Innocent Hostage (27 page)
“I’m not going anywhere.” He lurched to his feet, pins and needles attacking his shins and calves after sitting still for so long. Kit murmured and tried to make himself more comfortable by wrapping himself around his father’s neck. Half strangled, Breck staggered over to a corner of the room and plopped down on the visitors’ chair.
“Can you remember what you were doing when you got hurt?” the doctor asked.
It seemed that Ingrid’s memory was perfectly clear. “Uh, huh. I was trying to punch someone but she hit me first. She had one of those”—Ingrid’s voice trailed off as she searched for a word—“those knuckle dusters.”
The doctor grunted while Mrs. Rowland stared with horror at her daughter, her attractive face looking distraught.
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Fifty-two. Doctor, I’m fine. My head hurts, my face hurts and my leg hurts. But I can see okay and I can hear okay. I can even think okay. When can I go home?”
Breck got up and walked over to the bed. “This time, my girl, you are not going home until the doctor gives the all-clear without having his arm twisted. Right?” He turned to the doctor.
“
This
time?” Mrs. Rowland said at the same time as Ingrid muttered, “shit.” She seemed to have woken up belligerent. Breck didn’t mind at all. It was good to know she was her usual fighting self with a bit more edge. She might need that edge if she was to cope with the pain that was to follow as she recovered. And, of course, her mother. He almost wished he hadn’t contacted the Rowlands, but he knew he’d done the right thing.
Just then Mrs. Rowland’s gimlet stare alighted on him. “Are you the person who telephoned us?”
“Yes, Mrs. Rowland.”
“Thank you for letting us know.” She didn’t state the obvious: that Ingrid certainly wouldn’t have told them about being injured.
“Is that your son?”
“Yes.” Kit was in danger of sliding off his shoulder and Breck hitched him up.
To his surprise, Mrs. Rowland walked over and brushed the hair off Kit’s face. “A good-looking boy,” she whispered.
Breck knew she was dying to ask what his relationship with Ingrid was, but good breeding was holding her back.
“He goes to Ingrid’s preschool,” he explained. “Ingrid and I are friends.” And that was as far as he was going to go. He leaned down and whispered, “Ingrid, I need see my mother. We’ll be back soon. You’re safe now.”
“Oh! W-What happened to her?”
“Angela happened to her.”
“Oh, no! Is she here in this hospital?”
The doctor finished making notes on Ingrid’s chart while the nurse tucked in the edges of Ingrid’s blankets. “Sleep,” the doctor said firmly. He indicated the drip. “Otherwise…”
Ingrid got the message. She whispered, “Bye,” to Breck and obediently closed her eyes.
Must be very ill. Last time in hospital she’d been far from obedient.
As Breck turned to leave, Mrs. Rowland said, “I’ll hold your son while you visit your mother.”
Breck eyed her. She might be Ingrid’s mother, but he didn’t know her. More to the point, neither did Kit. After the night he’d had, if he woke up being held by a stranger, he might panic.
“Thank you for the offer, but if he wakes up—”
Mrs. Rowland nodded, her lips firm, but Breck was unsure whether or not he had offended her. As he strode past her, juggling Kit into a more comfortable position, he stole a look at her. Her fingers plucked at her Oroton handbag and she glanced around as if wondering what she should do. Breck felt a little sorry for her.
At the nurses’ station he was making inquiries about his mother when his cell phone rang. “Marchant.”
“Raker. Got some bad news.”
His chest tightened. His mother or his father?
“Tania didn’t make it, Breck.”
“Oh.” He didn’t know how he felt. The woman who had led him a dance for years and who had done her best to wound Ingrid was dead. At least…he hesitated as he walked in the direction of his mother’s room. Had it been Tania who’d attacked Ingrid at the school? Kit had said that ‘Mommy’ attacked Ingrid, but what if he was wrong? What if it had been Angela? The end result was the same. Ingrid had been badly battered.
