Peter Lovesey - The Last Detective

Diamond assessed his injuries as he moved. The rib was the most disabling, and there was also blood trickling down his scalp from the head-wound. He could feel its warmth on the side of his neck. The blood was conspicuous. When he reached the Great Bath, he didn't want the students crowding around him asking questions. Somehow he must hold himself together and convince anyone who was watching that he was walking normally. That the blood, if they noticed it, was some sort of blemish, a strawberry mark on the skin. Then he needed only to get to one of the doors leading to an exit.

He would have to leave Matthew to find his own way out. Thank God the boy was familiar with the place. He was smart enough to escape.

But Diamond was not. Within a few yards of the entrance to the Great Bath, he was surprised by a sudden movement to his right. He turned. Enough daylight had penetrated the place to show him Andy Coventry coming at him with a spade, a heavy-duty, long-handled spade of the sort used by builders. There was no escape this time. Wielded like a sledgehammer, it was about to cleave Peter Diamond's skull.

A BLACK BAR ACROSS WHITE. A thin black bar, dividing the field of vision like a cable across the sky.

Too uniformly white for sky. It had to be something else.

A ceiling.

A cable across the ceiling? No. Something more rigid. A black bar. A rod. Or rail.

Maybe a rail. There was something right about a rail. A connection, but with what?

With a sound. The rustle and scrape of something metallic. Curtain rings. So why not a curtain rail?

What would a curtain rail be doing across a ceiling? Curtains were for windows. No window here.

Unless this was a bed, a hospital bed with curtains for privacy. That would explain the scrape of the rings. It ought to be easy to check, because the rail would go at least three sides around the bed.

Unfortunately it wasn't so easy when one couldn't move one's head to left or right. When one felt muzzy and tired, too tired really to care…

'He opened his eyes again, sir,' the voice of a woman announced, a woman difficult to place.

'Didn't move his lips, I suppose?' A man's voice.

'No.'

'Poor sod. Keep your ears open, just in case. I know it's bloody tedious, but it has to be done. You want to try talking to him when you're here by the hour. Anything that comes in to your head. Tell him the secrets of your love life. That's what the nurses do. Anything to stir up the brain cells.'

'Do you mind? My private life isn't for Mr Diamond's ears, sir.'

'Relax, Constable. Even if he heard you, which is doubtful, he wouldn't remember a thing. Well, I'm off. See you tomorrow.'

'Gutso.'

'Mm?'

'You see?' The voice was triumphant. 'It is a response. He heard. Peter Diamond, you fat slob. What do we have to do to bring you round? What's your taste in music? The Hippopotamus Song, I reckon.'

'He's moving his lips, sir.'

'Jesus Christ, he is. Peter? Can you hear me?'

'Mm.'

'Again.'

'Mm.'

Terrific. Mr Diamond, do you understand? This is Keith Halliwell. Remember me? Avon and Somerset Police. Your old sidekick, DI Halliwell.'

'Halliwell?'

'He spoke! Did you hear that, Constable?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Brilliant. Put a call through to Mr Wigfull. We're in business at last.'

His eyes were open, and instead of the curtain rail in front of them, there was a face, a dark face dominated by a moustache. A face he didn't particularly care for.

'Mr Diamond?'

'John Wigfull.'

'How are you feeling?'

'I can't move.'

'Don't try. Your head's clamped. You're lucky to be alive.'

The trite remark irked Diamond, even at this level of consciousness. 'Where am I?'

'In the RUH. You've been in a coma. They said if you did come round, there was no obvious physical damage to the brain, but no one can stay in a coma too long. Do you follow me?'

'Perfectly,' said Diamond.

'You were found in a pool of blood in the Roman Baths. The Didrikson boy alerted us.'

'Good lad.'

'Your skull was cracked and impacted. The only reason your head isn't in two pieces is that the spade was curved at the edge. Do you remember being struck?' the edge. Do you 'Not really.'

'It may come back to you slowly. We'll be needing a statement.'

'You pulled Coventry in?'

'You remember a certain amount then?'

Diamond summarized what he remembered, up to the moment when Andy Coventry had set off in pursuit of him.

Wigfull informed him that the drugs squad were holding Coventry on a charge of possession. 'We'll do him for dealing, as well. He had two kilos of cocaine stashed away in the Baths.'

The brain was functioning, sluggishly, but reliably. 'He was supplying Mrs Jackman, the woman who was murdered.'

Wigfull frowned. 'What's your evidence for that?'

'The boy and his mother witnessed Andy coming out of the house.'

'The Jackman house? When was this?'

'Months ago. Last summer. You remember. Mrs Didrikson told us in her statement. Geraldine Jackman was begging Coventry not to leave.'

'That was Coventry?' Wigfull's tone was sceptical.

'The boy is certain of it.'

'What exactly are you suggesting, Mr Diamond – a drugs angle on the Jackman case? Is that the best the defence can think up?'

'I'm talking facts, John. Geraldine Jackman was snorting coke. Go to the house. You'll find packets of cocaine hidden in bags of flour in the kitchen.'

Wigfull moved away from the bed, out of Diamond's limited range of vision. 'The post-mortem samples were negative for drugs. If you cast your mind back, Dr Merlin ordered a full screening test for drugs and alcohol. Chepstow found nothing.'

'This is something you should check with Merlin,' Diamond advised. 'It doesn't mean she hadn't used cocaine. Unlike cannabis, it doesn't hang about in the body for long. A few days at the most. If she hadn't snorted the stuff in the few days prior to her death, it's unlikely that traces would have shown up in the samples.'

'Even if what you're saying is true, it's a side issue,' Wigfull insisted. 'Nobody's suggesting Gerry Jackman was nice to know. That's no part of the prosecution case. All right, you tell me she was a junkie. I'll see that it's investigated, but the fact remains that Dana Didrikson killed her. The evidence is unassailable.'

'When is the trial?'

'In just over a week.'

'A week?'

'You've been here ten days. Take it easy. They bring the papers round. You won't miss a thing.'

Later that morning, he met the surgeon who had pieced together his splintered skull. The operation, he learned, had been a five-hour job, and no one had been able to predict with confidence that he would come out of the coma, let alone come out of it with his brain unimpaired. The contraption clamped around his head was essential to his recovery. In twenty-four hours it would be replaced by something that permitted more movement. As for other injuries, two of his ribs had cracked, and there were superficial abrasions, but there was no reason why he shouldn't be on his feet in a week.

'On my feet and out of here?' Diamond asked.

'On your feet and as far as the toilet, Mr Diamond. As a ward sister once remarked to me, bedpans are nobody's cup of tea.'

At least he had an opportunity to think. The matter that exercised him most was Andy Coventry's behaviour. He would dearly have liked to question the man, only it wasn't possible, now or later. John Wigfull must have taken a statement already, but John Wigfull was blinkered.

The ferocity of the attack had been out of all proportion. Coventry could easily have killed him. Was a crack over the head with a spade a reasonable response to being caught with a couple of kilos of cocaine? People can panic, certainly. The chances were that Coventry wasn't a big wheel in the drugs trade, not an importer or a trafficker, just a pusher, probably with no form at all. Those are the people who are liable to strike back when threatened. The real professionals weigh the consequences.