He showed his card to the senior nurse. ‘You’re here for Grete?’ the man asked. The DCI nodded. ‘Ms Iqbal’s with her just now; she’ll just be a few minutes. Her aunt’s waiting outside her room. Why don’t you have a wee seat with her?’
‘I want to avoid Mrs Rainey,’ Pye confessed.
‘On brief acquaintance I can understand why,’ the nurse murmured.
‘Does Grete know about her child?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ The man pursed his lips. ‘The bloody aunt came out with it as soon as she saw her. Ms Iqbal had arranged a counsellor to break the news, and she told Mrs Rainey as much, but the woman insisted it was her duty.’
‘How much does she know?’
‘The aunt told her that the child was suffocated, that’s all.’
‘That’s not strictly true, but there’s no way of softening a blow like that. How has she reacted?’
‘Ms Iqbal gave her a sedative, but she’s still conscious and responsive. She did say that she wants to talk to you.’
‘That’s right, Chief Inspector,’ Sonia Iqbal said, from the doorway. ‘She is very anxious to speak to you.’
‘You’re okay with that?’
‘Yes, or you wouldn’t be here. I wish I could keep her family at bay, though. You can go in now, if you like.’
‘How is she?’ Haddock asked.
‘She’s remarkably well,’ the surgeon replied. ‘The brain swelling has lessened and she seems to have all her motor functions back.’
‘And her memory?’
‘Vivid, as you’ll discover. I can’t say, though, how much of it is real and how much imagined. Come with me, both, I’ll take you along.’
She led the way along the corridor. Ingrid Rainey’s chair had been vacated; she was waiting inside her niece’s room, standing by her bedside with her back to the door. She was speaking in hushed hospital tones, but both detectives could still hear her well enough.
‘This is what happens when you’re nice to people, Grete. You feel sorry for them, now look at you; look at poor little Zena. I had to identify her, you know.’
‘Fuck’s sake!’ Haddock whispered.
‘Mrs Rainey,’ Pye said.
The woman turned. ‘Chief Inspector. You are here; you can tell poor Grete what happened to her.’
‘We’re hoping that Grete can tell us, ma’am, and we’d be grateful if you’d leave us with her.’
‘I’m not doing that!’ the aunt protested.
‘I’m sorry,’ Pye murmured, calmly, ‘but that wasn’t a request.’
‘You can’t make me leave.’
‘There’s a maximum of two visitors per patient at any given time,’ Sonia Iqbal pointed out. ‘You can come back in when the officers have finished.’
‘Go on, Ingrid; please.’ Grete Regal’s voice was half whisper, half croak. Her aunt glared at the two detectives but finally she left the room, with the surgeon following.
‘Ten minutes,’ Ms Iqbal murmured, ‘but at the first sign of distress . . .’ She pointed at the monitor beside the bed. ‘If her heart rate goes above ninety, you stop. Understood?’
‘Understood.’ Haddock said, as he closed the door.
‘It’s true, then?’ the prostrate woman whispered.
‘I’m sorry, Ms Regal,’ Pye replied. ‘It is. But what your aunt told you, that Olivia was suffocated, that’s not correct.’
‘Zena, we always called her Zena,’ she corrected. ‘Only the school called her by her given name.’ Despite her Norwegian parentage her accent was Scottish.
‘Of course. Zena was asthmatic, yes?’
‘Yes, severely. Is that what happened?’
‘I’m afraid so. She was placed in a confined space, and the belief is that it triggered an attack that she didn’t survive.’
‘Was it quick?’
‘Very,’ Pye lied.
‘If there’s any consolation, it’s that. What about David,’ she asked, ‘does he know yet?’
‘That’s been difficult,’ the DCI admitted. ‘We’ve contacted the Ministry of Defence of course, but . . .’
‘No,’ Grete whispered. ‘They will tell him whenever they can, but the Navy will not interrupt a mission for anything. He’s the engineering officer on a Trident submarine, and nobody can ever know where they are.’