But…would they ever know the truth? Because when Angela was caught and brought to account, as soon as she learned her twin sister was dead, she’d blame everything on Tania. He held no brief for his ex-wife. How could he give a damn? But he hated injustice, and he’d have to work hard to see that Angela paid for what she’d done.
Then he shoved thoughts of the sisters aside as he came to his mother’s room. Drawing in his breath, he tiptoed towards her bed. Even from several paces away her injuries shattered him. A student nurse sat sentinel at her bedside. There was a tube leading to a suction device that sucked the air out of her lung, or so he presumed. It made a horrendous slurping noise as if it was sucking out her blood. She was unconscious, white as parchment and seemed to have shriveled up so that she looked more like a child than a woman.
“You’re her son?” the nurse inquired.
She spoke in a normal tone as if her patient could hear her. So he didn’t lower his voice. “Yes. Can we just sit here for a while?”
“Sure. I’m supposed to let the doctor know when someone arrives to see her, so I’ll just do that now. Won’t be long.” She rustled out of the room leaving him with a sleeping son and an unconscious mother.
The suction machine continued its obscene slurping and Kit mumbled and muttered in his sleep. Breck’s arms were beginning to ache and cramp in spasms so he eased Kit on to the chair and covered him with a spare blanket from the end of the bed. He stretched his arms out for a few minutes then wandered over to the window but all he could see were the lights in the room reflected back and his own grim, exhausted face. In a cupboard he found a pillow that he propped up against the side of the bed. Sitting on the floor and resting his head on the pillow, he found he could just reach his mother’s hand. He would go back to Ingrid’s room soon, but first he had to find out what the doctor thought about his mother’s condition.
He must have dozed off because the next thing he heard was a sharp, loud voice demanding, “Come on, man. Wake up.”
His reflexes had taken such a beating over the past twenty-four hours that it took him a few seconds to react. He scrambled shakily to his feet and shook his head. “Sorry.” Walking over to the wash-basin unit in the corner he splashed cold water over his face. “I’m Mrs. Marchant’s son.”
The doctor held out his hand. “Alan Edwards. I see you’re a cop. Bet you’ve done as many hours as I have, huh?”
Breck wished Dr. Edwards would lower his voice. Kit was wriggling restlessly. He tried to respond to the doctor’s comment but he was just too tired and anxious. “How is she?”
The doctor walked around to the other side of the bed and adjusted the suction machine. Then he checked the drip and stood for a moment looking down at Breck’s mother. “Something or someone slammed into her so hard they cracked her sternum and collapsed one of her lungs. These sorts of injuries usually occur during road accidents.”
Breck shook his head. “No accident. Believe it or not, it was another woman with a powerful punch and a knuckle duster.”
“Christ.” Edwards shook his head in disgust, his untrimmed wavy hair bouncing about. “She’ll be on the suction for about another three or four hours, and we’ll keep the drip going for a couple of hours after that. From then on she’ll be on some strong painkillers. Can’t let her go home for a couple of days ‘till her breathing’s stabilized. Do you know if she’s allergic to anything?”
Breck shook his head, feeling lower than a snake’s belly. Shouldn’t he know stuff like this about his parents? “I think she’s okay with most things. I’m not really sure, because we’ve been estranged for years.” There, he’d said it. He’d admitted that their relationship was non-existent.
The doctor flicked a look at him and shrugged. “You’re here now. That says enough. How long can you stay?”
“I have to get back to see my-my partner.” He didn’t know how to describe his relationship with Ingrid. What did you call a woman who put herself in harm’s way to protect himself and his child? She was more than a friend.
The doctor frowned.
“She’s in 245,” Breck explained.
“Oh! I thought you meant you had to get home. Hell’s delight! You’ve had a great time tonight, haven’t you?” He ran his eye down the chart in his hand. “Is that Ms. Rowland?”
Breck nodded.
“I’m on her team, but her main doctor is Dr. Tole.”
