She was about to say something else when Finch appeared beside her. He looked down at me for a moment and then sat beside her.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he said.

  I tried to laugh.

  ‘I spoke to Smart,’ he said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘He’s fully aware of the situation and all it might imply.’

  There were things neither of us wanted him to say in front of Yvonne. She understood this and told us she was going for coffee. She held out her hand and he gave her some money. ‘Ten minutes,’ she told him. ‘After which, no more of this Men Only stuff.’

  ‘I appreciate it,’ he said.

  ‘Of course you do. Milk? Sugar?’

  ‘Neither.’

  She left us.

  ‘I thought it was you,’ I said. If the sentences were going to be long, then the syllables were short.

  ‘Whoever it was must have known that Smart and I were there and then waited for us to leave. The real question is, did they know why we were there, or was finding the file a bonus?’ He knew this was as unlikely as I did, and said, ‘We’ll work on the assumption they knew.’

  ‘Which means . . .’ I didn’t know what it meant.

  ‘That someone told them, and that they were watching either us or you. Your follower, perhaps. Did you see anything?’

  I remembered only the man’s leg and his foot. I started to shake my head, but quickly thought better of it. ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘He hit you hard with something harder.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Smart?’

  ‘As you can imagine, he isn’t the happiest man in the world.’

  I looked at him and closed my eyes.

  ‘What? You think he set you up? You think he brought the file knowing or hoping this would happen? Not very likely. In fact, I’d say it was impossible. Why would he? Why would he need to?’

  ‘OK,’ I said, but I remained unconvinced and I made sure he knew it.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said. He looked over his shoulder in the direction Yvonne had gone. ‘She cried when she saw the state you were in,’ he said.

  ‘It looks bad?’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll assume by “it” you mean you. Your face looks like a bowl of rotten fruit.’

  ‘Why Sunny?’ I said.

  ‘Why did I ring him? Because I knew you and him were close. Because I knew he’d have been the one to put you on to Wallis the warder in the first place. Because I knew there’d be something in this for him if it ever came out into the open. Because you and him have probably already struck a deal about revealing everything eventually. And because, knowing all this, I was intrigued to hear that Sullivan had once had him thrown out of a press conference for repeatedly asking a question Sullivan had no intention of ever answering.’

  ‘At Roper’s arrest?’

  ‘At Roper’s arrest. Yvonne answered, told me Sunny wasn’t there, and when I mentioned your name she told me to tell her everything.’

  I closed my eyes again. ‘Who?’ I said.

  ‘I’ve spent most of the night trying to find out. It’s nobody we’re already watching. No one saw anything. Smart was on his way back to Sheffield. Nothing suspicious reported. Whoever it was could easily have parked in the darkness, probably in the multistorey, waited there and then come to you without anyone seeing them. I’m going to go over the car-park videos for the hour or so before our arrival until the time you were attacked. We had to wait for you, remember. If there was anyone following either us or you, they’d have had plenty of time to sit and wait.’

  ‘And find something hard?’

  ‘We’re looking, but don’t hold your breath. Luckily for us, if we do find something, the chances are it will have some of your blood or hair on it.’

  ‘That’s good news,’ I said.

  Yvonne came back to us, carrying two styrofoam cups with a bar of chocolate held between her teeth.

  ‘Finished with all that secret stuff?’ she said, letting the chocolate fall on to my bandaged ribs. She gave Finch his coffee and held her varnished nails out to him. ‘Is this me, do you think?’ she asked him.

  ‘I thought last year’s mauve was this year’s lilac,’ Finch said.

  ‘It’s pale plum,’ she told him.

  They sipped their coffee.

  ‘You cried,’ I said to her.

  ‘I was looking forward to being wined and dined. I’d been looking forward to it since five o’clock when Mister Wonderful called me from the garage forecourt to confirm our “arrangement”.’ She turned to Finch. ‘I know you’re a policeman, but don’t ask.’

  ‘Where’s Mr Summers?’ he asked her.

