“Just mucky,” I said.
She heard the evasion and made a face at me. “But could you murder someone in cold blood? Someone you’d loved? Could you murder Melissa?”
“Good Lord, no!”
“What makes you think Tony could, then?”
“I don’t know what I think.” I paused. “Could Mulder?”
“For God’s sake, Nick!” So far she had patiently indulged my interest in the subject, but now, in a flash of the old Angela, she became annoyed. “You think Tony would keep Mulder around if he’d murdered Nadeznha? Tony keeps Mulder as a bodyguard. He knows Kassouli has threatened to stop him winning the St Pierre. Why do you think we won’t take any strangers into the crew?”
“But you asked me.”
She ground the cigarette into the ashtray. “We know what kennel you crawled from, Nick. You’re not one of Kassouli’s people. He’s trying to make you into one, though, isn’t he?” The question was a challenge.
“Yes,” I said honestly, “but he didn’t succeed. And I’m sorry I asked you all these horrid questions about Bannister.”
“Tony isn’t a murderer,” she said flatly.
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
“Don’t even speculate about it,” she said firmly, and with another trace of impatience. “The last thing I want is for the gutter press to start on Tony’s last marriage. Can you imagine the mud they’d sling if they thought he might have murdered Nadeznha?” I could imagine it, and I’d already triggered the process by talking to Micky Harding. Now, however truthful I wanted to be with Angela, I did not think I had better mention Harding to her.
She lit another cigarette.
“You smoke too much,” I said.
“Piss off, Nick.” It was said gently enough; nothing more than irritation at being criticized.
“And can I give you some more advice?” I said.
“Try me.”
“Don’t let Bannister go on the St Pierre. Keep him ashore. I don’t know what Kassouli plans, but it’s more than just preventing him from winning the St Pierre.”
She looked at me for a long time. “He wants revenge for his daughter’s death?”
“I think so, yes.” I wondered why I was being so solicitous of a man who was now my rival for this girl. Good old chivalry.
“Male pride. Old bull, young bull.” Angela swung herself off the bed and walked to the window beside me. The thick clouds were bringing on an early dusk. “Tony’s very proud, Nick, and he won’t back down. He’s told the whole world that he’s going to win the St Pierre this year. He wants to become a hero for Britain on television; he wants to be the man who tweaked the noses of the French. Bloody hell, Nick, he wants a knighthood! Other telly people have got it, so Tony wants one, and he thinks that winning the St Pierre will help.”
“So you’ll be Lady Bannister?”
She smiled, but didn’t answer, and I thought how she would love the title.
“Don’t let him go,” I said. “Does he know how determined Kassouli is?”
“Would you give up a dream just because you were threatened?”
“It would depend on who was doing the threatening,” I said fervently. “I’m much more likely to repent for a Soviet armoured division than for the Salvation Army.”
“He won’t give it up, Nick.” She took my arm and leaned against me. “That’s why I want you to go with him. Because you’ll be another bodyguard.”
“Not for the ratings?” I asked.
“That, too, you fool.” She laughed, then threw her cigarette out of the window.
I fell over.
It had not happened for days, but suddenly my right leg had switched itself off and I lurched sideways, grabbed the windowsill, then sprawled heavily on the thick carpet. Panic coursed through me. I felt stupid, frightened, and suddenly very helpless. The pain was in my back again; not the usual dull pain that I had learned to live with, but a sudden streak of hard and frightening agony.
“Nick? Nick!” There was genuine alarm in Angela’s voice.
“It’s OK.” I had to force my voice to sound calm. I tried to stand, and couldn’t. I heard myself hiss with the pain, then I managed to roll over, which helped, and I pulled myself across the floor towards the bed.
“What is it, Nick?” Angela tried to lift me.
“Every now and then the leg crumples. It’ll be all right in a minute.” I was hiding my fear. I’d thought that because the leg had stood up to my American trip then perhaps the sudden weakness had mended itself, but suddenly, and foolishly, I was a helpless cripple again. I managed to haul myself on to the rucked bed where I lay with eyes closed as I tried to subdue the pain.
“You never mentioned it before,” Angela accused me.
“I told you, it’ll be all right in a minute.” I forced myself to turn over, then began to pound my knee in an attempt to force pain and feeling back into the joint.
“Have you seen a doctor?” Angela asked.
“I’ve seen millions of doctors.”
“You God-damned bloody fool.” She strode naked across the room and seized the telephone.
“What are you doing?” I asked in alarm.
She fended off my clumsy grab for the phone. “You’re going to see a doctor.”
“I’m bloody not.” I lunged for the phone again.
She lifted the phone out of my reach. “Do you want to go to bed with me again, Nick Sandman?”
“For ever.”
“Then you bloody well see a doctor.” She paused. “Do you agree?”
“I told you,” I insisted, “it’ll cure itself.”
“I’m not discussing it, Nick Sandman. Are you going to see a doctor or are you not?”
I agreed. I’d found Angela now and I was not going to lose her and I’d even see a quack for her. I lay back on the bed and willed my leg to move, and I thought, as I listened to her quick, competent voice arranging my appointment, how very nice it was to be cared for by a woman again. I was Nick in love, Nick in La-la land, Nick happy.
PART THREE
The doctor turned out to be a woman of my own age, but who seemed older because of her brusque and confident manner. She was a neurologist whom Angela had met during the filming of a medical documentary. Doctor Mary Clarke had a hint of humour in her green eyes, but none in her voice as she briskly put me through her various tests. At the end of the performance she led me back to her private office overlooking a rose garden, where Angela had waited for us. Doctor Clarke asked me to describe the exact nature of my wound. She grimaced as she took notes, while Angela, who had not heard the full story before, flinched from the gory details.
“I wish,” Mary Clarke said when I’d finished, “that I’d had you as my patient, Mr Sandman.”
“I rather wish that, too,” I said gallantly.
“Because”—she pointedly ignored my clumsy compliment—“I’d have kept you strapped down in bed so you couldn’t have done any more damage to yourself.”
Silence. Except that a nearby lawnmower buzzed annoyingly.
“What do you mean?” I asked eventually.
“What I mean, Mr Sandman, is that your do-it-yourself physiotherapy has undoubtedly aggravated a fairly routine and minor oedematose condition. There’s no medical reason why you shouldn’t be walking normally, except that you forced the pace unreasonably.”
“Bollocks,” I said angrily, with all gallantry forgotten. “The bastards said I’d never walk again!”
“The bastards usually do.” Mary Clarke half smiled. “Because a spinal oedema routinely presents itself as a complete severance.
Naturally, if your spinal cord was cut, you’d be paralysed for life.
It’s only when some degree of mobility returns that an oedema can be diagnosed.”
“Oedema?” Angela asked.
“A bloody swelling,” I answered too caustically, and immediately regretted the tone. I might have lived too long with the doctors and their vocabulary, but Angela was new to it.