She reached for her cigarettes. "I'd hate to disappoint you, Miles."
"She says you can't remember anything since the fourth. Is that true?"
She didn't answer.
"Which means it is." He giggled suddenly. "So you don't remember the week you spent at the Hall."
She eyed him coldly as she felt for her lighter.
"You borrowed two hundred quid off me that week, Jinxy, and I want it back."
"Bog off, Miles."
He grinned. "You sound pretty on the ball to me. So what's with this amnesia crap? You trying to get yourself off the hook with Dad?"
"What hook?"
"Whatever it is you've done that you shouldn't have done."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
He shrugged indifferently. "Then why did you try to top yourself? Dad's been worse than usual this week. You might have thought of that before you started playing silly buggers."
She ignored him and lit a cigarette.
"Are you going to talk to me, or have I wasted my time coming here?"
"I doubt you've wasted your time," she said evenly, "as I imagine seeing me was the last thing on your list." She was watching his face, saw the flash of intense amusement in his eyes, and knew she was right. "You must be mad," she continued. "Adam wasn't bluffing when he said you'd be out on your ear the next time. Why on earth do you do it?"
"You think you know everything, don't you?"
"When it comes to you, Miles, I do."
He grinned. "Okay, then it gives me a buzz. Come on, Jinxy, a couple of hands of poker in a hotel bedroom, it's hardly major gambling. And who's going to tell Dad anyway? You certainly won't and neither will I." He giggled again. "I scored"-he tapped his jacket pocket-"so no lectures, all right? I'm not planning to run up any more debts. The old bastard's made it clear enough he won't bail me out again."
He was more hyped up than usual, she thought, and wondered how much he'd won. She changed the subject. "How's Fergus?"
"About as pissed off as I am. A couple of days ago, Dad reduced him to tears. You know what my guess is-the worm'll turn when Dad least expects it and then it'll be your precious Adam who gets the thrashing." He was fidgeting with the lapels of his jacket, brushing them, smoothing them. "Why did you do it? He hates you now, hates us, hates everyone. Poor old Ma most of all."
Jinx lay back and stared at the ceiling. "You know as well as I do what the solution is," she said.
"Oh God, not more bloody lectures. Anyone would think you were forty-four, not thirty-four." He raised his voice to a falsetto, mimicking her. " 'You're old enough to stand on your own two feet, Miles. You can't expect your mother to give you Porsches all your life. It's time to move out, find your own place, start a family.' "
"I don't understand why you don't want to."
"Because Dad refuses to ante up, that's why. You know the score. If we want to live in reasonable comfort, we stay at home where he can keep his eye on us. If we want out, we do it the hard way and graft for ourselves."
"Then welcome to the human race," she said scathingly. "What the hell do you think the rest of us do?"
His voice rose again, but this time in anger. "You damn well never had to graft. You stepped straight into Russell's money without lifting a finger. Jesus, you're so bloody patronizing. 'Welcome to the human race, Miles.' You piss me off, Jinx, you really do."
She was dog-tired. Why didn't the nurse come back to rescue her? She stubbed out her cigarette and turned to look at him. "Surely anything has to be better than letting Adam treat you like dirt. When did he last beat you?" There was something wrong with him, she thought. He was like an addict waiting for a fix, twitched, unable to sit still, fidgeting, fingering, eyes overbright. Oh God, not drugs ... not drugs... But as she fell asleep, she was thinking that yes, of course it was drugs, because self-indulgence was the one thing Miles was good at. If nothing else, his father had taught him that.
ODSTOCK HOSPITAL, SALISBURY-9:00 P.M.
The emergency room doctor was barely out of medical school and nothing in his training had prepared him for this. He smiled tentatively at the woman in the cubicle. It was worse than the elephant man, he was thinking, as he took his place beside the nurse whose hand the wretched woman was clutching. Her face was so swollen that she looked barely recognizable as a human being. She had given her name as Mrs. Hale. "You've been in the wars," he said vacuously.
"My husband-belt-" she croaked through lips that could hardly move.
He looked at the bruising on her throat where the marks of someone's fingers were clearly visible. "Is it just your face that's been hurt?"
She shook her head and, with a pathetic gesture of apology, raised her skirt and revealed knickers saturated with blood. "He"-tears squeezed between her swollen lids-"cut me."
Three hours later, a sympathetic policewoman tried to persuade her to make a statement before she was transferred to the operating room for surgery to her rectum. "Look, Mrs. Hale, we know your husband didn't do this. We've checked and he's currently serving eighteen months in Winchester for handling stolen property. We also know you're on the game, so the chances are that the animal responsible was one of your customers. Now, we're not interested in how you make your money. We're only interested in stopping this bastard doing the same thing to some other poor girl. Will you help us?''
She shook her head.
"But he could kill next time. Do you want that on your conscience? All we need is a description."
A faint laugh croaked in her throat. "Do me a favor, love."
"You've got two factured cheekbones, severe bruising of the throat and larynx, a dislocated wrist, and internal bleeding from having a hairbrush rammed up your back passage," said the policewoman brutally. "You're lucky to be alive. The next woman he attacks may not be so lucky."
"Too right. It'll be yours bloody truly if I open my mouth. He swore he'd come back." She closed her eyes. "The hospital shouldn't have called you. I never gave them leave, and I'm not pressing no charges."
"Will you think about it at least?"
"No point. You'll never pin it on him and I'm not running scared for the rest of my life."
"Why won't we pin it on him?"
She gave another croak of laughter. "Because it'll be my word against his, love, and I'm a fat old slag and he's little Lord Fauntleroy."
THURSDAY, 23RD JUNE, THE NIGHTINGALE CLINIC-3:30 A.M
As he did every night at about this time, the security guard emerged from the front door of the Nightingale Clinic and strolled towards a bench on the moonlit lawn. It was a little treat he gave himself halfway through his shift, a quiet smoke away from the nagging lectures of the nursing staff. He wiped the seat with a large handkerchief, then lowered himself with a sigh of contentment. As he fished his cigarettes from his jacket pocket he had the distinct impression that someone was behind him. Startled, he glanced round, then lumbered awkwardly to his feet and went to investigate the trees bordering the driveway. There was no one there, but he couldn't rid himself of a sense that he was being watched.
He was a phlegmatic man, and put the experience down to the cheese he'd eaten at supper. As his wife always said, too much cheese wasn't good for anyone. But he didn't linger over his smoke that night.
Jane Kingsley was floating in dark water, eyes open, straining for the sunlight that dappled the surface above her. She wanted to swim, but the desire was all in her mind and she was too weary to make it happen. A terrible hand was upon her, pulling her down to the weeds below-insistent, persuasive, compelling. She opened her mouth to let death in...
She burst out of sleep in a threshing frenzy, sweat pouring down her back. She was drowning ... Oh Jesus, sweet Jesus, somebody help her! The moon beamed through a gap in her curtains, lighting a path through the room. Where was she? She didn't know this place. She stared in terror from one dark shadow to the other until she saw the lilies beside her, gleaming white and pure against the black of the carnations. Memory returned. Jane was her mother ... she was Jinx ... Jane was her mother ... she was Jinx...