The Ties That Bind (38 page)

Luke wished with the same fervency he had prayed for his own life so recently that he could unsee this last horrific image of her. His vision dwindled to a pinprick again and gracefully, as though granting a last request, his body finally shut down.

Chapter 56

White light hurt his eyes. Alien beeps, clicks and whirs attacked his ears. A computer screen to his left displayed a scrolling mountain range of green on black and a clear tube dribbled liquid into a shunt in the back of his hand. Charlene’s face floated above him, small and tight.

‘
Viggo
!’ she shouted over her shoulder. ‘He’s waking up! Get in here! No, get a doctor!’

Behind Charlene was a pine door with a porthole window at eye-level. Viggo’s face appeared at it for a millisecond, mouthed, ‘Oh my God!’ then disappeared.

‘Luke, can you hear me? Can you talk?’ said Charlene. He croaked in response.

‘Viggo’s getting the doctors now. Oh shit, I don’t know what to say to you! Um, you’re in hospital, obviously. Your mum and dad are on their way. They’d have been here earlier but their passports were out of date. They’re somewhere over Singapore now. Oh,
Luke
.’

He squeezed her hand to show he understood and a smile split her face. ‘It’s Wednesday morning,’ she said, pre-empting his first question. ‘You’ve been in here since last Thursday night. They had you in that shithole for forty hours. They had to put you into a coma to save your life. You had septicaemia, Luke. You nearly
died
.’

Suddenly the room was full of doctors and nurses, implements and instruments. Charlene and Viggo sat together on the bedside chair while the doctors shone lights in his eyes, tested his reflexes, took his temperature and asked him the same questions over and over again. While they filled out forms and ticked charts, he looked at the scabbed welts that ringed his wrists. It looked like someone had gouged the flesh with a knife but nothing seemed to hurt. There must be some serious drugs in that drip.

A nurse pressed a button to raise the head of the bed so that he could sit up, and fed him a glucose solution through a straw. Now he could see the whole ward. It was small: his was the only bed in it. Black and white photographs of Paris at night hung on the wall and through an open door was an en-suite bathroom.

‘Is this NHS?’ he asked.

‘The emergency treatment was,’ said Viggo, ‘You were in intensive care at the Royal Sussex for the first three days. But all this is private.’

‘I don’t suppose I need to ask who’s paying for it,’ said Luke. His heart sank and soared at the same time, stretching it to breaking point. ‘Is he here?’

‘He’s on the floor above,’ Charlene nodded heavenwards. ‘He fractured his pelvis.’

Luke was surprised. ‘When? He looked fine when I saw him.’

‘You can’t have looked properly, then,’ said Charlene. ‘He’s not fine. A pelvic fracture at his age is a big deal.’

‘What do you mean? He’s only forty.’

Charlene looked like his answer confirmed a suspicion of brain damage, then understanding chased away her concern. ‘Bloody hell, you think I’m talking about Jem. No, sweetie,
Mr Grand
is paying for your care.’

‘Shit,’ said Luke. ‘I’ve got to talk to him.’ For a crazy second he thought about trying to find his room but he had only the vaguest idea where he was, the machines he was wired to were like alarms, and anyway he didn’t trust his legs to work.

Viggo and Charlene exchanged a look.

‘You’re not allowed to until the police have seen you first,’ she said. ‘The only one who’s been in touch with them is Jem, and he’s under strict orders not to say anything. We’re not allowed to talk to you about it either. Not that we know anything.’

‘We’d tell you if we did, though,’ said Viggo, and Charlene looked daggers at him. ‘What? Well,
I
would.’

It occurred to Luke that it was a weekday afternoon and Charlene was away from the office. He felt sick.

‘How come you’re not at work? Oh Jesus. He didn’t sack you, after all that?’ Charlene losing her job would be more than he could bear.

‘I’m on compassionate leave,’ she said.

He felt sicker. ‘Oh, Char, not your dad.’

‘No, I’m on leave because of
you
, you twat. Well, partly because of you. Dad’s still around, but his nurse did a bunk once she heard his funding was being taken away and her job wasn’t safe, so I’m casting around for a replacement.’

‘He lost his benefits? Char, that’s awful.’

Charlene batted his sympathy away with the back of her hand. ‘Don’t worry about us, just get yourself well again. Actually it looks like it might have a happy ending. I’ll fill you in on all that tomorrow. You need to get some rest for now. I’d better head if I want to check in on Mr Grand before I go home.’

