Jackman?”
Banks stopped. He thought he recognized her from somewhere, but he couldn’t put a name to the face. Was she a bearer of bad news?
“You won’t remember me,” she went on. “I’m PC Nerys Powell, with the AFO team? I was with the unit that went to the Doyle house.” Banks didn’t understand what she meant, but Winsome seemed to be following all right. “I know you,” she said. “I’ve seen you around HQ, and you were at the meeting on Monday.”
“We’re spending a lot of time there these days,” Nerys said. She turned to Banks. “Look, sir,” she said, “the officer on the door won’t let me in to see Annie. She spoke very highly of you. Will you let me know how she’s doing?”
“Why do you want to know?” Banks asked. He knew he sounded brusque, but he was anxious to get past her, to Annie’s bedside.
“We were working on the case together. She was kind to me. That’s all. It’s been…things have been…very difficult. I sort of feel responsible.”
“Things are difficult for me right now,” said Banks, brushing past her. Then he half turned. “I’ll keep you informed, PC Powell. I promise. Go home now. Get some rest.”
Intensive Care had facilities for about sixteen patients, but an arrangement of curtains and screens allowed for a certain amount of privacy. Banks’s knees felt weak when he approached Annie’s bedside. She seemed so small, frail and lifeless, lying there against the white sheets amid the machines and tubes. But the monitors were beeping steadily, and the LCD lights were all on. He thought he could see her blood pressure at 139/81 and her heart rate at 72, which wasn’t so bad, as far as he knew. Probably lower than his, at any rate. A nurse stood by the bedside adjusting one of the tubes, and Banks asked if he might hold Annie’s hand.
“Just for a few moments,” she said.
So Banks sat there holding the limp hand, Winsome standing behind him. The other hand was bandaged up and held fast in the brace along with her injured shoulder. The IV needle was taped to the back of her good hand and several tubes were attached. Banks could see that she was getting blood and some sort of clear fluid, probably saline, with whatever medication she was being given. There was a yellow clip on her finger, also attached to a machine, to measure the oxygen level in her blood. The lower half of her face was covered by the tube in her mouth and the tape that held it in place. Her eyes were closed. Her pale hand was warm to his touch, but there was no grip, no life in it. For a moment his universe shrank to that small space defined by the steady in and out of the pump that was giving her breath. If he looked closely, he could see her chest gently rising and falling with its rhythm.
Banks felt a stir of air behind him and turned to see a slight Asian man. He hardly seemed old enough to be out of medical school, but he was wearing a charcoal-gray suit, white shirt and tie, not the bright turquoise scrubs that are the sign of a medical student. Banks had seen plenty of them on his walk down the corridors to Intensive Care.
“That’s enough now,” said the nurse, putting her hand on Banks’s shoulder. “This is Mr. Sandhar. He’s the star surgeon on our trauma team, and he operated on the patient. Perhaps you’d like to talk to him?”
Banks thanked her, kissed Annie on the forehead and left her side. Mr. Sandhar led Banks and Winsome through another maze of corridors into a small consultation room. There was only one chair, so Banks and Winsome sat side by side on the examination table. Its tissue-paper cover made a crinkling sound as they sat. A chart on the wall depicted the circulation of the blood. Sandhar’s chair was next to a weighing machine.
“Can you give it to us in plain English?” Banks asked.
Sandhar smiled. “Of course. Believe it or not, we usually do try to translate medical jargon into layman’s terms wherever possible for friends and family. Obfuscation is not our business.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“Perhaps it would be easier if you were to ask me questions? I should imagine you are quite used to being in that position.”
“Well, I’m hardly going to interrogate you,” said Banks, “but I can certainly ask the questions if you prefer. First of all, can you tell me what happened?”
“Ms. Cabbot has been shot twice. One bullet entered her chest, passing through the middle lobe of her right lung, and the other hit her left clavicle and fragmented, causing a fracture. She was perhaps fortunate in that neither bullet exited, though that very fact alone caused an entirely different set of problems.”
“Those being?”
Sandhar crossed his legs and rested his hands on his lap. “From my information,” he said, “the response time of the ambulance was within ten minutes, which is excellent for a rural area, and for a Category A emergency, which this most certainly was. Whoever made that 999 call probably saved the patient’s life. As I understand it, that person has not been found, but I think that’s your domain rather than it is mine. To continue, the patient had already lost a significant amount of blood by the time the paramedics arrived, but had the weapon been more powerful, and had the bullets exited, there’s no telling how much more blood she would have lost. With an entrance wound only, you see, the skin has a certain elasticity, and it closes around the point of entry.” He used his thumb and forefinger to mimic the puncture hole closing. “Not so much blood is spilled.”
“So Annie was lucky the bullets didn’t go all the way through,” Banks repeated. “I see. That’s probably the good news. What about the other problems?”
“Most of Ms. Cabbot’s bleeding was internal, and the leaking fluid put pressure on her lungs, not allowing them to expand.” Again, he used his hands as he talked, moving his open palms close together, as if about to applaud, or mimic the action of bellows. “One of her lungs collapsed and, as you can imagine, she experienced serious breathing difficulties as a result. If the other lung had stopped functioning, she would have died before the ambulance arrived. Luckily, it didn’t. The paramedics acted quickly and had the knowledge and equipment to deal with the situation en route. They managed to stabilize her in Eastvale General Infirmary and then airlifted her here.”
“But she’s going to be all right?” said Banks. “You fixed it? I mean, you operated?”
Sandhar paused. “We operated. But I must stress that the patient is far from out of danger yet. It could go either way.”
“What you mean?”
“Right now there’s a struggle going on. If she’s strong enough, she’ll win it. At the moment, no one can predict the outcome.”
“She’s strong,” Banks said.
The doctor nodded. “Good. She will need to be.”
“When will you know more?”
“The next twenty-four hours are crucial. We’ll be monitoring her constantly, looking for any signs of decline or improvement. There’s nothing else we can do right now but wait. I’m sorry.”
“Is there anything we can do?”
“If you’re religious you can pray.”
“And if not?”
“You can hope.”
VICTOR MALLORY was pleasantly stoned after a few drinks at lunchtime and a nice spliff when he got home. He had just put Toru Takemitsu’s I Hear the Water Dreaming on the CD player, and was about to lie down and drift off for a while when he heard the doorbell ring. If he had already lain down, he thought, he might not have bothered answering. But it could be important. Maybe Jaff had brought his car back, or maybe the nubile Marianna from the golf club had taken him up on his offer, after all. So he answered it.
Immediately he opened the door he knew he had made a mistake and desperately wished he could close it again. Stoned or straight, he wouldn’t have liked the look of the two men who stood there. They could mean nothing but trouble. Panicking, he did try to shut the door, but his reactions were too slow, and they easily pushed their way into his hallway. They would probably have broken the door down, anyway, he realized. In his business he met some nasty types from time to time, and he generally found that he could talk his way out of most situations, but this time he wasn’t sure. They didn’t look like good listeners.
The smaller one with the ginger hair resembled a speed freak, bad teeth and all, and Victor didn’t like speed or speed freaks. They were wild and unpredictable. That was why he stuck to making E and the good old psychedelics like acid, mescaline and psilocybin. Not a huge market these days, it was true, but in his eyes, they beat crystal
