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  ‘Just what are you implying?’ he asked, withdrawing his gaze from the far end of the terrace.

  ‘Nothing at all.’ Willow let herself seem puzzled. ‘It was an idle question: making conversation and all that.’

  ‘Oh, I see. I don’t think he knew her particularly well, although they had some friends in common. Now, how are you getting on with them all in the Vauxhall Bridge Road?’

  ‘I’m not yet,’ said Willow carefully. ‘I’m afraid that they’re all being pretty obstructive so far.’

  ‘I suppose that was only to be expected.’

  ‘No doubt, but if I’m to do a proper job, I shall need more information. The files they’ve given me have been censored, and I’ve been denied access to any others. Can you compel them to hand over any information I need?’

  ‘That may be tricky. Aspects of their work constitute official secrets, or so I understand from my more experienced colleagues.’

  ‘Well, there’s no problem there. I signed the Official Secrets Act years ago, when I joined the civil service. I belong to the same club, even though they can’t bring themselves to believe it.’ Resentment was oozing into her voice, and she corrected it at once. ‘Will you talk to your relevant colleague and get an instruction through to Little Miss Muffet?’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’ The minister smiled at her reference to Kate’s nickname. ‘But I’m sure you know what civil servants can be like: need-to-know basis and all that.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Willow with a smile of her own. ‘But the people who decide who needs to know what are sometimes kept in the dark by the very people who need to know, because they don’t want irrelevant people knowing what it is they’re doing—and therefore needing to know. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘It sounds a little complicated,’ he said with the first glimmer of real humour Willow had seen in him, ‘but I think I get your drift. I’ll do what I can. So you’ve nothing for me so far?’

  ‘Nothing specially about Fydgett, but I must say that your anxieties about a canteen culture may have been well founded.’

  ‘Aha. What leads you to that conclusion?’

  ‘Various conversations I’ve had that point up the hostility some of them seem to feel towards their “customers”, a conviction that taxpayers are dishonest, and an apparent certainty that any errors made by taxpayers are deliberate, whereas any made by Revenue staff are wholly innocent and always excusable. But I’ll put it all into the report.’

  ‘What’s your opinion of Kate Moughette?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet. She seems efficient, but that may be merely because she speaks so fast. She dresses surprisingly lavishly, but I’m sure that’s not the sort of thing that would interest you. I haven’t seen or heard enough to form any fair judgment of her competence yet.’

  ‘Pity.’

  Willow stared at him for a moment and saw a faint flush staining his angular face. He had not given her any indication that he had been expecting an assessment of Ms Moughette.

  ‘Minister, will you tell me something?’

  ‘If I can.’

  ‘What is it that you really expect me to find out from this investigation?’

  ‘I can’t imagine what you mean,’ he said, gazing at the far end of the terrace again as though he were determined not to catch her eye. She wanted to say that she could not imagine what he might be trying to hide. ‘I’ve told you that I want to find out whether Doctor Fydgett’s death was caused, in any way or to any degree, by the activities of anyone in that tax office. Didn’t I make that clear?’

  ‘Yes you did, but I feel as though I’m being kept in the dark about something that you know or suspect, which could be relevant to the assignment you have given me.’

  The minister glanced down at his watch, an expensive-looking, very thin Piaget. It seemed an uncharacteristically luxurious item for such a high-minded, almost ascetic, man.

  Don’t let your suspicions run away with you, Willow apostrophised herself. It was probably a present from someone or bought in the days before he even entered Parliament. She told herself that she was becoming paranoid and wondered whether she could have been infected by something in the air of the tax office.

  ‘I’m afraid I really am going to have to leave you now, Willow. There are things I must do before tonight’s main debate. Do stay, if you’d like. I’m sure there must be people you know here.’

  ‘One or two,’ said Willow, looking around. She caught sight of Elsie Trouville, who had been Home Secretary during the last government and whom she had always liked. They waved to each other. ‘But I’m due home for dinner. I ought to get back.’

