Trick of the Mind

by Cassandra Chan

  “So what brings you out so early?” he asked at last, opening his eyes again.

  “Your guv’nor,” answered Bethancourt, who had settled himself in a second chair. “He rang me at dawn, apparently thinking I would be up and ready for anything by that time.”

  Gibbons smiled, though his mother—to whom the idea of sleeping past seven was entirely alien—looked a little puzzled. It suddenly occurred to him to wonder what his parents were making of Bethancourt. They had met before, of course, but they had never spent much time alone together before this.

  “What did the chief inspector want then?” he asked.

  Bethancourt looked rather pleased. “He wanted me to read a report of a conversation you had with Chris O’Leary on the night you were shot. He has an idea that I might be better at reconstructing your thought process than he is himself.”

  “Does he now?” Gibbons’s eyebrows shot up. “Is there some reason he doesn’t think I would be equally good at it? It’s my bloody thought process after all.”

  “I don’t know,” answered Bethancourt cheerfully. “I wondered the same thing.”

  “He’s probably trying to spare you any stress,” put in his mother practically. “He’s really very concerned about you, you know.”

  Her expression, if not her tone, showed clearly that Carmichael was not alone in this. Gibbons narrowed his eyes at her.

  “There’s nothing you’re not telling me, is there?” he demanded.

  She just sighed and shook her head, so he transferred the glare to Bethancourt.

  “Don’t look at me,” said his friend. “I told you what I found out—you have peritonitis and will be feeling poorly until the antibiotics manage to knock it out of you.”

  “I was feeling plenty poorly before,” muttered Gibbons.

  “This is a different sort of poorly,” explained Bethancourt.

  “You are very ill indeed,” interrupted his mother. “They still expect you to make a full recovery, but it will take some time.”

  Gibbons didn’t want it to take time, he wanted to feel better at once. Most of all, he wanted the pain to go away. It startled him to realize that he could no longer remember a painless existence. He knew quite well the pain had not always been there, and could remember going about his business without such an encumbrance, but the actual sensation of being without pain no longer seemed to be stored in his brain.

  The door opened and Nurse Pipp appeared, smiling brightly. “Good morning, everyone,” she said.

  Bethancourt and his mother returned murmured salutations while the nurse moved briskly into the room, her eyes immediately seeking out the monitors.

  “Well, you’re not doing too badly, all things considered,” she said, smiling down at Gibbons and gently taking hold of his wrist to check the pulse. “How do you feel?”

  Gibbons had given up trying to pretend he was all right. “Pretty rotten,” he answered. “I feel awfully weak.”

  “That’s only to be expected,” she answered, folding back the covers and bending to listen to his abdomen with a stethoscope. “That infection will have you feeling as weak as a baby for a bit yet.” She frowned, concentrating and shifting the stethoscope a bit. “I think I’m beginning to hear some bowel sounds,” she said with satisfaction, straightening. “That’s very good, very good indeed.”

  Gibbons felt a warm glow, as if he had accomplished something, though in fact he had no control over the functioning of his bowels. He grinned up at Nurse Pipp like a schoolboy at a teacher who has given him a gold star.

  She continued checking him over while his mother listened anxiously and Bethancourt excused himself lest his presence prove an embarrassment. Gibbons submitted to her ministrations more or less gracefully, largely because his mother was present.

  “Oh,” said Nurse Pipp as she was tucking the blanket in around him, “I almost forgot—there’s something for you out at the nurses’ station. I meant to bring it in with me.”

  “What is it?” asked Gibbons.

  “Well, I don’t know, do I?” replied Nurse Pipp. “That nice chief inspector of yours came by and handed it to the night nurse last night while you were asleep.”

  “Carmichael?” said Gibbons, surprised. “He was here?”

  “So Julie said.” Nurse Pipp stepped back and cast an expert eye over him. “I’m going to have to get you up later, you know,” she warned.

  Gibbons could not suppress a grimace. “I can’t see,” he said, “what difference it makes if I’m sitting up in bed or sitting in a chair.”