The door swung closed behind her.

Luke ran his hand over his head and yelped to feel stubble where he was used to curls.

‘Oh yeah,’ said Viggo. ‘They had to shave you to clean and sew you up and scan you and all that. I still don’t think you know how lucky you are to be alive. I tell you what, though, you don’t want a mirror.’

‘That bad?’

‘You know how when they went into those orphanages in Romania they found all those kids with big eyes and no hair? That.’ He pulled his skin taut across his forehead. ‘And look at me! The worry has
aged
me. I look at least thirty. I’ll be invoicing you for my Botox.’ Actually, Viggo was right. His face was sallow, the same pale straw as his greasy hair and his eyes were cupped with pale brown bags. Chewed nails tipped fingers stained with green ink that matched the scribbles on a sheaf of papers lying on an occasional table.

‘Have you been working here, Vig?’ he said, softly.

‘Trying to,’ said Viggo, forcing a smile. ‘Editing an early draft, and I’ve been using your laptop.’

The mention of the computer sent a shockwave through Luke that registered as a double beep on the heart monitor. In it was all the evidence he had gathered, enough for the police to convict Grand. The notes alone would give them enough to reopen the case, and this time he was implicated, too. What might he be charged with? Perverting the course of justice, withholding evidence, failure to report a crime?

‘I’m sorry,’ said Viggo, evidently mistaking Luke’s panic for anger. ‘It was just that I forgot to bring mine in all the fuss and bother legging it down from Leeds, and a deadline’s a deadline. I didn’t go through your emails or your browsing history if that’s what you’re worried about.’

‘Where’s my bag?’

‘Here,’ said Viggo. He crossed the room and retrieved the bulging satchel from the bedside cabinet. It looked harmlessly academic. Luke reached out clumsily to grab it. He missed, and hoped that his mental reflexes were not as dulled as the physical.

‘Have the police looked at this?’ he said, dropping his voice to a whisper even though there was no one else in the room. Viggo shook his head.

‘I panicked and told them it was mine. I didn’t want you to get into trouble. Did I do the right thing?’

He was glad now that he had not saved his work on the hard drive. Of course a decent tech-head would be able to locate his Dropbox file in a few clicks, but only if they knew they were looking for it.

‘You couldn’t have done a better thing for me. I don’t deserve you.’

‘No, you don’t. I had half a mind to burn the bloody lot, all the trouble it’s got you into. I suppose if one good thing comes of all this, it’s that you can’t write it now.’

Viggo’s assumption shocked Luke into the realisation that he did still want – and intend – to finish his book. He nearly countered that he hadn’t endured all this for nothing, but the oxygen monitor on his finger bleeped like a polygraph machine waiting to pounce on all the lies he must tell. There was much to consider. Who knew what complications would surface when he spoke to the police tomorrow? One thing was certain,
In Cold Blood
could no longer be the model. It was Capote’s separation from the subject that was the work’s genius, the way the author’s presence was all in the subtext. Luke could claim no such detachment. He was part of the story now, a catalyst within it and there at the grisly dénouement. His book was no longer the life of one man but the collision of three histories, Grand’s, Sandy’s, and his own.

He could hardly tell Viggo that now.

‘How did you get the satchel, anyway?’ he asked.

‘I’ve been staying at yours,’ said Viggo. ‘Char gave me a key. Actually, Jem offered me his hotel room. He was checked into the Metropole but he’s been sleeping in that chair since they brought you in.’ He nodded to the corner of the room, at the recliner that didn’t look like it reclined very far, blankets folded over the back of it. ‘He’s been reading to you every day. I tell you what, if I ever hear another e. e. sodding cummings poem again it’ll be too soon.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘He had to go back to Leeds this morning for work, but he’s going to come back at the weekend. He saved you, raising the alarm like that. They reckon another hour and you wouldn’t have made it.’ Gratitude was, as ever with Jem, complicated by guilt. It had taken Luke so long to get to the point where he felt he owed him nothing and now he was in debt for his life. Would he ever be able to make a straight line of the tangled knot of their relationship? Viggo was looking at him strangely.

‘Luke, are you sure you want to get back with him?’

It took a few seconds for him to understand. ‘
I
didn’t write that email, for fuck’s sake!
They
did, to get him down here. Haven’t you . . . haven’t the police worked that out?’

