Deep Cover

‘Don’t know. . bring him with us.’

‘On what charge, boss?’

‘Dunno. . we’ll think of one — can’t leave him out here now he knows Penny’s a copper. You got the keys to this office?’

‘Desk drawer.’

Vicary strode across the floor to the desk, opened the drawer and took out a bunch of keys. ‘These?’

‘Yes.’

‘Right.’ He walked back to where Brunnie and Batty stood and handed the keys to Brunnie. ‘Check in the back room, then lock up and give the keys back to me. . and you, start to think about working for yourself, Nicholas. Curtis Yates is finished; he’s got nothing to hold over you now.’

The long afternoon stretched into an even longer night. Billy Kemp, to whom Penny Yewdall was chained, had eventually, but only eventually, stopped asking questions which Yewdall could not answer — ‘Which one of us will they kill first?’, ‘Will they drown us like they drowned him?’, ‘Will our bodies ever be found?’, ‘Will anyone know what happened?’ He then gave up the futile tugging of the chain, seemed to curl up into a ball and settled into a prolonged whimpering, which he kept up until the dawn.

In time, a certain calm, a certain peace settled over Penny Yewdall. So, she thought, so it has come to this — an early death at the hands of thieves and gangsters, but it was also a death she felt proud to die. . for the police force. She had joined to serve, and had joined accepting the risks therein. Not perhaps as much of a risk as is faced by those who enlist in the armed services, but nonetheless police officers not infrequently lose their lives when on duty. Penny Yewdall, noticing that sounds appeared louder, smells stronger as she waited to die, realized that she was not worried for herself — she had hoped for a quick and painless death when her time came, and like the whimpering youth she did not relish the thought of drowning, the panic. . the struggle. . the bursting lungs. . and likewise she did not want to die by falling from a great height, nor by incineration — but her worry turned to fear for her parents, her real, actual parents, still alive and living in retirement on the coast, and her sister and brother. Her family must know what had happened to her; they would need a grave to visit, a place to lay wreaths and a place where they could gather and grieve, but they were not going to have that. She would disappear, leaving them not knowing what had happened to her. They would never know peace. They would be in permanent distress. It was for them that she worried, endlessly fretting while her earthly remains putrefied under a sapling of a flowering cherry tree, so pretty in the spring, in a meadow in Hertfordshire. That was the worry — she felt for her family; aggravated by the sense of guilt that she had, somehow, betrayed them.

It became cold that night. Very cold. In the barn rats rustled about. Outside in the still air, an owl hooted.

Victor Swannell stepped nimbly out of the drizzle and off the greasy pavement, entered the main entrance of the London Hospital and was immediately assailed by the strong smell of formaldehyde. He consulted the hospital directory and took the stairs, in preference to the lift, to the second floor. Upon reaching the second floor he turned left and entered the ward, and approached the nursing station. He showed his ID. ‘I was told a patient wishes to see the police as a matter of urgency. A man called Sherwin. . Clive Sherwin.’

‘Ah, yes.’ The senior of the two nurses at the station stood. She was one Sister Jewell, by her name badge, which was fixed perfectly horizontal on the lapel of her uniform. She was a short, finely built woman — serious- minded, thought Swannell — the sort of nursing sister who is always right all the time about everything and a terror of trainees. ‘I’ll take you to him. We have put him in a private room, wholly for the benefit of the other patients I might add. He would distress them.’

‘Distress them?’