  “It makes a world of difference to your circulation,” she told him. “Don’t forget, you’ve had a serious operation.”

  “I’m hardly likely to forget,” snapped Gibbons miserably. “It hurts like bloody hell.”

  “Jack,” chided his mother. “You shouldn’t use such language to Nurse Pipp. She’s only got your best interests in mind.”

  Gibbons gritted his teeth. “Sorry,” he managed.

  “It’s all right,” said Nurse Pipp, smiling to show that it really was. “I’ve heard worse in my time—and you can hardly expect people to be on their best behavior when they’re in hospital. Now, you ring if you want anything, and I’ll send an orderly in with that envelope.”

  Gibbons, who knew from recent experience that the orderly might show up in the next five minutes or the next five hours, cast a desperate glance at his mother. But she was smiling up at Nurse Pipp and did not see him.

  Happily Bethancourt must have been waiting just outside, because he poked his head back in almost as soon as Nurse Pipp was gone, smiling tentatively and saying, “All settled again?”

  “Yes, yes,” answered Gibbons impatiently. “Carmichael left an envelope for me last night—can you run after her and find it?”

  “Righto,” said Bethancourt, and disappeared again.

  Gibbons leaned back against his pillows, enervated by this little effort. His mother frowned at him.

  “You should rest,” she said gently. “I don’t see why you can’t leave other people to do their jobs. You’re just like your father.”

  Gibbons ignored this. “Where is Dad?” he asked.

  “He didn’t have a good night, so I let him sleep in,” his mother replied.

  A smile touched Gibbons’s lips because that was so like his mother, always taking care of everyone, making sure they all were fed and rested and set up as best she could see to it. Sadly, he reflected, none of that seemed to be doing him much good in the present case. His father, he was sure, was suffering from being the only one available for his mother to take care of.

  He sighed, turned his head more comfortably on the pillow, and dropped into a doze.

  He woke again, as he nearly always did now, because of the pain. Once on the threshold of consciousness, the combination of the sharp ache in his belly and a general malaise prevented him from drifting back off and so, like a hippopotamus heaving itself out of the muddy shallows, his mind struggled back to reality and his hospital room.

  His mother had resumed her perusal of her magazine, although he could tell she was not really taking any of it in, and Bethancourt had returned and was comfortably ensconced in the second chair, long legs negligently crossed while he paged through some papers, a thoughtful expression on his face. Cerberus alone seemed to realize Gibbons was awake again, lifting his head to look at the patient in an inquiring manner.

  The movement caught Bethancourt’s attention and he, too, looked up, smiling when he saw Gibbons’s eyes were open.

  “Back among us, are you?” he said.

  His mother also smiled. “Did you have a nice sleep, dear?” she asked.

  Gibbons merely grunted in reply, but Bethancourt, with customary aplomb, smoothed over the moment by saying, “I winkled your envelope out of Nurse Pipp—here it is.”

  He rose to hand Gibbons a manila envelope, sealed and stamped with the Scotland Yard crest. Gibbons eyed it hungrily.

  “Open it for me, will you?”
he asked, knowing his fingers would fumble it.

  Bethancourt efficiently ripped the envelope open and handed it to his friend, relaxing back into his chair while he watched Gibbons pull out the papers within and then blink rapidly to focus on them.

  “It seems to be O’Leary’s report,” he said in a moment.

  “Ah,” said Bethancourt. “Then Carmichael was only hedging his bets when he gave a copy to me. You have a go at it now, and then we can brainstorm.”

  Gibbons was not sure his brain was currently capable of brainstorming, but nothing could have stopped him from reading the report. His mother, he noted, had her lips firmly pressed together and a doubtful look in her eye, an expression he translated as meaning that she was unsure as to whether this exercise would be good or bad for her newly wounded son. Before she could make up her mind, he began to read, thereby settling the question, or so he hoped.

  His hopes were justified when he heard her sigh and say, “I’ll leave you two to work it out, then.”

