Chapter 45
FORTY-FIVE
Gina’s stomach churned as she waited near the accident and emergency side room that Briggs was being treated in.
She peered through the crack in the door.
A nurse stood beside him, checking all the beeping machines.
She gasped when the nurse moved aside, revealing the extent of Briggs’s injuries.
‘Are you family?’ she asked. Gina couldn’t take her gaze off his bruised, battered face.
Brodie stepped in and held his identification up. ‘Police. Can we speak with him? He’s a colleague.’
The nurse turned to her patient and he half prised an eye open. ‘Mr Briggs, are you up to speaking?’
Briggs mumbled something that Gina thought might be a yes.
‘Not too long, okay.’
‘Okay.’ Gina ran over to his bedside. ‘Chris…’
‘Is that you, Gina?’ He could barely focus through his swollen eyes. He yelled in pain as he tried to move.
‘Yes, I’m with DCI Fraser who has stepped in to work on the case.’ She hoped he’d now know not to say anything too personal about their relationship.
Brodie stepped in and Gina moved aside. She was lucky to be there and one wrong word or move could get her thrown off the case.
She had no option but to let Brodie lead.
‘DCI Briggs, sorry to meet you under such horrible circumstances. Can you tell us anything about the incident and what happened to you?’
‘He came up from…’ Briggs paused, his words still a little slurred. ‘I think he drugged my drink. There’s a glass… I spilled most of it thankfully… there’s a towel on the settee that I mopped it up with… it might be Rohypnol, maybe something like that…’
Brodie interrupted. ‘The crime scene team are there at the moment.’
‘I felt really weird so I opened a can of pop to replace the drink I’d spilled. I thought… maybe I was dehydrated… woozy…’
Gina knew the team at his house would probably find traces of her.
She was glad she’d been on the case day and night; she couldn’t possibly be considered a suspect.
They’d made love in his bedroom. She’d used his shower and they’d lain together on his couch last winter while watching Christmas films. A lump formed in her throat.
She swallowed it down. The love they used to have was in the past. She was there to investigate who had hurt him and she had to do her job.
After pulling out a notepad, she sat on the plastic chair backed against the wall, poised to take notes.
‘He came from behind and covered my head with a pillowcase. I fought… even though my head was spinning… he bashed me in the face with something. It might have been, err… I can’t think…
it felt like a smooth, hard, metal stick or pole.
It felt solid, not hollow. I was hit over and over again…
’ He half opened an eye and flinched. ‘Bloody hell, I feel like crap.’ He closed his eyes again.
Metal stick – Gina noted that down while thinking of the piece of blue metal that had been found in Fabien Stone’s warehouse.
Gina fought the urge to go over to comfort him.
Had Brodie not been in the room, she’d have sat closer but Briggs didn’t want that anyway.
He’d protect her in her job but that was it.
She’d always love him and she should have known something was wrong when they spoke on the phone.
He was nothing like Terry. Being drugged had confused him and she’d jumped to the conclusion that he’d been drunk.
‘Did you hear or see anything unusual in the run up to the attack?’
‘I, err, my dog kept barking. I stumbled to the door to let her out, then I sat back down and knew there was something wrong. I came over woozy and nauseous and my phone, I couldn’t find it and I knew I needed to call an ambulance, that’s when I was hit…’
‘Do you remember anything else in the run up?’ Brodie asked.
Briggs flinched and placed a hand across the side of his face.
‘Ouch… the run up. I don’t know. I have had so much on my mind with the investigation and being questioned, I wasn’t thinking.
Uniform have been checking up on me and they’d just left…
’ He dabbed his sticky eyes and flinched. ‘I must look like a monster.’
Far from it, for the first time in all the years she’d known him, he looked vulnerable.
‘The neighbour must have scared him away. She heard the dog… she’s my dog sitter so she knew something was wrong… She has a key and as she came in, he ran out the back…’
‘Did you see him at all?’
‘No.’
‘How do you know it was a man?’
Briggs sighed and paused. ‘His voice. He said all debts must be paid in full.’
Gina gasped for breath and held her hand over her mouth. She didn’t want Brodie to turn around and see her coping badly with this news but they had Fabien in custody. It couldn’t be him. He could be working with Craig Crawford but he wasn’t the attacker.
