“Not at all, sir,” answered Gibbons. “I’ve spent most of the day thanking God that most of my relatives aren’t like that, and wondering why Dawn has to be the one that lives closest to me.”
Carmichael grinned. “It’s often that way with relatives, isn’t it?” he said sympathetically. “Here, give me this Danny’s address and I’ll run round and see him this afternoon.”
Gibbons read the information off, and then added, “He doesn’t seem to have a job, or at least not one he was willing to tell Dawn about, so his home information is all I’ve got.”
“It’ll do,” replied Carmichael. “You’ve done brilliantly to get that much out of her. Now, tell me: why do you think you rang her back when you did?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Gibbons slowly. “It’s odd that I rang her first if I was about to ring you, and I’ve been trying to work out how that happened. But since I left a message on your office phone rather than your mobile, I probably scrolled through my incoming calls to find the number. And of course, the one at the top of the list would have been Dawn’s.”
“Yes, I see,” said Carmichael. “And you were only leaving me a message, not planning to speak to me, so you rang her while it was at the front of your mind.”
“Right,” said Gibbons. “But what that also means is, whatever I was doing in Walworth—I’d finished it. Perhaps I was only following the other bloke to see where he went, or who he met. But I would never have rung Dawn while I was still in the middle of something, not even if I had been waiting for a suspect to reappear and had reason to believe it would take some time. I might have left you a message in that case, but I would have waited to ring Dawn till later.”
“Of course,” breathed Carmichael. “I never thought of it that way, but I’d have done the same thing if it had been me. Well, Sergeant, you’ve put in a solid day’s work for someone on the sick list.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Gibbons, clearly pleased with this praise.
“I’ll go ferret out this Danny once I’m done here,” continued Carmichael, “and then I’ll stop by the hospital and let you know how it went.”
“I’d appreciate that very much,” said Gibbons.
Carmichael hesitated, but then said good-bye without telling Gibbons about the notebook facsimile. It was becoming evident that he would have no choice but to give it to Gibbons, but he was still unsure how to prepare the sergeant for what he would be looking at. It was, he decided, something that was probably best done in person.
After talking with Carmichael, Gibbons pulled out the copies of his own reports as well as the one from O’Leary, and began reading through them. He had done this countless times before, but then he had been concentrating on the effort to jog his memory. He had never, he realized now, looked at them with his investigator’s eye, merely as data in a case, and not as the outline of what he could not remember.
It took him some effort to get everything arranged exactly: the reports in an easily readable place, with one of the notebooks Bethancourt had brought him balanced open on the bed beside his thigh where he could write in it without having to move any part of his torso.
He was well into it when his father appeared.
“Well,” he said, smiling as he came into the room, “you don’t look so bad. Your mum and I were a bit worried earlier, when Nurse Pipp wouldn’t let us in.”
“I just needed some rest,” said Gibbons reassuringly. “I’d had my physio, and then that chat with Dawn, and I was done in.”
His father nodded, unzipping his jacket and easing his bulk into a chair.
“What’s all this, then?” he asked, nodding to the papers and notebook arranged over the bed.
“Some of the reports about my case,” answered Gibbons. “I’m trying to think how I would go about solving it if it were just any case, and nothing to do with me.”
His father looked a little surprised at that, and took a moment to think it over.
“Well, yes,” he said at last. “I can see where that might be a help. Are you getting anywhere with it?”
“I might be,” answered Gibbons, squinting down at his notes thoughtfully. “It’s really too early to say yet. But,” he added, “it’s better than trying to remember things I can’t.”
“I’d imagine almost anything would be better than that,” said his father sympathetically.
“So where’s Mum?” asked Gibbons.
“She’ll be along in a bit,” answered his father. “She took Dawn off shopping after we left here. I think she wanted to get out of her what she’d been telling you.”
Gibbons smiled faintly. “And I’ll bet she manages it,” he said.
