Trick of the Mind, Page 4

  In times past, Carmichael had also described Bethancourt as charming, though Dotty had understandably not seen much of that in the present circumstances. He had been scrupulously polite in a distant, public-school sort of way, and was clearly terribly anxious about Gibbons. He had been standing at the bedside for at least ten minutes now and showed no signs of moving.

  But in this she was mistaken, for the next moment he stirred and, replacing his glasses, turned to smile at her sheepishly.

  “You must excuse me,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ve been terribly rude.”

  “Not at all,” said Dotty. “They tell me,” she added, “that he’s doing quite well.”

  “Ah,” said Bethancourt, glancing quickly back at Gibbons as if her words might magically have brought the bloom of health to his cheeks.

  “I know,” she said. “He doesn’t look it.”

  Bethancourt sighed and sat down on the stool. “No,” he agreed. “He looks—well, rather worse than I had thought. Has he woken at all?”

  Dotty nodded. “Two or three times now, but very briefly. He seemed very confused, but the sister said that was the anesthetic and painkillers at work. I don’t think he recognized me.”

  “It must be very disorienting,” said Bethancourt. “Passing out somewhere and then waking up in a completely different place, I mean.”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  Bethancourt hesitated, and then said, “Do you know—was the damage very extensive?”

  “Oh,” said Dotty, “I wasn’t thinking—of course you haven’t had any details, have you? Apparently the damage wasn’t as bad as it might have been, or so they say. The surgeon removed two bullets from the sergeant’s abdomen and performed a bowel resection. He said it went smoothly.”

  “Two bullets?” Bethancourt looked alarmed. “He was shot twice?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. Since he wasn’t found right away, they’re worried he may develop peritonitis. His temperature is up a little.”

  “God.” Bethancourt rubbed at his face again. “I never thought anything like this would happen,” he said, looking up. “Not to Jack.”

  “No,” agreed Dotty. “One never does. And it doesn’t happen often, thank God.”

  Bethancourt murmured agreement, turning back to look at Gibbons again.

  And just then Gibbons stirred, frowned, and opened his eyes. Even their normal fierce blue color seemed to Bethancourt to be dimmed.

  Bethancourt was on his feet in an instant, bending over the bed.

  “Jack?” he asked. “How are you feeling?”

  “Phillip?” said Gibbons faintly, looking confused. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came as soon as I heard,” said Bethancourt, not at all certain Gibbons knew where “here” was. “How are you, old man?”

  Gibbons blinked, as if he were having trouble focusing. “Is there anything to drink?” he asked. “I’m awfully thirsty.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Bethancourt, looking round.

  Dotty was before him, experience having taught her that this request would be coming in short order. She handed Bethancourt a cup with a few ice chips in it.

  “They said only ice, no liquid,” she murmured.

  Bethancourt nodded and dropped a bit of ice into Gibbons’s mouth. Gibbons looked vaguely startled, but sucked on the ice anyway while Bethancourt said, “I’m afraid that’s all you’re allowed. Does it help?”

  Gibbons nodded, his eyelids already beginning to droop again. “Cheers,” he mumbled, and fell back to sleep.

  Bethancourt, left holding the ice, smiled down at him.

  Gibbons had only the vaguest recollection of this incident when he woke again, half an hour later. He was first aware of feeling generally bruised and battered, and something hurt quite a lot, but he wasn’t sure what it was. He blinked his eyes open sleepily and found himself in a hospital room.

  “Jack?”

  His vision seemed oddly blurred, and he squinted up to see Bethancourt leaning over him with a cup in his hand. Unconsciously, he swallowed in preparation for speaking, and discovered that his throat was one of the things that was very sore indeed. Moreover, there seemed to be some kind of tube stuck down his gullet. That, together with the hospital room and the muddy, sick feeling in his head, began to ring alarm bells. Fear started to coalesce in the pit of his stomach.

  “Phillip?” he ventured, and his earlier brief bout with consciousness came back to him. “I thought you were a dream,” he muttered.

