Trick of the Mind (4 page)

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Authors: Cassandra Chan

BOOK: Trick of the Mind
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Just before four, Wyber reappeared, still in faultless scrubs but now looking rather tired. He glanced about the waiting room and, not seeing any of the plainclothes detectives who had greeted him before, looked a question at the uniformed policemen standing guard.
“This is Chief Inspector Carmichael’s wife,” said one of the men. “She knows DS Gibbons.”
“How is he, Doctor?” she asked, rising and coming forward, steeling herself to hear the worst while hoping for the best.
“It went quite smoothly,” Wyber told her. “I can’t say he’s entirely out of danger yet, but he came through the operation very well. A small section of bowel had to be removed, but that shouldn’t bother him at all, and the other holes were reparable. Peritonitis is a concern at this point, but he’s young and strong—I should say he has a good chance of coming through this.”
Something in Dotty’s chest suddenly relaxed, though she had not been aware of the constriction before, and she took her first deep breath in several hours.
“That’s excellent news,” she told the doctor, beaming at him. “May I sit with him? My husband wanted him to have someone there when he woke.”
“He’s still in recovery at the moment,” replied Wyber, “but I’ll tell them to let you know when he’s moved into a room. He won’t be waking for some little time yet in any case. Oh,” he added as an afterthought, “the chief inspector wanted the bullets kept.” He looked dubiously down at Dotty. “Do you, er …”
“No,” said Dotty firmly.
“That would be Detective Constable Lemmy’s job,” said one of the policemen, and Dotty gave him a grateful glance. “Jake here will wake him.”
Wyber nodded, looking somewhat askance at the spectacle of Lemmy stretched out across a row of chairs. “Yes, of course,” he murmured. “I’ll have my nurse bring them out.”
“Thank you very much, Doctor,” said Dotty. “My husband and I think a lot of Sergeant Gibbons and we appreciate your efforts ever so much.”
“Not at all, not at all, Mrs. Carmichael. Pleased to be of service.”
And, with a little bow, Wyber withdrew.
Which left Dotty and the two policemen grinning foolishly at each other.
“Over the first hurdle,” she said, and went to ring her husband with the news.
At just about that time, Bethancourt was driving off the ferry at Dover. His nap aboard ship had left him feeling blurry instead of rested, but at least he was once again in England, driving on the proper side of the road, and not much more than ninety minutes’ drive from London.
And, best of all, within mobile phone range again. As he swung the Volvo onto the A2, bypassing Dover’s city center, he reached for his phone, trepidation roiling his stomach as he waited for Carmichael to answer. He was all too conscious that he had been out of touch for well over an hour and that anything might have happened in that time.
“Carmichael here.”
“It’s Phillip Bethancourt again, sir,” said Bethancourt, pressing the phone to his ear. It was absurd, but the reception had been better in Calais. “Have you heard anything?”
“I’ve just got the news,” Carmichael replied, and he sounded pleased. “He’s out of surgery and doing fine. He’s still in critical condition, mind, but he’s done well to make it this far.”
“Thank God,” said Bethancourt fervently. “Is he awake yet?”
“Not yet. They apparently expect that to take some little while. Where are you, lad?”
“In Dover. I’ve just come off the ferry.”
“And you’ll go straight through to the hospital?”
“I was planning to, yes.”
“Good, good. I’ll speak to you then—I should be back there by the time you arrive.”
“I’ll look forward to that, sir,” said Bethancourt, and rang off.
He was beginning to feel more hopeful; that Gibbons had come through the operation was, he thought, a very good sign. And he himself was bound to make good time along the A2 at this hour; the only traffic consisted of a few early lorries speeding toward London with their deliveries. At this rate, he should be in town by half five, or six at the latest.
Ian Hodges, chief of Scotland Yard’s forensics laboratory, had a raspy, unpleasant speaking voice, which was universally regarded by the Yard’s detectives as music to their ears. Certainly Carmichael felt that way early that morning when he answered his phone and heard the familiar gruff tones.
“What have you got?” he asked eagerly.
“As far as we can make out from the times we’ve been given, Sergeant Gibbons was on the phone when he was shot,” replied Hodges.
