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‘You awake at last, Joseph?’ said Mirabelle. “Bout time. Doctor says there’s not much wrong with you.’
‘Now that’s not exactly true,’ said Beryl, breaking off her conversation.
Mirabelle gave her a reprimanding glare, then stooped to kiss Joe on the cheek, at the same time whispering in his ear, ‘You did real well, Joseph. Your ma, God rest her soul, would have been real proud of you.’
‘Thanks, Auntie,’ said Joe, touched.
She straightened up and at her normal volume said, ‘Why you speaking that funny way? You ain’t gone and done something to that voice of yours, I hope. It’s rough enough the way the Lord made it without you sticking in your sixpenn’th.’
Joe sighed. He had no desire to play the big hero, but he didn’t really see why everyone should find it necessary to hide his light under their bushel. Surely modesty was his prerogative?
Rescue was close. Beryl gently moved Mirabelle aside and stood smiling down at him.
‘Hi, Joe,’ she said. ‘Reckon you owe me an apology.’
‘Huh?’
‘There we are, middle of a conversation, suddenly you take off without a pardon-me-ma’am, next time I see you, you’re flying out of a burning house with a naked woman in your arms. Hope you’d do the same for me if the occasion arose.’
The memory of his waking dream rose in Joe’s mind and he felt himself blushing.
‘You got a fever, Joe?’ she said anxiously.
Then she stooped and kissed him full on the lips.
‘No, that feels about normal,’ she said.
‘This a new NHS economy measure?’ he croaked. ‘All the nurses taking my temperature this way?’
‘In your dreams,’ she laughed. And Joe blushed again.
He took another drink of water. The red-headed nurse came forward and picked up the empty jug. She wore a name badge which told him he was being cared for by Nurse Tilly Butler, which was nice. Made it feel like a user-friendly hospital.
‘Throat bad, is it?’ she said sympathetically. ‘Doctor will be along shortly, get you something to soothe it then.’
‘Guinness?’ said Joe hopefully.
She laughed and said to Beryl, ‘You were right about him then. Back in a mo.’
‘What you been saying?’
‘Nothing that needs bother you. She’s a nice kid.’
‘I noticed. Shouldn’t she be at school?’
‘You think? Maybe she thinks you should be in the gerry ward.’
‘Sorry,’ said Joe, reproved. ‘So how’s it look to an expert, this place? They got chloroform yet?’
‘There you go again, Joe,’ sighed Beryl. ‘You and that lady you saved hit real lucky. Nurse Butler was telling me, they closed a lot of small hospitals round the region and put all their resources into this one. State of the art is what you got here. Makes where I work look ancient.’
‘Yeah, but they got you to keep them young,’ croaked Joe gallantly.
It got him a smile. Then a voice said, ‘Excuse me,’ and Beryl was edged aside by a weary-looking young man in a white coat whose name badge said he was Dr Godsip, though from the way he glanced down at it from time to time, Joe got the impression he wouldn’t have minded finding he was somebody else.
After a yawn which looked like it might be terminal, he started checking off Joe’s ailments. Joe was reminded of a mechanic doing an MOT.
‘Superficial burns to the face and hands; dislocated left shoulder, replaced; wrenched right knee; heavy bruising to the back and buttocks; various other minor strains, sprains, and contusions of the arms and legs; nothing life-threatening; I’d say you’ve been very lucky, Mr Sixsmith.’
It didn’t feel that way. Like warning lights on a test circuit, each of the injuries flashed pain as the doctor listed them, and by the time he finished, Joe felt much worse than he had before.
‘What about his lungs and throat, Doctor?’ asked Mirabelle. ‘He sounds real funny.’
‘Yes, that was the most worrying thing. Often it’s not fire that does the real damage, but smoke inhalation. But as far as we can see, he’s been lucky there too. There’ll be some discomfort if he breathes too deeply, and his oesophagus will feel like it’s been pulled through with a pineapple for a while, but no lasting damage. Now, normally we’d keep him in for observation for another day or two, but if he’s happy to discharge himself …’
Joe sat straight up, ignoring the pain.
‘Hey, man,’ he said. ‘What is this? I know you folk get short of beds, but how many legs do I need amputated before you let me stay here?’
It was Beryl who answered.
