Live to Tell (43 page)

“So where is he now?”

Henderson took a deep breath and clenched his teeth. “I’ve no idea.” He paused. “You see, being on remand means when he’s released, he’s a free man. Could be anywhere. One thing’s for sure. The man’s a mad dog. It won’t be long before he re-offends. What brings him to your attention?”

“A mad dog and you let him go?” Ben’s anger re-ignited.

“Had no choice, laddie. It’s the system! But you were telling me why you’re sniffing around.”

“No,
you
were asking. Someone mentioned the other guy, that’s all. It’s probably nothing. But tell me. What happens now? With the McCaffery murder investigation I mean? Presumably, you start again?”

“Well that would be nice wouldn’t it? In an ideal world, Laddie, in an ideal world… But with resources being so tight, manpower’s stretched.”

The thought crossed Ben’s mind that the search for the killer might be given more urgency if the victim had not been a member of the IRA. As a precaution, he had already copied all the items of interest in the file. He realised now he made the right decision.

Mum and Dad didn’t seem to know how long Aunt Jess would stay in hospital and now I began to fear she would never come out. For the third night running I went to her bedside straight from work. She was sitting up this time and looked a lot brighter. She waved as I came in.

“You are spoiling me, dear,” she said. “But I’m not complaining. I haven’t seen so much of you since you were a little girl. Don’t think I’m popping off, will you? I’ve still got a lot of living to do. I’m a tough old bird.”

I felt glum. I knew only too well how fragile life was. “Have they given you any idea when you’ll be able to come home? Can you have the treatment as an out-patient or do you have to stay here?”

“I could be in a lot worse places. Can you pass me that glass of water, dear? The staff are very kind you know, very friendly—especially the young men. I always thought nursing was a woman’s job. I can’t believe how many men they have working here. And here he is, my lovely, lovely doctor.”

I heard a man laugh behind me.

“I’ll remember to come to you when I need my next reference,” he said.

I turned around. He held out his hand to me and smiled.

“Olivier,” he said. “Olivier Scarlatti. I’m afraid I don’t use the name Joe anymore.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
 

It was now five days since Ben first started getting phone calls from the whispering caller and nearly three since he read the police file. At night the building he worked in was largely deserted and quiet. Ben liked the quiet although he hated working the night shift. He tried to concentrate on preparing for his next European Intelligence-Sharing (EIS) meeting but his thoughts kept returning to the impending murder. He wanted to believe the man was mistaken, deranged even. The McCaffery file told him differently.

Absentmindedly, he shuffled the “European” papers. This would be the first meeting attended by Jurgen Bauer, the new representative from Germany. Ben re-read the man’s C.V. Something nagged at the back of his brain but he couldn’t pin it down and so he pushed the irritation aside.

He thought of sending an e-mail to Henderson—to see if he had re-arrested Fenton yet. Surprised, he saw there was a message already waiting from the policeman. Damn, he thought as he read it.
Here is a link you might find useful.

Ben hated it when people assumed he knew as much about computers as they did. Invariably they were wrong. Tentatively he double clicked on a small picture that looked like an artichoke and held his breath. What seemed like an age passed—then with a flash a file emerged before his eyes. It was another McCaffery file, this one much older.

Olivier? Joe? What did the “lovely, lovely” doctor say? In the heat of the hospital room, my brain felt scrambled. Aunt Jess beamed at us from her pillow as if in eager anticipation. Well she was in for a disappointment. I felt a strange mixture of emotions: embarrassment, shame, shock, and anger. I must not blush, I thought as I remembered our last encounter. I held out my hand to the smiling stranger, for that was how I viewed him from a distance of fifteen years. “Nice to see you again,” I said and waited. I could not think of a single thing to say to him. Then a thought came to me. He was
her
doctor. He would know how she really was.

After a pause he turned to Jess again. “And how’s my favourite patient tonight? Comfortable?”

“Yes, thank you dear. All the better for seeing you.”

He picked up the chart at the end of her bed, looked at it briefly and placed his fingers on her wrist to check her pulse. His hair was still long and curly—far too long for a doctor, I decided. And I felt shocked to notice that under his medical coat he wore jeans. He looked more like a musician than a doctor. He wouldn’t look out of place carrying a cello case, rather than a stethoscope, I thought.

“Dr Scarlatti’s very good. I’m lucky to have him,” my aunt said. “Isn’t fate a strange thing, meeting him here after all these years? Only the best people work at The Royal Free’, you know.”

Yes, I thought. He abandoned me without a backward glance yet I’m supposed to greet him like a long lost friend.