  I tried to work out if it was a serious question – something connected to what had happened to me – or just something to say.

  ‘He went out about three, said he was unlikely to be back.’

  ‘“Pig With Two Heads”?’ I said to her.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Where’s Smart now?’ I said to Finch.

  He looked at his watch. ‘He’s on his way.’

  Yvonne looked at each of us. ‘It’s good to know you’re both actually scared of someone,’ she said. ‘Perfect men worry me.’

  ‘Even ones with flowers?’

  ‘I make exceptions.’ She put her cup on the bedside cabinet and stood up. ‘I’m going home,’ she said. ‘Work to do and I don’t want Sunny to see me like this.’

  ‘You could tell him you stayed out all night,’ I said.

  ‘I did,’ she said.

  ‘Can I get in touch with you?’ Finch asked her.

  ‘I’m on my way to the East Carr Estate. A twelve-year-old girl is about to have her first baby. Just imagine, she could be a grandmother at twenty-four.’

  I held out my hand to her. ‘I owe you,’ I said.

  She laughed at the words. ‘I’ll tell Sunny what happened,’ she said. She leaned over to kiss me, came close, said, ‘Ugh,’ and stood up again.

  ‘It can’t be that bad,’ I said.

  ‘It is,’ she said. ‘When you stop having to liquidize all your food you can take me out to dinner.’ She leaned back down and kissed my forehead.

  I cried out at the pain.

  ‘I’m used to it,’ she said to Finch.

  He stood up and held his hand out to her. She looked at this and then hugged him and whispered something to him.

  ‘What?’ I said when she’d gone.

  ‘She told me that if Smart and I were going to keep on fucking using you, then we’d fucking well better keep a closer fucking watch on you from now on.’

  ‘Police protection?’ I said. ‘Great idea.’

  ‘What would be useful’, he said, ‘would be knowing at what point whoever attacked you knew precisely what you were up to.’

  I considered this, but said nothing.

  Smart arrived several minutes later.

  Finch rose at his appearance and Smart acknowledged this with only a sour glance.

  ‘We were followed,’ he said immediately. ‘Someone at the station knew we had that file with us.’

  You were the one who insisted on going through the proper channels and signing it out, I thought. You were the one who insisted on me keeping it overnight.

  ‘It’s the most likely explanation,’ Finch said, though doing little to disguise his own lack of conviction.

  Smart sat in Yvonne’s chair and studied my face. ‘You’ll mend,’ he said. ‘I spoke to the doctor. It’ll hurt for a while, but they won’t keep you in too long. They’ll strap up your ribs and give you something to hold your mouth shut while you’re sleeping.’

  ‘Great,’ I said.

  ‘It could have been a lot worse.’ He saw Yvonne’s half-drunk coffee, picked it up, sniffed it and dipped his finger into it. Neither Finch nor I said anything.

  ‘They took the file,’ Finch said eventually, as though the words needed to be spoken. Smart already knew this and said nothing. ‘You don’t seem too concerned about its loss,’ Finch added.

  ‘Don’t I?’ Smart said. ‘And so now you want to suggest to me that I agreed – that I insisted even – on taking it to poor Mr Rivers here with the sole intention of getting someone – one of Sullivan’s old cronies, presumably – to finally come out of the woodwork and make a grab for it?’

  Finch said nothing.

  ‘Apart from that little far-fetched scenario leaving me as the one with most egg on his face, it was you who wanted him to see the stuff in the first place. All I did – and imagine here that I’m talking now to a Police Board of Inquiry – was point out to you the likely consequences of your actions.’

  ‘All I meant was that you seem—’

  ‘What I seem to be may be of very little consequence now that the file has been taken,’ Smart said. ‘I imagine all our energies might be better spent now in keeping abreast of whatever happens next and not wasting time on pointless speculation. I suggest we leave Mr Rivers here and that you go and examine the car-park videos. Be thorough.’ He rose, told me he genuinely regretted what had happened to me and that he’d be in touch soon.

