In Too Deep (Knight & Culverhouse Book 5) (17 page)

Y
ou’d imagine
that calmness and confusion wouldn’t go together very well, but they’re doing a very good job of cancelling each other out. My body is relaxed, yet my mind is screaming; the desperation to yell out is being quashed by the calmness I know is being provided by the drugs. Black and white. Yin and yang.

It’s a terrifying position to be in, feeling completely in control of your mind but unable to do a thing about your body. That control has been hard fought, but I’ve got there. I’ve gradually learned to separate the wheat from the chaff, work through my memories, understand the stimuli. What else is there to do when you’re lying in a hospital bed, unable to move? If you do nothing, you’ll go mad.

All I can do is hope. Hope that the words I thought I was saying actually got out; hope that they got to the right people; hope that those people know what to do about them.

But I’ve got time on my side, haven’t I? There’s a police presence on the ward. They can’t do anything while the police are here. Can they?

I know I’m unlikely to get another chance to speak out. They’re not going to give me a second opportunity. I just need to pray with every fibre of my being that I made the most of my first.

There’s a good chance it’s too late. I know that. And a kind of grudging yet peaceful acceptance is washing over me. When you know there’s truly nothing you can do, the human brain has a marvellous way of ridding itself of all worry. After all, what’s the point? Que sera, sera.

And it’s then that I realise why I’ve reached this level of acceptance, why I’ve made peace with myself and my situation. It’s because I know it’s too late. I hear the footsteps. I recognise them immediately. No-one else wears hard soles on this ward. No-one else walks with that particular gait, that pattern of moving.

And again, I feel my mind detach from my body. It’s as if I’m floating, up above myself, watching on as a spectator as I see myself lying in the hospital bed with him standing over me. And I watch as he loosens a tube, detaches a wire. I see the monitor start to change its display, warning that things aren’t going quite right.

And everything starts to become very dark.

J
ulian Mills stood
in Tanya Henderson’s room on the ward, watching the monitor next to her bed. Her breathing had become laboured without the endotracheal tube, which lay on the pillow next to her head, the bulbous end thick with a coating of mucus and saliva.

He could feel his heart beating in his chest, knowing it wouldn’t be long until it happened. And he had to hope that the nurse wouldn’t arrive in the meantime.

The bleeping of the monitoring equipment was far louder than he wanted it to be, and he was pleased that he’d asked the nurse to fetch him something from the café while he watched the fort. Sure, she’d think him a complete sexist arsehole, but so what? At least she wouldn’t know the real truth. And even if she did, it would never be proven.

Once it was too late — once Tanya’s heart had stopped beating for a minute or so — he’d reinsert the breathing tube and reattach the monitoring equipment. Her lungs would fill with air and empty, over and over again, but it would be no use. The monitoring equipment would detect no pulse. And he’d be back at the reception, assiduously keeping an eye on the desk, just like he said he would.

Only a couple of seconds had passed, but it felt like much longer. Fortunately, he’d timed the walk to and from the café himself. If you took the stairs it was a round trip of eight minutes, thirty seconds. If you took the lift it could be anywhere between eight and nine minutes. Factor in the time it’d take her to find what he wanted and buy it, and you were probably looking at a safe nine minutes, possibly ten. He’d be out of here within eight anyway, if only this bloody woman would die.

This bloody woman who’d tried to ruin his life, who’d been sniffing around and asking too many questions. And now look at what she was making him do. This went against everything he knew, everything he’d trained his whole life to do. His Hippocratic Oath, gone up in flames. He’d never wanted it to come to this. That was why he’d hired Clyde in the first place. He was meant to do the dirty work, keeping him one step removed. Clyde would have been paid pretty handsomely, too — a small cut of the money Mills was due to get from the deal, but still a decent amount. But he’d fucked it up. He’d have to deal with him later. Calmly, of course. Anything else just wouldn’t do. Pay him off, keep him quiet. He might have fucked it up, but there was a whole lot more he could fuck up if he wanted to.

Mills fixed his eyes on the woman in the bed. He could swear her face contorted slightly as she struggled and fought for her last breath, though he knew it couldn’t be possible. She was far too unconscious. It wouldn’t even be instant rigor, the state in which a body enters rigor mortis at the moment it expires, usually when there’s an intense struggle and a large amount of physical exertion as they die. Tanya Henderson’s muscles, however, would be as relaxed as they could be. Too relaxed, in fact, which was why she needed the endotracheal tube in order to breathe.

