Deception on His Mind (63 page)

At first they all slurred together. “Nottoomuchdifferentfromwhat-happenstotheheart,” someone was saying reasonably. “Butthisisabrain-attackinstead.”

Butthisisabrainattackinstead?
What did this mean? Agatha wondered. Where was she? And why was she lying so still? She might have thought she'd died and was having an out of body experience, but she was firmly and definitely
in
her body, all too aware of its presence, in fact.

“OhGodhowbadisit?” This was Theo's voice, and Agatha warmed to it. Theo, she thought. Theo was there. Theo was with her, in the room, nearby. Things couldn't be as bad as they seemed.

So relieved was she to have heard his voice that she caught only snatches of words for the next several minutes.
Thrombosis,
she heard.
Cholesterol deposits. Occlusion of artery.
And
right hemiparisis.

Then she knew. And what she felt in the instant she knew was a despair so profound that it welled inside her like a fast-inflating balloon of a scream which she could not emit, which threatened to kill her. Would that it could, she thought brokenly. Oh blessed Jesus, would that it could.

Lewis had called to her. Lawrence had called to her. But pig-headed as always, she hadn't joined them. She had things left to do, dreams to fulfill, and points left to make before she was done with living. So when the stroke had attacked and the blood clot had robbed her brain of oxygen for however long a time it had been, the substance and spirit of Agatha Shaw had fiercely fought back. And she had not died.

Now the words were becoming clearer. The light that filled the field of her vision began to transform itself into forms. From these forms, people emerged, indistinguishable from one another at first.

“It's the left middle cerebral artery that's been affected again.” A man's voice, and one she now recognised. Dr. Fairclough, who'd seen her through her last stroke. “You can see as much from the pull on her facial muscles. Nurse, use the needle again please. See? There's no reaction. If we repeat the pricking on her arm as well, we'll have the same results.” He bent over the bed. Now Agatha could see him clearly. His nose was large, with pores that were the size of pinheads. He wore glasses whose lenses were oily and smudged. How could he possibly see anything through them? “Agatha?” he called. “Do you know me, Agatha? Do you know what's happened?”

Bloody stupid man, Agatha thought. How could she
not
know what had happened. With an effort, she blinked. The very act exhausted her.

“Yes. Good,” Dr. Fairclough said. “You've had another stroke, my dear. But you're all right now. And Theo's here.”

“Gran?” He sounded so tentative, as if she'd become an abandoned puppy that he attempted to coax from a hiding place. He was standing too far away for her to see him clearly, but even seeing the shape of him was comforting to her, a sign that all might be well once again. “Why the hell did you try to get to the tennis court?” Theo asked. “Jesus, Gran, if Mary hadn't been with you …She didn't even phone for an ambulance. She picked you up and rushed you here herself. Dr. Fairclough thinks that saved your life.”

Who would have thought the silly cow had such presence of mind? Agatha wondered. All
she
could ever recall Mary Ellis doing in an emergency situation was blubbering, blinking, and letting her nose dribble onto her upper lip.

“She isn't responding,” Theo said, and Agatha could see that he'd turned to the doctor. “Can she even hear me?”

“Agatha?” the doctor said. “Will you show Theo you can hear what he's saying?”

Slowly and once again with great effort, Agatha blinked. It seemed to take every ounce of her energy, and she felt the strain of the movement all the way to her throat.

“What we're seeing,” the doctor said in that blasted imparting-of-information voice that had always caused Agatha's hackles to rise, “is called expressive aphasia. The clot denied blood—hence oxygen—to the left side of the brain. Since that's the region responsible for word-oriented rational reality, speech is affected.”

“But she's worse than last time. She had some words last time. So why doesn't she have them now? Gran, can you say my name? Can you say your own?”

Agatha forced her mouth to open. But the only sound she was able to make sounded to her like “Ahg.” She tried a second time, then a third. And she felt that balloon scream trying to force its way out of her lungs again.

“It's a more serious stroke this time,” Dr. Fairclough was saying. He put a hand on Agatha's left shoulder. She could feel him squeeze warmly. “Agatha, don't strain yourself. Rest now. You're in excellent hands. And Theo's here if you need him.”

They stepped away from the bed and out of her range of vision, but she could still hear some of their hushed words.

“…no magic bullet unfortunately,” the doctor was saying. “…will need extensive rehabilitation.”

“… therapy?” this from Theo.

“Physical and speech.”

“…hospital?”

And Agatha strained to hear. Intuitively, she knew what her grandson was asking because it was what she felt herself desperate to know: What was the prognosis in a case like hers? And could she expect to remain in hospital, immobilised in a rail-sided bed like a blasted rag doll, until the day she died?

“Actually quite hopeful,” Dr. Fairclough said, and he returned to her bedside to share the information with her. He patted her shoulder, then touched his fingertips to her forehead as if he were giving her a formal benediction.

Doctors, she thought. When they didn't think they were the Pope, they thought they were God.

“Agatha, the paralysis you're experiencing will improve over time with physical therapy. The aphasia …well, reacquisition of speech is more difficult to predict. But with care, with nursing, and most of all with a will to recover, you can live for any number of years.” The doctor turned then to Theo. “She has to
want
to live, however. And she must have a reason to live.”

