With No One As Witness

by Elizabeth George

  “And then I wouldn’t let them tell you by phone. We had to wait for a second panda car—the first officers needed to stay at the hospital…to speak to Deborah…”

  “She’s there?”

  “Still. Yes. Of course. So we had to wait. Tommy, I couldn’t let them phone you. I couldn’t do that to you, say that Helen…say that…”

  “No. I see.” And then he said fiercely after a moment, “Tell me the rest. I want to know it all.”

  “They were calling in a thoracic surgeon when I left. They haven’t said anything else.”

  “Thoracic?” Lynley said. “Thoracic?”

  St. James’s hand tightened on his arm once again. “It’s a chest wound,” he said.

  Lynley closed his eyes, and he kept them closed for the rest of the ride, which was mercifully brief.

  At the hospital, two panda cars stood at the top of the sloping entrance to Accident and Emergency, and two of the uniformed constables who belonged to them were just coming out as Lynley and St. James entered. He saw Deborah at once, seated on one of the blue steel chairs with a box of tissues on her knees and a middle-aged man in a crumpled mackintosh talking to her, notebook in hand. Belgravia CID, Lynley thought. He didn’t know the man, but he knew the routine.

  Two other uniforms stood nearby, affording the detective privacy. Apparently, they knew St. James by sight—as they would, since he’d already been at the hospital earlier—so they let both of them approach the interview that was going on.

  Deborah looked up. Her eyes were red. Her nose looked sore. A pile of sodden tissues lay on the floor next to her feet. She said, “Oh, Tommy…,” and he could see her try to pull herself together.

  He didn’t want to think. He couldn’t think. He looked at her and felt like wood.

  The Belgravia man stood. “Superintendent Lynley?”

  Lynley nodded.

  “She’s in the operating theatre, Tommy,” Deborah said.

  Lynley nodded again. All he could do was nod. He wanted to shake her, he wanted to rattle the teeth in her head. His brain shouted that it was not her fault, how could it be this poor woman’s fault, but he needed to blame, he wanted to blame, and there was no one else, not yet, not here, not now…

  He said, “Tell me.”

  Her eyes filled.

  The detective—somewhere Lynley heard him say his name was Fire…Terence Fire, but that couldn’t be right because what sort of name was Fire, after all?—said that the case was well in hand, he was not to worry, all stops were being pulled out because the entire station knew not only what had happened but who she was, who the victim—

  “Don’t call her that,” Lynley said.

  “We’ll be in close contact,” Terence Fire said. And then, “Sir…If I may…I am so terribly—”

  “Yes,” Lynley said.

  The detective left them. The constables remained.

  Lynley turned to Deborah as St. James sat next to her. “What happened?” he asked her.

  “She asked would I park the Bentley. She’d been driving, but it was cold and she’d got tired.”

  “You’d done too much. If you hadn’t done too much…those God damn bloody christening clothes…”

  A snaking tear spilled over the rim of Deborah’s eye. She brushed it away. She said, “We stopped and unloaded the parcels. She asked me to take care parking the car because…You know how Tommy loves his car, she said. If we put a scratch on it, he’ll have us both for dinner. Watch the left side of the garage, she said. So I took care. I’d never driven…You see, it’s so big and it took me more than one try to get it into the garage…But not five minutes, Tommy, not that even. And I assumed she’d go straight into the house or ring the bell for Denton—”

  “He’s gone to New York,” Lynley said, unnecessarily. “He isn’t there, Deborah.”

  “She didn’t tell me. I didn’t know. And I didn’t think…Tommy, it’s Belgravia, it’s safe, it’s—”

  “No where is God damn safe.” His voice sounded savage. He saw St. James stir. His old friend raised a hand: a warning, a request. He didn’t know nor did he care. There was only Helen. He said, “I’m in the middle of an investigation. Multiple murders. A single killer. Where in the name of heaven did you get the idea any place on earth is safe?”

  Deborah took the question like a blow. St. James said his name, but she stopped him with a movement of her head. She said, “I parked the car. I walked back along the mews.”

