Graham Hurley - Cut to Black

"That's right."

"Another nick?"

"No."

"Why not?" Faraday looked from one to the other. "You're serious?"

WEDNESDAY, 19 MARCH 2OO3, O9.41

Winter loathed hospitals. Ever since he'd been a kid, they'd represented authority. People who'd tell you what to do. People who'd strip you half naked and take the most amazing liberties. People who'd hurt you. A couple of years back, he'd lost his wife to the men in white coats. More recently, after a vehicle pursuit that had gone badly wrong, he'd spent a couple of painful days under NHS care, fantasising about Bell's whisky and the possibility of a decently-cooked spud. Show Paul Winter a hospital, and he'd be looking for the door.

The A 8c E Department, for a Wednesday morning, was already busy.

Winter showed his warrant card to the woman manning the reception desk.

"It's about last night," he said. "Girl called Trudy Gallagher."

"What about her?"

"She was brought in by ambulance. Three, half three, this morning something like that. Bit of an incident."

"And?"

"I need to talk to her."

The woman tapped a command into her keyboard. The other side of the waiting area, Jimmy Suttle was sorting out small change for the coffee machine.

"As far as I can tell, she went." It was the receptionist again, still gazing at the screen of her PC.

"Went? We talking the same girl?"

"Here." The woman turned the screen towards Winter. Trudy Gallagher had been booked in at 03.48. She'd complained of a headache and period pains, and the duty streaming nurse had marked her low priority. The pre-midnight rush had thinned, but with half a dozen patients ahead of her in the queue that still meant a wait of a couple of hours. At least. r. Here and here." Winter touched his ribcage. "She'd been tied up half the night, terrified out of her head. She was in shock. You're telling me she just walked out?"

"We can only go on what we're told. It's her body, not ours."

"Yeah, but…" Winter shook his head. Last night he'd known he should have ridden up to the QA with Trudy but, looking at her, he'd concluded there was no point. She was past talking, past saying anything remotely useful. They'd keep her in at the hospital, bound to. Next morning would be better. Then she'd have something to say.

"Here…" It was Suttle with the coffees. Winter ignored him.

"So where did she go?"

"No idea."

"She give you an address?"

"Yes." The woman was peering at a box on the screen.

"And?"

"No chance." She gave Winter a withering look. "You blokes ever bother with data protection?"

Winter obliged her with a smile.

"Never," he said.

He leaned across the counter, trying to check out the screen, but she turned it away. Finally, he gave up.

"So that's it?" He pocketed his notebook. "She arrives in an ambulance? She sits here for an hour? Then legs it?"

"That's the way it looks."

"What about the people who dealt with her? The streaming nurse you mentioned. Where do I find her?"

"At home, Mr. Winter." The woman was already clearing her screen for the next patient. "Asleep."

Winter phoned Cathy Lamb from the car park. Back from her head-to-head with Secretan, she'd sent him a text message. Secretan was looking for an action plan, some clue to where the inquiry might be headed next, and the DI wanted to know about Trudy Gallagher.

"It's fine, boss. Favour?"

"What does "fine" mean?"

"We're setting up to take a statement. Could you do a CIS check for me? Dave Pullen?"

"What about him?"

"I need a current address." '93 Bystock Road." There were limits to Cathy's patience. "You were there last night."

"That's his rental property. He lives somewhere else. Has to."

There was a pause while Lamb accessed the Criminal Intelligence System.

Simple checks like these took less than a minute.

"They're giving 183 Ashburton Road, Southsea," she said at last.

"Flat 11."

Driving back into the city, Winter couldn't rid himself of the image of Trudy Gallagher crouched in the bare bedroom minutes after Suttle had taken his penknife to the plastic cable ties. Last time he'd seen her, a couple of years back, she'd been a dumpy little schoolgirl with a passion for Big Macs and anything featuring Leonardo di Caprio. Her mum, with more money than sense, had given her a big, fat allowance and let nature take its path.

Now, a stone thinner, a couple of inches taller, young Trudy had stepped into womanhood in the dodgiest company imaginable. First, according to a trusted local source, had come a live-in relationship with a Farlington car dealer twice her age. Then, for reasons the source didn't begin to understand, Trudy had picked up with Dave Pullen. Share a bed with that kind of arse-wipe, thought Winter, and you shouldn't be surprised by the consequences.

Last night in Bystock Road, the neighbour had come in with a couple of blankets while Trudy had huddled in the corner of the bedroom, white-faced, her whole body shuddering with cold. When Winter asked her what had happened, she said she didn't want to talk about it.

Nobody had hurt her. Nobody had sexually molested her. It had all been a joke and the last thing she needed was an examination by a police surgeon. In the end, once Suttle had found her clothes, she'd agreed to let the ambulance men take her to hospital for a check-up, but what she really wanted was everyone to go away and leave her alone.

"You saw her, son. She was wrecked, wasn't she?"

"Yeah, right state." Suttle was at the wheel, nudging eighty on the long curve of motorway that fed traffic into the city.

Winter was still brooding, still working out how he'd managed to abandon a key witness in favour of rescuing a couple of hours' kip.

"Observation, at least. Isn't that what we thought? Couple of days tucked up in some ward or other? Amazing." He shook his head, staring across the harbour at the pale spread of Portchester Castle. "Just goes to show, eh?"

"You're thinking she conned us?"

"I'm thinking my arse is on the line." He reached for the packet of Werthers Originals on the dashboard. "Again."

Suttle grinned. As a young DC, barely twenty-four, he was new to Portsmouth. He'd grown up in the New Forest, one of a huge family of country kids, and to date his police service had taken him to postings in Andover and Alton, neither of which had prepared him for the likes of Paul Winter. Their month together, to his delight, had been the steepest of learning curves and he was still trying to disentangle truth from legend.

"It was DI Lamb before, wasn't it? When you totalled the Skoda?"

"It was, yes."

"Good job you've got me to drive you round, then, eh?"

Winter shot him a look. While it was true he'd lost his taste for driving, he'd still emerged from the Skoda incident with his licence intact. Better still, with Traffic finally choosing not to charge him with reckless driving, he'd even won reinstatement to CID. Two long months in uniform, waiting for their decision, had been the pits.

Nothing, he'd recently told Suttle, could prepare a man for the excitements of the community foot patrol on a wet winter day in deepest Fratton. One more nicked bicycle, one more rogue pit bull, and he'd have been fit for the locked ward at St. James.

Suttle checked his mirror, easing into the middle lane to let a motorcyclist through.

"What do you think, then?" He glanced sideways at Winter. "About the girl?"

"I think we find her."

"And then what?" The grin again. "We tie her down?"

Ashburton Road was one of a series of streets which led north from the commercial heart of Southsea. Back in the nineteenth century these imposing three-storey terraced properties would have housed naval families and wealthy businessmen, the social foundations of fashionable seaside living, but successive tides had washed over the city since, and the results were all too obvious. There wasn't a house in this street that hadn't been overwhelmed by multi-occupation. Properties spared by the Luftwaffe had surrendered to three generations of Pompey landlords.