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‘Strip me of my badge,’ I said. ‘I don’t care.’

‘Oh, I’m going to do much more than that.’ Woods laughed humourlessly. ‘I’m going to see that every charge you racked up in this stupid, selfish mission of yours is presented fully. We’ve got four people dead tonight, and a fifth on the way. You’re gonna be sorry Regan’s gone so he can’t share some of the shit I’m about to rain down on you.’

I hardly heard Woods’s last sentence. My mind was rushing. Regan and Vada were dead. That made two. And I assumed Vada had killed the officer she’d stolen her uniform from. Her knife had already been bloody when I’d seen it on the edge of the well as she bound my wrists. I knew that the tactical teams had most likely paired up. That made four. I’d just seen Tox and Whitt walk by my ambulance, arguing like a married couple. They were fine. So who was the fifth casualty?

‘Who’s number five?’ I asked Woods.

The officers by his side looked grave, but Woods only glared at me with disgust. He nodded to the paramedic beside me. She walked in a crouch to the end of the ambulance and started to pull the doors shut.

‘Wait,’ I called, but Woods and his guys were already turning. ‘Who’s the fifth casualty?’ A desperate feeling was growing in my chest. I tried to shift upwards, and the cuff around my ankle clanged as it held me in place. I turned, wild-eyed, to the paramedic as she gave the driver the signal to go.

‘Who’s the fifth casualty?’

‘An older man.’ The paramedic hushed me, trying to push me back onto the pillows. ‘You don’t have to worry about that now.’

One week later

Chapter

114

IT WAS CLEAR to me by the second day in hospital that I was getting special treatment. With no television allowed in my room, and no visitors, I’d amused myself in any way that I could. I lay watching the people passing the door of my single room for hours, counting the breakfast, lunch and dinner trolleys going by. Breakfast seemed to be little plastic bowls of oats and wafer-thin slices of fruit, jugs of pale orange cordial. When mine came, however, it was not on a plastic tray but in a styrofoam container, and it was fried eggs and thick toast, strips of bacon and a cappuccino. I asked questions, but the nurses only smiled and shrugged, having been directed by the two thuggish police officers outside my door not to speak to me. When dinner came, there was even a slice of pecan pie for dessert, my all-time favourite. I’d stopped wondering about all the strange benefits I was getting, until I heard one nurse in the hall outside my room explain to another, ‘She’s a friend of Mr Handsome.’

I didn’t know what that meant.

Being a friend of Mr Handsome had more benefits than just the upgraded hospital cuisine. On the third night, one of the nurses caught my eye as she brought in my dinner tray, setting it on the stand beside my bed. She had a funny look on her face, like a practical joke was about to go down and she wanted me to be aware of it.

‘Ward C, Room eight,’ she whispered.

‘Huh?’ I asked. She winked and disappeared.

As I ate my dinner, I noticed that dessert tonight was one of the regular little tubs of coloured jelly that all the other patients got. That was odd. I examined the tub, noticing the surface of the jelly was uneven and cracked. I tilted it up and saw that a key had been pushed into the jelly and lay at the bottom of the tub.

A handcuff key.

At about midnight, two nurses walking by suddenly became very interested in the officers outside my door. There was a lot of smiling and laughing, and I saw one of the women put her hand on one officer’s chest, slapping him as though he’d said something cheeky. As they all moved off down the hall, I unlocked the cuff around my ankle and slid off the bed.

Chapter

115

THE BULLET WOUND in my calf had been badly infected when I came in, but since then it had been hit with every drug known to modern medicine. Still, I limped as I made my way down the darkened hall to the elevator, past rooms full of sleeping men and women, and blinking machines. The hospital lights had been dimmed, so I walked in a soft gold glow towards Ward C, checking the room numbers as I went. The nurses on this floor hardly glanced at me. I turned towards Room 8 and pushed open the door.

Pops was lying on his back, propped uncomfortably against the high pillows, both hands folded over his round belly like he’d fallen asleep reading a book. I stood looking at him for a while, at the machines all around him and the whiteboard above his head. When I closed the door, he woke but didn’t seemed alarmed by my presence. As I curled on the blanket beside him, he put an arm out and smiled, shifting his head to give me more room on the pillow.

‘Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky,’ the old man said.

‘I had to see you before there’s bulletproof glass between us,’ I said, patting Pops’s chest. ‘How’s the ticker?’

‘It’s still going. They’ve sent me a nice little booklet on retirement from the police force and all the benefits I’ll get. They’re subtle, the top brass.’

I’d learned from a doctor when I arrived at the hospital that Pops had suffered a heart attack. There had been a team of people around me, trying to hold me down so that I could be prepped for surgery on my leg. But I’d made a hysterical fuss about knowing Pops’s fate. The doctor had been so troubled by my screaming and kicking that he’d had an intern go down to the emergency room to check on Pops’s progress. They’d told me he was stable.

Pops had since been given a single bypass. It would be a long road to recovery, the doctors had told him. The chances of him clearing, or even being allowed to attempt, a compulsory police fitness test were practically nil.

‘They gave me a list of things I’m not allowed to eat,’ he said. ‘Since I’ve been here it’s been nothing but carrots. Carrot salad. Boiled carrots. Carrot sandwiches. I hate carrots.’

I didn’t mention my gourmet menu in Ward D.

‘I’ll try to visit again tomorrow night,’ I said. ‘I think they’re taking me on Thursday.’

‘You didn’t get bail?’

‘No,’ I said. Pops’s hand was cupped around the top of my arm. He gave the muscle a squeeze and a stressed sigh emanated from his chest.

‘You’ll do jail time,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to. Resisting arrest, the assaults. Disarming that tactics kid. The department will have to save face, but they’re not sticking a murder charge on you. No way. I’ll pull in every favour I can, and I have favours owed going back decades.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said.

We lay in the quiet together.

‘I haven’t heard anything about charges against Whitt,’ I said eventually. ‘I tried to tell them it was me alone who killed Regan, but Whitt was honest in his statement. They’re going with his version. Are they going to go after him?’

‘No.’ Pops shook his head. ‘He was off his head. Self-defence, defence of a colleague. It’s your head Woods wants on his den wall.’

‘I’m surprised he hasn’t visited me to gloat,’ I said.

‘He hasn’t visited me either.’ Pops said. ‘I thought he would have delivered the retirement pamphlets himself.’

‘Weird.’ I shifted closer to him.

‘You need to speak to Tox Barnes about the remand centre,’ Pops said. ‘Whichever one they send you to. He’ll have women in there who can look out for you. He knows those kinds of people.’

‘Pops, don’t worry about it. I’m not worried about it, so you shouldn’t be, either.’

The old man settled back against his pillow. He seemed calmer.

But we both knew I was lying.

Chapter