“We’ve met. Dr. Tole is having a hard time keeping Ingrid in her bed. She’s not fond of hospitals. This is her second trip in a week. And she must have cited her mother as a referee because Mrs. Rowland arrived and umm…”
Dr. Edwards grinned. “Sometimes the people we use as referees are about the last people we want to see. Have you got anyone to look after the boy?” He nodded towards where Kit snorted in his sleep.
Breck shook his head. “I guess the two of us will be bouncing back and forth between Ingrid and Mother like yo-yos.”
“Got a suggestion. When you’ve appeased Ms. Rowland, go home and get some sleep. Don’t come back till you’ve had a shower and a meal. Your mother won’t be ready to talk to anyone till the afternoon.”
Breck glanced towards the window. The afternoon? He glanced at his watch. God, it was morning already. Five a.m.
“I’ll instruct the staff to mention that you’ve been waiting by her bedside and that you’ll return later.”
“
Thank
you.” Breck’s comment was heartfelt. He was torn in so many different ways it was hard to know what his priorities were. Angela had to be caught. His mother and Ingrid had to be comforted. Kit had to be looked after.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
But when he returned to Ingrid, he knew that this was where his priority lay. Ingrid was his future. His hospital-phobic lady had her eyes closed, but her bruised face was turned towards the door, as if she had been waiting for him. There was nobody else in the room so he lay Kit in the visitor’s chair and sat down on the end of the bed. Without opening her eyes, Ingrid stretched out her arm, wincing, and he clasped her hand in his. “Oh, Ingrid darling. I promise you’ll never have to go through anything like this ever again.”
One side of her mouth rose. “With your job, who knows? Got something to tell you.”
He leaned forward. “About?”
“Mother called my father. Said that if I was getting involved with police issues, he’d better handle it.”
Breck blinked. “Your real father?”
“I guess you’d call him that. The correct term is ‘natural’ father.”
“Very PC. What will Tom Rowland say?”
“Now
there’s
my real father, to all intents and purposes. Sort of. He finds me hard to understand. But I think Marla has a lot to do with that. There’s quite a wall between Tom and myself. He tries to scale it with dollars.”
“When did you last talk to your father?”
“About…I was five. Just learned to use a phone. I answered it one evening when Marla was in one of her depressive moods and wouldn’t come out of her room. He seemed…nice. Asked about my day, stuff like that. He didn’t ask about Marla which was good. If I’d told him that she hadn’t come out of her room for two days he’d have been over like a shot, and then Marla would have
really
gone off her trolley.”
“She seems very calm now. No anxiety.”
“Yes, Tom has been good for her. Not sure if he’s been quite as good for me, but I’m not the one who matters.”
“You matter to
me
, Ingrid. Because of me you’ve had a terrible time and I feel so damned guilty—”
“Sssh.” Her grip on his hand tightened. “It’s not just because of you. Tania and I crossed swords a few years back. She almost torpedoed my career, but I managed to scramble back on board. Because she didn’t quite stymie my work, I guess she’s been lying in wait to finish off the deal. I knew when she enrolled her kids at Rowlands she had a plan.”
“But whoever would have thought she’d conceal Angela’s existence so well?”
“I’ve been wondering where Angela has been for the past few years. Perhaps she lived with the great-aunt.”
“Or a mental health facility.”
“Oh! I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Excuse me. Uh…Marchant?” Harley Max stood in the doorway.
“Sir.” Breck let go Ingrid’s hand and stood. “Did Raker call you…?” His voice got tangled up in his throat. Surely Max wasn’t
Ingrid’s father
?
At the same time, Ingrid asked, “Dad?”
This changed everything. Harley Max? Of all people. Max was one of the most difficult characters he’d ever had to deal with.
“This is awkward,” Harley Max commented. “I gather you two know each other?”
