Now there is only the soft drone of a fan radiator and the click-click-click of the moth that flaps fatly at the glass behind the blinds.
She keeps her eyes closed until her senses return. Everything hurts. She feels like one colossal tooth-ache; that cold, sharp agony of an infected root. She has to fight to keep her face still. She wants to grimace. To grimace and roar.
Slowly, she takes inventory. Her legs feel jelly-like; numb, as if she’s sat on a hard surface for too long. There’s a sickening headache kneading away at her temples and her mouth feels dry; a sun-baked slug of tongue sticking to the white crust on her lips.
The pain in her guts is like the worst stitch she has ever had. The skin feels tight, as though two folds of flab have been pulled taught and glued together.
She can smell disinfectant and pot-pourri. Can smell talcum powder and rum.
She becomes aware of the soft, prayer-like intonation droning at her bedside. Adjusts the frequency in her head until she can hear Derrick clearly. His voice is so full of sorrow it almost seems to turn to rain in the air.
“…did the right thing. It wouldn’t have made a difference, I know that. And they’re ok, that’s the thing. So don’t you be thinking of dying on me, yeah? There’s so much life in you, eve. I saw that from the first. You’re the first person I’ve ever met that I could truly see the point in. I know that sounds awful but you don’t know what my life was like growing up. So much of the kindness was kicked out of me. I still became a copper though, didn’t I? Tried to make a difference. And I swear, I cared about the victims in every case I ever policed. But I did my duty because it was my duty, do you understand? I never thought the lives I might be saving or the deaths I might be getting justice for – I never thought they were lives that properly mattered. But you, eve. You’re somebody who the world needs. I know you understand how it’s all supposed to work. How people tell whatever truths the world needs to hear and that underneath it’s all just about trying to find the most credible lie to live with. I know that wherever you are right now, you’re giving yourself Hell thinking you’re a bad person. But you’re not, love. They’re okay. The girls, I mean. Violet and Catherine. They don’t remember much and Rev Marlish did as you asked him and kept everything small. Violet’s Daddy’s neither use nor ornament and the mum’s like a whipped dog. As far as anybody knows, you were involved in an altercation in the woods while searching for the missing teenagers. When I found you I got on the radio to Mountain Rescue and they found them in no time. It’s all going to be okay. They don’t remember anything. Violet kept gibbering about the pig-face man but she’s so pumped full of the home-brew he gave them it’ll be like remembering a dream….
Eve clears her throat, painfully. She opens her eyes like a Hollywood glamour-puss waking from a swoon.
“Did you catch him?” she croaks. “Cormac …,”
“We never say that name,” comes a voice from the other side of the bed. She blinks, rapidly, taken by surprise. She barely notices the surroundings into which she wakes – propped up on comfortable pillows in a mahogany bed; plush patterned paper clinging redly to walls decorated in Art Deco mirrors and George Stubbs prints.
In the chair by her bed sits a big man. He’s pushing 50 and looks it, but there’s an air of solidity about him that suggests he would be a formidable physical opponent. Big, clean, hairy-knuckled hands grip the arms of a wicker-backed mahogany chair. He’s wearing a vest and a cardigan, and there’s a strip of blue cloth wrapped around his neck, all but obscuring the gold crucifix beneath. A round, swarthy face is topped by a head of dark curls. He has a face that looks as if has been beaten into shape by a hammer and an anviclass="underline" flat features here and risen, lumpen bones there. He’s looking at her dispassionately: watching her as if she’s a cloud drifting across the sky.
“Mr Pearl…,” croaks Eve, trying to sit up. She flashes angry eyes at Derrick. “What’s he doing here.. if anybody sees…?”
“Nobody will see, Detective Chief Inspector,” says Mr Pearl, his accent a soft, velvety County Wexford. “This is a private hospital. The best. Better than most five-star hotels, so they say, though I’ve not spent much time in any of those. Spent time in hospital, though. Spent plenty. Never liked it . Always felt as though I’d been trapped, you understand. Always my biggest fear, that. Waking up with my hands tied. Daddy used to use a manacle on me and my brother, can you believe that? All to be frowned on these days but you knew you were in for a whipping when you felt the steel go on. There was a hatch in the hayloft. Nasty, smelly place. He’d hang us from a beam, dangling there with our shirts off while he went to town with the lash. Gave me long arms but I don’t know if that’s much compensation.”
Eve swallows again. Derrick moves to get her some water from the elaborate bedside table. Pearl sits him back in his seat with one hard look.
“Mr Pearl, there was no choice. I was hurt. Bleeding to death. We had to get the girls to safety. We’d have called you in but there was no time …,”
“You were bleeding to death,” says Pearl, flatly. “That can’t be nice.”
“No, it wasn’t,” spits Eve, bristling.
“But you were paid to find my son,” he says, and turns his eyes on Derrick. “You were given a lot of money for a simple job.” He swings the searchlight glare onto eve. “And you have done very well from the information I’ve provided you, and from the many cash gifts that have been deposited in your account.”
Eve shakes her head. “No. I never took money.”
“No? Odd. I have a savings account that shows regular payments to an account in your name, eve. Regular as clockwork.”
Eve looks to Derrick, shaking her head.
“I’ve paid for you to have the best care that money can buy,” he says, drily. “That’s because I want you well. I want you in tip-top fighting form so you can take me to my son.”
“Your son’s a murderer,” growls Eve. “He’s gone. He’s missed his chance with the girls here but he’ll need his fix somewhere. He’ll turn up, but I won’t be helping you find him. I should never have started on this road. Neither should Derrick. If we ever find him, he won’t be getting handed over to you. He’ll go to prison like any other killer.”
“No,” says Pearl. “He wouldn’t like that. He’s a child of nature – that is why I had such hopes for Mr Sixpence. He failed me. He helped my boy grow stronger. Darker. Gave him a taste for things he would never have discovered alone. He has gone too far now. He needs putting down.”
Eve shrinks into the pillow, wrinkling her lip. “You wouldn’t kill your own son.”
Pearl shifts in his seat, straightening his back, and a shaft of light falls across his face. The irises of his eyes are completely black: fat scarab beetles that swallow the light.
"If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father or his mother, and when they chastise him, he will not even listen to them, then his father and mother shall seize him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway of his hometown. They shall say to the elders of his city, 'This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard.' Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death; so you shall remove the evil from your midst, and all Israel will hear of it and fear.”
“You’re not in fucking Israel,” spits Eve, her throat all but closing up as she speaks. She shuffles upright, the heavy woollen blankets slipping down. She realises she is naked. Sees the huge bandage, stuck to her skin: all gauze and blood and puss.