Blood Substitute (30 page)

I paused, reading direction signs, of which there seemed to be dozens pointing to a myriad of departments. None mentioned a café. I would have to go all the way back to where there were a few shops, including a coffee bar.

About ten minutes later I had completed my errand, having added a packet of mints for me and a London evening newspaper for the patient. News of the cinema fire was all over the front page together with a report of how firefighters had rescued three people from the roof of the building.

I stopped in surprise when I saw that the policeman had been replaced by another and who, when I first saw him was walking slowly away from me in the direction of Robert Kennedy's room. He was extremely tall and, even in his body armour, looked pole-thin.

Quickly, I went into the side room and put everything I was carrying but the Smith and Wesson on to a table. Then I ran, as silently as possible.

The corridor was empty now but I could detect voices, or more correctly I discovered when I got closer, a voice, a hissy, high-pitched voice. It seemed to be delivering a diatribe and was getting angrier and louder.

With the helmet on he did not hear my approach. I registered that the Heckler and Koch was pointing uncompromisingly in Robert Kennedy's direction, aimed and fired at the hands holding it at the same time diving to the floor by the bed. There was a roar of rage, the loud clatter of metal and there he was, standing right there looking down at me, the weapon not in sight. He rushed at me.

This time I got him in the body armour and he went over backwards from the force of the shot. But it was not enough to stop him and he picked himself up and again came at me, as relentless as the scarecrow coming through the window in my nightmare, a figure whose small but piercing eyes were staring at me through the visor. Then, before I could react, a boot had shot out and kicked the gun from my hand. All this had happened in seconds.

The weapon skittered along the polished tiles and we both went for it. I got to it first, having the advange of already being on the floor. His hands came at me, clawing, but I managed to evade them and tossed the gun on to the bed. I did not see what happened next as I was trying to avoid being kicked but heard it fire and the tinkle of breaking glass.

Feet pounded away down the corridor. He had got away.

‘Where are they?' Kennedy was shouting. ‘Where are the wondrous members of the armed support unit who were supposed to be watching our backs?' He coughed agonizingly and then gasped, ‘Ingrid, are you all right, girl? I can't see you. For God's sake say something.'

A foot had caught me in the side, a deliberate vicious kick. I got to my feet, unable to speak just then, and thumped a hand down on the red emergency button on the bedside locker.

‘Are you hurt?' Kennedy asked, placing the gun down on the bed.

‘Just … winded,' I wheezed.

Various nursing staff arrived at the run then and got very annoyed with Kennedy for having detached one of his drip lines. Someone went away to try to discover what had happened to the protection team. Someone else stood tut-tutting at all the noise and disturbance.

I sat on the visitors' chair, shaking, ignored, the police-issue Heckler and Koch, it's firing mechanism smashed, beneath it. Then, when I felt I could move again I rang Greenway's number. He still was not answering.

Moments later a hunking copper wearing body armour but carrying his helmet under his arm strode into the room.

‘Cummings,' he announced. ‘Sergeant Cummings. What's gone on here?'

Before I could open my mouth Kennedy told him and I discovered, endeavouring to hide a smile, that like his son, he swore in Gaelic. So Cummings got the gist of what had happened without the trimmings, as it were. It transpired that the officer who had been on duty when I arrived was missing. They were looking for him. The rest of his team had received a visit – they had been on standby in a laundry room on the floor below – from a uniformed inspector, very tall and thin with a rather strange voice, who had sent them off to the hospital canteen for a break, saying he would hold the fort for them and remain in radio contact with the man on duty outside Kennedy's room. There was no sign of him either.

‘Are you here
now
though?' I asked Cummings in a break in the conversation. ‘I mean, is it all right if I leave? This senior F9 operative no longer has to rely for his personal safety on the wife of someone who works for SOCA?'

I did not wait for his reply, the auspices for which were not promising as when I left the room he still had his mouth wide open.

I had gone to the hospital by taxi and now hailed another, asking to be taken to the next road to Poplar Road, Walthamsden, where Sydney Hellier lived.

