You still there? Perks had asked. Then, Everything all right?

  Miller let his head fall back against the side of the van and stabbed out a reply.

  So far, so good.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  The man who answered the phone did not sound best pleased. ‘You got any idea what time it is?’

  ‘Yeah, and I’m wide awake,’ Cutler said.

  ‘Well, so am I now.’

  ‘Tough tits.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  Cutler had given up on trying to sleep and with Jacqui already dead to the world (and quite possibly dreaming about whoever she’d been whispering to on the phone a couple of nights before) he’d climbed out of bed and stalked downstairs to his office. Now, he was slumped in an armchair in the corner, with his phone in one hand and a tumbler of Bell’s in the other. He was wearing pyjamas beneath the monogrammed dressing gown Jacqui had bought him for his fortieth – which he suspected made him look a bit of a ponce – and wondering if the bloke with whom he was trying not to lose his temper was more of a liability than an asset.

  He’d give him one last chance to prove it, either way.

  ‘Have a guess why I couldn’t sleep?’ he asked.

  ‘Cheese?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you eat cheese before bedtime?’

  ‘Are you trying to wind me up?’

  ‘Chocolate can do it as well . . . the caffeine, yeah? And crisps because of all the salt—’

  ‘What are your lot up to?’ Cutler asked the question with just enough menace to make it abundantly clear that he had not called in the early hours of the morning to discuss chocolate or chuffing cheese.

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘This Driscoll business.’ Cutler knew Dennis Draper’s real name by now along with the fact that he hadn’t been caught in the raid at the guesthouse. The men and women Cutler paid to pass on such nuggets of intelligence had provided plenty of helpful information, but he was hoping this particular source might be able to provide a rather more practical service. ‘The big operation at the hospital.’

  ‘Well, I’m not part of that team, so—’

  ‘I don’t care what bloody team you’re part of, pal. I want to know what’s happening.’

  ‘I might be able to make a call.’

  ‘Yeah well, that’d be a start.’

  ‘A start?’

  Cutler took a sip of whisky and rubbed his chest. He’d popped a couple of Gaviscon before bed, but the heartburn hadn’t gone away and he could still taste the chicken tikka masala he’d had for dinner. ‘You do know I don’t particularly want Driscoll arrested, don’t you, Christopher? You do understand that, right?’

  ‘I can see why it might be awkward.’

  ‘Awkward?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah . . . I get it, OK. I’ll try and find out what’s happening, but if it’s an ongoing op, that might not be until it’s all done and dusted.’

  ‘Right, but I’m guessing that, in this instance, my idea of done and dusted is not quite the same as yours.’ Cutler grimaced and this time it wasn’t the heartburn. ‘Or Detective Sergeant Miller’s. See, Driscoll being arrested and then gobbing off in an interview room is obviously what some of your more diligent and less bent colleagues are hoping for, but on a magic island, I’d prefer him out of the picture rather more permanently.’

  ‘There’s not a lot I can do about that.’

  ‘Isn’t there?’

  ‘Well, no, not really.’

  ‘That surprises me, because it’s not like you haven’t got form, is it?’

  ‘Once,’ the man said. ‘It was once.’

  ‘Right, because on that occasion you were the one at risk and I’m telling you that if this doesn’t go the way I want it to, you might find yourself at risk again.’

  ‘Is that a threat, Mr Cutler?’

  Cutler rolled his eyes because . . . how thick could you be? ‘Yes, obviously.’

  ‘I honestly don’t know what you think I can do.’

  ‘I’m sure you can work something out. Easier to deal with the situation now, I would have thought, than trying to get to Driscoll once he’s in custody.’

  ‘This is all hypothetical anyway, because with a bit of luck Miller and the rest of those clowns’ll cock it up and Driscoll won’t get nicked.’

  ‘I’d rather not take that chance,’ Cutler said.

  ‘You’re asking a lot.’

