And None Shall Sleep
Page 2
The nurse put her hand on Sheila’s arm. ‘Of course,’ she soothed. ‘We just want to be absolutely sure. There’s no need for you to worry.’
Sheila’s face grew hard. ‘I’m not worried,’ she said.
The nurse gave a warm smile. ‘They all say that.’
Sheila stared at her.
‘The first twenty-four hours,’ the nurse said. ‘Once they’re over that they’re almost always OK.’
‘Quite,’ Sheila said and she turned and walked up the corridor.
‘Not that way,’ the nurse called after her. ‘It’s the other way to get out.’
‘But... ?’ Sheila Selkirk pointed to the exit sign.
‘Just a fire exit,’ the nurse explained.
Matthew was still there when she opened her eyes again. But he had moved. Now he was standing with his back to her, staring out of the window. She lay without stirring and watched the movement of his square shoulders and the light, tousled hair. She rarely had the chance to study him undetected, standing still, not knowing she was watching him. So she indulged herself and lay, watching him quietly from beneath drooped lids, and hoped he would turn around before she slid off to sleep again.
He did. He cleared his throat, ran his fingers impatiently through his hair and turned around to see her.
‘You’re awake,’ he said, smiling. He stood, staring at her for a moment, then crossed the room in two long strides, bent and kissed her forehead. ‘Like Sleeping Beauty,’ he said, laughing. ‘You’ve been asleep for hours. It’s late, almost nine o’clock.’ He cleared his throat and sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘I’ve done a full day’s work and come back.’
She smiled lazily, dropped her good arm around his neck. ‘And you still smell of antiseptic, Matthew.’
He took a deep breath. ‘They’ve put a pin in your arm. It’ll be sore and you’ll have the plaster on for a few weeks.’ He gave a tentative smile. ‘I sneaked a look at your X-rays. I thought you’d want to know.’
She glanced at the plastered arm. ‘I knew it was broken straight away – without an X-ray.’
He grinned at her. ‘All right, smarty-pants. What you didn’t know is that it was a bit of a bad break. You managed to break both bones. Jo,’ he said softly, ‘you were lucky it wasn’t anything worse. What exactly happened?’
A quick flashback to the lorry, wheels spinning, pulling her in. ‘I think I got snarled up in the wheel of a juggernaut.’
His eyes were warm, shining green but quite serious.
‘Then thank God you’re all right. How will you manage on your own?’
She struggled to sit up. ‘What do you mean?’
He looked around the room. ‘Cooking, washing. You won’t even be able to drive. And certainly not cycle,’ he added severely.
‘Mike can pick me up.’
‘You won’t be able to work,’ he said. ‘You need looking after.’
Her face hardened. ‘No, Matthew,’ she said. ‘I’ll manage – somehow.’
He gave a long sigh.
‘I’ll manage,’ she repeated. ‘I’ll be all right.’
He sat quietly on the edge of the bed for a long time, staring at her. She found his hand and squeezed it.
‘I will manage,’ she repeated firmly.
He gave a quick exclamation of annoyance and an angry frown. ‘I thought you’d say that.’ He paused. ‘You could move in with me,’ he said diffidently. ‘There’s plenty of room and I could look after you.’
She dropped back on the pillows. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I’m not ready for that.’
Matthew’s lips tightened. ‘Be reasonable, Jo,’ he said.
‘I’ll manage,’ she said, fiercely this time.
‘We’ll see.’ Matthew sighed as he bent over her and kissed her cheek, stroked her hair away from her eyes.
‘How’s my bike?’
He made a face. ‘A wreck. But I did get the bike shop to pick it up. They seem to think they can make it rideable again.’
‘Good.’ She smiled lazily.
‘Now let the nice nursey give you an injection. Go back to sleep, Joanna,’ he said. ‘I’ll pop in and talk to you first thing in the morning. Before I start work.’
He paused at the doorway. Please think about what I’ve said. The offer’s there.’ His eyes rested on her affectionately. ‘Now is as good a time as any.’
He grinned self-consciously. ‘Besides, I’ve always fancied myself as a nursemaid.’
