Half Moon Chambers (3 page)

* * *

Infinite darkness delivered me back to a cold
profane
black that stank of antiseptic. For a long
while
I tried to dissolve myself once more. I'd
been
so far away, but I hadn't minded
--
the
distance
had been full of stars. I didn't want what I
had
now. The surface beneath me felt cloudy and
damp
. Maybe I was still on the concrete at the
dockyard
, or on a slab in the morgue. A prickling
heavy
numbness was weighing me down. The only
sensation
making it through to my brain was an
intense
discomfort in my cock, as if someone had
rammed
a tube up there, for what arcane pleasure I
couldn
't begin to imagine...

"Vince? Vinnie? Nurse, is he awake? I saw
him
move again."

"Hold on. I'll get the doctor."

Doctor. Nurse. Okay, I had clues now. I
hadn
't made detective for nothing
--
could put two
and
two together and come up with a hospital. The
mental
effort exhausted me, though, and I drifted
again
, a little way back out into the sea of stars.

"Vincent?"

That made me twitch. Only my mother ever
called
me Vincent, and even then only when I was
in
the deepest trouble.
In trouble
, I thought, seeing
inside
my head my tiny cubbyhole office
at
Mansion Street, then for some reason my desk
phone
, and then in a dazzling flicker my
partner
Jack Monroe, sitting with no shirt on in an
interview
booth.
I'm in trouble now.
I wanted to
laugh
but my lungs didn't have that much
spontaneity
left to them. They inflated without any
help
from me, gave up their air a second later with
a
mechanised hiss, filled again.

"Detective Sergeant Carr? You're in
the
Freeman hospital. You've had an operation, but
you
're going to be fine. Vincent?" A pause, and I
felt
fingers at my wrist, a thumb lifting one eyelid
then
the other. My pupils contracted painfully
against
the beam of a torch, but I couldn't make it
mean
anything. "What do his friends call him?"

"Er, Vince. Sometimes Vinnie."

No, Jack.
I wanted to reach out and give him
a
smack.
Only you call me Vinnie. No-one else
would
dare.

"Okay. Vince, can you hear me?" I wanted to
tell
this cool-handed stranger that I could hear him
just
fine. Another twitch jerked at the muscles of
my
arm. "All right. Good lad. Don't worry
,
Detective Sergeant Monroe. He is responding. He
was
awake for a little bit this afternoon. We'll
have
him back with us shortly."

"Awake? I asked the staff nurse to give me a
call
if he
--
"

"Oh, it was just a few minutes. And he was
very
confused. Not worth calling you in for."

"Do
you think he remembers what happened
?"

"About the shooting? Very likely not. I know
you
'll need his report, but you might have to wait
for
a long time yet. He had massive trauma, and
he
'll need a while to get over the surgery too."

Surgery
... Yes, I was definitely getting a
grasp
on things now. Nurse, doctor, surgery.

The shooting.

"Doc, his hand clenched. What does that
mean
?"

"He's surfacing. He can probably hear us, so
mind
what you say. Vince, you've had an op to take
a
bullet from your back. You're a lucky man,
believe
it or not
--
it missed your spine by an inch."

The cool hand closed on mine. I was feeling quite
rude
by now, like a society hostess neglecting her
guest
, and I tried to return the grasp. "There you
go
. He's responding to my grip. There's another
bullet
lodged in there, Vince, and we'll need to
operate
again, but for now you'll be fine. Can you
wake
up for me now? Vince? Vinnie?"

I couldn't wake up for him
--
not quite. One
more
swimmer's thrust toward the surface would
have
done it, but now I had too much to think
about
. He'd taken a bullet from my back. There
was
something almost comical to me in that, a kind
of
cartoon-style shame. Cowboys from my dad's
collection
of paperback Westerns, relics from days
when
men said to one another,
only a coward gets
shot
in the back, son. You deserve it for running
away
.

No. Not me. I hadn't been running. The doctor
was
still talking
--
to me, to Jack, I couldn't tell.

Then definitely to the nurse, ripping a strip off her
about
a badly fitted catheter. I wanted to tell him to
leave
her alone, but then there was some bustle
and
tugging down there, and the discomfort eased.