She had that, Agatha thought. Damn it to hell and back again, she had that. She
would
recreate this town to her image of what a sea resort ought to be. She would do it from her bed, she would do it from her coffin, she would do it from her grave. The name Agatha Shaw would mean something beyond an abortive marriage brought to a meaningless early end, a failed motherhood with children either scattered to the globe or tucked into premature graves, and a life defined through the people she'd lost. So she had the will to live and endure. She had it in spades.

The doctor was continuing. “She's enormously blessed in two respects, and we can hang our hopes of recovery on them. Overall, she's in excellent physical condition: heart, lungs, bone mass, muscles. She has the body of a woman in her fifties, and believe me, that's going to serve her well.”

“She was always active,” Theo said. “Tennis, boating, riding. Until the first stroke, she did it all.”

“Hmm. Yes. And much to her benefit. But there's more to life than keeping the body fit. There's keeping the heart and soul fit as well. She does that through you. She isn't alone in the world. She has a family. And family give people a reason to go on.” The doctor chuckled as he asked his last questions, so apparently sure was he of the reply. “Now, you aren't thinking of going off somewhere, Theo? Not planning an expedition to Africa? No trips to Mars?”

There was a silence. In it, Agatha heard the bleeping of the monitors to which she was hooked up. They burbled and hissed just out of sight, beyond her head.

She wanted to tell Theo to stand within her view. She wished that she could tell him how she loved him. Love was balderdash and rubbish, she knew. It was nonsense and illusion that did nothing but wound one and wear one down. It was, in fact, a word she'd never used openly in her life. But she would have said it now.

She felt a longing for him, to touch him and hold him. She felt it down her arms and in her fingertips. She'd always thought touch was meant for discipline. How had she failed to see it was meant for forging bonds?

The doctor chuckled again, but this time it sounded forced. “Good God, don't look like that, Theo. You're no expert in the field and you won't have to rehabilitate your grandmother on your own. It's your presence in her life that's important. It's continuity. You can give her that.”

Theo came close enough for her to see now. He gazed into her eyes and his own looked clouded. They looked, in fact, just the way they'd looked when she'd arrived at that urine-scented children's home where he and Stephen had been taken in the immediate aftermath of their parents’ deaths. She'd said to them, “Come along with you, then,” and when she didn't extend her hand to either of them, Stephen walked out ahead of her. But Theo reached up and grasped the waistband of her skirt.

“I'll be there for her,” Theo said. “I'm not going anywhere.”

S LIAISON OFFICER, BARBARA CAME UP WITH
A compromise that all present declared themselves able to live with. Emily had stopped their procession outside the interrogation room, where she'd informed the two men that their access to Fahd Kumhar would be limited to visual access only. They could check him for his physical condition, but they could ask nothing. These ground rules caused an immediate argument between the DCI and the Pakistanis, with Muhannad manhandling the reins of the discussion away from his cousin. After listening to his threats of “imminent community dissent,” Barbara suggested that Taymullah Azhar—an outsider clearly not suspected of anything—act as an interpreter. Fahd Kumhar would hear his rights given to him in English, Azhar would translate anything that the man did not understand, and Emily would tape-record their entire interaction for verification from Professor Siddiqi in London. This appeared to cover all possible permutations of what could happen in the room. Everyone agreed it was a viable alternative to squabbling indefinitely in the corridor. So the compromise was accepted, as are most compromises: Everyone agreed to it; no one liked it.

Emily swung her shoulder against the old oak door and admitted them into a small room. Fahd Kumhar sat in a corner, as far as possible from the police detective—oddly clad in walking shorts and a Hawaiian shirt—who was attending him. He was cowering in his chair like a rabbit cornered by hounds, and when he saw the identity of the newcomers, his gaze skittered from Emily to Barbara and then beyond them to Azhar and Muhannad. It seemed that his body reacted without any intention on his part of doing so. His feet pushed against the wooden floor and forced the chair even farther into the corner. Fright or flight, Barbara thought.

She could smell his incipient panic. The acrid stench of male sweat made the air very nearly unbreathable. She could only wonder how the Asians would interpret the man's mental state.

She didn't have to wonder for long. Azhar crossed the room and squatted in front of his chair. As Emily switched on the tape recorder, he said, “I'm going to introduce myself to him. My cousin as well.” He then spoke in Urdu. Kumhar's flash of a glance from Azhar to Muhannad and back to Azhar indicated that introductions had indeed been made.

When Kumhar whimpered, Azhar reached out and put his hand on one of the man's arms, which he still held up defensively against his chest. “I've told him I've come from London to help him,” Azhar said. He went on quietly in his native tongue, repeating in English both his questions and Kumhar's answers. “Have they hurt you?” he asked. “Have the police treated you roughly, Mr. Kumhar?”

Emily interposed at once. “These weren't our parameters, and you know it, Mr. Azhar.”

Muhannad shot her a contemptuous look. “We can't tell him his rights till we know how many of them have already been violated,” he said. “Look at him, Azhar. He's like melting jelly. Can you see any bruises? Check his wrists and his neck.”

The DC who'd been in the room upon their arrival stirred at this. He said, “He was quiet enough till you lot got in here.”

“Consider what constitutes the
lot
of us, Constable” was Muhannad's riposte. “We didn't exactly walk in here without DCI Barlow, did we?”