Jack was fuming at this wholly avoidable situation. ‘I warned you he was bloody dangerous. If you’d let me continue the investigation, I could have got Maria to change her mind, make a statement and press charges. George would have been in custody pending trial and none of this would have happened.’
She faced him angrily. ‘I made the decision I felt was right at the time, with the information available to me.’
Jack quickly changed his attitude. ‘I’m sorry. My tone was uncalled for, Ma’am. But let me go to the hospital and check on Maria. It’ll mean you can continue your briefing. I can catch up on everything on my return.’
She considered her options before nodding. ‘Yes, please do that. I will explain everything later.’
As she walked off down the corridor, Jack smiled to himself. An official visit to the hospital to see Maria would also give him the opportunity to check on the victim from the frame shop. As he grabbed his jacket from the back of his desk chair, Laura walked in, prizing open a pack of aspirin, popping two in her mouth and grimacing as she forced them down.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked.
‘That domestic I was looking into. The victim has been assaulted again, and Armani wants me to deal with it, so I’m not going back to the briefing room.’
Before Laura could ask anything else, he was out of the incident room and hurtling down the stairs to talk to Burrows. He learnt that the police had been called to the Barras house by social services, who were there to speak with Mrs Barras. As they knocked on the front door, George Barras ran out of the back door like a crazy man. They found his wife unconscious on the kitchen floor.
‘She’s in a bad way, Jack,’ Burrows said. ‘He used a fucking claw hammer on her this time.’
‘And Fulham station called us?’
‘Yeah. They wanted to talk to DI Armani. And only her.’
Jack thanked Burrows, then headed out. Burrows called out to him as he went. ‘Put your foot down, Jack. It’s a bad one.’
Jack took the unmarked CID car, turning on the sirens and concealed blue lights as he left the yard. Arriving at St Thomas’s threequarters of an hour later, he found a parking space and left the Met Police logbook on the dashboard to avoid getting a ticket. He went to the main hospital reception area, showed his ID and explained his urgent reason for being there. It was a few moments while the receptionist conferred with two others working on the desk. They located Maria Barras in the intensive care unit in a new building away from the main hospital. He was handed a red plastic lanyard and told he could take a shortcut by exiting and going through the staff-only entrance on the right-hand-side of the hospital.
Jack made his way along a narrow pathway and then turned into the entrance to the newly built section housing the ICU wings. He went down a long corridor, following the arrows, until he got to a midway cubicle manned by two nurses checking TV monitors. Jack identified himself again.
‘The patient you’re making enquiries about is being prepared for surgery,’ one of the nurses told him. ‘I’m afraid I am unable to give you any further detail.’
Jack tried to mask his frustration. ‘Is there an area I could wait until the surgeon can speak to me?’
‘Yes, we have a private visitors room. A duty nurse can take your details and give you information when there is an update. It may be quite a while as the team is only just preparing for surgery. Go down this corridor and take the third door on your right.’
Jack followed her directions, passing several white-coated doctors and nurses who paid him no attention. He stopped by a large glass-fronted map of the ICU with directions to theatres, private wards and the visitors’ waiting room. Reaching the waiting room, Jack found a young man sitting in the corner reading a medical journal. Jack sat down. After a couple of minutes a nurse opened the door.
‘Miles, you’re wanted in X-ray. Like now.’ The man dropped his journal and darted off.
‘Things a bit hectic?’ Jack asked with a smile.
The nurse nodded. ‘We’ve got a lot of extra security around terminal one at the moment.’ She glanced down at her beeper, then hurried out herself. Jack stood in the empty room for a couple of minutes, then made his way back to the map. If terminal one had extra security, it was a good bet that’s where the frame shop victim was.
Jack studied the map for a moment, then took off at a brisk pace down the length of the corridor, turning into a large mushroom-shaped area. There were banks of monitor screens lined up on the desk, but to his relief, nobody was around. He was about to go round the desk and have a peek at the monitors when he felt a firm hand on his shoulder. He whipped around.
‘Jesus Christ.’
A burly uniformed officer was grinning at him. ‘It’s Ralph, Ralph Jordan. We were on a training course together a while ago. What are you doing here?’
‘I went to the loo and couldn’t find the way back. There’s a woman I need to interview but she’s in surgery.’
‘Come on in,’ Ralph said, opening a door to the right of the desk. ‘We’ve got decent coffee in here.’ Jack hesitated for a second, not wanting to appear too eager. As Jack entered the room, Ralph introduced everyone. ‘I’m relieving Tommy, and that’s DS Collingwood. This is DS Jack Warr. We were on a Met training course years back. He’s here on another case.’
The men nodded their hellos as Tommy put on his jacket. Ralph went to a table laden with sandwiches and two percolators and offered Jack a coffee, which he gladly accepted. ‘See you tonight,’ Ralph said to Tommy as he started to walk out.
‘Maybe you won’t. Word is he’s failing fast and you know the rules, Ralph.’ Tommy glanced to Jack, who he obviously thought shouldn’t have been allowed into their waiting area. Ralph waved his hand dismissively as he handed Jack his coffee.
‘I needed this, thanks. So, why are you lot here?’ Jack sat in one of the easy armchairs and looked at the bank of monitors lining one wall. Most of the screens were blank, but on one he could see doctors and nurses surrounding a bed, with a lot of complicated looking equipment around it.
‘It’s that bloke found in Portobello Road,’ Collingwood said. ‘We’ve been on round the clock since he was brought in.’
‘Oh yeah. I think I heard something about that,’ Jack said, taking a sip of his coffee.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ Collingwood continued. ‘He was stripped naked, nailed to a bloody great cross, his face shattered. Knife wounds to his chest, punctured lungs.’
‘Who is he?’ Jack asked.
‘Dunno. There were no clothes, identifying items or fingerprints. His palms and fingers had been scraped raw, and there were no teeth because they’d been hammered out. His jaw was hanging loose.’
‘It’s a wonder he’s still alive,’ Jack said.
Collingwood sighed and got up to refill his coffee. ‘The only thing working, and it has to be bloody strong, is his heart. He’s in an induced coma; can’t breathe by himself. The machines are pumping day and night.’
‘Bet you’re chomping at the bit to talk to him.’
‘Shit yeah. For now, it’s a sterile room with only the surgeon and nursing staff allowed access to him... You were on that Rodney Middleton case, weren’t you?’ Collingwood asked, stirring his coffee. The question took Jack by surprise. ‘I was at the trial, waiting to go into another court. You were very impressive, and I’m not telling tales out of school, but we could do with someone like you heading up this one.’
‘Thanks. Who is running the investigation by the way?’
‘DCI Mark Morrison. He’s running around like a headless chicken because we’ve got fuck all after almost a week. We had a nasty piece of work brought in who appeared to be running the shop. At first, he said he wasn’t the owner, then admitted he was. The shop mostly sells junk; old picture frames, that sort of shit. We had him in custody for twenty-four hours, but he’s got a solid enough alibi.’