I had to admit that was better. I could sleep again
now
. The starfield was waiting. Among those
shimmering
lights and blue-white fires, all the
human
nonsense burned to ash. Cowardice,
abandonment
, betrayal, running away
--
all that
stuff
came from the flesh, from being an animal, a
skinful
of hormones, adrenaline, reflexes. It
couldn
't exist in the dark between the stars. I fell
back
into it gladly, arms outstretched as if for
flight
--
one way, thank you. Doctor, you can keep my
ticket
home.

Chapter Two

August

"C
ome on, mate. You can do better than
that
."

I took a critical look at the chessboard set up
on
the table hooked across my bed. Yes, Jack was
right
. I could do a hell of a lot better. My last move
had
laid my queen's rearguard open to half a dozen
threatening
advances. I could see it now, though I'd
shoved
my castle almost at random across the
board
, driven by a blinding spasm of pain. I was
due
another morphine shot. Complaining or
moaning
wouldn't make these come any quicker,
and
I'd learned a habit of clenching my jaws and
doing
something else
--
anything, no matter how
stupid
--
until the wave passed. It didn't always
work
out for me. I'd used to be able to beat Jack
hollow
at chess. "Yeah. Sorry."

"Take the move again."

"Don't fucking patronise me."

A silence fell in the sunny room. My elevated
status
as a copper injured on duty had won me a
commendation
and a private hospital bed. The
cupboards
and cabinets were bright with flowers,
most
of them with tongue-in-cheek tags on them
from
my unsentimental friends and colleagues. You
never
knew how popular you were until you got
knocked
off your perch. I looked up into the blue
eyes
fixed on mine. I wished I could read their
expression
. They were so clear, it should have
been
easy, and I saw the compassion, the faint
trace
of hurt. But there was something else too
--
a
shadow
. "Sorry," I said again. "No, I'll stand by it.
Maybe it's part of my master plan."

"Only if you're planning to get trounced again.
Is your back hurting?"

"What do you fucking think?"

Oh, God. I leaned forward as far as I could
bear
to, pressing my fingers to my mouth. Eight
weeks
after the Sunderland raid, I'd moved from
deadly
ill to merely surly. I couldn't seem to help
myself
. My healing scars itched. The morphine
disagreed
with me. The pain was turning from a
disabling
scream to a constant background nag. I
managed
to keep a lid on it around the hospital
staff
, but Jack got it in the neck every time. I didn't
know
why. It was something to do with that fucking
shadow
in his eyes
--
so new, so alien to him.

Perfectly familiar to me in other men's eyes
--
eyes
that
insolently met or tried to avoid mine across an
interrogation
-room table.

His hand closed on my shoulder. I stiffened,
but
then he stroked the back of my head, a gesture
far
more tender than any he'd shown me before.

He'd been very good, very tolerant. He'd hardly
missed
a single visiting hour. "It's okay," he said
softly
. "Stupid fucking question. I'll go get
someone
to help."

"No." I grabbed his wrist. "Jacky, forgive
me
. Look, can we call it a day on this game?"

"Yeah. Course. Anything you want."

"I think I want..." I sat back. I could see late
-
summer
foliage shifting in the wind beyond the
hospital
car park. Doc Richardson, my surgeon,
had
said he wanted to try and get me walking
tomorrow
. That would be nice
--
to have those
trees
within my reach again, in theory anyway. My
world
had shrunk from a grand encompassment of
two
major cities to a ten-by-ten cell. I hadn't been
able
to think too clearly about the implications
until
now. "I want you to go and get back to
whatever
you should be doing at half six on a
weekday
night. It's August now, isn't it?"

"That's right, Detective. August the fifteenth.
Is that a problem for you?"

"Yes, because... Because your secondment to
the
special-ops training programme starts on
the
20th. You should be at the gym. Or on the range, or
the
assault course, or... anyway, not lollygagging
around
in here with the mardiest bastard on planet.
Go on."

"Oh, Vince." Again, that gentle hand on the
back
of my head. "I'm not going anywhere on
the
20th, okay? The Met said they'd wait our
application
until you were better again."

"What?"

"Well, as if I'd go without you! They head
-
hunted
us as a partnership, remember."

"Yes, before... Look, don't be stupid. Hodges
might
find me a desk job up here, but as for
the
Met
--
special ops, running and jumping and
gangsters
--
I'm finished. We both know that."

