Corrigan sat in the visitor’s chair beside Hanlon’s bed, looking at her with affectionate concern. He was formally dressed in black tie, but with his size and battered face he looked more like a doorman than a senior policeman.
Her dark, curly hair contrasted with the white of the pillows, and the bandage that ran around her head looked almost chic. She was wearing a hospital gown and seemed frail and childlike in the bed.
Fuller was making a good recovery in a separate hospital. Parts of him were frostbitten, there was a certain amount of internal bleeding and his skull was fractured, but it seemed he would survive intact.
Hanlon’s mobile was charging next to the bed, when Corrigan’s phone rang.
‘Excuse me,’ he said and left the room, closing the door behind him.
Enver had spoken to him briefly about a threat to Hanlon from some Russians. The Russian mafia, he’d said. Corrigan had groaned to himself. Not content with home-grown may- hem, Hanlon was casting her net further afield. To Enver’s huge relief, Corrigan had told him to fill him in later. The assistant commissioner had watched the expression on Enver’s face and rightly guessed that the DI would be busy trying to airbrush whatever facts made Hanlon look bad, out of the report.
In the interim, for security reasons, Corrigan had Hanlon transferred from University College Hospital, where she’d been initially taken, to the one at Seven Sisters where Whiteside was being looked after. In fact, he was just down the corridor. Hanlon was high on a cocktail of medication and felt warm, comfortable, safe and grateful to be alive. I could be face down in that drain, she thought drowsily, sleeping with the microbes,
not even the fishes.
She propped herself dozily up on one elbow and saw that Corrigan’s long black overcoat with a velvet collar, the one that made him look like a successful bookmaker, was draped over the back of his chair and his briefcase, a kind of man-bag that rather surprised her, was there too. He had been wearing a dinner jacket; only now did it occur to her that he must have come straight from the Mansion House.
She thought, I wonder. She took her phone from the bedside table next to her and scrolled through the menu, until she came to the number of the unrecognized mobile that had been giving her the information on Whiteside’s family. She pressed dial.
A phone rang from the overcoat pocket. One ring was enough. She pressed end call and put her phone back.
Corrigan knocked and re-entered the room.
‘I’m off now, Hanlon. I’m sure DI Demirel will keep me up to speed and you can come and see me when you’re up and about.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ she said sleepily. ‘I’m sorry if I messed up your
evening.’
Corrigan smiled. ‘It was very dull, Hanlon. You’d have hated it.’
She smiled woozily at him. ‘I’ll have my report ready as soon as I can.’
‘You do that, Hanlon, and concentrate on leading as dull a life as possible, please,’ said the assistant commissioner.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘No more excitement, Hanlon. I’m on pills for that kind of thing, understand.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Corrigan turned to go. ‘Sir?’ said Hanlon. Corrigan stopped and looked at her.
‘Thank you,’ she said simply, and closed her eyes. Corrigan nodded curtly and left the room. A wave of con-
flicting emotion washed over him. It was the first time Hanlon had ever thanked him for anything. He felt very moved. He closed the door quietly behind him. Hanlon waited five minutes. She had one more thing she needed to do, before she could sleep. She slipped the heart-rate monitor and blood-pressure counter off the fingers they were attached to. She had canulae in the backs of her hands but they weren’t yet attached to any lines.
She swung her feet down on to the cool, beige lino of the floor. She picked up the book she’d asked DCI Murray to bring in. It belonged to one of his daughters and the request had puzzled him greatly, but he’d done as she asked.
Hanlon padded in her bare feet, two doors down to Whiteside’s room, and let herself in. The nurses’ station was the other side of a partition with a window and allowed enough light to read by.
Whiteside lay asleep in his coma and he stirred as she watched. She could see a muscle move in his powerful forearm. She whispered, ‘It’s not called Sleeping Beauty in the original, Mark. It’s called Briar Rose. I’ll read you the opening sentence. Just like I promised you. Everything’s going to be all right, I swear.’
She opened Grimms’ Fairy Tales and started reading. ‘A long time ago there lived a King and Queen . . .’
A little while later she leaned forward and kissed his fore- head. ‘One day, Mark, one day.’