Yesterday's Battles by Jack Whyte

Author:Jack Whyte [Last, First name]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Iguana Books
Published: 2020-08-20T00:00:00+00:00

***

He woke up in a white-painted room, the sour taste of vomit in his mouth and a face with steel-rimmed spectacles inches from his own.

Pain raddled him as blackness came again, and people far away were calling his name, and he wanted to open his eyes and be back in Alberta, back in the bush, but they wouldn’t let him go. He opened his eyes and there was still a face inches from his own. This time it was a woman’s. And behind her, looking down over her shoulder, someone else, someone familiar. Sabatini! How in the hell had they got Sabatini? Pain again, and the blackness coming back . . .

He awoke next time to the sound of utensils tinkling on a passing trolley and followed the nurse with his eyes as she went along the ward.

“Well! Rip Van Winkle has rejoined us.”

He turned his head slightly and there was Sabatini, sitting by the bedside, grinning at him. He swallowed, trying to clear his throat, then spoke, but nothing came out. He collected himself, breathing deeply and fighting down his panic, and tried again, and this time was able to generate a whispered croak. “Inspector. What’s up?”

“You are. Or you will be soon, they tell me. How are you feeling?”

He considered that, breathing deeply several times, and then nodded, or tried to. “Okay,” he said softly, instinctively careful. “I guess . . . What’s going on?”

“How d’you mean?”

“What am I doing here?” He moved to sit up and gasped as a tongue of pure agony flared around his rib cage.

“Steady on, Hudson! You won’t be able to move around much for another week or so, according to the quacks.”

“What quacks? What happened?”

“Do you remember what we talked about when I was here yesterday?”

“You were here yesterday?”

“Well I’ll be damned! You spoke to me for about half an hour yesterday, and I would have sworn you were fully rational at last.”

“At last?” Hudson closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. He waited for the pain to die down to the point where he could speak again. “Inspector, I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”

The inspector was sitting on a hospital chair, legs crossed, his raincoat folded over his lap, and he examined his fingernails with a musing look on his face. The thought crossed Hudson’s mind, as it had before, that Sabatini was the cinematically perfect senior British police detective.

“One of Big Paddy Reilly’s villains stuck a shiv in you. Almost made a job of it, too. An inch or so to the right and you’d have handed in your papers there and then. As it was, it was touch and go. For a long time nobody thought you were going to live.”

“Christ! I remember now. He came at me from the side. Big Paddy was throwing in the towel. Did you get him?”

“We got them all. We picked up the rest of the gang within twenty-four hours. Trial’s next week.”

“Next week! Jesus, that’s fast.”

“No, not particularly.

“Not particularly? Oh, shit.

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