The Impossible Dead

  And for something to do.

  After almost an hour, he asked the receptionist for a progress report, and was told his father was in Combined Assessment.

  ‘Along there,’ she explained, pointing through another set of doors. Fox nodded his thanks and followed the signs on the wall. Eventually he arrived at a nurses’ station. His father seemed to have arrived only a few minutes before. Staff were still fussing around his bed. A machine was monitoring his heart rate. It gave a regular beep, creating a rhythm with the other machines nearby.

  ‘How is he?’ Fox asked.

  ‘A doctor will be along soon.’

  ‘But he’s all right?’

  ‘The doctor will have a word …’

  A chair was provided for Fox’s use. His father’s eyes were closed, the bottom half of his face covered by a translucent oxygen mask. Fox went to squeeze his hand, but saw that there was a spring-loaded clip on one finger, linking it to the machine. He touched the wrist instead, finding it warm. He looked for any signs that his father might be about to open his eyes. There was a bruise on his forehead and a bit of swelling – probably from the fall.

  ‘Dad,’ Fox said, just loud enough for his father to hear. ‘It’s Malcolm.’

  No response. His fingers sought the pulse in Mitch’s wrist. It beat a slow, steady tattoo in time to the machine.

  ‘Dad,’ he repeated.

  The staff seemed to be discussing something at the nurses’ station. Fox wondered where his father’s clothes were. He was wearing a short-sleeved hospital gown. One of the staff had broken off from the discussion to make a phone call.

  ‘We can’t take any more admissions,’ he explained. ‘No spaces left.’

  So it could always have been worse: Mitch could have been kept waiting on a trolley in a corridor. Fox wondered if there were some sort of hierarchy, and whether that meant things were serious.

  Could just be a fall …

  ‘I don’t believe it.’ The voice came from behind him. He turned his head and saw Jude standing there, arms by her sides. Fox got to his feet.

  ‘They say he fell,’ he began to explain.

  ‘I don’t mean Dad,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘I mean you.’

  It took Fox a moment to realise what crime he had committed. ‘Jude, I’m sorry …’

  ‘Walked into Lauder Lodge as usual. “Oh,” they tell me, “did your brother not say? Your father’s been rushed to hospital …” So thanks for that, Malcolm. Thanks a bunch.’

  A member of the nursing team was approaching, gesturing for them to keep the noise down.

  ‘I plain forgot, Jude. I was up to high doh …’

  ‘How do you think I’ve been? All the way here in the taxi …’ She had turned her attention from Malcolm to Mitch. ‘Not knowing what I was going to find.’

  ‘Sit down,’ Fox said, offering her the chair. ‘I’ll get you some water.’

  ‘I don’t want any of your water!’

  ‘Look,’ the nurse started to warn them, ‘I know this is difficult, but you’ll have to keep it down for the sake of the other patients.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ Jude was still studying her father.

  ‘It might be a stroke,’ the nurse said. ‘But we can’t know that for sure yet.’

  ‘A stroke?’ Jude lowered herself on to the chair, gripping its sides with both hands.

  ‘He’s already had an X-ray,’ Fox explained to his sister.

  ‘There’ll be a doctor along in a minute,’ the nurse added.

  Fox nodded to let the nurse know everything was fine now. But when he made to squeeze Jude’s shoulder, she shrugged him off.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ she said. So Fox stood there and watched as she leaned forward until her head was resting against the edge of the bed. Her whole body spasmed as she sobbed. Fox looked over towards the staff, but they’d seen it all before. Eventually the same nurse came with a few words of advice.

  ‘There’s a café in the main entrance. You might be better off there. Give us your number and we’ll buzz you when the doctor turns up.’

  But Jude shook her head. She was staying, so Fox stayed too. Another chair was found for him and he placed it next to his sister. She was squeezing their father’s hand, and failing to dislodge the finger-clip.

  ‘They found him on the floor of his room,’ Fox explained quietly. ‘He hit his head when he fell.’ He paused, realising there was nothing else to add, apart from yet another apology. Jude wouldn’t look at him. When she did lift her face from the bed, she focused on the machine instead.