Barely ten seconds had passed. Eight minutes was going to feel like an age. Everything seemed to slow down in front of him, including the slight movement of the floor-length curtains, which twitched and twisted momentarily just before he felt the hand clamp down on his right shoulder.

The blood pulsed in his ears, a deep, throbbing sound, as a woman, slight and slender, stepped out from behind the curtain. He turned to see who had their hand on his shoulder — strong and firm — and as he did so he saw the blue blur of the nurse’s uniform as she rushed past him to Tanya’s bed.

The sounds rushed back into his ears, time sped back up, and he started to feel extremely dizzy and sick. Coloured spots began to appear in his vision, the edges fading to blackness. The last thing he heard before his legs buckled and he passed out were some words about anything he said being used as evidence.

T
hey say
any good plan needs extensive planning and immaculate execution. This one hadn’t been long in the planning stage at all, but the execution had been textbook.

Wendy knew that her direct line of questioning would’ve forced Julian Mills’s hand. Mills knew that if they got into a position where they could arrest him on suspicion of anything, someone else would have been put in charge of Tanya Henderson’s medical care and she’d be taken out of the coma in no time. Then the only witness, the only person who knew what had really happened, would be there to tell her tale. Wendy knew that Mills would only be left with one option — to finish Tanya off there and then.

Everyone knew their roles, and they’d executed them to perfection. Shortly after Wendy and Julian Mills had gone into the side room to talk, Steve, Debbie and Ryan had entered the ward. Debbie had informed the nurse of what was happening, Ryan had positioned herself behind the curtain in Tanya’s room and Steve had lain in wait inside a store cupboard, ready to apprehend Mills and make the arrest once he’d been seen removing the monitoring equipment and breathing tube.

A fresh-faced and inexperienced lawyer might try to claim entrapment, but they’d been very careful. They hadn’t led him to commit a crime — they’d simply opened up the opportunity and watched him take it. And he’d acted exactly as they’d hoped he would.

Fortunately for them, Julian Mills had acted not like a hardened, always-suspicious criminal, but like the desperate and hopeless man that he was.

Mills had regained consciousness a couple of minutes later. It hadn’t been anything serious — just the pure shock and realisation of what was happening. After a couple of glasses of water and a journey back to Mildenheath Police Station in the back of the car, he’d been booked in and had his lawyer called for him.

The lawyer looked completely out of his depth, and Wendy guessed that this probably wasn’t his particular area of expertise. Jack Culverhouse didn’t appear to be on his finest form either, having suddenly reappeared half an hour earlier looking as though he’d just watched all the
Saw
films back to back after a heavy meal.

‘Do we really need to be doing this at this time of night?’ the lawyer asked as they entered the interview room, looking as though he’d much rather be in bed.

‘Yes, we do. Time is of the essence,’ Culverhouse said, referring to the fact that they would have just twenty-four hours to interview him and build a case strong enough to convince the Crown Prosecution Service to let them charge him.

Wendy started the interview, getting Julian Mills to confirm his name and address. This was the first time he’d spoken since the moment of his arrest — he’d been completely silent otherwise.

‘Julian, can you tell me what your connection was to Tanya Henderson?’

‘You don’t need to say anything. You can say “no comment” if you like,’ his lawyer said.

Julian Mills sighed. ‘More recently she was my patient, but before that she was the journalist investigating the Pevensey Park development plans.’

‘Julian, you don’t need to say any of this,’ the lawyer repeated, now looking even more concerned.

‘I want to. I need to,’ he replied. ‘She’d been sniffing around and asking questions, and when I looked into her history and the things she’d done before — the people she’d exposed, the lives she’d ruined — I knew something had to be done. I had too much to lose.’

‘And anything to gain?’ Wendy asked.

‘Yes. A lot. Enough to retire more than comfortably. And all I had to do was to try and put forward a positive case for merging the hospital services and closing Mildenheath. As simple as that.’

‘Who asked you to do it?’ Culverhouse asked.

Julian Mills didn’t reply.

‘Was it Gary McCann?’

Mills’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who?’

Culverhouse could see instantly that he’d never heard of McCann. ‘He’s a shareholder in Avalon Construction. He lives locally.’

‘Oh. No, I don’t know him. I think there’s quite a few people involved with Avalon.’

‘Who was your contact? Who was paying you?’ Culverhouse tried asking again.

Mills sighed, louder this time. ‘Can we talk about that side of things later?’

