"He was a bit shorter than I am, say about five ten or eleven. I suppose you'd describe him as medium build-he certainly wasn't fat-and he was dressed in black."
The policeman waited for him to continue, pencil poised over notebook on knee. When he didn't, he looked up. "A slightly fuller description would be more helpful, sir. For example, what skin color was he?"
"I don't know. I think he was wearing a ski mask. All I saw was a man dressed in black from head to toe wielding a sledgehammer."
"Fair enough. Then perhaps you could give me some details of his dress. What was he wearing on his top?"
Alan shook his head. "I don't know." He saw impatience in the constable's eyes. "Look," he said with a flash of anger, "it's very dark. I get out of my car and the next thing I know, some bastard is trying to make mincemeat out of me. Frankly, taking in the minutiae of his dress is the last thing on my mind."
The policeman waited a moment. "Except that you must have taken in a few more details when you were back in the car and he was running away."
"It happened very fast. All I can tell you is that he was dressed in black."
"It's not much to go on, sir."
"I'm aware of that," said Alan testily.
There was a short silence. "Yet you're very sure it was a man. Why? Did he say something to you?"
"No."
"Could it have been a woman?"
"Maybe, but I don't believe it was. Everything about him-body shape, strength, aggression-told me it was a man."
"You wouldn't be so convinced if you saw some of the women we deal with, sir," said the constable with heavy humor. "There's no such thing as a weaker sex these days."
Alan took a deep breath. "Look, would it be a problem if we left all this till tomorrow? I'm pretty tired and my shoulder's giving me hell."
The constables exchanged glances. "I can't see why not," said the one who had remained standing. "The place seems secure enough, and without a good description, there's not much we can do tonight anyway. We'll have one of the plainclothes lads come and talk to you tomorrow. Meanwhile, sir, you might make a list of where you've been today and who you've spoken to." He gave a courteous nod. "For what it's worth, I think your theory about drugs is the most likely explanation. Some junkie after morphine who found the clinic was too well guarded and preferred the softer target of you and your car. It was a good bet that anyone coming back after midnight was more likely to be a doctor than a visitor or a patient."
Alan stopped at the nurses' room on his way to bed. "Everything all right?" he asked.
Veronica Gordon, the only occupant, looked at his bloodied face. "Are you trying to play the martyr?" she demanded. "Is that why you won't let me do something about those cuts?"
"You're too ham-fisted, woman," he growled. "I'd rather do them myself, quietly and gently, in my own time. Any problems?"
"Good Lord, no," she said tartly. "Why would there be problems when a houseful of insecure drunks and drug addicts get woken in the middle of the night by security officers and policemen tramping about the gravel and shining torches through their windows? For your information, Amy and I are being run off our feet. She is currently responding to the three bells that rang just before you came in." A light began flashing on the board at her elbow. "There's another one. They're all too nosy for their own good. They want to know what's going on."
"What about Jinx Kingsley? Are you still running the half-hourly checks?"
She swung the night register round for him to look at. "Fast asleep, and has been since ten o'clock. Matter of fact, she's the only one who hasn't given us any trouble. Amy checked her just before you started blaring your horn, but it's not recorded because we haven't had time, not with all the hoo-ha going on. I've popped my head in once since then, but she's out like a light. Do you want us to go on with it?"
"Yes," he said thoughtfully. "Just in case. It makes me feel easier, knowing where she is."
It wasn't until after he'd gone that Veronica was struck by the inappropriateness of what he'd said. She intended to mention it to Amy Staunton, but it went out of her mind when the demands of another bell sent her off down the corridor. Had it not, and had Amy been encouraged to tell her that Jinx was fully dressed, she, like Sergeant Fraser, often wondered afterwards, how different might the end result have been?
Jinx's waxen cheeks lost their last vestiges of color when Alan Protheroe entered her room before breakfast the following morning, his left arm supported in a sling and his face scarred with tiny cuts and scratches. "Did Adam do that?"
He was visibly taken aback. Whatever reaction he'd expected from her, it certainly wasn't that. "Why would your father want to break my windshield?"
"He wouldn't," she said rapidly. "Forget I said it. It was silly. Is that what happened? Is that why the police were here last night?"
He smiled. "There now, and I was reliably informed you slept through the whole thing."
"I did."
"Then how do you know the police were here?"
"Matthew told me. He came in half an hour ago."
God damn bloody Matthew! He seemed to spend more time in this room than he did in his own. "Did he say what it was all about?"
Jinx shook her head. "He's on a trawl to see if anybody else knows."
She was a great liar because she understood the importance of being plausible. "I see." He perched on the end of the bed. "And you couldn't tell him because you don't know."
She held his gaze for a moment before looking away. "That's right."
"The police think it was an intruder after drugs." He examined her exhausted face. "For someone who slept through it all, you don't look very rested."
She forced a cheerful smile. "It's my skinhead look. It doesn't do me any more favors than it does your average convict. But it's not really designed to, is it? Hair is the original fashion accessory."
"Are you cold?" he asked her. "You're shivering."
"It's nerves."
"Why are you nervous of me, Jinx?"
"I'm not."
"Then what are you nervous of?"
"I don't know," she said. "I can't remember."
He grinned broadly. "I had a dream about you last night. I dreamed I was lying on my back on a cliff edge when a hand came up, grabbed my ankle, and started to pull me towards the brink. As I was sliding over, I looked down and saw your face staring up at me, and you were smiling."
She frowned. "Is that supposed to mean something?"
"Yes," he said, standing up. "It means you were pulling my leg."
It was a Detective Constable Hadden of the Wiltshire police who took up where the two uniformed policemen had left off the previous night. He was a bluff middle-aged man who was there to pay lip service to police procedure but without any obvious intention of pursuing the matter further. Rather to Alan's annoyance, he arrived with the newspaper, which put paid, for the moment anyway, to Alan's attempts to substantiate what Simon Harris had told him over the telephone.
"Frankly, sir," confided DC Hadden, pushing his ample bottom into the sculptured recesses of the leather sofa, "I'm inclined to go along with the junky theory unless you've remembered anything overnight that points to something more concrete. You see our dilemma. We'd have more success looking for a needle in a haystack than scouring the countryside for this man you've described. It would be different if you could give us a name or if he'd stolen something-there'd be a slim chance of tracing him through the goods-but as it is"-he shook his head-"needle-in-haystack stuff, sir. I'm sure you understand the problem."
"Then this list I made of the people I spoke to yesterday was a complete waste of time," Alan snapped irritably. "I could have had another half hour in bed, which would have done me rather more good than attempting to assist the police in an inquiry they aren't even interested in." He snatched the list from the coffee table and prepared to roll it into a ball.