  When the doctor arrived, he seemed impossibly young to Fox – barely out of his teens, surely. No white coat or stethoscope; just a shirt and tie and rolled-up sleeves.

  ‘No bones broken, no fractures,’ he recited, flicking through the notes he’d been handed. ‘Might just do a scan. We’ll keep him in a day or so …’

  ‘Someone mentioned a stroke,’ Fox said.

  ‘Mmm, it’s one possibility.’ Fox had been expecting the doctor to shine a light in Mitch’s eyes, or take his blood pressure and pulse … something like that. But the young man just glanced at the patient. The notes were telling him what he needed to know. ‘We’ll start to get a better idea when he comes round.’

  ‘Should we try rousing him?’ Fox asked.

  ‘Best leave it.’ The doctor had come to the end of his reading. ‘Scan later today or maybe tomorrow. After that, we’ll hopefully have some firmer news.’

  And with that he was gone, moving to a patient on the other side of the room.

  Jude didn’t say anything, and neither did Fox. He’d seldom felt as useless. When someone from the nurses’ station asked if they’d like a cup of tea, he nodded and felt pathetically grateful. Jude wanted water, and both drinks duly arrived. Fox said sorry again, and this time Jude looked at him.

  ‘You never think of me – either of you,’ she said.

  ‘Not now, Jude. Leave it for later.’ Fox nodded towards Mitch. ‘He might be able to hear.’

  ‘Maybe I want him to hear.’

  ‘Even so …’

  She took a sip of water from the plastic glass, cupping it in both hands. Fox’s tea was too strong. The only way to make it drinkable was to add both sachets of sugar.

  ‘Look,’ he told his sister, ‘I was in the middle of something when they phoned me. I wasn’t thinking straight – even when I got here.’

  ‘No room in that head of yours for me, eh?’

  ‘Can we cut the martyr crap, Jude, just this once?’

  He managed to hold her gaze, but only for a few seconds.

  ‘You’re some piece of work, Malcolm,’ she said, slowly and steadily. ‘You really are.’

  ‘Better to be something than nothing, eh?’ He made the mistake of glancing at his watch.

  ‘Somewhere you need to be?’ she asked.

  ‘Always.’

  ‘Don’t let family get in the way, will you?’

  He was trying to calculate how long it would take him to get to Stirling. Would the evening rush hour slow him?

  ‘Christ, you really are planning to up and leave.’ Jude’s mouth stayed open. ‘Whatever it is, it can’t be more important than this.’

  ‘Just because you don’t understand doesn’t mean Dad wouldn’t.’

  ‘And I’m supposed to just sit here?’

  ‘You’ll do whatever you want to do, Jude, same as always.’

  ‘Said the kettle to the pot.’

  It was hard to disagree, so Fox didn’t bother trying. He asked her if she needed money for the café. She kept him waiting for an answer before admitting that the taxi had cleaned her out. He placed a twenty-pound note on the bed, next to where she was holding Mitch’s hand.

  ‘I’ll be back later,’ he promised. ‘You going to be all right?’

  ‘What if I say no?’

  ‘Then I’ll feel worse than I already do.’

  ‘Just bugger off, Malcolm.’

 
Which was exactly what he did, after handing one of the nurses his card with his mobile number on it.

  The nurse nodded, but then looked over towards Jude. ‘Is she going to throw another wobbly?’

  Fox shook his head with some confidence. ‘Just so long as I’m not here,’ he explained.

  35

  It was a large, modern house down a side road opposite the university and not far from the Wallace Monument. A low brick wall separated it from its neighbours. There were fake shutters either side of each set of windows, and Palladian-style pillars flanking the front door. The gates had been left open for him, and the driveway was tarmacked. As Fox parked alongside a sleek Maserati and a small, sporty Lexus, the door opened. Fox recognised Stephen Pears from his photographs. The man beckoned towards him, as if welcoming a guest to a party.

  ‘Alison’s taking a phone call,’ he said. ‘She’ll only be a minute.’ Then he stretched out his hand for Fox to shake. He had good teeth and that tan, but was a stone or two heavier than necessary. His permanent five o’clock shadow could not disguise the double chin and jowls. Life, it seemed to Fox, was close to proving too much of a good thing for Stephen Pears.