‘That's Elm Street and it's a long road, luv,' said the taxi driver. ‘D'you want the pub?'

I replied no, not really, but it would do. On second thoughts, a stiff tot of whisky would go down a real treat right now.

The Plate Layers' Arms was one of those Victorian pubs that appeared to have missed being modernised, or even painted, for half a century. Some of last year's Christmas lights were still twinkling sadly outside, the rest of the bulbs having failed, together with a couple of sorry-looking tubs containing last summer's bedding plants, dead as Marley's ghost.

I paid off the taxi and paused on the doorstep, seriously considering dropping in for a small bracer. I needed something to combat the continuing shakes and a fervent desire to burst into tears. You have low blood sugar, I told myself severely. What you really need is a hot, sweet drink, not alcohol. I went in, reasoning that they might serve coffee.

Why had I come back here? In truth I could not be bothered to delve deeply into my reasons, I was too tired. Just the maverick investigator still at work perhaps.

It was quite late now, the clock above the bar that faced me when I entered registering ten-fifteen, six minutes slow according to my watch. The place was almost deserted, a couple sitting at a table near a window, two or three men playing darts towards the rear, no one behind the bar. The sound of voices was coming through an archway where the counter extended into another room. I went through a door into the adjoining bar. It was just about full of men, some in smart suits with designer smirks on their faces, others obviously of lesser standing; the drivers, the pickaxe handle wielders, the knife and gun carriers.

A mobsters' convention, no less.

‘Get her!' a beanpole of a man squawked, jumping to his feet. ‘A thousand quid to the man that does! No,
two
!'

To a cacophony of upturned tables and spilled drinks those in the room poured towards me.

It is very bad practice to chase horses when they refuse to be caught in a field. They just go faster and learn the wrong lessons. But I had once taken George by surprise when he had been going through a slightly awkward phase shortly after we got him by belting after him and grabbing him around the neck with both arms. A gentleman to the last he had succumbed to the head collar immediately. I had been surprised by my own turn of speed and put it to good use now, fleeing the building with at least twenty of them after me. For the first hundred yards or so adrenalin gave me feet with wings.

Unfit couch pototoes that most of them were, they were getting closer. Panting wildly now I reached the end of the road and turned left, expecting to be shot in the back at every stride. Surely, surely, there was a police presence of some kind around here? Or had some tall, thin uniformed inspector turned up and told them all to go and have a break, have a Kit-Kat?

It had been raining and the pavement was slippery from moisture and the greasy detritus from the remains of take-aways. I slipped and almost fell. The nearest man chasing me was now only a matter of yards behind, his breath rasping in his throat. Then, judging by the sounds, he skated on one of the discarded chips and crashed into a litter bin.

I turned left again into Poplar Road not able to recognize anything. My legs were on fire and someone else was catching up with me. I realized then that I was at the opposite end of Poplar Road to that which Patrick and I had parked when I had first called on Sydney Hellier, the house numbers I was passing now in the low twenties: Hellier's was one hundred and five. Looking at front doors, which fronted directly on to the pavement here, for numbers I almost went head-on into a lamppost.

Feet still thumped behind me. Then, seconds later, a hand seized the back of my jacket. Somehow grabbing the gun from the pocket, I shrugged it off, my bag going with it, and ran on. House number thirty-three.

Lungs agony, legs numbed now, I ran on. House number fifty-seven sort of floated past. I felt like I was stationary while the houses bobbed by me in a strange procession. A man on a bike was there too. He gave me a sideways look and almost rode into a parked car.

House number sixty-nine: big numbers painted black on a white plastic door.

A car was coming up behind me. It drew level.

‘Goin' somewhere, darlin'?' hissed a voice.

I paused long enough to put one bullet into the tyre nearest to me and another into the bonnet right where it lived that resulted in a jet of steam emanating from under the wings and then tore on.

Where were all the bloody cops? I inwardly raged.