“On the phone?” The scene of the crime flashed into Carmichael’s mind, the blood on the pavement washing away in the rain and the red stain left beneath the bus shelter. “Of course,” he murmured. “He wasn’t coming out of that house—he stopped there to use his phone and keep it out of the rain.”
“Probably,” grunted Hodges. “We’re going to have some work to do to pull up all the data on the phone—it died on the way into the lab. All we managed to garner was the last number he rang.”
“And what was that?” asked Carmichael eagerly.
Hodges seemed surprised. “It wasn’t you, sir?”
“What? No, of course it wasn’t me. Why do you say that?”
“Because it’s your number,” retorted Hodges.
“It can’t have been,” protested Carmichael. “I’ve had my mobile on all evening, ever since I left the office.”
“Not your mobile,” corrected Hodges. “Your office line. He rang it at nine fourteen this evening.”
Carmichael cursed fluently. “I never thought to check,” he admitted. “Let me know when you have anything else, will you, Hodges? I must check my voice mail at once.”
“Right you are,” agreed Hodges. “I’ll ring you again as soon as I have any more.”
“Thank you, Hodges. You’re a godsend.”
Hodges accepted this accolade with his usual insouciance and rang off, leaving Carmichael to meet the questioning eyes of Inspector Hollings and Sergeant O’Leary. They were all sitting in an interview room at Lambeth station, having sent Constable Clarkson off to continue his well-earned repose.
“Gibbons apparently left me a message,” Carmichael told them, dialing. “I never once thought to check my own messages.”
“I wonder if Davies has checked his,” said Hollings.
“See that he does, will you?” said Carmichael, typing in a code. “Ah, here we go.”
Gibbons’s voice came over the line, sounding just as usual; it gave Carmichael a chill to hear it.
“Gibbons here, sir. Something rather strange has come up and I wonder if you could spare me a few minutes tomorrow morning. I’d very much like to talk it over with you if you have the time. I’ll ring you again when I get into the office. Thanks.”
Carmichael played it over again, and then let Hollings and O’Leary listen to it.
“He doesn’t sound particularly upset,” offered O’Leary.
“No, he doesn’t, does he?” said Carmichael thoughtfully. “Really, he could have wanted anything at all. It wouldn’t necessarily have to do with a case.”
“I can’t see why he would be ringing you about a case at all,” said Hollings. “If he’d had some idea about the Haverford robbery, he would have rung Davies. Unless—” He paused, thinking it out. “Have you spoken to him about any of your own recent cases, sir?”
Carmichael shook his head. “I last spoke with him about a fortnight ago,” he said. “I stopped in to make sure he was doing all right with Arts. It’s a big change from homicide. I may have mentioned the case I was working on, but since I wrapped it up last Sunday, I can’t think why he should ring me about it now. There’s no doubt in the case—the killer confessed.”
“So we’re back to square one,” said Hollings, exasperated.
“Jack himself may be able to fill us in,” said O’Leary. “We can’t know until he comes to himself.”
“Mrs. Carmichael will ring me the moment he does,” Carmichael assured them.
Dotty Carmichael was at that moment sitting by Gibbons’s bedside in intensive care, having finally been allowed in to see him. There had been a stool, but the sister had done away with it and brought up a proper chair. Dotty liked the sister, who was a brisk, no-nonsense sort of person.
“He’s stirring a bit,” she had said. “We’ll probably move him into a room in an hour or so if he continues on as he’s going.”
“He’s doing all right then?” asked Dotty doubtfully. Gibbons looked terribly unwell to her eye.
“Quite all right,” said the sister, who apparently did not share this outlook. “His blood pressure is holding up nicely. We’re keeping a close eye on his temperature, but he’s doing well so far.”
Much gratified by this news, Dotty had nodded and taken her seat, making herself as comfortable as she could and hoping she would soon be moving to a hospital room where—she knew from long experience—they had cushioned armchairs.
The sister had said Gibbons was beginning to come out from under the anesthetic, but Dotty could see no sign of it. He lay very still, the only movement the shallow rise and fall of his chest, and she contemplated him anxiously. She felt she knew him well, having heard so much about him from her husband, though in fact she had met the sergeant only a handful of times. She knew what it would do to her husband if Gibbons should die or be permanently disabled and she clung to the sister’s encouraging words while she waited, praying silently, for him to wake up.
