“Tea?” she called.
Joseph followed her in, taking a seat at the round wooden dining table that took up a corner of the kitchen. Dziko filled the kettle, then placed it on the hob.
“So was there cause for celebration?”
“Yes,” Joseph smiled, then he remembered the full story, and backtracked. “Well, no, not really.”
“Sounds complicated.”
“It is. A little. I stood up to someone.” Dziko nodded and said nothing in response to him, her eyes opened wide, her lips pursed as she did so, so he carried on. “Someone attacked someone, and I made them stop.”
“Ah, now that makes more sense,” she said as she rested herself against the worktop. “Is it something you can tell me more about?”
Joseph thought for a moment about the implications of telling her the story but in his impaired state he couldn’t decide what was fit for public consumption and what wasn’t. He knew that if the case ever got to trial, Dziko wouldn’t be on its jury, so it seemed fair game to tell her everything.
“We were following someone,” he began. “A man from the docks where that murder happened. Turned up where we didn’t expect him to.”
“Where?”
The kettle began to whistle as it reached boiling point.
“Just some gangster’s place out near Deptford. This fellow, he does a lot of naughty… lot of dodgy things, especially with the dockyards. The boats,” he tried his best to explain it all to her. Something about the way she looked at him, that slight smile on her face, looked a little like bewilderment, which didn’t make sense. He didn’t think what he was saying was complicated. Why would she be looking at him like that? He hiccupped.
“The boats, yes,” she said softly as she took the kettle off the heat and poured water into the teapot, which meant more than one cup. That was good. He hadn’t needed a drink before, but now he was parched. And hungry.
“Mmm,” he found himself agreeing with her, but he wasn’t sure why. “Well, we don’t know what he was doing, so we went to find him and then, we, well, I mean, me, I found him being beaten up.”
“Who by?” she asked, placing a cup of tea in front of him.
“Well, I don’t know that. I shouted and he ran off. I made him run. I saved the chap. The first chap. Not the second one. He ran away.”
She sat down opposite him, sipping her tea as she did, before placing the cup down. “Were you scared?”
He wanted to say no. The beer gave him a new level of bluster, but it would be futile. She would see through it. She knew who he was. “Of course,” he said sobering up as he did so. Or maybe his bubble had just burst? He couldn’t tell.
Dziko leaned forward, her smile still on her face, hands reaching out to his. “That’s good.”
“It is?” He didn’t know why.
“You were scared and you still stepped in. That’s real courage. Not the sort that comes in a glass jug for two and fourpence.”
He felt himself growing again. She knew what to say to him. She always knew.
“Come on,” she smiled. “Drink your tea and let’s get you to bed.”
21.
The morning brought heavy heads to both Joseph and Ray, although if Ray hadn’t mentioned it when he saw Joseph rubbing his temples at his desk, it would have been hard for Joseph to tell. Thankfully, the WPCs from the floor below had put the urn on ahead of the CID shift starting, so they had plenty of tea and sugar to help take the edge away.
“Plan of action,” Ray said as they washed down the second round of drinks. “Head over to the hospital, see what our man Harry has to say for himself.”
“Will he be up for visitors yet?” Joseph asked. He wasn’t sure that he was up for visiting yet, never mind Harry.
“The matron called this morning. Says he’s on the up. Good enough for me,” Ray replied, much to Joseph’s disappointment. He could have happily hidden behind his desk for the rest of the day.
A grey blanket of low cloud had invaded London, hovering just above the rooftops, keeping it from being a mist. It made everything seem smaller, as if contained within some giant’s terrarium. It kept Joseph from wanting to look up. Moisture hung in the air, coating their coats and spraying in their faces as they walked to the hospital from the car. The cold fresh water helped invigorate Joseph. Inside the building the air was stuffy and thick from the heating and his sweats quickly returned.
The hospital was far quieter than when they had arrived the day before. It was still early. Less time for people to have had mishaps at work, or to have got themselves into whatever sort of scrape that would send them scurrying to casualty.
The matron from the night before greeted them as they arrived on the ward, her face stern. When she spoke, it was to the point and her tone made clear that there was no room for rebuttal. She told them that Harry had slept most of the night and been “absolutely no bother at all.” Joseph wondered how many patients were bother. Looking at the matron, Joseph couldn’t help but wonder what became of those who were “bother”.
They had put Harry into a private room, away from the other patients. As the matron explained this, she left them in little doubt it had not been her preferred option. She complained about her staff being pulled “hither and tither”, “and all for what?” she had asked. “To look after some silly young so-and-so who had got himself into a scrape he couldn’t handle?” It made Joseph glad that they hadn’t told her much more. She seemed the type who may have gone in and interrogated Harry herself. She certainly would have left him with a flea in the ear.
Harry looked a mess when they got to him. Both of his eyes were blackened and swollen, although not fully closed. A large cut ran up from his lip to the side of his nose, stitched together, the stitches dark red with old blood. Joseph had to assume that they would be at least cleaned if not changed before too long. He shuffled in the bed, wincing from some hidden injury, trying to sit more upright as Joseph pulled the curtain around them.
“Quite the day you had,” Ray said, standing over the bed as Joseph moved next to him, notepad out, ready to write.
Harry said nothing. His tongue licked against the crust of the scabs and dried blood around his lips.
“Matron didn’t say you’d lost your voice,” Ray went on. “Let’s start at the beginning. What brought you to Tommy Jay’s warehouse?”
Harry looked up at them through puffy eyelids, which hid any sign of emotion from his face. He could have been scowling or smiling at them, they would never know. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Ray parroted.
“I don’t remember anything about yesterday.”
“Nothing?” Ray asked dubiously.
