`Cover my face as the animals cry.’
Running through the hospital, stopping nurses to ask directions. Sweat dripping off him, tie hanging loose around his neck. Taking right turns, left turns, looking for signs. Whose fault? He kept asking himself that. A message which failed to reach him. Because he was on a surveillance. Because he wasn't in radio contact. Because the station didn't know how important the message was.
Nom running, a stitch in his side. He'd run all the may from the car.
Up two flights of stairs, down corridors. The place was quiet. Middle of the night.
`Maternity!' he called to a man pushing a trolley. The man pointed to a set of doors. He pushed through them. Three nurses in a glass cubicle. One of them came out.
`Can I help?’
`I'm John Rebus. My wife… ' She gave him a hard look. `Third bed along.’
Pointing… Third bed along, curtains closed around it. He pulled the curtains open. Rhona lay on her side, face still flushed, hair sticking to her brow. And beside her, nuzzling into her, a tiny perfection with wisps of brown hair and black, unfocused eyes.
He touched the nose, ran a finger round the curves of an ear. The face twitched. He bent past it to kiss his wife.
'Rhona… I'm really sorry. They didn't get the message to me until ten minutes ago. How did it…? I mean… he's beautiful.’
`He's a she,' his wife said, turning away from him.
He didn't want anyone else taking his work. It was his. He owned it; it owned him.
`Look, John, you're going to want some time off, right?’
`I can handle things, sir.’
His gaze met the Farmer's. `Please.’
Across the hall in the CID room he nodded as everyone came up to say how sorry they were. One person stayed at their desk – Bill Pryde knew Rebus was coming to see him.
`Morning, Bill.’
Pryde nodded. They'd met in the wee small hours at the Infirmary. Ned Farlowe had been napping in a chair, so they'd stepped into the corridor to talk. Pryde looked tireder now. He had loosened the top button of his dark green shirt. His brown suit looked lived-in.
Thanks for sticking with it,' Rebus said, drawing over a chair. Thinking: I'd rather have had someone else, someone sharper…
`No problem.’
`Any news?’
`A couple of good eyewitnesses. They were waiting to cross at the lights.’
`What's their story?’
Pryde considered his reply. He knew he was dealing with a father as well as a cop. `She was crossing the road. Looked like she was heading down Minto Street, maybe making for the bus stop.’
Rebus shook his head. `She was walking, Bill. Going to a friend's in Gilmour Road.’
She'd said as much over the pizza, apologising that she couldn't stay longer. Just one more coffee at the end of the meal… one more coffee and she wouldn't have been there at that moment. Or if she'd accepted his offer of a lift… When you thought about life, you thought of it as chunks of time, but really all it was was a series of connected moments, any one of which could change you completely.
'The car was heading south out of town,' Pryde went on. `Looks like he ran a red light. Motorist sitting behind him seemed to think so.’
`Reckon he was drunk?’
Pryde nodded. `Way he was driving. I mean, could be he just lost control, but in that case why didn't he stop?’
`Description?’
Pryde shook his head. `We've got a dark car, a bit sporty. Nobody caught the licence plate.’
`It's a busy enough street, must've been other cars around.’
`A couple of people have called in.’
Pryde flicked through his notes. `Nothing helpful, but I'm going to interview them, see if I can jog a memory or two.’
`Could the car have been nicked? Maybe that's why he was in a hurry.’
`I can check.’
`I'll help you.’
Pryde considered this. `You sure?’
`Try and stop me, Bill.’
`No skid marks,' Pryde said, `no sign that he tried braking, either before or after.’
They were standing at the junction of Minto Street and Newington Road. The cross-streets were Salisbury Place and Salisbury Road. Cars, vans and buses queued at the traffic lights as pedestrians crossed the road.
It could have been any one of you, Rebus thought. Any one of them could have taken Sammy's place…
`She was about here,' Pryde went on, pointing to a spot where, just past the lights, a bus lane started. The carriageway was wide, a four-lane road. She hadn't crossed at the lights. She'd been lazy, carrying on down Minto Street a few strides, then crossing in a diagonal. When she'd been a child, they'd taught her about crossing the road. Green Cross Code, all of that. Drummed it into her. Rebus looked around. At the top of Minto Street were some private houses and Bed amp; Breakfasts. On one corner stood a bank, on another a branch of Remnant Kings, with a takeaway next door.
`The takeaway would have been open,' Rebus said, pointing. On the third corner stood a Spar. `That place, too. Where did you say she was?’
`The bus lane.’
She'd crossed three lanes, been only a yard or two from safety. `Witnesses say she was nearly at the kerb when he hit her. I think he was drunk, lost it for a second.’
Pryde nodded towards the bank. There were two phone boxes in front of it. ‘Witness called from there.’
The wall behind the phone boxes had a poster glued to it. Grinning maniac behind a steering-wheel, and some writing: `So many pedestrians, so little time'. A computer game…
`It would have been so easy to avoid her,' Rebus said quietly.
12
Rebus was sitting in his boss's office. It was nine-fifteen and he had slept for probably forty-five minutes the previous night. There'd been the hospital vigil and Sammy's operation: something about a blood clot. She was still unconscious, still `critical'. He'd called Rhona in London. She'd told him she'd catch the first train she could. He'd given her his mobile number, so she could let him know when she arrived. She'd started to ask… her voice had cracked. She'd put down the receiver. He'd tried to find some feeling for her. Richard and Linda Thompson: `Withered and Died'.
He'd called Mickey, who said he'd drop by the hospital some time today. And that was it for the family. There were other people he could call, people like Patience, who had been his lover for a time, and Sammy's landlady until far more recently. But he didn't. He knew in the morning he'd call the office where Sammy worked. He wrote it in his notebook so he wouldn't forget. And then he'd called Sammy's flat and given Ned Farlowe the news.
Farlowe had asked a question nobody else had: `How about you? Are you all right?’
Rebus had looked around the hospital corridor. `Not exactly.’
`I'll be right there.’
So they'd spent a couple of hours in one another's company, not really saying very much at first. Farlowe smoked, and Rebus helped him empty the pack. He couldn't reciprocate with whisky – there was nothing in the bottle – but he'd bought the young man several cups of coffee, since Farlowe had spent nearly all his money on the taxi from Shandon…