Jack exhaled sharply. He got up and went to
the
window, banging his hip on a chair-back en
route
. It was so unlike him to be clumsy. He was
nervous
and distracted. Come to think of it, he'd
been
like that every time he'd visited. Well, he
didn
't like hospitals. Maybe there was nothing
more
to it than that. "Fuck's sake, Vince. How can
you
give up so soon? You haven't even tried your
walking
physio yet."

"That's right. They wanted to start me last
week
. But the bullet I've still got jammed in my
back
started shifting around, and they daren't
operate
again in case they paralyse me from the
waist
down." I tried to smooth the ragged
bitterness
from my voice, though hearing this bald
statement
of my own case chilled me with fear.

"So... I've got to learn to walk before I can run,
and
before that I've got to learn to get to the bog on
my
own. As for the Met
--
forget it. And don't for
one
second think of staying up here because of
me
."

Jack turned from the window and stood with
his
arms folded. I couldn't see his face against the
light
. For a moment I thought he was going to talk
to
me
--
truthfully, with a force that would dispel
the
shadows. But then he broke into the low,
wicked
chuckle I knew so well. "Ah, Vinnie.
You're just wallowing."

"I'm...
what
?"

"You heard me. You're cooped up here, in
pain
, and you're grumpy as fuck because you're not
getting
any."

Before I could find an answer he was back at
my
bedside. He sat down and unhitched our chess
table
, swinging it out of the way. I had time to
breathe
a prayer of thanks that my catheter had
been
removed, and then his hand was under the
blanket
and closing on my cock. Okay. He'd done it
now
. Just as well I wasn't hooked up any more to
my
monitors
--
the crash team would have been
through
the door in ten seconds. My jaw dropped,
the
air stopping dead in my lungs.

I fell back on the pillows. The movement hurt
like
hell, but not half so much as it would have
done
without the rush of endorphins this one touch
had
released. Nevertheless I grabbed his wrist.

"Christ! Stop. The nurse'll be in here any minute."

"Yeah? Bet you I can make you come before
she
does."

"Jack! You're a fucking nutcase, you are...Pack it in!"

But the connections I'd half feared had been
severed
were apparently still firing away. I
couldn
't believe the surge of my response.

Mortified, I tried to shrink away from him
--
from
his
knowledgeable hand, which seldom spent time
in
caressing or coaxing but sure as hell knew its
business
when it came to jerking me off. I groaned,
lifting
an arm to cover my eyes. "You can't do
this
."

"You can't stop me. Ah
--
sexy little animal
you
are, bonny lad, ready and up for it even
now
..."

Looked as if I was. Not for the first time in a
risky
place, either. Memories rose up, thinning the
mists
of pain and shock in which I'd been floating
for
the last few weeks. We'd done it in the locker
rooms
, hadn't we? Once in the lift when Jack had
jammed
it between floors, and even in the squad
room
--
an interview cell, just before the balloon
went
up on the night of the quayside raid. Then
we
'd gone out. The shoulder strap of his ballistic
vest
had been loose. I'd fastened it up for him.

We'd run and slithered down the muddy banks to
the
dockyard, and...

There was a shadow in Jack's touch as well
as
in his eyes. What the fuck was it? My blood
slowed
, cutting off unnecessary supply, and I lost
my
erection as suddenly as he'd conjured it.

Guilt. That was what I was seeing. That was
the
shadow.

"Stop it. Please."

"Ah, Vince. It's just the drugs they've got you
on
."

"Yeah. Probably it is. But let me go, okay? I
don
't want this."

He withdrew his hand. "All right. It was
doing
you good, though. Bet if I sucked you off,
you
could..."

"Tell me about that night. The raid."

Jack flopped down into the chair by the bed.

A long whooshing sigh escaped him. He ran a hand
into
his beautiful fair hair. "You know all about
that
already. I briefed Bill Hodges, and he said
he
'd told you."

"Yeah. He did. My memory's been screwed
up
, though, and... you were there with me."

"Okay. The raid was a bust. They were
waiting
for us. We walked into a trap, and you got
cornered
. You were trying to take out the sniper on
the
roof when another of the bastards fired from
behind
you."

"Bill said Sergeant Walsh shot both those
gunmen
."

"That's right. I got the call through,
and
Walshie came blazing in. He had a good vantage
from
the hill."