Then suddenly, strong arms were wrapped around her, and a soothing voice told her to lie very still, that help was on the way, that she shouldn’t worry about anything.
‘I’m here, I’ll look after you,’ said the voice. It was a familiar voice.
Michelle stopped screaming and struggled to focus. Panic momentarily engulfed her because she couldn’t see clearly. What had happened? Had she been blinded? She reached for her eyes with one hand and rubbed the back of it across them. It was then that she realized that her eyes were covered with blood. And although the pain remained as excruciating as ever, it came as a huge relief when her sight cleared as she wiped the worst of the blood away.
Now she could see. She looked up into the concerned face of the man who was cradling her in his arms.
No wonder his voice had been familiar. It was Alfonso.
Vogel was sound asleep when the call came at around 4 a.m. He always slept well and took the attitude that anyone who didn’t probably did not work hard enough.
He had issued instructions at Charing Cross and throughout every relevant department within the Met that he should be notified at once in the event of any incidents involving the Sunday Club members. As luck would have it, when responding officers called in details of the attack on Michelle, PC Jessica Harding was on duty in Dispatch. Two days earlier, she’d contacted Vogel when the mutilated dogs were found, and had been sufficiently intrigued by the case that, even without a written directive, she would have alerted him to the latest development. A violent assault on a serving police officer took the investigation to another level. Finding whoever was responsible for the attacks on this group of friends would now become a priority, not just for Vogel, but for the Met’s top brass.
Vogel had the knack of waking up quickly, but the news PC Harding imparted caused him to awaken even more quickly than usual. He groped for his spectacles, without which he was virtually blind, and sat bolt upright, listening intently as Harding concluded her report with the news that Michelle had been taken to University College Hospital, where she was expected to be detained for the rest of the night.
Vogel’s next, perhaps somewhat obscure, response was a sense of relief. This must mean that Michelle could not be responsible for the other incidents. After all, she could hardly have mugged herself. Then the pedantic nagging voice Vogel could never quite discount began to make itself heard, asking questions he did not really wish to consider. Could Michelle have arranged the assault in order to eliminate herself from his inquiries? Had she hired some lowlife to stage an attack? Perhaps the hired thug had hit her with more force than she’d bargained for. If the hospital had decided to keep her overnight, then they probably suspected concussion or something more serious than a black eye.
Given that Michelle was a police officer, there was also a possibility that the attack was connected to her job rather than Sunday Club. Working in Traffic, she didn’t come in contact with the sort of violent criminals that officers in the serious crimes squads dealt with, but the anger of motorists who believed they had been unjustly treated was legendary. Could it be that someone had recognized her out of uniform and taken revenge?
‘Any witnesses?’ he asked.
‘Yes, a passing motorist and a pedestrian,’ replied PC Harding. ‘It was well gone midnight but there were still a few people about. Craddick and Parsons were the responding officers. They took two witness statements, each giving more or less the same account of a hooded cyclist riding straight up to Michelle, punching her full in the face, nicking her bag and riding off.’
‘Bit like the other incident with Marlena, then.’
‘Yep.’
‘Nobody tried to stop this cyclist?’
‘Well no, Sarge. Sounds like it was the usual story: all happened so fast, and so on.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Well, one of the witnesses — the pedestrian — said he knew Michelle. He happened to be walking home from work and saw the whole thing. Quite a coincid—’
Vogel interrupted sharply.
‘Name?’ he barked. ‘Do we have a name for this witness?’
‘Of course,’ responded Jessica Harding. There was a brief silence. Vogel assumed she was checking the report on screen.
‘Alfonso Bertorelli,’ the PC continued. ‘Oh, isn’t that one of the other names on your list?’
Before Harding had finished speaking Vogel was half out of bed, trying to dress with one hand while using the other to keep the phone clamped to his ear.
His wife propped herself on one elbow.
‘Try not to wake Rosamund, won’t you,’ she said.
Vogel nodded, smiled, and mouthed the word ‘sorry’, but his mind was elsewhere.
‘What address did Bertorelli give?’ he asked Harding.
Harding read out the Dagenham address Alfonso had given Vogel the previous afternoon.
‘And where is he now?’ Vogel asked, keeping his voice as low as he could.
There was another silence while PC Harding did some more checking before she spoke again.
‘His present whereabouts is unknown. According to the report, he went to the hospital, travelling in the ambulance with Michelle. When nursing staff told him she was being detained, he left.’
‘And we don’t know where he went?’
‘Well, no. Home, I should imagine.’
‘Do we know what time it was when Bertorelli left the hospital?’
Another pause.
‘He was still there when Craddick and Parsons turned up to get a statement from Michelle. She’d been in a state of shock when they tried to question her at the scene, so they followed the ambulance to UCH. It would seem Mr Bertorelli left the hospital about the same time they did: around three a.m.’
‘Unlikely he was going back to Dagenham at that hour.’
‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ said Harding.
‘I bloody know,’ responded Vogel, rather more loudly than he’d intended.
‘Shhhhh,’ said his wife.
Turning to her, Vogel pulled an apologetic face. Then he spoke again into the phone.
‘Why the hell didn’t those two idiots stop him leaving?’
‘Stop him? Why would they?’
Still holding the phone to one ear, his shoes clutched in his free hand, Vogel tiptoed out of his bedroom and along the short corridor past his daughter’s room towards the kitchen. He needed coffee.
‘Because he should have been brought in for formal questioning, at the very least,’ he said. ‘Not only is Alfonso Bertorelli one of these Sunday Club people, he was also the star witness when Marleen McTavish was knocked down by a hooded cyclist. Didn’t Craddick and Parsons realize that? Didn’t anybody in Dispatch check it out? It’s all in the system. Every detail. I’ve made sure of that.’
Harding mumbled something incomprehensible in response.
‘We need to find Bertorelli, and we need to find him fast, before he has a chance to dispose of any evidence,’ Vogel went on. ‘I think I know where he’ll be: at his nan’s place, King’s Cross. Full address already on file. I’m going over there. I’ll need back-up. You don’t have a response unit nearby, do you?’
‘Hold on,’ said Harding. This time there was a silence lasting three or four minutes before she spoke again.
‘There’ll be a patrol car outside your place in ten minutes,’ she said. ‘DC Jones will meet you at King’s Cross with a second team.’
Alfonso was wide awake when he first heard the wail of a siren, some time approaching 5 a.m. he thought. He was indeed at his nan’s place, and had arrived there shortly before 4 a.m., having walked from the hospital just along the Euston Road. He hadn’t bothered going to bed because he knew there was no hope of getting any sleep that night.