Peter Robinson: Sleeping in the Ground

‘Where’s his wife?’ Banks asked the constable. ‘Maureen.’

The constable shook his head. ‘There was no one else here when we arrived, sir. Just the man lying on the floor there.’

‘This blood come from him?’

‘It looked that way, sir.’

‘Was he unconscious?’

‘Not quite, but I’d say he was definitely stunned.’

‘Could you tell how he’d been hurt? Gun? Knife?’

‘No, sir. Nothing like that. From what I could tell, he was most likely hit on the head with that heavy wooden chopping block. You can see the blood on it if you look closely. I tried to touch things as little as possible.’

Banks looked and he did see blood on the chopping block. It was certainly heavy enough to deliver a nasty wound. He knew that head wounds bleed a lot, so the amount no longer seemed so significant as it had at first. On the other hand, a blow to the skull can cause any amount of damage, not all of it immediately apparent. ‘Did he say anything?’

‘He was struggling to speak, sir,’ the constable said. ‘But I couldn’t make out any of it. It seemed like he was trying to say something important but it just wasn’t coming out. Then the paramedic got to work and I got out of the way.’

Banks and Annie next made a quick search of the rest of the house but found nothing of interest. There was no blood to be seen anywhere else, and no signs of a struggle in any of the upstairs rooms. Whatever the interloper had done with Maureen Tindall, he hadn’t done it in the house. Maureen was gone. Someone had taken her.

Back outside, Banks told the constable to organise a house-to-house of the neighbourhood and show Vincent’s photo to everyone, and to pay particular attention to getting information on the car he was driving.

After the meeting, Gerry went back to her maps with a heightened sense of excitement. She felt a little annoyed at being left out of the trip to Eastvale General Infirmary, but realised there was no point in all of them being there. According to Banks, Robert Tindall would tell them what he could when he was able to talk. It might mean a lot of waiting around, hospitals being what they were, and she had important work to do, especially now that Maureen Tindall was missing, presumed abducted, according to Banks.

DC Wilson and PC Stamford were out interviewing local estate agents and farmers who rented out rooms and converted barn accommodations. It seemed a fairly thankless task, Gerry thought, especially in this weather, but it had to be done. Now they had a good likeness of their man — of Mark Vincent — they might get a more positive reaction to their enquiries.

Gerry looked over the OS Landranger map with a magnifying glass, feeling a bit like Sherlock Holmes as she scanned the squares for anything she might have missed. At one and a quarter inches to a mile, it was a fairly detailed sheet, but she decided it might be worth having a look at an Explorer map, two and a half inches to a mile. It would be less cluttered.

She spent a few minutes in the tiny station library looking through the racks, eventually found the area she wanted and took it back to the boardroom, where she tacked it gently with adhesive putty to the whiteboard. That was better, she thought, standing back to admire the precision draughtsmanship, translating the whirls and blobs into images of a vital, living landscape in her mind’s eye. The symbols were larger and less likely to be obscured by contour lines, footpaths or village streets, and after a while of simply standing looking at it as she might a painting in the National Gallery, she spotted something she had overlooked. Pausing only to make a few jottings of locations in her notebook, she dashed back to the squad room, grabbed her raincoat and went down to the car park.

Robert Tindall had been moved to the head of the queue for immediate attention, and nobody would be allowed to see him until the doctors had determined the extent of the damage. So far, none of them had given away a thing.

The coffee was weak and the decor drab. It was bad enough that you had to be in a hospital, Banks thought, without having to put up with weak coffee and drab decor, too. He vaguely remembered a funny quote about wallpaper. Oscar Wilde, he thought it was. Wilde had all the best funny quotes. Still, Banks didn’t suppose that patients in need of serious attention cared much about the decor, or the coffee, though no doubt an expensive survey would one day prove that a little colour in a patient’s life could work miraculous cures.

He looked out of the window through the ‘silken strings’ of rain to the jaundiced streetlight in front of the Unicorn across the road. That would be an improvement, he thought. The decor was just as bad, but the beer was decent enough. He found himself wondering what Emily’s hospital had been like, her last days, whether she’d been aware enough to notice or care. As he remembered, she was always very fussy about furniture and paint colours. Julie Drake said Emily spent as long as she could at home, but when the pain got too much, and a visiting nurse could no longer provide the level of care she needed, they took her to hospital. He thought about the other hospital, too, where she had had the abortion all those years ago. What had she felt like after that? Empty, he supposed. Wasn’t that the cliché they always used in movies? Perhaps she had felt free, elated. But he doubted it. Empty was more like it. And he hadn’t even known. Hadn’t even been able to hold her hand or offer her any comfort, let alone suggest having the baby, getting married. Julie was most likely right. He would have tried, and he might have succeeded, and it would probably have been a big mistake. Let go with both hands. Smile and forget.

Banks became aware of the doctor talking. He hadn’t noticed him walk in. ‘It’s not as serious as we thought,’ he went on. ‘He’s lost some blood, and he’s weak, but there’s no skull fracture and no brain damage as far as we can make out. Mild concussion. We’ll keep him in and monitor him overnight, carry out some tests. What was he hit with, by the way?’

‘We think it was a chopping block,’ said Banks. He had placed it in an evidence bag and passed it on to one of the uniformed officers before leaving for the hospital. ‘Can we talk to him?’

‘I don’t see why not. But just for a few minutes. He’s very tired.’ He glanced at Annie. ‘Just one of you, though, I’m afraid.’

‘I’ll wait here,’ said Annie.

The doctor led Banks down the corridor and up in the lift to the private room where Robert Tindall lay on a plumped-up pillow with bandages around his head and various tubes and monitors attached to him. They seemed to subject you to that indignity even if all you came in with was a cut finger. ‘And don’t overexcite him,’ the doctor admonished Banks as he walked off.

‘God forbid,’ Banks muttered under his breath.

The light was dim and the curtains closed. Banks could hear the wind-blown rain lashing against the windowpane, along with an annoying beep inside the room itself every two or three seconds. That was another thing he had noticed; there was always an annoying beep in hospital rooms.

Tindall’s eyes were open, and Banks noticed signs of recognition. It was a good start. Tindall tried to sit up but couldn’t make it. He reached out and grabbed Banks’s wrist. His grasp was surprisingly strong. ‘Mr Banks,’ he said. His voice was soft but the words were formed clearly enough, and the anxiety and urgency in his tone were obvious. ‘Can you tell me anything about Maureen? Please. What’s happened to her? Where is she? Did he hurt her?’

‘We don’t know much yet,’ said Banks, ‘but there are no signs that he hurt her. Now calm down. The doctor says you need rest and shouldn’t become too excited.’