‘Are you at home?’ I asked.
‘No… In the hospital.’
‘Tell me the number and I’ll phone straight back.’
I heard murmuring in the background; then another voice came on, efficient, controlled, reading out a number, repeating it slowly. I tapped the digits onto my mobile so that they appeared on the small display screen.
‘Right,’ I said, reading the number back. ‘Put down your receiver.’ To Charles I said, ‘May I use your phone?’
He waved a hand permissively towards his desk, and I pressed the buttons on his phone to get back to where I’d been.
The efficient voice answered immediately.
‘Is Mrs Ferns still there?’ I said. ‘It’s Sid Halley.’
‘Hang on.’
Linda Ferns was trying not to cry. ‘Sid… Rachel’s worse. She’s asking for you. Can you come? Please.’
‘How bad is she?’
‘Her temperature keeps going up.’ A sob stopped her. ‘Talk to Sister Grant.’
I talked to the efficient voice, Sister Grant. ‘How bad is Rachel?’
‘She’s asking for you all the time,’ she said. ‘How soon can you come?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Can you come this evening?’
I said, ‘Is it that bad?’
I listened to a moment of silence, in which she couldn’t say what she meant because Linda was beside her.
‘Come this evening,’ she repeated.
This evening. Dear God. Nine-year-old Rachel Ferns lay in a hospital in Kent a hundred and fifty miles away. III to death, this time, it sounded like.
‘Promise her,’ I said, ‘that I’ll come tomorrow.’ I explained where I was. ‘I have to be in court tomorrow morning, in Reading, but I’ll come to see Rachel as soon as I get out. Promise her. Tell her I’m going to be there. Tell her I’ll bring six wigs and an angel fish.’
The efficient voice said, ‘I’ll tell her,’ and then added, ‘Is it true that Ellis Quint’s mother has killed herself? Mrs Ferns says someone heard it on the radio news and repeated it to her. She wants to know if it’s true.’
‘It’s true.’
‘Come as soon as you can,’ the nurse said, and disconnected.
I put down the receiver. Charles said, ‘The child?’
‘It sounds as if she’s dying.’
‘You knew it was inevitable.’
‘It doesn’t make it any easier for the parents.’ I sat down again slowly in the gold armchair. ‘I would go tonight if it would save her life, but I…’ I stopped, not knowing what to say, how to explain that I wouldn’t go. Couldn’t go. Not except to save her life, which no one could do however much they ached to.
Charles said briefly, ‘You’ve only just got here.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And what else is there, that you haven’t told me?’
I looked at him.
‘I know you too well, Sid,’ he said. ‘You didn’t come all this way just because of Ginnie. You could have told me about her on the telephone.’ He paused. ‘From the look of you, you came for the oldest of reasons.’ He paused again, but I didn’t say anything. ‘For sanctuary,’ he said.
I shifted in the chair. ‘Am I so transparent?’
‘Sanctuary from what?’ he asked. ‘What is so sudden… and urgent?’
I sighed. I said with as little heat as possible, ‘Gordon Quint tried to kill me.’
Gordon Quint was Ginnie’s husband. Ellis was their son.
It struck Charles silent, open-mouthed: and it took a great deal to do that.
After a while I said, ‘When they adjourned the trial I went home by train and taxi. Gordon Quint was waiting there in Pont Square for me. God knows how long he’d been there, how long he would have waited, but anyway, he was there, with an iron bar.’ I swallowed. ‘He aimed it at my head, but I sort of ducked, and it hit my shoulder. He tried again… Well, this mechanical hand has its uses. I closed it on his wrist and put into practice some of the judo I’ve spent so many hours learning, and I tumbled him onto his back… and he was screaming at me all the time that I’d killed Ginnie… I’d killed her.’
‘Sid.’
‘He was half-mad… raving, really… He said I’d destroyed his whole family. I’d destroyed all their lives… he swore I would die for it… that he would get me… get me… I don’t think he knew what he was saying, it just poured out of him.’
Charles said dazedly, ‘So what did you do?’
‘The taxi driver was still there, looking stunned, so… er… I got back into the taxi.’
‘You got back…? But… what about Gordon?’
‘I left him there. Lying on the pavement. Screaming revenge… starting to stand up… waving the iron bar. I… er… I don’t think I’ll go home tonight, if I can stay here.’
Charles said faintly, ‘Of course you can stay. It’s taken for granted. You told me once that this was your home.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Then believe it.’
I did believe it, or I wouldn’t have gone there. Charles and his certainties had in the past saved me from inner disintegration, and my reliance on him had oddly been strengthened, not evaporated, by the collapse of my marriage to his daughter Jenny, and our divorce.
Aynsford offered respite. I would go back soon enough to defuse Gordon Quint; I would swear an oath in court and tear a man to shreds; I would hug Linda Ferns and, if I were in time, make Rachel laugh; but for this one night I would sleep soundly in Charles’s house in my own accustomed room — and let the dry well of mental stamina refill.
Charles said, ‘Did Gordon… er… hurt you, with his bar?’
‘A bruise or two.’
‘I know your sort of bruises.’
I sighed again. ‘I think… um… he’s cracked a bone. In my arm.’
His gaze flew instantly to the left arm, the plastic job.
‘No,’ I said, ‘the other one.’
Aghast, he said, ‘Your right arm?’
‘Well, yeah. But only the ulna, which goes from the little-finger side of the wrist up to the elbow. Not the radius as well, luckily. The radius will act as a natural splint.’
‘But, Sid…’
‘Better than my skull. I had the choice.’
‘How can you laugh about it?’
‘A bloody bore, isn’t it?’ I smiled without stress. ‘Don’t worry so, Charles. It’ll heal. I broke the same bone worse once before, when I was racing.’
‘But you had two hands then.’
‘Yes, so I did. So would you mind picking up that damned heavy brandy decanter and sloshing half a pint of anesthetic into a glass?’
Wordlessly he got to his feet and complied. I thanked him. He nodded. End of transaction.
When he was again sitting down he said, ‘So the taxi driver was a witness.’
‘The taxi driver is a “don’t-get-involved” man.’
‘But if he saw… He must have heard…’
‘Blind and deaf, he insisted he was.’ I drank fiery, neat liquid gratefully. ‘Anyway, that suits me fine.’
‘But, Sid…’
‘Look,’ I said reasonably, ‘what would you have me do? Complain? Prosecute? Gordon Quint is normally a level-headed, worthy sixtyish citizen. He’s not your average murderer. Besides, he’s your own personal long time friend, and I, too, have eaten in his house. But he already hates me for attacking Ellis, the light of his life, and he’d not long learned that Ginnie, his adored wife, had killed herself because she couldn’t bear what lies ahead. So how do you think Gordon feels?’ I paused. ‘I’m just glad he didn’t succeed in smashing my brains in. And, if you can believe it, I’m almost as glad for his sake that he didn’t, as for my own.’
Charles shook his head resignedly.
‘Grief can be dangerous,’ I said.