At house number ninety-one my legs gave way. I dragged myself into the doorway and sat with my back to it, my hands grasping the Smith and Wesson supported on my raised knees. I had one shot left: spare ammunition was in my jacket pocket.

Ye gods, the price on my head had ensured they were all still in pursuit, give or take a heart attack or two. Four more were just getting out of the car, that tall, thin figure in the lead, and a hairy, tubby little man who waddled as he walked at his side. This was going to be a bit like the Alamo.

Silly of me not to have thought that the sound of firing would not have roused someone. Three someones actually, who burst out of a doorway several houses away.

‘Armed police!' Greenway's voice roared. ‘You're all under arrest! Put down any weapons or we'll fire!'

Those of the cohorts who had only hard cash on their minds slithered to a standstill and then turned tail. It did them no good; their escape was now blocked by police vehicles. Several more, sirens howling, sped down from the other end of the road and braked to a standstill, their crews piling out.

I saw, almost inconsequentially, that Lazlo Ivers was approaching and had a gun in his hand. It was pointing directly at me. It suddenly ceased to point at me and I have never been able to remember pulling the trigger.

At some stage in the general chaos that followed I heard Greenway call above the wail of ambulance and police sirens, ‘So who the bloody hell were they after then?'

Someone came over and looked down at me and I was too weak even to smile.

‘It's a woman, sir.' And, alarmed he continued, ‘She's armed!'

‘It's not … loaded any more,' I panted, but of course no one heard me.

Greenway came closer. ‘Did she fire that shot that got Ivers just now?'

I wasn't sure.

‘Don't know, sir. She isn't moving – might be hurt.'

‘Get the medics to see to her, now. I'll deal with the gun.' He walked up.

I found the energy to place the revolver down on the pavement. He crouched down to see me better.

‘You're a very brave man,' I whispered.

‘But … but you're at the hospital!' he blurted out.

‘No, I'm here,' I said. ‘They were having an AGM in the Plate Layers' Arms.'

‘Are you hurt?'

‘I don't think so.'

He lifted me up, steadied me and the rest of the threesome, Patrick and James Carrick strolled up to see what was going on. For several seconds nobody spoke.

‘Ingrid, will you marry me again?' Patrick said in a faraway voice.

W
hile it is not illegal for even crooks to congregate in a public house – and the police had no evidence that anyone present would have broken his journey on the way home hoping to put a bullet into Sydney Hellier – nearly all those arrogant or stupid enough to have gathered in such numbers there that night were urgently wanted to help with various enquiries. It transpired that the short, fat man in the car with Ivers was Ernie O'Malley who had grown his hair long, and a beard, presumably hoping it would disguise him sufficiently to enable him to enjoy a short period out of hiding in order to attend what became known in police circles as ‘the annual company dinner'.

‘I just literally stumbled upon them,' I said to Patrick afterwards. Neither of us had asked about the aftermath of the hospital disaster, a too-sensitive subject by far. I do not suppose that James Carrick was making any kind of issue about it either. I think we were all leaving it up to Robert Kennedy to raise every kind of hell.

James had gone straight off to the hospital when all he was expected to do at Poplar Road had been completed. I knew that he would contact us eventually but right now his reunion with his father was a matter for strict privacy.

Michael Greenway was delighted with me for several reasons, but mostly for snatching the prize, or rather prizes, from right under F9's nose. I very much doubted that this would make any difference to Patrick's decision as to whether to stay with SOCA or not. He did not say so but I knew he was annoyed at having gone bald and brown for next to nothing.

Two months later, the brown having faded to a light tan – or that might have been as a result of having been out in the sun a lot while on leave – and his hair now at the very-short stage, we travelled on a short-notice visit to Hinton Littlemoor. It was term-time so the children were not with us. They were still happily chattering about their recent stay at the rectory; moving scarecrows, policemen who let them try on their helmets and told them stories when they were not on guard outside. I was greatly relieved that there were no bad memories or nightmares and Vicky had quickly realized that daddy might look different but still sounded the same and gave her even better rides on his shoulders around the garden. I think we have another horsewoman in the making.