  ‘Keep me informed, won’t you, and I’ll let you know about your powers of search and so on. At your home number?’

  ‘Yes, please. My housekeeper will answer the telephone if I’m not there, and if she’s out too there’s an answering machine.’

  ‘Splendid. I can’t thank you enough for the work you’re doing,’ he said, with what Willow thought was probably his constituent-charming smile. His washed-out blue eyes looked distant again. He ran one hand through his thick, straw-blond hair. ‘Well, good night to you.’

  Willow followed him back into the building and made her way through the vaulted stone corridors to the street. Various people nodded to her as she passed, and one civil servant, with whom she had worked years earlier, stopped to chat for a moment.

  He seemed surprised to see her but asked no questions. Instead he launched at once into telling her how high he had risen at the Treasury. Bored, but aware that if she continued to postpone her retirement she might find herself working with him again some day, Willow smiled and nodded in all the right places.

  ‘Nothing’s ever wasted that happens to a writer,’ her literary agent, Eve Greville, had once said when Willow had confessed to a lowness of spirits that was affecting every aspect of her life. ‘All the worst things come in useful in the end.’

  And so do the boring and the trivial, she told herself as she eventually extricated herself from her erstwhile colleague. Reaching the fresher air of Old Palace Yard a few minutes later, she cast a glance up at the statue of Henry V. It looked even more magnificent than usual with the reflections of the evening sun glowing orange on the polished bronze.

  She crossed Parliament Square and walked along Birdcage Walk to avoid the noise and bustle of Victoria Street. Cutting up through St. James’s Park, enjoying the light on the water of the lake and the mixture of greens in the leaves and grass, she made her way on into Green Park, walking diagonally past the palace.

  As she went she rehearsed the events of her day so that she could make up an amusing account of it to entertain Tom when he got home. Strung up from his work dealing with serious crime and wanting distraction, he often needed her to tell him stories before he could relax.

  Laughing at some of her own jokes, Willow told them this way and that until she was satisfied, interrupted only by a large man who looked as though he had just come off a building site, who grinned at her and said: ‘You can talk to me, love, if you like.’

  Aware that she was blushing, irritated with herself and yet a little amused as well, Willow walked on much more quickly. Quite soon she reached the boundary of the park and stood at the edge of the road, watching the roaring, angry traffic that forced its way round Hyde Park Corner. Contemplating the few crossing points above ground, she decided to save time and use the subway.

  The smelly dankness made her wish that she had not given in to impatience, but she hurried on, looking neither right nor left and pretending not to see the beggar who tried to stop her.

  Lurching up from his bed of matted blankets, papers and bits of cardboard, he put out both hands and shouted at her that he was starving. The smells of urine, dirt and alcohol that rose from his clothes and bed nauseated her, but they might not have been enough to stop her giving him money if he had not frightened her as well. Ashamed, but excusing herself with the knowledge that she subscribed to several
charities for the homeless, she held her breath as she passed him, shaking her head, and did not breathe easily again until she reached the far side of the huge roundabout and was climbing the steps up into the open.

  She was soon back in the broader, quieter, more peaceful streets of her familiar neighbourhood, where no beggars ever lay in cardboard boxes, unfed, unwashed, unhappy and frightening.

  Willow knew that Mrs Rusham would have left the house twenty minutes earlier and that Tom would be unlikely to return for a while, but that suited her. Despite her complete happiness with him, she cherished the hour or so that she

  usually had to herself at the end of each working day. It gave her time to take stock, and, if she had been writing, to return from whatever fantasy world had been engaging her.

  Planning to have a bath and perhaps a glass of wine from the latest mixed tasting case she had ordered from the Wine Society, she rounded the last comer before the mews and saw with surprise that several of the windows in the house were wide open.

