‘There’s a maximum of two visitors per patient at any given time,’ Sonia Iqbal pointed out. ‘You can come back in when the officers have finished.’
‘Go on, Ingrid; please.’ Grete Regal’s voice was half whisper, half croak. Her aunt glared at the two detectives but finally she left the room, with the surgeon following.
‘Ten minutes,’ Ms Iqbal murmured, ‘but at the first sign of distress . . .’ She pointed at the monitor beside the bed. ‘If her heart rate goes above ninety, you stop. Understood?’
‘Understood.’ Haddock said, as he closed the door.
‘It’s true, then?’ the prostrate woman whispered.
‘I’m sorry, Ms Regal,’ Pye replied. ‘It is. But what your aunt told you, that Olivia was suffocated, that’s not correct.’
‘Zena, we always called her Zena,’ she corrected. ‘Only the school called her by her given name.’ Despite her Norwegian parentage her accent was Scottish.
‘Of course. Zena was asthmatic, yes?’
‘Yes, severely. Is that what happened?’
‘I’m afraid so. She was placed in a confined space, and the belief is that it triggered an attack that she didn’t survive.’
‘Was it quick?’
‘Very,’ Pye lied.
‘If there’s any consolation, it’s that. What about David,’ she asked, ‘does he know yet?’
‘That’s been difficult,’ the DCI admitted. ‘We’ve contacted the Ministry of Defence of course, but . . .’
‘No,’ Grete whispered. ‘They will tell him whenever they can, but the Navy will not interrupt a mission for anything. He’s the engineering officer on a Trident submarine, and nobody can ever know where they are.’
‘They didn’t even tell us that much,’ Haddock said, ‘but we’d worked it out. Now,’ he continued, smiling gently, ‘for we’re on a meter here, how much can you remember of what happened?’
‘All of it,’ she replied, slowly. ‘We were walking to school, as we always did when the weather was dry. Then a red car pulled in in front of us, and a man jumped out. He was wearing a black thingie over his face, a balaclava, so all I could see were his eyes and his mouth.
‘He shouted at me. “Get back! Get back!” he yelled, and then he tried to grab Zena. Of course I tried to stop him. I went for him. I hit him about the head and I grabbed a handful of the balaclava and I pulled it, I pulled it half off. I saw his face, a mean, nasty face. I’ll know him again, don’t you worry; I’ll never forget him.’
Pye was on the point of telling her that Dean Francey could never harm her again but she continued.
‘That was when he hit me,’ she said. ‘With his fist at first; that knocked me backwards. Then he picked something up and hit me again really hard. It was like an explosion inside my head. Not sore but very loud, and then everything faded away . . .
‘Until this morning, when I began to hear sounds around me, and to be aware, of being touched and moved, and of tubes going into my neck and in other places.
‘And then I woke up,’ she sighed, with a tearful sadness that the young detective sergeant found hard to bear, ‘and now I wish that I hadn’t.’
‘I know,’ he murmured, squeezing her hand.
She smiled, weakly, but only for a second or two. ‘There’s something that Ingrid said, about Gloria, Gloria Mackail, that she caused this to happen.’
‘We don’t believe that,’ Pye told her. ‘Mrs Mackail had nothing to do with it. We know who attacked you, and took Zena. We know also that someone paid him to do it, but he can’t tell us, because he’s dead.’
Her eyes widened as she stared up at him. ‘The man who killed my baby is dead?’
The DCI nodded. ‘Yes. He was shot. We believe it was because of what happened to Zena. As I said, we knew who he was, and we’d have caught him before too long. The person who paid him couldn’t rely on him to keep his mouth shut, and so he silenced him, permanently.’
‘That’s the first good news I’ve had since I wakened,’ she said, her voice stronger. ‘You didn’t have to tell me that Gloria was not involved. Poor woman; to lose her husband in such a stupid way. A drunk driver, the police from Haddington told her; there’s no chance of them finding him, not now. Ingrid still wanted me to pursue her for the money he owed me, but I wouldn’t do it. Everything’s about money with my aunt. I pay