Execution

THIRTEEN

‘Are you some kind of spook?’ Casey lit a cigarette and gazed at Harry for a moment. ‘You probably wouldn’t tell me if you were, though, would you?’

‘No,’ Harry agreed, ‘I probably wouldn’t. But what makes you assume that?’

‘I don’t know, exactly.’ She looked around as they walked side-by-side along the street, the bulk of the hospital building to their right. ‘Something about you, I suppose. And the other men who came to see Clare.’ She stopped. ‘I’ve been doing this long enough to get a feel about people. Not just the patients, but visitors and. . others. Some have an aura, you know? My dad was in Special Branch. Some of his friends had this air about them, like they had secrets they couldn’t talk about, that the rest of us weren’t in on. Weird.’

‘What did you want to tell me?’

She dropped her cigarette and turned to face him. ‘OK, this is going to sound crazy, right. But the other night, when Clare left. . I had a feeling she was building up to something.’ She turned and started walking again, then turned back immediately. ‘When Melrose came in-’

‘Melrose?’

‘Yes, the Russian or Pole or whatever he was. He was admitted through the back door. I mean, literally, the back door. Like a delivery of new equipment. What the hell was that all about? I knew something strange was happening. Anyway, he was ranting and raving in his sleep — I mean, really shouting, like the worst kind of fever. But none of us could understand him, which didn’t help. One of the auxiliaries is married to a guy from over that way and she thought he might have been Ukrainian. Then Clare told me he was asking for water.’ She took out another cigarette and lit up. ‘Sorry — filthy habit, I know, but if you worked in there, you’d. . Anyway, she told me he wanted a drink of water, so I assumed she understood the language. She denied it, and said she just knew what water was in Russian from school. Varda or something similar.’

She had understood a lot more than that, thought Harry. But he didn’t tell Casey. ‘Was that all?’

‘Well, she didn’t say anything else about him. But she seemed different after that. Like she’d had this kick of energy go through her. . like a light being switched on.’

‘Is that unusual?’

‘No, not really. Some get back into it quite quickly, others need something to jolt them. But Clare had been. . well, you know how she was: like a living corpse, poor thing. Anyway, suddenly she began to sit up and talk more, taking an interest, asking questions. She hadn’t done that before. It was slow, of course, but getting there.’

‘What sort of questions?’

She shrugged. ‘Weird stuff, mostly. About the layout of the hospital, where the staff entrance was, was the place covered by CCTV, that sort of thing. I mean, I didn’t think anything of it at the time, because I figured showing any interest in her surroundings was better than none. Before that, she’d just lain there, barely moving.’

Harry nodded. Clare hadn’t said much the last time he’d seen her, beyond telling him where to go in two precise words. Even then, Casey had mentioned that she would only get well if she wanted to. At the time, it had not been an encouraging sign.

‘Did she ever say where she might go — what her plans were after leaving hospital?’

‘No, nothing like that. Some patients don’t. They keep it inside until they’re ready. Some don’t ever let on where they come from, like they can’t bear to talk about it in case they don’t make it, I suppose. But if she was starting to think about going home, that was good, right? She wasn’t near ready for it, though. I tried to tell her, but I don’t think it got through.’

‘What about Melrose? Did she say anything else about him?’

‘No. She buttoned right up after that first bit about water. I assumed she felt sorry for him because he couldn’t speak English. But thinking about it now, I wonder if something happened the evening she left.’

Harry stopped walking. ‘Why would you think that?’

Casey tossed the cigarette into the gutter, as if she were unconvinced about the need for it. ‘He’d been shouting again, although only Clare could hear him properly, being just across the corridor. I popped in to see her before going off duty, and she seemed confused.’

‘How?’

‘Well, she was pulling at the top sheet, folding and re-folding it, and asked me where her clothes were. She hadn’t done that before, but we try to make patients feel safe — a sense of having their things close by — so I told her, in the wardrobe, where they’d always been. It wasn’t a secret and I thought it might help calm her down. She couldn’t have her blouse, though, which had been thrown away; it was covered in blood.’

Harry remembered all too well, but didn’t say so. ‘Go on.’

‘I’d got her a spare T-shirt — we have an odds-and-ends cupboard for emergencies like that. I told her everything was in the wardrobe and she seemed to calm down a little after that. But that’s not unusual; it doesn’t take much to change their moods. I was going to recommend a sedative because I thought she was going stir-crazy, like some patients do — especially from the military. In the end, though, I didn’t. I doubt she would have taken it, anyway.’ She looked up at him. ‘That was the last time I saw her. Or the new guard.’

Harry held his breath. ‘A new guard?’

‘Yes. Big bloke, not like ours. Looked like he could chew barbed wire. He arrived the same time as Melrose.’ She shivered. ‘He gave me the creeps. It was obvious he was there to look after Melrose, though. He never spoke to the other guards and used to sit inside Melrose’s room most of time, except when he went on a break.’

Harry relaxed. If what Ballatyne had said was correct, he wasn’t surprised that extra security had been placed on Tobinskiy’s room. It made absolute sense to keep unwanted visitors away from their secret charge, if they didn’t want news of his presence leaking out to the press. Like giving him a very British name while he was there; it was a simple precaution. Then Casey drove a truck through his reasoning.

‘What I didn’t understand was why he left early that particular evening.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. I’d been asked to stand in on another unit after my normal shift, and was just leaving when I saw him getting into a car down the road. When I went in the next morning, I found everything was in chaos. They said he’d left before his replacement came on, leaving a gap in security.’