But as he considered it, things began to take on a different coloration.
There was Gemma’s transfer to Brixton, coming so swiftly after she’d been instrumental in unearthing a long trail of assaults against female police officers by a senior officer. Kincaid had half suspected that Denis had arranged it as a sweetener, a way of discouraging him from protesting about the outcome of that same case. But what if it had been, not a subtle bribe, but a means of putting Gemma out of harm’s way?
Diane patted his hand, bringing him back to the present. “He would never admit it, of course. But I know he was not happy about losing you to Holborn, although there’s no one he respects more than Tom Faith.”
“Losing me?” Kincaid asked. “Is that what he said?”
Diane sat back and sighed. “Well, perhaps he didn’t put it quite like that. He—” She stopped, looking up as the ward door opened.
It was a consultant, easily identified by her white coat and stethoscope. Kincaid felt Diane tensing beside him, and for a moment he hoped the doctor had come to speak to the couple across the room. But she came straight towards them, saying, “Mrs. Childs?” in a soft, slightly accented voice.
Diane nodded and Kincaid instinctively clasped her hand.
“Mrs. Childs, I’m Miss Cisse and I’m the consultant who will be managing your husband’s case while he’s in the critical care ward.”
The consultant’s skin was a deep mahogany, and the name, Kincaid guessed, was central African, perhaps Nigerian. She wore the tiny plaits of her thick hair pulled back with a colorful printed bandeau, a contrast to her serious demeanor.
When she looked questioningly at him, he released Diane’s hand and stood for a moment to shake the doctor’s. “Duncan Kincaid,” he said. “I’m a . . . a friend of the family.” Diane gave him a quick nervous glance.
The doctor sat beside Diane, taking a moment to scan a small tablet she carried with her, then looked up and began, “You know we are keeping your husband under sedation to minimize any swelling on his brain? He has a type of injury called an epidural hematoma, which required surgery last night. The surgeon also inserted a tiny device into the incision that monitors the intercranial pressure—any swelling of the brain,” she clarified, glancing at them both to make certain they were following.
Diane nodded, and Kincaid guessed some of this had been explained to her last night.
“Your husband also hit his head when he fell forward, and the two blows have given his brain quite a jar.”
“A concussion?” Kincaid asked.
Miss Cisse nodded and smiled at him as if he were a prize pupil. “Yes, exactly.”
“But we were told that Denis was talking when the girls found him,” said Diane, and Kincaid could tell it was taking an effort for her to keep her voice steady.
“That’s very common with your husband’s type of injury.” Cisse gave her another encouraging smile, but Kincaid didn’t feel better. He’d seen injuries like this, where after a blow to the head, the person remained lucid for as long as several hours before losing consciousness. His stomach lurched.
“Can you tell what caused the injury to the back of the head?” he asked.
The doctor’s smile lost some of its wattage. “I can guess it was made by something hard and that the depression was about the width of your finger. I don’t think we can determine more than that, Mr.”—she paused to consult the notes on her tablet— “Kincaid. Now, if there’s anything else—”
“How long will he have to be kept sedated?” Diane’s rose lipstick looked stark now against her pallor.
“That all depends on whether there is any more swelling, Mrs. Childs. But he’s comfortable, I assure you.”
“When he wakes up, will he remember what happened?”
“I’m afraid it’s quite common for patients to have no memory of the incident that caused their injury. I wouldn’t worry about that just now.”
What the doctor didn’t say seemed to hang in the air like a specter.
It was also quite common for patients with severe brain trauma never to wake up at all.
Kincaid went into the curtained cubicle alone. The doctor had left just as Tom Faith returned with Diane’s sandwich and hot chocolate.
Slowly, he moved to the foot of the hospital bed and gripped the railing. There was an ugly purpling lump on the right side of Denis Childs’s forehead, and the stubble from two days’ growth of heavy dark beard covered his cheeks and chin. An IV catheter trailed from his right arm and his mouth hung loosely around the breathing tube, the muscles slack. The monitors stood by, silently blinking guardians, and Denis’s large frame seemed shrunken under the hospital sheet.
A strip of bandage ran rather rakishly just beneath Denis’s hairline and Kincaid assumed it anchored the small probe placed in the back of Denis’s head. It was frightening enough, Kincaid thought, to watch those one knew well sleeping, but still in the mumble and twitch and the flutter of eyelids there were signs of the personality that animated the body. Here, there were none. He realized that although Denis Childs’s face had often seemed impassive, in reality it had conveyed a myriad of expressions, all of them unique. And his dark eyes had been filled with a lively and calculating intelligence. They were closed now, the dark lashes fanned against Childs’s olive cheeks.
Kincaid gripped the rail until his knuckles showed white. He would find out who had done this.
He would find out what Denis had been trying to tell him.
And Denis was bloody well going to wake up.
“Reagan was an only child but she always had a special knack for kids,” Gwen Keating said to Gemma. Gwen had gulped her tea as if she were parched and Gemma had refilled her mug from the dregs of the pot.
MacKenzie had stepped into the hall to ring Bill and check on the children. Nita sat perched on the edge of the sofa, tapping her foot and glancing towards the upper part of the house every few minutes.
Gemma wasn’t sure if it was because she’d served the tea, or because she hadn’t known Reagan, but Gwen seemed fixed on telling her about her daughter. “Her dad died when she was three,” Gwen went on. “Cancer. So it was always just the two of us. We did everything together.”
“What do you do in Cardiff, Gwen?” asked Gemma, hoping to steer the conversation towards something less personal.