'Thank you.'
I gazed into the gas fire until my eyes burned. When I couldn't keep them open any longer I swung my feet on to the settee and fell asleep.
Sam Evans woke me, tapping quietly on the window. He was carrying the bottle of milk from my doorstep.
'You look a mess,' he declared. 'Have a shower and put some clean clothes on, while I make coffee.'
My resistance had vanished, so I asked him to ring the hospital for me and did as I was told. In the bathroom I stripped naked and bundled everything together, for throwing in the dustbin. I was under the shower when he poked his head around the door. 'She's still critical but there's no deterioration in her condition. I would say that's good news.'
'Good. Thank you, Sam.'
The clock inside me didn't know what time of day it was, so I had a big bowl of cornflakes for lunch. Surprisingly, Sam approved of my diet.
Shortly after he went, Nigel and Sparky arrived, in different cars.
Nigel was returning mine, but he left it out on the road. Sparky dropped his into the drive.
'I've been thinking,' he said as I let them in.
'In that case you'd better sit down,' I told him. Nigel asked if he could make coffee.
Sparky went on: 'The press are asking questions about Annabelle.
They've found out who she is and have decided she's the latest victim of this Mushroom Man. It's only a matter of time before some kind soul earns his forty pieces of silver by telling them about your involvement, so we're swapping cars. It might throw them off the scent until the story dies. I think you ought to bugger off somewhere you can't do anything here but I don't suppose you will.'
Nigel agreed with him, but I shook my head. 'I'm staying,' I said.
When they left I walked outside with them and we stood talking in the garden for several minutes. Sparky knows about gardening. He told me what to do with the perennials, but I didn't listen. Listening has always been one of my problems. The house martins were gathering on the phone wires, and a blackbird was gorging itself on the berries on next door's mountain ash. The man over the road was dismantling his barbecue.
I nodded in his direction and said: 'That marks the official end of summer.'
'It's still only August,' Sparky protested. 'What happened to all this global warming. It's more like November.'
'Ah,' said Nigel. 'That's the strange effect of global warming. We'll actually get cooler. The weather in Britain is governed by the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean. As the icecaps melt, due to the warming, the meltwater cools the seas, so we'll have cooler weather.'
Sparky gave him the scowl he usually reserves for burglars who swear blind that they were drunk and were convinced that the penthouse they were stripping really was their own squat. 'Are you 'having us on?' he said.
I was shivering when I went back inside. Nigel had given me an envelope containing stuff from the bloodstained jacket I'd left in the City nick. It was my wallet and some loose change. And the ticket stubs and programme for the concert. I opened the programme and read from the translation of the ancient verse:
O Fortune, variable as the Moon. Always dost thou wax and wane.
My mind flashed to the new moon I'd seen the previous Tuesday as I drove away from Annabelle's, but this time I had no defence against the bad memories it invoked.
I sat all that night in the corner of the intensive care unit. A different armed policeman was on duty outside the door. Two patients had moved out, another was brought in. I watched the ventilator rising and falling, and the green blips moving across the ECG screen. The nurses had an office area in the middle of the room. They were constantly checking their charges, moving quietly and efficiently. They read dials, made notes, felt brows and changed drips. I could understand why intensive care nursing was so satisfying.
When I wasn't in anybody's way I held Annabelle's hand and tried to talk to her. I whispered in her ear that she had to get better. She just lay there, as if in the deepest sleep, breathing with the rhythm of the machinery. Her face was pale, with dark smudges under her eyes, but she still looked hauntingly beautiful, like some aristocratic lady who'd fallen under a spell.
I heard voices outside the door and looked up. Through the porthole window I could see Nigel remonstrating with the armed policeman and showing him his ID card. I went out to them.
'What's happening?' I said.
'Sorry, Mr. Priest,' said the uniformed PC, 'I didn't know who he was.'
'That's OK. Nigel?'
'Morning, boss. How is she?'
'No change. It's a bit early for you, isn't it?'
'It certainly is. I didn't know it was light at this hour.
Unfortunately the press have found out about you. It's all over the Sunday papers. They've been camped outside Dave's all night, but now they're here, at the hospital. We've come to get you out, when you're ready.'
'Thanks, just give me a minute.' I had a word with the nurse and a last look at Annabelle. I squeezed her hand and told her I'd be back later.
Nigel radioed Dave, telling him to bring the car to the entrance. The other uniformed policeman walked out with us. The press were gathered in the foyer, like jackals at a kill, waiting for any scraps that they could make a meal out of. Nigel and the PC positioned themselves on either side of me and we headed purposefully towards the door.
Cameras flashed. A whizz-kid newshound with eyes in his backside and a huge video camera hiding his face cleared a path for us without once looking where he was going. Several microphones were poked towards me, their owners firing questions simultaneously:
'Was this another Mushroom Man shooting?'
'Are you and Annabelle lovers?'
Nigel tried to parry the questions. 'You've been given a statement,' he told them. 'We've nothing to add.'
'Is it true you didn't see anything, Inspector?'
'Are you expecting him to strike again?'
A tired hack at the back of the group shouted: 'Apart from that, what did you think of the concert?'
I clenched my fists and swung towards him, but the big PC's fingers clamped around my arm and propelled me through the door.
They trotted after us towards the car, their sound men running behind like poodles on leads. Sparky hadn't unlocked the passenger door so I couldn't get in. My car doesn't run to centralised locking.
A microphone was thrust under my nose. 'Do you love Annabelle?' the girl holding it asked. She was about nineteen and had an editor to please.
I could imagine the exclusive that would be claimed if I gave the wrong answer. Sparky leaned over to lift the catch and I pulled the door open. As I climbed in she poked the mike into the side of my face and repeated the question: 'Do you love Annabelle?'
I turned so my lips were touching the microphone and said: 'No.'
I slammed the door. If you tell a lie, might as well make it a whopper. That was the biggest I'd ever tell.
Our press office prepared a statement to get them off my back: we were just good friends; she was still on the critical list; and yes, the shooting was being investigated by the Mushroom Man team. When they realised there was no more, they drifted off. The headlines weren't very flattering: 'Top cop never saw a thing,' they said.
I had some kip and tried eating Sunday lunch at the local pub, but I didn't enjoy it. In the evening I went back to the hospital and sat with Annabelle all night. She was just the same, and I left as dawn broke. I asked to be informed of any change in her condition, but I wasn't next of kin, so they were reluctant.
When I drove into Heckley nick car park later in the day, I half expected Sparky to have commandeered my parking space as well as my car, but he hadn't. I used the back entrance and ran up the stairs to Gilbert's office. He was expecting me.
'Hello, Charlie. I'll just put the kettle on,' he said.
'Not for me, Gilbert, if you don't mind. I'll be looking like a pot of tea soon.'
'Oh. Something stronger?'
