‘You don’t look bloody fine,’ Ridley growled. ‘Why the hell aren’t you on the way to hospital, too?’
Jack grimaced. ‘You’ll have questions. I thought you... I think I...’ He suddenly went from white to green. ‘...I might be sick.’ Ridley helped Jack to his feet, and, before Ridley could stop him, he stumbled through the office door. ‘There’s a bathroom, where I can...’
From the en suite, Jack could hear Ridley shouting to him: ‘I’ll drive you to the hospital. You get checked out and I’ll formally arrest Alberto. I’ll be downstairs.’
Jack leant heavily on the rim of the basin watching the swirling water from the running tap take the contents of his stomach down into the drain. He felt so lightheaded he thought he was going to pass out. He lowered himself onto his haunches, still hanging onto the rim of the basin to stop himself from sliding all the way to the floor. He could feel something in his front trouser pocket pressing into him. Jack knelt on the floor, put his hand into his pocket and pulled out the diamond bracelet. Glancing round, Jack could see a dark shadow inside the shower cubicle. He opened the door and there, tucked into the corner, was the small black rucksack.
The conversation on the way to the hospital was one-sided, with Ridley filling Jack in on everything that had happened while he was chasing down Alberto Barro.
‘You were right about all of the burglaries being decoys. The real target was a house belonging to an Emil Borreson and his wife. He’s a bitcoin dealer. A very successful one.’
‘Charlotte...’ Jack was so tired that he couldn’t get any more words out. His whole body felt as if he’d been kicked through a hedge and then trampled on, but he was still trying his best not to let the wound in his arm bleed onto Ridley’s pale leather seat.
‘She delivers their fruit and veg. Betina gave up Borreson’s name and address as soon as she realised that we knew everything. She wanted us to know that she’d not hurt anyone, and never would. When Gifford got to Borreson’s house, he was sitting at his desk in a puddle of urine, staring at a camera that wasn’t even turned on, waiting for his wife to walk through the door. He’d been told that if he moved, she’d die. She’s OK. Tied up in a disused barn on a neighbour’s property.’
Jack let his head fall back and closed his eyes. He had so much still to think about.
First and foremost was the fact that with the man he respected most in the world sat next to him, between his feet, part hidden underneath his jacket, he had the small black rucksack with the stolen diamond bracelet in it along with a large amount of cash, although he didn’t yet know how much.
‘We got them all,’ Ridley concluded. ‘You got them all, Jack. Well done. I’ve got a meeting with DCI Hearst tomorrow where I intend to tell her about the protection I promised Charlotte Miles.’
‘You promised?’ Jack said.
Ridley shrugged. ‘It sounds less insubordinate than my DS doing it behind my back.’
Jack didn’t say his next thought out loud: And she likes you, so she’ll forgive you. Instead, he thanked Ridley for trusting him that Charlotte was an unwilling participant.
‘DCI Hearst is a pragmatist, Jack. She’ll be lenient with Charlotte, in the service of the greater good. Gifford will retire on a high, Oxford will get their killer and we... well, I’m not sure what we get other than a firm handshake and a warm feeling inside for having done an amazing job. But isn’t that always the way?’
Ridley’s genuine contentment at having done his job was written all over his face. It was admirable. Enviable. Ridley was a copper through and through. Jack started from the same place, had all of the same intentions and relished the wins just as much as Ridley; but he needed more.
Jack squeezed his ankles together, gripping the small black rucksack to make sure that taking it hadn’t been some sort of hallucination brought on by the pain spreading through his body. It hadn’t. The rucksack was definitely there.
Jack hadn’t taken it because it contained a huge amount of money; he’d taken it because the world was wrong in the way it worked. The legal system would take this money and put it on a shelf in a police evidence room for the next God-knows-how-many years. It would probably never be needed as evidence, because they’d nailed everyone on so much else. And when the cash was finally released, it couldn’t be used as victim compensation, because they would all have received their insurance pay-outs. It’d either be returned to the bank to be destroyed or end up in the Met’s bank account and fed back into police services. Jack couldn’t see the justice in any of those options when there were so many people in the world, who worked all the hours that God sent painting other people’s nurseries, and still couldn’t earn enough money to keep their own baby alive.
Life was unfair, and although Ridley would never bend the rules to put any of that right, Jack would. Life was not about settling for the firm handshake and a warm feeling inside; and it certainly wasn’t about sitting back and waiting for your reward in heaven. Jack wanted his rewards now. But only the ones he’d earned.
Chapter 25
As Jack was pushed swiftly down the hospital corridor, the wheelchair pulled naturally to the left, and he could feel the paramedic pulling on the right handle and pushing on the left one, just to keep the decrepit heap of junk in a straight line. This twisting motion moved Jack in his seat and made him feel even sicker than he did already, as did the bump and click on each rotation of the back wheel, while strip-lights on the ceiling were so bright that Jack kept his eyes almost closed, just to cope with the pain inside his head.
He tried to ignore it by listening to Ridley’s handover to the ED doctor.
‘He was hit in the head with a crowbar about five hours ago. He was checked by paramedics who said he had concussion and they couldn’t rule out a fracture. Then he jumped in a helicopter and flew to London where he was in a physical, one-on-one confrontation with a suspect that resulted in his head injury re-opening, a stab wound to his forearm and, well, I don’t know what else.’
Jack couldn’t see the doctor’s face, but he heard his heavy sigh.
In resus, Jack was helped onto a bed and his rucksack, which had been hanging on the back of the wheelchair, was put into a transparent property bag and placed underneath. He was then cut out of his clothes, while nurses attached various machines to his body. The doctor came out with a slew of letters that meant very little to Jack. He understood ‘ECG’ and ‘BP’, and he’d heard ‘GCS’, ‘FBCs’, and ‘U&Es’ said numerous times whilst watching Casualty with Maggie, but he had no clue what any of it actually meant. He wished she was here.
A male nurse wearing John Lennon glasses, who looked to Jack to be about 13 years old, leant in close by the side of Jack’s head, as everyone else worked above him and around him. ‘My name’s Noah. So, what we’re doing is we’re making sure there are no obvious worries, such as internal bleeding. Then, we’ll take you to CT to get a scan of your head. I need to ask you some questions, Jack. You up for that? Can I call you Jack?’
Jack had no idea how many hands were on him, but it felt like dozens. Someone was definitely pressing his abdomen and saying there was ‘guarding on the left’ and someone else was trying for a third time to insert a needle into the crook of his arm. He looked over Noah’s head to Ridley who was wiggling his mobile in the air and mouthing ‘Maggie’. Jack gave him the thumbs-up and Ridley left resus to make the call. Jack then heard Noah ask him if there was any history of medical problems in his family and Jack realised that he didn’t know. He could hear himself saying, ‘My dad died of cancer... no, no he was shot. My old mum was killed by a brain tumour. But my new mum’s alive.’