Kill Me Twice: Rosie Gilmour 7

by Anna Smith

  Rosie reached across and touched her wrist but said nothing.

  ‘My God! That poor girl. She was so sad, and yet she was fighting for her life right until they killed her.’

  They sat in silence, and Rosie watched as Millie wiped her tears.

  ‘Then I ran,’ Millie said. ‘I ran and ran, and I’ve haven’t stopped running since. I’m ashamed of that too, Rosie. I could have come forward in Madrid and talked to the police. But I was in such a state emotionally I just couldn’t have coped. I hate myself for that now.’ She looked Rosie in the eye. ‘I’m not running any more. I’m going to tell the truth and I’m going to do it for Bella. Are you going to help me, Rosie? Are you really going to expose these people?’

  Rosie nodded. ‘Yes, Millie. I am. You can be sure of that.’

  Millie reached across and grabbed Rosie’s arm. ‘Thank you.’ She swallowed. ‘Could I please have another drink? Just one?’

  Rosie smiled. ‘Of course. I need one too. One drink and then we’d better get ourselves to bed for the night. You must be shattered.’

  ‘I am. And I know they’ll be looking for me.’

  Rosie tried not to think about that.

  Chapter Twenty

  Rosie scanned Dan’s story one final time before sending it to McGuire. It was a harrowing read, and she’d felt more involved than she should have as she wrote it. But reading it now made her smile inside. It would send the rest of the media into a frenzy in the morning when it was splashed all over the front page of the Post. The story was so good, it had more or less written itself. There had never been as much as a sniff that Bella Mason had a long-lost brother, never mind one who was a heroin addict, living rough in Glasgow. Nobody would see it coming, because the last couple of days the Bella Mason story had been a series of the same old follow-ups from the police investigation that Bella had been a depressed cocaine addict. But Rosie’s ‘exclusive’ had it all: the loving siblings dumped in a children’s home by their mother, the separation a few years later when Bella was plucked from obscurity and thrust into the glamorous world of modelling, and how they’d lost contact for more than a decade.

  Rosie and Matt had hammered up the motorway from the hotel that morning after McGuire had told her he planned to blast Dan’s story over the next couple of days. She’d put aside Millie’s interview from last night and left her and Bridget in the more than capable hands of Bertie Shaw. She pulled on her jacket, and pressed the send key, emailing McGuire’s private account with the message that she was going up to see Dan in the apartment. She didn’t tell him the rest of her plan.

  *

  Rosie was conscious of the ward sister at the Royal Infirmary giving Dan the once-over. He looked every inch the heroin addict, with his gaunt face and skinny frame.

  ‘Now, I can’t have Mitch being disturbed for too long,’ the sister said, as she walked ahead of them down the corridor towards the room at the end. ‘He’s not a well boy. He’s in a lot of pain, and’ – she glanced at Dan – ‘with all the underlying problems, he’s lucky to be alive.’ She sighed. ‘I despair of these young people nowadays, so many of them lost to drugs.’

  ‘I know,’ Rosie agreed, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say, and wanted to keep on the sister’s good side.

  Dan looked a little sheepish as he walked beside her, but Rosie was glad to see he was definitely in better shape mentally now that he was on the methadone. She knew it was only replacing one addiction with another, but at least she didn’t have to sit outside drug dens to get him through his day. The antibiotics were working too and he wasn’t coughing his guts up as he had been when she’d first met him.

  Dan had told her as they drove to the hospital that he was determined to change his life. Rosie knew that if this story were ever to have a happy ending for him, he had to quit drugs – and soon. There was a shedload of money coming his way, once he could establish for the authorities that he was Bella’s only surviving relative and therefore heir to her fortune. He would either use it to change his life for the better or he’d be dead in six months. Right now, it wasn’t worth a bet either way.

  The sister opened the door to Mitch’s room and they stepped in. Rosie tried not to gasp when she saw him. Mitch lay on the bed, his face almost unrecognizable, puffy and bruised, with stitches across his forehead and a bandage around his chin and up to the top of his head. The crumpled white sheet stopped below his bare chest and there were wires connected to a machine at the side of his bed. You could count almost every one of his ribs.