  Either Mrs Rusham had had a mad fit of absent-mindedness before she left the house, Willow thought, or there was something wrong. Hurrying along the street, fishing in her large, squashy suede shoulder bag for her keys, she thought of burglars and wondered if she ought to get some help before she let herself in.

  There was no one around, and she thought that she would look an idiot if she summoned a busy policeman on such slim evidence of danger. Nervously unlocking the front door, Willow called out: ‘Hello?’

  There was the sound of hurrying footsteps and the kitchen door opening. Mrs Rusham came out into the hall, looking quite unlike herself without her white overall. It was a moment before Willow realised that her imperturbable housekeeper had been crying.

  ‘Mrs Rusham,’ she said at once, moving forward. ‘Whatever’s happened? Are you ill? What is it?’

  Mrs Rusham shook her head, gasped out an apology, and then said: ‘It’s Mr Tom.’

  ‘Mr Who?’ asked Willow, wondering whether one of Mrs Rusham’s relations was in trouble. Then it hit her. In a quite different voice, she said: ‘My Tom?’

  ‘Yes. He’s been shot.’

  Willow felt as though her insides were being sucked out of her. There was pain, dizziness, a terrifying coldness and the awful, eviscerated emptiness in the centre of her body.

  ‘Not dead,’ she said, not making a question of it

  ‘No.’ Mrs Rusham gulped again and made a visible effort to pull herself together and give all the necessary information as quickly as possible. ‘He’s in Dowting’s Hospital with wounds to his chest, and he has a fractured skull. They think he most have hit his head awkwardly as he collapsed; He’s on a ventilator and drips. They say that he’s holding his own. I thought I’d better wait for you. I couldn’t just leave a note about something like that.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Willow mechanically, her mind refusing to absorb the full impact of the news, even though her body was reacting to it all. She held on to the wall with her left hand and rubbed her damp forehead on the shoulder of her suit jacket. Her eyebrows clenched together as she tried to force her brain into some kind of rationality.

  ‘Where did it happen?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘Somewhere in Kingston. It was his office who rang. They wouldn’t give me any details. We’ve all been trying to find you ever since. They got the news at about half-past six.’

  ‘I was at the House of Commons. I’d better …’ Willow took her hand down from the wall and looked at the fingers. They felt as though they ought to be swollen, but they showed no signs of change. It seemed extraordinary that any part of her could be the same as it had been ten minutes earlier.

  ‘I’ll get over to Dowting’s now.’ Willow frowned. She couldn’t see properly or think and her voice sounded peculiar. ‘And you’d better get off home, I expect. At least, hadn’t you?’

  Mrs Rusham nodded, blew her nose hard, and blundered back into the kitchen to fetch her shopping bag and jacket Willow stayed in the hall, unaware that the front door was still open behind her. It was not until the pressure of the keys began to hurt her palm that she realised she was still gripping them in her right hand. She moved jerkily to drop them on the pewter plate on the hall table where she and Tom always kept their keys when they were in the house.

  ‘Holding his own,’ she repeated aloud. It sounded dreadful.

  The telephone started to ring. Willow did not want to talk to anyone; she moved towards the stairs so that she could change into some clothes that would be comfortable enough for a night spent in a chair by a hospital bed.

  Hearing Mrs Rusham coming out of the kitchen again, Willow stopped half-way up the stairs. Something moved sluggishly in her brain and she realised it was gratitude. She managed to unclench her lips and smile.

  ‘It was good of you to wait so long.’

  ‘It was all I could do,’ said Mrs Rusham, sounding more like her usual efficient, unemotional self. ‘I’ll set the alarms and lock up when you’ve gone. Oh, I do hope … Well, that won’t do any good. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  Willow nodded and went on upstairs, tripping over her feet, which felt twice as large as usual, and trying to ignore the buzzing in her ears and the clenching pain in the pit of her stomach. It was not until she had buttoned up her loose trousers that she realised it was her own muscles that were gripping tight around the emptiness. She made herself relax them. The pain seemed less intense at once, but she still felt sick and very cold.

