After the Fire (40 page)

‘She’s bleeding,’ he said. ‘Check her.’

I turned her over, not seeing any injury. Her eyes were closed, her face shuttered. As I bent over her she coughed fat droplets of blood that splattered against my cheek, my neck, my shirt.

‘Oh shit.’ I forced her mouth open as wide as I could and peered in. Her mouth and throat were filling with blood. ‘I think she swallowed some glass.’

‘Right.’ Derwent bent down and gathered her into his arms. He carried her out to the car, at speed. She was limp, semi-conscious or pretending to be.

I ran to open the back door. ‘Should I call an ambulance?’

‘No point in waiting. We’ve got blue lights too.’ He laid her on the back seat and straightened up. ‘Sit in the back with her. Stop her from falling off the seat if you can. And don’t let her get away with anything else.’

I put a hand to my head, distraught. ‘I’m sorry, I—’

‘Not now,’ he snapped and I had to be content with that, and the murderous look that accompanied it.

If you ever want to know what true fear is, I highly recommend being in a car driven by Josh Derwent on a blue-light run. I gnawed through my bottom lip, hanging on to Elaine Lister for dear life as we cut through the north London traffic like a scalpel. It took us three or four minutes to get to the hospital, the one where the burn victims had been, with the sirens screaming all the way. I cradled Elaine, who was silent except for an occasional cough that racked her body. I sacrificed my jacket to cover her mouth, to catch the spray of blood that each cough forced out of her. Her breathing was shallow and a gurgling sound accompanied every breath: her lungs and airway filling with blood, I guessed, and I didn’t mind how fast we went or how many close calls we had on the way, as long as she didn’t die in my arms. Derwent swung in through the ambulances-only entrance and pulled up outside the A & E department, jumping out of the car almost before it had stopped.

‘Bit of help here, please,’ he shouted, summoning paramedics who lifted Elaine and transferred her to a trolley, checking, assessing but most of all moving her as fast as they could towards proper medical care. We went with her, as far as we were allowed to go, Derwent fumbling with his handcuff key as the triage nurse tutted at the cuffs.

Elaine was our prisoner, still.

When they moved her to surgery we went too, occupying one of the rooms for relatives. Una Burt arrived with Chris Pettifer and Mal Upton and Liv and pretty much everyone who wasn’t doing anything else, and they listened while I explained how it was I’d managed to allow a murderer enough space to harm herself just minutes after she’d confessed. Derwent neither damned me nor defended me until Chris Pettifer made a crack at my expense.

‘She did all right.’ Derwent didn’t look in my direction. His focus was all on Pettifer, on putting him in his place. ‘She got the situation under control quickly and safely. Couldn’t have asked her to do much more.’

Liv patted my hand, unseen by everyone else, and I was grateful for the support. Somehow, brusque though it was, what Derwent had said meant more to me than anything – more than Liv’s sympathy, or Una Burt’s muttered reassurance.

It felt like an endless wait until the surgeon was finished with Elaine Lister, in a room that got increasingly stuffy. Derwent went out at one point, too restless to sit still, and I went after him. He was striding down the corridor, away from me.

‘Hey,’ I called.

He looked back. ‘What do you want?’

‘Thanks for sticking up for me.’

‘It’s all right.’

‘No, really. I – I made a mistake. I know I did.’ I caught up with him. ‘But you were kind about it and I appreciate it.’

‘You did make a mistake. But so did I.’ Derwent shook his head. ‘Never cuff them in front, no matter how meek and mild they seem to be. I know that. You know it too. If she’d been cuffed with her hands behind her, we wouldn’t be here now. We’d be home and dry.’

‘
My
home,’ I said. ’Don’t get too comfortable.’

‘Technically, it’s your boyfriend’s home. Your ex-boyfriend, I mean.’ Derwent raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you even pay rent?’

‘That’s none of your business,’ I said, stung. ‘And if you don’t move out soon, I’m going to start charging
you
rent.’

‘I make a valuable non-monetary contribution to your life and don’t you forget it.’

‘I wish I could.’

He flashed a grin at me that lit up his face for a second. Then he dismissed me with, ‘I’ll see you later.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Coffee,’ Derwent said, walking away.

‘I drink coffee too.’

‘Don’t follow me.’

