Sam pointed the remote and flicked off the telly. No doubt it would be on the news again later, be at work by then, must set the recorder.
A fat black detective. Who would have believed it? Sam wished Desi was here to share the moment.
He’d laid down a challenge, this Darriteau person. Sam hurried into the other room and booted up the Internet. Typed in “Walter Darriteau”, not expecting much. One hundred and eight pages of entries about the guy. Geez, he even had his own entry on Interpedia, the online encyclopaedia, and that was interesting because anyone could update that. The mind pondered on opportunities, as Sam surfed the sites and devoured the data.
Details of his cases, his press conferences, his history, his disciplinary matters. God, don’t you just love the Internet, a nosey parker’s whole new way of life!
I want you to know I am coming to get you.
Bloody nerve, there should be a law against public threats like that.
It was an infringement of Sam’s human rights.
I shall find you wherever you are.
Not if I find you first.
You know I will catch you in the end, nothing is more certain.
Well come on big boy, let’s see you try!
That day is coming soon.
Says who? A bad actor like you, Walter, Wally, what a Wally you are, and Sam sniggered. Wally Darri, what a prick!
Remember this, you and I will meet soon.
Yeah, just for once, you might be right.
Chapter Eleven
Maggie O’Brien came from a big family. They were all dead. Ten assorted brothers and sisters, twelve uncles and aunts, two sons, all dead. Michael, her first son, had struggled through childhood. He never suggested he would make it, and he didn’t. Leukaemia. What a bugger.
At least Liam had reached forty. Dead now though, killed in a car crash while drink driving in the outback, knocked over and killed a king kangaroo, and himself. Not such a surprise, for all the O’Briens could worry the liquor bottles when roused.
All dead, every one of them.
True, there were fifty nieces and nephews and heaven knows how many grand nieces and grand nephews, but none of them were in the slightest bit interested in Maggie O’Brien, not since she’d grown old, become forgetful; began repeating things every five minutes. At the beginning that had been funny, but it soon became a fatal irritant.
The modern kids weren’t interested. They didn’t see the point of the lonely old lady that none of them knew. It wasn’t as if she was any of their mothers or fathers. They didn’t owe her a damned thing.
Maggie had one close friend, Floria Beech, who had been in and out of hospital for the previous two years. Heart trouble, poor girl, Maggie always called her girl because she was quite young at seventy-nine. She was in dry dock again, the Countess of Chester Hospital, on the north side of the city.
Maggie visited her whenever she could, but she had fallen into a bad habit. She kept missing the bus. If anyone was watching they would have noticed that. Maggie came puffing and panting round the corner to see the maroon and cream bus pulling away. She put it down to her sciatica playing up, and the Meniere’s disease that kept her awake at nights, when it was down to plain forgetfulness. The bus left the end of her bungalowed road at ten past seven, not quarter past, and that five minutes made all the difference.
She did it again.
Stupid woman! She cursed aloud. What am I like?
The single decker pulled away. There were two young children on the back seat with their mother. The kids put their fingers in their mouths, widened their gobs, stared at Maggie through the dirty glass, pulled a face and nodded their heads.
Cheeky beggars! What was the world coming to? Even their mother glanced over her shoulder, back through the window, stared at the old woman standing forlornly at the bus stop, a tiny bunch of daffodils wrapped in a damp copy of last week’s Chester Chronicle, in her rheumatoid hands. The woman on the bus stuck her nose in the air and turned back to the front.
I blame the parents, said Maggie aloud, but there was no one there to hear.
A shiny dark car pulled up at the bus stop. The nearside window buzzed down. A kind voice said, ‘Have you missed your bus? Do you want the hospital? I am going that way.’
It was hard to hear. The stereogram, or whatever they call it these days, was on loud, thumping pop music; bang, bang, bang, rat music, was it? Was that what it’s called?
Maggie bent down and peered inside.
‘Were you talking to me?’
The doctor nodded.
‘Sure. I am going to the Countess if you wanna lift.’
Lovely car, nice clean person, and you can always trust a doctor in a white coat.
‘Well, if you’re sure, I’ll pay for the petrol.’
The doctor laughed and reached across and opened the door and said, ‘Jump in.’
Maggie O’Brien’s jumping days were long behind her.
She grasped the headrest and made to enter, but had forgotten which foot to begin with. She thrust in her left, but that didn’t seem quite right, but she was already half in, and in the next second she fell into the red sports seat. It had been nine years since she had last sat in a car. It took a moment to get her breath.
‘Can you close the door?’ said the doctor.
‘What!’
‘The door, we can’t go far with the door wide open.’
Maggie stared at the open door. It seemed so far off. She wasn’t sure with her dickey shoulder if she could reach it, but the nice doctor must have gathered that, because in the next second the doc jumped out, ran round, and closed the door, ensuring that Maggie’s coat was tucked inside, and in the next moment the doctor was back in the
