The Incident Room was quiet. The day shift had gone home, but Paget sat at a desk, going slowly through the log and the mass of reports and notes that had accumulated over the past two weeks.
Tregalles had spent some time at the hospital earlier in the day, talking to the young woman they called Bunny Brown, but she remembered little of what had happened on Wednesday night. She recalled leaving the boat and setting out on the path. She remembered being choked and fighting back, but from then on it was all a blur. It was raining and it was dark. She hadn’t seen the man who had tried to kill her.
It was frustrating. So close, and yet it seemed that they were blocked at every turn. By six o’clock, Tregalles had been ready to call it a day, but Paget was not prepared to give up so easily. “We’ll go through every statement, every scrap of evidence again,” he said. “There has to be something that will give us a lead.”
Which was why the sergeant was working his way through
statements instead of spending a quiet evening at home as he had planned. It was a tedious job, and he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. “Anyone want coffee?” he asked as he poured a mug for himself.
Paget, immersed in the middle of a report, grunted something unintelligible, which Tregalles took to mean no, but Ormside, who had volunteered to stay behind as well, and was talking on the phone, raised his hand.
Tregalles poured another mug and popped two sugars in, then set it down on Ormside’s desk. “Anything new?” he asked idly as Ormside put the phone down.
Len Ormside leaned back in his chair and stretched. “Not much,” he said. “We had this old chap in earlier on today. Name of Moss. He said he saw a strange car parked just down the road from the Invisible Man the night before last, and it was there again about the same time that the girl was attacked. We showed him pictures, but all he could tell us about the car was that it was light-coloured, fairly new, and there was a brief-case on the seat. We sent him on his way and told him to give us a call if he thought of anything. That was him.” Ormside picked up his coffee and sipped it slowly. “He rang to say he’d remembered something else. The car had a sun-roof.
“Funny what makes some people remember things,” he observed. “This old chap said he was clearing out his tomato boxes in his greenhouse when he got a splinter in his finger, and it reminded him of the sun-roof because he cut his finger on the car. Said he was leaning down, trying to see inside, with his hand on the roof to steady himself, when he nicked his finger. He never thought anything of it until he got home and saw the blood on his hand. He’s on blood thinner, and he says even the smallest cut bleeds like a bugger. He reckons there must have been a sharp bit of metal on the edge of the sun-roof. If it hadn’t been for that, he never would have remembered it.”
“A sun-roof, Len?” said Paget sharply as he pushed his chair back. He came round the desk. “Let me see that report.” He scanned it quickly. “And split seats!” he said softly. “By God, Len, this could be the very thing we’ve been looking for!” He dropped the report back on the desk and grabbed his mac. “Come on,” he told Tregalles, “we’ve got work to do.”
He was parked on the street. The exit from the hospital car-park was narrow, and he didn’t want to risk being held up when it was time to leave. He watched from his car as visitors came down the steps and went their separate ways. Anxious as he was to be going, it might be best to wait a few more minutes; there were always a few stragglers who lingered after the bell had gone.
He had telephoned the hospital less than an hour ago and asked to be connected to the nursing station on the third floor. Was it permitted to visit someone who was in SOU? he’d asked.
He was assured it was.
He’d pretended to be hesitant. It was just that he didn’t want to disturb other patients in there who might be in serious condition, he explained.
No fear of that, he was told. There was only one patient in there at the moment.
It was better than he’d hoped for, and the sooner it was done, the better.
There were only a few cars left in the car-park, and no one had come down the steps in the last five minutes. It was time to go.
He picked up the box of flowers, got out of the car and locked it. There was a chill in the air, and mist rising from the river in the valley drifted through the trees. He entered the hospital and walked purposefully to a door beside the lift, opened it, and began to climb the stairs.
He paused on the first landing, where he put on the latex gloves, then took the knife from his pocket and thrust it in his belt where it would be instantly to hand.
