And None Shall Sleep (2 page)

‘Something for the pain, dear.' And a bee sting in the side of her leg. She swallowed. Her mouth felt dry.

A tall man in a dark suit swam into vision. He told her what she already knew – that her arm was broken – and that they would have to operate. Then mercifully she went to sleep.

The doctor took one look at Jonathan and rapped out a couple of questions. ‘Pain?'

Jonathan nodded.

‘Where? Up the arm?'

For a second time Jonathan nodded.

The doctor picked up the bottle of pills. ‘How many of these did you take?'

‘Six.'

‘Have they helped?'

‘No.'

The doctor turned his attention back to Sheila He'll have to go in. He's probably had a heart attack.' He looked accusingly at her. ‘Worry, stress, overwork. I did warn you.' He picked up the telephone and ordered an ambulance

Sheila Selkirk was agitated. ‘Not hospital, doctor,' she objected.

The doctor's hand slid across the mouthpiece. ‘We've no choice, Mrs Selkirk,' he said. ‘He needs rest ... complete freedom from stress.'

‘Not hospital.' This time it was Jonathan who was objecting.

‘Just the cottage hospital,' the doctor decided. ‘We can keep an eye on you there.'

Husband and wife seemed satisfied.

Someone in white was sitting on her bed. She opened one eye and mumbled, ‘Matthew?'

He was watching her with an expression that churned her vulnerable stomach. He gave her a grave smile, leaned across and kissed her forehead.

‘Jo,' he said. ‘You gave me such a fright.'

She closed her eyes and swam away. ‘I'm sorry.'

Men in white coats. She rarely saw Matthew in his. In the mortuary he always wore theatre greens. Theatre greens ... sounded like a vegetable ... She dreamed and felt his hand touch her unplastered one.

On the floor directly beneath, Jonathan Selkirk was trying to get rid of his wife.

‘There's absolutely no need for you to stay. The nurses can look after me.' He was watching her pack his clothes in a small, overnight case.

‘I'll take these home, dear.'

‘There's no need for you to stay,' he repeated. ‘I wish you'd go and leave me alone. Please go,' he added irritably.

‘I'll go,' she said, ‘very soon.' She gave him a strange, hurt look. ‘You'll be free of me before long. I'll come again this evening – see how you are. Well, I'll be off.' She smiled. ‘Things to arrange. I must ring the office and tell them.'

‘Don't bother. I'll do it.' She bent over him. ‘Remember what the doctor said? Complete freedom from stress.'

She was back again that evening, staying too long, moving around the bed and studying the machines he was wired up to. ‘I wonder what they all mean,' she said idly, ‘what good that does.' She looked at the bottle of clear fluid leading into his forearm.

Her husband stared balefully at the TV monitor. ‘And how am I supposed to get any sleep with that thing bleeping away all night?'

His wife twiddled with the knobs. ‘I understand you only have to worry if the alarm thing goes off.'

Sure enough the machine emitted a high-pitched scream and one of the nurses came running in. She took one look at her patient, turned the knob to terminate the noise and gave Sheila Selkirk a severe stare. ‘Please,' she said, ‘don't touch anything. They're all set.'

Sheila watched her go. ‘I suppose,' she said, ‘that they're all life-savers in one way or another.'

Something passed across Jonathan's face – a shadow ... tension and apprehension. And he felt uncomfortably aware of his wife's presence, of her restless movements around the room, of her touch.

At last she did go. She gave him a dry kiss on the cheek. ‘Goodbye, my dear,' she said very softly. ‘I'll see you later.'

It was only after she had carefully closed the door behind her that he realized she had taken all his clothes and left only his pyjamas, slippers and a dressing gown. He was imprisoned here. He pressed his buzzer and asked the nurse to wheel in the telephone. The nurse looked dubious. She muttered something about complete rest.

‘The telephone!' he barked.

But the nurse left. He was alone.

Outside her husband's room Sheila Selkirk was speaking to one of the nurses.

‘It was a heart attack,' she insisted, ‘wasn't it? The doctor did say. It
was
a heart attack.' She tightened her grip on the black canvas bag.

