thigh.
“You’re certain she will be in your hands?” he asked.
“Soon,” the voice said. “She’s receiving treatment now, but she’ll be released from the hospital soon. She has to go somewhere, and all the agencies for dealing with her sort will be closed for the holiday. Besides, she’s a witness to at least one murder, and possibly a suspect in another. She won’t go anywhere but to a police station. My station. I’ll figure out how to deal with her. Don’t worry.”
“Thank you,” Strazdas said. “My mother thanks you.”
“One thing,” the voice said. “Your driver is a known associate of yours. Expect questions. Unless you can get out of the country.”
“Out of the country?”
“Go back to Brussels,” the voice said. “You won’t get a flight until Boxing Day, but if you get across the border, you’ll be okay until then.”
“I want to stay,” Strazdas said. “Until the whore is taken care of. I can’t go to Brussels until then.”
“Why not?”
Strazdas thought of his mother’s hard eyes, and her hard hands. “I can’t, that’s all,” he said.
“All right,” the voice said. “I’ll deal with her as quickly as I can. But have your bags packed, sort out whatever transport you need for the airport, and be ready to go. Christmas Day might buy you some time, but after that, you’ll be questioned, there’s no doubt.”
“All right,” Strazdas said.
“Good,” the voice said. “And about recompense.”
“What?”
“Payment. Things have gone well beyond the remit of our arrangement. I expect to be compensated accordingly.”
“Don’t worry,” Strazdas said. “You will be. But tell me this one thing.”
“What?”
“Who is this crazy man?” Strazdas asked. “The one who killed Herkus?”
69
THERE WAS NO doubt in the mind of Edwin Paynter that he would escape. From the moment the first officers stumbled down the cellar stairs, their guns drawn, to his lying down on a gurney in a hospital corridor, he knew they could not hold him for a single second longer than he chose to be held.
It was simply a matter of biding his time, not resisting, being calm and compliant. Sooner or later, the two policemen who guarded him would slip up, and Edwin Paynter would be gone before they knew his name.
They had no choice but to bring him to the hospital. The girl had opened his scalp with the chair, but Paynter knew that scalp wounds bled heavily, meaning there was no way to be sure if the injury was more serious without a proper examination.
He held a wad of gauze to his temple with his free hand, pressing it hard against the cut to staunch the flow. A pair of cuffs fixed his other hand to the trolley. If he wanted to, he could simply throw his legs off the edge of the bed and walk away, dragging the gurney behind him.
But he did not want to. His exit would be better thought out than that.
The hospital’s Accident and Emergency ward was understaffed and overpopulated. It never failed to astound Edwin Paynter that most people marked the Lord’s day by refusing to work and drinking too much. It was no wonder, then, that so many of Belfast’s drunks wound up in an emergency ward with not enough doctors or nurses to treat them.
So Edwin Paynter found himself bound to a gurney in a corridor, listening to the moans and cries of the city’s lowest while the handful of medical staff on duty ran themselves ragged trying to look after the sorry lot of them.
He had always found hospitals strange and frightful places to be, especially the A&E departments. The sounds and the smells. The things occurring behind drawn curtains, the swishes and footsteps that were none of your business. The gatherings of families waiting to be bereaved. The emptyfaced geriatrics staring at you from the other side of the ward.
This place was no different. Drunks called out, challenging their demons as they sobered. Young children screamed as their parents fretted. Others checked their watches and cursed their taxes, furious at waiting so long to have their small hurts addressed. All of it meaningless bustle and noise.
Most of it he could only guess at, limited as he was to this narrow bed. Let them suffer, he thought.
A nurse appeared at the foot of the gurney, an orderly close behind her.
“Mr. Paynter?” she said.
“My name’s Crawford,” he said. “Billy Crawford.”
She looked at the policemen, confused.
The nearest of them shrugged. “They told me he’s Edwin Paynter. I don’t care what you call him, so long as I can get home soon.”
The nurse turned her wavering smile back to Paynter. “Mr., er …”
“Crawford,” Paynter said.
“Mr. Crawford, there’s no bays available yet, but we’ll get you into one as soon as we can. We’re going to move you off the corridor, though. There’s space in the orthopedic room. All right?”
He did not answer.
The ceiling moved above him as he laid his head back on the thin paper-covered pillow. Wheels and feet squeaked on the vinyl-tiled floor until he rolled through a doorway into a room with beds and curtains, a light box on the wall, rows of drawers, and boxes of bandages.
“You’ll be all right here for now,” the nurse said as the orderly pushed the gurney into an empty space. “How’s that bleeding coming along?”
She lifted Paynter’s hand away and examined the side of his head. “You’ll live,” she said. “Right, you sit tight here. It won’t be much longer.”
The nurse whisked out of the room, the orderly trudging behind her, leaving the two policemen standing over the gurney.
One of them sat on the edge of the nearest bed while the other paced, moving in and out of Paynter’s vision. He noted that their guns looked very like the one he had taken from the foreigner, and the one the policeman Lennon had aimed at him earlier in the night.
The policeman who sat on the bed checked his watch and raised his eyebrows. “Merry fucking Christmas,” he said.
70
LENNON SAT ON the edge of the bed while the nurse applied two butterfly strips to the cut on his chin, then covered them with a bandage. CI Uprichard entered the bay as she left. He wore an anorak over a patterned sweater and corduroy slacks. Lennon wondered if he’d ever seen Uprichard in civvies before, and realized he hadn’t. It made him look every one of his sixty years.
“You pick your moments,” Uprichard said. “Happy flipping Christmas.”
Lennon smiled at his superior’s inability to swear. “Thanks for coming out,” he said. “You didn’t have to.”
“No, but best to clear up what I can tonight so there’s less to fight with when I come back after the holiday.” He lifted Lennon’s jacket. “Come on, they’ll want the bay for the next eejit in line.”
Lennon followed Uprichard out through the ward and into the corridor beyond.
“What do we know so far?” he asked.
Uprichard took one of a row of seats lined up outside a consultant’s office. “We’re positive he’s this Edwin Paynter chap young Connolly found in the ViSOR database. A quick search of the house didn’t turn up any identification, but there’s no doubt. There’ll be a proper search after the holiday.”
“What about the woman upstairs?” Lennon asked, taking the seat next to Uprichard. She’d been found after
