Going Wrong by Ruth Rendell

Author:Ruth Rendell
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3, pdf
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media LLC
Published: 2010-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

Robin Chisholm wasn’t dead or even badly injured. Guy felt angry with Maeve for causing Leonora unnecessary anxiety. The woman made a drama out of everything. No doubt going in the ambulance to hospital with him and seeing him taken off for a brain scan had made her hysterical. But as far as Guy could tell, Robin had simply got a mild concussion and a few cuts and bruises. To add to that black eye, he thought.

She had told her tale after Leonora had ministered to her with an aspirin and a glass of the stuff he wouldn’t dignify with the name of wine that came out of that cardboard box.

“We were coming out of the park, you know that bit where the roads sort of meet and come out into the Bayswater Road and there are lights and everything, where the Royal Lancaster is. I don’t know what you call it.”

“The Victoria Gate,” said Guy.

She took no notice of him. She hadn’t since she came in. He might as well not have been there, except that it wasn’t natural, when talking, to avoid ever looking to the right side of the room. She kept her bead turned away the way she might if there were vomit on the floor.

“Well, we were coming from the Kensington Gardens side, we were going to go in the Swan for a drink. You know it’s always dicey crossing the road there because the traffic tears round the—is it called the Ring? So we were very very careful but naturally looking to the right, if you see what I mean, we didn’t think the left mattered on account of the lights being red and nothing being there anyway. And men it happened. This car came tearing out of whatever that road’s called by the side of Hyde Park Gardens …”

“Brook Street,” said Guy, expecting no acknowledgement and getting none.

“Robin had gone over ahead of me. My shoe-lace was undone. I was bending down doing up my shoe-lace, only he didn’t realize and he’d gone on over. This car came tearing out of nowhere—well, out of”—she looked at him at last—“Brook Street, I suppose, right through the red light; the lights might not have been there for all the notice he took. Thank God Robin’s pretty quick on his feet and I saw and I yelled. I screamed out, ‘Robin! Look out!’ The car hit him, but only a glancing blow. It didn’t hit his head, he hit his head on a lamp-post.

“There are never any police about when you want them, are there? A great crowd gathered, though, you can always depend on that. I wasn’t in shock then, the shock didn’t hit me for about an hour—well, it doesn’t, does it? Most of the people came there just to gawp and get the maximum thrill—you know the type—but there was one man with a bit of sense who phoned for an ambulance. The ambulance man asked me if I got the number of the car but of course I hadn’t, you have other things to think about at a time like that.

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