  ‘Find the place okay?’ he asked as he led Fox into a double-height hallway.

  ‘Yes thanks.’

  A dog appeared at Pears’s side, a Labrador with a glossy black coat. Fox reached down a hand to stroke its head. ‘What’s she called?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s called Max.’

  ‘Hiya, Max.’

  But the dog had already lost interest in the visitor and was turning away. Fox straightened up. There were photographs lining the wall next to him. Fox recognised a number of celebrities. They were all pictured standing alongside Pears, smiling, occasionally shaking hands.

  ‘Sean Connery,’ Fox commented, nodding towards one particular photo.

  ‘Bumped into him and just had to get a snap.’

  ‘Looks like the New Club,’ Fox commented.

  Pears looked surprised. ‘Are you a member?’

  Fox shook his head. ‘You?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s nice and central when I want to impress people,’ Pears explained. ‘Come on through, won’t you? I was just pouring Andy a drink.’

  Andy being Justice Minister Andrew Watson. He rose from the sofa at Fox’s approach and they shook hands.

  ‘Malcolm Fox,’ Fox said by way of introduction. No reason for Watson to be told any more than that.

  ‘Lothian and Borders Police?’ Watson commented.

  Okay, so the Justice Minister knew. Fox nodded and turned down Pears’s offer of a malt.

  ‘Water’s fine,’ he said.

  It came with ice cubes and a wedge of lime in a heavy crystal tumbler. Pears clinked glasses with his brother-in-law and sniffed the whisky before sampling it.

  ‘Not bad, Stephen,’ Watson said approvingly.

  ‘Sit down, Inspector,’ Pears commanded, hands in movement again.

  Most of the ground floor seemed to be devoted to this huge open-plan space. Four or five sofas, a vast glass dining table with a dozen chairs placed around it, a fifty-inch TV screen on one wall. Spotlights picked out undersized paintings in overwrought frames. Piano music was being piped from somewhere – Fox couldn’t see any speakers. The French doors to the rear of the room led out to a terrace with lawns and a tennis court beyond. The tennis court was floodlit, either in an effort to impress, or because Pears could well afford to waste the electricity.

  ‘How’s she bearing up?’ Watson asked his host.

  ‘Your sister doesn’t “bear up”,’ Pears chided him. ‘She commands, she overcomes, she triumphs.’

  ‘And how is she “triumphing” tonight?’

  Pears smiled into his glass. ‘This is just the sort of thing she’s been needing. Otherwise it’s all meetings and number-crunching.’

  Watson nodded. ‘I know the feeling.’

  Fox was staring at the ice cubes in his drink.

  ‘You all right there?’ Pears asked.

  ‘Fine, yes.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Sure.’ But something made Fox change his mind. ‘My dad’s in hospital. Just happened this afternoon.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that,’ Pears said, while Watson made a grunting sound that could have passed for commiseration. ‘Shouldn’t you be there? Alison can make a bit of space in her diary tomorrow.’

  Fox gave a shrug. ‘I’m here now.’

  Pears nodded, keeping his eyes on Fox. ‘Something serious?’ he enquired.

  ‘They’re doing tests …’

  Pears smiled. ‘I meant your business with Alison. She’s been a bit cagey, hasn’t she, Andy?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘It was that Scotland Yard bloke who mentioned you’re Lothian and Borders …’

  ‘DCI Jackson?’ Fox guessed.

  ‘Left here half an hour ago,’ Pears stated. ‘I think he was keen to stick around.’

  The Justice Minister was loosening his tie, undoing the top button of his shirt. ‘He said you’ve got some case in Fife.’

  Fox nodded slowly. ‘Started off pretty straightforwardly,’ he admitted. ‘Then it got complicated.’

  ‘The opposite of my business,’ Pears commented, getting up to refill his glass. He offered to do the same for Watson, but Watson shook his head. ‘I like taking complex things and turning them into something that’s simple to understand and communicate. That way you sell it to people. Problem with the way finance was going the past ten or so years, nobody could grasp any of it, so nobody questioned it. Back to basics, that’s my motto.’

  Watson looked as if he had heard this speech many times. He did everything short of roll his eyes. When the financier was seated again, he leaned forward towards Fox.

