Where There's A Will

Chapter Twenty-Four

Constable Robin Day stifled a yawn as he slouched a little lower on the chair he occupied outside the hospital room which held Julia Harris and Brian Jacobs. He had an easy assignment that was putting him to sleep, but he was startled into full wakefulness by a sudden burst of music.

He shot to his feet as though scalded, and looked around a little wildly for the source of the music. It took him a moment to realise that the music was coming from the room he had been ordered to guard. Pushing open the door he entered the room. It was dark, the only illumination came from the corridor behind him, and the machines monitoring the two patients, but Day had no difficulty figuring out where the music was coming from; it's source was a plastic bag on a chair in the corner of the room. The bag held Brian Jacobs' clothes, and in the inside pocket of the chauffeur's jacket he found the man's mobile phone, which chose that moment to stop ringing.

A quick check of the phone revealed that the missed call came from someone called Penny. Day slipped the phone back into the pocket, since the call had no bearing on his duty at that time, though he made a mental note to let DI Stone know about it at the first opportunity. Of more immediate interest to him was the envelope he found in the same pocket, an envelope addressed not to Brian Jacobs but to Owen Keating.

"This it?" Stone asked, indicating the envelope and sheet of paper which sat on the table at the end of Brian Jacobs' bed.

Though the room's main light blazed overhead, neither the chauffeur nor Julia Harris showed any sign of being aware of it – they were equally oblivious to the small group that was taking up all the space in the room. Brian Jacobs was still unconscious, and Julia Harris remained in shock.

"Yes, sir," Day said with a nod. "I found it in the inside pocket of his jacket when his phone rang."

Stone slipped on a pair of latex gloves, to avoid contaminating any fingerprints or DNA evidence there might be, and then picked up the envelope and ransom note in turn. There was little for him to see - the envelope looked no different to millions of others, and the ransom note, a brief thing printed in black ink, was on a very ordinary sheet of white paper. The paper and the envelope might be ordinary, which would make it hard for the forensics team to get anything from them, but Stone had confidence that they would discover something, whether it was some minute trace of DNA or a fingerprint.

"At least we know what they want now," Stone remarked to Burke, who was standing at his shoulder. "It's not much." He was caught out by a yawn, which reminded him that he had been on his feet for almost fifteen hours, and it was likely to be a while longer before he could get any sleep. "But it's something." Carefully, he slipped both the envelope and the ransom note into the clear plastic bag his partner held for him. "Take it to the station, would you, Steven, and tell the lab boys I want it gone over ASAP, this is top priority, ahead of anything else they might be doing."

"Sure, Nate." Without another word Burke turned and left the room with the plastic evidence bag. Before he headed to the police station, however, he found himself a vending machine, from which he got a cup of black, heavily sweetened, vile-tasting coffee.