Nope.
The lift doors juddered open.
‘You see, because the bishop thought the penguin was the Mother Superior.’
Roberta stepped out into the corridor. ‘Don’t give up the day job.’
‘Oh, come on. It’s funny.’
‘You keep telling yourself that.’ She sauntered down the corridor to the flat at the end. Stopped.
Mrs Galloway’s front door hung squint from one hinge, the wood all buckled and scraped. Someone had kicked it in.
Oh sodding hell...
Roberta knocked on the splintered doorframe. ‘Mrs Galloway? Agnes? Are you OK?’
She stepped inside, Tufty right behind her.
‘Mrs Galloway? It’s DS Steel. Hello?’
A voice behind them, cold and hard: ‘You’re too late.’
Roberta turned, peering past Tufty.
The woman from the flat across the hall stood there in her disappointed tracksuit, arms crossed, face pinched and creased.
‘What happened?’
‘What do you think happened? You were supposed to save her! Instead, she’s in intensive care, half dead, because you screwed it up!’
‘She’s...’ A lump swelled in Roberta’s throat, like a tumour. She swallowed it down. ‘Intensive care?’
‘Should be ashamed of yourself!’ The neighbour slammed a hand against the twisted door. ‘HE — CAME — BACK!’
She was so tiny, lying there on the other side of the glass, in her crisp-white hospital bed, dwarfed by the machines gathered around her. Everywhere no’ covered in bandages, casts, or dressings was covered in bruises instead. The almost imperceptible rise and fall of her chest was the only sign that she was still alive.
Roberta put a hand against the window through to the High Dependency Ward, its glass cool beneath her palm.
The doctor flipped the page in her notes and kept droning on in a flatline nasal monotone: ‘... four broken ribs, punctured lung, ruptured spleen, broken ankle, dislocated shoulder...’
So small. So fragile. So broken.
‘... fractured cheekbone, detached retina, broken wrist, internal bleeding—’
‘She going to be OK?’
The doctor sighed. Scrubbed a hand across her face, tugging the bags beneath her eyes out of shape. ‘No. Maybe. Someone her age... It’s a lot of trauma. She’d be better off if he’d run her over with a car.’
The neighbour was right: it was all her fault.
She’d screwed up and Agnes Galloway had paid for it.
‘Look, I know I’m not meant to say this, but speaking as a medical professional...’ The doctor put a hand on Roberta’s shoulder. ‘If you catch the bastard who did this, I want you to batter the living crap out of him.’
Tufty was waiting for her, fiddling with his phone as she marched out of the ward. He stuck it away in his pocket and fell into step beside her. ‘Is she all right?’
Idiot.
‘Of course she’s no’ all right! How would she be all right? Philip Innes nearly killed her.’ Roberta curled her hands into claws and glowered at the ceiling. ‘AAAARGH!’
An old man pushing a drip on a stand stopped to stare.
‘Keep moving, Grandad!’ She stormed past him, down the corridor and into the waiting lift. Mashing the button with her thumb. Glowering at the numbers as the doors slid shut. ‘We should’ve had uniform watching the place! Why didn’t you remind me to get someone watching the place?’
Tufty shrugged. ‘Concussion, remember?’
Useless git.
‘Oh, come on, Sarge: this isn’t our fault! We didn’t do it, Phil Innes did.’
She hauled out her phone and called Control. ‘What the hell’s happening with my lookout request? You were supposed to find Philip Innes! Why isn’t he in sodding custody?’
Ding.
She swept out into yet another bland corridor. ‘Well?’
There was silence from the phone. Then, ‘For your information, Detective Sergeant Steel, we are not here for you to yell and shout at. If you want an update you can ask nicely!’
‘Fine!’ Roberta clenched her teeth, squeezing the words out: ‘Can I pretty please have an update on my lookout request?’
‘There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?’
‘I swear to God I’ll come down there with a claw-hammer!’ She barged through a set of double doors, and up to a reception area where a lumpy male nurse in green scrubs squinted at a computer screen.
‘Philip Innes hasn’t been spotted. Patrol cars and foot patrols have been asked to keep an eye out.’
‘AAAAARGH!’ She hung up. Rammed the phone back in her pocket. Poked a finger at the nurse. ‘Police. Wee boy, brought in earlier. Eaten nothing but dog food for days.’
The nurse didn’t even look up from his computer. ‘Antibiotics for the sores, fluids for the dehydration, social workers for the rest of it. No visitors.’
‘Well... sod you then!’ She turned on the spot and stormed out again, grabbing a handful of Tufty’s sleeve on the way, hauling him with her. ‘We’re going to find Philip Innes. We’re going to arrest him. And somewhere along the way he’s going to fall down a LOT of stairs!’
III
Cairncry Drive was a nice street, very fancypants. The houses were of the semidetached-bungalow-with-attic-conversion type in pink granite. Neat and tidy front gardens with crisp-edged box hedges and artistic shrubs.
Tufty locked the pool car and followed Steel up the path to number thirteen. A Jaguar sat out front. A new-looking one with leather seats and bags of extras. And they said crime didn’t pay? Had to admit, standing outside Phil Innes’s fancypants house on his fancypants street with his fancypants car parked outside, loansharking looked a hell of a lot more lucrative than police work.
Steel’s face was set like angry concrete, both hands clenched into fists.
Yeah, that was a good sign.
Tufty rang the bell. ‘Erm... Sarge? You’re not going to do anything silly, are you? You were only joking about him falling down stairs, right?’
‘No.’ She hammered on the door. ‘PHILIP INNES! POLICE! GET YOUR BACKSIDE OUT HERE, NOW!’
‘Only, you know, Professional Standards—’
‘EITHER YOU OPEN UP, INNES, OR WE KICK THIS DOOR DOWN!’ More hammering.
‘He’s probably not even here. I mean, surely if you’ve got a lookout request out for you someone checks your house first, right? A patrol car or something?’ A shrug. ‘Stands to reason.’
‘INNES!’
The door swung open, and there was Phil Innes, dressed in a denim shirt and tan chinos. Very preppy. ‘What’s all the shouting— Hey!’
Steel grabbed him, spun him around, slammed him against the side of the house and pinned him there. Pulled out her handcuffs and snapped them on. ‘Want to know what happens to scumbags who beat up old ladies? They’re going to tear you apart in prison.’
She shoved him towards Tufty. ‘Get this piece of crap in the car. We’re going for a drive.’
Interview Room Four had the same sharp cheese-and-vinegar smell as a pair of manky old trainers left out in the rain, then brought in to dry on a radiator. The only upside was the expression on Philip Innes’s face as he sat there breathing it in.
His solicitor was a baby-faced young man in a slightly crumpled suit. His hair cut short to try to hide the baldiness happening on top of his head.