  “Not a bit of it,” said Bethancourt.

  Gibbons closed his eyes again, squeezing them tight in order to take away the blurriness, and tried to think. He had some hazy notion that Bethancourt was out of town, but that clearly was wrong. And he did not remember being in hospital.

  “I was going to work,” he murmured, trying to bring himself up-to-date.

  “What?” asked Bethancourt anxiously. “I couldn’t make that out.”

  The inquiry interrupted Gibbons’s tenuous train of thought and he cracked an eye open to glare at his friend, only to find the plastic cup waving dangerously close to his eye.

  “More ice?” asked Bethancourt helpfully.

  “Not in my eye,” retorted Gibbons, batting feebly at the cup. He made an effort to push himself into a sitting position; the effort ended abruptly in a blinding flash of pain that made him gasp and close his eyes again. It was so severe that he was not even sure where exactly it had originated. Dimly, he heard Bethancourt saying, “Whoa. Take it easy there—I don’t think you ought to be doing sit-ups just yet,” while he struggled to conquer the fear that something was seriously wrong with him. He found himself panting a little and tried to slow his breathing.

  “Was there an accident?” he whispered in a moment.

  “That’s right,” replied Bethancourt in a soothing tone. “But the doctors say you’re going to be fine.”

  The soothing tone struck a false note with Gibbons. Still, he did not imagine that Bethancourt would lie to him, even if the prognosis was less good.

  “What happened?” he asked. “I can’t remember anything.”

  “Well, you’ve had a bit of an operation,” said Bethancourt. “That’s why your tummy’s so sore. But it went very smoothly, so they say, and they expect you to make a full recovery with time.”

  Gibbons felt greatly relieved to hear it, but even in his dazed state, it was not lost on him that Bethancourt had failed to mention why he had been brought to the hospital to begin with. He was beginning to feel quite put out with his friend.

  “But why have I had an operation?” he demanded. “Did my appendix burst? Was I hit by a car?”

  “Not exactly,” said Bethancourt, dithering a bit. “In fact, you were, er, shot.”

  Gibbons could not have been more surprised.

  “Shot?” he repeated incredulously. “With a gun you mean?”

  Bethancourt nodded solemnly. “That’s right. You were shot twice, as a matter of fact. But as I say, it wasn’t half as bad as it might have been. Your intestines are a bit shorter than they were this morning, but other than that, all’s well.”

  It seemed beyond belief.

  “But who shot me?” he asked.

  “No one’s sure just at the moment,” said Bethancourt. “But Carmichael’s working hard on it, and he’ll no doubt have an answer shortly.” He cocked his head. “How do you feel?”

  “Not very well,” admitted Gibbons. He shifted cautiously, relieved to find a more gentle movement did not result in the same hideous pain. “Perhaps I will have—is that water?”

  “Ice,” corrected Bethancourt, eagerly fishing out a chip and adroitly slipping it into his friend’s mouth before he could protest. “You can’t have anything else yet.”

  Gibbons might have questioned this, but sucking on the ice brought the tube in this throat back to prominence.

  “What is this?” he asked irritably, fumbling at his nose.

  “Er …” said Bethancourt and gl
anced over his shoulder.

  “I don’t know either,” said a woman’s voice. “They said something about keeping his lungs clear, but I didn’t quite understand.”

  Gibbons was startled to find someone else was in the room—normally he was a very observant man—and peered around Bethancourt. His eyes widened as they lit on Dotty.

  “Oh, hello, Mrs. Carmichael,” he said weakly.

  “Hello, dear,” said Dotty. “We’ve all been very worried about you. Wallace will be glad to hear you’re awake.”

  “Is the chief inspector here, too?” asked Gibbons in a small voice.

  “Yes indeed.” Dotty smiled at him. “He just went out to take a call and will be right back. And he’s sent a car for your parents—they should be here in not much longer,” she added with a glance at the lightening sky out the window.

