‘My dad was a police officer in Belfast,’ Velvet Wilde said in her Northern Irish accent, the smell of pipe smoke on Potting’s clothes reminding her of him. ‘He was killed by a car bomb during the Troubles. I made the decision that as soon as I was old enough, I would do something to stand up against any kind of tyranny or intimidation.’
‘I like feisty women,’ Potting said. ‘Good on you.’
She said nothing.
Potting was silent for a beat. Street lights flashed by, overhead, briefly illuminating their faces. ‘Like I said,’ he repeated, ‘I like feisty women.’
‘I’m sure Brighton is full of them, gagging to get laid by you.’
He smiled. ‘Are you allowed to say that these days with all the political correctness about workplace harassment?’
‘You know what, Norman, so far as I’m concerned most of it is absolute bollocks.’
‘I agree with you, Velvet. So would you permit me to tell you that you’re a very attractive lady?’
‘Well, that’s what my partner tells me,’ she said.
‘Ah.’ Potting nodded. ‘He’s a lucky man. What’s his name?’
‘Julia.’
There was a long silence. ‘Right,’ Potting said, clumsily.
‘I understand your fiancée was a police officer who died in a fire,’ she said.
He nodded, gloomily. ‘Bella. She was the love of my life.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Thank you.’ He shrugged. ‘You’re happy with Julia?’
‘She’s the love of my life. Very happy.’
‘You’re lucky.’
‘I am.’
The satnav indicated half a mile to their destination. They were high up above the cliffs of East Brighton and in daytime they would have had commanding views, to their right, across the English Channel. Now it was a vast, inky blackness.
‘I heard that Detective Superintendent Grace lost the love of his life, too,’ DC Wilde suddenly said.
‘Well, he’s very happily married now,’ Potting replied, guardedly. ‘He lost his first wife but I couldn’t say whether she was the love of his life.’
‘How did he lose her — what was her name — Sandy?’
‘He doesn’t talk about her much. As I understand, they married when he was quite young. Then he came home, on the evening of his thirtieth birthday, after they’d been married ten years, to find she had vanished.’
‘Vanished?’
‘Into thin air. No note or message. He came home to take her out for a birthday dinner and she wasn’t there. I think they found her car at Gatwick Airport, but there were no transactions on her credit cards, nothing. He spent ten years looking for her — I heard he even consulted mediums.’ He shrugged. ‘Eventually he had her declared legally dead and married a lovely lady, Cleo, who runs the Brighton and Hove Mortuary. They have a baby son, Noah.’
‘She is so nice — I’ve met her. And did he ever find out what happened to his wife?’
‘Only very recently. Sandy was in a coma after being hit by a taxi in Munich and then died — leaving behind a ten-year-old son he never knew existed.’
‘His son?’
‘As I understand.’
‘God,’ she said. ‘How does he cope with that — how does his new wife?’
‘He doesn’t talk about his personal life much. Not at work, anyhow. But I’ve known him a long time — he’s pretty resourceful.’
She shook her head. ‘None of us ever knows what’s around the corner, do we?’
‘That’s why we do this job,’ Norman Potting said.
‘Because we don’t know what’s around the corner?’ She looked puzzled.
‘Exactly.’
‘In what sense?’
He pulled out his warrant card. ‘One day, when you’re as old as I am, you’ll understand. This card, this job, it lets us see around blind corners. Whether we like the view or not.’
‘We’re not about to like the view ahead, right?’
Norman Potting shook his head. ‘That’s never an option. We don’t like or dislike. We just do what we do. Roy Grace says all we can do as police officers is to try to lock up the villains and make the world a slightly better place.’
‘And do we?’
‘Lock the villains up? Or make the world a better place?’ he asked.
‘Make the world a better place.’
‘I think we help stop it getting worse.’
52
Saturday 12 August
22.30–23.30
Gentian Llupa passed an hour, inconspicuously, at the rear of a crowded pub close to the Royal Sussex County Hospital. He sipped a Diet Coke, whilst watching a darts match that was in progress between a local team and one from Ipswich, the Thrasher Vipers, who all wore smart black-and-orange shirts. One member of this visiting team, heavily tattooed and sporting a Lincoln beard, was punishingly accurate. The Thrasher Vipers were indeed thrashing the local team, Llupa thought with a smile.
He left the pub and slipped out into the darkness. One thing he had learned as a medical student was that hospitals tended to be pretty chaotic places. Anyone could walk around the corridors and wards unchallenged. But even so, just to be safe, beneath his motorcycling leathers which were now folded and locked inside the motorbike’s pannier, he had put on blue surgical scrubs, a stethoscope round his neck and an ID tag bearing the name Dr Tojo Melville, which his boss, Mr Dervishi, had given him.
He strode down a long corridor that smelled of disinfectant and mashed potato, passing a hand sanitizer, a caged trolley, an empty wheelchair, a lift, toilets and a multicoloured sign naming the various wards on this floor. He passed a stack of empty blue and green plastic crates, two filled pink garbage bags, a row of noticeboards pinned with information leaflets, a yellow warning triangle stating CLEANING IN PROGRESS. A young, grief-stricken couple stood, hugging each other. An orderly walked past, from the opposite direction, giving him a cursory, respectful nod.
He reached the sign for Albourne Ward, Orthopaedic Unit, and stopped, peering in. Then, pulling his surgical hat low over his forehead, he approached the nursing station.
It was an open ward, comprising twenty-six beds, but to his right there were doors to four private rooms. Still no one took any notice of him. The nursing station was staffed by a pleasant-looking Asian man engaged on a phone call and two female nurses studying some paperwork. On the third door was the label STEPHEN SUCKLING.
As he hesitated outside, the door suddenly opened. A middle-aged woman, in jeans and a baggy blouse, blew the occupant a kiss and told him she would be back in the morning.
He turned his face away as she walked past him and waited until she had left the ward, then opened the door, walked in and closed it behind him.
The mechanical digger and crusher operator lay in the bed, both his legs held up by traction pulleys. He had been brought in earlier today, Llupa had been informed, with multiple fractures to the tibia and fibula in both legs, as well as fractures to his sacrum and coccyx. Much of his lower half was currently encased in plaster.
Llupa knew, from these injuries, he would not be walking again for many months and then for the rest of his life he was likely to have a severe limp. Well, he thought, that was one blessing. Stephen should be grateful to him for sparing him that suffering, no?
It was a small room, with pale-green walls and a wash basin with a soap dispenser. Above the bed was an Anglepoise lamp; there was a drip stand with two lines cannulated into the back of Suckling’s hand, two plastic chairs, a free-standing tray on which sat a glass, a jug of water and a box of tissues, and monitoring equipment with a display showing his blood pressure, 180 over 70 — High, thought Gentian — and his heart rate, 87 — Also high, he thought.