‘Yeah. Wasn’t quite true what I said about Professional Standards.’
‘Really?’
He shook his head, wincing as if the movement caused him some pain. ‘Been chasing this one on my own. Didn’t know who to trust. Knew it went high, thought even Standards might have been compromised.’
‘They’re the incorruptibles,’ she said. ‘You know that.’
‘Yeah, aren’t we all? Still don’t know who to trust. Don’t know if Welsby was acting on his own, or if others were on the Kerridge payroll. But we’ve got enough now to convict Welsby, even if some of the surveillance stuff here’s inadmissible.’
‘You set this place up? I saw the wires upstairs.’
‘Multi-talented, me. Last couple of days, I let Welsby know I’d sussed his relationship with Kerridge. I tried to persuade them that I was onside. Not exactly on the payroll, but prepared to help them deal with Boyle. Do them a few favours if they’d do a few for me. Thought I had them fooled. Seems I didn’t.’ His white face looked momentarily rueful, as if he’d been caught out in some technical error. ‘This was Kerridge’s place. Kerridge likes this neck of the woods. Bit more upmarket than the places he sells his shit to, convenient for the sea, inconspicuous. His people used to deal from up here. But lately they’ve just used it as an occasional hideaway or stash. Welsby suggested it when I said I was going after you yesterday. He gave me the keys so I could prepare the place – just had time to get the recorder up there. I thought I could get them to come here with you as bait.’
‘Nice to be in people’s thoughts,’ she said.
‘Yeah, well. It nearly worked.’
‘And even more nearly got us both killed. So what story do we need to get straight? I was planning just to tell the truth. Thought it might make a change.’
‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘Just don’t want them to know I was following you. That I let you get away from Blackwell’s clutches. Or that I knew where you were all the time the police were searching for you. That might be seen as bending the rules too far. Young Hodder helped me as well. Want to keep him out of it.’
‘You’re all heart. So what do I say?’
There was a moment’s pause. ‘I think you should say you’d called me yesterday to give yourself up. You wanted to do it discreetly, rather than just stepping into Blackwell’s clutches, so you asked me to meet you at the hotel. I got there just as Morrissey was taking you away – against your will. Once I’d dealt with Morrissey, we decided between us to try to lure Kerridge and Welsby out here, put this thing to bed once and for all. How does that sound?’
‘Convoluted as hell, but then so’s the truth. Your story puts me more on the side of the angels, too. Panicked and went on the run, but then was going to give myself up. Do the right thing.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Salter said. He was smiling, now, as if he’d just pulled some confidence trick that no one else had seen.
She looked away from him, uneasy. She had the sense that she’d just taken her own first step into the unknown, had walked over that line. Trivial enough in its own right. But impossible to step back from.
In the far distance, she could hear the sound of approaching sirens.
Chapter 30
‘How are you feeling?’
He was staring up at her, a look in his eyes she hadn’t seen before. Something she couldn’t quite read. ‘Is that a real question? How do you think? I’m feeling like – what is it? – like shit.’
He was lying back in the hospital bed and, for the moment at least, he looked like a shadow of his old self. His left hand was shaking more than ever, she noticed.
‘So what happened exactly?’
Liam shook his head. ‘Don’t know. I was in the studio. I’d been working a bit late. One of the new paintings. Couldn’t get it quite right. Kept tweaking. Then realized – probably about nine – that I was feeling pretty awful. Went straight to bed.’
‘I’d tried to phone you,’ she said, conscious that it sounded as if she were trying to justify herself. ‘Couldn’t get an answer. Home or mobile.’
‘I’d forgotten to charge the mobile. You didn’t leave a message.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘I didn’t think. I just assumed I’d call you later.’
‘Or I’d call you.’ Which, they both knew, was more likely to be the truth.
‘Yes. So what happened?’
‘I didn’t wake up, basically. Just slept round the clock. Woke up – I don’t know – maybe thirty-six hours later. Feeling like death. They reckon I was badly dehydrated on top of everything else. Could barely move. In the end, I managed to phone Jean.’ This was the old lady who lived in the house opposite. They’d given her a spare key some months before so she could water Liam’s plants when the two of them were away. ‘She came in, took one look at me and called an ambulance.’
‘And here you are,’ she said, looking around the small hospital ward. Most of the other patients were elderly, she noticed. Much older than Liam, certainly. ‘So what do they reckon?’
‘They reckon it’s the illness,’ he said. ‘It’s just one of the things it can do. The way they talk about it, there doesn’t seem much that it can’t do. But apparently it can just knock you out like that, especially if you’ve picked up some other bug alongside it.’
‘But if you can shake off whatever that is, you can get back to normal?’
There was a moment’s silence. ‘That’s the thing. They seem to think that it’s probably knocked me down a step or two. Increased the decline.’
‘But that can’t happen overnight?’
‘It can, apparently. Maybe not quite literally. But sometimes it happens unexpectedly quickly. It can go for years with nothing or not much, and then – wham.’
‘What kind of wham?’ she said. ‘In your case, I mean.’
‘Shit, I don’t even know exactly. It’s partly my mobility. I can still walk, but it’s getting worse. I walk more than a few steps, I’m knackered. I try to walk too fast, I feel like I’m going to fall over. Christ, I do fall over . . .’
She could tell from his expression that this wasn’t all of it, or even perhaps the worst of it. ‘What else?’
‘It’s my brain,’ he said. ‘My mind. I feel like I’m in a fog. I can’t think straight. Things that used to make sense don’t any more.’ He paused, frowning, as if he was trying to get his description exactly right. ‘I don’t remember things,’ he said. ‘I don’t mean big things, important things. It’s the small stuff. Things people said, things I did only a few minutes ago. I can be in the middle of something and not know why I’m doing it.’
‘We’re all like that,’ she said. ‘It’s called getting older. You’re just imagining it. I’ve see no signs of anything like that.’
‘You’ve not been here,’ he pointed out, and for once it sounded like something more than his usual reproach.
‘But it doesn’t affect your mind – your mental abilities. That’s not the way it works.’ She thought back to all the material they’d pored through when he’d first been diagnosed.
‘It can,’ he said. ‘It does. In around 10 per cent of cases, it does exactly that.’
‘Yes, but that’s minor stuff,’ she said. ‘I remember reading about all that. Stumbling over your words. Being a bit forgetful. Jesus, like I say, that’s me already.’
‘That’s usually the way it works,’ he said. ‘But they reckon that sometimes – rarely, but sometimes – it can be more. Sometimes it can be much more serious. It all depends on which parts of the brain have been affected. It’s the luck of the draw. Fucking Russian roulette. But they’re concerned about it. They’re going to do tests. You know – what do they call them? Psychometrics.’
‘If you can remember a word like psychometrics, you can’t be doing too badly.’ Her mind went back to Winsor, his batteries of psychological instruments, his relentless game-playing.
‘It’s not a joke, Marie.’