Ingrid and Breck nodded. Warily Breck edged towards Kit, ready to pick him up and beat a hasty retreat. “I’ll leave you two to get er…acquainted.”
But Ingrid piped up. “No. I want you to stay, Breck. Please.”
“Can you remember what you were doing when you got hurt?” the doctor asked.
It seemed that Ingrid’s memory was perfectly clear. “Uh, huh. I was trying to punch someone but she hit me first. She had one of those”—Ingrid’s voice trailed off as she searched for a word—“those knuckle dusters.”
The doctor grunted while Mrs. Rowland stared with horror at her daughter, her attractive face looking distraught.
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Fifty-two. Doctor, I’m fine. My head hurts, my face hurts and my leg hurts. But I can see okay and I can hear okay. I can even think okay. When can I go home?”
Breck got up and walked over to the bed. “This time, my girl, you are not going home until the doctor gives the all-clear without having his arm twisted. Right?” He turned to the doctor.
“
This
time?” Mrs. Rowland said at the same time as Ingrid muttered, “shit.” She seemed to have woken up belligerent. Breck didn’t mind at all. It was good to know she was her usual fighting self with a bit more edge. She might need that edge if she was to cope with the pain that was to follow as she recovered. And, of course, her mother. He almost wished he hadn’t contacted the Rowlands, but he knew he’d done the right thing.
Just then Mrs. Rowland’s gimlet stare alighted on him. “Are you the person who telephoned us?”
“Yes, Mrs. Rowland.”
“Thank you for letting us know.” She didn’t state the obvious: that Ingrid certainly wouldn’t have told them about being injured.
“Is that your son?”
“Yes.” Kit was in danger of sliding off his shoulder and Breck hitched him up.
To his surprise, Mrs. Rowland walked over and brushed the hair off Kit’s face. “A good-looking boy,” she whispered.
Breck knew she was dying to ask what his relationship with Ingrid was, but good breeding was holding her back.
“He goes to Ingrid’s preschool,” he explained. “Ingrid and I are friends.” And that was as far as he was going to go. He leaned down and whispered, “Ingrid, I need see my mother. We’ll be back soon. You’re safe now.”
“Oh! W-What happened to her?”
“Angela happened to her.”
“Oh, no! Is she here in this hospital?”
The doctor finished making notes on Ingrid’s chart while the nurse tucked in the edges of Ingrid’s blankets. “Sleep,” the doctor said firmly. He indicated the drip. “Otherwise…”
Ingrid got the message. She whispered, “Bye,” to Breck and obediently closed her eyes.
Must be very ill. Last time in hospital she’d been far from obedient.
As Breck turned to leave, Mrs. Rowland said, “I’ll hold your son while you visit your mother.”
Breck eyed her. She might be Ingrid’s mother, but he didn’t know her. More to the point, neither did Kit. After the night he’d had, if he woke up being held by a stranger, he might panic.
“Thank you for the offer, but if he wakes up—”
Mrs. Rowland nodded, her lips firm, but Breck was unsure whether or not he had offended her. As he strode past her, juggling Kit into a more comfortable position, he stole a look at her. Her fingers plucked at her Oroton handbag and she glanced around as if wondering what she should do. Breck felt a little sorry for her.
At the nurses’ station he was making inquiries about his mother when his cell phone rang. “Marchant.”
“Raker. Got some bad news.”
His chest tightened. His mother or his father?
“Tania didn’t make it, Breck.”
“Oh.” He didn’t know how he felt. The woman who had led him a dance for years and who had done her best to wound Ingrid was dead. At least…he hesitated as he walked in the direction of his mother’s room. Had it been Tania who’d attacked Ingrid at the school? Kit had said that ‘Mommy’ attacked Ingrid, but what if he was wrong? What if it had been Angela? The end result was the same. Ingrid had been badly battered.
But…would they ever know the truth? Because when Angela was caught and brought to account, as soon as she learned her twin sister was dead, she’d blame everything on Tania. He held no brief for his ex-wife. How could he give a damn? But he hated injustice, and he’d have to work hard to see that Angela paid for what she’d done.
