Chapter 10

Where was your heart then,
My love, my soul, my one desire?
Where is your heart now
Still hidden away, locked and secure?
Where will your heart be tomorrow?
Don’t abandon it, mine is there too.
Loving on Annie-May (B. Lake) 2019

ZERO HOUR +68

I awoke in Pong, an old arcade game, the soft electronic noise of the ball striking the bat regular and steady in the darkness behind my closed eyes. The pain from my arm had muted to a dull ache, and the hammer pounding my brain had been switched from a jackhammer to a rubber mallet. Either way, it was still trying to ring the bell on the High Striker.

There was the scent of antiseptic and fresh, crisp linen, and I sighed with relief as I realised I was in a hospital, the arcade game noises coming from a monitor of some sort.

I opened my eyes, slowly focussing in on the white and grey ceiling panels above my bed.

Without thinking, I tried to raise my right arm, and found it held solid in a crooked pink cast. It was supported by a sling from a gallows-like contraption that loomed over the right side of the bed.

My left arm was supported by handcuffs that locked me to the low railings.

I jiggled it, unbelieving.

The wrist was bandaged neatly, the cuffs snug but not tight around the dressing.

Unfounded panic began to rise in me. Was this really a hospital? Had Murdoch risen to take revenge? Had his fellow-conspirators got me? Was this all a dream created by a maddened brain?

I jiggled the handcuffs frantically, causing the drip plugged into that arm to lash back and forth, and the arcade noise of the monitor to beat faster and faster. Then I heard the swishing susurration of a uniform and stockings and a nurse trotted into the room.

“Mr. Lake. You’re awake again. Welcome back.”

“Where am I?”

“Forest Drive Hospital,” she said brightly. “You’ve been here for almost a whole day. You were kinda messed up when you arrived, but the doctors sorted out your arm and your head. Are you in any pain?”

“My head hurts. Not as badly as it was, but it’s still pounding. What about Summer? Is she alright?”

The nurse looked blank. “Ah damn, I mean Charlotte...”

I couldn’t remember her surname for a moment.

“Kennedy,” I said after a long pause. “Charlotte Kennedy. Is she okay?”

“I’m not allowed to comment on other patients, Mr. Lake. Sorry.”

“Is she in the hospital? Can you tell me that?”

“ ... She was.”

“Was? Where is she now?” I felt panic rising.

“I really can’t say, Mr. Lake. Now, look at the light please.” She flicked a penlight on and aimed it at each of my eyes in turn. “Oh that’s much better. Your pupil is back to normal.”

“It was abnormal?” I asked.

“You had a severe concussion when you were brought in, and one of the signs is uneven pupil size. Your left one was so big, the emergency staff hustled you down for an MRI as soon as the medics brought you in. They wanted to check your eye socket for fractures as well, although that turned out okay. Then you were taken to surgery to get your arm sorted out. On the good side, it should be as good as new within six weeks. On the bad side, you’re going to set off the alarm whenever you go through a security check at airports from now on. They had to do an open reduction and put some extensive metal work in there – plates and pins. The surgeon was quite happy with how it turned out.”

She fussed around for a few moments, and then jotted down notes on my chart. Tapping her pen against her bottom lip, she frowned.

“I have to get your insurance details.”

“What insurance?”

“Your medical insurance.”

“I’m from Britain. We don’t have medical insurance.”

She frowned again. By all indications, this was a very bad thing. Very bad.

“We have the NHS,” I explained.

“Will they pay?”

“I dunno. I’ve never been in hospital outside Britain before. I know Americans get treated free there, so ... possibly.”

She looked troubled. “I’ll check with the office.”

“Look,” I said. “If someone can get my wallet from my car, I can sort it out. And my passport.”

She looked slightly embarrassed. “The police are holding your passport.”

I rattled the handcuffs. “So that’s why these are here. Is there someone I can speak to, or a phone I can use?”

“Let me check.”

She left the room and I heard her speaking to someone outside in the passage. When she came back, she was holding my phone.

“You can make one phone call, but I have to call the number for you. They want me to tell them who you called.” She said the last part in a whisper.

“I need to call my agent. He’s in the address book under Lappies.”

In seconds she had dialled the number and pressed the phone to my ear. It seemed everyone in the world was better at using a phone than I was. I felt like I belonged in an old-age home.

Karen answered the phone. “Hello, I’m afraid the agency is closed. Please call back tomor...”

