Implant (DI Gardener 3)

“Why are you wearing Mr Sinclair’s clothes?” she asked him.

“What’s your name?” he asked her. “Who are you?”

She seemed to have lost her tongue.

Hobson helped her to find it by taking a couple of steps into the room, and raising the gun he’d found in the study level with her head.

The woman let out an involuntary yelp and went into a faint. She held on to the side of the table and eased herself into a chair.

“I’m waiting,” said Hobson.

“I’m his housekeeper,” she eventually said. “Would you please put that thing down?”

“Why? Am I making you nervous?”

“Oh, dear,” she cried, once again burying her head in her hands.

“Name!” shouted Hobson, banging the gun on the table.

She jumped so quickly she nearly fell out of the chair.

“Mabel Bradshaw.”

Hobson could see that it took every ounce of effort she had to utter those words, which meant he wasn’t going to obtain much information out of her by brute force.

He lowered the gun.

“Thank you, Mabel. You can calm down. It’s not you I’m after. I don’t want money, and I don’t want drugs. Don’t reckon either of those would be much use to me in my condition.”

“Is it medical help you’re after?”

“You could say that.”

She placed her hands on the table, continually twisting a handkerchief she had removed from the sleeve of her cardigan.

“If it’s Dr Sinclair you want, I’m sure he won’t be far away.”

“Now you’re talking my language.”

“I’m sure he can help you. What is it? What’s wrong with you?”

“You’d better ask the good doctor that.”

“Pardon?” replied Mabel Bradshaw, quite clearly not grasping the situation.

“Surprise you, that, does it?”

“I really don’t follow you, Mr…?”

“Hobson. I said, you’d better ask your boss, the doctor, just what the hell it is he’s done to me.”

Mabel Bradshaw blew her nose. “Done to you?”

“Yes, done to me,” said Hobson. “Quite the man, your Mr Sinclair. I’ve been here a bloody long time.”

The housekeeper made no reply. Perhaps she was beginning to think the man in front of her was deluded. Maybe that he’d escaped from a local asylum. Well, she wouldn’t be far wrong with that one, would she?

He leaned in close to her, tiring of the game. He had no idea how much time he had left, but of one thing he was certain: he would make damn sure he lived long enough to finish off every last member of the Sinclair family, starting with psycho surgeon.