Then he shoved thoughts of the sisters aside as he came to his mother’s room. Drawing in his breath, he tiptoed towards her bed. Even from several paces away her injuries shattered him. A student nurse sat sentinel at her bedside. There was a tube leading to a suction device that sucked the air out of her lung, or so he presumed. It made a horrendous slurping noise as if it was sucking out her blood. She was unconscious, white as parchment and seemed to have shriveled up so that she looked more like a child than a woman.
“You’re her son?” the nurse inquired.
She spoke in a normal tone as if her patient could hear her. So he didn’t lower his voice. “Yes. Can we just sit here for a while?”
“Sure. I’m supposed to let the doctor know when someone arrives to see her, so I’ll just do that now. Won’t be long.” She rustled out of the room leaving him with a sleeping son and an unconscious mother.
The suction machine continued its obscene slurping and Kit mumbled and muttered in his sleep. Breck’s arms were beginning to ache and cramp in spasms so he eased Kit on to the chair and covered him with a spare blanket from the end of the bed. He stretched his arms out for a few minutes then wandered over to the window but all he could see were the lights in the room reflected back and his own grim, exhausted face. In a cupboard he found a pillow that he propped up against the side of the bed. Sitting on the floor and resting his head on the pillow, he found he could just reach his mother’s hand. He would go back to Ingrid’s room soon, but first he had to find out what the doctor thought about his mother’s condition.
He must have dozed off because the next thing he heard was a sharp, loud voice demanding, “Come on, man. Wake up.”
His reflexes had taken such a beating over the past twenty-four hours that it took him a few seconds to react. He scrambled shakily to his feet and shook his head. “Sorry.” Walking over to the wash-basin unit in the corner he splashed cold water over his face. “I’m Mrs. Marchant’s son.”
The doctor held out his hand. “Alan Edwards. I see you’re a cop. Bet you’ve done as many hours as I have, huh?”
Breck wished Dr. Edwards would lower his voice. Kit was wriggling restlessly. He tried to respond to the doctor’s comment but he was just too tired and anxious. “How is she?”
The doctor walked around to the other side of the bed and adjusted the suction machine. Then he checked the drip and stood for a moment looking down at Breck’s mother. “Something or someone slammed into her so hard they cracked her sternum and collapsed one of her lungs. These sorts of injuries usually occur during road accidents.”
Breck shook his head. “No accident. Believe it or not, it was another woman with a powerful punch and a knuckle duster.”
“Christ.” Edwards shook his head in disgust, his untrimmed wavy hair bouncing about. “She’ll be on the suction for about another three or four hours, and we’ll keep the drip going for a couple of hours after that. From then on she’ll be on some strong painkillers. Can’t let her go home for a couple of days ‘till her breathing’s stabilized. Do you know if she’s allergic to anything?”
Breck shook his head, feeling lower than a snake’s belly. Shouldn’t he know stuff like this about his parents? “I think she’s okay with most things. I’m not really sure, because we’ve been estranged for years.” There, he’d said it. He’d admitted that their relationship was non-existent.
The doctor flicked a look at him and shrugged. “You’re here now. That says enough. How long can you stay?”
“I have to get back to see my-my partner.” He didn’t know how to describe his relationship with Ingrid. What did you call a woman who put herself in harm’s way to protect himself and his child? She was more than a friend.
The doctor frowned.
“She’s in 245,” Breck explained.
“Oh! I thought you meant you had to get home. Hell’s delight! You’ve had a great time tonight, haven’t you?” He ran his eye down the chart in his hand. “Is that Ms. Rowland?”
Breck nodded.
“I’m on her team, but her main doctor is Dr. Tole.”
