“Are you telling me to think about taking the gold carriage clock?”
“Retirement? No. Not unless it’s something you’re already thinking about. Is it?”
“No.”
“Then just give yourself a break. Call it a sabbatical, if you like.”
“The last time I was stuck in bed, someone I thought highly of died. I can’t let something like that happen again. But also, there’s this to consider.” Redlaw felt it was best to get it out in the open now, while events were still fresh in his mind. “In that industrial unit, those ’Lesses were lying in wait for me.”
Macarthur did a double take. “What?”
“I’m almost sure of it. I was as stealthy as I could be getting inside, and I suppose there’s a chance they heard me and got themselves into ambush positions. But that isn’t how Sunless normally operate. They’re not that organised. More likely, if they’d got wind of me coming, they would have tried to make a run for it, or else headed straight for me and attacked at the first opportunity, like termites defending their mound. The way it went down, it was as if they were expecting me.”
“That’s preposterous, Redlaw.”
“Maybe so, but that’s how it felt,” Redlaw said. “There was something off about the whole thing. So I’m asking you, who else knew about the nest? Who, apart from you, knew I was going there?”
“The possibility it existed was on the wires. Common knowledge. The eyewitness statement was logged earlier in the evening. Anyone with access to the SHADE database could have pulled it up.”
“In other words, just about anyone at HQ.”
“And as for knowing I was sending you there, I mentioned to several people I was doing that.”
“In advance?”
“Yes. Redlaw, you’re not really thinking what I think you’re thinking? That someone inside SHADE set you up? Somehow tipped off the vampires that you were coming?”
“I’m
trying
not to think that.”
“For heaven’s sake, I’ve never heard anything so insane in all my life!” Macarthur exclaimed. “What could this person hope to gain?”
“My death. Or, failing that, something like this.” He indicated his injury.
“But why?”
“Revenge is the only motive I can come up with.”
“In which case, who? Who at SHADE would be after revenge on you? Granted, you’ve rubbed a few people up the wrong way, but...”
“Did Sergeant Khalid know about the nest?”
“Did Sergeant—? I’m not even going to entertain this idea.”
“Did he? You said you’d thought about sending him instead of me.”
“Redlaw.” Macarthur stood, fists clenched by her sides. “If you didn’t happen to be in hospital already, I’d put you there myself for talk like that. As it is, I’m going to blame whatever medication it is they’ve got you on. That and post-traumatic stress. Do you realise how irrational you sound? A SHADE officer knowingly, deliberately endangering another?”
“Maybe I’ll ask Khalid myself.”
“You will not. You will not be going anywhere near Sergeant Khalid, and that’s because you will not be going anywhere near HQ. Not ’til you’re fully recovered. And it won’t be the medical professionals who’ll decide when that is, it’ll be me. Do you understand? Let me put it a little more bluntly, in case I’m not getting through that thick skull of yours. You are hereby suspended. You are no longer on active duty. I will reinstate you when I, and only I, believe you are ready for reinstatement. Until then, you may consider yourself on indefinite leave. Have I made myself clear?”
“Crystal, marm,” said Redlaw.
“Good.”
Macarthur stomped out, and Redlaw settled back against the pillows.
To be honest, that had gone better than he’d thought it would. At least she hadn’t sacked him. And he now knew that his suspicions about events on the Isle of Dogs weren’t pure paranoia; they carried a grain of possibility.
The fact was, there’d been grief between Redlaw and Ibrahim Khalid for years. Interreligious tensions were not uncommon in SHADE, and officers tended to group according to faith, Christian with Christian, Muslim with Muslim, and so on, which exacerbated matters. With Redlaw and Khalid, however, it was a clash of personalities rather than creeds. The sergeant’s attitude towards the job was a blend of cynicism and bludgeoning overkill that Redlaw found unprofessional and unpalatable.