  “There’s no need for you to go,” said Bethancourt quickly. “If any of this was classified police business, Carmichael would never have let me see it. You might have some thoughts of your own.”

  She laughed heartily at this idea, and shook her head. “You’re a kind lad, but I’d never keep it all straight. I’ll go find myself a cuppa and have a chat with the nurses.”

  “Thanks, Mum,” said Gibbons, smiling at her to show he appreciated her tact.

  “Don’t you tire yourself out,” she replied. “You see to it he doesn’t, Phillip.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Bethancourt meekly.

  Grinning faintly, Gibbons returned his attention to the report. His vision seemed oddly fuzzy, and he had to blink rapidly several times to make the print come into focus.

  It was very strange indeed to be reading about his own actions—and to recognize himself in some of the dialogue quoted—and yet to have no recollection at all of the events described. He read doggedly, rather admiring the amount of detail O’Leary managed to cram in, although privately he thought his own writing style was superior. He tried to drink in all the detail, but found himself reading many parts twice in an effort to keep it all in his head, something he would never have had to do in the normal way of things.

  All in all, it was quite some time before he reached the part where O’Leary mentioned the Pennycook murder.

  “Pennycook?” he said, feeling confused. “In Walworth? Is that why I was there?”

  He looked up to find Bethancourt stifling an enormous yawn.

  “What?” said Bethancourt, reaching up to resettle his glasses on his nose and push his hair out of his eyes. “Oh, right, the murder. Well, no one knows why you went haring off to Walworth. Do you think you would have, if you had a good idea about the case after O’Leary left?”

  Gibbons frowned and looked doubtful. “It doesn’t seem very likely, does it?” he asked. “I mean, why wouldn’t I simply have rung O’Leary? Why should I take myself all the way down to Walworth when it’s not even my case? And,” he added, more practically, “it wouldn’t have taken me till nine to get from St. James to Walworth in any case.”

  “No,” agreed Bethancourt. “But we don’t know what time you did get there. You might have been investigating for hours.”

  Gibbons was unconvinced. “No.” He shook his head. “If I’d had an idea about O’Leary’s case, I might just have checked it out a bit before telling him, but I would never have spent hours investigating it without him.”

  “True,” said Bethancourt, stroking his chin and looking thoughtful. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. So you must have been fairly recently arrived when you were shot.”

  “Only if I was there looking into the Pennycook thing,” said Gibbons. “If I was there for some other reason, well, there’s no telling really.”

  “Might you have gone to look at a pawnshop?” suggested Bethancourt.

  “What?” demanded Gibbons, looking totally lost. “Why on earth should I have done that?”

  “Well, you were investigating a jewel robbery,” explained Bethancourt. “Stolen jewelry has to be fenced, doesn’t it?”

  “It doesn’t have to be fenced in Walworth,” retorted Gibbons.

  “But I was thinking that O’Leary’s talk of pawnshops and jewelry might have made a connection in your head.”

  Gibbons closed his eyes. “If it did,” he said in a moment, eyes still shut, “it’s not there now. And I still don’t see why I would have gone to Walworth, particularly not after all the shops were shut.”

  “Oh,” said Bethancourt, crestfallen. “Yes. They would have been shut by then, wouldn’t they?”

  “Good Lord,” muttered Gibbons wearily. “Things have come to a fine pass when your thinking isn’t any clearer than someone whose head is stuffed with morphine.” In fact, he rather resented Bethancourt’s muddied thinking. It seemed to him that if anyone was justified in having impaired reasoning, it was himself, not his friend.

  Bethancourt grinned sheepishly.

  “I had this whole Pennycook connection thrown at me too early this morning,” he complained. “There I was, all absorbed in elite jewel thefts, and then Carmichael wakes me up at an ungodly hour and tosses this grotty little murder at me. What do you expect?”

  Gibbons started to laugh, which shifted the tube in his throat and made him cough instead. Which in turn made him cringe with the pain and curl onto his side, shivering.