‘
Oh
.’ Relief washed over Viggo’s face. ‘Thank fuck for that. I thought you’d gone completely mad. I don’t know about the police, but Jem definitely thinks it was from you. He showed it to me half a dozen times, trying to get me to analyse it.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘Not a lot. I didn’t want to get involved. And . . .’ Viggo grabbed a corner of the bedclothes and began to twist it in his fingers. ‘I told him we’d cross that bridge when we came to it. I didn’t want to tempt fate, either, thinking about what we’d do when you woke up. Just in case you didn’t.’

A nurse in pink scrubs with rosy cheeks to match bustled in.

‘I think it’s time you let Luke get some rest,’ she said kindly to Viggo.

‘I’ve been resting for a week!’ protested Luke, even as exhaustion dragged at his eyelids and he fought back a yawn.

Viggo dropped the blanket, gathered his manuscript and put it neatly underneath Luke’s closed laptop. He replaced the satchel in the bedside cabinet.

‘Ring the ward before you come in tomorrow,’ said the nurse, holding the door open for him. ‘We called the police as soon as Luke came round. They’re going to be in first thing.’

‘OK,’ said Viggo. He picked up an apple from the fruit bowl and rolled it on his sweater before taking a bite. ‘I’m going to meet your mum and dad off the plane at Gatwick tomorrow lunchtime. I’ll bring them down mid-afternoon, OK? Don’t worry, Nurse Ratched, I’ll ask your permission first.’ He winked at the nurse, then bent to kiss Luke’s forehead. ‘It’s good to have you back, you know. But if you
ever
get yourself involved in anything like this again, I’ll kill you myself.’

Chapter 57

It was three o’clock in the morning. The bustle and hum of the day had given way to a sterile hush and finally Luke could be alone with his thoughts. They did not make comforting companions. He kept thinking he saw dark shapes falling at the edge of his peripheral vision and braced himself for the sound of the impact of her body hitting the ground. He thought constantly of Sandy, how she had deceived him and what she would have done to him if Jem had not summoned the police. Despite this, he found that his overriding memory of her was the tinkle and glug of the day’s first drink, their easy laughter and her tenderness as she bathed his cuts and bruises. The intimacy was salt in the wound.

In a few hours the police would be here. He had fallen asleep happy that they did not know about his notes or his laptop. If they pressed him on these things, he would feign ignorance and hope the police inferred that Vaughan and Sandy had destroyed them. Only now did he wonder about his phone. As far as he knew, it would have been in Vaughan’s pocket when they arrested him. Even if emails sent from his laptop didn’t show up on his phone, the email they had sent to Jem would raise complex questions.

His plan was to protect, in order, his exclusive and Grand’s liberty, although the two were indivisible. How he would manage this, he had no idea. There were so many unknowns, not least what Grand had told the police. Was he still angry enough at Vaughan to disinherit him? Was he angry enough to send him down? What would he have told them about Sandy? These questions turned over in his mind while the grey shades of night brightened into the white-on-white dazzle of a hospital morning.

At eight o’clock, nurses removed his drip and his catheter. They gave him bran flakes to eat and promised him a shower later in the day. He was still forcing the cereal down when CID arrived, wearing suits and carrying Costa Coffee cups.

‘DI Markevelos, and this is DC French,’ said the older and greyer of the two, flashing his badge. ‘It’s good to see you back in the land of the living.’

DC French, dandruff on the shoulders of a cheap blue suit, sniffed by way of a greeting.

‘Good to be here,’ said Luke.

‘We’ll take it nice and easy with you today. This isn’t a formal interview, although we will need you to make a statement when you’re up to it. First of all we’ll bring you up to speed. The investigation has moved very swiftly while you’ve been in here. First of all, the inquest into Sandy Quick’s death has been opened and adjourned but we’re confident a verdict of suicide will be returned. It’ll be an open-and-shut case. That won’t surprise you.’

‘No,’ said Luke. It was extraordinary that the mess of Sandy’s life could be so easily filed away behind her death. Perhaps when there was no question of the method – and after all, a crowd had seen her jump – the law was not concerned with motivation. There was also, he had to admit, a strange sense of loyalty to Sandy. Why had she shredded Jem’s suicide note if not to avoid this kind of complication? It was the last thing she had ever done, and it had been for him. He clung to that.