Something Rotten (Thursday Next 4)

Second First Person

YACHT CHOICE OF FAMED LITERARY DETECTIVE A MYSTERY

The shooting of Thursday Next last Saturday leaves the question of her favourite yacht unanswered, our Swindon correspondent writes. 'From the look of her I would expect a thirty-two-foot ketch, spinnaker-rigged and with a Floon automatic pilot.' Other yachting commentators disagree and think she would have gone for something larger, such as a sloop or a yawl, although it is possible she may only have wanted a boat for coastal day work or a long weekend, in which case she may have gone for a compact twenty-footer. We asked her husband to comment on her taste in sailing but he declined to give an answer.

Article in Yachting Monthly, July 1988

I was watching her, right up to the moment she was shot. She looked confused and tired as she walked back from the penalty, and the crowd roared when I shouted to get her attention, so she didn't hear me. It was then that I saw a man vault across the barrier and run up to her. I thought it was a nutty fan or something and the shot sounded more like a firecracker. There was a puff of blue smoke and she looked incredulous for a moment and then she just crumpled and collapsed on the turf. As simple as that. Before I knew what I was doing I had handed Friday to Joffy and jumped over the barrier, moving as fast as I could. I was the first to reach Thursday, who was lying perfectly still on the muddy ground, her eyes open, a neat red hole two inches above her right eye.

Someone yelled: 'Medic!' It was me.

I switched to automatic. For the moment the idea that someone had shot my wife was expunged from my mind; I was simply dealing with a casualty - and heavens knows I'd done that often enough. I pulled out my handkerchief and pressed it on the wound.

I said: 'Thursday, can you hear me?'

She didn't answer. Her eyes were unblinking as the rain struck her and I placed my hand above her head to shield her. A medic appeared at my side, sloshing down into the muddy ground in his haste to help. He said:

'What's happened?'

I said: 'He shot her.'

I reached gingerly around the back of her head and breathed a small sigh of relief when I couldn't find an exit wound.

A second medic — a woman this time —joined the first and told me to step aside. But I moved only far enough for her to work. I kept hold of Thursday's hand.

The first medic said: 'We've got a pulse,' then added: 'where's the blasted ambulance?'

I stayed with her all the way to the hospital and let go of her hand only when they took her into theatre.

A friendly casualty nurse at St Septyk's said: 'Here you go,' as she gave me a blanket. I sat on a hard EHS chair and stared at the wall clock and the public information posters. I thought about Thursday, trying to figure out how much time we had spent together. Not long for two and a half years, really.

A boy next to me with his head stuck in a saucepan said: 'Wot you in here for, mister?'

I leaned closer, spoke into the hollow handle so he could hear me and said: 'I'm okay but someone shot my wife.'

The little boy with his head stuck in a saucepan said: 'Bummer,' and I replied: 'Yes, bummer.'

I sat and looked at the posters again for a long time until someone said:

'Landen?'

I looked up. It was Mrs Next. She had been crying. I think I had, too.

She said: 'How is she?'

And I said: 'I don't know.'

She sat down next to me.

'I brought you some Battenberg.'

I said: 'I'm not really that hungry.'

'I know. But I just don't know what else to do.'

We both stared at the clock and the posters in silence for some minutes. After a while I said: 'Where's Friday?'

Mrs Next patted my arm.