“That’s not a bet I’ll be taking,” said his father, grinning. “Your mum’s a powerful force when she’s got her mind set on something.”
“So what have you been doing all afternoon?” asked Gibbons.
“Oh, I’ve been at the museum,” replied his father complacently. “I’ve been spending a lot of time there. It’s right handy here, and it’d take more time than I’ve got to see it all. Today I was looking at the Sutton Hoo exhibit—amazing stuff it is.”
“It is,” agreed Gibbons, who had, over the years, spent a fair amount of time at the British Museum himself.
But his father had moved on from the glories of Sutton Hoo. He was looking down at his hands in his lap and frowning a little.
“They still have no idea who shot you, do they?” he asked.
“No, but it’s early days yet,” answered Gibbons, trying to be reassuring. “It hasn’t even been a week—we’ll nail it down in the end. We’ll have more trouble with it if it turns out to be a random crime, but somehow I don’t think it is. I didn’t have much on me, but a thief would have taken whatever he could get, even my Oyster card.”
His father was silent a moment.
“You do know, Jack,” he said, looking up from his clasped hands, “if this career isn’t turning out how you thought it would, there’s always a place for you at home. The shop’ll have to go to your brother in the end, but we could take you on there for a bit if you needed it.”
This was so far from anything Gibbons had considered that he was at first merely confused, at a loss for what his father was talking about. Then the penny dropped.
“No, Dad,” he said, not even having to think about his answer. “I love this job—really I do. It’s a good career, and I like the work. Getting shot—well, that was an anomaly.”
His father met his eyes, as if reading the truth from them. Which, Gibbons reflected, his father was well accustomed to do from his childhood.
“If you’re sure, Jack,” he said earnestly. “And mind, you can think it over, decide later if you like. Hell, it’ll always be there for you, son—I hope you know that.”
“I do—and I appreciate it,” said Gibbons. “But this hasn’t put me off being a detective, Dad.”
“Well”—his father rubbed his head—“I don’t know. It’s not the kind of thing that’s ever happened to anyone in the family before. Your brothers seemed to think you might be traumatized.”
“I don’t think so,” said Gibbons, turning this idea over. “At least, I don’t feel traumatized. Maybe it would be worse if I could remember anything about it, but I don’t. It’s more disturbing having lost a whole day than having been shot. That’s almost like being in a traffic accident.”
“So long as you’re sure,” said his father. “Your mother, I don’t mind telling you, wants you out of London altogether.”
Gibbons laughed at this, though he was careful not to let the laughter penetrate to his belly; he was always wary now of provoking more pain.
“Talk her out of that, would you, Dad?” he said. “I don’t want to leave London. It’s my home now.”
But he was gratified nonetheless by this show of familial support. Later, after his parents had gone off for dinner and a film, he considered his father’s offer, but he still had not the slightest inclinati
on for it. He tried to imagine what it would be like, when he was better again, and once more out on the streets, tracking down murderers, but no matter how he thought of it, it did not seem frightening. It seemed right.
17
Gibbons’s Notebook
At dinner, Gibbons was given a bowl of cream soup, which represented a step up from the clear liquids he had been getting. He was not sure how he felt about it. He sat in the bed, propped up by lots of pillows, and stared down at the pale, bland surface of the soup. The faint scent that rose up from it did not smell terribly appetizing, and he could not make up his mind whether he felt nauseated or hungry. It had, he realized, been a very long time since he had been hungry.
Cautiously, he dipped the spoon into the soup and gingerly brought it to his lips. It did not taste like much of anything, and it felt a little odd going down, as if his esophagus had forgotten what real swallowing was like. He tried a slightly fuller spoonful and was pleased to discover that it provoked no further nauseous sensations. On the other hand, it was not very satisfying either. Beggars, he decided, could not be choosers.
He had not quite finished the soup when he heard the sound of Cerberus’s toenails in the hall and in a moment the dog appeared with his master.
