47

I WOKE UP IN A HOSPITAL ROOM. THE WINDOW BLINDS WERE drawn but there seemed to be soft light behind them. I’d lived to see another day. I lay still for long minutes. I was very hot. Then I risked moving my arms and legs. Everything hurt. Everything did what it was supposed to. I sat up and had a whole new experience of pain. My head, face, torso, everything screaming.

I sat still on the bed, just concentrating on breathing in and out, waiting for the pain to fade. After a while, when it had drifted back to a dull ache, I thought about lying down again. Only sensible thing really. Except I desperately needed to pee.

I lowered myself to the floor and experimented with standing upright. A toddler would have sneered, but at least I hadn’t fallen. At the far end of the room, about eight feet away, was a door that I was praying led into a private bathroom. No way was I negotiating a corridor.

I set off. Oh shit, it hurt. Couldn’t I have peed in the river? My head was spinning by the time I got to the door. Thank God, a loo, with disabled bars. There was a chance I could sit down without falling.

Sitting down was achievable. Getting up again was a whole different story, so for a while I just didn’t bother. Where was I? One of the south London hospitals, probably. I remembered bright lights shining on me. A man’s hand reaching down. I hadn’t been able to take my hand off the rope to grasp his, so he’d lassoed me like a runaway steer and dragged me to the back of the RIB. A pretty red-haired girl, part of the Met’s Marine Policing Unit, had fastened me on a stretcher and wrapped silver heat-retentive blankets around me. Then the RIB’s engines had fired up and we’d flown across the river to where an ambulance was waiting.

Realizing I couldn’t spend the night on the loo, I pulled myself up. The pain might have been easier but it was marginal. And for some reason it was feeling horribly difficult to breathe. Like I had a heavy cold. After flushing the loo, I left the bathroom. The door to my room had a window that looked out into a corridor and, directly opposite my door, a man was sitting in a plastic chair. His eyes were closed, his left arm in a sling. The door to my room and his eyes opened at the same time. Joesbury stared at me for a second, then got to his feet.

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked, when we were both inside my room and the door had closed gently behind us.

‘Like I fell in the Thames.’

Joesbury looked exhausted and I wondered how long he’d been sitting outside my door.

‘You really shouldn’t be up,’ he said. ‘They pumped you full of painkillers and sedatives two hours ago.’

Sedatives might explain why my head felt like a swarm of bees was trapped inside it. ‘What happened to me?’ I asked.

‘Mainly cracked ribs. A few strains. And a lot of bruising.’

That didn’t seem too bad. I nodded at his sling. ‘Was that my doing?’ I asked.

He shrugged with the uninjured shoulder. ‘Well, they don’t have to amputate just yet.’ Then he half smiled. ‘I’ve got your trainer in my car,’ he added.

I looked down at my foot. ‘I think I lost the other one,’ I said.

The smile became a little wider. ‘Maybe I’ll keep it as a souvenir.’

‘What about Cooper?’ I asked. All the time I’d been in the river, I hadn’t given the man who’d pulled me in a second thought. Survival had been all that mattered. Now though …

Joesbury shook his head. ‘Nothing yet,’ he said. ‘But we wouldn’t expect it. We wouldn’t have found you if …’

‘I know,’ I said, and when that didn’t seem enough, ‘Thank you.’

‘He’s dead, Flint. The chances of both of you getting out were zero.’

‘I know,’ I said again. It was better, probably, that Cooper didn’t survive. And yet … ‘That thing he said just before we went in. About it being a fix.’

‘They all say that.’ Joesbury indicated the bed. ‘Now, you really need to get some sleep,’ he went on. ‘Tully’ll be here first thing in the morning, clucking like a mother hen and wanting chapter and verse on everything.’

‘I’ll just wash my hands,’ I said. In the corner of the room was a washbasin.

He stepped after me. ‘Lacey, that’s not—’

I was at the basin. Automatically, I raised my head to the mirror. Staring back at me was a face I’d never seen before. I stepped quickly back, as though not looking at it might make it go away. It hadn’t though, I could see in Joesbury’s face it hadn’t. I put my hands up to cover the hideous thing I’d turned into. Then one arm was wrapped around me and I was weeping against a black and grey sweatshirt.

‘It’s 90 per cent superficial,’ he was saying into my ear. ‘I spoke to one of the doctors. Most of it is swelling and bruising. In a couple of weeks it’ll be gone.’

