Angela became a perpetual motion engine of prevarication. “She and I, we don’t . . . she wouldn’t. I can’t, couldn’t . . . He husband wouldn’t. Like I said, we don’t . . . I mean, even assuming I could find her—which I haven’t the foggiest idea how to do, I couldn’t possibly . . .”
“She’s in Christchurch,” said Albert. “You told me that.” He handed her a piece of paper. “This is her address and phone number.”
Angela looked dumbly from Albert, to the paper in her hand, back to Albert.
“She’s expecting you.”
Angela’s lips moved a couple of times before the words came out. “How did you. . .?”
“Jeremy Ash found her,” Albert said, which, to him, meant it wasn’t surprising. Jeremy Ash could do anything. “Simon spoke to her—on the phone—and wrote down what you’re supposed to do. It’s on that paper.”
Angela opened the paper and read.
“After Phuong is safe,” said Albert, “James will call Sergeant Jeffreys. Then we can go home.”
“Home!? But . . .”
“Do you want to stay here?” Albert asked.
“Here? Me?” said Angela, blushing. “Well, I hadn’t thought about—I didn’t think we’d be going home so soon. I like it . . . I like it here, I guess. You know? All this business aside. But . . . well, I hadn’t thought about it.”
Albert had heard the term “babbling” but, until this demonstration, had had only a murky concept of the phenomenon. Angela was babbling—her mouth stalling for time while her brain tried to sort out what to say, which was redundant anyway; her thoughts were written on her face.
“You like him.”
“Him? Him who?”
Albert cocked his head and stared at her. “James.”
“James? James Simon? Well, I mean, yes, I like him. I like lots of people. But that’s beside the point.”
“Which is?”
Angela was totally flustered, not least because she’d been so well-read by, well, by Albert, from whom she had entertained no doubt that her secret was safe. Was she as transparent to Simon? Her blush took on a deeper hue. What was the point?
By the time the point had ceased to be the question, Angela was seated behind Jimmy and Phuong in the back of a Kirra Tours motor coach. While anyone wishing to lay hands on Phuong would be expected to be watching airports and seaports—probably suspecting she’d attempt to make her way home—it was highly unlikely a luxury motor coach, loaded with mostly Australian tourists, making its way leisurely south, would arouse their interest.
That had been Simon’s idea. The tour would have them arriving in Christchurch in six days.
Though Senior Sergeant Hawkes’ impression of Albert had undergone significant revision since his last visit to The Braemar, he was not happy that neither Albert nor Vicar Simon would tell him where the missing girl was.
“But, you clearly want the police to take what you’ve . . . what you’ve uncovered and run with it, don’t you? I mean, that’s why you arranged this meeting?”
“The Professor thinks she’s in danger,” said Simon. “And, since it’s not impossible—however improbable—that one or more policemen are involved in the Trade . . .”
Hawkes inhaled to protest, but Simon held up a hand. “However improbable,” he said. “The fewer people who know, the better. I agree. The kind of people who would engage in this business, will stop at nothing to get what they want, or to keep from being apprehended.”
Albert was thinking thankful thoughts about James Simon who, in the absence of Jeremy Ash, was proving a valuable proxy, even with legs.
“But we’ll need her, once we’ve got our hands on these . . . these . . . to call them pond scum would be an insult to pond scum,” Hawkes huffed. “We’ll need her testimony in court.”
“That’s your problem,” thought Albert, who, over the last forty-eight hours, had developed a distinct longing for nothing more than to be playing a concert in Dallas, with Huffy smiling loudly in the front row. Nobody dying, or being threatened with death, no eviscerated corpses.
Just music.
“My problem,” said Hawkes to Albert, Simon, and Sergeant Jeffreys, “is who can I trust? As you said Vicar, an operation as complex as this must have the cooperation of key people in the medical community and, though it galls me to say, I have to agree, in my own department.”
Jeffreys spoke up. “First we need to find out more about Patricia Hogan.”
“That’s being done,” said Simon.
