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“Visitor, boss,” he growled. Blaine had been seated on his bed, but rose to his feet, facing De
“What’s this I hear about you, Mr. Henshall? Seems you’ve taken a right shine to Selina. She saw you driving past the house.” Blaine took a step closer, his tone jocular but face set like stone. “Now why would you do a thing like that? Can’t think your employers would be too thrilled…”
“She must’ve made a mistake.”
“That right? She got the make of car and the color: green Vauxhall Cavalier. Ring any bells?”
“She’s made a mistake.”
“So you keep saying. I know I told you plenty of men come to fancy her, but they don’t all go to your extremes, Mr. Henshall. You been following her? Watching the house? That’s my house, too, you know. How many times you done it? Cruising past… peeking through the curtains…” Blood had risen to Blaine ’s cheeks, a tremble entering his voice. De
“You a bit of a perv, Mr. Henshall? Locked in that room of yours, reading all those love letters… give you a hard-on, does it? No wife to go home to, so you start sniffing around other men’s. What’s the Governor going to think about that, eh?”
De
“You’re lying.” Beads of sweat had appeared on Blaine ’s forehead. His face was almost puce, and his breathing sounded ragged.
“She’s been co
“Liar!”
“We’ll soon find out, won’t we? You can call home, see if the line’s been disco
Blaine ’s hands went out, and De
“I think it’s a coronary,” he said, as the first of the warders rushed in.
The Governor had asked for De
“Seems to tie in with Chalmers’s version,” the Governor had said, to De
“He going to be all right, sir?”
“The hospital will tell us soon enough.”
Rushed to the Western General, leaving Chalmers in the doorway of the cell, looking stu
De
And she might never know.
It was nearly going-home time when another call summoned him to the Governor’s office. De
“ Blaine ’s escaped.”
“Sorry, sir?”
“He’s fled the hospital. Looks like it was a setup. A man and a woman were waiting for him, one dressed as a nurse, the other an orderly. One of the escort team has a concussion, another’s lost a couple of teeth.” The Governor looked up at De
“But I…”
“You entered the picture at the wrong moment, Henshall. Because an officer was there at the time, we took it that bit more seriously.” The Governor returned to some paperwork. “Just a bit of bad timing on your part… but a major bloody headache for the rest of us.”
De
No, of course there wasn’t. They could have made plans each time they met. Always the chance of being overheard, of lips being read. But that had to be the way it was. Nothing more or less to it… De
He walked to his local bar and ordered a whiskey with a lager chaser. Downed the whiskey in one gulp, shaking the remnants into the beer glass.
“Hard day, De
Crosswords… and what was the other thing Blaine had said: acrobatics?
“Tommy,” De
“Not that I know of.” Tommy hadn’t bothered looking up from his paper.
“A word like that then.”
“Acrostic, maybe.”
“And what’s an acrostic?”
“It’s when you’ve got a string of words and you take the first letter from each one. The cryptics use them a lot.”
“The first letter from…?”
Tommy looked ready to explain further, but De
I miss your hard-ons. See, Paul, I’m totally, absolutely lovestruck!
And embedded in it, the word “hospital.” De
Helping Elaine at Riddrie tomorrow. Perhaps ring our Bill, lift Elaine’s morale?
While De
Fred’s off up north. (Denise isn’t talking to him-and not keeping sober!)
“Found it. Thanks.”
Found what? The cash, of course: another bundle of Blaine ’s cash. He eked it out to her a bit at a time, his way of ensuring she stuck around, or didn’t blow it all at once. His letters to her contained messages showing where the money was hidden. Little stashes all over the place. Blaine ’s were clumsier than Selina’s. Maybe De