If she’d been feeling better she would have given him an earful. As it was she closed her eyes and drifted off almost immediately.
In the room below, Jonathan Selkirk watched the corridor light dancing along the ceiling.
Chapter Two
Through the night her dreams were confused and disturbing. She dreamt that Matthew was offering her a small, brass key, which she took and cradled in her palm. It was warm ... then it grew hot and hotter still, and when she looked down she saw that it had burned right through her hand, leaving a hole the shape of a key. She peered through the hole and saw the spinning wheels of the lorry, changing patterns like the view through a child’s kaleidoscope. Next she was lying in the middle of the road, clutching her arm and screaming while a car sped towards her. She was unable to see the driver’s face from where she lay.
At some time in the night she woke with a dry mouth and rang her bell. Through the dark a nurse in white moved and spoke softly, asking if she was in pain. She swallowed the cold, crystal water and sank back on the pillows. Then she slept and when she opened her eyes the room was filled with early-morning sunshine and someone was standing at the foot of her bed, watching her.
She struggled to focus. Matthew had said he would drop by in the morning. But it wasn’t Matthew who was standing there, it was Sergeant Mike Korpanski. She stared at the broad shoulders and dark hair and frowned. ‘Bit early for sick visiting, isn’t it?’
‘Sorry about your accident,’ he said awkwardly.
She narrowed her eyes and studied his face. He was scowling, his dark eyes avoiding hers. His shoulders were tensed. She knew Mike. This was how he looked when he had a problem and judging by the grim expression on his face his problem was not a small one.
‘Mike,’ she said. ‘What’s going on?’ She tried to sit up. ‘What is it? What are you doing here?’
He watched her without speaking, still scowling. And now she became aware of other things in the background.
There seemed to be increased activity around the ward, doors opening and shutting, voices loud voices. All strange noises for a hospital. She lay back against the pillow and waited for him to speak.
But being Mike his explanation was both violent and unexpected. He moved away from the bed, banged his fist down on the windowsill and glared at her.
‘Why of all times why did you have to come off your bloody bike yesterday?’
‘Mike,’ she said patiently. ‘I didn’t elect to get knocked down. It just happened. Now are you going to tell me what’s going on or am I supposed to play twenty questions?’
In the background she heard the unmistakable wail of a police siren moving closer. It stopped outside the hospital.
Mike took two steps towards the bed. ‘Last night someone – a patient – disappeared from his hospital bed.’ He stopped. ‘We think, I mean ...’ he shuffled awkwardly. ‘He could have wandered off. We don’t know. We’re not sure. But it looks as though someone could have taken him from his bed.’
‘Him?’
‘A man,’ he said. ‘A middle-aged solicitor, admitted yesterday with chest pain. Heart attack. His bed was found empty this morning.’
Joanna frowned at him. ‘People do leave hospital,’ she said slowly, ‘for all sorts of reasons,’ She listened again to the noises foreign to a normal hospital day. ‘So why do you say he was abducted?’
‘He was wired up to all sorts of machines, with a drip going into his arm. The wires had been yanked off really hard. There were bits of
skin and hair still sticking to the plasters.’
She looked curiously at him. ‘And?’
‘There were drops of blood all the way to the fire door. The doctor thinks it was from where he’d pulled the drip line out.’ He paused. ‘But surely if he was just legging it out of the hospital the obvious thing would have been to press on it and stop it bleeding? I mean, he wouldn’t just let it bleed – or would he?’
Joanna nibbled her fingernail. ‘So where did he go?’
‘He seems to have disappeared into thin air. There’s no sign of him anywhere and he was only wearing his pyjamas.’
She moved her plastered arm. ‘I take it you’ve searched the immediate hospital grounds as well as his home?’
Mike moved two steps closer and frowned. ‘Joanna,’ he said. ‘What’s the anaesthetic done to your brain? We’ve already looked in all the obvious places. I came here hoping for inspiration. Ideas. Not some bloody lecture you’d give to new constables the first day on the job.’ He paused. ‘This was an ill man, very ill according to the doctor. They really did think he might have had a heart attack.’ His hand was clenched in a fist. ‘I think someone may have ripped him off those machines and taken him from the hospital – against his will.’
