Jenny sat down next to Rosie and put her arm round her shoulder. The human contact was too much and Rosie burst into tears and sobbed, hanging on to Jenny as though her life depended on it.
‘We’ll look after Rosie,’ said Charles. ‘You go back to Marina. We’ll be here when you need us.’
He ushered me back to the unit door and almost pushed me through. It was such a comfort to have them there but I felt a little guilty at leaving them out in the corridor.
‘Sorry, just you,’ said the nurse when I asked. ‘And only then because she’s your fiancee.’
I stayed with Marina for what seemed like a long time. Every few minutes, a nurse would come to check on her and twice Mr Pandita, the surgeon, came in too.
‘She’s doing fine,’ he said on his second visit. ‘I’m more hopeful.’
‘More hopeful’ didn’t sound wonderful but a lot better than ‘less hopeful’.
‘It’s been more than two hours now since she left theatre,’ he said. ‘Her blood pressure is still low but that’s a good thing. It reduces the chance of internal bleeding. We will leave her sedated overnight and attempt to bring her out in the morning.’
‘Bring her out?’ I asked.
‘From the induced coma,’ he said. ‘Only then will we really know.’
We stood at the foot of the bed looking down at the unconscious figure.
‘I think I’ll go and get something to eat,’ I said. It was a while since I’d left my uneaten lunch on the floor of the sandwich bar, and even longer since dinner the previous night. ‘Then I’ll come back, if that’s all right?’
‘There are no visiting times on this ward. We run a twenty-four-hour service here.’ He smiled. At least I think he smiled. Due to his mask, I couldn’t see his mouth but there was a smile in his eyes.
Charles, Jenny and Rosie were still there when I came out.
They had made themselves at home and were surrounded by the remains of bacon rolls and chicken mayonnaise sandwiches with salad. Empty polystyrene coffee beakers stood in a row on the bottom of an upturned waste bin that had doubled as a table.
Rosie looked much better for having had something to eat and other people to take her mind off the horrors of earlier.
‘Hello,’ said Charles, looking up from a newspaper. ‘How’s she doing?’
‘The official bulletin is “more hopeful”.’
‘That’s great,’ said Jenny.
‘I’m starving,’ I said. ‘I see that you’ve all had something but I need some food. Where’s the hospital canteen?’
Charles stood up, put all the trash in the reinstated bin, and gathered up his newspaper.
‘A policeman came and gave me these,’ he said, holding out my car keys. ‘He said to tell you that your car is in the hospital administrator’s parking space to the left of the front door.’
‘Fantastic,’ I said.
‘He also told me to tell you that he was only just in time to stop the bomb squad blowing it up.’
I laughed. The first time since…
‘He also wants you to move it as soon as possible as the hospital administrator could arrive at any time and demand his space back.’
‘I’ll drive it home now and put it in the garage,’ I said. ‘We could get something to eat there, and I could put on a clean shirt.’ It seemed like a very long time since I’d dressed to go to Harrow.
‘The policeman didn’t really want to give me the car keys but I told him I was your father-in-law.’
‘And I told him I was your wife,’ said Jenny.
That must have confused him.
My car was where it was promised and I drove the four of us back to Ebury Street. Rosie didn’t want to go home on her own and Jenny and Charles were happy to have her stay with us.
‘Hello, Mr Halley,’ said Derek at the desk. ‘Delivery for you.’
He held out an envelope to me. I just looked at it as he put it down on the marble top.
‘Did it come by taxi?’ I asked him.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘About an hour ago.’
‘You didn’t get the number of the taxi, I don’t suppose?’ I asked.
‘No, sorry.’
‘Could you identify the taxi driver?’
‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘Flat number 28 have been moving today and there have been a load of people through here. Not only the removal men but the gas and electricity, to read the meters and so on.’
‘Do you have security film?’ I asked, pointing at the bank of monitors.
‘Yes, but we only have cameras in the garages and round the back. There are none in reception.’
Dead end.
I looked at the envelope. It was white, about four inches wide by nine long, with ‘SID HALLEY — BY HAND’ written in capital letters on the front, as before.
‘This is the same as I received last time,’ I said to Charles. ‘After Marina was attacked.’
‘You ought to give it to the police,’ he said. ‘Don’t touch it.’
‘The envelope’s been handled by the taxi driver and by Derek,’ I said.
‘And Bernie,’ said Derek. ‘He took it from the taxi driver.’
Bernie was another of the team of porters/security.
I used Derek’s pencil to turn the envelope over. It was stuck shut. It looked like a birthday card.
‘I’ll open it,’ I said.
I used another sheet of paper to hold the envelope down on the desk and used the pencil to slit it open. Only touching the sides I withdrew the contents. It was a card but not a birthday card. It said, ‘Get Well Soon’ on the front, along with a painting of some flowers. I used the pencil to open it.
There was some writing, again in capital letters:
‘NEXT TIME SHE’LL LOSE A HAND. THEN SHE’LL BE A CRIPPLE, JUST LIKE YOU.’
Charles drew in his breath sharply. ‘Not much doubt about that, then.’
‘What does it say?’ said Jenny, coming closer and reading it. ‘Oh!’
‘Don’t let anyone touch this. I’m going to get something to put it into for the police,’ I said.
‘Can you get fingerprints off paper?’ said Charles.
‘I’m sure you can,’ I said.
‘You can also get DNA from saliva,’ said Rosie.
I turned to her. ‘So?’
‘If someone licked that envelope to stick it shut then they will have left their DNA on it,’ she said.
I stared at her. ‘But won’t it have dried out by now?’ I asked.
‘The DNA will still be there.’
‘Could you get a profile from it?’ I asked.
‘I can get a profile from a single fruit fly you can hardly see,’ she said, smiling. ‘This would be a piece of cake.’
‘Shouldn’t you leave that to the police?’ said Jenny.
‘There’s plenty of stick for both of us,’ said Rosie. ‘I would only need a tiny bit of the envelope. And I really want to do it.’ She looked at me.
‘So do I,’ I said. ‘I’ll fetch some scissors and two plastic bags.’
Derek had stood listening to it all.
‘Like something out of Agatha Christie,’ he said. ‘Death on Ebury Street.’
‘No one’s died yet,’ I said. At least not here. But I thought of Huw Walker and Bill Burton.
We went up to my flat and I raided the refrigerator to find some food. I made a plateful of ham and mustard sandwiches and found some bananas lurking in a fruit bowl behind the kitchen television. The others kindly let me have first go but then they also tucked in with relish.
I went into my office to find Marina’s parents’ number. I tried to call them but there was no answer. I wrote down their address to give to the police, just in case.
