When at last he is cut free of the handcuffs, Hathaway hurries down the stairs. The front door stands open, its frame broken from the forced entry. The ground floor of the house is eerily empty of police officers. Hathaway soon discovers they are almost all out in the garden, in a group near where the ambulance personnel are working beneath the broken window. Before he can approach, a hand falls on his arm.
"Hathaway, are you alright? James?"
He turns, facing his Chief Superintendent. "I'm fine, yeah. How's Inspector Lewis?" He starts again to head in that direction, but she pulls him back.
"You'd better stay out of their way. It's hard to get back in there, lots of rose bushes . . ." Her eyes are better indicators of his condition than her words. Hathaway yanks his arm free.
"Ma'am, if he's . . . I need to be with him." He sees her look of reproach. "With all due respect, Ma'am." He pivots and heads resolutely to the group of scurrying med techs. One of them sees Hathaway approaching, and guides him in past the thornier shrubs to where they are working on the body lying face-up on a heavy blanket on the ground.
Lewis looks very pale: eyes closed, mouth slightly open. They've removed most of his clothing, and although much of him is covered in a red blanket, the parts that do show reveal bloody gashes, mostly in his arms and knees, some of them apparently quite deep. One of the workers moves the blanket to one side of Lewis's torso and James can see a blown-out, ragged hole about the size of a golf ball in his belly to the right of his navel. There is a great deal of blood everywhere. His hair is wet with it.
The worker who guided Hathaway to Lewis's side bends down and mutters into Lewis's ear. The older man's eyes flutter then as he tries to focus. The worker pushes Hathaway toward his boss. "Talk to him, tell him you're here. Call him by name. It'll help."
"Sir? Inspector Lewis? It's Hathaway. Can you hear me, Sir?"
Lewis's eyes still lack focus, but one corner of his mouth turns up slightly. "Hathaway?" Barely a whisper.
"Yes, Inspector, I'm here. It's over, everything will be alright. Just be sure you can hear my voice, okay? Can you hear me?"
"Yeah, I hear ya. You okay, Sergeant?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. The, erm . . . the marksmen . . . They got her. She never hurt me."
"James? Call Laura, tell her I'm okay, would you? She'll be worried."
Hathaway swallows hard. "I'll call her, Sir, I promise." He does not promise to tell her any lies.
The crew chief bends to Lewis's other ear. "We're going to put you under now, Inspector, understand? Don't worry, you won't feel anything. It'll be like falling asleep, okay?"
"'Kay." He swallows. "Hathaway? You still here?"
"Yeah, right here, Sir. I'll stay with you, as long as they let me."
"James . . . I'm sorry . . ."
His features relax as the sedative takes effect. The crew chief addresses Hathaway. "We'll be a little while packing him up, if there's anything you need to get or do before we go, take care of it now. You'll be riding with us, yeah?"
"Yes, definitely, thanks." He reaches for his mobile to call Hobson, then stops midway. His keys and mobile, of course, are missing. What did she do with them? A bit late to ask her. Then he sees Hobson's familiar BMW pulling up in front of the house. Hathaway breaks into a trot as he nears, the doctor fairly leaping from the car when she sees him approach.
"James! How is he?" She doesn't need to explain who "he" is.
"They're packing him up over there. I don't know. I spoke to him, but there's so much blood. He's out now. But go see him."
She sprints toward the ambulance as Hathaway goes inside to see if he can find his things. He recreates the events of the evening in his head, trying to figure when she would have lifted them and where she would have unobtrusively deposited them for later collection. Of course! When I was washing up. She wouldn't have needed much in the way of pickpocket skills to nick his things from his jacket, he had taken it off by then, and hung it over the back of the desk chair. He easily finds both missing items in a desk drawer, reclaims them, and heads back out toward the ambulance. He meets Doctor Hobson on the way, her eyes reddened.
"Doctor, how did you know where to come, anyway?"
She frowns a little. "I was told, of course." Noting his confusion, she explains. "I'm here to take care of a dead body." She takes a breath, and her eyes say the rest. Thank God it's not his.
"Of course. Sorry. Look, I'll call you if I know anything before you get free, I promise." Hathaway feels better knowing he will be able to fulfill his promise to his boss.
The ride to the Radcliffe seems to take forever. Hathaway is feeling somewhat nauseous from sitting sideways in the back of the ambulance. The stress of the evening, the champagne, and the brandy aren't helping him, either. But the state of his stomach seems relatively unimportant, and he manages to keep himself together for the length of the trip.
He has to find a place to wait as soon as they arrive, Lewis being whisked off to the surgical theatre immediately. Hathaway finds out where he can smoke and begins to empty out his packet, one cigarette at a time. He paces relentlessly. All he can think about is how easily fooled he was. He accepted Vicki's story without question, and now Lewis was paying the price for his lack of forethought. He had wanted her attention so badly, he ignored not only Lewis's common sense but his own as well. Every step Hathaway takes as he paces is a lash on his back.
After some time, a doctor emerges from the theatre, scanning the waiting area. Hathaway is over in a flash, chewing his lower lip nervously.
"Doctor, any word?"
"We're closing him now. I was merely assisting, Doctor Renfrew will give you the complete report in about an hour or so. He's stable and doing as well as can be expected for now."
"Is there anything I can do, any way I can help him?"
The doctor looks Hathaway up and down. "What blood type are you? He lost a lot of blood. If you match, and could spare a pint . . .?"
Lying on his back with a needle in his arm incongruously makes Hathaway feel that he's doing something active, something affirmative to help Lewis. He was happy to find his blood sufficiently matched that of his boss and that he did not have any of the disqualifying factors. And it gives him something to do besides pace purposelessly. Truly relaxed for the first time that night, he even dozes a little as the precious fluid drains.
