When the nurse had finished with the bandages, I walked down to the plaster room, taking it slowly to avoid jolting any part of my protesting body. I’d only just pushed the swing doors open when I heard a familiar Scouse accent. Alexis’s cheerful raucousness was to my headache what Agent Orange is to house plants. Della’s head swung round with all the belligerence of a punch-drunk boxer who’s gone one round too many and we chorused, ‘Go away.’
‘Well, that’s a charming way to greet your friends. Soon as the newsdesk hears there’s a bit of a fracas involving DCI Prentice and a private eye called Brannigan, I say to them, “I’ll take care of this, the girls need to see a friendly face,”’ Alexis said self-righteously.
‘If you’re here as a journalist, go away, Alexis,’ I said wearily. ‘If I said this has not been a good night, it would be the understatement of my life. Things have gone so wrong in the last hour that I’m desperate to hit somebody. Now, we might be in the right place for the aftermath of that sort of thing, but I really don’t want it to happen to you.’
‘Me, I’d just settle for somebody to arrest,’ Della said, her voice sounding as emotionally exhausted as she had every right to feel. ‘So, as Kate said, Alexis the journalist can take a hike. Alexis the friend, however, is welcome to stay provided she has a set of wheels that can take us all home after this little fiasco has run its course.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
Della shook her head. ‘It really wasn’t your fault. I should have had the sense to realize he’d be walking around with armed minders. We should have let them all walk out of there then picked Lovell up in the middle of the night when he was on his own. I misjudged it.’
That should have made me feel better. Instead, I felt infinitely worse. Della was on the point of being promoted to superintendent and an operation like this that could be painted as a screw-up wasn’t going to help. Add to that the pariah status automatically granted to any police officer who puts other cops away, and it looked like my bright idea might have put Della’s next promotion into cold storage. ‘You’d better come back and stay with me,’ I offered as the first stage in what was going to be a long apology. ‘You won’t be able to manage the stairs at your place for a few days.’
She nodded. ‘You’re probably right. Won’t Richard mind?’
‘Only if you try to arrest him for possession.’
Della managed a tired smile. ‘I think I can manage to restrain myself.’
‘So what actually happened?’ Alexis chipped in, unable to restrain herself indefinitely.
‘Gun battle in Manchester’s clubland,’ I said. ‘Police officer held hostage. Man helping police with inquiries, two gunmen sought. Club owner seriously injured, two police officers with minor injuries. One private investigator who wasn’t there.’
Alexis grinned. ‘I hate it when you come home with half a tale.’
Later, a lot later, when Della was asleep in my bed and Richard in his, I sat in the dark in the conservatory with a strong mixture of Smirnoff Black Label and freshly squeezed grapefruit juice and contemplated the capital D of the moon. Tony Tambo hadn’t made it; one of Della’s colleagues had rung to tell her not ten minutes after we got home. I sipped my drink and thought about how far reality had diverged from the simple little sting I’d envisaged. I’d gone in all gung ho and full of myself, and now a man was dead. He’d had a girlfriend and an ex-wife and a little daughter who was the apple of his eye, according to Richard. He wasn’t supposed to behave like a hero, but then, I hadn’t imagined there was going to be any need for heroics.
If my life was like the movies, my character would be planning vengeance, putting the word out in the underworld that she wanted those guys so bad she could taste it. And they would be delivered to her in such a way that she could decide their fate. But my life isn’t like the movies. I knew I’d be doing nothing to discover the identities of the gunmen, where they hung out or who they ran with. That was the police’s job, and I couldn’t do it without placing more lives in danger. After what had happened to Tony Tambo, I was through with setting myself up against the major players.
I took a long cool swallow and tried not to think about Tony’s daughter. Tried not to despise myself too much. Tried desperately to remember why I’d been working so hard to find a way to stay in this destructive game.
I woke around half past seven, just as the sun climbed over my back fence and hit the end of the wicker settee where I’d finally lost consciousness. I was still wearing the T-shirt and jogging pants I’d put on after the shower I’d needed to get the last of Tony Tambo’s blood off me. If there’s a female equivalent of unshaven, I felt it. I rubbed the grit out of my eyes, wincing at the arrow of pain in my left wrist, and stumbled through to the kitchen. I was just filling the coffee maker with water when I heard Della call me. ‘Be right there,’ I said, finishing the job.
Della was propped up on my pillows looking ten years older than she had done the day before. According to my wardrobe mirror, that still gave her a few on me. ‘How are you feeling?’ I asked.
‘You see it all.’
‘That bad? Shit, I’d better take your shoelaces and belt then.’
Della reached out and limply patted my hand. ‘Do I smell coffee?’
‘You do. Life-support systems will be available shortly.’
Ten minutes later, we were sharing the first pot of coffee of the day. I even relaxed the house rules enough to let her smoke in my bed. ‘What have you got on today?’ she asked.
I shrugged. ‘I thought I might go down to the university and see if I can sign up to finish my law degree this autumn.’
Della was suddenly alert. ‘Part time?’ she said suspiciously.
‘Full time.’
‘Tony Tambo’s death was not your fault,’ she said firmly.
‘I know that. I just don’t know if I want to do this job any more. I didn’t think it was going to be like this. Come to that, it didn’t use to be like this. I don’t know if it’s the world that’s turning nastier or if it’s just that I’ve had a run of cheesy luck, but some days I feel like there should be a task force of counsellors, undertakers and paramedics in the car behind me.’
Della shook her head, exasperated. ‘My God, you are feeling sorry for yourself this morning, aren’t you? Listen, I’m the one who screwed up royally last night. A man died, and other people could have. The only way I could feel worse than I do now is if it had been you lying there on the mortuary slab. I’ve also probably kissed goodbye to my next promotion. But I’m not about to hand in my resignation. Even though I make mistakes, the police service needs people like me more than I need to gratify my guilt. I don’t have to tell you about the dozens of sleazy, creepy exploitative PIs there are out there. Your business needs you, just like the police needs me. What about all the times when you’ve changed people’s lives for the better? You got Richard out of jail, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah, but if it hadn’t been for me, he wouldn’t have been there in the first place,’ I reminded her.
‘You’ve saved businesses from going down the tube because you’ve identified the people who were stealing their money and their ideas. You’ve done work that has helped to clear up major drug syndicates.’