  “You didn’t hear—”

  “I didn’t hear a sound. I came round the corner back into Eaton Terrace and what I saw was the shopping bags. They were spread on the ground, and then I saw her. She was crumpled…I thought she’d fainted, Tommy. There was no one there, no one nearby, not a single soul. I thought she’d fainted.”

  “I told you to be sure no one—”

  “I know,” she said, “I know. I know. But what was I meant to make of that? I thought of flu, someone sneezing in her face, Tommy being a fuss pot husband because I didn’t understand, don’t you see that, Tommy? How would I know because this is Helen we’re talking about and this is Belgravia where it’s supposed to be…and a gun, why would I ever think of a gun?”

  She began to weep in earnest then, and St. James told her that she’d said enough. But Lynley knew she never could have said enough to explain how his wife, how the woman he loved…

  He said, “What then?”

  St. James said, “Tommy…”

  Deborah said, “No. Simon. Please.” And then to Lynley, “She was on the top step and her door key was in her hand. I tried to rouse her. I thought she’d fainted because there was no blood, Tommy. There was no blood. Not like what you would think if someone is…I’d never seen…I didn’t know…But then she moaned and I could tell something was terribly wrong. I phoned triple nine and then I cradled her to keep her warm and that’s when…On my hand, there was blood. I thought I’d cut myself at first and I looked for where and how but I saw it wasn’t me and I thought the baby, but her legs, Helen’s legs…I mean, there was no blood where one would think…And this was a different sort of blood anyway, it looked different because I know, you see, Tommy…”

  Even in his own despair, Lynley felt hers, and that was what finally got through to him. She would know what the blood of a miscarriage looked like. She’d suffered how many…? He didn’t know. He sat, not next to Deborah and her husband, but across, on the chair that Terence Fire had been using.

  He said, “You thought she’d lost the baby.”

  “At first. But then I finally saw the blood on her coat. High up, here.” She indicated a spot beneath her left breast. “I phoned triple nine again and I said, There’s blood, there’s blood. Hurry. But the police got there first.”

  “Twenty minutes,” Lynley said. “Twenty God damn minutes.”

  “I phoned three times,” Deborah told him. “Where are they, I asked. She’s bleeding. She’s bleeding. But I still didn’t know she’d been shot, you see. Tommy, if I’d known…If I’d told them that…Because I didn’t think, not in Belgravia…Tommy, who would shoot someone in Belgravia?”

  Lovely wife, Superintendent. The sodding profile in The Source. Complete with photographs of the smiling superintendent of police and his charming wife. Titled bloke, he was, not your garden variety sort of cop at all.

  Lynley rose blindly. He would find him. He would find him.

  St. James said, “Tommy, no. Let the Belgravia police…” And only then did Lynley realise he’d said it aloud.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “You must. You’re needed here. She’ll come out of theatre. They’ll want to speak to you. She’s going to need you.”

  Lynley headed in the direction of the door but this, apparently, was why the uniformed constables had been hanging about. They stopped him, saying, “It’s in hand, sir. It’s top priority. It’s well in hand,” and by that time St. James had reached his side as well.

  He said, “Come with me, Tommy. W
e won’t leave you,” and the kindness in his voice felt like a crushing weight on Lynley’s chest.

  He gasped for breath, for something to cling to. He said, “My God. I’ve got to phone her parents, Simon. How am I going to tell them what’s happened?”

  BARBARA FOUND that she couldn’t bring herself to leave even as she told herself she wasn’t needed and probably wasn’t wanted either. People milled about everywhere, each one of them in a personal hell of waiting.

  Helen Lynley’s parents, the earl and countess of whatever because Barbara couldn’t remember if she’d ever heard the title so many generations in their family, were huddled in misery and they looked frail, more than seventy years old and unprepared to face what they were facing now.

  Helen’s sister Penelope rushing in from Cambridge with her husband at her side, tried to comfort them after herself crying out, “How is she? Mum, my God, how is she? Where’s Cybil? Is Daphne on her way?”

