Stone - 25 - Collateral Damage

“She’s gone to ground, and she won’t pop out again until she’s ready for another bombing.”
    “Naturally,” Sir Evelyn said, “we’ve taken every possible precaution at the sort of targets she’d be interested in.” He looked regretful. “I’m sorry we didn’t include American targets.”
    “Quite,” Holly said, gaining a clamped jaw from Sir Evelyn.
    “Well,” the chief inspector said, “if there’s nothing else at the moment, I’d better let Inspector Tate go and see our witness.” The two Englishmen stood, and Holly and Stone stood with them.
    “Would it be inconvenient if I came along?” Stone asked. “Merely as an observer, of course.”
    The two policemen exchanged a glance and Sir Evelyn nodded almost imperceptibly.
    “Glad to have you, Mr. Barrington,” Tate said. “I have a car waiting downstairs.”
    —
    Stone sat in the rear of the unmarked police car and stole a sideways glace at Harry Tate. “Been at this a long time, Inspector?”
    “Call me Harry,” he replied.
    “And I’m Stone.”
    “I heard about you from Sir Evelyn,” Tate said. “He remembers you fondly from your past meetings.”
    Stone laughed. “I’m sure that’s not quite true.”
    “To answer your question, Stone, I’ve been at it for nigh onto thirty years, and it’s nice to get out of the bloody office.”
    The car stopped at the entrance to a large hospital.

The hospital was much like any of its large New York City counterparts: everybody in green scrubs, patients on gurneys in the hallways, nurses looking overworked. They were met by a doctor, a Sikh, bearded, with a large turban. He introduced himself, and his English was impeccable.
    “Mrs. Margaret Meyers-Selby is an American woman, thirty-seven years old, five feet six inches tall, nine stone three pounds,” he reported, as if they were med students doing rounds. “She was standing in front of a window when a large explosion took place in the street and has suffered the loss of her left eye and sustained a large head wound, as well as many cuts made by flying glass. You will note that, except for her eye, most of her wounds are not bandaged, as the result would give her the appearance of a mummy. She is remarkably well, considering what happened to her, and you will find her articulate.”
    “Thank you,” Harry Tate replied. He led Stone into the room, which was curtained off into four cubicles, Mrs. Meyers-Selby’s by the window, which overlooked a rear utility area of the hospital. The woman sat up in bed, reading a magazine with her remaining eye, and the sight of her face was horrific. Seemingly dozens of wounds, some of them two or three inches long, had been sutured, painted with iodine, and left bare. Her face had swelled to what Stone imagined must be twice its normal size, and he thought that once she might have been very pretty.
    She looked up from her magazine. “Don’t worry, gentlemen,” she said, “it’s nothing a little pancake makeup won’t fix.”
    Stone avoided laughing and pulled up two chairs. Harry introduced them. “We’d like to ask some questions, if you’re up to it,” he said.
    “I appreciate the break in the otherwise constant boredom,” she said. “If you don’t like Cockney soap operas, soccer, or cricket, there’s nothing to watch on TV.”
    “Can you please relate to us what happened, as best you can remember?” Harry asked.
    “I remember every bit of it,” she replied in a clear American accent, “and I’ll be happy to. I had received an applicant for a job as a translator,” she said, “and she was sitting at the window, filling out the application form and taking her own sweet time about it. She excused herself to go to the ladies’, and perhaps a minute later there was an awful explosion outside somewhere. I went to the window to see what the hell had happened and saw a police car upside down in Burnes Street, and what appeared to be a policeman’s body, hanging on a wrought-iron fence.
    “I stared dumbly at it for perhaps half a minute, then I went back to my desk, got an outside line, and called nine-nine-nine. I told them who I was and what had happened and requested every available ambulance and policeman to come to the scene at once. I could already hear sirens. After I had told the officer everything twice, I hung up and went back to the window. At that moment, the window blew into my face, and I flew backward. I may have been out for a few seconds, but then I