Broken Lines (28 page)

She didn't know whether to say anything more or not. Shapiro realized what she was thinking and grimaced. ‘I know: I promised Thelma I wouldn't hurt him. But we were talking about when he's in custody. I said he'd be safe at Queen's Street, and I meant it. I didn't say I'd stand by and watch him cut Donovan's heart out. If that's my only choice I will cheerfully blow his God-damned head off.'

WPC Wilson made a fetching nurse. She wasn't a big girl, people who didn't know her wondered if she was tough enough to be a police officer, and the blue gingham uniform suited her. She installed herself at a desk in the next bay to Mikey's, with a clear view down the corridor. If Roly got close enough to see his son, Mary Wilson would see him.

Liz waited in the nearby staff-room with Dick Morgan, and Shapiro with another three officers, two of them armed, in an empty office on the ground floor. They knew they could be there a while, and strictly speaking there was no need for both the town's senior detectives to be at the scene. But neither was prepared to sit it out at Queen's Street, so they sat with their radios and waited. And waited.

When rough hands grabbed Donovan's head, fear burgeoned through him. But Roly was only snatching off his blindfold.

It took time for his eyes to adjust but when they did he recognized two things in quick succession: the broad face of Roly Dickens, flushed with anger and thrust forward on the bull neck until it was only inches from his own, and the scalpel that he'd used to get Donovan down here. Its lancet tip was at his left eye. When Donovan blinked his lashes brushed it.

‘Donovan,' spat the big man, ‘I will use this. To get the man who maimed my child I will carve you; I will blind you if I must. Whoever he is, he's not worth that. You've held out as long as anyone could: now tell me. No one'll blame you. I'll give myself up as soon as I'm done – I'll send them here and they'll see you were all out of choices. Don't lose your eyes for a man who'd beat a boy with a baseball bat.'

‘Jesus, Roly.' Donovan began to shake. ‘
Think
about this, will you? This – man – is going to pay for what he did to Mikey. You don't have to do anything more. He's going to jail: he's going to be old before he gets out, if he ever does. Isn't that enough for you?'

Roly shook his head. ‘You've seen Mikey, you've seen what he did to him. He's never getting out of that bed. It's only a matter of time before the doctors start sounding me out about pulling the plug on him. This is my
child
we're talking about, my youngest son, and I'm going to have to say it's all right to kill him.' The pain and the fury in him were incandescent. Watching him was like seeing a star go nova.

He was panting as if with exertion. ‘But if you think I'm going to watch him die, and afterwards I'll be content for a court to say what happens to his killer, you know nothing about me. I'm an Old Testament man, me – an eye for an eye, a life for a life. He destroyed my son: I am the
only
one qualified to judge him. After that, a court can decide what happens to me.'

‘Roly, I understand how you feel.' Donovan had given up any attempt to disguise the tremor in his voice. ‘But I can't give you what you want.'

‘You can. You will.'

‘No. You may take it. Someone with a cast-iron stomach and enough time can probably get anything out of anyone. Sure you can hurt me. You can blind me; and probably by then I'll be ready to do anything, to say anything, to make it stop.' The words were coming faster and faster, out of control, almost too fast to follow. He clenched his jaw, struggling for command. ‘But you'll have to do it. Do you understand? – you have to
do
it. The threat isn't enough. You'll get what you want eventually, but I'll take a fair bit of punishment first. Is that what you want? Is that what you want to go to prison for – torturing information out of someone who couldn't fight back? I know you can do it, Roly. But you'll regret it.'

‘I can do my time,' Roly said thickly.

‘Jesus, I know
that!
' exclaimed Donovan. ‘That's not what I mean. There are people in this town look up to you. Admire what you've achieved. Today, right now, the worst anyone can say is that you're a professional criminal, and I don't suppose you'd mind having that on your tombstone. This is different. People may understand, in a way, but a lot of rooms'll go quiet when your name comes up in the conversation. Even apart from that, you'll be sorry. You won't believe you sank this low. I'm not your enemy, Roly, you know that. I know you want the name, but you can't justify what you're going to have to do to get it.'

‘My son is all the justification I need!'