It is hours before he is allowed to see his boss. Lying in his standard-issue gown, unconscious in the hospital bed, Lewis appears old and small. His right arm is in a cast, his face and exposed left arm adorned with numerous sticking plasters. His hair is stiff with dried blood. The doctor steps forward to explain.
"He's fractured his right humerus and clavicle—upper arm and collar bone—most likely due to landing there when he fell through the window. He also has numerous lacerations on his scalp and extremities from the window glass, the worst being on his arms, but no major blood vessels or nerves were severed."
The doctor checks to ensure Hathaway is keeping up, and continues. "None of these injuries is very serious, though they will certainly cause him a fair amount of pain in the immediate future. More worrying, however, is the harm from the bullet. The shot entered his backside just above his pelvis and passed through his abdominal cavity, exiting through his abdomen in front. We had to repair his bowel in several places, it was considerably damaged. Fortunately, the bullet missed his liver. The surgery went as expected, but only time will tell if it will be without complications. And we'll have to watch closely for infection. All I can tell you for certain now is that he's stable. Depending on how this develops, he may be here for a short time, but if there are any complications he could be in for a much longer stay, I'm afraid. It's up to him now."
The doctor strides away, having other patients to deal with. But the nurse remains, and she sees the despair in Hathaway's face. She touches his arm, her expression kind. "It won't be long before he wakes up. Maybe you'd like to stay? He'll hear you talking to him even before he wakes."
The words are balm for the troubled man, and he seeks further reassurance from her. "Can I ask you, Ma'am . . . how likely is it that he'll be okay?"
"Well, officially it will take some time before we can be certain he's free from the possibility of serious complications. But unofficially . . ." She leans close to his ear. "I've been doing this job a long time, Sergeant, and one thing I've noticed is that if the patient wakes up from surgery with a smile on his face, he's almost certain to be fine in a short time. If he doesn't, well, he can still pull through, so don't give up either way."
The nurse goes out of the room and Hathaway sits next to Lewis in the dark, his hand on the older man's shoulder. The two men are alone now. Golden light streaks the sky outside and Hathaway can begin to see his boss's face in the growing dawn. He sits stiffly on the chair next to the bed, perching on the edge of the seat, elbows on knees, chin resting on his other hand. He studies the expressionless visage.
"Sir?" Whispered. There is no response, as he expected. As he hoped, really. He does not want Lewis to consciously hear what he has to say.
"You were right, as you know. You won't ever say it, but I'm giving you the satisfaction anyway. I need to listen to you more. I've spent most of my life not listening to people who didn't agree with me, and it's a hard habit to break." He exhales, staring at the inert figure.
"I haven't always been easy to work with. Nor have you, to be honest, Sir. But I respect you. I didn't think I would when I first met you. And I get the feeling that you respect me." He's studying the ceiling now. "It's not something I'm used to."
His confession shifts into atonement. "I'm sorry I underestimated you that first day. People tend to do that with you, it's one of your strengths when you're dealing with suspects. And I'm sorry I so badly misjudged Vicki. I wanted her to be genuine so much I disregarded all the signs that she wasn't. It's because of my mistake you're lying here like this." He bows his head, touching his brow to the bedsheet. "Forgive me."
And last, supplication. "Sir, please recover from this. Please go back to being funny and cynical and insightful and enthusiastic and Geordie and wise and . . . you. I need you to be you, Sir."
Chief Superintendent Innocent finds Hathaway in that position when she arrives an hour later. He is asleep, head on the edge of the bed, one hand resting on Lewis's arm. The sound of the door closing behind her wakes him, and he starts, looking around as it takes him a moment to remember where he is, and why.
He glances quickly at Lewis, but it is immediately apparent the man has not moved, and is not awake.
Innocent is equally concerned for both her detectives. After studying Lewis a moment, she comes closer to Hathaway, worry knitting her brow.
"James, are you alright? Have you been here all night?"
He blinks at the questions. "Where else would I be?"
She extracts from him the information regarding Lewis's condition, folds her arms across her chest, and waits, standing next to the chair after rejecting James's offer to let her sit.
After a while, she speaks. "I've released Davidson. Lewis told me of his suspicions regarding Vicki Focks, and after the events at her house, I assumed Lewis was right about all of it." She checks James out of the corner of her eye. If she thought this would trigger an explanation of what happened inside the cottage, she is disappointed. Hathaway does not reply.
She begins to shift on her feet, restless and uncomfortable. After several minutes of this, she uncrosses her arms and heads for the door. "Hathaway, I have to use the ladies', I'll be back in a minute. If he wakes up while I'm gone, I'll know for certain that you two are teamed against me."
Hathaway snorts a little at that. As the door clicks shut, he hears a quiet groan from the bed. Almost afraid to look, he peeks down at his superior officer. Blue eyes gaze back at him, weary as the world.
"Sir?" There is no response. "Welcome back." Hathaway waits, feeling awkward.
Lewis clears his throat and licks his lips, trying to work saliva through his dry mouth. "Hathaway?" More of a croak than anything else. His eyes are flat and his mouth expressionless.
"Yes, Sir, it's me." Oh, God, he's not smiling. Hathaway feels a pit where his stomach should be.
"I knew you'd be here. Even before I woke. I felt it in me blood." He cracks a crooked grin, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "What there is left of it. Thanks, James."
Hathaway smiles broadly in relief. "Funny you should put it that way, Sir. There's something you should know about your blood."
Before he can speak, Innocent re-enters the room, sees Lewis is awake, and stops in her tracks. She shakes her head in mock exasperation, poorly concealing her pleasure. "I might have known."
The two partners reflexively grin, conspiratorially.