  ‘Fuck’s sake, man,’ Dan whispered. ‘Look at the nick of him.’ He turned to the sister. ‘Is . . . is he going to die?’

  She gave him a matronly smile. ‘He’s been through a lot. And the doctors are surprised that he’s actually hanging in there. He’s not out of the woods yet, but it looks like he’s survived the attack.’ She frowned. ‘The addiction is another matter. Right now that’s not an issue as he’s fully medicated for pain. But the boy has a long way to go.’ She stepped back. ‘I’ll leave you for a few minutes.’

  Rosie stood back as Dan went across to Mitch’s bedside. His tears were instant as he sat on the chair and reached out, taking Mitch’s hand. ‘Aw, mate! I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, man.’ He pushed Mitch’s fringe back with his other hand as he pleaded with him through tears. ‘Listen, Mitch. You need to get through this. You’re my only friend in the whole fucking world. I love you, man. Don’t fucking die on me.’

  Rosie swallowed hard, watching as Dan’s tears dripped off his chin and he stroked Mitch’s forehead. She pictured them as innocent boys, playing football in the schoolyard, blissfully unaware of what lay ahead and how their lives would turn out. Whatever their dreams had been, here they were, a couple of junkies who’d be lucky if they saw their next birthdays. Mitch’s eyes flickered and his lips slowly moved to a smile.

  ‘Can you hear me, Mitch?’ Dan said. ‘I’m here. I’m right beside you. I’m going to help you. We can get through all this shit because we’re mates. Don’t forget that. I need you here, man.’

  Mitch squeezed Dan’s hand and a solitary tear spilled out of the corner of the swollen, black mass where his eye should have been.

  *

  They took the lift to the ground floor, and Rosie stopped at the kiosk at the edge of the canteen to pick up a couple of bottles of water and some chocolate bars for Dan. The methadone was working, but it did nothing for the sugar cravings. She waited in the queue, handed over her money, then she and Dan walked towards the exit. A sudden uneasiness – paranoia or instinct – swept through her and she quickened her step. The corridor was busy and a couple of times she bumped into people walking briskly towards her. She wanted out of there fast, into the safety of her car. As they got to the automatic sliding glass doors, a voice called, ‘Dan!’ Rosie’s stomach turned over. ‘Hey, Dan!’ The voice again. Dan stopped in his tracks and turned around.

  ‘Don’t stop, for Christ’s sake. Keep going.’ Rosie grabbed his arm and pushed him to walk faster. ‘Hurry, Dan. Let’s get out of here. Keep your head down.’

  As they stepped outside Rosie felt someone burly bump into her, almost knocking her off her feet. She looked up and her gut flipped when she saw the bleached-blond hair.

  ‘Hey, Dan. Where you been, wee man?’

  Dan looked at Rosie, his face even whiter than normal. She pulled him away, and just as the guy came after her, a police car pulled up in front of them, like a gift from God, with its blue lights flashing. Rosie rushed quickly towards it and stood at the passenger door. She pretended to be looking at her mobile phone so as not to arouse the suspicion of the cops, but she knew they were safe as long as she stood there for a second. Her own car was only twenty feet away and now she was glad she’d taken the risk of parking on a double yellow line. Suddenly an ambulance screamed into the entrance and people scattered in all directions to keep the path clear.

  Rosie pulled Dan away and they jumped into her car, her fingers tre
mbling as she tried to get the key into the ignition. She headed out of the throng around the entrance, the police already out of their car. Another ambulance arrived and the road behind her was blocked. As she drove towards the exit, she looked in her rear-view mirror and could see the bleached-blond thug sprinting towards some parked cars. She prayed his was far enough away to give them a start.

  ‘Fuck, Rosie!’ Dan said, as she screeched out of the car park and down High Street. ‘That was him. That’s Ricky. The big blond cunt.’

  ‘I gathered that,’ Rosie said, trying to sound calm. ‘Don’t worry, there’s nobody behind us.’

  She drove down to the lights and turned right up towards the M8. She pulled her phone out of her jacket and punched in McGuire’s private mobile. ‘Mick. It’s me. There’s a problem.’

