Shaping the Ripples (33 page)

“Do you think that she might?” I asked, dreading her next answer.

“If it was up to me, I’d make you grovel for a good while yet. But Katie’s a lot more forgiving, and I know she loves you a lot. You’re probably just in time.” Her voice became harder “But if you ever do anything like this to her again .. .”

“I won’t,” I interrupted quickly. “I just got confused for a while. I know what I want now.”

“OK then,” she said. “As soon as she gets back I’ll tell her that you rang, and what you’ve said. If she wants to, she’ll give you a call.”

“Alright,” I said, and we ended the phone call.

There was no way that I was going to go out now, and risk missing Katie’s call. I tried reading a book, but I was far too on edge to concentrate. Suppose she decided not to call?

Every minute seemed to take an eternity to pass. Once again, I was in the position I find hardest to cope with – having to sit and wait for other people to do something. Fortunately by mid afternoon there was some international rugby on the television which proved sufficiently exciting to distract me slightly, but I still had one eye on the clock and both ears listening attentively for the ring of the telephone.

By eight o’clock, I was convinced that she wasn’t going to call. I had a sick certainty that I had driven her away for good. The urge to ring their house again was excruciating, but Rebecca had been clear that I should leave Katie to decide if she wanted to phone me. Maybe she was just keeping me waiting to make a point.

Finally, just after eight thirty, the telephone did ring. I snatched it up.

“Hello,” I called, desperate to hear the tone of her voice. But the voice that spoke was Rebecca’s.

“Jack, it’s Rebecca.” My heart sank with the realisation that she must be ringing to say that Katie didn’t want to speak to me. But her next words came as a complete surprise. “Is Katie there with you?”

“No,” I said, despair turning into anxiety. “I’ve just been sitting here waiting for her to ring. What’s going on?”

I could hear the tension in her voice. “I wasn’t totally honest with you before,” she admitted. “Katie had gone out for the day, but she’d taken her mobile phone with her because she’s on call at the centre. After your call I decided to give her a ring.”

“How was she?” I asked.

“She was fine. She was so happy when I told her that you’d changed your mind about being with her, and what you’d said. She told me she was going to finish her walk, and then come back here to get changed and call you.”

“When was this?”

“Just after lunch,” Rebecca admitted. “At first I just thought that she must have been called into work. But she would have let me know by now. That’s why I was hoping that she’d changed her mind and come straight to your flat. Where do you think she is?”

My head was pounding. “Phone the police,” I said.

“What?”

“Phone the police. Now.”

Her sudden sharp intake of breath told me that she had realised what I was thinking. “You think that something has happened to her?” she almost whispered.

“I think that there’s a serial killer on the loose, targeting people that I care about.” I said, feeling nothing but despair. “There may be a perfectly good explanation, but the fact that the person who I care about most in the world has gone missing doesn’t give me a very good feeling.”

“Oh, God,” she moaned. “Alright, I’ll ring the police.”

“They’ll try and tell you that they don’t record missing people until they’ve been gone for twenty four hours. You need to tell them who she is, and her connection with me and the other murders. Tell them how worried you are, and make sure that they take you seriously.”

“Oh, I will,” she said. “By the time I’ve finished with them they’ll have every policeman in the county out looking for her. I’ll let you know as soon as there’s any news.”

“She may come walking through one of our doors any moment, right as rain,” I said unconvincingly.

Once she’d rung off, the silence returned but this time it was far more oppressive and fear filled. All yesterday I had spent thinking about my own death, and what I wanted to say to Katie before then. The note on my door had lulled me into thinking that she was safe.

Now she was missing, quite probably dead already. And if she was, it was my fault. It was only because of her relationship with me that she would have been a target for the killer. I tried to calm myself, telling myself that at the moment we couldn’t be sure that anything had happened to her. But deep down, I didn’t believe it. I knew in that instant that if Guignol was determined to strike at me, he couldn't have chosen a more devastating blow than to take Katie away.

After a couple of hours, I called Rebecca. The police obviously had taken her seriously, as she had already had a visit from Michael Palmer and Laura Smith. They’d taken some photographs of Katie, and assured her that everyone available would be looking out for her.