‘Surely they have hospital security?’
Mike gave an expression of disgust. ‘A couple of half-blind porters in their seventies. Doors and windows open everywhere.’
‘Was this man’s room on the ground floor?’
Mike nodded. ‘And the room next door to him was empty with the window wide open. So anyone could have got in.’
‘No one saw him go?’
‘No.’
‘What does his wife say?’
Mike tapped his lip thoughtfully. ‘She doesn’t seem too upset. She’s convinced he’ll turn up – somewhere,’
‘But there’s no sign of him?’
Mike shook his head. ‘He really has disappeared, Jo. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything’ He stole a glance at her arm. ‘Colclough would be furious if he knew I’d even mentioned it. He’s convinced you have major injuries and won’t be fit to work for months. Forget it,’ he said, now eyeing the plaster cast with undisguised hostility. ‘That thing’ll take weeks to heal. I’m sure we’ll have found him by then.’ He aimed a kick at the foot of the bed. ‘Dead or alive.’
But already the adrenalin was coursing through her veins. It dissolved the pain, gave her energy, made the mummy shape of her arm nothing but a bulky nuisance. She sat bolt upright.
‘Who was he?’ she asked. ‘What was his name?’
Mike smiled grimly. ‘Was, Joanna? Was? Jumping to conclusions? After all you’ve said to me about being impulsive.’
‘Well, that’s what you think, isn’t it?’
She looked closer at him. ‘You think he’s dead, don’t you, Mike?’
‘You do,’ he accused.
‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘I do. Yet,’ she mused, ‘I wouldn’t have called myself a pessimist. And people do get stressed in hospitals – do strange things. Sometimes they wander off.’ She frowned. ‘But the circumstances are unusual, aren’t they? You say the IV line and machines had all been turned off?’
He nodded. Her curiosity was alight now. ‘Tell me more about him.’
Mike sank into the chair. ‘His name is Jonathan Selkirk,’ he said. ‘He’s a solicitor here, in Leek. He specializes in criminal law.’
A sudden image of a hard-eyed, humourless man with a toothbrush moustache edged into her memory. ‘I know him,’ she said. ‘Sly old Selkirk and that crooked partner of his.’ She looked at Mike. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Wilde. Rufus Wilde.’
She closed her eyes and struggled with something.
‘Aren’t they under investigation? Fraud Squad job?’
‘That was months ago. I haven’t heard anything about that for ages. Solicitors,’ he said disgustedly. ‘Some of them are more bloody crooked than half the villains they’re defending.’
‘That’s a bit of a sweeping statement, Sergeant. Most of the solicitors want justice every bit as much as we do.’
‘It depends on your interpretation of justice,’ Mike said darkly.
Joanna moved her plaster cast across the sheet. It felt cold, heavy, unfamiliar. Inside it her arm ached. ‘Let’s not get into prolonged discussions, Mike. Is there anything else I should know about Selkirk?’
‘Now hang on a minute,’ he said quickly. ‘You’re off sick. I just came to pick your brains.’
‘Really?’ And even Mike knew she was laughing at him.
He paused before shrugging and adding, ‘OK, I admit it. I mean you’ve only got a broken arm haven’t you. His wife did mention something about him receiving a letter through the post yesterday morning. She thought it could have triggered off his heart attack.’
Joanna looked up. ‘What sort of letter?’
‘It advised him to make a will.’
And Joanna jumped to exactly the some conclusion that Sheila Selkirk had jumped to only the day before. ‘It was probably just a circular,’ she said, ‘or Make a Will Week. I’m always getting letters advising me to make a will.’
But Mike shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It was a typewritten note which told him to make a will, and it rattled him. I’ve seen it. There wasn’t a letterhead, a telephone number or anything to get back to. No.’ He shook his head firmly. ‘It wasn’t advertising – nothing to do with that. But it wasn’t your regular threatening letter either.’
