The Glass Tower

by Gregg Dunnett

  Still she didn't pass out.

  Eleven

  In the hospital, Julia thought she was dying, and she hurt so much she thought this probably for the best. Later, she would remember a procession of doctors examining her, asking her what she could feel and where she hurt, bizarre questions about what year it was, who was President of the United States – and then backing off to have long discussions about her answers. She was x-rayed, wheeled into a huge round CAT scan machine, and then she was told they were going to operate.

  Only then, some two hours after the collision, was she finally allowed to drift off to sleep and escape from the chaos that had descended upon her life.

  When she awoke, it was a little like she had supposed it would be in the moments before the crash. She was in a private room, lying on her back in a bed with blue blankets, and next to her an ECG machine was beeping softly along with her heartbeat. Soothingly. Next to that stood a number of cards, and two vases of flowers. Next to them, a very crumpled, sleeping Geoffrey half-sat and half-lay across a chair.

  Julia surveyed the room. Her eyes were drawn to her bed, stretched out in front of her. There was the outline of her legs beneath the blanket. Preparing herself for a jolt of pain she tried to move them, but nothing happened. She tried again, and again they wouldn't move. It felt like they were moving, but her eyes told her otherwise. She felt a physical spasm of panic. The memory of those two words.

  Spinal injury.

  Could she even feel them? She didn't know. What did that mean? She tried to calm herself. Was she paralysed? She thought she felt an itch in her right leg, but to her horror the sensation appeared to come from some way to the right of where the leg actually was.

  "Effry," she said, desperately. She didn't understand why her voice didn't work. Had she lost the power of speech, as well as her movement? Would she spend the rest of her life in one of those wheelchairs that talks for you? The only thing that seemed to work properly was her heart, which was rapidly accelerating. The ECG’s soothing beeps weren’t quite so soothing any more.

  "Efffrrrry!" she repeated, trying her hardest to increase the volume this time. But he didn't wake up. Julia began to cry, but now she noticed that her hand was resting close to a remote control with a red button on it. She looked at it for a long while, wondering how to make her fingers move. Aghast in horror that she needed to wonder.

  It was just a few inches from her hand. She stared at it and slowly the hand began to move towards it. Almost as if it was a separate living creature, not physically connected to her at all. A five-legged crab crawling over the bed, dragging her arm behind it. Finally it arrived, her forefinger pressed the button, and a loud buzzer sounded somewhere out in the hallway. Geoffrey still didn't wake up.

  About a minute later a nurse came swiftly into the room.

  "Hello!" she said to Julia, in an impossibly bright voice. "Welcome back!"

  Julia stared in confusion. Where had she been? Maybe they hadn't expected her to wake at all?

  "You've been asleep for nearly 48 hours," the nurse told her. "That's very good." She smiled, as if to reassure Julia she hadn't been overstaying her welcome. She bustled around, doing what nurses do.

  "Your poor friend here has insisted on sitting with you the whole time. I told him to go home." She looked across at Geoffrey kindly. "He looks exhausted, poor dear." For the nurse, Geoffrey's condition seemed to warrant more sympathy than Julia's. Maybe that was a good sign?

  "Am I...?" Julia began, then gave up at the impossibility of pronouncing 'disabled' or even giving voice to the thought.

  The nurse stopped what she was doing. "I'll call the doctor now and he can explain it to you. Don't go anywhere."

  Was that a joke? Julia wondered. The sort of joke you told people who couldn't move?

  But at that point Geoffrey woke up, began to stretch and then noticed that Julia was awake. He jumped up at once.

  "How are you feeling?" he asked. The concern and care was heavy in his voice.

  "I can't feel anything," she said, crying again.

  Before Geoffrey could reply a doctor came sweeping into the room. His white coat was open and he wore a chequered golfing jumper underneath.

  "That's just the drugs, you'll feel plenty when they wear off. You don't want to be in a hurry there, believe me." He raised his eyebrows and snatched up the notes from where they hung on the end of Julia's bed.

  "Best thing you can do is sleep it off. So well done there. Now, has your friend here filled you in on what you've done?"

  Julia glanced at Geoffrey and shook her head.

  "No."

  "You've suffered a rotation fracture of the upper part of the spine. That's a transverse process fracture and a fracture-dislocation." The doctor sounded impressed and Julia blinked.

  "Would you like me to explain that?" The doctor's eyebrows flicked up with the question, but he didn't wait for an answer.

  "Each vertebra has two transverse processes. These are extensions on either side of the bone that connect to ligaments and muscle. Like little wings, really. What's happened is you've chipped them. Several of them. It's quite rare." He nodded, as if in agreement with himself.

  She blinked again and realised Geoffrey was squeezing her hand. Still, she barely felt it.

  "Now, it's usually the result of an abnormal bending to one side or violent twisting, sometimes from wrestling, but more often from a car accident. I understand you managed to do a full 180-degree skid, backwards? That would certainly do it." The doctor gave a cheery smile.

  "So, what does that..." Julia wasn't even sure if she got the words out. If she did, the doctor ignored her.