  Cutler stretched out his legs and wiggled his feet. There was a small hole in one of his slippers, which really annoyed him because Wayne Cutler was not a man who should have holes in his slippers. The bloody things needed chucking and maybe this idiot who thought he was ‘asking a lot’ needed chucking, too.

  Under a bus, off a tower block, into the Irish sea, whatever.

  He said, ‘You know, maybe you should be the one who’s paying me.’

  ‘Because . . . ?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Cutler was starting to get angry. ‘The stuff I’ve got on you. A few bits and pieces which some of your colleagues might be very interested in.’

  ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘Because I’ve got a slipper with a hole in it and right this minute I reckon it’s a damn sight more use to me than you are!’

  ‘I’m useful, Mr Cutler, you know I am—’

  Cutler was up and out of his chair fast enough to slop whisky all over the rug. ‘Well, make yourself bloody useful pronto, and do something about Dudley Driscoll.’

  FIFTY-FIVE

  It was just shy of one o’clock in the morning and, in the back of the van, while the atmosphere was still unquestionably thick with tension, Miller was still bored and coming up with increasingly ridiculous ways of coping with the tedium. He repeated various words over and over in his head until they sounded ridiculous: tickle, spatula, custard. He blinked frantically then closed his eyes to enjoy the lightshow and made himself feel a bit sick. He tried, using only the power of his mind, to get Tony Clough to spill coffee in Tim Sullivan’s lap.

  He counted specks of dandruff on the computer technician’s shoulders.

  He tried to picture rats dancing.

  He emitted a low and steady hum for several minutes, until Xiu told him to shut up.

  ‘I’m not sure I’m cut out for long periods of surveillance,’ he said.

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I need to be out there, you know? I need to be on the front line, where the action is and where real coppers find out what they’re made of. I need to feel the blood pumping and the adrenalin fizzing. I need—’

  Xiu told him to shut up again.

  He sighed and stared down at the pop bottle which he’d put to good use half an hour previously. He wondered what he’d do if he needed to use it again and decided it definitely hadn’t been a good idea to drink all the pop in the bottle before getting into the van. To the tune of an old Police hit, he quietly began to sing, ‘Wee-wee in a bottle . . . ’ then stopped when Xiu stared as though she might be about to pick the bottle up and assault him with it.

  ‘Are we being stupid?’ he asked her. ‘You think Driscoll’s coming?’

  ‘Yeah, I think he might,’ she said.

  ‘Any time soon, you reckon?’

  ‘Like you said, he’s not going to go after Natalie at the house, and he doesn’t know he was spotted near the hospital. So yes, if Driscoll’s seen the dummy briefcase, there’s every chance he’ll show up, but I can’t promise you that’ll be before the end of tonight’s shift. Or before I massively lose it and taser you.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Miller said. He nodded, thoughtful, then smacked his lips a few times. ‘So, not soon, then?’

  Natalie couldn’t remember any shift on A&E – and certainly not a night shift – that hadn’t been stressful, but for very obvious reasons this one was a little bit more nerve-racking than it would otherwise have been. She was sitting in a side room and bandaging up an old woman’s knee, but there could be a fleet of ambulances on its way to the Vic with the seriously injured victims of a motorway pile-up and she’d have been less stressed out than she was at that moment.

  She told herself she was being ridiculous, and not just because a fleet of ambulances was a little fanciful these days, not to mention that if there were any available ambulances at all, her imaginary RTA victims would have been waiting for several hours on the hard shoulder.

  She was being ridiculous because she was safe.

  Of course she was. There were plain-clothes coppers all around her, there were cameras everywhere and she had that radio in her pocket so she could let them know if she was worried about anything. She’d followed all their instructions to the letter and everything was where it should be. Thinking about it, she was probably a lot safer than she’d be on a normal shift, with drunks and nutcases tipping up on a regular basis and kicking off if they didn’t get seen fast enough.

  She wasn’t in any danger.

  ‘You OK . . . ?’

