One of the last things his beloved Maureen had said to him before her stroke was, ‘You know, my love, sometimes I wish I’d just been born as a tree.’
A flash of colour snapped him out of his reveries.
He stopped in his tracks. Had he imagined it?
The rest of the search line team carried on. He turned back and probed the bracken with his stick. Bloody hell. No, he hadn’t imagined it.
A woman’s blue-and-white trainer lay on its side at the edge of what looked like a recently dug area.
He reached for his whistle and blew it.
And as he did so, something else caught his eye. A glint of light in some brambles a short distance away. A shard of broken glass?
47
Roy and Cleo sat beside Bruno in the ICU of the Royal Sussex County Hospital. The boy was dwarfed by the mass of technology all around him. He lay, eyes closed, breathing through a clear plastic endotracheal tube connected to a high-tech ventilator. Much of his marble-coloured face that was visible was covered in abrasions. His right cheek had a dressing on it. His normally neat blond hair was tousled and greasy. His bruised left hand had two cannulas taped to it, with lines leading up to pumps, regulating the flow from the bags above. An arterial line came out of his wrist. ECG circles were stuck around his chest, with red, yellow and green wires running from them to another monitor that beeped steadily.
Two nurses and a registrar were all busy checking tubes and lines. The Intensive Care consultant talked Roy and Cleo through what was happening and all the monitoring equipment.
Grace’s eyes went up to the bank of monitors on shelving above him, one with a zigzagging line on a small green screen and a row of others giving digital readouts on red screens. He raised his arm over the boy’s head and gently tidied some of his hair. ‘Hi, Bruno, it’s your dad, I’m with you. Can you hear me?’
They were screened off from the rest of the ward by green curtains. There were constant, intermittent beeps, and the occasional whine of an alarm somewhere near. All the initial tests on Bruno had been completed, and he now lay in an induced coma. He would remain in this, Roy and Cleo had been informed, while monitoring continued.
He looked so vulnerable, Grace thought. All his previous concerns about his son were forgotten — he was now desperately anxious for the poor little chap. Wishing there was something, anything, he could do. Wishing he could wind the clock back and, instead of dropping him at school this morning, have done something different. Maybe carried on talking with him?
A couple of hours ago, Cleo had rung home to see if their nanny could stay late tonight with Noah. She reported that Kaitlynn said she was willing to do anything that could help. She and Jack were due to go out to dinner. But, of course, she would cancel it and stay as long as was needed — all night if that helped.
When Roy wasn’t fretting about Bruno, he spent much of the time pacing up and down, still thinking about Operation Lagoon. Thinking through Niall Paternoster’s comments and body language when he and Branson had interviewed him yesterday. Thinking about what did and did not fit with the evidence his team was uncovering. Evidence that was increasingly damning.
A swish of curtains made both of them turn round, and they saw Mel, a staff nurse, enter the confined area, closing the curtain behind her. She gave them a breezy but sympathetic smile. ‘I’m going off shift shortly. I know how concerned you are to be at your son’s bedside, but we’re going to be keeping him in this coma for the time being. You are, of course, very welcome to stay here, but I think you’d both be much better off going home and getting a good night’s rest.’
Cleo looked up at the displays on all the monitors to which Bruno was attached. There’d been no apparent change in his condition, so far as she could see.
‘If there’s any deterioration in Bruno’s condition to worry about, you’ll be called immediately,’ Mel said. ‘But, honestly, there isn’t anything for you to do here for now. I would go home and get some rest. Perhaps we’ll have better news tomorrow.’
‘Is that likely, do you think?’ Grace asked in a quiet voice.
She hesitated awkwardly. ‘Are either of you familiar with the Glasgow Coma Scale?’
Cleo nodded.
Mel indicated with her finger for them to follow her, and they stepped out through the curtains into the ward.
Her voice dropping to a whisper, Mel said, ‘We never know how much patients in a coma can hear. Bruno had a score of seven, which isn’t good. But,’ she added, her face brightening just a fraction, ‘we never know for sure. I’ve seen people make a complete recovery from a far worse prognosis than Bruno’s.’
As she left, Roy turned to Cleo. ‘Remind me, what does a score of seven mean?’
‘It’s not great, darling,’ she said. ‘The scale relates to responsiveness to stimuli — to pain, verbalization and eye-opening. Below eight means possible severe brain damage. The highest a patient can have is fifteen.’
‘And the lowest?’
‘Three — which often indicates brainstem death.’
‘So, seven is some hope?’
She nodded bleakly and replied in a whisper. ‘Yes. Some hope for sure.’
He nodded.
‘Listen, Roy, we’ll stay here tonight so we can be close to Bruno in case anything happens. Leave the arrangements at home to Kaitlynn and me.’
They returned to Bruno’s bedside. Grace looked down at his vulnerable young son and held his hand. ‘Don’t worry, Bruno, we’re both here for you, we’re not going home.’
They were interrupted by Bruno’s personal nurse, who said she needed to carry out some checks and asked them to return to the Relatives’ Room. Cleo took Roy’s arm and they walked down the corridor, sobbing.
48
‘You’re not coming in?’ It was a bad reception area and Glenn Branson’s voice crackled fuzzily through Roy Grace’s phone.
‘No, Cleo and I need to be with Bruno, it’s not looking good. Can you run things for me?’
‘Of course, Roy, seriously, leave it all with me.’
‘Do me a favour. When I do come in, probably tomorrow, will you ask everyone not to ask me how I am, because—’ He took a moment, choking on his words.
Sounding deeply and genuinely sympathetic, the Deputy SIO said, ‘Absolutely. But make sure you’re certain about coming in.’
‘I will,’ he said heavy-heartedly.
‘How is Bruno?’ Branson asked.
‘Not good — not at all good. He’s in an induced coma, which they’re hoping will reduce the swellings on his brain, but he has multiple head injuries.’
‘God, it’s awful, you both need to be with him. I’ll run the briefing and give you an update afterwards.’
‘Thanks. I appreciate it. You’re a good friend.’
‘You helped me when I was splitting up with Ari, when I went through all that shit of the separation and she tried to stop me seeing my kids. I’m here for you and always will be.’
Grace barely managed to utter his thanks. His eyes stung with tears.
49
Twenty minutes later, Glenn Branson sat at the head of the crowded conference room table, with his briefing notes and Policy Book in front of him.
‘This is the third briefing of Operation Lagoon,’ he said, then coughed and sipped some water, clearing a frog in his throat. ‘The investigation into the disappearance of Mrs Eden Paternoster. As we know, she was last seen by her husband in the car park of the Tesco Holmbush superstore two days ago, just after 3.15 p.m. on Sunday the first of September — if her husband is to be believed.’ He said the last few words with cynical emphasis. ‘There have subsequently been a number of developments giving us grave concern for Mrs Paternoster.’