The nurse looked at her, puzzled. ‘We can't be absolutely sure ... Not just yet.' She paused. ‘By tomorrow we should know.'

Sheila Selkirk nodded. ‘By tomorrow?'

The nurse put her hand on Sheila's arm. ‘Of course,' she soothed. ‘We just want to be absolutely sure. There's no need for you to worry.'

Sheila's face grew hard. ‘I'm not worried,' she said.

The nurse gave a warm smile. ‘They all say that.'

Sheila stared at her.

‘The first twenty-four hours,' the nurse said. ‘Once they're over that they're almost always OK.'

‘Quite,' Sheila said and she turned and walked up the corridor.

‘Not that way,' the nurse called after her. ‘It's the other way to get out.'

‘But... ?' Sheila Selkirk pointed to the exit sign.

‘Just a fire exit,' the nurse explained.

Matthew was still there when she opened her eyes again. But he had moved. Now he was standing with his back to her, staring out of the window. She lay without stirring and watched the movement of his square shoulders and the light, tousled hair. She rarely had the chance to study him undetected, standing still, not knowing she was watching him. So she indulged herself and lay, watching him quietly from beneath drooped lids, and hoped he would turn around before she slid off to sleep again.

He did. He cleared his throat, ran his fingers impatiently through his hair and turned around to see her.

‘You're awake,' he said, smiling. He stood, staring at her for a moment, then crossed the room in two long strides, bent and kissed her forehead. ‘Like Sleeping Beauty,' he said, laughing. ‘You've been asleep for hours. It's late, almost nine o'clock.' He cleared his throat and sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘I've done a full day's work and come back.'

She smiled lazily, dropped her good arm around his neck. ‘And you still smell of antiseptic, Matthew.'

He took a deep breath. ‘They've put a pin in your arm. It'll be sore and you'll have the plaster on for a few weeks.' He gave a tentative smile. ‘I sneaked a look at your X-rays. I thought you'd want to know.'

She glanced at the plastered arm. ‘I knew it was broken straight away – without an X-ray.'

He grinned at her. ‘All right, smarty-pants. What you didn't know is that it was a bit of a bad break. You managed to break both bones. Jo,' he said softly, ‘you were lucky it wasn't anything worse. What exactly happened?'

A quick flashback to the lorry, wheels spinning, pulling her in. ‘I think I got snarled up in the wheel of a juggernaut.'

His eyes were warm, shining green but quite serious.

‘Then thank God you're all right. How will you manage on your own?'

She struggled to sit up. ‘What do you mean?'

He looked around the room. ‘Cooking, washing. You won't even be able to drive. And certainly not cycle,' he added severely.

‘Mike can pick me up.'

‘You won't be able to work,' he said. ‘You need looking after.'

Her face hardened. ‘No, Matthew,' she said. ‘I'll manage – somehow.'

He gave a long sigh.

‘
I'll manage
,' she repeated. ‘I'll be all right.'

He sat quietly on the edge of the bed for a long time, staring at her. She found his hand and squeezed it.

‘I will manage,' she repeated firmly.

He gave a quick exclamation of annoyance and an angry frown. ‘I thought you'd say that.' He paused. ‘You could move in with me,' he said diffidently. ‘There's plenty of room and I could look after you.'

She dropped back on the pillows. ‘I don't think so,' she said. ‘I'm not ready for that.'

Matthew's lips tightened. ‘Be reasonable, Jo,' he said.

‘I'll
manage,
' she said, fiercely this time.

‘We'll see.' Matthew sighed as he bent over her and kissed her cheek, stroked her hair away from her eyes.

‘How's my bike?'

He made a face. ‘A wreck. But I did get the bike shop to pick it up. They seem to think they can make it rideable again.'

‘Good.' She smiled lazily.

‘Now let the nice nursey give you an injection. Go back to sleep, Joanna,' he said. ‘I'll pop in and talk to you first thing in the morning. Before I start work.'

He paused at the doorway. Please think about what I've said. The offer's there.' His eyes rested on her affectionately. ‘Now is as good a time as any.'

He grinned self-consciously. ‘Besides, I've always fancied myself as a nursemaid.'

