‘So who have you pissed off, Cameron?’ Gemma wondered.
Boyd sat across the interview table, again showing his brown Halloween grin. He wasn’t exactly happy with the turn of events, but he seemed pleased to have regained what he considered to be the upper hand. ‘Dunno. How far afield are we going?’
‘You’re taking it very well that someone tried to frame you for a series of murders,’ Heck said.
Boyd shrugged. ‘It’s only what you lot thought you were going to do … till you found out you couldn’t.’
‘Can you think of anyone in particular?’ Gemma asked.
‘Now you want my help? Are you fucking serious?’
‘It’s you this maniac has got his sights on,’ Heck reminded him. ‘Not us.’
Boyd snickered. ‘What do you want me to say? I’m a fucking criminal. I make enemies both sides of the fence, and I always have.’
‘Try thinking about it, Cameron,’ Heck persisted. ‘This person’s a cut above the normal gutter trash you associate with. The matchbook with the fingerprint on it would be easy enough to obtain … probably taken from a dustbin at the back of Terry’s house. But how the hell did your DNA end up on the Christmas victim? I mean, you being such a smart guy and all, I’m sure you’d have noticed if someone yanked out a lump of your hair.’
Boyd shrugged. ‘Beats the crap out of me … oh, sorry, you’ve already done that, haven’t you? Don’t worry.’ He grinned again. ‘My brief’s taken pictures. We’re still going to rip you apart in court.’
The ICU, though quieter than it would be during the day, was still busier than most other hospital departments at this late hour. Soft-soled shoes whispered on polished floors as personnel busied themselves between the rooms, checking notes and providing medication to patients. Andy Gregson was in a special bay at the far end of the main corridor. Heck appraised him through an observation window.
The kid lay unmoving on a raised bed, his head invisible under layers of post-surgical wrappings and various feeding and breathing tubes. Cables connected him to a bank of bleeping monitors. He was also on a drip, which a young male nurse in blue scrubs was in the process of changing. Next to the bed, a very young woman – little more than a girl – was curled up on an armchair, asleep. No doubt this was Gregson’s wife, Marnie. Her make-up was smeared and sweaty, her shoulder-length auburn hair in disarray. Some thoughtful member of staff had laid a blanket over her.
‘Can I help?’ someone asked in a Glaswegian accent.
Heck turned and found a stocky, red-haired woman alongside him. She too was in scrubs; the tab on her collar indicated that she was Mavis Malone, Head Nurse.
‘Sorry,’ he said, showing his warrant card. ‘Detective Sergeant Heckenburg. DC Gregson’s partner.’
She gave him a business-like frown, and he realised that she was assessing his own state of health. ‘You look like you’ve taken a battering yourself.’
‘It’s been a rough night.’
‘Can I fix that dressing for you?’
‘It’s okay.’
‘I think it probably needs it.’
Heck reached for his temple, and found only a sticky twist remaining of the plaster applied earlier. When his fingers came away, their tips were smeared red. ‘Erm … maybe … yeah.’ She smiled and led him to a side-desk. ‘How’s Andy doing?’ he asked.
‘He’ll be okay.’ She cleaned his cut, then carefully and delicately covered it with a fresh dressing. ‘He suffered a depressed skull fracture, which the neurosurgeon managed to elevate without any complications. We also evacuated the extradural haematoma underneath. The CT scan would have revealed if there was bleeding elsewhere, but there wasn’t. He’s now on Mannitol … it’ll help keep the swelling down.’
‘No disrespect, but that’s double-Dutch to me. Will he be properly okay? Will he be fit to work again?’
‘If his recovery stays on track, he’ll be perfectly fine.’
Heck moved back to the window, wondering why he didn’t feel more relieved – probably because his senses were too dulled by fatigue. Beyond the glass, the young couple lay motionless; Marnie curled in her armchair, Gregson comatose in bed. They made a picture of damaged innocence. As a murder detective, that was something you saw often, but it always cut deeper when it was one of your own.
Heck trudged tiredly back through the ICU, attempting briefly, but unsuccessfully, to wipe all concerns from his mind. With the DNA and fingerprint evidence gone, the enquiry had reached another dead-end. Where they went from here, he truly didn’t know.
