Walking in Darkness (12 page)

‘That’s why she mustn’t come back here when she leaves the hospital,’ Steve said quickly. ‘So long as she is fit to travel, I’ll take her to Europe with me.’

Lilli focused on him, breathing audibly. ‘What?’

He had been thinking about it in the back of his mind ever since he saw Sophie in the hospital; he couldn’t go to Europe knowing she might be killed while he was away. It had taken a while to figure out how to make sure he knew where she was all the time. He could put her on the expense sheet as a researcher. He sometimes took one with him, and Sophie said she had lived in London for a time; she knew the place well, he could easily prove a case for having her with him. He could swing it with Harry.

All he had to do was hint that she knew something about Don Gowrie’s private life. Sophie must have a union card, she was, after all, a professional journalist – that qualified her to be employed as a researcher.

‘But will she be safe? How do you know she’ll want to go? If I was her, I’d be too scared to go anywhere.’

‘Sophie isn’t the type to scare easily.’ He was sure of that. What little he had seen of her so far had convinced him she didn’t lack guts; she would never have outfaced Don Gowrie, with all the power he could muster against her, if she were a coward. Sophie had gone up against Gowrie knowing it would make her an enemy, a dangerous one.

He looked at Lilli and shrugged. ‘But I won’t try to talk her into it if she is scared, don’t worry.’

The attack on her had failed, but it was a warning. She might be wise to heed it.

On his way to the door of the flat he took a last look round the sitting-room and saw the edge of black paper protruding from under the table which had been thrown on to its top and lay like a stranded turtle on a wrecked beach, legs in the air. Steve bent to lift the table with one hand while with the other he drew the sheet of paper out.

Lilli came up beside him. ‘Sophie’s wheel!’ She took it from him and held it at arm’s length to stare at it. ‘I didn’t even dare look for it. I was so sure they’d destroyed it, like everything else.’ Her face lit up. ‘This is like an omen . . . they didn’t manage to kill Sophie, and her wheel is OK too. D’you think it’s an omen?’

‘Maybe,’ Steve said, and patted her shoulder comfortingly. ‘It will comfort her for the loss of her family photos, anyway.’ Then his eyes narrowed. ‘Lilli, could I borrow this? I’ll take good care of it, you’ll have it back, I promise. I just want to have it photographed.’

She didn’t let go of it. ‘I’ve got a photocopier in my bedroom.’

‘No, the reproduction wouldn’t be good enough. It has to be done by a very good photographer. You’ll have it back tomorrow afternoon, don’t worry.’

She still didn’t quite trust him, he saw the wary suspicion in her eyes. ‘What do you want a photo of it for?’

‘I’m not sure yet; I just have a feeling the wheel might be important.’ It was rare for Steve to act without knowing quite why he was doing what he did, but there was so little to go on that he had to grasp at any straw he came across.

Why had they taken those framed family photographs? Lilli said the frames were practically worthless, just cheap modern reproductions – of course, the thieves might not know that and might have believed they were valuable. But Steve had a feeling those family photos could be revealing and he wanted a better look at them. Enlarged and sharpened in detail, they might tell him something.

‘A hunch, huh?’ Lilli smiled suddenly. ‘You don’t look the kind of guy who works on hunches, but they’ve often worked for me. Men laugh at female intuition, and then turn round and talk about gut instinct – well, let me tell you, it’s the same thing. You know, I might even learn to like you, Mr Reporter.’ She held out the big black sheet of paper.

‘Thanks,’ he said, taking it, but she didn’t let go.

Her eyes held on his face. ‘If you don’t send it back in perfect condition I’ll come after you with a hatchet.’

Steve had thought her a bit crazy when he first saw her earlier tonight, but she grew on you. Smiling he said, ‘I believe you would! Don’t worry, I’ll look after it like a mother.’

Sophie saw Dr de Silva at nine o’clock next morning and was told she could go home at once. ‘No problems in the X-rays, just a few bruises, and you were in shock at first, but you’re quite stable now.’ He smiled, a short, sturdy man whose natural expression was cheerful energy, but who this morning had dark circles of weariness under his eyes because he had been up half the night dealing with emergency cases, and a hungry look, as if he never got enough to eat or enough sleep.

