"So you think that's why they're here now?"
"You watch, I think we'll know soon enough."
Rebecca was cold. It was bright outside her flat, the top of the Greenwich roofs all rusty-coloured against the blue, but this wasn't a weather cold: it was a different cold, a cold inside her, like stone. She stood in the kitchen unloading shopping-bags three cartons of orange juice, milk, two bottles of vodka and a ready-made meal, chicken and tarragon. She knew she needed to eat she had been drunk all yesterday, hadn't eaten and had slept for just three hours, waking with the sun, her skin damp, her hair matted. The flat had been a mess some time in the night she'd broken another glass, in the studio this time, and there were rolled-up edges of Rizla packets everywhere. No food in the kitchen, only a year-old bottle of Bailey's, curdled in the heat on the window-sill. Her brain had been swooshing around so much that she'd had to take a deep breath, get her keys, and venture out to get paracetamol. Now she put her hand on her head and stared at the groceries.
No paracetamol. She had gone out intending to get paracetamol but had come back with vodka.
Oh, God. She didn't think she could face going out into the sun again so instead of pain-killers she found a dusty glass in the back of the cupboard, rinsed it, opened one of the bottles of Smirnoff and poured herself a weak vodka and orange. Just to soothe her head and send her off to sleep again she wasn't going to get drunk but, God, it's so difficult to sleep when the sun is up. She sniffed the drink, turned the glass around, and tasted it. After the first sip it didn't taste bitter it tasted sweet. She rolled up her shirt-sleeves and took the drink into her studio to close the shutters and that felt better. Now all of Greenwich couldn't look in and see how transparent and substanceless she was. The sunlight had found a way in from the kitchen, so she went back in there and closed the blinds, stopping to refill her glass on the way.
"Jack," she muttered, walking unsteadily back into the studio, "Oh, God, Jack '
In the relatives' room at King's Hospital I.C.U, Caffery woke up with a jolt, as if someone had said his name. He lay there for a while blinking, trying to piece together why he was here. Last night Souness had come over to the unit and together they had tried a little pressure on Mr. Friendship. But for health professionals the police come a long way down the chain of priority, and the answer was: no, not yet. "There's a life to be saved whatever it is can wait until he's stabilized."
So Souness went home with Paulina, and Caffery spent another night away from home, sleeping on a banquette in the relatives' room, waiting for news. The relatives' room could have been Gatwick airport for all the makeshift sleeping arrangements. Except for the tears. A woman with a massive brain haemorrhage had come on to the ward in the night, and her husband, unable to bear his wife's almost dead face on the pillow, sat in a corner on his own, staring at the floor, not moving. He hardly seemed to notice the baby in the car seat on the floor next to him, who cried and made faces and curled its little fists and didn't have any idea how wildly its future was pivoting in the neighbouring ward.
Blinking, Caffery sat up and rubbed his face. His neck was sore from sleeping on the banquette. He went straight to the main doors of the intensive care unit, straightening his shirt, flattening his hair back with his palm. Time to get moving. The armed officer let him in, but the manager inside the unit was ferociously tall, heavily pregnant and quite determined that Caffery was not to trouble her patient.
"I'm sorry, sir, Mr. Friendship talked to you about this last night. He says he'll let you have access to the patient when he's ready, but until then I've been told not to let you inside. You can wait here with the officer."
"Look, I was the one with Mr. Peach when he got ill. I'll only be a moment."
"Mr. Friendship said he's sorry. Not for the time being." She nodded to the PC sitting in an alcove just inside the door. "You've been allowed him."
"Fine, fine. I don't suppose if I said please…"
"No really." She smiled. "I'm sorry. Honestly, I'm sorry."
"It's OK." He scratched the back of his neck and looked around the small area where the officer was posted. "I suppose I couldn't just sit here for a bit? In case there's any change."
"There won't be."
"Well, OK, but maybe if I could."
"I can't stop you, but nothing's going to change until Mr. Friendship says it's changed."
"OK." He took off his jacket and sat down opposite the uniformed officer, stretching out his legs, watching the manager walk away with her small, clipped steps. From the storeroom a nurse, unpacking a box of ventilator tubes, watched him, her eyes big and unblinking. The armed officer nodded at Caffery but neither of them spoke. Eventually the nurse took the endotrachial tube and went back to her patient, and presently the unit manager reappeared, wandering over to where Caffery sat. She leaned against the wall, her arms crossed. "Why the urgency, then?"
He half stood, thinking she'd changed her mind. "We just want to speak to him about what happened."
"It was terrible, wasn't it?"
"Terrible," Caffery agreed. "And God forbid it should happen to someone else."
"Oh, crumbs don't say stuff like that."
"These people don't stop at one. There's too much fun in it."
"Stop it. You're not being serious, are you?"
"As serious as a heart-attack."
She frowned. "We don't use expressions like that here."
"I'm sorry." He straightened and came to stand next to her, looking at the name on the staff badge hanging around her neck. "Sorry. Didn't mean to offend, Ayo."
She smiled and half put her hand over the badge, slightly embarrassed, slightly flattered. For the first time in months she wished she hadn't got this football up her sweater. "That's OK. It was horrible how it happened, wasn't it?"
"Yes." He scratched the back of his neck and leaned a little closer. "And he's very clever whoever it was who attacked that little boy was very clever. And I'm sure that if I spoke to Mr. Peach now I'd get that final…" he made a quick fist '… that final bit of the puzzle. Anyway," he rapped his knuckles on the wall and looked around him, 'do you, uh, mind if I use the gents'?"
"Back through the door, first on the right." She gestured down the corridor.
"Thanks."
In the gents' Caffery closed the door and counted to five. Then he turned around and went straight back to Intensive Care, buzzing urgently on the door. Ayo opened it.
"Is that one of your patients?"
"What?"
"On the floor in the gents'. He's got a drip with him, I thought
Ayo dithered, confused, not certain what to do.
"He's just inside the door. Do you want me to call someone?"
"The consultant!" She hurried down the corridor, her nametag swinging wildly on its chain. '455 for an air call."
"Will do." He waited till she was through the doors, then nodded at the uniformed officer and slipped inside the unit.
The carpet came away quickly like Elastoplast coming away from skin the tacks pop-pop-pop-pop-popping. She scrabbled away the underlay, dropped down and pressed her ear to the naked floorboards. Silence. For a moment she lay there, comforted by the texture of the wood the lovely grained surface, the outdoorsy Canadian smell of forest and rain. But she had to keep going. She took a deep breath and sat up, looking at the area she had cleared.
The grip rod, the little wooden strip with tacks in it, was nailed into the boards so she leaned over, found the wiring from her bra and slotted the end under the rod, sliding it down as far as it would go. "Hey, Smurf," she muttered. "Look at Wonder Woman." She took off her shirt, double-wrapped it around her hands and pulled on the wire. The grip rod creaked, rose quickly and broke away from the floor.