  "Now, you might be feeling a little bit numb. That's nothing to worry about and just the result of the drugs we're using to stabilise you. We'll try taking you off those now, unless your screams wake up all the other patients." He stopped and tipped his head to one side.

  "Don't worry, I'm winding you up. There's plenty of short and long-term pain relief we can try you on. But I am afraid the recovery from this injury can be rather a painful experience. That's the bad news."

  There was a silence while Julia and Geoffrey took in what the doctor had said.

  "Is there any good news?" Geoffrey asked in the end.

  "Oh yes. The good news is the spinal cord itself is unaffected, there's no weakness. The stability of the spine remains secure. You'll be in bed for a few weeks but it shouldn't have any effect in the longer term. Apart from the pain. That's the good news."

  It took some time for the good news to sink in.

  "Oh and there's one more bit of bad news."

  "What's that?"

  "Your car, I'm afraid. Nice little classic Morris Minor? I hear that's a total write-off."

  Twelve

  When Geoffrey was convinced that Julia was okay he agreed to go home and sleep, telling Julia she should relax and concentrate on getting better. There followed a stream of interruptions from doctors and nurses, with forms to say what she couldn’t eat and others to say what she wanted to eat. But finally, Julia was left alone. Perhaps it hadn't gone exactly as she’d planned, but the car was written off. The car was dealt with. She was safe.

  But even if that was true, relaxation wasn't easy to achieve. For one thing, the pain seemed to defy the drugs the doctors had prescribed. Yes, they took an edge off it, but it remained there stubbornly. It seemed to be base camped somewhere in her lower back, but would send out exploratory expeditions down her legs, or out into her arms. Raiding parties of pain. Even something so simple as finding a position to lie in – letting her body weight rest upon the mattress – hurt to the point of distraction. And her muscles ached from the effort of trying to maintain a tolerably pain-free position.

  Slowly, though, Julia's more fundamental predicament ballooned to take control of her thoughts again. So the car was written off. Did that mean it would be crushed? She remembered the way the bonnet had looked, all crumpled and buckled, the paint peeling off fr
om the twisted metal. It seemed difficult to believe there would be any evidence remaining from the impact with the bicycle. She couldn't know for sure, but she felt confident the car was dealt with. What did that leave?

  The woman's body. By now, someone must have found it.

  There was a TV screen on a huge articulating arm that was just in reach, and below the screen was a button labelled ‘internet’. She pulled the screen towards her, and read that she needed to buy credits to use the internet and the television, but she could listen to the radio. Peeved at this, she tuned the device to a local radio station, and waited through tedious pop songs and cheap-sounding adverts (one of which asked her whether she had recently been injured in an accident) for the news to come on. When it did, she learned that, if the woman's body had been discovered, it hadn't made the local news.

  When the nurse next came in to check on her, Julia asked her how she could use the internet.

  "Your purse is just on the chair there," the woman replied. "Your friend Geoffrey had it recovered from the car. Shall I get it for you?"

  Inside, Julia found her phone, with its battery presumably dead since it wouldn't switch on, and her purse with its credit card. She spent a frustrating half-hour using arrow keys on the TV's remote to painfully add her credit card details, but eventually she was online. She thought carefully before selecting any webpage. It wouldn't do now to give away her obsession with the woman. But Julia thought it wouldn't look suspicious to have a look at the local newspaper's site.

  Again, there was nothing about a woman's body being discovered in a ditch.

  It began to rain, beating against the window. The light was fading too, as a dark cloud slid over the hospital. For the first time since arriving there, Julia noticed there was still a world outside. Beyond the chaos in her mind.

  Thirteen

  It continued to rain all night.

  The woman would be found eventually, Julia knew that. But for the time being there was nothing she could do. And with every passing hour, surely, her situation was getting better? The road would be being washed clean, the water in the ditch getting deeper.

  Was there anything else? Any other loose ends she hadn't considered? Julia bit her lip. There was one. Well, two.

  The couple who had helped her – Becky and Rob. It wasn't quite true to say that Julia hadn't considered them a threat up to this point. They were always there, in a corner of her mind. But not ready to come out. Now she had a little space to think, she could admit to herself that they were a problem. When she thought about them, the dilemma they represented came more clearly into focus.

  Obviously they knew everything. Well, not everything. Presumably they didn't know Julia was currently sitting in hospital, having damn-near paralysed herself. But they certainly knew enough.

  They knew she had been drink-driving. They knew a woman had been knocked down and killed. They knew Julia had tried to cover it up. Three crimes. Any of which could ruin her.

  On the other hand, they had assisted in covering up the woman's death – it had been Becky's idea, for goodness sake. And Rob had taken the lead in carrying it out. So was it right to say that made them as guilty as she was? Perhaps. Would that be enough to keep them from going to the police? She didn’t know.

  Taking a pessimistic perspective, it certainly seemed possible they might be feeling so remorseful about what they had done that they were even now speaking to the police, confessing their part in the crime and incriminating her.

  It was horribly possible. Perhaps even likely. Her fight or flight instinct surged within her. But she was unable to move; there was no one to fight against, except her own mind.