‘And we need the bed,’ he told her with a faint touch of humour, then took a sharper look at her pale face. ‘You feel OK, don’t you?’ he demanded.

She nodded. ‘I’m fine, thanks, Doctor. Everyone has been very kind, thank you.’ Her voice was polite but although she smiled at him there was a blankness about her face that made him frown.

‘Is there anyone at home to take care of you?’

‘A friend, we share an apartment, and she works at home.’

He cheered up. ‘That’s great. OK, then. Get in touch if you have any serious headaches. That’s the only thing to worry about. You did hit your head when you fell, but there seems to be no damage, so you probably have nothing to worry about.’

When he had gone Sophie rang the apartment but nobody answered the phone. Lilli might be out shopping, or might be on her way here. A plump black nurse, who had just begun the day shift and did not know her, brought her clothes, and Sophie got dressed while her bed was being stripped of the used bedclothes, and the plastic mattress was washed with disinfectant.

Sophie tried to ring Lilli again. Still no reply. She stood by the window, looking out at the high buildings opposite. The sky was lit with a chilly winter sunlight, but there was a lowering cloud hanging around looking as if it might pour rain down on them any minute. Sophie felt depression hanging around inside her; she wished to God she was back in Prague. She had not felt homesick all the time she was in London and Paris. She had been too excited and too busy. Oh, God, why did I go back to Prague before I came here to New York? Why did I have to go down to the village to see Mamma? If only I hadn’t gone home that time. I wouldn’t feel this way now.

She got hold of herself, choking down an aching need to cry. Instead, she looked round at the nurse who was dumping the bedlinen in a big wheeled basket.

‘Nurse, I’d like . . . would it be OK . . .? I’d like to visit the other woman who came in with me . . . would I be allowed to see her?’

‘Is she on this ward?’

‘I don’t know – she was more badly injured than me.’

The nurse looked dubious but shrugged. ‘I don’t know if they’ll be letting her have visitors if she had an operation last night. It takes a while for anaesthetic to wear off. But you can try. Come on, I’ll show you where to find her.’

She took Sophie to the waiting-room and left her sitting on a soft-seated chair, surrounded by soothing pale pink walls, meant to sedate the anxious into a trance, with a pile of old magazines on the central table in the room. The other people waiting looked up and stared without smiling. Some of them had the look of people who have been waiting hopelessly for a very long time; their eyes were almost dead with misery and fear. Were any of them relations of the woman she had sent plunging off the edge of the subway platform? Guilt made her stomach clench.

The door opened again and the black nurse beckoned to her. Sophie hurried out of the room. A small, thin, sharp-faced woman in white stood beside the nurse. Her grey eyes stabbed Sophie’s face. ‘You want to see Mrs Rogers? She’s under sedation, sleeping, but you can take a peep at her, so long as you don’t disturb her.’

‘Is she going to be OK?’ Sophie asked unsteadily, crossing her fingers.

‘It will take time, and she’s going to have a lot of pain,’ she was told sternly. ‘But with good nursing, yes, she will recover fully.’

She led the way to a room further along the corridor, opened the door and gestured. Sophie stood just inside the room. The blinds were down and the room was shadowy with pale, wintry morning light. There was just one bed; in it lay an unmoving figure, the head capped by bandages, making her face oddly mask-like, a pale, drawn set of features that expressed no character at all. Eyes closed, nose pinched, mouth pale and closed. It could be anyone. The bedclothes were draped over a support to raise them above her broken leg. Both arms were stiffly encased, and under the white hospital robe she wore Sophie could see thick bandages around her ribs.

‘I’m sorry, you have to go now,’ said the ward sister, and Sophie looked round at her, eyes blurred with unshed tears, wanting to sob out loud but holding back.

‘Please . . .’ Her voice was low and shaky. ‘Please, when she wakes up, will you tell her . . . I’m so sorry, really sorry . . . it was an accident, I just grabbed at her to stop myself falling, I would never have wanted her to get hurt.’

‘Sure,’ said the sister with more warmth. ‘Sure, she’ll understand . . . accidents will happen, and look, she will get better, you know, she isn’t going to die.’

It didn’t help Sophie to know that; she could see how much pain the other woman was going to be in and she wished there was something she could do to help her.