He laughed again. “Your aunt’s too kind to me. How did you sleep last night, Jess? Still finding it difficult?”

She nodded.

“Right. Well we don’t want that. I’ll prescribe a sleeping draft for tonight. You need your rest. Let’s see how you get on with this. But if it causes you nausea, we’ll try something different. Is that alright?” He smiled at her and patted her shoulder.

She gazed rapturously back and he turned to me. “My shift finishes in ten minutes. We have a half reasonable cafe downstairs. Can I offer you a cup of coffee?”

My instinct was to tell him where to stick his coffee but I realised he might need to tell me something important about her treatment, so I agreed.

Hospital visiting time was ending and in the underground cafeteria barely half-a-dozen tables were occupied. We chose one near the entrance and sat down.

“Well? What can you tell me? How is she? Will she get better? And what about coming home? Can she continue her treatment there? She’s lost so much weight, we are all very worried about her. Is she going to be alright?”

My quick-fire questions seemed to catch him off guard. “Um, er, I’m not able to tell you anything about her health care, I’m afraid. It’s patient-doctor confidentiality. Nowadays we only discuss their health and how they’re progressing with the patients themselves. But don’t worry, she’s responding well.”

“You can’t tell me? So what am I doing down here?”

He looked surprised. “I’m sorry. I thought it would be nice.”

I was sick with worry about my aunt. I longed for the abandoned comfort and protection of Barry’s arms. On top of all this I was still trying to cope with the fucking phone calls. I stood up. In general I never swore but over the last few days, in my mind at least, I found myself swearing continuously. I felt I was reaching a tipping point.

“Look, I know it’s hard,” he said, “but these days the majority of cancer patients make a full recovery, I promise. It’s understandable you are upset. Please sit down again.”

“I have to get home,” I said and left.

Later when I was home, with a glass of wine in my hand and Henry on my knee, I thought about Olivier again. “I know I was tough on him,” I said to the sleeping cat. “He made me just so cross. Everything came so easy to him. He never had to struggle, did he?”

Henry yawned and stretched out his paws.

Two days later Ben was back working the day shift. Surreptitiously he studied the other older McCaffery file. The file covered a twenty-five year period from when the man was a teenager and first came to the notice of the police. A plethora of minor misdemeanours evolved into a catalogue of terrorist activity. Late at night the case file seemed more suitable reading to Ben than in the bright light of morning. Now, facing Kevin across his sunlit desk, the terror threat seemed unreal, laughable almost.

“Hmm, that joker certainly led a charmed life,” Ben mumbled. “Very little time banged up behind bars considering what he got up to.” And what of Fenton? The two men’s careers seemed to run on parallel tracks, intertwining over the years.

He shook his head and idly turned to the next page. “
Oy,
gevalt
, I don’t believe this,” he said out loud.

Kevin looked up. “Problem, old man?”

“I’m going out for five minutes—need to clear my head. No, on second thoughts I won’t. Gotta think this through though.”

“Wise decision. The boss seems to be in a bad mood this morning, very tetchy. I get the feeling he expects his troops to be straining at the leash. Bit of a bore really.”

Ben quietly re-read an address in the McCaffery file and compared it against one in Jurgen Bauer’s C.V. knowing before even checking it was an address he knew. It was the one he wrote to as a young, junior, officer all those years ago. Ben didn’t believe in coincidences. A stab of fear ran down his spine and his mouth felt dry. Could the intended victim be Danny’s wife? But why her? How do they choose anybody? How did they choose the victims of the Omagh bombing? Was there really a connection? He needed to find out.

The phone rang, shocking him out of his temporary trance.

“Where you been? I told you—I can’t do this on my own,” the familiar voice said. Ben put his hand over the mouthpiece, rolled his eyes and mouthed to Kevin, “I just lost the will to live.”

Kevin smiled back.

The voice pressed on. “Don’t you care? I told you, you got to stop him.”

“Perhaps it would be better if we met,” Ben said. “Face to face, so to speak. Then you can tell me all about it.”

With a crash the line went dead. Ben put his head down onto the desk and groaned. Later when Kevin left the room he picked up the phone again and dialled Jurgen’s work number.

“Hello, er… Jurgen. It’s Ben Jacobs here. I wonder. Can we meet? I happen to be in the vicinity of your office.”

“Really? Are you in Lambeth?”

“Er, sort of. Can we meet at er… in the, um… the cafe of St Thomas’ Hospital at Westminster Bridge? Do you know the one I mean, at car-park level?”