  ‘What problem? We’re all set for tomorrow. All guns blazing, Gilmour.’

  ‘Listen. I need to get out of here. Fast. That big guy I told you about, the one who’s looking for Dan, he’s here. We just saw him.’

  ‘Fuck me! Where? At the flat?’

  ‘No. At the Royal. Just outside. He saw us.’

  ‘The Royal? What were you doing up there?’ McGuire paused. ‘Fuck’s sake, Rosie. You went to see Mitch! Christ almighty!’

  ‘I know, I know. But Dan wanted to see him. Look, never mind that. We need to act now. I’m heading for the border. I need to take Dan out of here.’

  ‘Is the bastard following you?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Not so far. But I didn’t want to hang around Glasgow. I’m on the motorway. Is that okay?’

  McGuire snorted. ‘Like I’ve got a fucking choice?’

  ‘Sorry, Mick. It had to be done. I’ll just hole up in the hotel for the night, the one where Millie and the nurse are. I’ll come back up in the morning, early doors. Can you get Matt to hook up with me?’

  ‘Christ, Rosie! You’re fucking off the scale.’

  ‘It’ll be fine. I’ll call you in a couple of hours in case there’s any problem with my story.’

  ‘The story’s great. It’s you that’s the bloody problem.’ He hung up.

  *

  Larry’s mobile rang as he was about to sit down to a late lunch with his driver. He looked at the screen. It was that clown Ricky. He didn’t have the patience for this.

  ‘Ricky.’ Larry’s tone was sharp. ‘I’m about to eat. You’d better not be disturbing me with bad news.’

  ‘Good and bad news, boss. I saw Dan Mason.’

  Larry poured a little red wine into his glass and swirled it around. ‘What do you mean, you saw him? Are you telling me you saw him, but you haven’t got him?’

  ‘Well, yeah, boss.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake. Get to the point, Ricky. My steak’s getting cold.’

  ‘You see, boss, he turned up at the hospital to see that Mitch geezer we gave the going over to.’

  ‘You mean the one you beat the shit out of but still got no information from, you tit.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ricky said sheepishly. ‘But we were staking out the hospital in the hope something would happen, in case the Dan boy came. And he did. Pete was inside and clocked him going up to the ward and asking for Mitch. Then, when he was leaving, I was stood outside. I called out, “Dan,” and the little prick turned around. Thing is, boss, he was with this bird. She just about shat it when the boy turned, and she ushered him away. I’m nearly a hundred per cent sure it was him.’

  ‘What bird? What are you talking about? He was with some bird?’

  ‘Don’t know who she is. Nice-looking. Not a junkie. And older than him. Maybe thirties.’

  ‘So who the fuck, was she? Maybe a copper?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘They saw us, obviously, and as I say, the bird rushed away. We would have grabbed him, but she seemed to sense the danger and made for a cop car that had just pulled up, so we had to stand back. Then, there was some sudden emergency at the door of the hospital, with ambulances arriving, and it all got a bit chaotic.’

  ‘So you fucking lost them, you prick.’

  ‘Yes. I’m afraid so, boss.’

  ‘Fucking Christ almighty! Talk about fucking amateur night! Did you see her car?’

  ‘Yeah. It was a Vauxhall Vectra. I got the number plate.’

  ‘Gimme it. I’ll get it checked.’ Larry wrote down the registration on the back of his hand. ‘Okay. So what happened next?’

  ‘We jumped into our motor, but by the time we got out of the car park – I mean it was fucking mental, boss, queued up because of the emergency – by the time we got out into the road, she was nowhere to be seen.’

  Larry sighed. ‘Okay. Just stay where you are and keep looking. I’ll get the number checked. Now fuck off and let me eat my lunch.’

  Larry hung up, then scrolled down and punched in the number of a copper on his payroll. ‘Jack? You all right, mate? Listen. I need you to check a plate for me.’ He reeled off the number.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Colin Chambers had been screaming down the phone at people for so long that his head was pounding. How hard could it be to keep a patient locked up in a psychiatric ward? The whole fucking point of sectioning someone was to save them from harming themselves or being a danger to the public, but his bloody wife was out there somewhere, walking around. If it had been an NHS hospital he’d have expected no less, but this was costing him a fortune.