  After moments – she didn’t know how many – of pure panic, she forced herself to calm down. Why did they get themselves involved, Becky and Rob? Answering this question suddenly became important. It was because they were kind. Becky in particular. She had understood how important The Glass Tower was, not just to Julia, but to the wider world of literature. And she understood how unfair the situation Julia had found herself in was. Suddenly faced with losing everything for one little mistake, and all for a woman who clearly shouldn't have been out cycling late at night with no lights on.

  Perhaps she could rely on Becky not to go to the police. Because she would continue to want to support Julia? Continue to recognise the importance of The Glass Tower? Because she would continue to be kind?

  Maybe. But there was another side to that. Becky's kindness would apply to others, too. Becky was simply the sort of person you could rely on to do the right thing. What was the right thing in these circumstances? A woman had died. She would have relatives, perhaps a husband. They would be worried she was missing. And when the body was found, Becky was exactly the kind of person who would compromise herself. She would go to the police whatever the repercussions might be.

  Rob was different. He hadn't come across as particularly nice – in fact, quite the opposite. She hadn't warmed to him at all, Julia realised now, and the thought surprised her. But actually, that made him more her ally. It wasn't hard to imagine Rob cautioning Becky against going to the police, to shield them both from danger. It was precisely the fact that Rob wasn't very nice that made him her best hope now.

  Why had they got involved in the first place? Her mind reset to this question, and this time she nearly caught the answer that flashed quickly through her head.

  Why had Rob got involved? He didn't care about Julia. He'd made that clear enough. He just wanted a lift home because his van didn't work. He didn't read. He had taken no interest when she and Becky had been talking about literature. In fact, he only seemed to even listen when...

  Julia’s mind lit up as if floodlights had been switched on inside her head.

  Rob had only agreed that he and Becky should do anything to help after he remembered the money.

  Rob only helped because he planned to blackmail her.

  Julia looked around the room in sudden fear, as if Rob might leap out from behind the chair dressed as a highwayman. My goodness, Julia thought. How much did he want?

  Then another memory crashed in. The little bursts of the LED flashing on Rob's phone as he had moved around the accident site, taking photographs. He had said he wanted to record the scene for the police, so that they would be able to drive and get help. But that was never the case. He'd wanted evidence. Evidence he could later use as leverage against Julia. She remembered how she'd had to shield her eyes against the brightness of the flash. He'd been trying to get her face in the pictures.

  As the shock of this realisation receded, it left behind a grim positive. If Rob planned to blackmail her, then he wasn't planning to go to the police. Because if she went to prison, there would be nothing left to blackmail her with. There would be no money either. So – was this good news? Was Rob's poor character going to keep her from prison?

  A new thought occurred to her. If Rob were planning on blackmailing her, might he not already have done so? They had exchanged email addresses, at the end of that terrible night – and now she thought about it, that had been his idea too. Maybe there was already a demand for cash waiting in her inbox?

  She turned back to the hospital entertainment system, and struggled to enter her email username and password. She worried, as she did so, that the system the hospital used might in some way record what emails she got, but she decided that was unlikely. It wasn't something she'd ever read about in any of her murder mysteries. As a precaution, she told herself that she would just look at who the emails were from, and not open them. If there was an email from Rob she would know what it was about anyway, and could open it later, somewhere safer.

  Julia had received more emails in the last three days than she normally got in a month. There were emails from Geoffrey, copying her in on how he had upgraded her to a private room. There were messages from her publisher, several from Marion, two from James McArthur, and even – gratifyingly – one from Deborah Gooding, the Booker prize-winning author she had s
poken with at the party. Julia looked around when she saw that email, as if to see if there was anyone nearby who she could show it to. But there was nothing from Rob or Becky. Julia checked again, certain that she must have missed it. She checked her spam folder, in case it had inadvertently been directed there. Still nothing.

  At first Julia felt confused. A little cheated almost, that she had figured Rob out but he hadn't yet proved her right. But then she decided that all it demonstrated was that he had decided to wait before issuing his demands. To let her suffer before he turned the screw. Julia felt further convinced of his general poor character the more she thought about it, but she was tiring now. It was too much thinking for her drug-addled brain.

  Julia let the whirlwind of thoughts slip from her mind, and then went back to her inbox. She began reading through the messages she had received. As she was doing so – seeing all the expressions of goodwill and messages of support – she began to feel as if her accident had been just that, an accident.

  The last email she read was from James McArthur. It also happened to be the most important.

  In it he detailed, in a rather business-like manner, how he had now received the money from the auction of the worldwide rights to The Glass Tower, and would be transferring the balance to her, minus his percentage. It was a long and impersonal way of telling Julia that, for the first time in her life, she was rich.

  She read on, stunned anew. She’d known, of course, that the money was coming. But it had taken so long to arrive that she’d begun to doubt she would ever actually receive it. But, according to James, the money was in her account now, or at least had left his. James had gone on to detail his own costs, most of which she hadn't known about until that point. They included a 'contract fee', expenses and something termed 'supplementary charges' – which, together with McArthur's industry-beating 17.5 percent, meant he had earned a whopping half-million pounds from the deal. Even so, at the end of the email was the figure that McArthur had transferred in Julia’s bank account the previous day. Nearly £2,000,000.