New York, to a specialist neurological rehabilitation centre where they were experienced in dealing with long-term coma patients. Here they fed him, kept him hydrated and gave him passive physio to keep his joints in working order, even if his muscles were wasting. I’d been coming every day since then.
I flipped the lid from the coffee and put it down on the side cabinet, close enough for the aroma to reach his nostrils, and dragged the visitor’s chair closer to his bedside. Out of habit, I glanced at the cardiac monitor, wired to patches on his chest. I was no medical expert, but I’d grown to know the rhythms of his body well enough to recognise there had been no change.
Sean’s hair was longer than he would probably have preferred, falling dark and straight over his forehead. I pushed a lock of it back from his temple, revealing the narrow scar that streaked back into his hairline from the corner of his left eyebrow. If he continued to wear his hair in a style less military to the one he’d always favoured, I realised, it was likely people would hardly notice. The surgeons had made a neat job of putting the pieces back together. Time alone would tell how much was missing on the inside.
A nurse appeared in the doorway, a motherly figure in brightly patterned scrubs. Nancy. She lived across the river in New Jersey and enjoyed the reading time offered by her daily commute. Her husband was in the construction industry and she had two sports-mad teenage sons who drove her to affectionate distraction. I’d come to know a lot about Nancy.
‘Hello, Charlie,’ she said, her voice slow and musical, as always. ‘It’s time to turn him.’
I helped her shift Sean onto his back, his limbs slack under our careful hands. He had to be moved every few hours to prevent sores and Nancy was often the one who did it. She had a gentle touch and bottomless compassion and it seemed to me that if Sean made one of his apparently random physical responses – a twitch or a turn of his head – it was for Nancy that he moved most often.
She rearranged the sheet low across his stomach, checking the monitor patches were still firmly attached, and the gastric tube that disappeared into the wall of his abdomen. Initially, they had fed Sean using a nasogastric tube down his nose and through his oesophagus, but that, I was told, could lead to complications. As soon as it became obvious this wasn’t going to be over quickly, they’d inserted something more permanent, through which pureed food could be squirted directly into his stomach.
The thought of it did little for my own appetite. When Sean finally awoke, I thought, refusing to consider another outcome, he would be about ready to kill for a taste of the daily coffee I brought to tempt him.
Nancy smiled serenely and departed. I tucked my fingers into Sean’s open hand and began to tell him about my visit to the Willners, about the recent kidnappings and Dina’s apparent glee at my employ. I sought his opinion, unvoiced, on the wisdom of Dina going to the party she was so keen to attend, and reported Caroline Willner’s own hesitation over the same event. And all the time I wondered if doing this was for his benefit, or my own. Sean always had been a good listener.
‘These three kids who’ve been taken so far all live on Long Island, at least part of the time,’ I said. ‘I say “kids”, but they’re late teens, early twenties, but so far that’s all we know. I suppose this party is a good opportunity to look for patterns, but at the same time, there’s the risk that if someone is watching them – working security for one of the families, maybe – am I exposing Dina to danger by agreeing that she go? We don’t know how the victims were selected, or even how they were taken. They can’t remember much after the initial abduction, apparently, which probably means some kind of pre-med relaxant, like we used in California for that cult extraction – remember?’
I paused. Sean’s head seemed to rock a little in my direction. Involuntary, no doubt, as most of his movements were, but it still felt like he’d reacted with discomfort, as if trying to warn me of something. I’d read about coma victims who were actually locked into their paralysed bodies but totally aware of everything going on around them, screaming silently into the void, sometimes for years. Like being buried alive.
Bearing that in mind, I looked for meaning in every gesture, however pointless they told me that might be.
Sighing, I let my thumb stroke the back of his right hand. Without animation from within, his skin felt different, alien to the touch. And I remembered, with splintered clarity, every moment we’d spent together. Sean was everything I’d ever wanted, even before I’d known what that was. He understood me better than I understood myself, and he would have understood, better than anyone, how this slow limbo was crushing me from the inside out.
‘I need you,’ I said out loud. It sounded stark and craven in the quiet room.
Gently, I let go of his hand and stood up. I shrugged into my jacket, picked up the cooling coffee from the cabinet.
‘Last chance,’ I murmured, waggling the cup slightly. Sean didn’t stir. ‘Maybe tomorrow, hey?’
I walked out of the room and along the corridor, resisting the urge to look back.
We’d talked about death, in a roundabout kind of way. We couldn’t do the job we did without the subject coming up and being faced in advance. Sean had always said, calm and casual, that when his time was up he wanted to go clean, fast, and know nothing about it.
A sudden dazzling image exploded behind my eyes, the way his head had snapped sideways from the bullet’s impact, the slash of blood, the instant drop.
It didn’t give any comfort that he’d gone down in the line of duty, as he would have seen it. Doing his job. Hesitation had never been a possibility with Sean and it seemed that to hesitate now would be to let down everything he’d stood for. So if it came to it, I thought fiercely, then yes, I would die to protect Dina Willner, as her mother had asked.
And maybe I’d do it just a fraction more willingly than I might have done, a hundred days ago.
CHAPTER SIX
‘Isn’t this just to die for?’
Dina opened the ring box and turned it towards me. Inside was the biggest, ugliest yellow diamond I’d ever seen. It looked like nicotine-stained glass and cost the same as a car.
I held up my unadorned hands with the fingers splayed, and shook my head. ‘I’m the wrong person to ask about jewellery,’ I said evasively. ‘But couldn’t a ring as a birthday present be … misconstrued?’
She coloured slightly, snapped the box shut again and handed it back to the eagle-eyed sales assistant. ‘You’re right,’ she agreed. Her eyes drifted indecisively across the glittering display cabinets. We’d been into a dozen similar high-end stores so far on this street alone, and all that dazzle was starting to give me a bad head.
‘The party’s the day after tomorrow. I just wish Mother had given in earlier, then I would have had more time to find something suitable,’ Dina said. She sighed. ‘Tor’s
Recognising that Dina was clutching at straws on the ideas front, I refrained from the old joke about penicillin. Torquil Eisenberg, whose twenty-first birthday celebration was the cause of all the fuss, was the son and heir to a vast transportation empire. Eisenberg Senior, so I understood, owned a large percentage of everything that flew, drove or floated with a bellyful of bulk goods, from crude oil to car parts. There was rich, and then there was Eisenberg rich. I took a wild stab that suggesting some aftershave and a pair of socks was probably not quite going to cut it.
‘You’ve seen the necklace Tor’s mother has, of course – the Eisenberg Rainbow?’ Dina said now, undeterred by my silence. ‘All these rows of beautiful diamonds – different cuts and colours. Not just white, but some are pale pink, or deep blue like sapphires. It’s priceless, and utterly fabulous.’
She sighed, as if – by courting Tor’s favour – she might get to wear it herself one day. I’d seen news photographs of the jewellery in question. To me it looked as fake as something from a cheap Christmas cracker, but I thought it best not to say so.
‘What’s he like – Torquil’s father?’ I asked instead as we walked back out into the sunshine. I checked the passers-by out of habit before we crossed the street and I blipped the locks on Dina’s Mercedes SLK. ‘Have you ever met him?’
‘Mr Eisenberg?’ Dina looked blank for a moment, then shrugged. ‘A couple of times. He’s OK, I guess,’ she said, and heard the doubtful note in her own voice. ‘Well, he