  Finch remained sitting, and Smart told him it was time for him to leave, too.

  They went together, leaving the screen at the bottom of the bed open.

  I saw the ward beyond, and the other beds and patients and the machinery surrounding them. In a glass cubicle by the entrance, two nurses sat watching a small television.

  It was not yet seven in the morning.

  I thought I might like to sleep, but it remained only a thought.

  19

  THE DOCTOR ARRIVED to see me mid-morning. He had with him the X-rays of my face and ribs. He held these up to the light and showed me the fractures.

  ‘Another two inches higher, and whatever hit you would have taken out your eye,’ he said. ‘You still don’t know what hit you?’ he said.

  ‘Or who.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Would it make a difference?’ I asked him.

  He considered this and shook his head. He prodded the side of my swollen face and when I flinched at the pain in one place, he moved to another and prodded the pain there. He told me he had arranged for a CAT scan for me later in the day.

  ‘There may be damage we have yet to discover,’ he said.

  I asked him how long I would have to remain there.

  ‘No one can keep you here against your will,’ he said. ‘But it would certainly be my recommendation that you stay with us another twenty-four hours at least.’ He told me the swelling would soon go down.

  Earlier, talking to Finch and Yvonne, I’d hardly felt the pain from my fractured ribs, but now, presumably as the pain-killers wore off, they were beginning to hurt. I told him this. He took the chart from its sleeve at the bottom of my bed and read it.

  ‘Pain-killers,’ he said. ‘They kill pain. Let someone know when it becomes unbearable. We’ll keep you strapped up; it should help.’

  ‘Recovery through suffering,’ I said.

  ‘People forget what suffering is,’ he said, and left me.

  An orderly brought me a late breakfast, which I couldn’t eat. She straightened the creases in my sheets and asked me if I needed anything. She said I looked as though I’d been in the wars.

  A nurse came shortly afterwards with a carrier. ‘Your partner dropped these off,’ she said. A white T-shirt and a navy-blue dressing-gown, both still in their wrappers. ‘She told me to tell you the receipts are in there.’

  I slept for most of the morning and was woken at noon by the same nurse telling me there was someone to see me. My ribs hurt worse than before.

  James Bishop and Alison Menzies stood beside me, vying with each other to look the most concerned at my injuries.

  I propped myself up on my pillows, helped by the nurse.

  ‘We came straight away,’ James Bishop said. ‘As soon as I heard.’

  Sweat beaded on my brow at the effort of pushing myself upright.

  ‘How did you hear?’ I said.

  ‘Someone called Finch called me.’

  I’d hoped he might somehow reveal that he’d had someone watching me.

  ‘Why did he do that?’

  ‘He was concerned. He said it was a brutal and deliberate assault.’

  As opposed to an inoffensive and accidental one?

  ‘I take it, therefore, that this happened in connection with the enquiries you are carrying out on my behalf.’ He was speaking like he had spoken in front of Alison Menzies at our first meeting, and she again stood and listened as though she were making notes of our conversation for future reference.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I told him. ‘My insurance will cover it.’

  He looked at the room around us. ‘Exactly,’ he said.

  He was about to say more when his phone rang. The nurse, who had moved on to talk to the man in the next bed, came quickly back to him and told him to turn it off.

  ‘Off?’ he said. ‘Surely not?’

  ‘Off,’ she repeated. She held out her hand as though she were about to take it away from him.

  Bishop checked to see who had called and then switched it off. He held the screen to Alison Menzies.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said to me. ‘I have to take it.’ He turned to the nurse. ‘Where?’

  ‘Outside. Right out. There’s a notice at the entrance, another at reception, others in the lifts and corridors, and one on the ward door.’

  ‘I must have missed them,’ he told her. He looked pointedly at her security identification, and in response she angled it directly at him.

  ‘Just as you missed the notice telling visitors to wait until after lunch before coming,’ she said to him.

  ‘“Except in Exceptional Circumstances”,’ Alison Menzies said.

