Part 4 (1/2)

'I cannot allow '

Sarah turned and walked away, while behind her the robot choked to a halt. At Reception, Sarah asked the young woman when visiting hours were.

'Mondays to Fri '

'I'll deal with this, Dawn,' the robot said. 'Ms Tucker, I'll have to ask you to leave.'

'This is ridiculous.'

'You are interfering with the smooth '

'I'm interfering with nothing. I'm concerned about a child. That is all.'

'Are you a relative?'

'No, but '

'Then there is nothing more to be said.'

'I don't agree.'

The robot's mouth twitched once. Twice. Somewhere deep behind her eyes lurked an una.s.suaged affront.

'Just tell me this. Is she all right?'

'I have no information on the patient.'

'What do you mean you've no '

'I have no information on the patient.'

Sarah's anger tipped into fear. All around, walls pulsed with the consequences of emergency. How could one small child survive the damage by the river? Wardrobe or no wardrobe. 'She's dead, isn't she?'

'I have no ' said the robot. Then she stopped.

'You know which child this is, don't you? There was an explosion.'

The mouth twitched again.

'It's a police matter. Shall we call the police? Do you want the police here instead of me?'

'You'll have to leave now. Or I shall call security.'

'If I go without seeing her,' Sarah said, 'I'm calling the police.'

'That won't help you.'

'Why not?'

A wrestling match took place in the robot's head: Sarah watched the coverage broadcast live on the robot's face. The disinclination to give out information versus dealing the clinching blow to Sarah's wants. The blow won.

'The patient,' she said, 'is no longer in the hospital.'

The patient was no longer in the hospital. What did that mean: she'd been transferred, discharged, what? Abducted by aliens? 'Are you actually in charge?' Sarah asked. 'I mean, who else can I speak to about this?'

The robot's eyes narrowed to slits, the kind you find on coastal defence bunkers. The ones they fire cannons through. 'I am in charge,' she hissed. 'Any enquiries you have will be dealt with by me.'

Sarah did not wait to hear it but turned and walked smartly out the front door, the best she could manage on the way being a wink at Dawn on Reception, pressganging the poor woman into an alliance against her horrible boss. Who was probably herself a hara.s.sed, overworked woman but there'd be time for rational sympathy later. At that moment, Sarah hoped the robot would soon step into a malfunctioning lift.

Out in the fresh air, she took a deep breath. It had been years since she'd smoked, but at times like this, of which there were thankfully few, she tended to monitor her stress receptors, putting that old chestnut about there being no such thing as an ex-smoker to the test. Everything seemed normal. No outraged nicotine centre screaming its shredded lungs out. She expelled air carefully, relieved that tobacco slavery was a thing of the past, and headed for the car.

Where a man leant against her driver's door: long-haired, bearded; wearing shades today, but she recognized him. Anywhere but here and now broad daylight, people, a hospital she'd have screamed. You read about this: women finding strangers by their cars, wielding sob stories, looking for lifts. Afterwards, you'd know they had tools in their bags: saws and pliers, cutting knives. Never trust anybody you meet on the street. If Sarah had children, that would be lesson one. Never trust anybody you meet. But this man carried no bag, and his hands hung loosely by his sides, palms out, as if he were aware of the dangers flas.h.i.+ng through her mind, and wanted them out of the way. He spoke first.

'Who are you?'

b.l.o.o.d.y cheek.

'You were on the bridge, with the other women. Now you're here. What do you want?'

'I want my car,' Sarah said. She had her keys in hand, prepared to throw them in his face. Or slash out; leave railway tracks down his b.l.o.o.d.y cheek.

'I don't mean to scare you. But you're here for Dinah, aren't you? Where is she?'

'I want my car,' she said through gritted teeth. 'Would you get out of the way?'

He didn't move. 'Are you a social worker?'

'f.u.c.k off!' She moved round and opened the pa.s.senger door. He didn't try to stop her. But he watched through the windscreen as she squeezed into the driving seat, and she wished she'd worn a longer skirt. She wound the window down. 'And who are you?'

'They're friends of mine,' he said.

'The Singletons?'

'All of them.'

'There were only two,' she said stupidly. Then he turned and walked off, his ponytail bouncing against his neck as he went. He didn't look back. Whatever he'd wanted, she didn't have.

Sarah's hands were shaking, even once she'd taken a grip on the steering wheel. She felt, now it was over, that she'd spent the past five minutes being beaten up. The patient is no longer in the hospital. Where the patient was was no business of Sarah's. But it could not be right, this humourless rejection of a simple enquiry; nor did she enjoy being lurked for in car parks, when all she wanted was to ascertain the fate of one orphaned child. A spurt of anger fuelled her into action, and she twisted the ignition key harshly. There were other uniforms, she thought, than the white one the robot wore. Not a natural-born police enthusiast, she at least recognized when matters fell within their jurisdiction. And as she reversed from her parking s.p.a.ce the statue in the fountain stirred in the back of her mind, as if it could tell her a thing or two about survival, about resurrection; about how they did not always end in the happy ever after.

IV.

The agency was sandwiched between a pub and a newsagent's, and while the advert in Yellow Pages specified hi-tech, the reality did not run to a working doorbell. After pressing twice Sarah tried the door, which opened on a staircase leading up to a small landing, where a framed print of dreaming spires hung next to another door. The legend read Oxford Investigations, and below that, in upper case, Joseph Silvermann BA. She tapped on the gla.s.s. Maybe Joseph Silvermann BA was hard of hearing. When she pushed it, this door opened too hard of hearing and short on locks and Sarah found herself in what looked like a secretary's room: a desk with a phone and intercom and electric console, and a couple of plastic chairs lined against the wall. A coat rack stood next to a closed connecting door, and more dreaming spires, taken from a different angle, brightened the wall. Through the door came voices, mostly a woman's. It did not sound pleased. A male kept attempting a counterpoint, but she couldn't hear what he was saying: it was just a ba.s.s stutter, poking through the gaps in the harangue.

' just try growing up, even. I mean Jesus Christ, you're old enough. Or is that too much to ask?'

'Oh f.u.c.k off, Joe.'

Leaving suggested itself as a bright next move. The last thing she needed was a homegrown version of Moonlighting, especially after her brush-off from the regular cops. The police station was opposite the Crown and County Courts, a proximity helping foster the illusion that the law was efficient, travelled in short straight lines, and knew exactly where it was headed. There was a busy road to cross between the two, though, and maybe this accounted for the casualties along the way. Certainly Sarah's experience suggested that justice was not so much abstract as un.o.btainable given the materials at hand, chief among these being the bored, or possibly stupid, desk sergeant who had taken the details she offered him and proceeded to put them together in a bewildering variety of ways, their common thread being his inability to come anywhere near the truth.