“Oh, look,” said Bethancourt, his face lighting up, “they’ve given you some soup. That’s encouraging, don’t you think?”
“I do,” said Gibbons. “Although I could have wished it tasted a little better.”
“Really?” Bethancourt ventured nearer and then stopped abruptly, his face breaking into a broad smile. “Jack!” he said. “They’ve taken away the tube.”
Gibbons grinned back. “I know,” he said. “My throat is sore as hell, but I feel ever so much better without it.”
“Well, apparently I’ve missed a lot,” said Bethancourt, dragging one of the chairs round and dropping down into it. “Tell all.”
“You first,” said Gibbons, reaching out to pet Cerberus. “You’ve been up to something or you would have come round earlier.”
“I’ve been doing my best to help,” admitted Bethancourt. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have come to much in the end.”
Succinctly, he described his theories and his various conversations. When he finished, Gibbons was smiling at him.
“It’s nothing to smile about,” he said. “Not unless you think sweet old Nicky Burdall hiked over the fields with her great-grandchildren to commit a felony.”
“No, I don’t,” answered Gibbons, “but I think you thoroughly enjoyed finding out she didn’t. If it had been me, I should be feeling quite annoyed and frustrated, but it’s obvious you had a perfectly delightful time.”
“Ah, well, they were nice people,” said Bethancourt. “And old Grenshaw was a wonderfully preserved specimen from my grandfather’s time. But you seem to be doing very well yourself today—and I didn’t think I’d be saying that anytime soon.”
“I think I do feel better,” said Gibbons, sounding almost surprised. “It still hurts like bloody hell, but I think my head is a bit clearer. At any rate, I managed to do something.”
Bethancourt raised his brows in query, his hazel eyes behind his glasses looking hopeful.
“It wasn’t very much,” Gibbons told him. “I told you about Dawn and the phone calls.”
Bethancourt nodded. “You seemed to think it didn’t amount to much,” he said, “although if you ask me it was decidedly odd.”
“Not if you know Dawn,” said Gibbons, making a face. “In any case, Carmichael had her down at the Yard yesterday to get it sorted out.”
“And?”
Gibbons grinned. “She cried.”
Bethancourt hesitated, unsure how to respond to words and expression so at odds with each other. In the end, he fell back on polite formula.
“I’m sorry to hear it,” he said. “Did she have an explanation?”
“You don’t understand,” said Gibbons, still smiling. “Crying was all she did. Carmichael couldn’t get her to stop.”
“You’re joking,” said Bethancourt, incredulous.
“Well, to give him credit, I don’t know how hard he tried,” admitted Gibbons. “He knew he had another way in. But apparently she put on quite a show. So I had her here this afternoon to find out what she was hiding.”
Bethancourt, observing Gibbons’s good humor, had already concluded that whatever it was, it had nothing to do with his friend being shot.
“Did she cry?” he asked.
“Copiously,” confirmed Gibbons. “But I told her I wasn’t having any of it and threatened her with my mother.”
“I see,” said Bethancourt, smiling. “So the threat of Scotland Yard pales beside the threat of her aunt Margery.”
“Pretty much,” agreed Gibbons. “It was all terribly silly, really. She’d snuck out to meet her ex-husband and lend him money and she’s petrified lest that come out and somebody tries to talk some sense into her. She doesn’t actually want to lend him money, so she rang to see if she could hoodwink me into going with her, since she reckoned he wouldn’t ask for money in front of a third party.”
Bethancourt was frowning. “But how would that help?” he asked. “It’s just putting off the evil day.”
“Exactly,” said Gibbons. “Hence the tears.”
“Ah. When in doubt, cry?”
“That seems to be her philosophy,” agreed Gibbons.
“Well,” sighed Bethancourt, “I suppose it’s one point cleared up.”
“Yes—is that someone else coming?”
Bethancourt twisted round to look and saw Carmichael appear in the doorway, peering in cautiously to see if he was interrupting anything.