His biggest fear was that Vikki might scream. He must get to her before
she had a chance to utter a sound, which meant hiding his face when he entered the room. He opened the box and removed the flowers. The box could stay here in the stairwell. Nothing could be traced back to him.
He went up the stairs to the third floor and looked through the window in the door. The corridor was empty. He eased the door open and held the bouquet of flowers in front of his face as he moved toward the door beneath the sign that said SOU.
A nurse appeared at the far end of the corridor and began walking toward him.
He kept on walking. The nurse drew nearer, then veered off to one side and opened a door marked STAFF ONLY and disappeared inside. The door beneath the sign was open, and fifteen feet away was the high counter behind which he could hear the nurses talking. He slipped inside the door.
The girl lay on her side, face toward the wall. Still holding the flowers in front of his face, he moved swiftly toward the bed, eyes fixed on the bedclothes he would have to pull away before the thrust directly to the heart. The girl stirred and turned her head to see who it was.
He froze! He couldn’t believe his eyes. He’d never seen this girl before!
She rolled over and squinted at him as if a light were shining in her eyes, and he realized she’d been asleep.
He turned away. “Sorry, must have the wrong room,” he said gruffly as he retreated, almost running from the room. To his left a nurse, still talking to someone behind the desk, came out into the corridor. He walked rapidly away and had almost reached the door when she called out behind him, “Sir … ? Sir … ?”
The stairwell door closed behind him, shutting out the sound. He dropped the flowers and ran down the stairs. The sooner he put some distance between himself and the hospital, the better.
He was at the top of the last flight of steps when the door to the ground floor opened. He put his head down and a hand up to his face as he continued on down, then stopped, slack-jawed, as the person below looked up.
Vikki!
At the same time he recognized her, she recognized him. He could see it in her eyes, see the shock on her face as she stood there, paralysed with fear as all her nightmares suddenly came true.
He ran down the steps, knife glinting in his hand.
“No one home,” said Tregalles. “No sign of the car, either.”
Paget looked at his watch. They could sit here for the rest of the evening and wait for their man to come home, or they could return in the morning. Julia Rutledge was probably half-way across the country by now, so it wasn’t as if there was any immediate danger, and he couldn’t see their man leaving town.
Assuming he was their man.
He yawned and stretched, and heard the rustle of paper in his shirt pocket. It was the note he’d made to remind himself to ring Andrea. He’d tried to reach her earlier, but Mrs. Ansell had answered and told him that Andrea was working late at the hospital.
“We’ll come back first thing tomorrow morning,” he told Tregalles, much to the sergeant’s relief. “But stop in at the hospital on the way back. I’ll only be a couple of minutes.”
“The hospital it is,” Tregalles said. “Something to do with the girl, is it?”
“No.”
Tregalles waited, but as the silence between them lengthened, it became obvious that no further explanation was forthcoming. Five minutes later, he swung the car into an empty space close to the hospital steps, then settled back in his seat as Paget got out and went inside. A couple of minutes, Paget had said. That probably meant ten or fifteen.
Inside, Paget identified himself to the elderly head porter who sat behind the reception desk, walked over to the open door of the lift, and pressed the button for the fourth floor.
Andrea was in her office, and she looked pleased to see him when he knocked and poked his head inside. “What brings you here?” she asked. “I hope it isn’t anything serious this time.”
“Oh, but it is,” he assured her. “I happened to be passing, so I thought I’d drop in and make sure everything is set for Saturday. It seems that every time we make plans, something gets in the way. We’re still on, are we not?”
“As far as I’m concerned, we are,” said Andrea.
“Good. What time would you like to go for dinner? Seven? Eight?”
“I think seven,” she said. “I don’t like keeping Mrs. Ansell up too late if I can help it. Where are we going?”
“I thought the Tudor. What do you think?”
“I should have thought you’d had enough of the Tudor after that murder there last week, but yes, that would be very nice. The food is always good there. You haven’t booked, then?”