‘Don’t worry, he’ll be fine,’ Nurse Malone said, smiling as he passed her desk.
Heck nodded in appreciation of the thought, but it was difficult to smile back.
Outside, the car park, which would be bursting at the seams during daytime, was now largely empty – apart from Gemma’s BMW, which had just pulled up in the next bay along from Heck’s borrowed Volkswagen.
‘Do I want to go back in there?’ Gemma said, getting out of the car and gazing reluctantly up at the huge, impersonal building, most of whose lights were now either turned off or dimmed.
Heck shrugged. ‘Up to you, ma’am. But he’s out for the count.’
‘How’s he doing?’
‘Apparently he’ll be okay.’
‘And how are you?’
‘Well that depends …’ Heck sniffed and shoved his hands into his pockets. ‘I’m tired … but I’m also wired. If that makes sense. Not sure I’ll be able to sleep tonight.’
‘You’d be as well trying. Here …’ Gemma took a flask from her coat pocket; when she unscrewed the cap, there was an aroma of coffee laced with something else – Irish whiskey. She filled the plastic beaker and offered it to him. ‘Not saying this’ll help you sleep, but it’s always a good anaesthetic.’
He took a couple of sips, before handing it back. ‘What did you think of Boyd?’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as stupid in my entire life.’
‘He’s looking to his own interests.’
‘What … and he won’t help us find someone who so hates him they’d fit him up for a series of torture-murders?’
‘Like he said, there’re loads of people who hate him. While he’s on remand he’s protected. His problem now is how to wriggle out of three aggravated burglaries.’
She chuckled without humour. ‘Good luck to him on that. Did you speak to Marnie Gregson?’
‘She was asleep.’
‘Pity. She might have welcomed a few words of comfort from the partner her husband’s been bigging up to her.’
‘He’s been bigging me up?’ Heck was bewildered. What the hell had he done to merit that? Had he impressed the young detective with his world weary air? How about his irreverent attitude and reckless self-confidence? That Gregson was so much a rookie he failed to recognise all this as insecure bullshit made him somehow even more endearing, and his injury infinitely more painful. ‘I wouldn’t have had many words of comfort to give her, would I?’ Heck finally said. ‘I couldn’t even tell her Andy fell in a good cause.’
Gemma didn’t reply to that. Instead, she glanced up at the sky. ‘Feels like rain …’ She hit her fob and the BMW unlocked itself. Once they were inside, she topped up the beaker and handed it over. Heck sipped again, glumly.
‘You know, Mark …’ Her tone became tentative; it was a rare occasion when she called him by his first name. ‘It’s been a soul-destroying day. But it’s not all bad. No one else is going to say this to you, so I will. What you did tonight … that was an amazing bit of coppering.’
‘Hey, I’m an amazing kind of copper.’ But he didn’t sound as if he believed it. He handed the beaker back.
‘I just want you to know how glad I am that you’re on the team.’
‘So is this the carrot as opposed to the stick?’ he wondered.
‘You can be an obnoxious prat sometimes, but … can’t we all?’
He watched glassy-eyed as an ambulance screeched to a halt in front of the double-doors to Casualty. An emergency team spilled outside as the paramedics eased a stretchered form from the rear, one of them carrying a saline drip.
‘Me and you should have stayed together all those years ago,’ he said slowly. ‘We should have tried to stick it through.’
She sipped at the fortified coffee. ‘Yeah, because that would make this mess go away.’
‘Then we wouldn’t have to do this in hospital car parks at three o’clock in the morning.’
‘Excuse me …?’ She glanced around. ‘We’re not doing anything.’
‘Maybe that’s the trouble.’
She gazed out front again. ‘Don’t view the past through rose-tinted specs, Heck. That way you never learn from your mistakes.’
