Stock hesitated, but there wasn’t any getting away from it. If she turned and ran, Sally might come back on-block and chase her down. So she walked over to the gate and told him to make it quick.
“I signed Jess Moulson in overnight,” he said. “Suspected concussion. She needs to stay there. I don’t want her to go back on-block until morning, even if it looks like she’s improving.”
“I’ll see to it,” Stock said.
“Promise me, Sylvie. It’s really important.” Sally actually reached through the bars and touched her hand. Jesus!
“Fine,” she said again. “I promise. Philip.”
She offered up that unfamiliar name to make him stop asking. To make him go away and leave her alone. It did the job, but it left Sylvie in a seething rage. She hated Sally for making her swear to him – for forcing her into a false position. In her mind she cursed his retreating back, his fat arse and his waddling legs.
This changed nothing, she told herself. Nothing at all. Sally’s bleeding heart notwithstanding, all the big guns were on her side and so were the angels. So screw him.
“I just want to talk to her,” Devlin had told Stock. “It’s possible she picked up some drugs from a contact at the courthouse and brought them back into the prison. She could be in a lot of trouble. It’s better for her if I have this little chat with her off the record. That’s why I need your help, Sylvie.”
And all the while he talked, she was nodding. Telling herself it might be true, and at the same time knowing it wasn’t. Stock was nobody’s fool. Even before Devlin handed her the little wad of fifty-pound notes, she knew damn well what had to be going on here. This was off the record because it was dirty business. She wasn’t keeping Moulson out of trouble, she was delivering her into it.
And she was fine with that.
The infirmary was dead quiet when she went in. Patience had signed out at six. The medical staff from now until six the next morning was just her on her lonesome own.
Moulson was in the quarantine ward, lying on the same bed where she’d slept before. Old habits, Stock assumed. She’d taken her shoes off, but apart from that she was fully dressed. Her eyes were closed, one arm behind her head and the other resting on her stomach. She didn’t stir when Stock looked in.
On the table in the consulting area there was a folded note with Stock’s name written on it in Sally’s beautifully neat script. She tore it up into a lot of very small pieces and flushed it down the toilet. She didn’t need to read it because she already knew what it would say. And now nobody could prove it had ever been there.
She picked up the phone and called the main guard post in G block. Devlin picked up.
“It’s Sylvie,” she said. “We’re all set.”
“Moulson’s there?”
“Sleeping like a baby.”
“Great. I’ll send someone over.”
“How will I know him?”
There was a half-second pause which Stock imagined was filled with Devlin rolling his eyes. “He’ll be a guard, Stock, and he’ll tell you he’s there for Moulson. Do you want a secret password?”
“All right,” she said. “But give me a few minutes. I’ll need to get the paperwork done.”
“You do that.”
The paperwork was minimal in fact, but she wanted to make absolutely sure she had her story straight. I examined Moulson and I determined that her condition had improved significantly since…
No. She could do better than that. She took one more look around the door of the quarantine ward to make sure her only patient was still out of it, then sat down and began a brief but masterful work of fiction in which Moulson signed herself out on her own recognisance.
The knock on the door came about ten minutes later, when she was reading through the discharge forms for the third time to make sure they held together. She vaguely recognised the man who walked in. Lovell? No, Lovett. Keith Lovett. He was skinny and blond and had a look that reminded her of the vivid American phrase “trailer trash”.
“Moulson,” he said. “For Devlin.”
Good enough.
“All right,” Stock said. “Wait here.”
She went through to the quarantine ward. Moulson hadn’t moved a muscle as far as she could see. The expression on her face had changed though: now she was wearing the look of idiot consternation that goes with a nightmare.
Stock shook her shoulder. When she got no response, she did it again, harder.
Moulson mumbled something. A name, maybe. Oh my God, it was his name. The kid’s name. Alex. You bitch, she thought. You callous, callous bitch! You relive it in your fucking dreams?
“Moulson,” she snapped. “Come on. Time to go.”
She lifted Moulson off the bed with a two-handed grip – the woman was still lighter than her so it wasn’t hard – and shook her more vigorously. That finally did the trick.
“What?” Moulson mumbled, her eyes blinking open. “I’m awake. What’s happening?” She pulled free of Sylvie’s arms, her hands coming up to ward her off. Stock stepped away. She wanted Moulson calm, not panicked. But she also wanted her on her feet. Moulson was still looking confused, but she was fully conscious now, just breathing a little heavily from that rude awakening.
“We’re moving you,” Stock told her.
Moulson’s expression of puzzlement focused down to one of alarm and suspicion. “What? Why? Where to?”
Stock took the middle one of those three questions. “Dr Salazar thinks you might be at risk here. He said something about another prisoner having a grudge against you, or a quarrel with you? I don’t know – he didn’t name names. He was worried that the infirmary was too open. There’s only me on duty now, and if I get called away, you’ll be on your own.”
Her face as she said all this was studiously deadpan. Devlin had given her the script to work to, but she’d thought long and hard about the delivery, which was brisk and efficient rather than kindly or concerned. She was trying to play to her strengths.
Moulson ran a hand through her hair, which was lank and tangled. She looked exhausted. Whatever sleep she’d managed to grab hadn’t refreshed her much. “Where is he?” she asked. “Can I talk to him?”
“No, he’s gone off duty,” Stock said. “I just told you: there’s only me. It’s your call, Moulson, but I can’t protect you here. Someone might be coming over right now from Goodall. Do you want to be here when they arrive?”
That did the trick. Moulson flinched and shook her head.
“No,” Sylvie agreed. “You don’t. So we’re moving you to a safe room.”
“A safe room?”
“It’s another infirmary in…” – she covered the pause for thought by pointing – “… in Franklin block. Nobody will look for you there.”
She was pushing Moulson’s shoes into her hands as she spoke, trying to convey a sense of urgency. Moulson took the hint and put the shoes on. There was a weird kind of absence about her, as though part of her mind was somewhere else. She kept looking into the corners of the room, where as far as Stock could see there wasn’t anything to look at.
While she was still doing that, and Stock was still scolding her to get up, get dressed, get out, Lovett walked in. Moulson tensed all over again and scrambled up off the bed, looking like she was prepared to fight her way out of this if she had to. Stock’s money would have been on Lovett, but a fight in the infirmary wouldn’t do at all.
“He’s your escort,” she told Moulson quickly. “Don’t be stupid. You can’t walk across the yard at night on your own; you’ve got to have a guard with you. Lovett’s fine. He’s a good friend of Dr Salazar.”
“Yeah,” Lovett said flatly. “We’re like brothers. Can we get a move on?”
Stock could see that Moulson wasn’t convinced, and it didn’t surprise her. This knuckle-dragger was the very opposite of reassuring. She put a hand on Moulson’s arm to calm her, but once again Moulson didn’t seem to like that, so she took it away again.