Dick Francis - Under Orders

‘What has any of this to do with Miss Meer being shot?’ he said.

‘Last Friday, I was warned that, if I didn’t keep my mouth shut, someone would get badly hurt. And now they have.’

They finally allowed me in to see Marina around four.

First I had to don the regulation outfit of blue smock, with matching dishcloth hat. And I had to wear a mask over my mouth and nose. I wondered how she would know who I was, but I needn’t have worried, she was deeply asleep.

She looked so defenceless lying there, connected to the machines, with the tube still in her mouth. Her breathing was being assisted by a ventilator and the rhythmic purr as the bellows rose and fell was the only sound. A rectangular blue screen showed a bright line that peaked with the beat of her heart. Go on heart, I said to the machine, keep pumping.

I sat to one side, opposite the ventilator, and held her hand.

There were other patients in the unit but partitions rather than curtains separated the beds and these provided a fairly high degree of privacy.

I spoke to her.

I told her how much I loved her and how dreadfully sorry I was to have brought all this on her. I told her to fight, to live, and to get better. And I told her that I would get the man who had done this. And then we’d see. Maybe I’d take up gardening as a career, though one-handed gardening might be a problem.

And I asked her to marry me.

She didn’t reply. I told myself she was thinking it over.

A nurse came to tell me that there were some people to see me outside. Not more police, I thought. But it was Charles, and he had brought Jenny with him.

‘Hello, Sid,’ she said. She leaned forward and gave me a peck on the cheek. ‘How is she?’

Charles and I shook hands.

‘She’s doing OK — at least, I think so. The nurses seem optimistic, but I suppose they would. Certainly her colour is much better than earlier.’

‘Jenny picked me up from Paddington,’ said Charles. ‘I called her on the way up on the train and she wanted to come. You know, to give support.’

Or to gloat, I thought. But maybe that was unfair of me.

‘I’m glad you’re here,’ I said. ‘Both of you.’

I looked past Charles and was astonished to see Rosie still sitting on one of the chairs opposite the lifts.

‘Rosie,’ I said, ‘why don’t you go home?’

She turned and looked at me with sunken eyes. She was clearly in no state to leave the hospital on her own. There was no sign of the Superintendent or his sidekick. What were the police thinking of, I thought, to leave her here without help?

‘Charles, Jenny, this is Rosie,’ I said. ‘Rosie works with Marina. She was there when Marina was shot. She saved her life.’

Jenny sat down next to Rosie and put her arm round her shoulder. The human contact was too much and Rosie burst into tears and sobbed, hanging on to Jenny as though her life depended on it.

‘We’ll look after Rosie,’ said Charles. ‘You go back to Marina. We’ll be here when you need us.’

He ushered me back to the unit door and almost pushed me through. It was such a comfort to have them there but I felt a little guilty at leaving them out in the corridor.

‘Sorry, just you,’ said the nurse when I asked. ‘And only then because she’s your fiancée.’

I stayed with Marina for what seemed like a long time. Every few minutes, a nurse would come to check on her and twice Mr Pandita, the surgeon, came in too.

‘She’s doing fine,’ he said on his second visit. ‘I’m more hopeful.’

‘More hopeful’ didn’t sound wonderful but a lot better than ‘less hopeful’.

‘It’s been more than two hours now since she left theatre,’ he said. ‘Her blood pressure is still low but that’s a good thing. It reduces the chance of internal bleeding. We will leave her sedated overnight and attempt to bring her out in the morning.’

‘Bring her out?’ I asked.

‘From the induced coma,’ he said. ‘Only then will we really know.’

We stood at the foot of the bed looking down at the unconscious figure.

‘I think I’ll go and get something to eat,’ I said. It was a while since I’d left my uneaten lunch on the floor of the sandwich bar, and even longer since dinner the previous night. ‘Then I’ll come back, if that’s all right?’

‘There are no visiting times on this ward. We run a twenty-four-hour service here.’ He smiled. At least I think he smiled. Due to his mask, I couldn’t see his mouth but there was a smile in his eyes.

Charles, Jenny and Rosie were still there when I came out.

They had made themselves at home and were surrounded by the remains of bacon rolls and chicken mayonnaise sandwiches with salad. Empty polystyrene coffee beakers stood in a row on the bottom of an upturned waste bin that had doubled as a table.

Rosie looked much better for having had something to eat and other people to take her mind off the horrors of earlier.

‘Hello,’ said Charles, looking up from a newspaper. ‘How’s she doing?’

‘The official bulletin is “more hopeful”.’

‘That’s great,’ said Jenny.

‘I’m starving,’ I said. ‘I see that you’ve all had something but I need some food. Where’s the hospital canteen?’

Charles stood up, put all the trash in the reinstated bin, and gathered up his newspaper.

‘A policeman came and gave me these,’ he said, holding out my car keys. ‘He said to tell you that your car is in the hospital administrator’s parking space to the left of the front door.’

‘Fantastic,’ I said.

‘He also told me to tell you that he was only just in time to stop the bomb squad blowing it up.’

I laughed. The first time since…

‘He also wants you to move it as soon as possible as the hospital administrator could arrive at any time and demand his space back.’

‘I’ll drive it home now and put it in the garage,’ I said. ‘We could get something to eat there, and I could put on a clean shirt.’ It seemed like a very long time since I’d dressed to go to Harrow.

‘The policeman didn’t really want to give me the car keys but I told him I was your father-in-law.’

‘And I told him I was your wife,’ said Jenny.

That must have confused him.

My car was where it was promised and I drove the four of us back to Ebury Street. Rosie didn’t want to go home on her own and Jenny and Charles were happy to have her stay with us.

‘Hello, Mr Halley,’ said Derek at the desk. ‘Delivery for you.’

He held out an envelope to me. I just looked at it as he put it down on the marble top.

‘Did it come by taxi?’ I asked him.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘About an hour ago.’

‘You didn’t get the number of the taxi, I don’t suppose?’ I asked.

‘No, sorry.’

‘Could you identify the taxi driver?’

‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘Flat number 28 have been moving today and there have been a load of people through here. Not only the removal men but the gas and electricity, to read the meters and so on.’

‘Do you have security film?’ I asked, pointing at the bank of monitors.

‘Yes, but we only have cameras in the garages and round the back. There are none in reception.’

Dead end.

I looked at the envelope. It was white, about four inches wide by nine long, with ‘SID HALLEY — BY HAND’ written in capital letters on the front, as before.

‘This is the same as I received last time,’ I said to Charles. ‘After Marina was attacked.’

‘You ought to give it to the police,’ he said. ‘Don’t touch it.’

‘The envelope’s been handled by the taxi driver and by Derek,’ I said.

‘And Bernie,’ said Derek. ‘He took it from the taxi driver.’