Dead Men's s Boots

That’s what I need to talk to her about, in fact. I’ve got some new information that I want to go over with her. If she comes home, or gets in touch, could you tell her Æed to call me?’

Susan said she’d pass the message along, but her tone was cold. She was blaming me for all this, in spite of my weasel words: as far as she was concerned, she’d invited me over for dinner and I’d dragged a big bag of crap and chaos in with me and dumped it all over her floor. Even without knowing the whole story, she knew that much: and she was right.

I fixed myself a quick breakfast of toast and dry cereal – the milk in the fridge having transubstantiated into something green and malevolent. My neck and back ached so badly that I was moving like an arthritic grandad. The day was off to a great start.

Nicky said they had Gary Coldwood in traction over at the Royal Free. A hop, a skip and a jump and I was treading the streets of Hampstead, a place where I’ve always felt as welcome as a slug in a salad. It didn’t help that I’d forgotten to shave.

Or maybe it did: at least people didn’t seem inclined to intrude on my privacy.

There were two uniformed cops on duty outside the private ward where Coldwood was holed up, but they didn’t stop me going in or ask to take my name or anything: I wasn’t sure whether they were there to stop Gary leaving – in which case they should probably have had more faith in his broken legs – or if they’d been assigned to protect him from his screaming fans. Either way, they were earning their overtime fairly painlessly.

Coldwood wasn’t feeling any pain either, but that was because he was doped up to the eyeballs and only about one-tenth conscious. I sat there for ten minutes or so, wondering if he was going to surface far enough to realise that he wasn’t alone. I wasn’t even sure why I was there: or at least where the balance lay between apologising and debriefing.

Eventually I admitted defeat and got up to leave. Coldwood mumbled something, but it wasn’t to me and it wasn’t intelligible.

As I headed for the door, though, a nurse walked briskly in and cut off my escape. She was about forty and built like a Victorian wardrobe: a solid trapezoid with a single undifferentiated mound of breast like a continental shelf.

‘Who are you?’ she demanded brusquely.

‘Friend of the family,’ I hedged.

‘Well, you’ll have to come back after I’ve given the sergeant his bed bath.’

‘I was hoping I could have a word with him about—’

‘After his bed bath.