Henry spoke to her for a long, long time.
He brought her up to date with everything that had happened since she had been shot. He told her that they – he and Diane – had been on the right path with the investigation. Chasing the money trail found at Hawkshead Farm and also going to the travelling community had been the way to go. It would have led them to bring people to justice.
Then – bollocks – she had to go and get shot.
He had smiled at her at that point. Smiled at the unmoving, unresponsive figure of Diane Daniels in the bed in the critical care unit.
‘You silly arse,’ he chided her. His eyes were moist and he swallowed. He folded his hand across hers.
He went on and told her all about Tommy Costain’s murder at Lancashire prison and the link to a big-time gangster in London called Dunster Cosmo who had sanctioned the hit, just as he’d sanctioned the death of the two lads whose bodies had been found up at Hawkshead Farm. He told her that Tommy’s murder was yet to be solved, though, and that he had since learned that Conrad Costain, the boss of the Costain crime clan, had been found dead in his cell at Manchester prison from a massive heart attack.
He told her about his trip to London with Jake Niven and Steve Flynn, where they had ‘brilliantly’ (his word) arrested a serial killer and prodigious sex offender, and then managed to lead the cops down there to a huge people-trafficking operation run by Cosmo – whom the police up here were still waiting to interview.
‘So, I’ve been pretty busy,’ he said. ‘I think you would have wanted that, wouldn’t you?’ he whispered, hoping there would be some response.
There wasn’t. But the monitors still kept showing that her heart rate was fine, blood pressure low but OK, and the drips kept on feeding her vital medicines through tubes.
He lost track round about then. He’d wanted to tell her about the completely nuts idea to hold Lisa Dean hostage while Rik Dean went to work and handed over the millions seized from the Yorks, and that Marcie Quant – who Diane did not yet know anything about – was in custody. And that Henry had been forced to shoot Darren McCabe – the man who had killed and wounded so many, including her – and that he was now dead, having bled out in the entrance hall of Rik Dean’s fancy house in Lytham. And that he, Henry, had to be prevented by Rik and Flynn from putting even more bullets into him as he lay there bleeding.
‘Long story,’ Henry said to Diane.
Then he blabbed on for much longer, saying that the legal implications of what had happened would stretch from here to eternity – him having shot dead someone, Flynn having shot someone, too. Both were things that had to be done, but the judicial fallout would be ‘fucking awful’ (his words).
He went on talking about more inconsequential subjects then: The Tawny Owl, about Ginny and her boyfriend, and, ‘Oh, I probably need to tell you about Maude Crichton, too. That’s if we – you know, me and you – are more than a one-night stand, as discussed. Because I’m up for it. Kinda hope you are too, because one thing I know – you came back into my life at just the right time, lass … the bad guys came in at the wrong time, obviously, but you, your timing couldn’t have been better … Thing is, I knew it as soon as I watched you walking up the field towards me after I’d found Beth York’s body by the lake … pretty romantic setting, eh? Yeah, so I knew it, but I sort of fought it …’ He ran out of words there.
He winced and sighed and then experienced a strange surge in his body as Diane’s fingers tightened ever so slightly on his hand. Just a twitch. Hardly anything. An involuntary muscle spasm?
He looked up at her and saw her lips moving.
‘Oh, God,’ he gasped, rose slightly from the chair he was on and leaned over her. She was saying something. A whisper, hardly audible.
Henry’s heart began to ram in his chest as he leaned in, angling his ear close to her moving lips.
Then he heard.
‘What … what do you need to tell me about Maude Crichton?’