When Will There Be Good News? (30 page)

'Exsanguinated,' she said, pronouncing it carefully.

'Right.'

'Exsanguinated,' she said again. 'Sangria comes from the same root, the Latin for blood. Blood-red wine. Wine-dark sea.'

'Do I know you?' Jackson said. It suddenly struck him that she might be a fellow survivor of the train crash. She had a nasty bruise on her forehead.

'Not really,' she said. Not a very helpful answer. 'Are you going to eat that toast?' she asked, eyeing up the unappetizing food still in front of him.

'Knock yourself out,' Jackson said, pushing the bed-tray towards her. 'Have we met?' he pursued.

'In a way,' she said, her mouth full of toast.

His headache, blissfully absent when he woke, was beginning to throb again. 'You don't remember me, do you?' she said. 'Sorry, no. There's a lot ofthings I don't remember at the moment.

Are you going to tell me or do I have to guess? I really don't think I have the energy to guess.'

'You wouldn't be able to. It would take you for ever.' She looked pleased with herself at this idea. She took a little dramatic pause from eating toast and said, 'I saved your life.'

I saved your life. What did that mean? He didn't understand. 'How?'

'CPR, artery compression. At the train crash. At the side of the track.' 'You saved my life,' he repeated. 'Yes.'

At last he understood. 'You're the person that saved my life.'

'Yes.' She giggled at his slowness. He found himself grinning, i
n
fact he couldn't stop grinning. He felt oddly grateful that his life ha
d
been saved by a giggling child and not some burly paramedic.

'They did their bit, as well,' she said. 'But it was me that kept yo
u
alive in the beginning.'

She had breathed life into him, literally. His breath was hers. The
n
the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into hi
s
nostrils the breath if We; and man became a living being. More rotel
earning from some murky place in his spiritual past.

What on earth could he say to her? It took a while but Jackso
n
got there eventually.

'Thank you,' he said. He was still grinning.

'How about the cornflakes?You gonna eat them?'

'So, technically speaking, you belong to me.'

'I'm sorry?' Her name was Reggie. A man's name.

'You're in my thrall.' She seemed delighted by the word 'thrall'.

'You can only be released by reciprocation.' 'Reciprocation?' 'Ifyou save my life.' She smiled at him and her small features were illuminated. 'Plus, I'm responsible for you now until you do.' 'Do what?' 'Save my life. It's a Native American belief. I read about it in a book.' 'Books aren't all they're cracked up to be,' Jackson said. 'How old are you?' 'Older than I look. Believe me.'

What did she mean he belonged to her? Perhaps he had mortgaged his soul after all, not to the devil but to this funny little Scottish girl.

Dr Foster put her head round the door of the ward and, frowning at the girl, said, 'Don't tire him out with talking. Five more minutes,' she added, holding up her hand in an emphatic gesture as if they needed to count her fingers to know what five was.

'Do you understand?' she said pointedly to Reggie.

'Totally,' the girl said. To Jackson, she said, 'I have to go anyway, I have a dog waiting outside for me. I'll be back.'

Jackson realized he was feeling much better. He had been saved. He had been saved for the future. His own.

When you had a future a couple of nurses could gang up on you and remove your catheter without any anaesthetic, or even any warning, and then force you out of bed, and make you hobble in your flimsy, open-backed hospital gown to the bathroom, where they encouraged you to 'try and pee' on your own. Jackson had never previously appreciated that such a basic bodily function could be both so painful and so gratifYing at the same time. I piss therefore I am.

He would look at everything differently from now on. The reborn bit had finally kicked in. He was a new Jackson. Alleluia.

Dr Foster mnt to Glouceste
r
'''ALL IN A SHOWER OF RAIN. HE STEPPED IN A PUDDLE RIGHT UP TO his middle and never went that way again." I bet people quote that to her all the time.'

'Who?'

'Dr Foster.'

'I bet they don't,' Jackson Brodie said.

She had finally found him and now she was keeping a faithful vigil by his bedside, Greyfriars Reggie.

