Damn Walsh and his bloody pattern, he thought. Logic was fallible. It had to be.
He showed his warrant card to the Sister. "Miss Cattrell?" he asked. "Any change?"
"Not really. She's getting restless and opening her eyes which is a good sign but, as I told the Inspector, you'll be wasting your time if you want to interview her. She could come out of it any moment or she could be like this for a day or two. We'll let you know as soon as she's up to talking."
"I'll stay for a few minutes, if that's all right. You never know."
"She's in side ward two. Chat to her," the Sister encouraged. "Might as well make yourself useful while you're here."
He hadn't seen her since she had been taken away in the ambulance and he was shocked. She was even smaller than he remembered, a tiny, shrunken thing with bandaged head and ugly, sallow skin. But, even unconscious, she seemed to be smiling at some private joke of her own. He felt no lust-how could he?-but his heart warmed with a sense of recognition as if he had known her a long time. He pulled the chair close to her pillows and started to speak. There was no hesitation for he knew, without thinking, just what would give her pleasure. After half an hour he ran dry and looked at his watch. She had moved once or twice, like a child in her sleep, but her eyes had stayed firmly closed. He pushed his chair back. "That's it, Cattrell. Time's up, I'm afraid. I'll see if I can get you alone again tomorrow." He touched her cheek with his fingertips.
"You're a mean sod," she mumbled. "Give me 'Tam o' Shanter.' " She opened one eye and glared at him. "I'm dying."
"You've been awake all the time," he accused her.
She opened the other eye and there was a twinkle amidst the confusion. "Was Phoebe here?"
He nodded.
"I remember Phoebe being here. Am I at home?"
"You're in hospital," he told her.
"Oh, shit. I hate hospitals. What day is it?"
"Friday. You've had a two-day snooze."
That worried her. "What happened?"
"I'll find a nurse." He started to get up.
"You bloody well won't," she growled. "I hate nurses too. What happened?"
"Someone hit you. Tell me what you remember."
She knit her brows into a deep furrow. "Curry," she said experimentally.
He gripped her hand tightly. "Can we forget the curry, Cattrell?" he asked her. "It'll be easier all round if you never saw me that evening."
She wrinkled her forehead. "But what happened? Who found me?" He rubbed her fingers. "I found you, but I've had the devil's own job explaining to Walsh what I was doing there. I can hardly admit to carnal designs on a suspect." He searched her face. "Do you understand what I'm saying? I want to stay on the case, Anne. I want justice."
"Of course I bloody understand." Humour danced in the dark eyes and he wanted to hug her. "I can chew gum and walk at the same time, you know." She thought deeply. "I remember now. You were telling me how to live my life." She looked at him accusingly. "You had no right, McLoughlin. As long as I can live with myself, that's all that matters."
He raised her fingertips and brushed them softly across his lips. "I'm learning. Give me time. Tell me what else you remember?"
"I ran all the way back," she said with an effort of concentration. "I opened the window, I remember that. And then"-she frowned-"I heard something, I think."
"Where?"
"I don't remember." She looked worried. "What happened then?"
"Someone hit you on the back of the head."
She looked dazed. "I don't remember."
"I found you inside your room."
A heavy hand descended on his shoulder and made him jump. "You've no business to be asking her questions, Sergeant," said the Sister angrily. "Get me Dr. Renfrew," she called to a nurse in the corridor. "Out," she told McLoughlin.
Anne looked at her with unalloyed horror and clung to his hand. "Don't you dare go," she whispered. "I've seen her picture on World at War and she wasn't fighting for the Allies."
He turned and raised his hands in helpless resignation. "Is there anything I should remember?" she asked him. "I wouldn't want to confuse the Inspector."
His eyes softened. "No, Miss Cattrell. You just concentrate on getting better and leave the remembering to me."
She winked sleepily. "I'll do that."
DS Robinson was after promotion. He had gone diligently door-to-door again, looking for leads to Anne's assailant, but he had come up against the proverbial brick wall. No one had seen or heard anything on that night, except the ambulance, and they'd all heard that. He had had another pint with Paddy Clarke, this time under the beady eye of Mrs. Clarke. He had found her immensely intimidating, more so since Anne's revelation that she had once been a nun. Paddy assured him they had looked for the map of the grounds but hadn't found it and, with Mrs. Clarke breathing over his shoulder, he expressed complete ignorance of Streech Grange and its inhabitants. In particular, he knew nothing at all about Anne Cattrell. Nick Robinson didn't press him. Frankly, he didn't rate his chances if he got caught up between Mr. and Mrs. Clarke and he was unashamedly attached to his balls.
There was nothing to stop him going home now. By rights, he was off-duty. Instead, he turned his car in the direction of Bywater Farm and one Eddie Staines. So far, Mrs. Ledbetter's information had paid dividends. No harm in giving her another whirl.
The farmer pointed him to the cow-sheds where Eddie was cleaning up after the evening's milking. He found Eddie leaning on a rake and carelessly chatting up an apple-cheeked girl who giggled inanely at everything he said. They fell silent as Nick Robinson approached and looked at him curiously.
"Mr. Staines?" he asked, producing his warrant card. "Can I have a word?"
Eddie winked at the girl. "Sure," he said. "Would bollocks do?"
The girl shrieked her mirth. "Ooh, Eddie! You are funny!"
"Preferably in private," continued Robinson, making a mental note of Eddie's riposte for his own future use.
"Buzz off, Suzie. I'll see you later in the pub."
She went reluctantly, scuffing her boots through the muck in the yard, looking over her shoulder in the hopes of being invited back. For Eddie, it was clearly a case of out of sight out of mind. "What do you want?" he asked, raking soiled straw into a heap while he spoke. He was wearing a sleeveless tee-shirt which gave full expression to the muscles of his shoulders.
"You've heard about the murder at the Grange?"
"Who hasn't?" said Staines, uninterestedly.
"I'd like to ask you a few questions about it."
Staines leant on his rake and eyed the detective. "Listen, mate, I've already told your lot all I know and that's nothing. I'm a farmhand, a salt-of-the-earth prole. The likes of me don't mix with the people at the Grange."
"No one said you did."
"Then what's the point of asking me questions?"
"We're interested in anyone who's been into the grounds in the last couple of months."
Staines resumed his raking. "Not guilty."
"That's not what I've heard."
The young man's eyes narrowed. "Oh, yeah? Who's been blabbing?"
"It's common knowledge you take your girlfriends up there."
"You trying to pin something on me?"
"No, but there's a chance you may have seen or heard something that could help us." He offered the man a cigarette.
Eddie accepted a light. He appeared to be thinking deeply for several minutes. "Happen I did then," he said surprisingly.
"Go on."
"Seems you've been asking my sister questions about a woman crying one night. Seems you've been back a couple of times."
"The farm cottages on the East Deller road?"
"That's right. Maggie Trewin's my sister, lives in number two. Her man works up at Grange Farm. She tells me you want to know which night this-woman"-he put a derisory emphasis on the word-"was crying."
Robinson nodded.
"Well, now," said Staines, blowing perfect smoke rings into the air above his head, "I can probably tell you, but I'd want a guarantee my brother-in-law'll never know where you got it from. No court appearances, nothing like that. He'd skin me alive if he knew I'd been up there and he'd not give up till he found out who I was with." He shook his head morosely. It's more'n my life's worth." His brother-in-law's young sister was the apple of his eye.