‘Don’t be exciting yourself, Joe,’ she said. ‘Yes, they are short of beds, but no, they’re not throwing you out. Only there’s a nice little sickbay at Branddreth College, and with me being a nurse, the doc’ll be happy to let me take care of your medication. Also there’ll be a doctor in attendance at the festival who’ll be able to check you out if necessary. We thought you might like it better to be close to the others rather than stuck here, miles away. But it’s your say-so.’
Joe scowled thoughtfully, but inside he was chortling with delight. Cosy little sickbay with Beryl as his private nurse or stuck here among the living dead with hospital hours and hospital food … no contest!
‘Where do I sign?’ he wheezed.
Godsip, who was still young enough to feel guilty at giving a patient the bum’s rush, wanted to put him in a wheelchair but Joe insisted on getting dressed and walking under his own steam.
He regretted it the moment he stood up but he wasn’t going to back off now and by the time he’d got into his clothes, he’d adjusted to the discomfort, but tying his shoelaces made him wince.
‘I’ll get that,’ said Merv, kneeling before him.
‘Heard you English were into hero worship but didn’t realize how far it went,’ said a sardonic Welsh voice.
It came from a tall thin man with eyes screwed up as if against the sun and a weathered face who looked like Clint Eastwood at early Dirty Harry age. His suit looked about the same vintage too.
Brynner, Burton and Eastwood, all in the same neck of the woods. Maybe I’ve wandered into an old movie, thought Joe, and these burns and bruises are just make-up.
Merv stood up. He didn’t tower over the newcomer but he had a couple of inches advantage which he used to good effect.
‘Joe, this is DI Ursell I told you about, but I expect you’d have recognized him anyway.’
Ursell regarded Joe as though thinking about inviting him to make his day.
‘Glad to meet you,’ said Joe. ‘How’s the lady?’
‘I’m a copper not a quack,’ said Ursell. ‘What bothers me isn’t how she is but who she is. Thought you could help me there.’
‘Sorry?’ said Joe.
Ursell rolled his eyes and said very slowly, as to a backward foreigner, ‘Did she say anything which might give us a clue who she is?’
‘Not a thing,’ said Joe. ‘Didn’t have time for introductions and she wasn’t in a fit state anyway. But don’t you folk keep records of who lives round here, council tax, electoral register, that sort of thing?’
It was a genuine question. Joe knew the Scots had a different legal system because it had come up in an episode of Dr Finlay’s Casebook, so maybe the Welsh moved in their own mysterious way too.
Ursell, however, looked like he was taking it as a crack.
‘Oh, yes, we keep very good records, as you may find, Mr Sixsmith. We like to know all about everyone who lives round here, or comes visiting for that matter. But nothing’s known about this woman, nothing at all, which I find very puzzling. I suppose everyone on your coach is accounted for?’
He glared accusingly at Merv, but it was Mirabelle who leapt into the breach.
‘What you saying? This poor lady jumped off our coach and ran into that burning house just so my nephew could risk his life saving her? And while we’re disputing the matter, how come that other policeman who was there didn’t do the saving? Ain’t that what we pay our taxes for?’
Even without the backing of rational argument, Mirabelle was a fearsome disputant. With it, she towered like the sons of Anak, and Ursell became as a grasshopper in her sight.
‘Sorry, no, you misunderstand me,’ he said, trying without much success for a placating smile. ‘Far as I understand it, Sergeant Prince was in his car, summoning help, and didn’t know there was anyone in the house till a few minutes later when he rejoined you all. House should have been empty, see? So what we have here is a woman nobody knows, and she’s in a bad way, and all of us are very keen to let her next of kin know what’s happened, so as they can get here to give her support and comfort.’
He didn’t sound very convincing but he suddenly sounded very Welsh, in the same way the Scots become very Scottish and the Irish very Irish at times they want to be defensively disarming. This was a phenomenon Joe’s radical solicitor friend, Butcher, had pointed out in reference to himself. ‘You saying I come over all Uncle Tommish?’ he’d demanded indignantly. ‘Worse than that,’ she replied. ‘You come over all poor-me-deprived-Luton-laddish.’
Mirabelle wasn’t disarmed.
‘If that wasn’t her own house burning, why you not hassling the folk whose house it is?’ she demanded.
‘That’s Mr and Mrs Haggard of Islington, London,’ said Ursell. ‘They’re on their way but over the phone they’ve made it clear no one was staying in Copa Cottage with their permission.’