  He had torn a strip off the hospital manager once the news began to sink in that Millie had disappeared. It was the same routine every day, he was told. Nobody had ever gone missing before, the manager had said, by way of apology. He assured Colin that an investigation was under way. The staff were being questioned closely and would be dealt with if any dereliction of duty was found. The manager had been surprised when Chambers had instructed him not to report the matter to the police. He told him it was a private matter, and the last thing he wanted was some story appearing in a newspaper that would frighten his poor wife. He had done his distraught-husband routine rather well, he mused, once he’d slammed the phone down.

  Earlier in the morning, he’d called in his closest aides and instructed them to do whatever they had to do to find her. They’d already tried to track down the location of her mobile from recent calls, but the last place it had been switched on was in the private hospital. It had been dead since then. They were able to check her phone records, though, and found she’d had an incoming call from a number they tracked to Eastbourne. It had been from a mobile, which belonged to someone called Bridget Casey from Eastbourne. Who the hell was she? He told them to find out. They’d just come back with the information that she was a nurse at the District General, but when they’d rung and asked to speak to her, they were told she was at home ill. She wasn’t at the house, so one of his men had broken in and found nothing suspicious. Whoever the hell she was, she must have had a hand in Millie’s escape.

  To some, Millie was a pathetic soul, and was out there somewhere and vulnerable. But that didn’t matter a damn to Colin. She was a nervous wreck and on the verge of a breakdown, and the very fact that she had buggered off to Madrid without telling him showed how unhinged she had become. He had been right to get her locked up for some treatment. It wasn’t that he wanted her back – he’d given up the ghost of their marriage a long time ago, and she didn’t even attract him any more: It was over. Millie was a seriously loose cannon. She knew too much.

  She’d been around and would have been in a position to hear things while he was Home Secretary. Especially during that unfortunate time when allegations began to emerge about a sexual-abuse ring. The claims were far-fetched, the police had told him. He should bear in mind that the kids making the claims were mostly from criminal backgrounds and were already young offenders. They were not to be trusted. Colin had been a little uneasy about it in the beginning, but once names had begun to emerge in political circles, it was important to silence it, shut it down.


  His closest advisers in the civil service suggested it was easier simply to shred the dossiers. It was his decision in the end, but everyone knew it was the civil servants who were the nuts and bolts of the government. They covered your back and they made things disappear. You just had to keep denying things. But every bloody time Millie was pissed she brought up the conversation she had overheard between Colin and the Chief Constable of the Met. ‘What about those kids?’ she’d kept moaning. ‘You knew about it. I heard you talk with the Chief Constable,’ she’d bleated one night. She’d received a hard slap for being so presumptuous and spying on him. But still she went on about it. It niggled him that she was out there now in a position to damage him, and was bitter and twisted enough to do it. But he consoled himself with the fact that she would be roaring drunk somewhere, not making sense to anyone. With any luck, they’d get her picked up in the next couple of days.

  His phone rang on his desk and he answered it.

  It was a private eye. ‘The mobile phone of that nurse has been traced to a location in the borders. She must have made a phone call,’ the voice said.

  ‘The borders? How come? Whereabouts?’ Colin barked.

  ‘The only place for miles is a country hotel. We have the name of it. Unless she’s lost her phone, I’d be surprised if this lady isn’t staying there. Perhaps Mrs Chambers too. I know it’s a long shot, but it’s all we have.’

  Colin took a few moments to process the information, then he spoke. ‘Okay. Do what you have to. Let me know when you find out any more.’

  *

  Rosie was glad Dan had crashed out in the passenger seat and was comatose most of the journey towards Carlisle. He’d been flapping after they’d made their getaway from the hospital car park, and had broken down in tears over the state Mitch was in. When they arrived at the hotel, Matt in his car following Rosie up the long, leafy driveway, Dan woke and looked around him, bewildered. ‘Where are we?’