Time was ticking down on the clock in Bethancourt’s mind, while his lips moved in an echo of Dotty Carmichael’s prayers. He was beginning to feel that he would make it to Gibbons’s side before the
drama finished playing itself out, however it might end. He did not suppose his presence would make any great difference, other than to make himself feel better, but having come so close, he was desperate not to fail at the last.
His brief leg on the M2 had flown by and he was back on the A2 again, just now reaching the outskirts of Greater London. Another half hour should, he thought, see him at the hospital. His London A to Z was back in his Chelsea flat, and he did not know the area well, so he was dependent on the hire car’s GPS system, which he did not wholly trust. It seemed, for some reason, to think he should have turned off some miles ago.
His back ached and his long frame felt cramped and stiff from sitting so long behind the wheel, but he was buoyed by the thought that the long night was nearly over.
The Morning
D
etective Inspector Jack Gibbons was asleep, his face very pale beneath the brown stubble on his cheeks, his redbrown hair looking dark in contrast. He was normally a slightly stocky, energetic man, but he looked thinner now and terribly vulnerable. A tube snaked across one wan cheek into his nose, intravenous fluid dripped into his arm, while a blood pressure cuff tightened and relaxed about his biceps. The machines and monitoring devices gave off a constant low hum in the quiet of the room.
Bethancourt’s face was sober as he stood by the bedside, his skin bleached nearly as pale as his hair with fatigue, his tall, lean form stooped a little from the same cause. He had taken off his hornrimmed glasses to rub at his eyes and they dangled from one hand as he regarded his friend silently.
Dotty Carmichael watched the pair from her chair in the corner of the room. It was she who had come out to vouch for Bethancourt with the uniformed guards at the door, despite never having met him before. But Carmichael had told her he was on his way, and she easily recognized the young man from his description, secretly amused to find that Bethancourt was somewhat taller than her husband had ever mentioned, topping the chief inspector by at least an inch.
In times past, Carmichael had also described Bethancourt as charming, though Dotty had understandably not seen much of that in the present circumstances. He had been scrupulously polite in a distant, public-school sort of way, and was clearly terribly anxious about Gibbons. He had been standing at the bedside for at least ten minutes now and showed no signs of moving.
But in this she was mistaken, for the next moment he stirred and, replacing his glasses, turned to smile at her sheepishly.
“You must excuse me,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ve been terribly rude.”
“Not at all,” said Dotty. “They tell me,” she added, “that he’s doing quite well.”
“Ah,” said Bethancourt, glancing quickly back at Gibbons as if her words might magically have brought the bloom of health to his cheeks.
“I know,” she said. “He doesn’t look it.”
Bethancourt sighed and sat down on the stool. “No,” he agreed. “He looks—well, rather worse than I had thought. Has he woken at all?”
Dotty nodded. “Two or three times now, but very briefly. He seemed very confused, but the sister said that was the anesthetic and painkillers at work. I don’t think he recognized me.”
“It must be very disorienting,” said Bethancourt. “Passing out somewhere and then waking up in a completely different place, I mean.”
“Yes, indeed.”
Bethancourt hesitated, and then said, “Do you know—was the damage very extensive?”
“Oh,” said Dotty, “I wasn’t thinking—of course you haven’t had any details, have you? Apparently the damage wasn’t as bad as it might have been, or so they say. The surgeon removed two bullets from the sergeant’s abdomen and performed a bowel resection. He said it went smoothly.”
“Two bullets?” Bethancourt looked alarmed. “He was shot twice?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. Since he wasn’t found right away, they’re worried he may develop peritonitis. His temperature is up a little.”
“God.” Bethancourt rubbed at his face again. “I never thought anything like this would happen,” he said, looking up. “Not to Jack.”
“No,” agreed Dotty. “One never does. And it doesn’t happen often, thank God.”
Bethancourt murmured agreement, turning back to look at Gibbons again.
And just then Gibbons stirred, frowned, and opened his eyes. Even their normal fierce blue color seemed to Bethancourt to be dimmed.
