Dying to Know (13 page)

I sat up straight. ‘What are you doing there?'

She didn't answer directly. ‘Can you come at once?'

‘Max, what's going on?'

‘Please, Lance. Can you come at once? I think that—'

And she stopped speaking. All that I heard was a clatter as the receiver was dropped. I shouted, ‘Max? Max?' The only sound I heard came about five seconds later. It was the sound of the receiver being put back on the cradle and then there was nothing other than the soft whisper of the ether.

My first impulse was to rush around there at once, to charge into the house and come to her rescue, but reason whispered in my head and slowed me. Although part of me felt that it was possibly wasting time as I waited to be connected to the police, another part told me that I was doing the sensible thing, that they would be able to get there before me. The woman who took the call was irritatingly slow and matter-of-fact, seeming to become more so as I became in turn more and more stressed. Eventually she was satisfied and I dropped the handset on the base, then ran to my car and drove there as fast as my new BMW series 3 and traffic conditions would allow. Thankfully there were already two police cars parked outside the house and I skidded untidily to a halt behind them.

The door to Lightoller's house was open and there was the usual small cluster standing on the pavement under a lime tree, talking amongst themselves. I thought bitterly that they must have been delighted to have yet another drama so quickly enacted for their own personal entertainment. I ran past them, aware of their judgemental gaze, their desire to be shocked by what they hoped was more disaster.

There was a uniformed police constable just inside and he stopped me with an official palm but then allowed me past when, from the back of the house, Constable Smith called out, ‘It's all right. Let him through.'

I hurried towards Smith who was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, just managing not to knock over a large brass table lamp as I went by. Smith looked genuinely worried as he said, ‘It's all right. We've called an ambulance.'

He let me through into the kitchen. A uniformed policewoman was down on one knee behind a round pine table, bending over the body of Max. My heart went into spasm. I said urgently, ‘Let me see her.'

The woman stood up and allowed me access to Max. Her face was white and there was some blood on the floor beneath her head. As I knelt down beside her I remember feeling neither anxious nor sick, just numb; completely divorced from everything. I was hovering above the world, giddy and yet perfectly focussed; holding my breath and yet hearing deep, undulant sighs in my ears.

The first two fingers of my right hand reached out to the side of her neck, felt nothing; somewhere inside my body there was a rising feeling of panic but, as I moved them slightly, the pulse came to them, strong and regular. I sighed a deep breath and with it the world became normal again; I rejoined my body, time seemed to speed back to its habitual pace, and I felt elation.

I looked into her eyes, saw contracting pupils that were equal in size, thought somewhere at the back of my mind that they were a beautiful hazel in colour, then heard her moan. Smith said, ‘Is she all right?'

I was feeling around the back of her head, my fingers encountering the sticky viscosity of coagulating blood and, without altering my position, I replied, ‘As far as I can tell, a single blow to the head but she'll be all right, I think.'

‘The ambulance should be here presently.'

‘Good.'

Max's eyes opened, looked at nothing for a moment, then found me. ‘Gosh,' was her only remark.

‘Are you all right?'

‘I don't know.' She winced, moved her head, then winced more deeply. ‘Ow.'

‘Is it just the head that hurts?'

She considered this question. ‘I think so.'

‘Well, lie there anyway. There's an ambulance coming and I want you checked over.'

‘I'm all right.' Of course, she tried to get up and, of course, she said, ‘Ow,' again, even before I pushed her gently back down.

Smith leaned over me. ‘Could I ask what you were doing here?'

She moved her focus to him, and frowned. ‘Doing where?'

‘In Oliver Lightoller's house.'

‘What am I doing there?'

Smith's voice expressed some exasperation. ‘That's what I want to know. This is a crime scene and it's a criminal offence to interfere with a crime scene.'

Max said, ‘Crime scene?' in a bewildered voice.

I said over my shoulder to Smith, ‘Post-traumatic amnesia. It's a sign of concussion. I don't think it's wise to continue this until she's had a chance to recover.'

‘I'm not sure. The inspector will want to know—'

‘Sod the inspector.'

Smith straightened up. ‘I'll have to report matters.'

‘Please do.'

He vacillated for a moment, then took me to one side. ‘Look, Dr Elliot, I'm sure that the young lady has a perfectly reasonable explanation of what she was doing inside the house, but the law's the law, you know. The inspector will have to know, but I don't suppose he'll want to take it much further.'

It was, in a way, the first sign of proper humanity he had shown and it changed my opinion of him from a slightly incompetent, robotic jobsworth to a man trying to do his job and finding it all a trifle tricky.

A call from the front door told us that the ambulance had arrived. Within ten minutes Max was in the back of it and I was left with a disgruntled Smith and the policewoman. We looked at each other. ‘Do you know what she was doing here?' he asked.

‘Not the foggiest.'

He didn't believe me. Just in case I'd forgotten, he repeated, ‘This is still a crime scene. It's an offence to interfere with a crime scene.'

I looked around and said facetiously, ‘It doesn't seem to be interfered with to me.'

‘That's not the point. I want to know what Miss Christy was doing here.'

‘As I said, constable, when she's fully recovered, I'm sure she'll tell you. What I want to know is who attacked her and, more specifically, what
they
were doing here.'

SEVENTEEN

B
y normal medical criteria, and even though physical examination and an X-ray of her head revealed nothing untoward, Max should have spent the night in hospital under four-hourly neurological observations, but because I promised to keep a close eye on her, she was allowed home after just five and a half hours. Somewhat oddly, though, her amnesia remained more or less unchanged, so that Constable Smith's repeated attempts to find out what had happened to her and why she had been in the house were thwarted. She seemed unfocussed and distracted, no matter what he asked. When he complained to the senior A&E registrar about this, implying that he thought that she was faking it, he received a condescending explanation that such things occasionally happened and that, as a layman, Constable Smith had no right to question clinical diagnoses. He departed shortly afterwards and I was able to thank the registrar for his assistance. Then I returned to the cubicle to collect Max. She was sitting on the couch, swinging her legs. She had an adhesive dressing applied to the back of her head, just to the left behind her ear, but she seemed to have improved remarkably from the slightly bewildered urchin who had been lying on the couch.