  ‘Is it anything you can talk about?’ Pears asked. ‘I swear I won’t breathe a word, though I can’t vouch for the Justice Minister …’

  ‘There was a CID officer, misusing his position,’ Fox began. He felt a crushing tiredness all of a sudden, and had to grip the tumbler for fear he would drop it. ‘Then his uncle died – looked like suicide, but it wasn’t. CID seem to have the nephew in the frame for it …’

  ‘But?’ Fox had Pears’s full attention.

  ‘The nephew’s dead now too. Someone chased him into the sea and he drowned.’

  Pears sat back in his chair as if to think this through. Watson, however, was checking his phone for messages, apparently uninterested.

  ‘The uncle was doing some research into the death of an SNP activist called Francis Vernal,’ Fox went on.

  Watson stopped what he was doing. Now he was interested. ‘I know that name,’ he said. ‘He was in the news around the time I joined the party.’

  ‘I thought you were still in a Babygro when you took the pledge,’ Pears teased his brother-in-law.

  ‘Not quite – I was in high school. One of our teachers was an SNP councillor.’

  ‘You underwent the indoctrination process?’ Pears swallowed some more whisky.

  Watson grew prickly. ‘We all know your politics, Stephen.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Fox countered.

  Watson looked at him. ‘Take a wild guess. I’m even hearing rumblings of a peerage, now the Tories are in power down south. Cameron’s stuffing them into the House of Lords like there’s no tomorrow.’

  Pears laughed and shook his head, while still seeming gratified. ‘I’ll bet you fifty quid your boss’ll end up in the same place eventually – maybe when he gets a drubbing at the next election.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen.’

  ‘With the lead Labour have got?’

  ‘We’ll pick up votes from the Lib Dems – they hate what your lot have done to their party in Westminster.’

  Pears seemed to think about this, then turned back to Fox. ‘What’s your opinion, Inspector? Are you a political animal?’

  ‘I try to keep my head down, sir.’

  ‘One way of avoiding the shrapnel,’
Pears conceded. ‘But you’ve got me intrigued now – what has all this stuff about drownings and activists got to do with my wife?’

  ‘She was a student at St Andrews at the time Mr Vernal died. There’s a theory she may have known him.’

  ‘St Andrews?’ Watson was shaking his head. ‘Two years at Aberdeen, then she jacked it in and joined your lot instead.’

  Pears was nodding. ‘Someone’s fed you a line, Inspector.’

  Watson was holding his phone to his ear, having punched in a number. ‘Rory?’ he asked. ‘What time’s the car picking me up?’ He listened, checking his watch. ‘Fine,’ he said, ending the call.

  ‘Such a busy life,’ Pears said, feigning sympathy. ‘All of it paid for by the Inspector and me.’

  ‘And worth every bloody penny,’ Watson muttered. He glanced towards the sweeping staircase. ‘Is she ever coming down? Maybe I should go up …’

  ‘Finish your drink, man.’ Pears found to his surprise that he’d finished his own – again. He rose to his feet, and this time Fox needed his own tumbler refilling. ‘One more,’ Pears stated, ‘and I’ll call it a night.’

  Watson pursed his lips, telling Fox that this might not necessarily be the case. There was the sound of a door closing upstairs. Alison Pears made an exasperated sound as she descended the staircase, phone in hand.

  ‘Do I need to be there every minute of every day?’ she complained. Then, to Fox: ‘Hello again.’

  ‘The inspector has been telling us what he’s working on,’ Pears said, handing her a gin and tonic. ‘All very mysterious, but also a wasted trip – got you mixed up with someone who was a student at St Andrews.’

  The Chief Constable toasted the room with her drink and took a slug, exhaling afterwards.

  ‘Better?’ her husband asked.

  ‘Better,’ she confirmed. Then, to Fox: ‘Let’s go into the study and clear this up.’

  Her brother got to his feet. ‘I need a word first, Ali – when my boss asks, what can I tell him about these bloody bombers?’

  ‘Nothing so far to indicate they won’t be charged,’ she said after a moment’s thought. ‘The house they were renting is a gold mine – material, blueprints and manuals, even a list of targets.’