Bethancourt was on his feet in an instant, bending over the bed.
“Jack?” he asked. “How are you feeling?”
“Phillip?” said Gibbons faintly, looking confused. “What are you doing here?”
“I came as soon as I heard,” said Bethancourt, not at all certain Gibbons knew where “here” was. “How are you, old man?”
Gibbons blinked, as if he were having trouble focusing. “Is there anything to drink?” he asked. “I’m awfully thirsty.”
“Yes, of course,” said Bethancourt, looking round.
Dotty was before him, experience having taught her that this request would be coming in short order. She handed Bethancourt a cup with a few ice chips in it.
“They said only ice, no liquid,” she murmured.
Bethancourt nodded and dropped a bit of ice into Gibbons’s mouth. Gibbons looked vaguely startled, but sucked on the ice anyway while Bethancourt said, “I’m afraid that’s all you’re allowed. Does it help?”
Gibbons nodded, his eyelids already beginning to droop again. “Cheers,” he mumbled, and fell back to sleep.
Bethancourt, left holding the ice, smiled down at him.
Gibbons had only the vaguest recollection of this incident when he woke again, half an hour later. He was first aware of feeling generally bruised and battered, and something hurt quite a lot, but he wasn’t sure what it was. He blinked his eyes open sleepily and found himself in a hospital room.
“Jack?”
His vision seemed oddly blurred, and he squinted up to see
Bethancourt leaning over him with a cup in his hand. Unconsciously, he swallowed in preparation for speaking, and discovered that his throat was one of the things that was very sore indeed. Moreover, there seemed to be some kind of tube stuck down his gullet. That, together with the hospital room and the muddy, sick feeling in his head, began to ring alarm bells. Fear started to coalesce in the pit of his stomach.
“Phillip?” he ventured, and his earlier brief bout with consciousness came back to him. “I thought you were a dream,” he muttered.
“Not a bit of it,” said Bethancourt.
Gibbons closed his eyes again, squeezing them tight in order to take away the blurriness, and tried to think. He had some hazy notion that Bethancourt was out of town, but that clearly was wrong. And he did not remember being in hospital.
“I was going to work,” he murmured, trying to bring himself up-to-date.
“What?” asked Bethancourt anxiously. “I couldn’t make that out.”
The inquiry interrupted Gibbons’s tenuous train of thought and he cracked an eye open to glare at his friend, only to find the plastic cup waving dangerously close to his eye.
“More ice?” asked Bethancourt helpfully.
“Not in my eye,” retorted Gibbons, batting feebly at the cup. He made an effort to push himself into a sitting position; the effort ended abruptly in a blinding flash of pain that made him gasp and close his eyes again. It was so severe that he was not even sure where exactly it had originated. Dimly, he heard Bethancourt saying, “Whoa. Take it easy there—I don’t think you ought to be doing sit-ups just yet,” while he struggled to conquer the fear that something was seriously wrong with him. He found himself panting a little and tried to slow his breathing.
“Was there an accident?” he whispered in a moment.
“That’s right,” replied Bethancourt in a soothing tone. “But the doctors say you’re going to be fine.”
The soothing tone struck a false note with Gibbons. Still, he did not imagine that Bethancourt would lie to him, even if the prognosis was less good.
“What happened?” he asked. “I can’t remember anything.”
“Well, you’ve had a bit of an operation,” said Bethancourt. “That’s why your tummy’s so sore. But it went very smoothly, so they say, and they expect you to make a full recovery with time.”
Gibbons felt greatly relieved to hear it, but even in his dazed state, it was not lost on him that Bethancourt had failed to mention why he had been brought to the hospital to begin with. He was beginning to feel quite put out with his friend.
“But why have I had an operation?” he demanded. “Did my appendix burst? Was I hit by a car?”
“Not exactly,” said Bethancourt, dithering a bit. “In fact, you were, er, shot.”
Gibbons could not have been more surprised.
“Shot?” he repeated incredulously. “With a gun you mean?”
Bethancourt nodded solemnly. “That’s right. You were shot twice, as a matter of fact. But as I say, it wasn’t half as bad as it might have been. Your intestines are a bit shorter than they were this morning, but other than that, all’s well.”