  ‘Tom,’ she said experimentally. ‘Oh, God! Tom. Pull yourself to get her and get a sweater. You need to be warm. It won’t help him if you have hysterics. Get going. Tom. Take some money and don’t forget the keys. Keys. Car keys. They’re on the bunch by the door. Check the fuel before you set off. Tyres are all right. You know that. Take the keys. Oh, Tom, please hang on. Holding his own. Help him, for God’s sake.’

  Muttering to herself, she dressed and went downstairs again. Mrs Rusham was standing in the kitchen doorway, but she said nothing, for which Willow was dimly grateful. They nodded to each other, lips tight and eyes anxious.

  Willow went out into the street to unlock her car.

  Chapter Five

  The drive across the river to the big hospital could take no more than eight minutes in the early morning or at night, but then, at the tail end of the rush hour, it took Willow forty-five minutes, creeping along the Embankment and sitting for ten minutes on the bridge itself, breathing in the exhaust from the car in front of her. She could not work out what the burning smell was for ages and even then did not think to shut the ventilators.

  Her brain still would not work properly and yet she could not make it ignore what might be happening to Tom. She tried to stop herself thinking by reciting childhood jingles, multiplication tables, and rules for this and that, even running through the proof of Pythagoras’s theorem as it had been laid out in her O level maths book.

  Eventually she reached the far side of the bridge, skirted the roundabout and found a parking space close to the accident and emergency entrance of the big hospital. She backed her car with difficulty and eventually left it slanting selfishly into the next space.

  The smell of the old hospital greeted her in a waft of familiar comfort. It was made up of floor polish, food and drink from the visitors’canteen, disinfectant, recycled air and something else she had never been able to identify. Nowhere else in the world smelled like Dowting’s Hospital.

  Willow knew lots of people who hated it and everything it represented, but to her it offered instant reassurance. She had never been admitted to the place except to have part of herself mended, and she had never visited friends there who had not been cured of whatever ailed them. Some of the tension eased in her neck and shoulders, and as she walked across to the reception desk she moved less clumsily.

  ‘Where will I find Detective Chief Inspector Worth?’ she asked.

  A blankly official expression deadened the smile on the receptionist’s face.
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  ‘I’m his wife, Wilhelmina Worth,’ she said, reaching down into the depths of her bag for some identification. She found her driving licence and offered that

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Worth,’ said the man, his expression changing to one of intense sympathy. ‘May I say how sorry I am?’

  ‘Thank you, but I’d rather you told me where to find him.’

  ‘Of course. He’s in a private room at the end of Sidney Ward in the ITU, that’s the Intensive Care Unit. Tenth floor.’

  ‘Yes, I know the way. Thank you.’

  Willow made herself wait for a lift, knowing perfectly well that, however long it was before an empty one appealed, it would take less time than climbing ten flights of stairs. Eventually the green bulb above the third lift in the row lit up and a moment later the doors sighed open. There was already an inhabited bed and a green-robed porter inside, but Willow pushed herself in beside the bed and pressed the button marked ten. She turned to smile apologetically at the patient, and, seeing that he was unconscious, raised her eyes to meet the gaze of the porter.

  ‘You going to ITU?’ he said. ‘Visiting’s over.’

  ‘I know. It’s my husband. He’s in a single room. They’ll let me go in, won’t they?’

  ‘He the policeman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The porter leaned across his sleeping charge, holding out his large, black hand. Willow took it and felt the first tears prickling at her eyes. She was at once touched and appalled by the man’s wordless sympathy. That Tom’s plight should already be known throughout the hospital made it seem as though he were in even worse danger than she had suspected.

  The lift stopped. She looked up to check where they were and when the doors opened stepped out in the quiet dimness of the intensive care wards. A young nurse walked towards her, carrying a stainless-steel kidney bowl that seemed to be full of rubber tubing.