Paget hesitated. “I suppose I should have,” he said, “but to tell you the truth, it slipped my mind. Could I use your phone?”
“I’ll do it,” Andrea told him. She flipped a Rolodex and punched in the number.
“Very efficient,” Paget commented. “I’m impressed.”
“Put me through to the dining-room, please,” Andrea said into the phone. “Yes, good evening. I’d like to make a reservation for two for dinner tomorrow night, and … I see. Completely booked? That is unfortunate. I’m sure Chief Inspector Paget will be most disappointed when I tell him … Oh! Yes, I can hold on.”
Andrea put her hand over the phone and raised an eyebrow in mock surprise. “It seems he may have made a mistake,” she said softly. “Yes? Oh, there is? A cancellation. Wonderful. Yes, at seven. Thank you so much.”
She put the phone down and grinned. “I thought it might be worth a try,” she said, “and it seems to have worked. They’re familiar with your name.”
Paget returned the grin. “They should be,” he said, “but I doubt
if I’m on their list of favourite people. There’s probably a note against my name saying: ‘Don’t upset this man, whatever you do!’”
“Now it’s my turn to be impressed.”
“I have to go,” he told her. “Tregalles is waiting in the car. Quarter to seven all right? It’s not as if we have far to go.”
“That would be lovely. I’ll see you then, Neil. Take care.”
Vikki wrenched open the heavy door at the bottom of the stairs and ran. The lobby was deserted except for the elderly night porter on duty at the desk, and he wouldn’t stand much chance against the man who was after her. Where were all the people when you needed them? She made a dash for the door, the instinct for survival overriding the pain.
“Oi!” the porter yelled as he scrambled out from behind his newspaper. “Oi! You, there! Where do you think you’re going?”
But Vikki was through the door and down the steps before he could so much as come out from behind the desk. His back was turned toward the man who hurried past, a hand to the side of his face. “Good night,” the man said as he, too, left the building.
“Good night, sir.” The porter didn’t even look at the man as he made his way back to the desk. “Bloody kids!” he muttered as the door closed behind the man. “Need their arses tanned, the bloody lot of ‘em!”
Tregalles saw the girl come flying down the steps. She was running awkwardly, and she kept glancing back over her shoulder as she cut off to the right toward the trees. He lost sight of her as she plunged into the shadows. A man was standing at the top of the steps, framed in silhouette against the light. Tregalles couldn’t see his face.
But he’d seen the face of the girl, and she’d been terrified. She’d looked familiar, and yet her features had been so distorted that it took a few seconds for it to register that she was the girl whose picture had been taped to a board in the Incident Room for more than a week.
Julia Rutledge.
Tregalles paused only long enough to snatch something from the glove box before leaping out of the car. The girl had disappeared, but the sergeant caught a glimpse of the man as he passed beneath a light, running hard. Tregalles was half-way across the car-park when Paget appeared on the hospital steps.
“It’s him!” Tregalles yelled. “He’s after the girl. Come on.”
Vikki heard the shouts, but they only served to spur her on as she tried to find an opening in a chain-link fence that surrounded the hospital grounds. She hadn’t realized it was there when she’d made for the shelter of the trees, and found out too late that the trees were on the far side. The fence was high, impossible to climb, and she could hear the man behind her as she followed the fence toward the road. There had to be a break somewhere. There had to be!
She found it. A small gate exiting to the street. She darted through. There wasn’t a soul to be seen in either direction. Oh, God, she screamed inside her head. Help me. Please help me.
Across the street, the crumbling towers of the ancient minster rose against the sky. Beyond the perimeter lay a maze of broken walls and tumbled stone and shadows darker than the night itself. It was her only hope. There was nowhere else to hide.
With every step a piercing stab of pain, Vikki plunged across the road and reached the shelter of the ruins. She blundered on, seeking ever deeper darkness, spurred on by the thud of feet behind her, twisting, turning, bumping into walls until she didn’t know where she was. She staggered on, her whole body now a blinding sheet of pain.
