Felicity Young - Take Out

She made eye contact with Col. ‘Surely this doesn’t take plastic surgery into account? You said she’d had various makeovers.’

He shrugged—God only knows—and urged her back to Mai with a firm nod of his head.

‘Do you know who this woman is, Mai?’ she asked, forsaking her chair to perch on the edge of the bed.

Mai’s head dipped as she examined the picture of the older Granger, a veil of hair falling over her face, hiding it. Pimjai took a peep at the picture too and said something to Mai who returned a single word answer. Pimjai responded with an uneasy laugh.

‘Well, Pimjai?’ Stevie asked.

‘She said the woman is very ugly.’

Stevie blew out a breath of impatience. ‘Yes, but does she recognise her?’

‘Wait, give her longer.’

Shit, how long does she need? Stevie fidgeted with her shirtsleeves while she waited, trying to roll them into neat folds of military precision, ending up making uncomfortable knots at her elbows instead. Her gaze dropped once more to the picture Mai held in her hand.

And then her breath caught.

She bent over the picture and examined it again, her cheek almost touching Mai’s. She knew that face, she was certain, there was something about the mouth. Must be a known Madam, she reasoned, familiar from one of the reams of mugshots imprinted on her mind. She would send this composite to her colleagues in Sex Crimes and see if it rang any bells.

Mai took a bolstering breath. ‘Mamasan.’ The single word needed no translation. Col pointed a told-you-so finger at Stevie before indicating for her to continue with the questions. ‘But now she looks different,’ Pimjai added after listening again to Mai.

‘Different, how?’ Stevie asked.

‘Mai, do you know an old woman called Mrs Hardegan?’ Fowler asked simultaneously. Stevie could have murdered him.

‘No!’ Mai gasped in English, having obviously recognised the name. Her dark eyes flitted in panic away from Stevie’s. She pulled the sheet over her head and lay as inert as a body under a shroud.

‘She’s an old woman who lives next door to the Pavels.’ May as well finish what Fowler had started, Stevie decided. ‘Mai, you must know who she is.’

Mai shook her head vigorously under the sheet, making a low, keening sound. Stevie glanced toward Fowler, who looked on with exasperation.

Pimjai turned on Stevie. ‘This must end now—you, your questions, you are upsetting her.’ Before Stevie could react, Pimjai gave the nurses’ call button three sharp jabs—emergency—then let rip with a rapid stream of Thai.

‘Hey, wait on a minute...’ Stevie began.

‘No more talk,’ Pimjai said, ‘If she has to speak to you again it must be with a lawyer.’

Stevie plucked at the sleeve of Pimjai’s Audrey Hepburn suit and shook her head in desperation. ‘Pimjai, Mai’s not in trouble, she’s a witness only—you’re hardly being professional about this...’

A nurse dashed into the room and pulled up short when she realised it wasn’t an emergency. Despite Fowler jabbing his thumb accusingly at Pimjai, they were told they had to leave.

‘Shit,’ Fowler said as they stepped into the passageway, his lower lip jutting with disappointment. ‘What an obstructive little cow, she doesn’t miss much does she? Talk about the sisterhood. We’re going to have to lodge a complaint against that one.’

Stevie bit her tongue; the situation was hard enough without Fowler making it worse. Some of her hair had come loose; it must’ve been from all that frantic head shaking at Pimjai. She smoothed it back and tightened her ponytail. What she really wanted to do was get out of here, return to her mother’s house and sleep for a week.

‘Pimjai was only doing her job, Fowler,’ she said. She glanced back into the room and saw Pimjai reach for the sobbing girl and felt the last of her energy drain away. After everything that girl had been through and despite her best intentions, all she’d succeeded in doing was make Mai cry.

Fowler folded his arms and glared at her. ‘You should have been tougher, Hooper, cut to the chase sooner, shown her the dress and asked her about the bus crash.’

‘Look what happened when you cut to the chase,’ Stevie said.

Fowler appeared not to hear her. ‘What a waste of bloody time that was.’

‘Bull it was,’ Col said to Fowler with uncharacteristic sharpness, the strain was getting to him too. ‘We now have proof of everything we suspected and more. The hunt for Mamasan and The Crow can begin for real now we have that positive ID.’

‘If you believe in that kind of composite garbage—the girl said Mamasan looked different now.’

‘Jesus, Fowler, stop and listen to yourself,’ Stevie said, his negativity was getting to her even though she had a feeling that he might be right. In small doses she found she coped quite well with Fowler—there were even moments of camaraderie—but after a while his minor irritations built up like lead poisoning in her system. He was more of an old woman, she decided, than Mrs Hardegan could ever be.

‘And what’s more,’ Col continued, flexing his fingers, doing his best to ignore the growing tension between the detectives, ‘we now know that Jon Pavel is seriously dead and not still driving around terrorising people in that green Jag of his. Any luck with the trace so far, Fowler?’

‘Not yet, sir, Wong’s people are still on it,’ Fowler said moodily.

‘Stevie,’ Col went on, ‘I’ll organise a lawyer from Legal Aid and then maybe you can sweet-talk Pimjai into letting you have another word with Mai. If not we’ll have to find a different interpreter. I want to talk to the other girl’s doctors too, get a progress report. Last time we spoke they seemed to think she’d be waking up soon.’

‘What will happen to Mai and Lin?’ Stevie asked.

‘They’ll be offered amnesty—and a happy ending, hopefully.’

Stevie raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Provided Mai had nothing to do with Notting’s death.’

Col paused. ‘Well, yeah.’

‘She was a whore, anyway,’ Fowler said, ‘It’s not like she was being forced to do anything she hadn’t done before. Get her off the hook and she’ll end up right back where she started.’

Stevie’s pent up frustrations exploded. ‘Haven’t you learnt anything over the last few weeks? The fact that Mai was a sex worker makes no difference; she was coerced into coming to this country to work, a sex slave no less—she did not ask for this. It’s time you got over this madonna – whore complex of yours. The nature of her work before she came to this country is totally irrelevant.’

Fowler lowered his head. If he had any sense at all, he’d have to know what she was alluding to. ‘I’d better go and report all this to Wong,’ he mumbled, thwacking his hand through the air. Things hadn’t gone the way he’d wanted, how any of them had wanted, but jeez, Fowler, get over it.

‘He’s an odd one,’ Col said as they watched the detective stride down the ward, swatting imaginary flies.

‘You get used to him.’ She gave an indifferent shrug, too tired even to keep her anger simmering. ‘Kind of.’ (Image 28.1)

Image 28.1

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Monty was dozing when Stevie crept into his hospital room. Without disturbing him, she slipped onto his bed, fitted herself to his body, and was asleep within seconds. Fowler woke her with a tap on the shoulder an hour and a half later. She washed the sleep from her eyes and combed her hair in the small bathroom, avoiding the mirror lest she see the hard face and ruffled collar of an interrogator of the Spanish Inquisition staring back at her.