Chapter 23

Sunday – 19 May

The sound of distant drums dragged Paget back to consciousness. He lay with his eyes closed, trying to get his mind to work, trying to identify the sound.

Rain. He groaned aloud. So much for ‘red sky at night’, he thought gloomily. The bloody shepherd had got it wrong again.

He made breakfast and sat down to read the paper, but his thoughts from the night before kept intruding. Jill’s words still echoed in his head, and he was troubled by their insistence. Why should he think of that particular incident now? He wandered disconsolately from room to room, growing more irritable by the minute.

By ten o’clock he could stand it no longer. He left the house and drove into town.

His original intention was to go to the office, but once in town he changed his mind and drove to the hospital instead.

Paget stopped at the desk to speak to the senior nurse on duty, a short, stout, grey-haired woman of about fifty. Her face was round; her skin was the colour of polished mahogany, and her eyes were the liveliest Paget had ever seen. Originally from Jamaica, Rose Tremonte had been at the Royal Broadminster hospital for much of her working life.

‘Good morning, Rose,’ Paget greeted her. ‘Still working the weekends, I see. Don’t you ever get tired of it?’

Rose glanced around as if afraid of being overheard, and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘No bosses on the weekends,’ she confided. Her face broke into a broad smile, and a deep chuckle rumbled in her ample throat.

They chatted for a few minutes, and Paget asked about Amy.

‘She’s coming along just fine,’ said Rose. ‘She’s a nice kid. She’s going to be all right.’

‘Can I talk to her?’

‘No reason why not,’ Rose told him agreeably.

Amy looked very young and vulnerable as she lay there against the pillows. Even at fifteen, she was a very pretty girl; in two or three more years she would an extremely attractive young woman. Paget only hoped that her recent brush with death would make her more cautious about whom she trusted in the future.

He led her through her story once more, but learned nothing new. Her memory seemed clear, and she was extremely frank about her relationship with Tony Rudge, although she came close to tears when she described how she had been attacked in the railway shed.

‘You seem quite convinced that it was Tony who attacked you,’ he said. ‘What makes you so certain?’

Amy’s face clouded. ‘It had to be him, didn’t it?’ she said. ‘I mean it had to be Tony who killed that woman in the church. Lenny’s mum. See, I didn’t know it was her at the time, so I believed Tony when he said he’d heard something and gone down to have a look round and found her dead. But he’d told me a bit about Lenny Smallwood, and I knew he hated him and his mum, so when I heard who she was, I did wonder.’

The girl plucked at the sheet and kept her eyes lowered. ‘But I didn’t want to believe that, because … Well, you know.’ She fell silent for a long moment, then looked up at Paget and shrugged. ‘It’s just that it all fits together,’ she said, ‘and I must have been daft to have believed all that rubbish about this bloke owing him money and being afraid to show his face and all that. I mean, where would Tony get that sort of money in prison anyway? And he’s not really the lending sort.’

‘You’re sure you neither saw nor heard anyone else in the church that night?’

‘No. There was no one; I’m sure of that.’

‘But you said yourself that you were asleep until Tony woke you and said you had to get out of there, so someone could have been in the church without your knowledge.’

‘I suppose,’ she said dubiously. ‘Are you saying you believe him?’

Paget didn’t answer directly. ‘Tell me, could you hear if someone was, say, having an argument in the church while you were in that room in the belfry?’

‘No. You can’t hear anything either way. That’s why it was so good for us. Nobody could hear us, and with the door locked and that sign about the tower being unsafe, we didn’t have to be quiet.’

‘What about the main door? It’s pretty heavy. Could you hear that if it banged shut?’

‘Oh, yes. You can hear that,’ the girl agreed. ‘It sort of echoes; sort of goes “boom,” if you know what I mean. But you can’t hear voices.’

‘Right. Now, Amy, I know it must be painful for you, but I’d like you to try to remember everything you saw or heard when you first entered that railway shed. You said you thought you were just going in to pick up an envelope. Did you have any idea that someone might be there?’

‘I shouldn’t have gone in if I’d thought there was someone in there,’ Amy said emphatically. ‘I was dead scared as it was.’

‘So take me through the steps again. You went inside and used the torch. What did you see?’