‘But—’

‘Don’t follow me. I mean it.’ He turned to frown at me. ‘Stay. Good dog. Stay.’

I stood and watched him until he was out of sight. It shouldn’t have surprised me that Derwent wanted to be alone.

After all, he was one hundred per cent full-blooded diva.

I LASTED ANOTHER
fifteen minutes in the waiting room before I began to fantasise about killing everyone around me, slowly. Ordinarily I would never have followed an example set by Derwent, but it seemed to me he had the right idea. I slid out of the room without saying anything to anyone about where I was going. I wasn’t altogether sure myself.

I wandered through the familiar corridors and stairwells until I reached the ward where the fire’s victims had been. Only Mary Hearn was left now. The police officer’s chair outside the door was unattended. I stood and looked at it for a moment, wondering when Una Burt had given the order to stop guarding Mary Hearn. When she had outlived her usefulness? When Una had run out of hours to spend on guard duty? When the case had moved on? When it had become clear to me – and I presumed everyone else – that we had made no progress whatsoever on identifying the arsonist? It was unlikely that we’d track them down now, I thought. All the secrets of Murchison House – all the sorrow, and pain, and hidden hurt – had drifted away from me like smoke, to dissipate against the clear blue winter sky. The building would be repaired. The flats would fill up with new residents, or the old ones bravely returning. Everything would be the same as it was before, except for the Bellews, and Geoff Armstrong, and the unknown women who had died there.

I went through the doors and headed over to the nurses’ station, where a middle-aged nurse gave me a not particularly welcoming look. I held up my ID.

‘I just wanted to check up on Mary Hearn. How is she?’

The nurse’s manner warmed slightly. ‘She’s much better. She’s talking to us now. Much more like her old self.’

‘Is she still mentally all there?’

‘She’s still sharp as anything.’ The nurse half-smiled. ‘She doesn’t let us get away with much, I can tell you.’

I smiled, relieved. ‘That’s a sign she’s on the mend.’

‘It is. Mind you, she’ll need to do a lot of physio. The stroke affected her left side. She’s very weak. She won’t be running any marathons for a while.’

‘Can I see her?’

‘Of course. She’s in room 310. Her daughter is with her at the moment.’

I had started to move away, but I stopped. ‘Her daughter?’

‘Yes, she’s just arrived. I think she was abroad or something. She got here about two minutes before you did.’ The nurse smiled up at me. The smile faded from her face. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘She doesn’t have a daughter. Which way is her room?’

She pointed to the left and I ran, almost crashing into a doctor as I rounded the corner. I ignored him, skirted a patient who was edging along on a walking frame, and hurled myself into room 310.

It took me a second to orientate myself: the curtains were drawn around the bed and the window blind was down so the light was dim. I slid between the curtains and saw a figure bent over the bed, standing between me and Mrs Hearn. From the end of the bed it looked innocent – touching, even. But Mrs Hearn was trying to struggle, her legs moving weakly under the covers. The woman didn’t look around even when I shouted, ‘
Get back!’

She was intent on what she was doing, the effort vibrating in her arms and across her shoulders. When I got close enough to grab her I could see her hand was over Mrs Hearn’s mouth, her fingers pinching the old woman’s nostrils closed, cutting off her air. I got hold of her wrists and elbowed her back from the bed, pushing her through the curtains so I could pin her against the wall as I shouted for help. It wasn’t long in coming: the nurse from the desk had followed me. She exclaimed in horror at the sight of Mrs Hearn, her eyes closed, her lips blue, her cheeks sunken. The nurse pressed an alarm button that brought running feet from all over the ward, and competent medical staff who swung into practised routines to knock Death’s hand off Mrs Hearn’s shoulder.

As they worked on her I struggled with my prisoner, who was desperately trying to get free, and I hadn’t the least idea what was going on but I’d recognised her as soon as I laid hands on her. She was shorter than me, and thinner, and her hair had loosened so it fell into her eyes, and none of that helped her. She raked at my face, her nails gouging my skin even though I jerked my head back. I got tired of that very quickly and kicked her leg as hard as I could, knocking her off balance enough for me to get her onto the floor where she was easier to control. I knelt on her shoulder, trying to stop her from fighting without hurting her. A solidly built male nurse squatted on her legs, which helped. I needed both hands to hold her wrists behind her, since my cuffs were two floors down in the waiting room near the operating theatre.