‘They didn’t even tell us that much,’ Haddock said, ‘but we’d worked it out. Now,’ he continued, smiling gently, ‘for we’re on a meter here, how much can you remember of what happened?’
‘All of it,’ she replied, slowly. ‘We were walking to school, as we always did when the weather was dry. Then a red car pulled in in front of us, and a man jumped out. He was wearing a black thingie over his face, a balaclava, so all I could see were his eyes and his mouth.
‘He shouted at me. “Get back! Get back!” he yelled, and then he tried to grab Zena. Of course I tried to stop him. I went for him. I hit him about the head and I grabbed a handful of the balaclava and I pulled it, I pulled it half off. I saw his face, a mean, nasty face. I’ll know him again, don’t you worry; I’ll never forget him.’
Pye was on the point of telling her that Dean Francey could never harm her again but she continued.
‘That was when he hit me,’ she said. ‘With his fist at first; that knocked me backwards. Then he picked something up and hit me again really hard. It was like an explosion inside my head. Not sore but very loud, and then everything faded away . . .
‘Until this morning, when I began to hear sounds around me, and to be aware, of being touched and moved, and of tubes going into my neck and in other places.
‘And then I woke up,’ she sighed, with a tearful sadness that the young detective sergeant found hard to bear, ‘and now I wish that I hadn’t.’
‘I know,’ he murmured, squeezing her hand.
She smiled, weakly, but only for a second or two. ‘There’s something that Ingrid said, about Gloria, Gloria Mackail, that she caused this to happen.’
‘We don’t believe that,’ Pye told her. ‘Mrs Mackail had nothing to do with it. We know who attacked you, and took Zena. We know also that someone paid him to do it, but he can’t tell us, because he’s dead.’
Her eyes widened as she stared up at him. ‘The man who killed my baby is dead?’
The DCI nodded. ‘Yes. He was shot. We believe it was because of what happened to Zena. As I said, we knew who he was, and we’d have caught him before too long. The person who paid him couldn’t rely on him to keep his mouth shut, and so he silenced him, permanently.’
‘That’s the first good news I’ve had since I wakened,’ she said, her voice stronger. ‘You didn’t have to tell me that Gloria was not involved. Poor woman; to lose her husband in such a stupid way. A drunk driver, the police from Haddington told her; there’s no chance of them finding him, not now. Ingrid still wanted me to pursue her for the money he owed me, but I wouldn’t do it. Everything’s about money with my aunt. I pay her to manage my affairs, and she feels that everything I’m owed is partly hers. But I don’t need it from Gloria; with David’s salary we’re not short.’
She tugged on Haddock’s hand. ‘Tell Gloria to come and see me, please. I’d like that. I don’t know many people, and I don’t want to be left alone, with nobody but Ingrid till David gets back. If I am I’ll think about what’s happened.’ A look of concern came into her eyes. ‘This couldn’t be about David’s job, could it?’
‘Not a chance,’ Pye assured her. ‘The Ministry of Defence ruled that out. The people who have anything to gain by exerting pressure on a submarine officer know that it wouldn’t work, because they couldn’t get to him, under any circumstances, as we discovered when we tried.
‘We don’t know who was behind this, Grete, and I won’t promise that we ever will, but I do promise that we’re doing our damnedest to find out.’
He looked at his watch. ‘Our time’s up,’ he said.
She tried to nod, but found it impossible because of the tubes that fed into her neck. ‘Tell the surgeon lady, and Ingrid, that I want to sleep. Especially Ingrid,’ she croaked. ‘I can take no more of her today.’
‘We’ll do our best,’ Haddock chuckled.
She smiled again. ‘You’re nice, both of you. I’m glad you came; you make me feel safer.’
They were at the door when she called after them, using all her strength. ‘Can I see her?’ she asked. ‘Can I see my baby?’