Lost - Michael Robotham [82]
“Four brothers.”
“What ever happened to Home Economics?”
She takes a ragged breath. God knows what’s broken. I want to reach inside her body and hold her together.
“I wouldn’t ask you normally, Sir, but can you brush the hair out of my eyes?”
I push the hair across her forehead and tuck it behind her ears.
“Maybe I’ll take tomorrow off,” she says. “I could catch the Eurostar and go shopping in Paris.”
“Maybe I’ll come with you.”
“You hate shopping and you hate Paris.”
“I know, but it’s good to get away sometimes.”
“What about Mickey?”
“We’ll have found her by then.”
There are no soft blankets to tuck under her chin or canteens of water she can sip. She isn’t crying anymore. Her eyes are as serene as a deer’s. I can hear the ambulance siren.
Gerry Brandt has long gone. He has left behind a trampled flower bed and a torn scrap of his undershirt trapped in Ali’s fingers.
22
I hate hospitals. They’re full of horrible diseases that end with “ia” and “oma.” I know what I’m talking about. My first wife died in one of them, eaten away by cancer. Sometimes I wonder if the hospital didn’t make her sicker than the disease.
It took two years for her to die but it seemed longer. Laura celebrated every day as a bonus but I couldn’t do the same. It was like a slow torture, the endless, repetitive round of doctors’ appointments, scans, drugs, bad news and cheerful smiles to hide the truth.
Claire and Michael were only thirteen but they handled it well enough. It was me who went off the rails. I disappeared and spent eighteen months driving aid trucks into Bosnia Herzegovina during the war. I should have been at home looking after my children instead of sending postcards. Maybe that’s why they’ve never forgiven me.
They won’t let me see Ali. The doctors and nurses move past me as if I’m a plastic chair in the waiting room. The triage nurse, Amanda, is plump and composed. When she speaks the words tumble out like paratroopers.
“You’ll have to wait for the spinal surgeon. He won’t be long. There are hot drinks and snacks in the machines. Sorry, I can’t provide change.”
“We’ve been waiting for six hours.”
“Won’t be long now,” she says, counting rolls of bandages in a box.
Ali’s family is listening to the conversation. Her father leans forward until his head rests on his folded arms. A gentle respectful man, he’s like a torpedoed ship sinking beneath the waves.
Her mother is holding a paper cup of water, occasionally dipping her finger into the liquid and painting it across her eyelids. Three of her brothers are also in the waiting room and watch me with cold stares.
The stench of my own body odor rises from my shirt. It’s the same BO smell that fills airline cabins when businessmen take off their jackets. Turning away from the nurse, I walk slowly back to my seat. As I pass Ali’s father, I pause and wait for him to look up.
“I’m sorry this happened.”
Out of politeness he shakes my hand.
“You were with her, Detective Inspector?”
“Yes.”
He nods and looks past me. “What is a woman doing catching miscreants and criminals? That is men’s work.”
“She is a very fine police officer.”
He doesn’t reply. “My daughter was a very good athlete as a teenager. A sprinter. I once asked her why she wanted to run so fast. She said she was trying to catch up with the future—to see what sort of woman she was going to become.” He smiles.
“You should be proud of her,” I say.
He nods and shakes his head at the same time.
Moving past him, I slip into the toilet and douse my face with cold water. Taking off my shirt, I rub water under my arms, feeling it leak down to the belt of my trousers. Shutting the cubicle door, I lower the toilet lid and sit down.
This is my fault. I should have gone upstairs to find Gerry Brandt. I should have caught him before he escaped over the back fence. I can still see the look on his face as he held Ali’s legs and fell backward, breaking her body against the wall. He knew what he was doing. Now I’m going to find him. I’m going to bring him in. And maybe, if I’m