She walked heavily back to her own room and with a jerk of shock saw Steve Colbourne talking to the sister. At the sound of her footsteps they both turned to stare at her; Steve looked drawn and pale but as he saw her his eyes flashed with sudden rage.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ he broke out in a rough, harsh voice.

Sophie didn’t like being yelled at by a man she had only met yesterday. Especially in front of the sister and a couple of strange men in white coats who were walking past at that second and stared curiously at them. She glared at Steve, bristling with resentment.

‘I went to visit the woman who fell under the train. Not that it is any of your business! And don’t you shout at me, either. Why don’t you go away? Why are you here, anyway?’ Why did he keep turning up? He knew something – what? How was he involved?

The sister’s bleeper sounded and she groaned. ‘Sorry, I have to answer that. Miss Narodni, you have to sign out before you leave. Good luck, and remember, if you have any headaches get in touch with your doctor, or come back here, to the emergency room.’

When she had vanished back into the ward, Sophie looked coldly at Steve. ‘Please go now, I’m waiting for Lilli.’

‘She sent me.’

‘I don’t believe you.’ She did a double-take, staring at him, suddenly anxious, her skin cold. ‘Has something happened to Lilli? I’ve been ringing her for ages, and there’s no reply.’

‘Quiet now, don’t get upset. Look, come into the waiting-room and sit down for a minute. I’ve got something to tell you.’

He put an arm round her and led her across the corridor to the waiting-room, and Sophie was too worried to argue.

There were a few people in the room, waiting, reading magazines or newspapers, breathing very quietly, shifting in their chairs. They all looked up and stared, then looked down again indifferently. Sophie sat down on a chair near the door and Steve sat down next to her. Lowering his voice, he said quietly, ‘Sophie, your apartment was burgled last night.’

Her intake of breath made the others in the room look up again.

For a second she couldn’t think straight then her mind leapt with panic. ‘Lilli? Was Lilli hurt? She wasn’t . . .’

‘She’s fine, she wasn’t there,’ he said in the same low, quiet voice, conscious of all the listening ears, the surreptitious glances.

Sophie closed her eyes for a second; she was very pale.

Steve went on softly, ‘She discovered what had happened when she got back from the hospital last night. She called me and I went over there.’

Her brain ran with questions, doubts, suspicions. She watched him and wished she knew exactly where he fitted into all this. He knew Don Gowrie well, had known him for years, he said; was he in Gowrie’s pocket? She hadn’t been in New York for long, but she already realized that it wasn’t just in Communist countries that some of the press were bought off, were kept on a secret retainer, to write to order, to put out what their masters wanted the public to be told. Maybe it was the same all over the world? Just the way the system worked, whatever you called it. Propaganda greased the wheels of politics and business, made the lives of the mighty easier, kept the people quiet.

‘Called you? Why did she do that? Why not the police?’ she asked Steve Colbourne flatly, her face hostile.

‘I’d told her to ring me if anything happened. She has rung the police. They haven’t been over yet. There’s nothing valuable missing, nobody important involved.’ His smile was cynical. ‘They’ll get round to it when they have time.’ He looked into her eyes, his own intent and watchful. ‘I’m afraid the whole place was wrecked, Sophie. They took your room apart. There wasn’t much left of it.’

Her lower lip trembled. She bit down on it to stop herself crying; she wouldn’t cry, she wouldn’t be scared off, he wasn’t going to win by tactics like these.

‘That’s why Lilli isn’t answering the phone. She’s gone to stay with her friend Theo until the apartment can be redecorated.’ Steve met her eyes and gently told her, ‘They covered the walls with graffiti, I’m afraid, really smashed the place up. It isn’t fit to be lived in at the moment.’

‘What am I going to do?’ she thought aloud. Theo Strahov’s apartment was tiny, barely big enough for one, let alone Lilli too. There certainly wouldn’t be room for a third person. Sophie tried to work out how much money she had in her bank account – enough to pay for a cheap lodging house for a few days? She could cable Vladimir and ask for help, for some extra money, a loan against salary.

‘I’ll have to find a cheap hotel,’ she said.

‘No, you won’t,’ he told her impatiently. ‘You can’t be left alone. Can’t you get it into your head that you’re in danger? They tried once. They’ll try again and next time they could succeed. You’re coming with me, first to stay at my hotel –’

‘Isn’t that where Don Gowrie is staying?’