‘Just an empty shed. Well, bits and pieces of old machinery; that sort of thing.’

‘And…?’

‘This big old metal thing where Tony said the envelope would be, and it was. It was stuck on tight, so I had to really pull hard to get it off. And it wouldn’t go into my pocket because the tape kept sticking to my clothes.’

‘So you had the envelope in your hand? Is that right?’

‘Yes. That’s when I heard a noise.’ Amy gave an involuntary shiver.

‘What sort of noise?’

‘I don’t know. Just a noise.’

‘All right. Then what happened?’

‘I tried to see what it was, but that’s when he shone this big torch in my eyes, and I couldn’t see a thing. Then he hit me with this metal thing alongside the head, and…’

‘You said “metal thing”. You didn’t say that before. How do you know it was metal? Did you see it?’

Amy frowned, trying to concentrate. ‘I just saw this sort of glint as it came down, and I tried to stop it … Yes! That’s right. I remember, now. I tried to grab hold of it. It was cold and hard. It was metal, like a bar.’

‘Flat? Round?’

‘Flat – I think. I’m not sure. Sorry.’

‘It’s all right, Amy. You’re doing very well. What else do you remember?’

‘I went down. I thought my head was split. He had another go and hit me on the shoulder, and he was swearing like…’ Amy stopped in mid-sentence, and her eyes opened wide. ‘I’d forgotten that,’ she breathed. ‘He was lashing out and swearing because he’d missed me.’

‘Did you recognize the voice? Think, now. Was it Tony’s voice?’

Amy closed her eyes and remained silent as she relived that moment of the attack. Her eyes flew open. ‘It wasn’t Tony,’ she said with something like relief. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t Tony.’ Tears trickled down her face as she began to cry.

‘He did set you up, though,’ Paget reminded her. He didn’t want her to have any illusions about Tony Rudge. ‘Please go on.’

Amy sniffed loudly and wiped away the tears with her hands. ‘That’s when I reckoned my only chance was to knock him off balance so’s I could run,’ she said. ‘So I butted him as hard as I could and ran like hell.’

Her memory of events after that was confused and hazy until she woke up in hospital, and Paget didn’t press her. She was tiring, so he thanked her warmly and asked if there was anything she needed.

‘No, thanks,’ she said. ‘Besides, my mum will be here soon, and she’s bringing some things.’

‘How is your mother taking all this? It must have been very hard on her, not knowing where you were.’

Amy shot him a glance that was a mixture of guilt and impishness. ‘She didn’t half give me what for last night,’ she said, ‘but then she cried and she’s coming in this morning, so I reckon it’ll be all right.’

He couldn’t help but like the girl, he thought as he left the room. She’d been extremely foolish, and she was damned lucky to be alive, but she was a plucky little thing. He just hoped she’d learned her lesson.

Before leaving the floor, Paget sought out Rose once again and asked about Helen Beecham.

‘She’s down in C Ward, now,’ she told him. C Ward was the hospital’s psychiatric section. ‘They moved her down there last night for observation after they caught her trying to sneak out. Said she had to get home to her husband because he’d be wanting his tea.’

Paget thought of the free spirit portrayed in the charcoal sketch, and compared it to the image of the woman he’d seen standing at the kitchen sink. What Beecham had done to her filled him with revulsion, and he hoped Forensic would find sufficient evidence of his crimes to put the man away for a very long time.

He was about to leave when another thought occurred to him. ‘Tell me, Rose, when did Dr McMillan come back to work here?’

Rose thought for a moment. ‘About a month ago,’ she said. ‘Mr Stone’s been trying for months to get a registrar to work with him in orthopaedics, but he couldn’t find anyone who was interested.’ Rose lowered her voice. ‘Between you and me, Mr Paget, I’m not surprised; he’s a miserable old devil and so demanding that there’s not many who’ll work with him, but he is a brilliant consultant. So, he went to see Dr McMillan and persuaded her to come back to work with him.’

Rose grinned. ‘She has his measure,’ she chuckled. ‘She doesn’t stand any nonsense from him, and he’s been a lot easier to work with since she came back. And she’s got herself a good teacher. I hope she stays.’

So did he, thought Paget. So did he.