She tripped and fell, but was up on her hands and knees in an instant, scrambling sideways like a crab into the deepest shadow she could find. She lay there panting, trying to still the pounding of her heart so she could listen.
Nothing. No sound at all. But then there wouldn’t be, not here on the grass. Perhaps the man would give up and leave. She’d heard someone shout back there. Perhaps he’d been scared off—but it was
far more likely that he was listening, too, waiting for her to make a move. All right, she wouldn’t move. She would simply lie here close to the wall and wait for him to go away.
But it was hard to lie still. What if he didn’t go away—or worse! What if he knew that she was there and was creeping closer?
She held her breath. Was that another footstep or her own imagination? She dare not take a chance; she had to move. The man with the knife had tracked her down, and he was not going to leave until he’d found her.
Her only hope was to work her way out of the ruins on the Bridge Street side where it was well lighted and she’d find more people. But which way was Bridge Street?
Vikki attempted to stand up, but as soon as she touched her swollen foot to the ground she knew it wouldn’t hold her. If she was to get out of there, it would have to be on hands and knees. She dropped back down. The grass was wet beneath her hands, and her jeans were soaked.
She used her hand to probe the darkness ahead of her and found an opening. She paused, listening. Nothing. Within these walls she couldn’t even hear the sound of traffic. Vikki crawled through, gritting her teeth to prevent herself from crying out against the pain, inching forward, careful not to make a sound.
A shoe scraped on stone, and Vikki froze. The sound came from the other side of the wall. She could hear him breathing! She held her own breath and crouched low, covering her face and hugging the ground.
Suddenly there was movement, a thud, and someone swore. Vikki had a sudden urge to laugh hysterically. Serve the bastard right! She hoped he’d turned his ankle. Better still if he’d broken his bloody neck!
But she had to move while she had the chance. Still on hands and knees, she inched forward—and ran head-first into a wall. Dazed, she was forced to turn to her left again. Another wall! She bit back a groan. She’d boxed herself in.
She turned too quickly; her hand slid on the grass and she toppled over. Her foot shot out and hit the wall. She screamed and rolled around in agony. A blinding light exploded in her face and pinned her there. She saw the upraised arm; saw something glint …
She closed her eyes and waited for the blow to fall.
He pressed himself into the niche of darkness, panting hard and shaking. He’d managed to get rid of the knife, stuffing it and the gloves under one of the many fallen stones that lay scattered among the ruins, and he’d eluded his pursuer. But he dare not stop for long. Reinforcements might well be on the way, and he had to get away before anyone else arrived. He could see the car from where he stood. The street was quiet; nothing stirred. No sign of movement anywhere.
He stepped out of the shadows, forcing himself to keep to a normal walking pace, eyes darting everywhere. His keys were ready in his hand as he approached the car. The air was cool, but his face was damp with sweat.
He pressed the remote button on the key chain and heard the quiet click as the door unlocked. He glanced up and down the street as he grasped the handle, then froze as he heard the voice behind him.
“That’s far enough,” said Paget quietly. “Don’t turn round. Let’s have your hands on top of the car where I can see them.”
His legs began to shake. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. How could everything have gone so wrong? Tears of sheer frustration streamed down his face as he sagged against the car.
She heard the words but she couldn’t comprehend. Why didn’t he have done with it? Put her out of her misery. But he kept on talking, talking …
“Look at it, please,” the voice insisted.
She opened her eyes, squinting against the light. He was holding out a card, and the words slowly filtered into her brain.
“I’m a policeman, Julia,” he said, “and you’re safe. You don’t
have to run any more. Look at the card. That’s me, Sergeant Tregalles.” He flipped the torch so the light shone on his face.
It was all too much for Vikki. There was a roaring in her ears, the light began to spin, then everything went black.