Donovan shook his head. Droplets of sweat flew off the rat-tails of his hair. ‘No. We've had our differences, Roly, but I never thought you were capable of this. In your right mind I don't believe you would be. And when it's over, when your head's clear and you know the whole story, you'll wish you hadn't. You'll wish to God you'd stopped when you had the chance. Now, Roly. You can stop this now.' His mouth was dry. He swallowed. It was like swallowing ashes.

For as long as Roly Dickens said nothing, staring at him from a range of inches with anger and puzzlement and respect and, yes, regret in his eyes, Donovan thought there was a chance that he'd done it – that he'd saved both himself and Pat Taylor from the big man's wrath.

Then Mikey's father said bleakly, ‘You're a good man, Mr Donovan. It's a pity it's always good men who get hurt.'

Liz's nerve broke before Shapiro's did, but it was a close thing. If she'd delayed calling him another five minutes he'd have called her.

‘This is crazy!' she said. ‘He isn't going to come. He's holed up somewhere, God knows what he's doing to Donovan, and we're not even looking for them!'

It had been a calculated gamble. If the hospital had been crawling with police officers opening doors and checking under beds, Roly would have seen them before they saw him. If he meant to kill Donovan he would have all the opportunity he needed. But she was right. If he wasn't going to come, too much time was going to waste.

‘All right,' decided Shapiro, ‘Plan B. We search the building from top to bottom. Well, bottom to top – we'll start in the basement, drive him upwards. Less chance of him slipping out through a side door.'

‘Do you want me to come down?'

‘No, stay where you are. You might get lucky before we do.'

Shapiro surveyed his team. Four of them wasn't enough to search a large, complex building but getting more would mean waiting and suddenly he felt they'd waited too long already. ‘Be careful. I don't want to overstate the case, but Roly Dickens in his current state is a deeply dangerous man. Nobody tackles him alone. You find him, you even think you've found him, you pull back – quietly – and call me. Clear?' There was a muttered chorus of assent. ‘All right, let's do it.'

Nothing she could have been doing, even snatching open doors that might conceal a homicidal maniac, would have been as hard on Liz's nerves as doing nothing. She looked to DC Morgan for signs of a similar frustration, but Fenmen like Morgan could give lessons in patience to a stone.

Finally she got to her feet. ‘It's no good, I can't—' The radio on the table beside her burped as Wilson tapped hers with her pen.

Hope flared in Liz's eyes. ‘She's spotted him!' She picked up the radio. ‘I'll let Mr Shapiro know.'

‘All
right
,' exclaimed Shapiro. He raised his voice, no longer afraid of being overheard. ‘Roly's upstairs. So let's get Donovan found while there's no risk of meeting him. Liz, you'll let me know as soon as he leaves?'

‘Of course. We'll be right behind him.'

They hadn't expected Roly to stay in ICU, just stick his head in to see if anything had changed before returning to where he'd been for the last several hours. But it seemed the big man was no longer concerned with concealment. He trudged across the ward, cumbrous and tired, pulled out the chair beside Mikey's bed and sat down heavily. He looked as if he was there for the duration.

Unable to make sense of it, Liz radioed downstairs again. But Shapiro didn't understand either. Unless, and he wasn't going to say this aloud, it meant there was nothing for Roly to go back to. ‘I'm on my way. We'll have to ask him what he's done with Donovan.'

Just then, though, Roly looked up from the bed, looked around and heaved himself to his feet. The big body rolling slightly, he walked over to the sister's desk.

‘If Mr Shapiro's anywhere handy, tell him I'd like a word.'

Liz was with them in a few quick strides. ‘He's in the basement, Roly. Shall I get him up here?'

Roly shook his head. ‘We'll meet him down there.'

Shapiro had thought he'd need guns to make a safe arrest, but two women and a middle-aged man without a Swiss Army penknife between them proved a wholly adequate escort. Roly wasn't going anywhere. Whatever had happened, it was over now.

Liz fought the urge to question him. She'd know about Donovan soon enough, but while Roly was trudging docilely beside her and help was two floors below she wasn't going to open a line of inquiry that would make both of them angry.