It seemed beyond belief.
“But who shot me?” he asked.
“No one’s sure just at the moment,” said Bethancourt. “But Carmichael’s working hard on it, and he’ll no doubt have an answer shortly.” He cocked his head. “How do you feel?”
“Not very well,” admitted Gibbons. He shifted cautiously, relieved to find a more gentle movement did not result in the same hideous pain. “Perhaps I
will
have—is that water?”
“Ice,” corrected Bethancourt, eagerly fishing out a chip and adroitly slipping it into his friend’s mouth before he could protest. “You can’t have anything else yet.”
Gibbons might have questioned this, but sucking on the ice brought the tube in this throat back to prominence.
“What is this?” he asked irritably, fumbling at his nose.
“Er …” said Bethancourt and glanced over his shoulder.
“I don’t know either,” said a woman’s voice. “They said something about keeping his lungs clear, but I didn’t quite understand.”
Gibbons was startled to find someone else was in the room—normally he was a very observant man—and peered around Bethancourt. His eyes widened as they lit on Dotty.
“Oh, hello, Mrs. Carmichael,” he said weakly.
“Hello, dear,” said Dotty. “We’ve all been very worried about you. Wallace will be glad to hear you’re awake.”
“Is the chief inspector here, too?” asked Gibbons in a small voice.
“Yes indeed.” Dotty smiled at him. “He just went out to take a call and will be right back. And he’s sent a car for your parents—they should be here in not much longer,” she added with a glance at the lightening sky out the window.
“But …” began Gibbons, and then let his voice trail off as he, too, looked out the window and realized how early it was. “It’s not the same morning,” he said starkly.
Dotty looked confused, as well she might, but Bethancourt seemed to understand what he meant.
“Ah,” he said. “Is that the last thing you remember? Yesterday morning?”
“I—I don’t know,” answered Gibbons, frowning with the fruitless effort to put his memories in order. “I guess … what day is it now?”
“Wednesday morning,” answered Bethancourt.
Gibbons shook his head. “I remember going to work on Tuesday,” he said, but his tone was doubtful.
“Well, don’t fret over it,” said Dotty. “You’ll never get better if you do that. You leave it to Wallace to sort out—he will, whether you fret or not.”
“Right,” said Bethancourt. “Do you want anything? I can call the nurse.”
What Gibbons wanted was to think clearly, but that was obviously not an option. He felt unbearably weary, as if he had run a marathon and got a bad cramp in his belly at the end.
“I don’t think so,” he said uncertainly. “Where are we, anyway?”
“University College Hospital,” answered Bethancourt. “They rushed you here from Walworth.”
“Walworth?” This made no sense at all.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Bethancourt. “It’s the best trauma center in London—they’ll get you well.”
Gibbons felt that there was something vaguely sinister in the way Bethancourt kept harping on his recovery, but his brain was beginning to shut down again and he could not reason it out.
“All right,” he replied, though what he was agreeing to he could not have said. “I think perhaps I’ll have another sleep now. I don’t seem able to stay awake.”
“That’ll be the anesthetic,” said Dotty comfortingly. “You’ll feel more alert later.”
It hardly seemed possible. As he drifted off into soft, painless darkness, he wondered if he would have to give up his job because of not being able to think straight.
Bethancourt and Dotty fell into a hushed silence, watching the regular rise and fall of Gibbons’s chest, fruitlessly striving to determine any deviation from normal sleep. Neither of them had yet spoken when there was the sound of a heavy footstep behind them and Carmichael appeared in the doorway. The long night had left its mark on him and he looked older than Bethancourt remembered, the lines in his face more deeply etched, his eyes bleary. Even his eyebrows, those bristling harbingers of Carmichael’s mood, seemed damped down.
“Ah, Bethancourt, you’re here,” he said, his voice a low rumble. Then he looked toward the bed as he came into the room to lay a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “How is he?”
“He woke again,” said Dotty. “He seemed less confused than before and he recognized Mr. Bethancourt.”
“Good, good.” Carmichael rubbed a hand over his face and sank down on the arm of Dotty’s chair.
“You look all in, sir,” said Bethancourt sympathetically.

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