  ‘Mr Rivers’s case is hardly exceptional,’ the nurse said.

  I remained silent. The sweat on my brow ran into my eyes.

  Bishop left us and Alison Menzies pulled up a chair to sit beside me. ‘I was with him when he heard,’ she said. ‘We have a meeting. Negotiations are at a critical stage.’

  ‘They always are where he’s concerned,’ I said. ‘It was good of Finch to call him.’

  She understood my meaning.

  ‘Then, like you, I can only assume it serves his purpose to tell Mr Bishop.’ She looked more closely at my swollen face. ‘Does it hurt?’ she said.

  ‘Only when I laugh in scathing disbelief at how it happened,’ I said.

  ‘Why did they do it?’

  ‘Finch didn’t tell you?’

  ‘He didn’t tell me anything. And all he told James was that you’d been attacked. Were they after something, were you robbed? They surely weren’t trying to kill you.’

  ‘No, no, and I seriously hope not,’ I said.

  James. It was the first time I’d heard her use his first name.

  ‘Who exactly is Finch?’ she said. It was easy to imagine the conversation she and Bishop had had on their way to see me.

  ‘National Crime. He’s here to build the case against the men they believe Roper was involved with.’

  ‘And who avoided prosecution during his trial?’ If she knew that much, then she knew everything. And all of it from Bishop. She was making no effort now to disguise the fact. ‘And none of whom have been prosecuted since then,’ she added, making the remark sound uncertain, a careless thought.

  ‘Finch thinks Bishop might be having me followed,’ I said. It wasn’t strictly the truth, but I knew that everything I said to her would be repeated to Bishop and that his response would be interesting.

  ‘He’s convinced that this will slow things down,’ she said, indicating my face and chest.

  ‘It will certainly rule out any Jackie Woo-style gunfights or high-speed car chases,’ I said.

  ‘The bits you look forward to most,’ she said.

  I almost laughed.

  ‘He still has great faith in you,’ she said. She glanced at the door through which James Bishop had disappeared. ‘He told me that hiring you was the best thing he’d done as far as finding out about what happened to Nicola was concerned. He wishes you’d tell him more, but he’s happy to let you get on with things.’

  ‘I won’t leave anything out,’ I told her.

  ‘He knows that.’

  ‘Do you know his wife well?’

  ‘Patricia? Not really. I’ve met her once or twice, of course, but I wouldn’t say I knew her.’

  ‘I just wondered about her feelings concerning her daughter’s disappearance and murder.’

  ‘I can probably guess.’

  ‘Of course. Please, don’t tell him I was asking.’

  ‘I won’t. And just in case you’re wondering about me and him—’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ I said. She had been about to tell me that, despite my suspicions, they meant nothing to each other, but now the option for her to say nothing existed, and because it was the lesser deceit, she chose it.

  ‘I have a great deal of respect and admiration for James,’ she said. ‘And if the thought ever crossed anyone’s mind, then it crossed mine long before it ever crossed his.’

  I tried to understand what she was trying hard not to have to deny.

  ‘I’ll tell you something,’ she said. ‘A long time ago, before his daughter disappeared, I worked with James on one or two small corporate take-overs. I wasn’t actually employed by him then, but he knew one of the partners of the firm I worked for and they agreed to me going to him on a month’s attachment. One night we were working late, on our way back from somewhere, and when we arrived at his offices – it must have been almost midnight – we overheard one of the security guards there, a young man, twenty or so, on the phone to someone – probably his girlfriend – telling them that James and I were in his office together again. I’ll spare you the more lascivious and imaginative details of what he said, but I’m sure you can imagine.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘James apologized to me for what I’d heard. He said he hoped I didn’t feel personally compromised or my position to be jeopardized by it. I told him to think nothing of it and not to make anything of it with the guard. Like I say, it was midnight; we were both exhausted.’

  ‘To keep silent because, for you at least, some kind of involvement was still an option? He had other affairs.’

 

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