The Hanging Garden

`She was about here,' Pryde went on, pointing to a spot where, just past the lights, a bus lane started. The carriageway was wide, a four-lane road. She hadn't crossed at the lights. She'd been lazy, carrying on down Minto Street a few strides, then crossing in a diagonal. When she'd been a child, they'd taught her about crossing the road. Green Cross Code, all of that. Drummed it into her. Rebus looked around. At the top of Minto Street were some private houses and Bed amp; Breakfasts. On one corner stood a bank, on another a branch of Remnant Kings, with a takeaway next door.

`The takeaway would have been open,' Rebus said, pointing. On the third corner stood a Spar. `That place, too. Where did you say she was?’

`The bus lane.’

She'd crossed three lanes, been only a yard or two from safety. `Witnesses say she was nearly at the kerb when he hit her. I think he was drunk, lost it for a second.’

Pryde nodded towards the bank. There were two phone boxes in front of it. ‘Witness called from there.’

The wall behind the phone boxes had a poster glued to it. Gri

`It would have been so easy to avoid her,' Rebus said quietly.

12

Rebus was sitting in his boss's office. It was nine-fifteen and he had slept for probably forty-five minutes the previous night. There'd been the hospital vigil and Sammy's operation: something about a blood clot. She was still unconscious, still `critical'. He'd called Rhona in London. She'd told him she'd catch the first train she could. He'd given her his mobile number, so she could let him know when she arrived. She'd started to ask… her voice had cracked. She'd put down the receiver. He'd tried to find some feeling for her. Richard and Linda Thompson: `Withered and Died'.

He'd called Mickey, who said he'd drop by the hospital some time today. And that was it for the family. There were other people he could call, people like Patience, who had been his lover for a time, and Sammy's landlady until far more recently. But he didn't. He knew in the morning he'd call the office where Sammy worked. He wrote it in his notebook so he wouldn't forget. And then he'd called Sammy's flat and given Ned Farlowe the news.

Farlowe had asked a question nobody else had: `How about you? Are you all right?’

Rebus had looked around the hospital corridor. `Not exactly.’

`I'll be right there.’

So they'd spent a couple of hours in one another's company, not really saying very much at first. Farlowe smoked, and Rebus helped him empty the pack. He couldn't reciprocate with whisky – there was nothing in the bottle – but he'd bought the young man several cups of coffee, since Farlowe had spent nearly all his money on the taxi from Shandon…

`Wakey-wakey, John.’

Rebus's boss was shaking him gently. Rebus blinked, straightened in his chair.

`Sorry, sir.’

Chief Superintendent Watson went around the desk and sat down. `Hellish sorry to hear about Sammy. I don't really know what to say, except that she's in my prayers.’

`Thank you, sir.’

`Do you want some coffee?’

The Farmer's coffee had a reputation throughout the station, but Rebus accepted a mug gladly. `How is she anyway?’

`Still unconscious.’

`No sign of the car?’

`Not the last I heard.’

`Who's handling it?’

`Bill Pryde started the ball rolling last night. I don't know who's taken it from him.’

`I'll find out.’

The Farmer made an internal call, Rebus watching him over the rim of his mug. The Farmer was a big man, imposing behind a desk. His cheeks were a mass of tiny red veins and his thin hair lay across the dome of his head like the lines of a well-furrowed field. There were photos on his desk: grandchildren. The photos had been taken in a garden. There was a swing in the background. One of the children was holding a teddy bear. Rebus felt his throat start to ache, tried to choke it back.

The Farmer put down the receiver. `Bill's still on it,' he said. `Felt if he worked straight through we might get a quicker result.’

`That's good of him.’

`Look, we'll let you know the minute we get something, but meantime you'll probably want to go home…’

`No, sir.’

`Or to the hospital.’

Rebus nodded slowly. Yes, the hospital. But not right this minute. He had to talk to Bill Pryde first.

`And meantime, I'll reassign your cases.’

The Farmer started writing. `There's this War Crimes thing, and your liaison on Telford. Are you working on anything else?’

`Sir, I'd prefer it if you… I mean, I want to keep working.’

The Farmer looked at him, then leaned back in his chair, pen balanced between his fingers.

'Why?’

Rebus shrugged. `I want to keep busy.’

Yes, there was that. And `Sure you're okay? There's a cafe up the road.’

`I'm fine, Bill.’

He looked around, took a deep breath. `Looks like offices behind the Spar, doubtful anyone would have been there. But there are flats above Remnant Kings and the bank.’

`Want to talk to them?’

`And the Spar and the kebab shop. You take the B amp;Bs and the houses, meet back here in half an hour.’

Rebus talked to everyone he could find. In the Spar, there was a new shift on, but he got home phone numbers from the manager and called up the workers from the previous night. They hadn't seen or heard anything. First they'd known had been the flashing lights of the ambulance. The kebab shop was closed, but when Rebus banged on the door a woman came through from the back, wiping her hands on a tea-towel. He pressed his warrant card to the glass door, and she let him in. The shop had been busy last night. She didn't see the accident – she called it that, `the accident'. And that's what it was: the word really hadn't sunk in until she said it. Elvis Costello: `Accidents Will Happen'. Was the next line really `It's only hit and run'?

`No,' the woman said, `the first thing that caught my attention was the crowd. I mean, only three or four people, but I could see they were standing around something. And then the ambulance came. Will she be all right?’

The look in her eyes was one Rebus had encountered before. It almost wanted the victim dead, because then there was a story to be told.

`She's in hospital,' he said, unable to look at the woman any longer.

`Yes, but the paper said she's in a coma.’

`What paper?’

She brought him the first edition of the day's Evening News. There was a paragraph on one of the inside pages – `Hit and Run Coma Victim'.

It wasn't a coma. She was unconscious, that was all. But Rebus was thankful for the story. Maybe someone would read it and come forward. Maybe guilt would begin to press down on the driver. Maybe there'd been a passenger… It was hard to keep secrets, usually you told someone.

He tried Remnant Kings, but of course they had been closed last night, so he climbed to the flats above. There was no one home at the first flat. He wrote a brief message on the back of a business card and pushed it through the letterbox, then jotted down the surname on the door. If they didn't call him, he'd call them. A young man answered the second door. He was just out of his teens and pushed a thick lock of black hair away from his eyes. He wore Buddy Holly glasses and had acne scars around his mouth. Rebus introduced himself. The hand went to the hair again, a backward glance into the flat.

`Do you live here?’ Rebus asked.

`Mm, yeah. Like, I'm not the owner. We rent it.’

There were no names on the door. `Anyone else in at the moment?’

`Nope.’

`Are you all students?’

The young man nodded. Rebus asked his name.

`Rob. Robert Renton. What's this about?’

`There was an accident last night, Rob. A hit and run.’