  They all were, all four of Helen’s sisters, including Iris on her way from America.

  And Lynley’s mother was tearing up from Cornwall with her younger son, while his sister hurried down from Yorkshire.

  Family, Barbara thought. She was neither needed nor wanted here. But she could not bring herself to leave.

  Others had come and gone: Winston Nkata, John Stewart, other members of the team, uniformed constables and plainclothes officers whom Lynley had worked with through the years. Cops were checking in from stations in every borough in town. Everyone save Hillier had seemed to put in an appearance during the course of the night.

  Barbara herself had arrived after the worst sort of journey from North London. Her car had refused to start at first up on Wood Lane, and she’d flooded its engine in a panic trying to get the bloody thing running. She’d sworn at the car. She’d vowed to reduce the Mini to rubble. She’d strangled the steering wheel. She’d phoned for help. She’d finally got the engine to sputter into life, and she’d sat on the horn trying to clear traffic out of the way.

  She’d got to the hospital just after word had been given to Lynley about Helen’s condition. She’d seen the surgeon come to fetch him and she’d watched as he’d received the news. It’s killing him, she’d thought.

  She wanted to go to him, to say she’d bear the weight of it with him, as his friend, but she knew she didn’t have that right. Instead, she watched as Simon St. James went to him, and she waited until Simon had returned to his wife to share with her what he had learned. Lynley and Helen’s parents disappeared with the surgeon, God only knew where, and Barbara understood that she could not follow. So she crossed the room to speak to St. James. He nodded at her and she was furiously grateful that he did not exclude her or ask why she was there.

  She said, “How bad is it?”

  He took a moment. From his expression, she prepared herself to hear the worst.

  “She was shot beneath the left breast,” he said. His wife leaned into him, her face against his shoulder as she listened along with Barbara. “The bullet evidently went through the left ventricle, the right atrium, and the right artery.”

  “But there was no blood, there was almost no blood.” Deborah spoke into the jacket he was wearing, into his shoulder, shaking her head.

  “How can that happen?” Barbara asked St. James.

  “Her lung collapsed at once,” St. James told her, “so the blood began filling the cavity that was left in her chest.”

  Deborah began to cry. Not a wail. Not an ululation of grief. Just a shaking of her body that even Barbara could see she was doing her best to control.

  “They would have put a tube in her chest when they first saw the wound,” St. James told Barbara. “They would have got blood from it. A litre. Perhaps two. They would have known then that they had to go in at once.”

  “That’s what the surgery was.”

  “They sutured the left ventricle, did the same for the artery and the exit wound in the right ventricle.”

  “The bullet? Have we got the bullet? What happened to the bullet?”

  “It was under the right scapula, between the third and fourth rib. We have the bullet.”

  “So if she’s repaired,” Barbara said, “that’s good news, isn’t it? Isn’t it good news, Simon?”

  She saw him withdraw inside himself then, to a place she could not know or imagine. He said, “It took so long to get to her, Barbara.”

  “What do you mean? So long? Why?”

  He shook his head. She saw—inexplicably—that his eyes grew cloudy. She didn’t want to hear the rest, then, but they’d waded too far into these waters. Retreat was not an option.

  “Has she lost the baby?” Deborah was the one to ask the question.

  “Not yet.”

  “Thank God for that, then,” Barbara said. “So the news is good, right?” she repeated.

  St. James said to his wife, “Deborah, would you like to sit down?”

  “Stop it.” She raised her head. The poor woman, Barbara saw, looked like someone with a wasting disease. She felt, Barbara realised, like she’d pulled the trigger on Helen herself.

  “For a while,” St. James said, his voice so low that Barbara had to lean in to him to make out his words, “she had no oxygen.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Her brain was deprived of oxygen, Barbara.”

  “But now,” Barbara said, insistent still. “She’s all right, yes? What about now?”

  “She’s on a ventilator now. Fluids, of course. A heart monitor.”

