A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [181]
‘I don’t mean to be rude,’ he said. ‘But I’d just like to go outside and have a fag before I go back to see Fifi. I know you must want some proper explanations but I’m a bit shaky right now. Can it wait?’
The policeman put one hand on his shoulder in a gesture of understanding. ‘Of course it can, son. You did a great job and she’s safe now thanks to you. You go off now, and get yourself something to eat while you’re about it; you look as if you haven’t eaten for days either. Detective Inspector Roper will want to talk to you when he gets here, and you won’t be much good to him if you’re passing out with hunger.’
‘Your mum and dad will be here soon,’ Dan said as he sat down beside Fifi’s bed some time later. He’d wrapped the gun in a handtowel he’d found in the toilet, put it in a plastic bag and hidden it behind a tree next to a hospital outbuilding. It would be safe enough there until tomorrow. He’d had a cigarette, a cup of tea and a bun, and finally persuaded the ward sister to allow him in to see Fifi.
But now he was alone with her, he couldn’t find the words he wanted to say.
She looked so thin and pale, her eyes dull and her lips cracked, and a sudden rage had welled up in him that anyone could knowingly leave her to starve to death. She had been to hell and back, that much was certain, and it might be some time before she felt up to telling him about it.
The local police officer had said that he’d been on two cases where someone had hanged themselves, and both times he’d been a wreck after it. So what would it have done to Fifi? Yvette was her friend, not a stranger, and she’d been forced to stay there with the body, perhaps thinking she’d remain in the barn with it till she died too. He really wished that at least one of the men involved had been out at the barn; he would have enjoyed kicking his head in.
‘It’s so lovely to be warm again,’ Fifi said. Her voice had been cracking when he found her, but it was only husky now that she’d had several drinks. The sister said she’d had soup and some rice pudding too. Fifi had apparently asked for more, but had been told she had to wait a while so they could be sure she had digested that properly.
They’d washed her, brushed her hair and promised that tomorrow she could have a bath and wash her hair. She said she felt fine again, but Dan knew that really meant she only felt a lot better, not that she was anywhere near back to normal.
‘I thought you’d be asking me lots of questions,’ she said.
‘Are you still angry with me?’
‘Angry?’ Dan repeated in astonishment. ‘Of course not.
Why should I be?’
‘Well, the last words we had before this were angry ones.’
‘That was eleven days ago,’ he reproached her. ‘I forgot it all the moment I got the letter from you.’ He told her briefly how he’d gone back to Dale Street that evening and suspected something was wrong straight away when she didn’t come home.
‘It seems so much longer than that,’ she said, taking his hand and looking at the broken skin on his knuckles. ‘I’m not even sure what day it is.’
‘Tuesday,’ Dan said. ‘You were in that place a week. But it seemed like a month to me. I was frantic with worry. It wasn’t until your parents arrived on Saturday that I really got anyone to take your disappearance seriously.’
The door opened and Clara and Harry came in.
‘Darling,’ Clara said, bearing down on her daughter, arms open wide to hug her. ‘You can’t imagine how wonderful it was to get that call from Dan, even if he didn’t say much.’
Dan watched the family reunion closely. Fifi returned her mother’s hug and assured her she was already feeling better, but there was still a slight chill there. She was warmer with her father, holding on to his hand while her mother spoke of the reporters, the endless waiting and her brothers’ and sister’s joy when she phoned them to say Fifi was rescued.
‘Now we’re taking you home just as soon as you can leave here,’ Clara said bossily. ‘You need good food and plenty of sleep to get your strength back.’
Fifi’s