  “But …” began Gibbons, and then let his voice trail off as he, too, looked out the window and realized how early it was. “It’s not the same morning,” he said starkly.

  Dotty looked confused, as well she might, but Bethancourt seemed to understand what he meant.

  “Ah,” he said. “Is that the last thing you remember? Yesterday morning?”

  “I—I don’t know,” answered Gibbons, frowning with the fruitless effort to put his memories in order. “I guess … what day is it now?”

  “Wednesday morning,” answered Bethancourt.

  Gibbons shook his head. “I remember going to work on Tuesday,” he said, but his tone was doubtful.

  “Well, don’t fret over it,” said Dotty. “You’ll never get better if you do that. You leave it to Wallace to sort out—he will, whether you fret or not.”

  “Right,” said Bethancourt. “Do you want anything? I can call the nurse.”

  What Gibbons wanted was to think clearly, but that was obviously not an option. He felt unbearably weary, as if he had run a marathon and got a bad cramp in his belly at the end.

  “I don’t think so,” he said uncertainly. “Where are we, anyway?”

  “University College Hospital,” answered Bethancourt. “They rushed you here from Walworth.”

  “Walworth?” This made no sense at all.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Bethancourt. “It’s the best trauma center in London—they’ll get you well.”

  Gibbons felt that there was something vaguely sinister in the way Bethancourt kept harping on his recovery, but his brain was beginning to shut down again and he could not reason it out.

  “All right,” he replied, though what he was agreeing to he could not have said. “I think perhaps I’ll have another sleep now. I don’t seem able to stay awake.”

  “That’ll be the anesthetic,” said Dotty comfortingly. “You’ll feel more alert later.”

  It hardly seemed possible. As he drifted off into soft, painless darkness, he wondered if he would have to give up his job because of not being able to think straight.

  Bethancourt and Dotty fell into a hushed silence, watching the regular rise and fall of Gibbons’s chest, fruitlessly striving to determine any deviation from normal sleep. Neither of them had yet spoken when there was the sound of a heavy footstep behind them and Carmichael appeared in the doorway. The long night had left its mark on him and he looked older than Bethancourt remembered, the lines in his face more deeply etched, his eyes bleary. Even his eyebrows, those bristling harbingers of Carmichael’s mood, seemed damped down.

  “Ah, Bethancourt, you’re here,” he said, his voice a low rumble. Then he looked toward the bed as he came into the room to lay a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “How is he?”

  “He woke again,” said Dotty. “He seemed less confused than before and he recognized Mr. Bethancourt.”

  “Good, good.” Carmichael rubbed a hand over his face and sank down on the arm of Dotty’s chair.

  “You look all in, sir,” said Bethancourt sympathetically.

  “It’s been a long night.” Carmichael was staring blankly at his wounded junior. “I’m glad you’ve come, Bethancourt. We’ll need to go over anything you might know that could contribute to this.”

  Bethancourt nodded. “Certainly, sir,” he said.

  But Carmichael made no move to begin this interrogation; he just sat on the arm of his wife’s chair, gazing worriedly at Gibbons. And after a moment, Bethancourt’s eyes also returned there, and they all sat, very quietly, watching the slight signs that told them Gibbons was alive.

  Bethancourt stood blinking in the thin, early-morning sunlight on the street outside the hospital. The rain had apparently stopped for the moment, and he was dimly taking this fact in while he tugged his cigarette case out of his pocket and then patted himself down in a search for his lighter.

  Gibbons’s parents had arrived and Bethancourt and the Carmichaels had left to allow them some privacy with their son. Dotty had taken her husband off to put him to bed as, she said, he’d not have the sense to get any rest, left to himself. She had recommended that Bethancourt do the same thing and he had meekly promised to comply. But now he had the sensation of something forgotten at the back of his mind, which was trying to come out.