“We’ve met. Dr. Tole is having a hard time keeping Ingrid in her bed. She’s not fond of hospitals. This is her second trip in a week. And she must have cited her mother as a referee because Mrs. Rowland arrived and umm…”
Dr. Edwards grinned. “Sometimes the people we use as referees are about the last people we want to see. Have you got anyone to look after the boy?” He nodded towards where Kit snorted in his sleep.
Breck shook his head. “I guess the two of us will be bouncing back and forth between Ingrid and Mother like yo-yos.”
“Got a suggestion. When you’ve appeased Ms. Rowland, go home and get some sleep. Don’t come back till you’ve had a shower and a meal. Your mother won’t be ready to talk to anyone till the afternoon.”
Breck glanced towards the window. The afternoon? He glanced at his watch. God, it was morning already. Five a.m.
“I’ll instruct the staff to mention that you’ve been waiting by her bedside and that you’ll return later.”
“
Thank
you.” Breck’s comment was heartfelt. He was torn in so many different ways it was hard to know what his priorities were. Angela had to be caught. His mother and Ingrid had to be comforted. Kit had to be looked after.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
But when he returned to Ingrid, he knew that this was where his priority lay. Ingrid was his future. His hospital-phobic lady had her eyes closed, but her bruised face was turned towards the door, as if she had been waiting for him. There was nobody else in the room so he lay Kit in the visitor’s chair and sat down on the end of the bed. Without opening her eyes, Ingrid stretched out her arm, wincing, and he clasped her hand in his. “Oh, Ingrid darling. I promise you’ll never have to go through anything like this ever again.”
One side of her mouth rose. “With your job, who knows? Got something to tell you.”
He leaned forward. “About?”
“Mother called my father. Said that if I was getting involved with police issues, he’d better handle it.”
Breck blinked. “Your real father?”
“I guess you’d call him that. The correct term is ‘natural’ father.”
“Very PC. What will Tom Rowland say?”
“Now
there’s
my real father, to all intents and purposes. Sort of. He finds me hard to understand. But I think Marla has a lot to do with that. There’s quite a wall between Tom and myself. He tries to scale it with dollars.”
“When did you last talk to your father?”
“About…I was five. Just learned to use a phone. I answered it one evening when Marla was in one of her depressive moods and wouldn’t come out of her room. He seemed…nice. Asked about my day, stuff like that. He didn’t ask about Marla which was good. If I’d told him that she hadn’t come out of her room for two days he’d have been over like a shot, and then Marla would have
really
gone off her trolley.”
“She seems very calm now. No anxiety.”
“Yes, Tom has been good for her. Not sure if he’s been quite as good for me, but I’m not the one who matters.”
“You matter to
me
, Ingrid. Because of me you’ve had a terrible time and I feel so damned guilty—”
“Sssh.” Her grip on his hand tightened. “It’s not just because of you. Tania and I crossed swords a few years back. She almost torpedoed my career, but I managed to scramble back on board. Because she didn’t quite stymie my work, I guess she’s been lying in wait to finish off the deal. I knew when she enrolled her kids at Rowlands she had a plan.”
“But whoever would have thought she’d conceal Angela’s existence so well?”
“I’ve been wondering where Angela has been for the past few years. Perhaps she lived with the great-aunt.”
“Or a mental health facility.”
“Oh! I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Excuse me. Uh…Marchant?” Harley Max stood in the doorway.
“Sir.” Breck let go Ingrid’s hand and stood. “Did Raker call you…?” His voice got tangled up in his throat. Surely Max wasn’t
Ingrid’s father
?
At the same time, Ingrid asked, “Dad?”
This changed everything. Harley Max? Of all people. Max was one of the most difficult characters he’d ever had to deal with.
“This is awkward,” Harley Max commented. “I gather you two know each other?”
Ingrid and Breck nodded. Warily Breck edged towards Kit, ready to pick him up and beat a hasty retreat. “I’ll leave you two to get er…acquainted.”
But Ingrid piped up. “No. I want you to stay, Breck. Please.”
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