I couldn’t stop crying.

‘I think something must have hit you in the face,’ Joesbury went on. ‘Thank God you still had your bike helmet on.’

‘What’s the bandage for?’ I managed. I hadn’t seen my nose; where it should have been was a large square, surgical strip.

‘There’s a fracture in your nose just above the bridge …’

I wasn’t crying any more. I was howling.

‘Stop it, shush now. It’s going to be fine. The Met will pay for it to be made as good as new.’

I was trying to stop. I really was. For one thing, it was getting hard to breathe.

‘What else?’ I muttered.

Joesbury sighed. ‘There’s a small cut on your right temple. If it leaves a scar it’ll be a tiny one. The inside of your lip needed stitches, but any scarring will be inside your mouth.’

Deep breath. Joesbury’s sweatshirt had blood on it. Mine.

‘That’s all. I promise you. You’ll be as gorgeous as ever in a few weeks.’

I ran my hands over my face – God, it was sore – then looked up. I raised my finger to touch a scar – his. For several long seconds we just looked at each other. Then he said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘For grabbing my shoe instead of my ankle?’ I mumbled, knowing this wasn’t about what had happened on Vauxhall Bridge.

‘For giving you such a hard time the last couple of weeks,’ he said.

I couldn’t look at him any more. ‘You’ve been a complete bastard,’ I said.

‘You’ve been a complete bastard, sir,’ he corrected, pulling me closer still. ‘And I know.’

‘Why?’ I asked, not quite daring to lift my eyes from the tear-stains on his sweatshirt.

His left arm twitched inside the sling, as though he wanted to wrap that one round me too, and he gave a little sigh. ‘Dana thinks I fancy you rotten and I’m taking the time-honoured male path of venting sexual frustration through unreasonable aggression,’ he said.

So he and Dana weren’t …? Oh, grinning hurt like hell.

‘Is she right?’ I muttered to the tear-stain.

‘Probably,’ he said, as I was wondering how much kissing would hurt. ‘Although I told myself I was just taking the time-honoured path of reasonable suspicion when faced with a still-warm corpse and a witness covered in blood.’

Smirk gone. I tilted my head back to look him in the eyes. ‘You thought I killed Geraldine Jones?’

‘Well, look at it from my point of view, Flint,’ he said, as I realized I was doing exactly that. ‘The Jones woman went to that estate to meet someone and it’s been your regular Friday-night hang-out for a while now. You weren’t on duty when Amanda Weston went missing, or when she was killed. You were late into work the morning Emma Boston’s flat was broken into. Circumstantially, you could have done it. You have a drugs history – yeah, I know, all minor stuff and a long time ago – and you also have a mysterious habit of running round Camden in the small hours.’

Joesbury thought I’d killed Geraldine Jones? All the time I’d thought he was suspicious of my past, of my minor record with the police, he’d been investigating a potential killer? Who else had thought that about me? And what the hell had they found out?

‘Did you tell DI Tulloch?’ I asked, knowing my body had stiffened, my voice had become brittle and that I really couldn’t let him see how much what he’d just said had scared me.

‘Yep,’ said Joesbury, who wasn’t too keen to let me edge away. ‘She told me I was nuts, but if I could find any evidence that you’d had any past dealings with the Jones or the Weston families, or Samuel Cooper after he became our most wanted, she’d take me seriously.’

‘Did you?’ I asked, wondering when I’d stopped breathing.

‘Zilch,’ said Joesbury, his hand firm on my waist, not letting me go anywhere. ‘No evidence at all that Lacey Flint ever came across either family until the mothers were found dead. Or that she ever met Sam Cooper before this evening.’

His one good hand left my waist and gently touched the under-side of my chin. He was tilting my face up towards his. ‘And just so we’re clear,’ he said, when we made eye contact once more, ‘your Camden-based social life will be a problem for me.’

The door to the room opened. Joesbury raised his head but otherwise didn’t move. I turned. A plump black nurse in green scrubs stood in the doorway. Behind her, a young, uniformed police constable.

‘You shouldn’t be up,’ she announced, stepping inside. ‘Come on now.’

Joesbury let me go and the nurse crossed to the bed, peeling back the covers. She patted the mattress and her expression made it clear she was having no nonsense.

‘Say goodnight, big fella,’ she told Joesbury.

Joesbury looked at his watch. ‘Good morning, beautiful,’ he said. And then he followed the nurse’s pointing finger and left the room.