Like Chief Inspector Monroe before her, Dr Foster didn't really seem to believe Reggie when she said that she had saved Jackson Brodie's life. 'Really?' Dr Foster said sarcastically. 'I thought we did that in the hospital.' She had seemed harassed by Reggie's question
s
about Jackson Brodie's condition. 'Who are you?' Dr Foster asked bluntly. 'Are you a relative? I can only talk about his medical condition to close relatives.'

Good question. Who was she? She was the Famous Reggie, she was Regina Chase, Girl Detective, she was Virgo Regina, the stormtossed queen of the plucky abandoned orphans. 'I'm his daughter, Marlee,' Reggie said.

Dr Foster frowned at her. Dr Foster frowned every time she spoke
,
and quite often when she didn't speak. She should think about th
e
wrinkles she was going to have in a few years' time. Mum was always worried about wrinkles. For a while she had gone to bed at night with her jaw strapped up in crepe bandages so that she looked like an accident victim.

'You're the first thing he remembered,' Dr Foster said.

'That's nice.'

'Don't stay for long, he needs to rest.'

You would think they would ask for ID, for proofofwho you said you were. You could be anybody. You could be Billy. Just as well she was only Reggie.

He was on his own in a little room off a bigger ward. When she was looking for him she was worried that when she found him she wouldn't recognize him, but she did. He looked more gaunt but less dead. An uneaten breakfast lay on a table across the bed. It seemed an awful waste offood to someone who had breakfasted on a Tunnock's Caramel Wafer two mornings in a row. This morning, groggy with sleep, it took Reggie some time to understand that she had slept again on Ms MacDonald's uncomfortable sofa and that the noise that had woken her was the racket
of the
heavy recovery machinery gearing up for work on the track. She wondered if she would ever wake up again to her own alarm in her own bed. In her own good time.

The mug she drank her instant coffee from carried a message tha
t
was too complicated for this time of the morning. 'Bill of sale!

Eternal life paid in full in the blood ofJesus Christ.' Then she ha
d
phoned the hospital and -abracadabra -they had found him.

He was asleep and a nurse came to check his drip and said loudly t
o
him, 'You've got a visitor. You've not been forgotten about after all.

He's still a little dozy from the accident,' she said to Reggie. 'He'l
l
wake up in a bit.'

Reggie sat patiently on a chair by his bedside and watched hi
m
sleep. She had nothing else to do, after all. He was old enough to b
e
her father. 'Dad,' she tried experimentally, but it didn't wake him.

She'd never said that word to anyone. It felt like a word in a foreig
n
language. Pater.

*

He was a detective. ('Used to be,' he muttered.) He used to be a soldier too. What did he do now?

'This and that.' Something and nothing.

She peeled off a ten-pound note from the tight wad that cheapskate Mr Hunter gave her yesterday. She put it on his locker. 'In case you need stuff,' she said, 'you know, chocolate or newspapers.'

'I'll pay you back,' he said.

Reggie wondered how he intended to do that. He didn't have any money, he was penniless. He had no wallet, no credit cards, no phone, nothing to his name at all. He only just had his own name (,Yes, we had some trouble identifYing your father,' Dr Foster said.). No wonder the hospital had no record of him when she first phoned, they thought he was someone else altogether. Like Reggie, he'd been stripped of everything. At least now Reggie had a bagful ofTopshop clothes. And a dog.

'I thought you must have died,' she said to him.

'So did I,' he said.

While she was in the hospital Reggie left the dog lying placidly on the grass verge, near the taxi rank. She had written on a piece of paper, This dog is not a stray, her owner is visiting in the hospital, and stuck it inside Sadie's collar in case someone decided to call the SSPCA. Everywhere you went there were 'No Dogs Allowed' signs. What was a person supposed to do? It would be good if she could get hold of a guide-dog harness and put it on Sadie. Then she'd be able to take her anywhere. And, as a plus point, people would be sorry for the poor little blind girl and be especially nice to her.

