‘Get a doctor...’
‘An ambulance...’
‘Keep pressing...’
‘Towels...’
‘Bandages...’
‘Just keep the pressure on!’ the female guard yelled to her male colleague.
Keep the pressure on indeed, Rebus thought: wasn’t that exactly what he and Storey had done?
There were shards of glass on Traynor’s shirt. Shards from the cracked photo frame. The shards he’d used to cut open his wrists. Rebus realised that Storey was looking at him. He returned the stare.
You knew, didn’t you? Storey’s look seemed to be saying. You knew it would come to this... and yet you did nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
And the look Rebus gave him back, it said nothing at all.
When the ambulance arrived, Rebus was just inside the perimeter fence, finishing a cigarette. As the gates were opened, he stepped out on to the road, walking past the guardhouse and down the slope towards where Caro Quinn was standing, watching the ambulance disappear into the compound.
‘Not another suicide?’ she asked, appalled.
‘An attempt anyway,’ Rebus informed her. ‘But not one of the inmates.’
‘Who then?’
‘Alan Traynor.’
‘What?’ Her whole face seemed to crease itself into the question.
‘Tried slashing his wrists.’
‘Is he all right?’
‘I really don’t know. Good news for you, though.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Next few days, Caro, a lot of shit’s going to start flying. Maybe even enough to see this place shut down.’
‘And you call that good news?’
Rebus frowned. ‘It’s what you’ve been wanting.’
‘Not like this! At the cost of another man’s life!’
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ Rebus argued.
‘I think you did.’
‘Then you’re paranoid.’
She took half a step back. ‘Is that what I am?’
‘Look, I just thought...’
‘You don’t know me, John. You don’t know me at all...’
Rebus paused, as if considering his answer. ‘I can live with that,’ he said at last, turning to head back to the gates.
Storey was waiting for him at the car. His only comment: ‘You seem to know a lot of people around here.’
Rebus gave a snort. Both men watched as one of the paramedics jogged back to the ambulance for something he’d forgotten.
‘Reckon we should have made that two ambulances,’ Storey said.
‘Janet Eylot?’ Rebus guessed.
Storey nodded. ‘Staff are worried about her. She’s in another of the offices, lying on the floor wrapped in blankets, shaking like a leaf.’
‘I told her everything would be all right,’ Rebus said quietly, almost to himself.
‘Then I won’t go depending on you for an expert opinion.’
‘No,’ Rebus said, ‘you definitely shouldn’t do that...’
29
The train was fifteen minutes late.
Siobhan and Mangold were waiting at the end of the platform, watching the doors slide open, the passengers start spilling out. There were tourists with suitcases, looking tired and bewildered. Business travellers emerged from the first-class compartments and headed briskly towards the taxi rank. Mothers with kids and buggies; elderly couples; single men swaggering, light-headed after three or four hours of drinking.
No sign of Ishbel.
It was a long platform, plenty of exit points. Siobhan craned her neck, hoping they wouldn’t miss her, aware of tuts and looks from the new arrivals as they were forced to move around her.
And then Mangold’s hand was on her arm. ‘There she is,’ he said.
She was closer than Siobhan had realised, laden with carrier bags. Seeing Mangold, she lifted these and opened her mouth wide, excited by the day’s expedition. She hadn’t noticed Siobhan. Moreover, without Mangold’s prompting, Siobhan might have let her walk straight past.
Because she was the old Ishbel again: hair restyled and back to its natural colour. No longer a copy of her dead sister.
Ishbel Jardine, large as life, throwing her arms around Mangold and planting a lingering kiss on his lips. She had her eyes screwed shut, but Mangold’s stayed open, looking over Ishbel’s shoulder towards Siobhan. Eventually Ishbel took a step back, and Mangold turned her a little by the shoulder, so she was facing Siobhan.
And recognising her.
‘Oh, Christ, it’s you.’
‘Hello, Ishbel.’
‘I’m not going back! You have to tell them that!’
‘Why not just tell them yourself?’
But Ishbel was shaking her head. ‘They’d make me... they’d talk me into it. You don’t know what they’re like. I’ve let them control me for way too long!’
‘There’s a waiting room,’ Siobhan said, pointing towards the concourse. The crowd had thinned, taxis labouring up the exit ramp towards Waverley Bridge. ‘We can talk there.’
‘There’s nothing to talk about.’
‘Not even Donny Cruikshank?’
‘What about him?’
‘You know he’s dead?’
‘And good riddance!’
Her whole attitude — voice, posture — was harder than when Siobhan had last met her. She was armoured, toughened by experience. Not afraid of letting her anger show.
Probably capable of violence, too.
Siobhan turned her attention to Mangold. Mangold with his bruised face.
‘We’ll talk in the waiting room,’ she said, making it sound like an order.
But the waiting room was locked, so they walked across the concourse and into the station bar instead.
‘We’d be better off at the Warlock,’ Mangold said, examining the tired-looking decor and tireder clientele. ‘I need to be getting back anyway.’
Siobhan ignored him, ordered the drinks. Mangold got out a roll of notes, said he couldn’t let her pay. She didn’t argue the point. There was no conversation in the place, yet it was noisy enough to cover anything the three of them might say: TV tuned to a sports channel; piped music drifting from the ceiling; extractor fan; one-armed bandits. They took a corner table, Ishbel spreading her bags out around her.
‘A good haul,’ Siobhan said.
‘Just some bits and pieces.’ Ishbel looked at Mangold again and smiled.
‘Ishbel,’ Siobhan said soberly, ‘your parents have been worried about you, which in turn means the police have been worried.’
‘That’s not my fault, is it? I didn’t ask you to stick your noses in.’
‘Detective Sergeant Clarke’s only doing her job,’ Mangold said, playing the peacemaker.
‘And I’m saying she needn’t have bothered... end of story.’ Ishbel lifted her glass to her lips.
‘Actually,’ Siobhan informed her, ‘that’s not strictly true. In a murder case, we need to speak to every single suspect.’
Her words had the desired effect. Ishbel stared from above the rim of her glass, then put it down untouched.
‘I’m a suspect?’
Siobhan shrugged. ‘Can you think of anyone who had more reason to thump Donny Cruikshank?’
‘But he’s the whole reason I left Banehall! I was scared of him...’
‘I thought you said you left because of your parents?’
‘Well, them too... They were trying to turn me into Tracy.’
‘I know, I’ve seen the photos. I thought maybe it was your idea, but Mr Mangold put me right on that.’
Ishbel squeezed Mangold’s arm. ‘Ray’s my best friend in the whole world.’