He parked. He got out of the car. He moved towards the hospital entrance and what waited for him inside: the unchanging and unchangeable situation, the family, his friends, and Helen.
Decide, Tommy darling. I trust you completely. Well…all except in the matter of ties. And that’s always been a puzzle to me because you’re generally a man of impeccable taste.
“Tommy.”
He stirred from his thoughts. His sister Judith was coming towards him. She was looking more like their mother every day: tall and lithe with close-cropped blonde hair.
He saw she was holding a folded tabloid, and he would later think it was this that set him off. Because it wasn’t the most recent edition but rather the one in which the story about him, his personal life, his wife, and his home had appeared. And suddenly what he felt was shame in such a wave that he thought he’d actually drown beneath it and the only way to struggle to the surface was to give in to the rage.
He took the tabloid from her. Judith said, “Helen’s sister had it stuffed in her bag. I hadn’t seen it yet. I actually didn’t know about it, so when Cybil and Pen mentioned-” She saw something, surely, for she came to his side and put her arm round him. She said, “It isn’t that. You mustn’t think so. If you start to believe-”
He tried to speak. His throat didn’t allow it.
“She needs you now,” Judith said.
He shook his head blindly. He turned on his heel and left the hospital, returning to his car. He heard her voice calling after him and then a moment later he heard St. James, who must have been near when he’d first seen Judith. But he couldn’t stop and speak to them now. He had to move, to go, to deal with things as they should have been dealt with from the first.
He made for the bridge. He needed speed. He needed action. It was cold and grey and damp outside, and there was clearly a rainstorm on its way, but when the first drops finally fell as he turned into Broadway, he saw them only as minor distractions, splatters on the windscreen on which was already written an unfolding drama, of which he wanted no part.
In the kiosk, the officer waved him through, his mouth opening to speak. Lynley nodded to him and drove on, descending to the carpark, where he left the Bentley and stood for a moment in the dim light, trying to breathe because it felt to him as if he’d been holding air in his lungs since he’d left the hospital, left his sister, returned the accusing tabloid to her hands.
He made for the lift. What was wanted was Tower Block, that aerie from which the sight of the trees in St. James’s Park marked the changing of the seasons. He made his way there. He saw faces emerge as if from a mist, and voices spoke, but he wasn’t able to make out the words.
When he reached AC Hillier’s office, the assistant commissioner’s secretary blocked his path to the door. Judi MacIntosh said, “Superintendent…,” in her most officious voice and then apparently read something or understood something for the first time because she altered to, “Tommy, my dear,” in a tone so rich with compassion that he could hardly bear it. “You don’t belong here. Go back to the hospital.”
“Is he in there?”
“Yes. But-”
“Then step aside please.”
“Tommy, I don’t want to have to ring for anyone.”
“Then don’t. Judi, step aside.”
“Let me at least tell him.” She made a move for her desk when any sensible woman would have simply charged into Hillier’s office ahead of him. But she did things by the book, which was her downfall because with the path unblocked, he accessed the door and let himself in, shutting it behind him.
Hillier was on the phone. He was saying, “…many so far?…Good. I want the stops pulled out…Bloody right it’s to be a special task force. No one strikes at a cop-” And then he saw Lynley. He said into the phone, “I’ll get back to you. Carry on.”
He rang off and stood. He came round the desk. “How is she?”
Lynley didn’t respond. He felt his heart slamming against his ribs.
Hillier gestured to the phone. “That was Belgravia. They’re getting volunteers-these’re men off duty, on rota, whatever-from all over town. Asking to be assigned to the case. They’ve a task force in place. It’s top priority. They went into action late yesterday afternoon.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What? Sit down. Here. I’m getting you a drink. Have you slept? Eaten?” Hillier went for the phone. He punched in a number and said he wanted sandwiches, coffee, and no it didn’t matter what kind, just get it to his office as soon as possible. Fetch the coffee first. And to Lynley again, “How is she?”
“She’s brain dead.” The first time he’d actually said the words. “Helen is brain dead. My wife is brain dead.”
Hillier’s face went slack. “But I was told a chest wound…How is that possible?”
Lynley recited the details, finding that he needed and wanted the pain of telling them one by one. “The wound was small. They didn’t see at first that-” No. There was a better way to say it all. “The bullet went through an artery. Then through parts of her heart. I don’t know the order, the actual path of it, but I expect you get the general idea.”
“Don’t-”
Oh, he would. He would. “But,” he said forcefully, “her heart was still beating at this point, so her chest began to fill with blood. But they didn’t know that in the ambulance, you see. Everything took them too long. So when they finally got her to hospital, she had no pulse, she had no blood pressure. They put a tube down her throat and they shoved another into her chest and that’s when the blood started coming out of her-pouring out-so they knew, you see, at that point they knew.” When he breathed, he could hear it grinding into his lungs and he knew Hillier could hear it as well. And he hated that fact for what it revealed, and for how it could be used against him.
Hillier said, “Sit down. Please. You need to sit down.”
Not that, he thought. Never that. He said, “I asked what they did for her in Casualty. Well, one would ask that, don’t you agree? They told me they opened her up right there and saw one of the holes the bullet had made. The doctor actually stuck his finger in it to stop the flow of blood, if you can picture that, and I wanted to be able to picture it because I had to know, you see. I had to understand because if she was breathing even shallowly…But they said the blood flow was inadequate to her brain. And by the time they controlled it…Oh, she’s breathing now on the machine and her heart’s back to beating, but her brain…Helen’s brain is dead.”
“God in heaven.” Hillier went to the conference table. He pulled out a chair and indicated he meant Lynley to sit. “I’m so sorry, Thomas.”
Not his name, he thought. He could not bear his name. He said, “He found us, you see. You understand that, yes? Her. Helen. He found her. He found her. You see that. You know how it happened, don’t you?”