“Karen!” I screamed. “It’s Bryn Lake, please don’t hang up! Karen!”

“Bryn?” she said after a moment, and I sighed with relief. Karen was a sweetheart in her late fifties who had a tendency to mother the more lost amongst the agency’s signings.

“Karen, I’m in a lot of trouble here in America. A whole lot. Please can you contact Lappies and...”

“I’ll put you straight through, Bryn. He’s still here, he just didn’t want to take any more calls. You talk to him and then he can give me the details. If needs be, I’ll catch a later train if we need to get things sorted out for you. Look after yourself!”

“Ja? Bryn? What’s up?”

I was so relieved to hear his voice that I had to take a couple of deep breaths before explaining the situation.

“Jislaik!” he said when I finished the long, sorry tale and he’d taken down all the details. His accent grew thicker as he mentally geared himself up. “You don’t mess about when you get yourself into problems, hey? Okay, sit vas ou kerel, and I’ll get things moving for you. I was wondering why the hell you didn’t turn up to those meetings in Nashville. Those bliksems were real snotty when they phoned to complain about you wasting their precious time. But don’t hassle about it, boetie. I’ll make a plan.”

“You might have a problem getting in contact with me,” I confessed, looking at the handcuffs again.

“Ja-well-no-fine. Don’t worry about it. Like I said, I’ve got you covered, my china. I’m all over it like white on rice.”

In that moment, I truly loved that guy. He rang off and I nodded to the nurse. “Thanks.”

I settled back onto the pillow and tried to take stock. I was seemingly under arrest on god-knows how many charges – and with a dead body involved, those could be very extensive – and Summer was lost in the wind. The police were holding my passport, and probably my wallet, and there was no way of knowing when I’d get them back. I’d used up the one phone call I was allowed, if the movies were correct. And I had no idea where my car or luggage was.

I knew nothing, and could do nothing. I was pretty useless when it came down to it. Summer’s face swam before me, and guilt flushed through my whole body. Once again, I hadn’t been able to save anyone.

The nurse adjusted the drip, and I fell asleep, thankful to stop the never-ending merry-go-round of my thoughts.

When I awoke, the world had turned some more, and my wallet, passport and phone were stacked up neatly on the locker alongside my bed. I also had two visitors; a finely groomed older woman, who wouldn’t have looked out of place on the cover of Vogue, and a younger, more nervous woman, who probably wouldn’t make a cover, but very possibly a centrefold.

I rattled my hand-cuff, only to feel its absence. The older woman noticed my surprise.

“I got the police to take them off. Such a silly thing for them to do in the circumstances. You were clearly a victim, and besides, where were you going to run to – even if you could?”

She stood and moved to my bedside. At an estimate, she was in her mid-fifties, but looked forties. She was short, with a blond coiffure and a figure that made you think of pictures of cheerleaders from the eighties. Nice.

“I’d shake your hand, but I’m not sure that would be painless for you in your condition.”

I didn’t offer a foot.

“Adelaide Morgan,” she said. “I’m your lawyer. This is Beth. She’ll be your assistant, minder, and general dogsbody for the rest of your time in our country.”

Beth pushed a chair closer for Adelaide to sit on, and drew another up alongside for herself. She was taller, slimmer, with straight dark hair, round glasses and an astonishing pair of norks for her figure – hence the centrefold.

“May I call you Bryn?” Adelaide asked. I nodded. Her whole attitude shouted power and supreme self-confidence. She must charge an absolute fortune, I thought. I hoped Lappies had negotiated a good deal, and then discarded the thought. Money was not part of this calculation.

“Let’s deal with things one at a time. First of all, Mr. Labuschagne ensured that you were fully insured on your travels, so your medical bills are fully covered, and the hospital has been informed.” I was surprised. She’d pronounced Lappies’ surname correctly, as Lab-oo-skag-knee with the ‘g’ formed in the back of the throat like the ‘ch’ in the Scottish loch. And she did it without sounding as if she was clearing her throat to hoik out a gob of phlegm. A classy lady.

“Next, the police have acknowledged that you are no longer a murder suspect and are no longer under arrest – which was quite frankly ridiculous all along. Your medical records show that the collision with Mr. Murdoch’s head – the cause of his death – was with the back of yours, and the biological evidence from the back of your head proves that. The evidence in the photographs I’ve seen show that you were unwillingly restrained and bound to a piece of furniture.