Once again we were back to waiting. A little after midnight Rebecca rang to say that they had found Katie’s car, parked just around the corner from the Crisis Centre, but there was no sign of Katie. What little hope I had managed to cling onto was instantly extinguished.

I asked Rebecca if she wanted me to come and wait with her, but we agreed that we were probably better staying where we were, just in case Katie was able to try and get in touch with either of us. There was no way that I was going to be able to sleep, so I kept my station beside the phone.

It was three hours until the phone rang again. Rebecca’s voice was cracking and full of tears.

“Jack, it’s Rebecca. I’m at the hospital. They’ve found Katie. Please come.”

The dull tone of the line as she hung up was nothing compared to the deadness that had settled on my heart.

Chapter Thirty Six

The drive to the hospital was a total blur. Fortunately the fact that it was the middle of the night meant the hospital car park was virtually empty because I suspect that in the state I was, I would have just dumped the car in an ambulance bay.

I burst through the door of the Accident and Emergency area at a run. Rebecca was sitting just inside the entrance, her head in her hands. She stood up, and rushed into my arms before breaking down completely.

“How is she?” I asked, once she had quietened a little.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “They said she was alive but in a critical condition when she got here, but apparently she’s been in the emergency room ever since.”

Next to where we were waiting was a small office, labelled “triage nurse”. The door was closed but after a few minutes it opened and a teenage couple came out, the girl’s right ankle heavily bandaged. Once they’d gone through the doors leading into the main department, I looked into the room at the nurse who was writing up some notes.

“Can you give us any information on how Katie Dixon is?” I asked him.

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” he said looking up. “I assess people as they come in, but she went straight into the ER. I’ll go and see if I can find anything out for you.”

He disappeared through another door. Within five minutes, a doctor wearing surgical green scrubs came out to us. His name badge identified him as Doctor Grant.

“You were asking about the condition of Miss Dixon,” he said. “Are you her next of kin?”

Rebecca and I exchanged glances. “Not quite,” she answered. “I’m her flatmate and this is her partner. I’m in contact with her parents, but they won’t be able to get here until later on in the day.”

“Surely you can tell us something, doctor.” I blurted out. “At least whether she’s alive or not?”

He stared at me gravely for a moment, as if deciding what to say to us.

“She’s alive,” he said finally, and my spirits soared. “But she remains in a very critical condition.”

“Can you tell us what’s happened to her?” Rebecca asked, her voice still trembling.

“She’s been attacked,” he said bluntly. “She’s received a severe blow to the back of her head which has resulted in a fracture to her skull. The scans suggest that there hasn’t been any damage to her brain, but we won’t really be certain until she regains consciousness. She has also a number of knife wounds to her body, and has lost a great deal of blood as a result. Less seriously, but still affecting her ability to recover, she is suffering from hypothermia through being left out in the street.”

“Do you think she’ll live?” I asked directly.

“We won’t know for sure for a few hours,” he answered. “If she hadn’t been found when she was, I suspect she would have lost too much blood to survive. As it is, on balance, I think that she probably will. But the next few hours are critical. Her body has suffered a massive trauma and there may yet be an adverse reaction to that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really need to get back to her.”

He turned and walked back through the swing doors. Rebecca and I hugged each other silently, out of a combination of sadness and relief.

“She’ll be OK,” she told me. “Katie’s a real fighter you know.”

I started to answer her, but was stopped by the swing doors opening again. This time they revealed Laura Smith and Michael Palmer. A hot rage rose unexpectedly. I marched towards Michael Palmer, finger pointing.

“You’d better not make any comments about me being responsible for this,” I yelled at him. “Because I’d love an excuse to thump you just at the moment.”

To my surprise, he didn’t react at all, but just kept staring calmly at me. It was Laura Smith who spoke.

“I understand that you’re very upset at the moment, Mr. Bailey,” she said in a firm voice. “But I don’t think that Miss Dixon is going to be helped by a brawl out here, is she?”

