“It probably seemed like a good idea at the time. He was her friend. I was there when it happened. But the police didn’t take her seriously.”
“Well, I’m glad she didn’t get you into any trouble.”
Any trouble. Any trouble. I wanted to laugh, but did not know if it would escape as a howl.
Annie said softly, “But what am I saying? I’m not a fool. The Norwegian police don’t really believe your story about two men attacking each other and Julia getting shot by mistake.”
“Do you?”
The engine note climbed as the pilot tried to find his way out of the turbulence.
“I’ll believe that rather than believe Julia might have been at fault somehow.” Her face was set and so pale that the blusher seemed almost garish, the kind of work mortuary beauticians do.
“Julia was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. No, not just in Oslo. It started in Atlanta.”
“When Jim died.”
“Before then.” I told her what I knew, up to breaking into Honeycutt’s house and taking information to Denneny. She didn’t need to know about that, or my deal with the cartels. But as she had said, she was not a fool.
“So you killed them. No, don’t say anything. I’m glad. If I thought asking you to kill a hundred times would keep Julia safe, I’d ask you to do it.”
And I would. A hundred times. A thousand times.
“But we don’t need to worry about that now, do we? The Atlanta police will take it from here. They called, you know, while you were away. They have some new evidence. They wanted to talk to Julia again. I told them she was in Oslo, consulting with Olsen Glass.”
“What did they say?”
“They wanted the name of the person she would be seeing. I gave them Edvard’s number. He came to the hospital, you know.”
I nodded. He had visited me, too.
“He was so young, and he seemed to take Julia’s injury personally—kept apologizing on behalf of his country. I didn’t know what to say, so I just hugged him until he shut up. He cried. I had to mop up his tears. At least it gave me something to do, something that made a difference.”
We both looked at Julia lying still and silent and beyond our care. The engines resumed their steady hum. We were above the turbulence.
“That sculpture garden he and Julia were planning, are planning, sounds lovely. All those story characters and settings for the children. The adult version sounded challenging and exciting, too, but I think it was the children’s garden he really wanted. Wants. Oh, god, Aud, I’m talking about her and the garden in past tense.”
We landed just before six in the evening, Atlanta time. The air was thick and hot and flavoured with diesel fumes. The ambulance drove to Piedmont Hospital along streets crowded with convertibles full of tanned people in shorts and pastel polo shirts, eyes blank and anonymous behind shades. The trees were heavy and green with full summer foliage, the sky an impersonal, bland blue. I insisted that the EMTs give Julia a second blanket; the air-conditioning was fierce. By seven, she was being prepped for surgery.
The surgeon came to talk to us in the visitors’ suite before he scrubbed. “The operation will take several hours, and you won’t be allowed to see her for hours after that, but I don’t suppose there’s any point telling you to go home and get some sleep? No. Well, I’ll call in again after the operation and let you know how it went.”
I pulled two armchairs together for Annie, and two for myself, and found us both blankets. We curled up. When I woke at two in the morning, Annie was staring at the ceiling.
“Would you like some coffee?”
“May as well,” she said.
Hospitals at night are strange places. The floors gleam in the dark and the air is too dry and hot. In a few hours, gurneys trundled by hospital porters spiriting away those who had died in the night would squeak down these corridors, past doors behind which frightened people lay awake, listening. I passed a vending machine on the way to the nurse’s station, but ignored it.
Annie sat up when I came back with fresh coffee. “Where on earth did you find this?”
“I told the nurse that if she let me into the nurses’ break room to make some fresh, I’d not only make a generous donation to the hospital children’s fund, I’d bring her a cup, served any way she liked. You’ll be pleased to know that she takes cream and sugar. And she likes cookies.” I passed her the plate.
The coffee was long gone and we were playing backgammon when the surgeon returned. He was one of those men who needed to shave three times a day. He was wearing slacks and sports jacket. On his way home.
He was frowning when he came in, but smiled when we stood up.
“Let’s all sit down again, shall we?” Always we with doctors. “You’ll be pleased to know that the operation went smoothly and the patient is stable. But as you know, recovery can be a slow process.” He couldn’t remember her name.
“When can we see her?” Annie asked.
“She’s not conscious yet.”
“When?”
“In the morning? Yes, in the morning. A quick peep around ten o’clock. But very briefly. Yes, I think that would be best.” The man was so tired he was talking more to himself than to us. He started to get up.
“But someone will let us know how she’s doing?”
“The nurses’ station just down the hall will have all that information. Just ask. As I’ve said, the operation went very smoothly.”
Annie just nodded. He left. I got up. “I’m going to get some more coffee.”
I caught up with him at the nurses’ station, where he was commenting on some blunder on a TV hospital show the night before. They both laughed.
“Doctor.”
“Ah?”
“Another question, about Julia Lyons-Bennet, the woman you just gave a new liver. When will we know if she will reject the liver or not?”
“At least twelve hours. Tomorrow afternoon. Perhaps even later.” He just wanted to go home.
“It must have been a complicated operation.”
He made a vast effort and dredged up a smile. “Well, yes, she’d been shot and there were one or two things that we don’t normally encounter but, given that, everything went very well. Very smoothly. As I said.”
“But she’s still not conscious. What were the one or two things?”
He let his smile fade. “We had to resection her colon, and there are indications that her remaining kidney is under strain. But I can’t stress enough that she is currently stable and doing very well under the circumstances. It was a good organ match. We have high hopes.”
“How high?”
“High,” he said firmly. He was lying.
When I got back to the visitors’ suite with more coffee, Annie was crying. “She’s going to be all right, Aud. She’s going to be all right. I know it. Oh, please god she’s going to be all right.” She wiped at her eyes and sipped her coffee. I had put extra sugar in it. “He was very thoughtful, changing out of his bloody clothes before he came to see us, don’t you think?”
More likely he had needed the time to think of the phrases that would reassure without actually lying.
“Ah.” She put her cup down. “I think I can sleep now.”
I stayed awake, thinking. Julia, facing me that first time in the street in the rain. Julia, telling Dornan about penis piercing. Julia, in my arms at the fjord. Julia, Julia, Julia. So many mistakes.
After I had seen Julia, I took a cab back to the house. The flowers were all dead from lack of water and the house smelled of air-conditioning. The chair sat empty in the centre of my workroom. I called Benny. “I hope you don’t have any arrangements for lunch because I need some information, and I need it now. Anything you can find on the death of Michael Honeycutt in New York. The Bridgetown Grill at twelve.”