‘We’re set,’ my assistant replied. ‘You know where we’re going?’
‘General aviation, Cannes-Mandelieu airport, to connect with a Citation jet chartered from Excel Air.’
‘Fine. Let’s take off.’
‘How long will it take?’ I asked Conrad, through the headphones. The pilot was connected to the air-traffic system: we couldn’t hear him and he couldn’t hear us.
‘Less than half an hour, sir. Cannes is about fifty kilometres straight line, and this machine can travel. Audrey told the charter company to be ready to take off as soon as we get there, with a flight plan filed to the nearest possible landing point.’
‘Do you know where that will be?’
‘I’m hoping it’ll be Dundee. They normally close at nine p.m. BST, but if staff are available, they can extend that by an hour. The charter company said they’d do their best.’
I nodded and leaned back in my seat, staring out of the window at the coast as we headed west, doing my best not to think the worst, and failing abysmally, until I summoned a picture of Susie’s optimistic smile into my mind. That helped, a little.
7
It wasn’t hard to find them: Conrad and I walked into the main concourse and there they were, in the cafeteria, each with her hands clasped round a mug of coffee. It was hard to say who looked the more exhausted, Ellen, or Mary, my step-mother. They didn’t see me as I approached, trying to read their faces for any signs that might be there.
When I was three or four yards away, Ellie looked up. Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open; she stood and met me half-way, wrapping me in the sort of hug she used to give me when we were kids. ‘God, brother, am I glad to see you,’ she exclaimed, as she released me. ‘Harvey said you’d be lucky to get here by lunchtime tomorrow. I told him that he can’t know you all that well yet. How long did it take you?’
I glanced at my watch: it showed eleven thirty, but it was still on Central European Time, an hour ahead. ‘We left Monaco three hours ago,’ I told her. ‘We were lucky; they kept Dundee airport open for us because it was an emergency.’ I gazed around; the place wasn’t busy but there were a few people at other tables, most of them looking tired or sombre, in the same situation as us, I guessed.
‘What’s the score?’ I asked.
‘He’s still under assessment; they haven’t really told us anything.’
‘Time they did, then. Who’s in charge?’
‘I don’t know.’
Usually it’s Ellie who’s in charge, but this time she was just another helpless terrified relative, sitting on the sidelines of a loved one’s peril.
‘Time we found out, then. Where was he admitted?’
‘Accident and Emergency.’
‘Take me there.’ I looked at my assistant. ‘Conrad, stay here with Mary for now, and keep an eye out for media. It won’t take long for someone to tip the word that I’m here.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Normally Conrad and I are informal with each other, first-name terms both ways, but he’s ex-military and in what he sometimes refers to as ‘operational situations’ he tends to revert to type.
‘Why are you waiting here anyway?’ I asked Mary. ‘This is hardly private.’
She looked at me, red-eyed. ‘There didn’t seem to be anywhere else. I tried the chapel, but it’s closed.’
Ninewells is a big place; I’d been there before, but I wasn’t all that familiar with the layout. Ellie was, though, and she led me through a series of corridors until we spotted a sign announcing the A amp;E unit. Happily, things were quiet; I dare say it would have been different at the weekend, even in a douce city like Dundee, but whatever Wednesday-evening rush there had been seemed to be over.
In a thing that looked like a command unit, we saw a nurse in a dark blue uniform with a tag that gave her name as Sister Kermack. ‘She was on duty earlier,’ Ellie murmured.
I approached her. ‘Are you in charge?’ I asked her.
She frowned at me, appraising me, but said nothing.
‘Will I speak up a bit?’ I snapped. ‘Are you in charge here?’
‘I’m the senior nurse on duty,’ she replied evenly. There might have been a hint of a challenge in her tone: ‘and what do you want to make of it?’
‘Whatever I have to,’ was my unspoken answer. ‘Good,’ I breezed on. ‘We’re making progress. My father was admitted here earlier this evening. His name’s Macintosh Blackstone.’
‘Yes, and he was dealt with,’ Sister Kermack responded. ‘He was sent to the cardio ward.’
She’d probably had a hard day too: no, not probably, certainly. But I’d left my consideration, and my normal good humour, back in Monaco. ‘Look,’ I said heavily, ‘I know I’m being peremptory here, but I want the following, and you’re the person best placed to deliver it, or set me on the right track. I’d like to speak to someone who can give me full information on my dad’s condition, and I need someone to show me to a place where my step-mother, my sister and I can wait in private, for as long as I have to. I’d also like to speak to your press officer. I don’t expect you to do all that stuff yourself, only to direct me to someone who can.’
She looked at me and I could tell that the name had finally clicked. ‘You’re Oz Blackstone, aren’t you?’ I nodded, unable to summon up the usual accompanying smile. ‘And Mr Blackstone’s your father?’
‘He always has been.’
‘Give me a minute. I’ll phone the surgical wards and find out which one he’s been referred to, then I’ll get the most senior doctor there to talk to you.’ She pointed to a door marked ‘Staff’. ‘That’s our quiet room. You can wait in there, if you like.’
‘That’s okay, you just do what you have to, as quickly as you can.’
We watched her as she turned her back to us and picked up a phone. As she spoke, I couldn’t help noticing the back of her neck go pink, then red, then redder. Finally, she hung up and turned back to face us. ‘Someone’s on his way to speak to you, Mr Blackstone,’ she said. I could tell from her face that he would not be bearing good news. So could Ellie: she hugged me, as if for support.
‘Is he gone?’ I asked her quietly.
‘Please,’ she begged us, ‘wait in the staff room.’
I took pity on her and did as she said. There was a coffee machine, the kind that takes sachets. It’s not my favourite, but I switched it on and set it to make a double espresso.
I had just handed the end product to Ellie when the door opened and a man in a white coat, with the inevitable stethoscope hanging from his neck, stepped into the room. He looked no more than twenty-five, and he was holding a clip-board as if it was a comforter. Maybe it was. ‘Mr Blackstone?’ he began. ‘I’m Dr Oliphant, senior house officer in the cardio unit.’
I shook his clammy hand. ‘This is my sister, Mrs January,’ I told him. ‘I’ve just arrived but she and my step-mother have been here for over three hours. What do you have to tell us about our father? Is he in surgery?’
‘Well,’ the young doctor began. No, he had not brought good news, and he wasn’t looking forward to breaking it. ‘The thing is. .’
‘Yes?’ My patience was totally gone.
‘The thing is, he’s not here.’
‘What?’
‘He’s been transferred to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. We don’t do the sort of surgery here that he requires.’
‘Jesus!’ Ellie gasped. I laid a hand on her shoulder to stop her going into orbit.
‘I’m terribly sorry that nobody advised you of this, Mrs January, but my colleagues said they couldn’t find you. They thought you’d gone home.’
‘They thought. .’ She sounded like a volcano, starting to erupt. The lad was in deep trouble, until I decided to rescue him from my sister’s wrath.
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘let’s not get into a blaming situation. Someone fucked up and that’s it. What’s our dad’s condition? That’s all we really care about.’
‘He’s criticaclass="underline" he’s suffered a massive failure of the aortic valve, and he needs replacement surgery or he won’t survive.’
‘What brought it on?’