Added to that, Khalid had
really
not got on with Róisín Leary. Redlaw had never quite fathomed why, although he reckoned it had a lot to do with Leary’s being a woman, and a forthright, forceful one at that. Khalid did not seem to mind being answerable to Commodore Macarthur, but that was probably because he had no choice in the matter and was, at any rate, in no position to criticise her, at least not openly. For Leary, a fellow sergeant, Khalid had shown little but contempt, and she in turn, who usually had a good word for everyone, could find none for him. Many was the time, indeed, when she had muttered darkly that if Khalid kept pushing and needling her the way he did—going on about how Sunless control and enforcement was not an appropriate occupation for a female and how much he disliked trouser-clad, unwomanly women—one day he’d wind up on the wrong end of a stake.
“Ignore him,” Redlaw would counsel. “It’s just a cultural thing. It’s not personal.”
But it had felt pretty personal to Leary, and that had made it personal to Redlaw. He couldn’t bring himself to be open-minded and even-handed towards Khalid, especially now that Leary was gone. He was defensive of her memory in a way that he hadn’t had to be defensive of her while she was alive, when she’d been perfectly capable of standing up for herself and hadn’t needed or welcomed protection from anyone else. He was jealous of everything she’d been to him and resentful of any person who had ever misjudged or maligned her. Khalid seemed to sense that, and so a vicious circle had developed, a mutual grudge that now and then spilled over into outright hostility.
The question was, just how low would Khalid stoop?
Hours came and went. Nurses came and went. Redlaw dozed and, in between dozes, brooded.
TV news provided some distraction. There was widespread coverage of the aftermath of last night’s rioting, accompanied by dire predictions of what tonight might hold. Politicians pontificated meaninglessly. Maurice Wax was a hyper-cautious wimp and his Conservative nemesis, that Slocock person, a loudmouthed opportunistic grandstander. Neither was offering anything like a practical answer to the problem at hand, doubtless because neither had one. Both seemed to be in a holding pattern, recycling the same old bromides and jibes. Wax did, however, hint at some kind of alternative strategy, making public what he’d already vouchsafed in private to Macarthur. All would be revealed at a press conference tomorrow.
Night fell, and Redlaw was seized by the urge to get up, get dressed, get out into the city. He made it as far as the foot of the bed before dizziness overwhelmed him. It felt as though a hole had opened up inside him and he was tumbling into it. He had to sit for several minutes on the edge of the bed until his vision cleared and the quasi-vertigo passed.
The powerful painkillers he was taking were the cause. The doctors had warned they might have side effects—nausea, disorientation, and the like.
Simple solution, then. Stop taking the painkillers.
When an orderly came to give him his next dosage, Redlaw pouched the pills in a corner of his mouth, pretended to swallow, then spat them out after the man had left and secreted them inside his pillowcase.
Over the next few hours his resolve was tested to the limit as the pain from his shoulder mounted, crescendoed, crested into waves of sheer agony. He gritted his teeth and bore it. The pills in the pillowcase were a terrible temptation—gulp them down and in no time blessed relief would come—but he resisted. Commodore Macarthur had benched him, but that wasn’t going to stop him. He was John Redlaw and there was work to be done. London needed him. The small matter of a suspension was neither here nor there.
The television was not allowed to be on after 10pm—hospital rules—but emergency vehicle sirens in the streets told him all he needed to know. They wailed their song of chaos and alarm until well past midnight.
By then, Redlaw was getting ready to leave. Now was the ideal time, when there was almost no one around to stop him or get in his way. He girded himself to clamber out of bed. Starting—levering his upper half upright—was bad. The slightest jolt added fuel to the blaze in his shoulder. Swinging his legs out from under the covers was worse. And as for standing and detaching the sling... He managed it, but it almost made him faint. He swayed on the spot, clutching the bed frame for support, hospital gown flapping around his bare thighs. He’d never known anything like this—the feeling of being utterly enfeebled, paralysed by pain, his entire body jangling and malfunctioning. The agony was not isolated; it seemed to permeate every nerve he had, even down to the tips of his toes.