Shapiro met them at the foot of the lift-shaft, nodded a wary greeting. ‘Roly. I believe you've got something we're looking for.'

There was no reading Roly Dickens's expression. His eyes were as blank as ball-bearings: the adrenalin storm had passed, leaving him drained. He led them past the emergency generators and the laundry and into a side corridor.

Liz kept her voice flat. ‘Are we going to need a doctor?'

The big man considered, then nodded. Mary Wilson took off back the way they'd come.

Roly stopped at a shut door. Shapiro couldn't imagine how he could tell it from a dozen others. ‘He's in there. Before you go in, I'd better warn you. I had to hurt him.'

Liz pushed past him, fear and a helpless fury beating a turmoil in her breast, and flung open the door.

It was a small concrete box of a room with one small, high window. Dusty crates and boxes suggested it had no particular function except as a repository, for things that were broken or finished with.

At the back of the room, under the window, a body spilled across the dirty floor. That long and thin, and dressed for a tanners' funeral, it could only be Donovan. He was on his side with his back to her and his wrists taped behind him. He lay quite still. There was blood on the floor.

She hesitated, his name thin on her lips. Then she steeled herself and bent over him.

His face was battered almost past recognition. Blood trickled from his mouth and his nose, and his eyes were swollen shut. A painful whisper of breath rasped between broken lips. He was unconscious, but not so deeply unconscious that the hurt couldn't reach him. It wouldn't be long before he was back.

On a crate beside him lay the scalpel Roly had taken from ICU. It was clean. Except to cut lengths of tape, he hadn't used it.

Shapiro vented his breath in a ragged sigh. ‘All right. Liz, stay with him till the doctor gets here. Roly, time for you and me to talk back at Queen's Street.'

The superintendent went to lead him away; but Roly stood his ground for a moment, half turned in the doorway, looking back over his shoulder. His voice was gruff. ‘I'm sorry about this, Mrs Graham. I had to lay him out. If I hadn't I'd have done something we'd have both regretted.'

Liz looked up at him, caught between tears and a smile. Donovan's face was a bloody mess, but he'd heal. It could have been so much worse. ‘I think he'll be all right.'

‘He'd better be,' grunted Roly. ‘He knows who beat up on Mikey.'

‘He does?' Shapiro couldn't have looked more startled if someone had hit him with a kipper.
‘How?'

Roly shrugged. ‘I dunno. Something to do with a boat, I think.'

Liz gave a shaky chuckle. ‘Figures.' She looked at Shapiro. ‘Can I tell him? It won't make any difference now.'

‘Go ahead.'

She stood up. ‘We're not sure of the detail yet, but we have two people helping with our enquiries right now. As Mikey's father, I think you're entitled to know that.'

‘Someone I know?'

Liz shook her head. ‘Even Mikey didn't know them. The woman was in the car he turned over the night of the robbery. She miscarried a baby she'd been trying for for ten years. I think it drove her a little mad.'

‘A
woman?
' Roly sounded astonished. He thought about it. ‘A woman. And that's why…' He nodded at Donovan, still senseless on the floor.

Liz's lip curled. ‘You played right into her hands. She blamed them both: Mikey for the crash, Donovan for saving him instead of helping her. This was her revenge. She wanted you to kill him.'

Roly wasn't accustomed to being used. The thought of what this woman he'd never met had nearly made him do made him feel ill. His voice was thick. ‘Yeah? Well, tell her something. Tell her he took that for her. Tell her he was ready to take more.'

Liz was glad when they went. She didn't want Donovan waking up as the main attraction in a three-ring circus.

In fact they were alone when he surfaced. He didn't open his eyes: they were too bruised. He mumbled, ‘Roly?'

‘No, it's me – Liz Graham.'

She'd freed his hands. They were numb after five hours lashed behind his back. He moved one towards his face, but he had neither the co-ordination nor the feeling in his fingers to be sure. ‘My eyes?'

Understanding rocked her. So that was what Roly meant. She guided Donovan's hand and touched his fingers to his eyes. ‘They're fine. A bit puffy, you look like the morning after the night before, but you're OK. There's no damage done.'