  Natalie told the old woman that she was fine, but however much she tried to think reassuring thoughts, she couldn’t stop asking herself why she’d been daft enough to open her gob in the first place. To make out she was brave and suggest something as stupid as this. Bait, for crying out loud, like she was in some stupid thriller and the man they were after wasn’t the dangerous psychopath who’d killed her brother.

  She was a nurse, for God’s sake, not that woman out of The Silence of the Lambs.

  ‘Only you look a bit peaky.’

  Natalie tried to smile and to stop her hand from shaking as she wrapped the bandage.

  The old woman sucked in a breath. ‘That’s a bit tight, love . . . ’

  Natalie told herself to try and stay calm, to just keep doing what she was doing until all this was over. She could go on her break in ten minutes or so, and she’d feel better after a coffee and a couple of quick fags. Yeah, course it was stupid, but sometimes you had to do the stupid thing and step up.

  She was doing this for Andy.

  Dudley Driscoll sat at a table outside Costa sipping a hot chocolate and picking at a fair-to-middling blueberry muffin. All things considered, he was feeling pretty chipper. He’d had a quite a lot of good luck so far – which evened things out, he reckoned, because this whole silly caper had started with a spot of extremely bad luck in those station toilets – and he knew that with just a little bit more he’d have that briefcase soon enough.

  Then it would just be a question of making sure that Wayne Cutler did the decent thing. He couldn’t count on that, obviously, because the likes of Cutler rarely did the decent thing, prided themselves on the fact that they were anything but decent, but Driscoll wasn’t overly worried. He had a whole variety of ways to make people do things they were not inclined to, especially when they owed him money.

  Part of him hoped that Cutler would need a bit of persuading.

  He swept the muffin crumbs from the table into his palm and tossed them into his mouth, then he looked at his watch.

  It was about time he made a move.

  It looked to Miller as though Tony Clough had nodded off again. More than once he’d seen the DC’s big, boiled-potato head begin to loll, then finally drop, before jerking upright the moment Sullivan had barked instructions into his radio.

  ‘All units, status update . . . Alpha team please report . . . ’

  There’d been plenty of that.

  Once or twice, on being so suddenly roused from his much-needed beauty sleep, Clough had actually let out an involuntary cry.

  Miller was beginning to get jumpy himself. For no good reason, the boredom had given way to a bizarre hyper-vigilance; an alertness that was uncomfortably close to feeling scared. In the last few minutes, he’d gone from hoping that something would happen to feeling dread at the thought that it might be just about to.

  He was dry-mouthed and shivery. There was a funny whistle when he breathed and, most annoyingly, he couldn’t keep his leg still.

  ‘Miller!’ Xiu reached down to grab Miller’s foot, which was moving quickly backwards and forwards across the metal floor of the van, as though he was trying out for a one-man version of Riverdance.

  Miller keyed his radio. ‘All units at the rear of the building . . . give all those fire doors another once-over, would you?’ He knew that officers had eyes on all the entrances and exits and that Driscoll would be spotted if he tried to get in through Maternity, Cardiac, Occupational Health or any of the other dozen or so departments that offered a way in. He also knew that there were smaller doors at the back which were opened many times a day by both hospital staff and patients who wanted to smoke. Doors that were often left open. ‘Just to be sure, yeah . . . because if you’re regularly nipping out for a sneaky Marlboro or a vape or whatever, you might prop the door open with a bucket or something and forget to close it when you’d finished. So, can you check and let me know . . . ?’

  He stared at the radio, waiting for confirmation.

  ‘Calm down, Miller,’ Xiu said.

  ‘I’m perfectly calm.’

  ‘Really?’ She nodded down to where she still had a firm hold of his foot to stop it thrashing around. ‘I think I preferred it when you were humming or singing songs about urine—’

  ‘Why hasn’t Driscoll shown up?’

  Xiu shrugged.

  ‘He must have seen the briefcase, right? We know he’d been watching the house.’