If she'd been feeling better she would have given him an earful. As it was she closed her eyes and drifted off almost immediately.

In the room below, Jonathan Selkirk watched the corridor light dancing along the ceiling.

Through the night her dreams were confused and disturbing. She dreamt that Matthew was offering her a small, brass key, which she took and cradled in her palm. It was warm ... then it grew hot and hotter still, and when she looked down she saw that it had burned right through her hand, leaving a hole the shape of a key. She peered through the hole and saw the spinning wheels of the lorry, changing patterns like the view through a child's kaleidoscope. Next she was lying in the middle of the road, clutching her arm and screaming while a car sped towards her. She was unable to see the driver's face from where she lay.

At some time in the night she woke with a dry mouth and rang her bell. Through the dark a nurse in white moved and spoke softly, asking if she was in pain. She swallowed the cold, crystal water and sank back on the pillows. Then she slept and when she opened her eyes the room was filled with early-morning sunshine and someone was standing at the foot of her bed, watching her.

She struggled to focus. Matthew had said he would drop by in the morning. But it wasn't Matthew who was standing there, it was Sergeant Mike Korpanski. She stared at the broad shoulders and dark hair and frowned. ‘Bit early for sick visiting, isn't it?'

‘Sorry about your accident,' he said awkwardly.

She narrowed her eyes and studied his face. He was scowling, his dark eyes avoiding hers. His shoulders were tensed. She knew Mike. This was how he looked when he had a problem and judging by the grim expression on his face his problem was not a small one.

‘Mike,' she said. ‘What's going on?' She tried to sit up. ‘What is it? What are you doing here?'

He watched her without speaking, still scowling. And now she became aware of other things in the background.

There seemed to be increased activity around the ward, doors opening and shutting, voices loud voices. All strange noises for a hospital. She lay back against the pillow and waited for him to speak.

But being Mike his explanation was both violent and unexpected. He moved away from the bed, banged his fist down on the windowsill and glared at her.

‘Why of all times why did you have to come off your bloody bike yesterday?'

‘Mike,' she said patiently. ‘I didn't elect to get knocked down. It just happened. Now are you going to tell me what's going on or am I supposed to play twenty questions?'

In the background she heard the unmistakable wail of a police siren moving closer. It stopped outside the hospital.

Mike took two steps towards the bed. ‘Last night someone – a patient – disappeared from his hospital bed.' He stopped. ‘We think, I mean ...' he shuffled awkwardly. ‘He could have wandered off. We don't know. We're not sure. But it looks as though someone could have taken him from his bed.'

‘Him?'

‘A man,' he said. ‘A middle-aged solicitor, admitted yesterday with chest pain. Heart attack. His bed was found empty this morning.'

Joanna frowned at him. ‘People do leave hospital,' she said slowly, ‘for all sorts of reasons,' She listened again to the noises foreign to a normal hospital day. ‘So why do you say he was abducted?'

‘He was wired up to all sorts of machines, with a drip going into his arm. The wires had been yanked off really hard. There were bits of skin and hair still sticking to the plasters.'

She looked curiously at him. ‘And?'

‘There were drops of blood all the way to the fire door. The doctor thinks it was from where he'd pulled the drip line out.' He paused. ‘But surely if he was just legging it out of the hospital the obvious thing would have been to press on it and stop it bleeding? I mean, he wouldn't just let it bleed – or would he?'

Joanna nibbled her fingernail. ‘So where did he go?'

‘He seems to have disappeared into thin air. There's no sign of him anywhere and he was only wearing his pyjamas.'

She moved her plastered arm. ‘I take it you've searched the immediate hospital grounds as well as his home?'

Mike moved two steps closer and frowned. ‘Joanna,' he said. ‘What's the anaesthetic done to your brain? We've already looked in all the obvious places. I came here hoping for inspiration. Ideas. Not some bloody lecture you'd give to new constables the first day on the job.' He paused. ‘This was an ill man, very ill according to the doctor. They really did think he might have had a heart attack.' His hand was clenched in a fist. ‘I think someone may have ripped him off those machines and taken him from the hospital – against his will.'

‘Surely they have hospital security?'