Farrell settled back in his chair. Potzner was thinking on his feet. That was normal. The agitation wasn’t. Neither was the Polack expletive — Potzner only resorted to his mother tongue in extremis. Farrell watched his boss pace the room and wondered how things would pan out. It wasn’t looking good. Potzner’s complexion was greyer than ever, the lines around his mouth more pronounced. They had a word for it in the Department. Burnout. Thing was, how close could he get to the fire without getting burned himself?
Potzner knocked on the polished front door. A second later he saw the shape of Dracup’s wife peering at him through the translucent glass panel. Waiting. Hanging on every sound, every ring of the phone. When she opened the door he was struck by her composure. Attractive, petite. He knew why she and Dracup had split, but found himself wondering if he would have let it happen the same way.
“Yes?”
“James Potzner. I believe your husband may have mentioned me.”
She looked him up and down. “He did. Come in.”
Potzner followed Yvonne into her orderly domain. Fresh flowers were present in the hall and the lounge. The house felt prepared, expectant. Ready for her baby to come home.
“Have you come — I mean, is there any news of—”
Potzner shook his head. “No, ma’am. I’m sorry. I have to say at the outset that I haven’t come to tell you any more about your daughter. I was rather hoping you could tell me something I need to know.”
Yvonne nodded. “Sit down, please.”
Potzner watched her carefully. Did she know? Had Dracup confided in her?
“How can I help?”
“I’ll get straight to the point, Mrs Dracup—”
“Just Yvonne is fine.”
“Okay — Yvonne.” Potzner smiled. “I want to know where your husband is.”
“My ex-husband. Well, so would I.”
The reply had returned like a tennis backhand, straight down the line. She was ready for this. Potzner nodded. A tough cookie. “He didn’t mention anything about your daughter — where he might have been looking for her?”
“No.”
“I see.” Potzner moistened his lips. “Tell me, Yvonne, do you live alone?”
“I don’t see that that’s any business of yours, Mr Potzner.”
Potzner sighed. “Actually, Yvonne, it is. It’s all very relevant.” There was no one present in the house, he knew. Oh yes, there was a man often in residence, but he was busy with his networks on some client site in London. Potzner remembered Dracup’s assessment of the IT specialist and his lip curled with amusement.
“Is there something funny, Mr Potzner?”
“Nope. Nothing funny.” Potzner stood up and walked across the lounge carpet towards Yvonne. He felt in his pocket for the cold metal of the handcuffs. Now that he had decided on a course of action he felt a sense of detachment. What had to be done had to be done. Period. He watched Yvonne’s face, how her expression had yet to show any sign of alarm. How frail she was. How frail women were, for all their bravado and self-assurance. “Now, Yvonne. It’s just you and me. And I really need to know what your ex-husband has been saying to you.”
Yvonne maintained her composure. Her mobile phone lay on the arm of the chair. “If you’re threatening me, Mr Potzner, you’d better think again.”
Potzner was taken aback by her confidence. Perhaps there was a reason she… his own mobile vibrated against his thigh with an insistent pulse. He gave Yvonne a curt nod. “Excuse me a moment.”
Yvonne returned the nod and took the opportunity to escape from her chair. He heard her next door in the kitchen clattering cups. The running of a tap. Another noise — the kettle, zapping its current through ice cold water. But by then Potzner’s world had slowed to a standstill. Because the voice on the phone was Al Busby, their neighbour on West Penn Street, Philly. Al was a good guy; Potzner had lost count of the baseball games they’d yelled through together, the bottles of Bud they’d shared on the patio of a summer’s evening. He was the sort of guy you could rely on, and they had relied on him — and Evelyn, his fiery little wife of forty years. She was an ex-nurse — and boy, she knew her stuff. That had been reassuring, to know she was just a few metres away if they needed any help. Hospitals always listened up when one of their own made a report or request. Once, when Abi had needed something stronger for the pain, Evelyn had marched down to ER herself, taken no prisoners and organised a home assessment that same afternoon. Red tape cut to shreds. The Busbys. There when you needed them, invisible when you didn’t and wanted a little space for yourselves. His extended UK stay had been made more bearable by their presence right next door to Abi.
And they never phoned. They never asked him about his job, never troubled him while he was on duty. They never phoned. Potzner walked into the hall and out through the front door. He opened his car with one hand on the button of the key fob and slid into the passenger seat. Yvonne’s head poked curiously out of the space he had vacated at her front door, but his focus had moved on. Al was talking to him and he was trying to make sense of the words. He knew what they meant, but he couldn’t assemble them into any coherent pattern that fitted his understanding. He heard his own voice interjecting, misinterpreting. “No, Al, wait. I don’t — I can’t—”
And Al’s voice, that familiar East Coast drawl, was saying the same thing over and over. “I’m so sorry, Jim. It was very sudden. Evie took her down yesterday afternoon. You know she hadn’t been that great — but she was a fighter, wasn’t she? You should be proud of her. Jim — I’m so sorry. We both are. You know how we loved her. I–I didn’t want to break it to you like this, but—”
Potzner listened to Al rambling on. He took in air, exhaled again. He couldn’t prompt his vocal cords into life. Al was still talking, chatting like they were organising a party, or—
“Jim, you have to let us know what you want to do about — you know. They’re asking already about the — arrangements. I said you were away, but Evie didn’t pull any punches—” Al attempted a laugh here, “—well, you know what she’s like. She said they’ll just have to hang on until you—”
Potzner found his voice. To his surprise it sounded steady and authoritative. “Al, I have to ask you. Did she… say anything, I mean when—” he cleared his throat “—before she — slipped away, to pass onto me?”
Al stumbled on for a few sentences. He could hear the effort. There was nothing specific. It was sudden. And then the coma — he must understand. The deterioration was rapid. Twelve hours from chatting to Evie over the fence to the end.“Jeez, Jim. I don’t know what to say — this is hard, you know, not face to face like it should be. We tried to get hold of you earlier. I–I know how you must feel.”
Did he? Potzner doubted it. His light, his reason for living had been extinguished. In his absence. Without him even knowing. He stared at the plastic dash, counting the patterned lines, the fake leather indentations that seemed to him like wrinkles in an old world’s face. Everything was different now. Everything had moved on. He hadn’t even said goodbye.
“Jim? Are you still there?”
Perhaps it was a mistake. Perhaps Al had got it wrong. It happened. There had been cases where the patient had revived, stunning both doctors and family alike. Potzner nodded at the recollection. Why not? Thing was, he’d better get himself over to the US so he could be there when she woke up. But then his problem still remained. Dracup. And the research. It must continue at all costs. No, at any cost.