Dead Man's Time

swing arm was switched on but silent. A solitary greetings card lay on a table in front of the
pale-looking man, who rested on a bed of pillows, next to a glass of water, some tablets in a small container and an unopened copy of the
Argus
newspaper. There was a chair beside the
bed.
    With the assistance of another nurse, the curtains were drawn around the bed to give them privacy. Then Bella Moy sat down. ‘Ricky Moore?’ she asked, to confirm.
    He gave her a suspicious frown, but said nothing.
    Her first impression of the man was that he was the very double of the television actor Dennis Waterman, former co-star of
Minder
and now of
New Tricks.
    She held up her warrant card. ‘Detective Sergeant Moy of Sussex CID – are you up to answering a few questions?’
    He winced, painfully forcing one word out at a time. ‘If – you – want – the – capital – of – Peru – it’s – Lima.’
    She smiled. ‘Very witty.’
    He winced again.
    ‘I understand you were assaulted last Friday night, Ricky? Okay if I call you that?’
    He stared at her for some moments. Then he nodded.
    ‘Do you know the people who did it?’
    He shook his head.
    ‘Are you sure about that?’
    He fell silent.
    ‘So, Ricky, you’re in the antiques business, right?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You look in pain – does it hurt you to speak?’
    He nodded.
    ‘I’ll be brief. Someone hurt you quite badly – is that right?’
    He stared into space.
    ‘How badly, Ricky?’
    He continued staring into space.
    ‘I don’t get it, Ricky,’ she said. ‘So why did they hurt you?’
    Nothing.
    ‘The doctors say you’ve suffered very serious internal damage. You have a perforated bowel, and permanently damaged nerves. How do you feel about that?’
    Again he was silent.
    ‘I’d be pretty upset if that had happened to me. Are you upset?’
    Again he said nothing.
    She looked at the greetings card. ‘That from your wife?’
    ‘Girlfriend.’
    ‘Does it worry you that you might not be able to make love to her again? And that you might be incontinent for the rest of your life.’
    He gave her a sullen glare.
    ‘You’ve been the victim of a very brutal attack. I understand you have severe rectal burns. Is that right?’
    ‘I never – touched – the – old – lady,’ he said. His voice was low and pained.
    ‘Is that why this happened to you?’
    He did not reply.
    ‘Would you like to tell me who hurt the old lady? And who hurt you?’
    ‘No one hurt me.’
    ‘I’m told something very hot was pushed up your anus. With your perforated bowel you’re lucky not to be dead from septicaemia. Was someone torturing you?’
    He shook his head. ‘Nah, I was doing some electrical repairs. I just sat down on my soldering iron. Dunno how I did it.’
    ‘You were doing electrical repairs in the nude, were you?’
    He closed his eyes.
    ‘Is there anything you would like to tell me?’
    He remained silent.
    After ten minutes a doctor and a nurse opened the curtain and told Bella that Moore needed to sleep now.
    As she walked out of the hospital, Bella dialled Roy Grace’s number.

36
    ‘You know the worst thing?’ Glenn Branson said through his tears, cradling his second pint in the booth at the rear of the pub a short distance down the road from
the Royal Sussex County Hospital.
    ‘Tell me,’ Roy Grace said, one arm around his mate’s shoulder, his glass of a single Glenfiddich on the rocks on the table in front of them. He should not be drinking on duty,
he knew, and he still had work to do tonight. But for the moment he was making an exception. He was deeply shaken by Glenn’s news.
    ‘It’s knowing Ari’ll be having a post-mortem in the morning.’ He stared, heavy-lidded at Roy Grace. ‘We both know what that means.’
    All Grace could do was nod.
    ‘They’re going to cut her open. They’re going to saw off her skull cap, and lift out her brains. Then they’re going to slice open her chest and then . . .’
    He broke down, sobbing uncontrollably.
    ‘Don’t go there, mate,’ Grace said.
    ‘But they will, won’t they?’ Branson said, helplessly. ‘We’re talking about the woman I loved. The mother of my kids. I can’t bear that, Roy.’
    ‘They have to know what happened,’ Grace said, and immediately regretted it.
    ‘I know what happened. She was cycling along the cycle lane on the seafront. Someone, not looking where they were going, stepped out in front of her. She came off the bike, broke her arm
in three