  ‘Well, we presume so.’

  ‘So what’s he waiting for?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Xiu said. ‘Maybe he’s just biding his time.’

  ‘He hasn’t done any “biding” up to now, has he? He killed Andy Bagnall the same day the briefcase went missing and he didn’t mess about going after Finn or Slack. He’s someone who acts quickly, so what’s he up to?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Where the hell is he, Posh?’

  ‘Look, we’ve done everything we can. It’s all in place, so we just need to be patient. Simple as that. We just—’ Xiu stopped, seeing a look of horror creep across Miller’s face. ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, Christ alive . . . ’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What you just said.’ Miller stood up fast, ducking at the last moment to avoid hitting his head on the roof of the van. ‘Patient.’ As soon as Xiu had said the word, the horrific explanation for Driscoll’s no-show had popped into Miller’s head and, sure as eggs were eggs and Miller couldn’t dance a decent foxtrot, he’d known that he was right. ‘That’s exactly what Driscoll is . . . a patient. Well, what he was, anyway, when they were sewing his wedding tackle back together. Remember? Easy enough for him to waltz back into A&E any time he fancied and give them some old granny about the wound not healing up or some infection or something. Once he’s in there, hanging around in triage or wherever, he just wanders off into the hospital and disappears.’

  Miller looked at Xiu who was now on her feet herself, and at Sullivan and Clough who had turned from the front seats. He pointed to the hospital, the lights shining in all parts of the vast building.

  ‘We’re sitting around in this stupid van like lemons, waiting for Driscoll to turn up, and he’s already in there!’

  FIFTY-SIX

  Driscoll was quite convinced he wasn’t the only person hiding out in the hospital. Since he’d first arrived the evening before – a short walk from A&E to the Diabetic Resource Centre, from there to the X-ray department, then through the stroke ward and away – he’d spotted several people he was sure were homeless or just skint and making good use of the free facilities. It made perfect sense when you thought about how pricey it was to live anywhere a bit more conventional.

  The cost of heating and lighting, all that.

  You could wander around happily undisturbed in a nice warm hospital for days, he reckoned. Weeks even, considering how massive the place was, the variety of excellent services on offer and (thankfully) how few security guards he’d encountered since he’d been there.

  A skeleton staff, one of them had told him when he’d enquired. ‘Cutbacks and shortages, mate. Welcome to the NHS.’

  ‘It’s a disgrace,’ Driscoll had said.

  God bless the government.

  No, it wasn’t quite a leisure centre, but there were miles of corridors if you fancied some exercise. There was no shortage of places to grab a couple of hours’ sleep when you needed it (he’d made very good use of several different waiting areas), there were toilets all over the shop (many with showers) and he had no complaints about the food. The first-floor restaurant did a cracking gammon, egg and chips and there was a very decent café by the cardiac unit. It had all been very pleasant really. Obviously he knew there were cameras everywhere and coppers knocking about – they’d have to be stupid not to work out that he’d end up at the hospital eventually and he knew Miller wasn’t stupid – but they weren’t watching out for someone who looked like him.

  He was now rocking short hair – courtesy of Gazza’s Chop Shop the previous afternoon – and a pair of Boots’ reading glasses. He was wearing scrubs he’d grabbed from a laundry hamper and, crucially, sporting a nice blue NHS lanyard. The attached ID card (supplied by his mate in West Bromwich) was tucked into the top pocket of the scrubs, because obviously you wouldn’t want it dangling and getting in the way if you were doing important medical stuff and also because it hid the photograph of a doctor that wasn’t him.

  He’d actually spent most of the time sitting around in Main Reception.

  They’d even given him a staff discount at the Costa!

  Driscoll checked his watch again, nodding to some poor old soul on crutches as he walked past the pharmacy then the chapel and the toilets he’d sat in with a newspaper for a couple of hours that morning; ambling back in the direction of A&E. Towards the nurses’ lounge and the locker room just behind it.