  “Good. That’s very good, yes?” It was surely excellent, she thought, reason to celebrate, terrible moment but they’d all passed through it and everything was going to sort itself out. Right? Yes. Say the word yes.

  “There’s no cortical activity,” St. James said, “and that means—”

  Barbara walked away. She didn’t want to hear more. Hearing more meant knowing, knowing meant feeling, and that was the last bloody God damn thing…Eyes fixed on the lino, she paced rapidly out of the hospital into the cold night air and the wind, which struck her cheeks so surprisingly that she gasped and looked up and saw them gathered. The carrion feeders. The journalists. Not dozens of them, not as she’d seen them behind the barriers at the Shand Street tunnel and at the end of Wood Lane. But enough, and she wanted to hurl herself at them.

  “Constable? Constable Havers? A word?”

  Barbara thought it had to be someone from inside the hospital, coming out to fetch her with a piece of news, so she turned, but it was Mitchell Corsico and he was approaching with his notebook in his hand.

  She said, “You need to clear out of here. You especially. You’ve done enough.”

  His brow furrowed as if he couldn’t quite make out what she was saying to him. “You can’t think…” He paused, clearly regrouping. “Constable, you can’t think this has anything to do with The Source’s story on the superintendent.”

  Barbara said to him, “You know what I think. Get out of my way.”

  “But how is she? Is she going to be all right?”

  “Get out of my bloody way,” she snarled. “Or I won’t answer for the consequences.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  PREPARATIONS HAD TO BE MADE, AND HE SET ABOUT them with His usual care. He worked quietly. He caught Himself smiling more than once. He even hummed as He measured for the span of a grown man’s arms and when He sang, He did so quietly because it would be idiocy to take an unnecessary and stupid risk at this point. He chose tunes from who-only-knew-where, and when He finally burst into “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” He had to chuckle. For inside the van, it was indeed a fortress: a place where He would be safe from the world, but the world would never be safe from Him.

  The second set of leather restraints He fixed opposite the sliding panel door of the van. He used a drill and bolts to do the job, and He tested the result with the weight of His body, hanging from them as the observer would hang, struggling and twisting as the observer would do. He was sati
sfied with the result of His efforts, and He went on to catalogue His supplies.

  The cylinder for the stove was full. The tape was cut and hanging well within His reach. The batteries in the torch were fresh. The implements for a soul’s release were sharp and prepared for use.

  The van had petrol, a full supply. The body board was perfectly pristine. The clothesline ligatures were neatly coiled. The oil was in its proper place. This would, He thought, be His crowning achievement.

  Oh yes, too right. You think that, do you? Where’d you learn to be such a fool?

  Fu used the back of His tongue to change the pressure against His eardrums, eliminating the maggot’s voice for a moment, that insidious planting of the seeds of doubt. He could hear the whoosh of that pressure changing: Crinkle and crack against His eardrums and the maggot was gone.

  Only to return the instant He ceased the movement of His tongue. How long’re you planning to occupy space upon the planet? Was there ever on earth a more useless bit of gobshite than you? Stand there and listen when I’m talking to you. Take it like a man or get out of my sight.

  Fu hastened His work. Escape was the key.

  He left the van and made for safety. There was nowhere, really, where the maggot left Him in peace, but there were still distractions. Always had been and always would be. He sought them. Quickly now, quickly quickly. In the van, He used judgement, punishment, redemption, release. Elsewhere, He used more traditional tools.

  Do something useful with your time, little sod.

  He would, He would. Oh yes He would.

  He made for the television and punched it on, raising the volume until everything else might be driven away. On the screen, He found Himself looking at a building’s entrance, figures coming and going, a female reporter’s mouth moving, and words that He could not connect to meaning because the maggot would not leave His brain.

  Eating at the very essence of Him. You hear me, gobshite? Understand what I say?

  He raised the volume higher still. He caught snatches of words: yesterday afternoon…St. Thomas’ Hospital…condition critical…who is nearly five months pregnant…and then He saw him, the detective himself, witness, observer….