‘You’ll see what I mean. Please come this way.’ Sister Jewell came out from behind the nursing station and, with Swannell in her wake, walked silently down the ward on rubber-soled shoes. ‘We get one or two patients like this each year. It is the East End policing itself.’ Sister Jewell spoke sniffily. ‘I mean, as if the Health Service hasn’t enough to do. . and isn’t collapsing under bankruptcy. I confess, avoidable injuries and violence annoy me.’ She progressed along the ward which had been arranged in the traditional ‘Nightingale’ style, with beds at equal intervals and abutting the walls on both sides at ninety degrees. A few patients had visitors. ‘Open visiting hours,’ Sister Jewell explained, as if reading Swannell’s thoughts. ‘It is a recently introduced system, a new development. I confess, freely so, that I prefer the old system of strictly enforced visiting hours but then I am now old enough to dislike any form of change, and I really do believe that things were better in the old days.’ Swannell remained silent. He had long since learned not to argue with taxi drivers and nursing sisters, and his opinion of Sister Jewell as being a tyrant towards junior nurses was being reinforced by the second.

‘In here.’ Sister Jewell stopped outside the door of a private room, with painted wooden walls up to waist height and frosted glass up to a height of ten feet thereafter. The room had no ceiling. ‘He was brought in last evening.’ Sister Jewell continued to speak but with a lowered voice. The room offered privacy of vision but not sound. ‘He was found on the pavement near here. There is not one square inch of flesh that is not bruised, and I mean one square inch. . from the soles of his feet to his scalp, yet not one bone in his body is broken and his teeth have been left intact. I confess that he could be mistaken for a gentleman of the subcontinent, but he is as Northern European as you and me.’

‘I see.’

‘Hence not wanting to distress the other patients. They get upset when they find out that such injury is caused by premeditated violence, rather than accident.’

‘Yes. . I can understand that.’ Swannell nodded. ‘I did wonder but now I fully appreciate why you have isolated him.’

‘Thank you. Well, as I said, I have seen the like. He was numb last night, wasn’t feeling very much at all according to the nursing notes, but he woke in discomfort this morning. He refused breakfast and I confess that I doubt he’ll partake of lunch. He will get more uncomfortable over the next few days, then the pain will stabilize, but it will remain for a long time. We’ll put him on painkillers but he will still feel something.’

‘How long before he is recovered?’

‘Physically. . a few months, but mentally. . never. . the mental scars will never heal, they just don’t ever heal.’

‘Months!’

‘Oh, yes. . months. He won’t be here for that length of time, the pressure on beds won’t permit it, but I have known such bruising to take six months to fade completely. He was probably the victim of a sustained assault which lasted a full day.’ Sister Jewell shrugged. ‘That’s the East End. Some of the trainees can’t hack it and transfer to the west London hospitals. It’s not the injury itself you see — it’s the cause that upsets them.’

‘Yes.’

‘Now he is brown all over, that will turn into the mottled mix of blue-and-black bruising, then he’ll turn yellow as if he is badly jaundiced, but once the bruising turns yellow, then at least he is on the healing side of things. But that will still take months. He’s in for a very uncomfortable summer. . So that’s gangland London, but you know that as much as me — the East End policing itself, like I said. He said he wanted to talk to a Mr Brunnie.’

‘He’s busy. I am his senior officer.’

‘Very well.’ Sister Jewell opened the door and led Swannell into the room. Victor Swannell baulked at the sight which greeted him, and he saw then that Sister Jewell was not exaggerating when she said that even though he was Northern European, Clive ‘The Pox’ Sherwin could be mistaken for an Asian, such was the depth and extent of the bruising. His eyes were swollen shut.

‘Police to see you, Mr Sherwin.’ Sister Jewell spoke softly yet efficiently. There was no sympathy in her voice. ‘One gentleman, I have seen his identity card.’

‘Mr Brunnie?’ Sherwin asked weakly. ‘I can’t see nothing. . I can’t. . nothing. I can make out it’s day-time. . but nothing else.’

‘No, it’s Mr Swannell, Mr Brunnie is busy. He can’t come but you can talk to me.’

‘Well, I will leave you.’ Sister Jewell turned and walked out of the room, closing the door silently behind her.

‘I talked to Mr Brunnie.’

‘Yes, I know, I read the recording of the chat you had. He made you an offer.’

‘Yes, witness protection.’

‘Indeed. The offer is still on the table.’ Swannell drew up a chair and sat beside the bed.