'Good dog,' Reggie said to Sadie when she left her and the dog responded with a soft whine, which Reggie guessed meant 'Don't forget to come back.' Dog language was pretty easy to interpret compared to human language. (Something and nothing, this and that, here and there.)

As far as she could tell Jackson Brodie seemed an OK sort ofperson. It would be a shame if it turned out that she had saved the life ofan evil human being when she could have saved someone who was developing the cure for cancer or who was the only support of a large, needy family, perhaps with a small crippled child in tow.

Jackson Brodie had a wife and child so they would be grateful to her
. W
as Jackson Brodie's wife also Marlee's mother? It was funny how you could sound like a ditferent person depending on who you were attached to. Jackie's daughter. Billy's sister. Dr Hunter's mother's help.

Jackson Brodie said that he didn't want to alarm his wife with news of the accident, which was very altruistic of him. Word of the day. From the Latin, alteri huic, to this other. His wife ('Tessa') was 'attending a conference in Washington'. How sophisticated that sounded. She was probably wearing a black suit. Reggie thought of Dr Hunter's two black suits hanging patiently in the closet, waiting for her to come back and fill them. Where was she?

The automatic front doors of the hospital hissed open and Reggie stepped outside, pausing for a moment to make sure that there were no neds armed with Loebs waiting for her. She still hadn't been able to get hold ofBilly, she'd never known a person so good at not being found. Although Dr Hunter seemed to be trying to give him a run for his money.

Sadie spotted Reggie as soon as she came out of the hospital. She stood to attention, her ears pricked up, the way she did when she was on guard duty. Reggie felt a surge of something very like happiness. It felt good to have someone (if a dog was someone) who was pleased to see her. The dog wagged her tail. If Reggie had had a tail she would have wagged it too.

'Been visiting a friend?' an old lady in the queue tor the 24 outside the hospital asked her. 'Yes,' Reggie said. He wasn't really her friend, of course, but he would be. One day. He belonged to her now. 'I'll be back,' she'd said to Jackson Brodie. 'I really will,' she'd added. Reggie was never going to be a person who didn't come back.

She had forgotten to bring a book with her but found the mutilated lliad in her bag and read around the cavern at its heart. Th
e
beginning of Book Six was intact and she checked her translation _

Nestor shouted aloud, and called to the Argives: My friends, Danaa
n
warriors, attendants ofAres, let no mal1 now stay back. Pretty close.

Her bus journey was fatefully interrupted by a call from Sergean
t
Wiseman, telling her that Ms MacDonald was still 'unavailable'.

'Toxicology tests and so on,' he said vaguely.

'So when do you think she can be buried?' Reggie asked.

Reggie wondered if Ms MacDonald (her dead) would want to be buried. Wormfood or ash? She is dead; and all which die, to their Jirst elements resolve. They had done that at school. They had done Donne.

Ha. There was a horrible emptiness inside Reggie, as if someone had scooped out vital organs. The world was falling away. She began to feel panicky, the way she felt when she was first told that Mum was dead. Where was Dr Hunter? Where was Dr Hunter? Where was she? He was a detective. Used to be. Detectives knew how to find people. People who were missing.

A Good Man Is Hard to Fin
d
BUT EASY TO LOSE.

She couldn't breathe. A heavy weight was pressing on her chest and suffocating her, a great stone crushing her, martyring her lungs. Louise woke up with a start, gasping for air. jesus, what was tha
t
about? It felt unnaturally early, sparrowfart time of day by the feel and sound of it. She fumbled for her spectacles. Yes indeed, the digital numbers on the bedside clock glowed a Halloween green and confirmed that it was all the fives, five fifty-five. Her head was throbbing and her stomach was roiling, the wine from last night still working its way slowly through her blood. Re
d
wine was never a good idea, it dragged out the maudlin Scot from the dark tartan-lined pit inside her where it lived. Whisky soothed the embittered monster that lived in there, red wine boiled its blood.