“Being done? What do you mean, ‘being done’?” said Hawkes indignantly. “What’s being done, who’s doing it, and by what authority?”
Contrary to the senior sergeant’s expectations, the vicar didn’t wilt beneath the barrage of questions. He simply smiled and said, “A child shall lead them.”
“Child? What child? Whose child?” Hawkes emotional teapot was rapidly reaching a boil. Jeffreys intervened, drawing his senior aside and whispering. “Senior Sergeant,” he said calmly, “remember what you told me about,” he nodded at Albert. “He doesn’t think like us. That’s what makes him so . . . useful. Remember, he’s the one who uncovered all this body-harvesting business in the first place.”
“Death or Albert,” said Hawkes, “I wonder which comes first?” He sighed. “You’re right, Sergeant. What better to solve a puzzle than an enigma? I’ll let him have his head—to a point.
“That said, I don’t suppose you have any idea what they’re up to, him and the vicar? No inkling?”
Jeffreys shook his head. “Not the foggiest.”
Hawkes and Jeffreys returned from their conference in tandem. “You understand,” said Hawkes, speaking mostly at Simon, “I can’t give you carte blanche to do . . . whatever it is you’re planning to do. By which I mean, since I know nothing of it, it’s entirely unofficial, and if it turns tits-up, on your own head be it.
“By which I mean, good luck—and keep me posted.”
Chapter TwentyThree
The Reverend Michelle Yera was packing for an unexpected vacation. Now and then, she interrupted her packing to light on the edge of her bed, pick up the airplane ticket and review its particulars as if they might have changed since the last perusal. They hadn’t. By six o’clock that afternoon, she and her husband, Reggie, would be on their way to the airport for a flight to Fiji and two week’s holiday at a five-star hotel on the beach, all expenses paid. Stapled to the ticket was an envelope containing a thousand dollars, cash.
“What is it, Shelly?” said Reggie when he thundered through the door. The run from the car to the front door had left him breathless; proof, as far as his wife was concerned, how badly he needed this vacation. Doing nothing but play snooker, drink beer, and talk politics at his local had, since his retirement from the Postal Service, done nothing to improve his figure. “The way you sounded on the phone, I half expected to find the house burned down. What’s so important you had to drag me away from my game?” He flopped into his favorite chair.
“You’ll never guess what happened when I got to work this morning!” she said, and so unfolded the story of how she’s been called into the office at the hospital and informed by the administrator that, in recognition of her valuable service, an anonymous benefactor had given her the trip and the cash, stipulating only that the trip must be taken that afternoon.
At the conclusion of her recital, she thrust the tickets and the envelope containing the cash at him. He stared at them dumbly for a few seconds, then at his wife, then, slowly—as if these ephemera might dissolve at the touch of an actual human hand—took them, looked at them, counted the cash—a couple of times—and said, “They have a pub at this place?”
The administrator had been given the little package by Dr. Chan, with the explanation that he was acting at the request of a patient of his who, during recent residency at the hospital, had been powerfully affected by Reverend. The giver did not wish their name to be revealed.
“But, where am I to get a
replacement chaplain on such short notice?” the administrator had said, staring at the envelope containing the tickets and the cash and wondering what the good Reverend—who’d she’d always thought of as carrying out her duties rather perfunctorily—had done to warrant such profound, bankable gratitude.
“I was pondering that as I came over,” the doctor replied thoughtfully. “I think I may have just the man.”
Reverend James Simon, after a brief interview, obtained the badge that allowed him to wander the halls, rooms, corridors, and precincts of the hospital.
Admission to the medical community—like that of any isolated and self-contained population—was not something a mere card could provide, however. For that, he would have to pass the microscopic inspection that occurred around the water fountain, in the nurse’s station, and the restrooms. In these sacred areas it was quickly noted that he had already won the confidence of at least one staffer—even if only a volunteer—“That little trollop, Colleen Ruakare.”
“Must see her as his own little Mary Magdalene,” said the operating room technician with a chuckle.
