Free Lost by Michael Robotham Page A

you went off half-cocked like some maverick Hol ywood vigilante and got yourself shot.”
    Campbel is close now. I can see the dandruff in his eyebrows. “Howard Wavel murdered Mickey Carlyle. And if that sick, perverted, murdering son of a bitch walks free because of you, there won't be a police officer in the Met who wil ever work with you again. You're finished.” A deep continuous vibration has built up inside me, like the sound of a ship's engine deep within a hul .
    “We have to investigate. People died on that boat.”
    “Yeah! For al I know, you shot them!”
    My resolve is disintegrating. I don't know enough details to argue with him. Whatever happened on the river was my fault. I stirred up something poisonous and nobody wants to help me.
    Campbel is stil talking. “I don't know what you did, Vincent, but you made some serious enemies. Stay away from Rachel Carlyle. Stay away from this. If you jeopardize Wavel 's conviction—if I hear so much as a mouse fart from you—your career is finished. That's a cast-iron fucking guarantee.” He's gone then, storming down the corridor. How long was I unconscious, eight days or eight years? Long enough for the world to change.

    The Professor arrives, his cheeks red from the cold. He hovers in the doorway as though waiting for an invitation. Behind him I see Ali sitting on a chair. She is now official y my shadow.
    There are metal detectors being instal ed in the lobby and my medical personnel are being screened. Maggie isn't among them. I am responsible.
    Although I've been over it a dozen times with detectives, I don't mind talking to Joe about the attack because he asks different questions. He wants to know what I heard and smel ed. Was the guy breathing heavily? Did he sound scared?
    I take him on a guided tour, showing him where the fight took place. Ali stays two paces away from me, scanning the corridors and rooms.
    Leaning on my crutches, I watch Joe do his mad professor routine, pacing out distances, crouching on the floor and studying angles.
    “Tel me about the gas leak.”

    “One of the delivery drivers noticed the smel first but they couldn't find the source. Someone opened up a valve on one of the feeder pipes from the gas tanks near the loading docks.”
    Joe kicks at the ground as though trying to make it even. I can almost see his mind moving forward and backward as he tries to reconstruct what happened.
    Out loud now, he says, “He knew his way around the hospital but he didn't know which room you were in. Once he evacuated the floors there was nobody to ask.” Joe turns and strides down the corridor. I struggle to keep up without overbalancing. He stops beneath a CCTV camera and reaches toward it as if holding a spray can. “He must have been about six two.”
    “Yeah.”
    He continues to the nursing station, eyes darting over the long narrow counter and kitchenette. There are clipboards hanging on a wal . Each one corresponds to a patient.
    “Where did you find Maggie?”
    “On the floor.”
    Joe drops to his knees and then lies down, with his head toward the sink.
    “No, she was lying this way, with her head almost under the desk.”
    Jumping to his feet, he stands facing the clipboards and half closes his eyes. “He was looking at the clipboards to find your room number.”
    “How do you know?”
    Joe crouches and I fol ow his outstretched finger. There are two black smudges on the baseboard made by the heels of the fireman's boots. “Maggie came up the corridor. She was coming back to get you. He heard her coming and he stepped back to hide . . .”
    I can picture Maggie bustling up the corridor, admonishing herself for being late.
    “As she passed the doorway, she turned her head. He struck her with his elbow across the bridge of her nose.” Joe tumbles to the floor and lies where she fel . “Then he went to your room but you had already gone.”
    Al this sounds reasonable.
    “There is something I don't understand. He could have