‘If you like,’ Culverhouse replied. ‘And what about Callum Woods?’ he asked, watching Mills’s eyes for a flicker of recognition. There was nothing.

‘Who?’

‘Callum Woods. He’d been a previous and present customer of Avalon and had been a target of Tanya Henderson’s a year or so ago.’

‘Oh. Yes I know now. The footballer?’

‘That’s him,’ Culverhouse said. ‘What was his involvement?’

Mills curled his bottom lip and shook his head. ‘Nothing as far as I know. But then I don’t know who was meant to be involved. They kind of kept me on the sidelines.’

‘So when Tanya Henderson ended up on your ward, was that by accident or design?’ Wendy asked.

‘Bit of both, I guess. She wasn’t meant to end up in hospital at all. She was meant to die. But when she didn’t, and with her brain injury, well... I stepped in. It’s my specialist area.’

At the word ‘die’, Mills’s lawyer lowered his head. He didn’t look happy.

‘Handy,’ Wendy said, almost sarcastically.

Julian Mills didn’t reply.

‘And what was the plan?’ she asked. ‘When she didn’t die but was lying in a hospital bed on your ward. What were your intentions?’

Shaking his head, Mills looked at the floor. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t know what to think or what to do. But she was there, in my ward, effectively under my control. The induced coma meant that I could keep an eye on her. It gave me time to work out what I was going to do.’

‘And when you did bring her out of her coma, presumably so the eyes of suspicion didn’t fall on you for keeping her in it in the first place, she started talking about Pevensey Park.’

Mills spoke quietly. ‘Yes. And that’s when I knew I only had one option.’

Wendy could sense that Culverhouse’s patience was wearing thin as he asked him forcefully, ‘Why are you telling us this, Mills? It’s a pretty extraordinary confession.’

‘I’m not a career criminal, Inspector. I’m a medical professional. I did a very stupid thing. And now I need to make amends.’

Wendy raised an eyebrow. She still wasn’t entirely sure Julian Mills realised the gravity of what he’d done, or the charges he was facing, but even if he didn’t, at least he was talking. That was the main thing.

And Wendy was growing increasingly confident that he’d be brought to justice for the crimes he’d committed.

T
here was always
a strange lull after a big case, almost as if handing it over to the Crown Prosecution Service left a vacuum. It was a vacuum that Wendy liked to fill with a bottle of wine.

She still felt incredibly guilty for not letting Xav know she wouldn’t be able to make it to the meal. She felt even worse for not having texted or called him since.

It had been a mad twenty-four hours. One moment she’d been about to leave and head home, ready to prepare herself for the meal with Xav, and before she knew it, everything had changed. They’d apprehended and arrested Mills, conducted the interviews overnight and through the next day and had compiled a case that even the CPS couldn’t deny. She’d just about managed to snatch a couple of hours’ sleep late morning, which had resulted in her feeling both absolutely knackered but also unable to get to sleep now that evening had come around again.

She picked up her phone and called Xav, knowing that he’d definitely be home from work by now.

The phone rang six or seven times, then went through to voicemail.

She gave it a few minutes, then tried again. She got the same result.

Xav never let his phone go through to voicemail. He always answered somehow.

She opened up her
Messages
app and typed out a text to him, apologising and trying, poorly, to explain what had happened. As she sent the text message, the word
Delivered
appeared underneath it. A few seconds later, it changed to
Read 19:49
. She knew that as soon as he started typing a reply, three dancing dots would appear on the screen.

There were none.

J
ack sat in his armchair
, his eyes glazing over as he stared at the TV. He wasn’t even sure what was on — something about street markets in China from what he could make out, but he wasn’t really watching.

A glass of whisky sat on the table in front of him, as yet untouched.

There was far too much going on in his mind to be able to relax. The closure of the Tanya Henderson case had been one thing, but coming at the same time as he’d finally managed to track down Emily, just a few miles away, had really taken it out of him.

He rubbed his hand across his stubbled chin, a couple of days’ growth now apparent, and sighed.

Beside him on the armchair, his mobile phone vibrated. It was a text message, one from a number he didn’t recognise.

He knew immediately who it was. He’d given her his number, asked her to contact him if she had even the slightest desire to get to know him, if there was even the smallest hint that she might be able to forgive him and try to work at rebuilding. She hadn’t seemed keen at the time — not at all — but now he was starting to think otherwise.

Taking a deep breath, he unlocked his phone and read the message.