“Who?” said the nurse.
“Nevermind,” said the technician who, at over forty, had been born and raised in a different world than the one from which the nurse—who was closer to twenty than thirty—drew her breath.
It was unanimously agreed, however, that the new vicar was a vast improvement, especially since, as the night nurse observed, “He’s like Robert Redford, only better-looking.”
An older member of the sisterhood said, “Cute as a button. Makes me lactate just to look at him.”
Simon enjoyed his rounds of the sick and dying, and not only because he found them more receptive to his message than his customary congregants—who, though just as sick and dying, were not , moment-by-moment, made aware of the fact—but because face-to-face ministry was his forte. He loved looking into their eyes, holding their hands, hugging them, making them laugh, listening to their stories—in which he took a genuine interest—and comforting them with the cherished beliefs in which he, himself, took such comfort.
“I found one!” Colleen rasped as she entered the room, stealthily closing the door behind her. Simon turned quickly and held a finger to his lips. Mrs. Pederson had finally fallen asleep, resting her head on the arm he had slipped behind her neck. He withdrew it gently.
“A ring?” he whispered.
Colleen nodded and said, under her breath, “Dr. Witheridge. He’s an anesthetist.”
“‘F’ and nut, or the snake and heart?”
“Snake and heart.”
“Well done, Colleen,” said Simon, patting her shoulder. “On about your business, now. Keep a sharp eye and let me know what else you find.”
“What’s this about rings?”
Simon started. He’d have sworn Mrs. Pederson was asleep. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Pederson . . .”
“Laura, Vicar. Please.”
“Laura. Yes, of course. I’m sorry if we woke you.”
The woman shrugged with her eyebrows. “I may not have been asleep, but I was more comfortable than I’ve been in ages,” she said. “Thank you.”
Simon smiled.
“Now, what’s this about rings?”
“Oh,” said Simon, for whom lying on the fly was not a cultivated art. “A game. Yes. A game the young lady and I play. She saw this unusual ring— a Caduceus wrapped around a bird and . . .”
“A heart-shaped diamond?”
“Yes,” said Simon, taken aback. “You’ve seen it?”
“Very distinctive,” said the young mother of two children who would soon be motherless. Cancer. “My doctor has one.”
“Dr. Witheridge?”
“No. He’s an anesthetist. Mine’s an oncologist. Dr. Simsing. He’s an angel.”
“And, he has one of those rings, with the snake wrapped around. . .”
“A diamond heart. Yes. Odd there being two of them.”
“Very odd,” said Simon. “That’s, well, that’s the game Colleen—the girl who was just here—and I are playing. She’s an observant young lady and happened to mention that she’d seen two similar rings, so—more to occupy her than anything; between us, I think she has a crush on me. . .”
“I might do the same, Vicar,” said Laura, “if I weren’t happily married and dying.”
Simon flushed. “Well, nice of you to say, however—I don’t like to say as much—but she has a way of getting under foot, if you know what I mean.”
“So you told her to see if she could find anyone else wearing the same ring?”
Simon tilted his head in a way that, unbeknownst to him, women found attractive. “I suggested that wearers of this ring might belong to a secret society, and she should find out who they were.”
“To what purpose?”
Simon shrugged. “Never thought that far,” he said. “Fortunately, neither has she!” He smiled.
Laura laughed, and coughed several times in sequence. “While she’s at it,” she said at last, “you should tell her to be on the lookout for another odd ring, one with a letter ‘F’ and a nut on it.”
Once again, Simon was taken up short. “A nut?”
“Goes on a bolt,” said the woman. “My husband’s a mechanic. I may be a woman, but I know what a nut looks like, and that’s what’s on that ring.”
“What kind of ring?”
“Not an expensive one, I shouldn’t think,” said Laura. “Silver. Nothing like the one you’re talking about, the Caduceus. That’s gold and diamond. Very dear, I should imagine.
“Anyway, I’ve seen it—the ‘F’ and nut one—twice.”