  Nicotine seemed to help focus his thoughts. He blew out a stream of smoke and knew at once what he had forgotten: making some kind of arrangements for the Gibbonses’ stay. It would have to be somewhere nearby, which eliminated his own flat in Chelsea and left him with a choice of hotels. Half a cigarette later, he had decided on the Montague on the Gardens as being very comfortable and barely ten minutes’ walk away. After so many hours spent in the car, he felt he could use a brisk walk himself and accordingly set out down Gower Street, pitching his cigarette away as he walked.

  The Montague was quiet at this hour and in this season, but the girl at the desk was immaculately turned out and greeted him with a bright smile.

  “Checking in?” she inquired.

  Bethancourt shook his head. “No,” he answered. “I want to make arrangements for some friends. Have you any rooms looking out on the gardens available?”

  The smile stayed in place, but her brown eyes looked slightly worried. “Those are our most popular rooms,” she told him. “When were your friends thinking of staying with us?”

  “Now,” said Bethancourt, startling her. “Tonight,” he clarified. “I imagine they’ll be here for about a week, or possibly two if …” That sentence did not seem to lead anywhere he wanted to go, and he began again. “Their son’s in hospital,” he explained. “They’ve only just arrived this morning, and I don’t want them to have to worry about anything.”

  “Of course,” said the receptionist sympathetically. “I’m sure we can accommodate them. At University College Hospital, is he?”

  “That’s right. He’s a policeman and he was shot last night.”

  She paused as she was turning to her computer, appalled.

  “How dreadful,” she said.

  “They say he’ll make a full recovery,” added Bethancourt hastily, realizing he had been rather abrupt and, moreover, had probably said more than she wanted to know.

  “Thank God for that,” she said. “Still, his parents must be very worried. Let’s just see what we can do for them …” She returned her attention to the computer. “We do have openings just at the moment—November is a slow time for us—but even so, most of the garden rooms are occupied. Well, there, we do have a couple of suites.”

  She lifted a questioning eyebrow at him, clearly unsure if this would be beyond the means of a policeman’s parents.

  “A suite would be lovely,” Bethancourt assured her. “Just what’s needed, in fact.”

  She hesitated, her hands poised over the keyboard.

  “Er,” she said. “We usually greet our guests in their suites with a glass of champagne, but under the circumstances, well …”

  “Ah, yes,” said Bethancourt. “You’d better cancel that. A nice tea tray would be more the thing, I think.”

  She nodded, relieved, and began to type.

  “Th
e tariff,” she murmured discreetly, “would be two hundred sixty-five pounds per night.”

  “Fine, fine,” said Bethancourt. “Book it in for a week, will you? Here’s my card.”

  The receptionist seemed reassured by the sight of an American Express platinum card, and proceeded with the booking.

  “Have you got a brochure or any thing?” asked Bethancourt, looking about vaguely. “I want to leave it at the hospital for them so they’ll know where to go. They don’t know London at all well.”

  Now that the brochure was in his pocket and his credit card charged, Bethancourt walked back to the hospital and sought out the uniformed guards at Gibbons’s door, who greeted him with nods of recognition.

  “Did you want to go in, sir?” asked one. “The sergeant’s parents are still with him just now.”

  Bethancourt shook his head. “I’ll leave them in peace,” he said. “I’ve booked a hotel for them.”

  “Good job, that,” said the other policeman. “I dare say they’ll be too frazzled to work it all out for themselves.”

  Bethancourt produced his brochure. “Do you think you could give this to them when they come out?” he asked. “Tell them the hotel’s expecting them and everything’s taken care of.”

  The policeman let out a low whistle. “Posh place,” he said.

  “Do you know where it is?” said Bethancourt. “Can you tell them how to get there?”

  Both policemen peered at the brochure.

  “Oh, I know the place,” said one. “Across from the British Museum, right? And you needn’t worry about their getting there—I’ve got twenty pounds from the chief inspector and instructions to put the Gibbonses in a taxi whenever they want to leave.”

  “Good, good,” said Bethancourt. “I’ll leave it with you, then.”