She asked, ‘Has he gone?'

‘For now.'

‘Good.' She hopped down. ‘Can we go now?'

I like to think of myself as quick and so it was not long before I twigged. ‘You're all right.'

‘My head hurts,' she pointed out.

‘But you're not concussed.'

‘Of course I'm not.'

I took this in, thought about it and then, with light dawning all around me, I asked, ‘Can you remember what happened?'

She made a show of deep consideration. ‘I think so . . .' she said hesitantly, then spoiled things by smirking.

‘You never had amnesia, did you?'

‘Not exactly, no.'

‘Not in any way, I think.'

She made big eyes, and looked up at me. ‘I was a bit confused for a while.' She had a look of unalloyed innocence, but then, I suspect, so did Lizzie Borden shortly before she took up indoor lumberjacking.

‘Why all this charade?'

She said disdainfully, ‘You heard what Constable Smith said. It's a criminal offence to interfere with a crime scene. I didn't want to get into trouble.'

I sighed.

‘Why were you in the house?'

She opened her hazel eyes wide, gave me a full view of the light-green flecks in the irises, as her rather pouting lips formed a circle that tried to portray puzzlement. We were in the car, waiting behind a queue of cars to turn right on to the London Road. She said, ‘I went there to nose around.'

I sighed. ‘I guessed as much.'

‘It just seemed a good opportunity to see whether we could find any clues.'

Find any clues.
It was a naive thing to say, a naive way of looking at things. ‘I told you we were going to go home and get some sleep before we did anything.'

‘You told me that
you
were going to do that. That doesn't mean I have to do likewise.'

‘Yes, it does.'

‘No, it doesn't.'

‘Max, yes, it does.'

We were becoming slightly heated in this puerile exchange and, because we were both tired, neither of us spotted it. Her face was taking on an intransigent, angry look as she responded, ‘No, it doesn't, Lance. I'm not an underling. If I want to snoop around, I will.'

‘And look what happened. You could have been killed. It was a stupid, juvenile thing to do. We're not members of the Secret Seven, you know, Max.'

But I had gone too far, as I appreciated at once, because her face became suffused and set and I could see that she wanted to cry but was damned if she was going to succumb to the desire. I had broken the taboo and alluded to her age, to the age difference between us, and that made neither of us comfortable. There was silence for the time it took to get from the Pond roundabout to the Granada Bingo Hall where I asked in a gentle voice, ‘What did you find?'

She refused to answer until I was in the act of turning right off the main road, then mumbled, ‘Nothing.'

‘Oh.'

‘I had only just got into the house when I was interrupted.'

‘How did you get in?'

‘It was absurdly easy in the end, although when I got there, I suddenly realized that I might have a problem. I thought about going around the back, but I couldn't get around there. For a while I was stuck and I just sat on the wall staring at the front of the house and the door with all that silly yellow tape across it. I don't know why, but suddenly I got up and ducked under the tape and just shoved against the door. To my surprise, it opened. For some reason, they'd left it on the latch.'

For a moment I was as surprised as she was, then I appreciated the truth of the situation. I murmured, ‘I'm not sure you can blame the police.'

She glanced across at me, for a moment uncomprehending, then her face showed that she followed me. ‘Oh, I see.'

I turned into my road, past the roadworks where symphony for pneumatic drill and pickaxe was still being assiduously practised. ‘What did you do when you got inside?'

‘I began to look around.'

When I asked, ‘What were you looking for?' it was genuinely because I did not know and when she didn't answer I realized that neither did she. ‘Anything,' she said at last, and I contented myself with nodding knowingly.

I parked the car and we got out, went into the house. Max volunteered to make some tea while I phoned AMH to discover that there was no change in Dad's condition. In the kitchen over a steaming mug, I asked, ‘What happened, then?'

‘I was in the back room, looking around when I heard a noise; I think it was someone coming down the stairs. It gave me such a fright.'

‘I'm not surprised.'

‘I panicked, and suddenly I felt trapped. I ran for the door and, through the banisters, I saw the bottom half of someone coming down the stairs. I turned left and crept as quietly as I could into the kitchen. I thought that he hadn't seen or heard me, so I just crouched down in the far corner of the kitchen and waited.'

‘He? It was definitely “he”?'

‘Oh, well, I suppose it could have been a woman . . .'

‘What did he – or she – do then?'

‘I heard someone moving around. It was then that I spotted the phone extension on the far side of the kitchen and went across to it to call you. Whoever it was came in while I was making the call.'

I reached out across the kitchen table to take her hands. ‘Whoever it was could have killed you,' I pointed out gently.

Her eyes were large and underlined by tears as she nodded. ‘I know.'

I squeezed her hands and said, ‘I think you need to get some sleep, and I know I could.'

I led her upstairs, leaving the tea undrunk.

EIGHTEEN

W
e managed all of two hours of sleep before the doorbell rang. It was Masson's formidable face that greeted me as I answered it. He managed what he supposed was a smile and said, ‘Sorry if I'm bothering you, doctor. Mind if I come in?'

Being a policeman, it didn't matter much to him what minding was going on in my head, so he stepped past me and I was left, in my dressing gown, trailing him as he made his way into my house. ‘Isn't Miss Christy going to join us?' he asked.