Free Heaven's Light by Graham Hurley Page A

gets shafted,’ he said quietly, ‘again and again.’
    At last, Charlie heard the authentic voice of the city hecounted his own. Paranoia went with the turf. Always had. Always would.
    ‘How?’ he said, leaning forward.
    The man across the table offered Charlie a wry shrug. He had an air of infinite weariness, touched by a conspiratorial good humour. ‘I’m a lawyer,’ he said, offering the word as a kind of explanation, ‘and lawyers know far too much about the small print.’
    Charlie stole a glance at Carthew. Carthew was back in his chair, his lips pursed, his fingers drumming impatiently on the file that lay before him. Any minute now, Charlie thought, he’ll be up on his feet again. More flip-charts. More statistics. More wish-fulfilment.
    He returned to the man across the table. According to the notes he’d made earlier, his name was Dekker. ‘Tell me,’ Charlie murmured, ‘about the small print.’
    It was half past eleven before Barnaby, free of client meetings, got back to the hospital. He parked the Mercedes opposite the Accident and Emergency Unit. Inside it looked different. There were new faces behind the reception desk and the rows of seats in the waiting area were largely occupied by young mothers doing their best to quieten bored kids.
    Barnaby went to the desk and gave his name to a middle-aged woman trying to juggle two telephones. He watched her scribbling his name on the back of a newly opened envelope. Finally, both phone conversations came to an end.
    ‘Can I help you?’
    Barnaby explained about Jess. His daughter had been brought in yesterday afternoon. He imagined she must havebeen transferred to one of the hospital’s wards. He wanted to see her. He needed the name of the ward. The woman was already flicking through the register and Barnaby followed her finger as it raced up and down the page, astonished at the sheer number of people who’d passed through the unit since he’d left.
    The woman looked up. ‘Jessie Barnaby?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘She went this morning.’
    ‘Went?’
    ‘Yes.’ The woman pointed at the right-hand column and Barnaby glimpsed a name and a scribbled signature. ‘Seven forty-five. She discharged herself.’
    ‘She can do that?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘She just walked out?’
    ‘I imagine so.’
    One of the kids in the seats behind Barnaby was howling, and the woman behind the desk offered the mother a wan smile. Barnaby bent forward, getting a better look at the register. He might have been at the post office, he thought, trying to trace a missing parcel.
    ‘I need to talk to a doctor,’ he said urgently, ‘someone who knows what’s going on.’
    The woman’s hand reached for the phone again. She pressed a series of numbers and told Barnaby to take a seat. Someone would be along soon.
    ‘But when?’
    ‘Soon.’
    ‘Yes, but I haven’t got all day.’ Barnaby tapped his watch.
    The woman was talking on the phone now, looking at Barnaby and shaking her head. A small haphazard queue had formed at the counter, headed by a man in his fifties.His shirt was torn and crusted with blood and vomit. He was swaying on his feet and when the woman asked his name he spent several seconds trying to remember it. Barnaby shuddered, thinking of Jessie’s flat again, the stinking basement, the shabby street outside. That’s where derelicts like this lived. These were the kind of people she’d chosen as neighbours.
    At length, a young doctor appeared. He had a muttered exchange with the woman behind the desk before walking across towards Barnaby, extending a hand and apologizing at once for being new. He’d been on the unit barely a week. One or two things were still a bit unfamiliar.
    ‘It’s my daughter,’ Barnaby was saying, ‘Jessie. It seems she’s gone.’
    ‘That’s right. She went this morning.’
    ‘Just like that?’
    ‘So I understand.’
    Barnaby gazed at him. Another blank. Another tract of no man’s land where people