‘Then what sort of letter was it?’Joanna asked sharply.
‘I don’t know. It was addressed to him and told him to make a will. That’s all.’
‘So what did you think the point was, Mike, if it wasn’t advertising?’
‘A warning?’
She looked up. ‘A warning?’
‘Well ... you know.’ He stopped. ‘It could have been a sort of death threat.’
‘And now he’s disappeared?’ Joanna thought for a minute.
‘I don’t suppose his wife has any idea who sent the note?’
Mike shook his head. ‘Not that she was going to tell me anyway. All I got from her was that it had a local postmark. She thinks he’ll turn up.’
‘But you think he’s been kidnapped.’
Mike protested. ‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Well, what else does “taken against his will” mean?’ She pushed on. ‘You think he’s being held somewhere – or that he’s dead.’ She spoke the words flatly, as a statement.
Mike paused, then said, ‘I could do with you, Jo. I’d like to find him – soon.’
It was the nearest she would ever get to Mike begging. ‘Send the nurse in,’ she said. ‘I’m getting dressed.’
There was a formality of signing a form ... a disclaimer, absolving the hospital of any blame. And she know they disapproved. She ignored it. Mike was right. He needed her. Besides, she wanted to find Selkirk too. So she signed the form then sat and waited while he organized a WPC to fetch some clothes from home. Something she could easily slip on. And all the time she waited she was in a fume. Intrigued and impatient.
When the WPC returned Joanna knew why Matthew had known it would be necessary for her to have help. She was disabled by the plaster cast, much more than she had realized, unable even to pull up her knickers properly.
She looked hopelessly at the WPC. ‘PC Critchlow – Dawn,’ she said. ‘You’re going to have to help me.’
The WPC giggled. ‘I’d guessed that,’ she said. ‘You’re not going to get very far with all your clothes lopsided like that. And that thing on your arm.’
‘A necessary evil, I’m afraid.’
Even in her impatience Joanna was forced to smile at her reflection. Her skirt was crooked, her tights twisted, her sweater half-on, half-off. She was helpless, her progress irritatingly slow. But even what progress she was making was suddenly brought to a halt by Matthew bursting in, still dressed in his theatre garb.
Matthew watched her go with taut impatience before he turned back. ‘Now, would you mind explaining?’
She smiled. ‘Not at all,’ she said, ‘if you’ll just give me a hand with my sweater.’
He cleared his throat before helping her wriggle her good arm through the sleeve and tucking the rest around her.
‘Thank you,’ she said, ignoring his angry glance. ‘You were right, it is a bit tricky.’
‘I told you it would be. Now what’s going on?’
‘A patient went missing from here last night.’
Matthew dismissed it with a wave of his hand.' ‘It was some old fool with hospital phobia,’ he said. ‘I heard about it. It’s hardly enough to get you from your bed. Joanna,’ he said softly. ‘You could do with the rest. It was a nasty bump. You were concussed, you know.’
‘I’m all right now, Matthew,’ she said. ‘Please, don’t fuss. I’ll seek medical advice if I feel ill. A man’s disappeared. And they need me. I can co-ordinate things – direct the others.’ She stopped. ‘It’s not as though I have to do all the footwork.’
‘You need the rest,’ he repeated angrily. ‘They can manage without you.’
‘You know how much work there is?’ she said frowning. ‘They can’t manage this sort of major investigation on their own. They need everyone they can get. Not someone off sick.’
He gripped her shoulders. ‘He’s just some silly old fool,’ he said. ‘Probably lost his memory... wandering the streets. He’ll turn up.’
‘Mike told me all his wires had been ripped off,’ Joanna insisted. ‘He told me there was blood on the bed. It had dripped all over the floor.’ She paused. ‘I don’t think even a silly old fool would have done that. And if he’s simply wandering the streets dressed in a pair of pyjamas why hasn’t he turned up, been found by someone?’
Matthew glared at her. ‘It’s all you bloody well care about,’ he said. ‘Law and order and your beloved police force. Think you’re Joan of Arc, crusading for right against wrong.’