I took a step back from them, and she continued, “We will need to speak to both of you, but it can wait until it’s properly morning. I’m sure you both want to stay here for the rest of the night, to make sure that Miss. Dixon is beginning to recover.”

“Did she see who did it?” Rebecca asked suddenly.

“We won’t really know the answer to that until she regains consciousness,” Michael Palmer answered. “The blow to the back of the head was a very severe one, and the doctor thinks that it’s most likely that it happened before the other wounds were inflicted. The probability is that she didn’t see anything. But, as I say, we’d like to have that confirmed by her.”

“Are you both going to stay here for the foreseeable future?” Laura Smith quizzed. “If you are, we could come back and interview you in about three or four hours time.”

We both nodded. “We’ll see you later then,” she added as they prepared to leave. “Oh, and in case you start wondering about it later, we are leaving a police guard by her bedside.”

With that, they were gone. The next few hours were awful – constant terror of bad news every time the swing doors were opened punctuating long swathes of nothingness. For part of the time, Rebecca dozed on my shoulder.

Finally, the doors opening signalled the return of Doctor Grant. As he walked towards us, I tried desperately to read his face. Was that a mask of enforced sympathy? Or just the face of an exhausted man? My life seemed to hang in the balance as we waited for his first words.

“She seems to have stabilized,” he said.

Both Rebecca and I sagged with relief. “What does that mean exactly?” Rebecca asked. “Is she out of danger?”

“Barring any unexpected setbacks, yes,” he said with a smile. “It may be some time before she actually regains consciousness, but all her readings are strong and stable now. It looks as if she’s going to pull through.”

“How long before she does come around?” I asked.

“That’s hard to say at the moment,” he said. “The blow was a very hard one, in that it actually fractured her skull. At the moment her body is concentrating upon healing itself. It may only be a few hours, or it could be a bit longer than that.”

“Are you saying she might stay in a coma?” Rebecca’s voice had a new note of alarm in it.

“Not in the way that you mean,” he replied calmly. “Her brain scan seems to show that there hasn’t been any damage, so there’s no reason to think that she won’t wake up perfectly normally. But as I said earlier, her body has suffered a massive trauma, and may need a good period of rest before she recovers consciousness.”

“Can we see her?” I enquired.

“We’re going to move her into intensive care to keep a close eye on her. If all goes well, then by the end of the day we should be in a position to move her out of there and up to a ward. I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t sit with her while she’s being observed. If you could just wait until we’ve sorted her out I’ll get a nurse to come and get you.”

Once he’d gone, Rebecca began to cry softly. “Hey,” I said gently. “You were the one who told me she was going to be fine.”

“It’s just such a relief,” she sniffled. We held onto each other with the emotional release of the moment. Before too long, a nurse came to lead us to Katie’s bedside.

I had tried to prepare myself for this moment, but it was still a shock. Katie looked so pale, so fragile, lying in bed surrounded by a mass of electronics, and flashing computer displays. A hardness set in my heart as I resolved that I was going to make whoever had done this pay. Rebecca and I stood at opposite sides of the bed, each of us holding tightly onto one of her hands. Her skin had the icy smoothness of marble, and for a moment it was like touching a corpse.

We both stood, as if frozen in a tableau, for a long time. One of the computer screens showed that Katie’s pulse was relatively steady, but it was about the only measurement that I could make any sense of.

Time was measured in each beat of her heart displayed on the screen, and seemed to stretch on. The moment was broken when we were joined by Laura Smith and Michael Palmer.

“Still unconscious?” Laura asked in the muted whisper which everyone seems to use automatically beside a hospital bed. Rebecca and I nodded.

“Would it be alright to interview you both now?” she continued. “The hospital are letting us use a doctor’s office just down the corridor, so you won’t be away for long.”

They took Rebecca off first, leaving me alone with Katie. I leaned across and softly kissed her lips, but this was no fairy tale and she didn’t wake up. In the back of my mind, the question “why” was nagging at me. Why had Guignol left her alive when he’d so savagely destroyed his other victims? Had he just made his first mistake?