Minutes elapsed, and at last he regained sufficient self-control to walk towards the closet where his clothes hung. His coat and shirt were torn and bloodstain-browned, but they would do until he could get home and replace them. His Cindermaker and weapons vest were gone, removed by his fellow shadies when he was bundled into the ambulance, but he had a remedy for that, again at home. Losing the accoutrements of SHADE was something he wasn’t unprepared for. It had looked to be on the cards for a while.
He was reaching for his underpants and trousers when a doctor unexpectedly entered the room, without knocking. Redlaw froze. There was no way he could pretend to be doing anything other than what he was clearly doing. If the doctor started giving him grief, he would just have to brazen it out.
In addition to the long white coat and stethoscope the doctor had on a surgical mask, looped around her ears. The mask seemed incongruous to Redlaw, to say the least. He noted her long dark hair and her black, black eyes, and all at once he was diving across the room—shoulder be damned—in search of something, anything, to defend himself with.
But there was no piece of ash wood to be found anywhere. And he knew his crucifix would be no use.
For the woman masquerading as a doctor was the shtriga from the Hackney SRA, Illyria Strakosha, and she was coming across the room towards him with purposeful, menacing strides.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Redlaw snatched up a metal drip stand from the corner and swung it at Illyria one-handed. She caught the end of it and wrenched it out of his grasp in one swift, supple movement.
Instantly Redlaw lunged for her, hoping to barge her aside and make for the door. It was a desperate ploy but, unarmed and outclassed, it was all he had. The one thing she might not be expecting was a direct frontal assault.
Next he knew, Illyria’s hand was around his throat. Her grip, implacably tight, forced him to his knees. His head began to swim, heartbeat roaring in his ears.
“Don’t be foolish, Redlaw,” she hissed, bearing down on him. “You’ll gain nothing by fighting me except pain.”
“Rude... not to... try,” he gasped out.
“Listen well.” The black eyes glittered like polished onyx. “I have you in my power. I can snap your neck easily. One twist of my wrist, that’s all it will take, and no more John Redlaw. However, that is not what I came here for. I’m going to let go of you now, but only on condition that you don’t attack me again. I cannot guarantee that my patience with you will be endless. Do you agree to those terms?”
Redlaw saw no alternative. He gave a nod.
The hand relaxed its throttling grasp.
“So now,” said Illyria, setting the drip stand back down on its castors, “we’re going to talk, you and I. Peacefully. You may remain on your knees if you like. Then again, you may prefer to take that chair over there.”
Redlaw chose the chair, crossing his legs tightly to preserve his modesty, of which the gown left him in short supply.
“You’re out of your SRA,” he said. “That’s in direct contravention of the Sunless Settlement Act.”
“So impale me.”
“I would if I could.”
“I know, old bean. That’s what makes you so spiffingly entertaining—your relentless dedication to your job. To the point of masochism.”
“I... entertain you?” Redlaw snorted. “Well, that’s a first. I’ve
frightened
plenty of ’Lesses in my time, but never entertained one.”
“But I am like no vampire you have ever encountered.”
“That’s for sure. You can pass as human, for one thing.”
“Indeed.” She lowered the surgical mask. “The fangs are the only real giveaway. Were it not for the need to speak, I could go without any disguise whatsoever. Since I was looking for you in hospitals, this mask seemed—let’s say, serendipitous.”
“Hospitals, plural?”
“This is the third I tried. They’re dashed unforthcoming at Night Brigade headquarters about their officers’ whereabouts. All the person on the switchboard would confirm was that Captain Redlaw had been injured in the line of duty and hospitalised.”
“You rang SHADE HQ?” Redlaw almost laughed. “Some nerve.”
“Why not? It seemed the most straightforward method of locating you. I
can
use a phone, you know. We vampires are not the animals you think we are.”