Brodie’s phone beeped. ‘Bear with me a moment.’ He stepped out of the room, leaving the door open while he made his call.
‘Sorry, could you please make the call over there?’ a nurse asked as she tried to wheel a gurney past him with the help of a porter.
They were alone. Gina stood and hurried over to Briggs. ‘I was so worried. I’m sorry, I should have known something was wrong when I called.’
‘It’s okay. I wasn’t myself. I don’t know what came over me. It’s all going to be okay. I didn’t tell him you called but they’re going to look at my phone so you have time to work it out.’
‘I’ve already told Brodie. Don’t worry about that now. I’m here now so it looks like they’ve cleared you.’
‘You thought I could be involved in killing those men, Gina… did you really think that?’
‘I don’t know. It’s a confusing case. I’m sorry. If you need anything when you come out, let me know, or I can pick you up. You can stay at mine if you need. In the spare room.’
‘Gina, stop. My brother is coming down from up north to stay with me. I have it covered.’ He forced his eyes open again.
‘I only meant to help… nothing more.’
‘I know.’ He forced a smile that cracked a scab in the corner of his mouth.
‘Ouch.’ He exhaled slowly. ‘I worked with Zavier and Kain in my twenties. You have to look up a name. Barry something. When he said that I had to pay the debt, it clicked because… Sorry, my mind is a total blank. It was about thirty years ago when I was stationed at Kidderminster, the teddy bears. I was a custody sergeant and I checked in a personal item. A bear, a small bear… Ahh.’ He screamed and a nurse ran in.
‘How do you know about the bear?’ Gina leaned over him but Briggs screamed out in pain again.
‘I’m sorry. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’ The nurse ushered her out while starting to prep a syringe.
Briggs screamed again. That’s when Gina noticed that the dressing had come off his arm exposing a huge open wound. ‘When can we speak to him again?’
‘I can’t answer that yet. We’re trying to manage the pain at the moment. Call back later or in the morning.’
‘I believe you, Chris,’ she said quietly as the nurse ushered her out.
She almost bumped into Brodie outside the door.
He popped his phone back in his pocket. Gina blinked a few times to get rid of the tears forming in her eyes.
Seeing Briggs like that had been a shock.
‘Sorry, it got bad in there. Did you see his arm?’
‘No.’
‘It was covered up when we went in but it’s all open. He must have got hit really hard. He just started yelling in pain and I… the nurse told me I had to leave.’ She raised her brows and blinked a couple of times before looking up at Brodie. ‘Was the message to do with the case?’
Brodie nodded. ‘They found a small blue bear. DCI Briggs’s neighbour was standing outside asking if he was okay and PC Smith saw it in the dog’s mouth. We have a couple of officers on their way here. We can’t leave the DCI alone while the case is ongoing.’
‘Do you think they’ll come back?’
‘Yes, whoever attacked him wanted him dead. A hosepipe had been attached to the hot kitchen tap. I’m theorising that the killer was going to wait until whatever drug he’d given to DCI Briggs had taken effect before feeding the hose into his mouth and drowning him.’
Gina leaned against a cold wall as she fought the panic brewing up within her.
Medical staff carried on about their duties all around her and all Gina could do was imagine the scene they could have been attending had Briggs not spilled his drink.
‘We need to get to Justine’s mother’s, speak to her and her son again and see how the family liaison officer is getting on.
’ She realised she’d said all that at speed and wondered if Brodie had even properly heard her.
‘The three friends, Justine, Lindy and Pia are the thread in all this, I know it.’ She took another deep breath and tried to push the image of the hosepipe out of her head.
‘Do you need a break, Gina? You and the DCI have known each other for a long time. It’s a lot to take in when one of your own has been attacked like that.’
‘The whole department has known him for a long time and no, I don’t need a break. We need to catch the killer before Lindy’s body turns up, so no thank you to the break.’
‘But you and DCI Briggs worked closely, maybe closer than the rest.’
‘What do you mean?’ It was as if Brodie could read her thoughts. ‘I just care, that’s all. We’re all like family at Cleevesford. You never stop caring—’ There, she’d said it.
‘I agree and I understand,’ he replied, as if he knew. ‘I never stopped thinking or caring about you, Gina.’