‘Mistakes?’ Heck was vaguely aware that he wasn’t really thinking straight; that he was dizzied by fatigue, but sometimes you saw things more clearly that way, didn’t you? And now when he remembered he and Gemma’s mutual past – when they’d both been hotshot young DCs working out of Bethnal Green together, under exactly the same stresses and strains, keeping similar frantic schedules, similar exhausting hours, and thus able to fall into each other’s arms at the end of the day and get straight to the nitty-gritty without preamble – it didn’t seem like it had been particularly ill-fated. Even with the advantage of hindsight. Neither phone calls in the middle of the night nor alarm bells at the crack of dawn had posed much threat to that relationship.
‘Too much of a distraction all that stuff, Heck,’ Gemma said, almost indifferently. ‘We’d never have got on with our lives.’
‘Well there’s getting on and getting on, isn’t there?’ he retorted. ‘You may have managed it. But look at me. Look where I am.’
She glanced at him, half-amused. ‘And you wouldn’t have it any other way. Or so you never cease to tell people. What was all that working-class hero claptrap you used to spout: “I’m an investigator, not an administrator. I’m a detective, not a suit.” Yeah, yeah, very noble of you. But don’t start giving me bloody sob stories …’
‘Oh, put a sock in it!’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You heard.’
‘Bloody right I heard! Don’t tell me to put a sock in it! I’m your supervisory officer, or had you forgotten?’
‘Yeah, must have.’ He gazed at the ambulance again. ‘You make that so easy.’
They relapsed into somnolent silence.
‘Listen to us two,’ Gemma finally said. ‘Like an old married couple.’
‘But without the good stuff.’
‘Jesus Christ, lighten up. The last thing I need now is you flipping out.’
‘Sorry, it’s just that …’ He sighed. ‘Well … the truth is, I get lonely.’
‘Make a move on Claire. You seem matey enough with her.’
‘We’re just mates, that’s all. Anyway, Claire’s struggling …’
‘You don’t say.’
‘Don’t get me wrong, she’s sexy, she’s pretty … but every time I see Claire, I see a scared little girl. And I don’t want a little girl … I want a woman.’ He glanced round at her again. ‘Who I can make love to all night, as energetically and imaginatively as possible. Who’ll snarl in my ear. Who, when I bite her, will bite me back. In short, I want a lioness …’
When Gemma eyed him this time, it was almost reproachfully. ‘You’re a real swine, you know that, Heck? You’re the one who dumped me!’
‘You think I need reminding?’
‘I don’t care.’
‘I think you do.’ And he leaned forward and kissed her. Full on the mouth, attempting to probe past her lips with his tongue – but she kept them firmly together. At last he relented and drew back.
‘Feel better?’ she asked coolly.
‘Damn it, Gemma …’
She turned her ignition key; the engine rumbled to life. ‘You’re stressed, Heck. And worn out. You need some sleep. We all do.’
‘You want me back. I know it.’
‘Even if I did, would you want me?’ She gave him a frank stare. ‘Truly? Genuinely? And I mean for more than just a good screw? Be honest now. Because that would be a very big issue for both of us in the morning.’
‘Okay.’ He tried to wave the logic aside. ‘It’s just … times like this, you know?’
‘Oh, I know, Heck. Except that times are not always like this, are they? Even in our world, it isn’t every day when a bit of no-strings nookie can take your mind off the crap that’s going on around you.’
‘I really miss you,’ he said.
She put the car in gear. ‘You see me every day.’
‘No I don’t. I see a caricature. I see a front that you put on.’
‘Yeah, course … I’m a suit.’
‘I’ve never meant that about you …’
‘Go to bed, Heck. Before you say something you really regret.’
He climbed sullenly out, closing the door behind him – only to get spattered by icy raindrops. She’d been right about that at least. In truth, she’d probably been right about the other stuff too. He tapped on the passenger window. She powered it down.
‘Sorry,’ he mouthed.
‘That word’s almost foreign to you,’ she said. ‘You sure you know what it means?’
‘Not for saying I want to take you to bed … for calling you a caricature.’
‘That was a new one, I must admit. Now step away from the car, sergeant. I’ll see you in the morning.’
She drove from the car park in a swirl of exhaust, leaving Heck to soak in the deluge.
‘That went well,’ he told himself.
Though by the standards of the day, it probably had.