“On different people?”
Laura nodded. She had expended all her surplus energy and was sinking into her pillow, at which point she launched into another round of hacking. “Not doctors. Lower level staff.”
“Maybe the first person had given it to the second, for some reason?” Simon conjectured.
The woman shook her head and, not wishing to subject the vicar to the unpleasantness of her company at the moment, shooed him away with her free hand. With the other she clapped a tissue to her mouth to receive the sputum.
He placed his palm on her forehead, and ran it back softly through her hair which was damp with sweat. “We’ll talk more later, Laura. May I pray for you?”
Simon made his report that afternoon, and Albert was overcome by the need to get a piano under his fingers. Not waiting for dinner, he walked to Colonel Rivens’, alone, and made his request. Rivens assented and, “so as not to make a nuisance of myself” went to the garden. There he listened through the open French doors. Often he forgot to dig, or prune, or dead-head and his trowel would go limp in his hand, and he would simply stop and listen to the music; something he’d never done before.
Stopped and listened to the music.
Even the flowers seemed to strain toward it.
Though unaware of it at a conscious level, Albert was performing musical bruting on the multifaceted geode of thoughts, feelings, facts, figures, ideas, possibilities, improbabilities, conjecture, doubts, and personalities that had formed in his brain: each reflecting and refracting as it passed beneath the laser of his inquiry.
To each of these, his fingers attributed a musical value—melody, harmony, rhythm or silence—at the same time extracting it from the mass and assigning it a place in the score. In time, the score was done. Albert removed his fingers from the keys, and scanned it.
“Quite the tune!” said Colonel Rivens, entering through the French doors, slapping the dirt from the knees of his trousers after rather than before entering, a sequence with which his wife would have taken issue, were she alive. “Did you make that up?”
Albert looked at his fingers. As far as he was concerned, they had made it up. They and God. But he could read it now. That was the important thing. “Your wife,” he said, rather than the rejoinder Rivens anticipated, “Dr. Marcos was her doctor?”
“That’s right,”
said the Colonel. He laid his gloves on the table beside his favorite chair, in which he settled himself. “He was her GP. Simsing was her oncologist, of course.”
“Dr. Simsing?”
“Yes. You’ve heard of him?”
“Yes. Tell me what happened.”
“Happened? How do you mean? How she died?”
“Yes.”
“Well, let me see.” The colonel poured himself a tumbler of whiskey from the cut glass decanter that was seldom out of reach. With a motion, he offered to pour Albert a glass. Albert declined. Rivens cleared his throat. “Yes, well, came on of a sudden,” he said. “She’d had this . . . this chest thing.” He patted his chest. “Number of women on the Row had it at the time. Congestion, you know? Allergies. That’s what we thought. She was prone to them. Coughing and what-not, you know.”
“So you called Dr. Marcos?”
“That’s right. Her, our, regular GP, Harry Pinkham, retired out from under us. Good man, Harry. Tended us dog’s years.”
“And what did he say, Dr. Marcos?”
“Pretty non-committal fellow, I thought him. Not much of a bedside manner. Competent enough, I suppose. Seemed to agree with us, at first—allergies and that. Gave her some medicines. Antibiotics. But a week later, she was no better. Worse, in fact. Her mind seemed to be slipping. Forgetting things, you know? Her cough was a bit better, but . . . he changed her medications and said he’d give it another week. If that didn’t work, she’d might have to go into hospital. He decided to take a blood test, just to be sure.
“That’s when things started downhill.”
“They found something in her blood?”
Rivens’ head drooped and he stared into his whiskey. “Day or two later he was back with the news. Looked like cancer. Told me her best hope was Dr. Simsing. Didn’t say as much to her, of course. Didn’t want to kick out the braces. Still, anyway . . .”
“But he couldn’t help her?”
“Painted a pretty dismal picture. When he started pushing me to get her to sign her up for the donor list I knew how bad it was. She happened to overhear that conversation. Didn’t know that ’til later.”
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