The Consultant's Italian Knight. Maggie Kingsley

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      She’d kept on believing them even when John had started muttering that he hardly ever saw her. She hadn’t even worried when he’d begun booking himself on seminars without talking to her about them first, but her morning’s post had burst her illusory bubble once and for all. You couldn’t have it all. Or, at least, she couldn’t.

      ‘Did you forget something, Terri?’ she said, wiping her eyes quickly with the back of her hand as she heard the sound of the cubicle curtains opening behind her.

      ‘I’m not Terri.’

      He wasn’t. He was the dark-haired, olive-skinned man from the waiting room and, as he advanced towards her, she wondered why she had ever thought him attractive. Up close, with a twoday stubble that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a convict, and a good sixteen inches taller than she was, he looked even more intimidating than he had at a distance.

      ‘I’m sorry, but we don’t allow friends or family members into this part of A and E,’ she said with a calmness she was very far from feeling. ‘If you’d care to wait outside—’

      ‘I’m not a friend or family.’

      That didn’t surprise her. In fact, she had a sudden horrifying suspicion that he was probably the man who had put Duncan Hamilton into A and E in the first place.

      ‘If you’re not a friend, or family, you’ll definitely have to wait outside,’ she said. ‘Somebody—’ hopefully not her ‘—will be able to give you an update on Mr Hamilton’s condition in a few minutes.’

      The man glanced down at Duncan Hamilton.

      ‘Not much need of an update when he’s rather obviously dead,’ he said. ‘What I’m more interested in is what he might have said to you before he died.’

      That didn’t sound good, and neither did the way this man was looking at her.

      ‘We don’t give out information to non-relatives,’ she declared, ‘so will you please go back to the waiting room.’

      He didn’t look as though he was going to. In fact, a look of distinct irritation appeared on his face and, as he reached inside his leather jacket, every police drama she had ever seen on TV suddenly flashed into her mind.

      He was going to kill her. He was Duncan Hamilton’s fixer, or agent, and though his accent was surprisingly Scottish he was probably a member of the Mafia as well, and he was going to kill her.

      But that didn’t mean she had to give in without a fight, she decided.

      ‘OK, I’ve tried polite!’ she exclaimed, snatching a syringe from the instrument trolley beside her, ‘but polite is clearly something you don’t understand. This syringe contains a sample of your friend’s blood and if I’m not very much mistaken he’s probably HIV positive. Come one step closer to me and you’re going to be HIV positive, too.’

      He glanced down at the syringe, then at her. ‘That syringe is empty.’

      Damn, and blast, but she’d picked up the wrong one.

      ‘It’s…plasma.’ She bluffed. ‘Plasma is a part of blood, but it has no colour—’

      ‘Lady, that syringe is empty, and I am…’ He reached inside his jacket again, and she closed her eyes.

      This was it. She was dead, finished, history, and she could see the newspaper headlines now.

      Forty-five-year-old, divorced female consultant…because the newspapers always got your age wrong…murdered at the General Infirmary. Ms Kate Kennedy was found lying in a pool of blood having been shot at close range by—

      ‘…Inspector Mario Volante.’

      Her eyes flew open to see the man was holding out a police identity badge towards her and felt more foolish than she’d ever done in her life.

      ‘You’re a policeman,’ she said faintly. ‘But you…’

      Quickly she bit off the rest of what she’d been about to say. Maybe he was undercover, and it was part of his brief to look scruffy. And then again, maybe she was just an idiot.

      ‘You thought I was some sort of hit man, didn’t you?’ he said, his mouth twitching into a smile, and she flushed.

      ‘What else was I supposed to think?’ she demanded. ‘You appear out of nowhere, looking like…’

      ‘Like what?’ he said, clearly confused, and the colour on her cheeks darkened.

      ‘The way you’re dressed…All the policemen I’ve ever seen have worn uniforms, with caps, and badges, and…and stuff.’

      ‘I’m CID, Drugs Squad, as is my colleague, Detective Sergeant Evanton. We don’t go in for uniforms, and caps, and badges, and…stuff.’

      He was laughing at her. She knew he was, and nobody—but nobody—laughed at Kate Kennedy.

      ‘You don’t sound Italian, Inspector Volante,’ she said tersely, and his eyebrows rose.

      ‘I was born in Aberdeen to an Italian father and a Scottish mother, but even if both my parents had been Italian that doesn’t mean I have to sound like I’m auditioning for a part in The Godfather.’

      It was a rebuke, and a just one. It also, she thought, explained his amazingly blue eyes.

      ‘Let’s cut to the chase, Inspector Volante,’ she declared, tossing the syringe back onto the instrument trolley. ‘As you so correctly noticed, Mr Hamilton is dead, so neither you nor your colleague is going to get any information out of him.’

      ‘Did he say anything to you before he died?’

      ‘Just some names and addresses—nothing that made any sense—and now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a waiting room full of sick people—’

      ‘I want to hear what he said.’

      ‘And didn’t you hear what I said?’ she exclaimed. ‘It was just a random list of names, and addresses, and I’m busy. B-U-S-Y.’

      He squinted at her name tag.

      ‘Dr Kennedy, I’m busy, too,’ he said, his tone even, ‘and if you don’t give me ten minutes of your time I’ll take you downtown and book you for obstruction and, believe me, that will take a whole lot longer than ten minutes particularly if we include the strip search.’

      He meant it. She could tell from the cold, hard gleam in his blue eyes that he meant it, and she gritted her teeth.

      ‘OK. All I can remember him saying—’

      ‘Not here,’ he interrupted. ‘I want somewhere quiet—private—where we can’t be overheard. What’s through there?’ he added, nodding at the door at the end of the treatment room.

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