‘Get off me,’ she howled. ‘I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.’

‘That’s a lot of shouting for someone who can’t breathe,’ I observed. I was trying to see how the doctors were doing with Mrs Hearn. The bed was surrounded by people in scrubs barking observations and instructions at one another, and all I could conclude was that they were still trying to keep her alive, so there had to be a chance they’d succeed.

‘You’re killing me,’ the woman sobbed.

‘Nope. Arresting you.’ And I did just that, reciting her rights, all the while wondering what the hell was going on.

Eventually some security staff arrived and took over for me, so I could call Una Burt. I was still out of breath from fighting the woman, and my cheek stung like a bastard.

When the chief inspector answered her phone, she sounded irritated. ‘What is it, Maeve? Where are you?’

‘I’ve got one in custody,’ I said, trying not to pant. ‘Room 310.’

A short pause. Then, ‘What for?’

‘Murder.’ I looked at the bed, where Mrs Hearn was shaking her head slowly and trying to talk. ‘Actually, make that attempted murder.’ On the floor, Debbie Bellew snarled and fought. I touched my face, where it hurt, and my fingertips came away red. ‘And assault on a police officer. Let’s stick that one on the charge sheet too.’

I had a brief reunion with the police constable who’d been guarding Mrs Hearn: he was one of the response officers who turned up to transport my prisoner to the nearest police station.

‘I don’t believe it. All that time waiting for something to happen, and the second I leave it all kicks off.’

‘Which suggests you were doing a pretty good job,’ I pointed out, as Una Burt came to stand beside me, looking shattered.

‘Who is she?’

‘Her name is Debbie Bellew,’ I said. ‘She’s the mother of one of the fire victims.’

‘What was she doing here?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Good thing you happened to come along today.’

‘Yes, it was.’ I said it soberly. It was just luck that Mrs Hearn had survived; luck, and a determination to cling to life that I admired. It wasn’t as if she had all that much to look forward to, in my view, but she was a fighter, and she hadn’t given up yet.

Derwent appeared in the doorway, scowling darkly. He paused to take in the whole scene: the response officers, the prisoner, the milling medical staff who were now pretty much just gawking, the dressing on my face.

‘I leave you on your own for five minutes, Kerrigan. Five minutes.’ He bit his lip, which could have been concern, if I was thinking the best of him. ‘What’s under the bandage?’

I unpeeled the tape to show him: three scrapes that a nurse had cleaned quickly, but more thoroughly than I could have wished.

It wasn’t concern that had him biting his lip after all. He’d been trying not to laugh. It broke out on his face as a wide, wide grin. ‘Did they give you one of those cone collar things to stop you scratching at it?’

‘Ha ha,’ I said acidly.

Una Burt frowned at Derwent. ‘Where did you spring from? Where were you?’

‘I was just—’ he broke off as Mrs Hearn made a low, groaning sound. They had propped her up against some pillows, at her request, and a nurse sat beside the head of the bed, watching her carefully. She looked frail, and bruised, and above all confused. ‘Is she all right?’

‘For someone who just nearly died,’ Burt said tartly. I wondered if she’d noticed his neat sidestepping of the question about where he’d been when I needed him. I had noticed it and filed it away for a future discussion.

‘Who – who is she? What did she want with me?’ Mrs Hearn’s voice was slurred at the edges but she was coherent.

‘It’s your neighbour from flat 101,’ I explained.

Debbie gave a wail that made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. She was writhing in distress.

‘Take her away,’ Una Burt said to the uniformed officers. ‘See if you can get her assessed by someone in mental health before you take her to the police station, though. I don’t want her having to come back here to be sectioned if this is where she needs to be.’

‘No. Not yet.’ Mrs Hearn squinted across the room. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Debbie.’ She twisted her body. ‘Let me go. I have to go.’

‘I saw you.’ Mrs Hearn nodded. ‘Before the fire.’

‘No!’ Debbie screamed the word, then started sobbing. ‘I have to go. Take me away. I don’t want to be here any more.’

‘You saw her?’ I was concentrating on Mrs Hearn. ‘Where did you see her?’

‘On my television. In the hallway.’