  “God, I’m sorry, Jack,” said Bethancourt, truly penitent. “I never thought—I’m sorry. Do you want me to do anything? Should I ring—”

  Gibbons waved a hand at him to quiet him, and Bethancourt obediently fell silent. But Gibbons, even with his eyes closed, could feel his friend hovering, tensed and ready to leap into whatever action might be called for.

  Slowly the worst of the pain receded and he was able to catch his breath and ease himself back up on the pillows. Bethancourt was sitting bolt upright in his chair and Cerberus was on his feet, watching him as if deciding whether or not he needed rescuing. Gibbons managed a wan smile to reassure them, but in truth he was done in for the moment.

  “I think we’d better finish this later,” he said hoarsely.

  “Right,” said Bethancourt, popping to his feet. “I really am dreadfully sorry, Jack.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry,” said Gibbons, a little irritated by this third apology. “Just come back later, all right?”

  “Certainly,” said Bethancourt, gathering up his coat. “Count on it. Cerberus, come.”

  Gibbons, left alone, swallowed carefully, shifted his position slightly, and then lay very still until he fell into a fitful doze.

  10

  Dead Ends

  Two days’ worth of work had produced a wealth of negatives, thought Carmichael sourly as he gazed down in frustration at the list he was endeavoring to make of Gibbons’s movements on Tuesday evening.

  He was compiling the schedule from a wealth of brief reports that had been filed, it seemed to him, by half the London constabulary, and which outlined some of the many things Gibbons had not done on Tuesday night. He had not returned to the Yard, or been seen at his flat in Hammersmith or at any of the nearby establishments that he was known to patronize there. Here his landlady, who lived upstairs, had been very helpful, pointing out the various pubs, restaurants, and shops Gibbons often went to.

  Gibbons had not entered the underground station at St. James, and interviews with various bus drivers were still ongoing. He had not eaten at any of the usual haunts of young detectives in the area.

  But in all the piles of paper before Carmichael, there was not a hint as to where Gibbons had gone or what he had done when he got there.

  “Why the devil,” muttered Carmichael to himself, “couldn’t it have been a balmy summer night with half the population out on the street? That would have been some help.”

  But, of course, it hadn’t been. It had been a nasty, blustery, cold November
night, the kind of night on which everyone hurried home as quickly as possible, their attentions firmly fixed on their own warm firesides.

  The phone rang and Carmichael picked it up with a growl. Ian Hodges, however, had never been known to be impressed by anybody’s temper but his own.

  “The mobile’s done,” he announced without preamble. “I’m faxing the list of numbers over to you now.”

  “Gibbons’s mobile?” said Carmichael, rather surprised.

  Hodges snorted. “Of course Gibbons’s,” he answered scornfully. “Would I be ringing about anyone else? And don’t bother me about the notebook,” he added in a warning tone. “It’s in awful shape and we’re working as fast as we dare. If you want it unreadable, you can have it now.”

  “It won’t do me any good if I can’t read what’s in it,” retorted Carmichael. A sudden awful thought occurred to him. “You are going to be able to salvage it, aren’t you, Hodges?”

  “Remains to be seen,” replied Hodges shortly. “There. Jennings says your phone list has gone.”

  And he rang off.

  Carmichael picked up the fax himself, but then sent Constable Lemmy to make copies of it and to do the tedious work of matching the unidentified numbers with their owners. In his present mood, he hadn’t really much hope the numbers on Gibbons’s mobile would lead anywhere, but at least it was something new to work on.

  The rain had stopped when Bethancourt emerged from University College Hospital, so he turned without much thought in the direction of Regent’s Park. He liked to walk when his mind was occupied; strolling along with his dog at his side and perhaps smoking a cigarette was his preferred method of letting his thoughts wander and seeing what came of it. And Cerberus was more than happy to let his master indulge himself in this.

  So they turned into the gray world of the park in winter, walking briskly to keep warm and trying to avoid the puddles—as well as the raindrops, which periodically blew off the tree branches—while Bethancourt tried to avoid thoughts of Gibbons wrung out with pain in his hospital bed. There was no doubt the incident had unnerved him.