He made Islington, London, sound like Gomorrah, thought Joe. And also he got an impression that this Mr and Mrs Haggard were not people of good standing in Ursell’s eyes. Of course it could be it was just this anti-Anglocolonization thing he’d once read about in a magazine at the dentist’s.
‘Maybe they got children,’ said Mirabelle. ‘Young ‘uns can be pretty free with what ain’t their own.’
She shot Joe an unjustifiably significant glance.
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ said Ursell, clearly tiring of being disarming. ‘Now, if I could have a quick word with Mr Sixsmith alone …’
There was resistance, but the DI was good at crowd control and in less than a minute he had everyone else out into the corridor. He now looked at the other patients as if considering pushing them out too but decided against it.
Joe said, ‘There was some writing on a wall, something about GO HOME ENGLISH. Maybe this wasn’t an accident, is that what you’re thinking?’
Ursell let out the long-suffering sigh of one who is fed up with being taught how to suck eggs.
‘Someone mentioned you were some kind of investigator, Mr Sixsmith,’ he said with a neutrality worse than sarcasm. Not that it mattered to Joe who’d been put down by men with research degrees in down-putting.
‘Not trying to investigate anything,’ he said. ‘Specially not when you had one of your own men right on the spot. Prince, did someone say his name was? He the local bobby?’
Ursell took his time answering.
‘Not really,’ he said finally. ‘Just happened to be in the area on another matter, it seems. And not one of my men. Uniformed, or perhaps you didn’t notice?’
Joe, familiar with the often strained relationship between CID and the rest back in Luton, said provocatively, ‘In, out, always a cop, isn’t that what they say?’
Ursell said softly, ‘We can certainly count ourselves lucky having two pairs of trained eyes at the scene of the crime.’
That unsarcastic sarcasm again.
‘So it was definitely a crime?’ said Joe.
Ursell hesitated then shrugged.
‘It’s no secret, not round here anyway. Yes, it was arson. Traces of an accelerant, probably petrol.’
‘So maybe if this woman shouldn’t have been in the house, these fire raisers thought the place was empty?’ suggested Joe.
‘Could be,’ admitted Ursell. ‘Why she didn’t hear something and get out quick is the puzzle.’
‘Oh, that’s easy,’ said Joe, very superior. ‘She was naked when I found her. I reckon she was in the shower when it happened, probably didn’t hear a thing. Came out, found the place full of smoke. Ran into the front bedroom which was when we spotted her. Saw there was no way out there. Headed back, ceiling beneath already on fire, and her foot went through the floorboards. After that, best she could manage was to drag herself back into the shower, turn the cold water full on, and lie there waiting for the end.’
The long speech brought on a fit of coughing which spared Ursell the angst of having to agree.
‘You here to sing, you say? Interesting,’ he observed when Joe regained control. ‘Rest of the choir coughs in tune too, I daresay.’
‘Come along and listen if you’ve a spare moment,’ snapped Joe, irritated at the sneer against the choir. ‘You might learn something.’
‘Oh yes? About as much chance as I have of having a spare moment, with all this in my lap.’
Now Joe was thoroughly incensed, not a condition he was very familiar with.
‘Listen, Inspector. I’m sorry you’ve been inconvenienced, but this fire, whoever’s responsible, it’s not me or my choir, and it’s almost certainly not that poor woman who’s got herself nearly burnt to death. Now, if you need to talk to me again, you’ll find me at Branddreth College.’
He strode to the door. It was an effort not to show what an effort striding was, but he managed it.
With Merv’s strength at one side, and Beryl’s warmth at the other, he set off down a long corridor.
Ursell overtook them without a glance and turned down a side corridor. When they reached it, Joe looked along it and saw the inspector talking to a uniformed policeman who’d just risen from a chair outside a door.
‘Hang on a sec,’ said Joe.
He abandoned his supporters and walked down the side corridor. Ursell and the uniformed man watched his approach in silence. When he reached them, Joe peered in through the glass panel of the door. He’d anticipated what he would see there, but the sight of that deathly still figure lying on a bed, hooked up to a variety of drips and monitoring apparatus, still caught at his throat worse than the smoke from the fire.
‘How’s she doing?’ he asked.
‘No change,’ said Ursell.
‘I hope that … I hope …’
Joe broke off. What had this cop, who looked like he thought life was a form of irritable bowel syndrome, to do with his hopes?
He turned away, but he’d only gone a few paces when the inspector came alongside.