“Doctors are also firmly of the opinion that, because of the manner in which the broken bones occurred, the fracture to your arm was done by a deliberate act, which constitutes assault and battery on you, and therefore fulfils all the requirements for you to have acted purely in self-defence.

“With all that in hand, I persuaded the police to lift the arrest and free you immediately.”

“I’m not worried about that,” I said urgently. “I’m worried about Summer ... Charlotte Kennedy. She was with me when Murdoch took us.”

She pursed her lips and her voice grew sympathetic. “Miss Kennedy suffered a sexual assault. When she was brought to the hospital, the staff used a rape kit and established that she had undergone violent intercourse, and that, along with her severe bruising, has established that she was definitely raped.”

It sounded as if she was telling me something I was unprepared for.

“I know,” I said. “I was there. I could hear everything. But there’s something you have to know...”

I related the whole sorry tale of Summer’s abduction and torture. Adelaide looked shocked, and Beth was almost in tears.

“I’m pretty sure it was carefully calculated – a campaign of terror to try and push Charlotte into Stockholm Syndrome, where she’d form a bond with Murdoch, cooperate with her captors and allow them free use of her fortune and her inheritance.”

“I’ve heard of the syndrome, but I’ve never heard of it being deliberately employed,” Adelaide commented. “Not in this fashion.”

“Well, I heard the results of it,” I said, hearing the pain in my voice. “Summer – my nickname for her – got away from him, and when I met her, she was absolutely terrified of being put back in his control. When that did happen, he was incredibly cruel, then kind, then cruel again. You get the picture. He was constantly building up dependence within her, creating a need to please him in order to survive.

“At one point, not knowing he was already dead, she shot him five times. I think that was one of the most courageous things I’ve ever seen. And now I hear she’s been moved from a hospital once again, possibly by the same people who had her moved to the institute in Kansas in the first place. They are not going to want her talking!”

“But you said she had no idea who put her there in the first place,” said Beth, and then looked guiltily at Adelaide.

“That’s a good point,” the older woman agreed, and Beth relaxed again to the point where she merely looked on edge.

“I know who did it,” I said. “Well, I know how to identify them.”

I explained how after I met Summer, I’d used my phone only twice – both times to call Annie-May, and Summer had used my phone once, and yet Murdoch had somehow found and intercepted us in a forest.

“They tracked your GPS,” Adelaide breathed.

“Yes, and I’ll give you a million-to-one odds that it wasn’t a hotel receptionist that put this whole nasty shit together,” I offered.

“You can track that phone call,” Beth put in.

“I think so. All I have to do is find it in the log and press redial.”

They both looked at me expectantly. I pointed to my cast.

“I’ll do it,” offered Beth.

She took my phone, her fingers whizzing across the screen as if it had been created specifically for her.

Adelaide frowned. “Your phone wasn’t password secured?”

“I rarely use it,” I offered in explanation. I didn’t want to point out that my fingers were more like toes when it came to using smart phones.

“You must either be the most innocent or the most naive phone user in the world,” the blond smiled, which was nice. She was pretty when she smiled. Some prettiness in my world was a welcome change after the events of the previous day.

Beth was talking quietly while making rapid notes on a spiral-bound pad.

“Thank you,” she said and thumbed the phone off.

“Rylings, Cooper, Peese and Skeit,” she announced. “A law firm in Los Angeles.”

Adelaide pulled a face. “I know them by reputation; solid, reputable and old school. Not really ones you’d expect to pull this sort of crime.”

Beth hauled a tablet out of her bag and began working on it rapidly. Her fingers tapped the virtual keys as fast as mine did on a keyboard. She paused for a moment to take a photo of the tablet with her phone, and then started drumming away on the tablet once more, looking over at her phone now and again.

While her assistant beavered away, Adelaide and I made small talk, in which she first gained my confidence and then access to my musical history. She was delighted to discover that she’d danced to one or two of my songs. I in turn, discovered from her that my car had been released from the police pound, had been cleaned and detailed and driven to a nearby hotel, where mine and Summer’s suitcases had been safely stored pending my release from hospital. They’d even sorted out clothes for my eventual release, packed them into a little gym bag she’d obtained, and brought it with them, storing it under my hospital bed.

“Beth’s work. She’s absolutely the best assistant I ever had,” whispered Adelaide. “And she’s single.”

What is it about women and their need to try and hook up every unmarried person they know with each other? Three days before, I might ... no, I definitely would have been interested. But Summer had taken over my life by storm.