“Come in, sir,” called Gibbons. “It’s good to see you.”
Carmichael came into the room slowly, greeting both young men and pausing a moment to give Cerberus’s ears a rub before settling himself in the second armchair, holding his briefcase in his lap. But his shrewd blue eyes were on Gibbons, assessing his condition.
“You look better, lad,” he said to Gibbons.
“It’s the tube being out,” said Gibbons. “I can’t tell you what a relief it is.”
“And he’s had soup for dinner,” put in Bethancourt, sounding like a proud parent.
“Good, good,” said Carmichael. “That’s a step forward, eh?”
His tone was pleased, but Gibbons had worked with him for years and could tell he was distracted.
“What is it?” he asked simply. “Is there bad news?”
“No, no,” Carmichael hastened to reassure him. “No, not bad news. In fact, Hodges over at forensics has worked his usual miracle.”
Gibbons’s eyes lit up. “My notebook?” he asked eagerly. “Did you bring me a copy?”
“That’s right,” said Carmichael, still making no move to open the briefcase on his lap.
“I can excuse myself, sir,” said Bethancourt, already half out of his chair. “I don’t mind in the least.”
“Because Gibbons here will just tell you everything afterward,” retorted Carmichael. “No, Bethancourt, keep your seat. It’s not you I’m hesitating about.”
Bethancourt dropped back into the chair obediently, shooting a puzzled glance at Gibbons.
Gibbons did not notice. He was eyeing Carmichael, trying to work out what the problem was.
“Sir,” he said, “I’m full of morphine and I have trouble staying awake for more than an hour altogether. Could you just tell me what’s wrong?”
Carmichael sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be mysterious. I just don’t know what to say.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “Here’s the situation,” he said. “I’ve gone through the part of the notebook that deals with the Haverford burglary, and I’ll need your help to read it and decipher any clues that might be there.”
Gibbons was impatient. “Yes, of course,” he said. “I won’t overtire myself, if that’s what you’re on about. I promise.”
Carmi
chael looked faintly guilty. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he muttered. He glanced at Bethancourt.
“I wouldn’t worry,” advised Bethancourt. “He can barely keep awake as it is.”
Gibbons glared at him and Bethancourt’s heart leaped. He had not been properly glared at in days.
“The problem,” continued Carmichael, “is that some of the facsimiles are, well, a little disturbing to look at.”
Bethancourt looked perplexed while Gibbons merely stared at his superior incredulously.
“I’ve already seen my notebook,” he said. “I’ve seen it lots of times—I wrote whatever’s in it, for God’s sake.”
“It doesn’t look the way you remember,” said Carmichael gently.
Gibbons raised a dubious brow, but that was enough to make the light dawn for Bethancourt.
“Oh,” he said. “I see.”
“You do?” demanded Gibbons.
“Yes. The notebook’s got your blood all over it now.”
Carmichael winced at the baldness of this statement, but Gibbons’s eyes merely widened in comprehension, and he leaned back against his pillows for a moment. Then, his face blank, he turned to Carmichael.
“Give it to me,” he said.
And Carmichael obeyed silently, fumbling open the briefcase and removing a large envelope, which he handed to Gibbons.
“That’s a complete copy,” he said. “I mean, it’s got all the earlier pages, too.”
Gibbons merely nodded; he was already busy pulling the pages out of the envelope and sorting through them. He put aside the top half dozen or so sheets that did not relate to the Haverford case and bent his head over the first of the Haverford pages.
Even from where he sat, Bethancourt could see the deep coloring of the photographs, though a good deal of it looked more like chemical stain than blood. But Gibbons did not seem disturbed by it, and to Bethancourt the large, glossy sheets bore such little resemblance to the notebook he had so often seen Gibbons scribbling in that the impact of the images was negligible.
He leaned forward to get a better view of the page, though he knew he wouldn’t be able to read any of it; he had encountered Gibbons’s version of shorthand before.
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