Page 29 of Fixing a Broken Heart at the Highland Repair Shop

A ride-along in a cop car would, Ally had always imagined, be laced with excitement and intrigue.

On the hour-long drive to the Infirmary, however, it was all Ally could do to sit still in her seat.

At least Andrew had let her ride in the front.

Calls were coming in over the radio, but he didn’t respond to any of them.

It transpired he was technically off duty.

‘Doin’ a favour for a pal,’ he’d said when pressed, and Ally had wanted to ask what kind of ‘pal’ he thought he’d been when he was mocking Jamie at every opportunity, but she kept her mouth shut as they made their way through the mid-morning traffic, passing the occasional tractor and many, many caravans holding up the road.

Andrew didn’t seem to know much about Jamie’s condition, or he wasn’t letting on. Which was worse.

Ally felt just as she had done the few times she’d flown on family package holidays to Lanzarote or Majorca when she was a kid.

After take-off she hadn’t dared let herself nap or read her graphic novels, wouldn’t even leave her seat to go to the loo, because she felt somehow the pilot needed her to lend her powers of concentration to keep the plane in the air.

So she’d sat, bolt upright, hands clasped tightly over the rests, keeping an eye on the wing, willing the plane to stay up in the air.

That anxiety however, that exhausting channelling of willpower, was nothing compared to the sixty minutes she spent in that police car.

Jamie was asking for her. He wanted her. She had to get there quick and hope he was holding on and not thinking she wasn’t coming to him.

‘Can you not put your foot down a wee bit?’ she’d wailed eventually, seeing the building queues of traffic as they got closer to the city.

‘All right,’ Andrew said, feeling himself a hero. ‘Hold on to your seat!’ He flicked the sirens and lights on and Ally watched as the cars parted for them all the way down the carriageway.

* * *

Ally hadn’t known what to expect when she reached the ward, but it wasn’t an armed officer at the door of Jamie’s room. She’d shown her ID and been ushered in.

Chief Inspector Edwyn stood in the way of the bed, his back to her. Robert Mason stood up as she came in.

She peered at the white bed, the drip bag and tubes, Jamie’s hands pale over the blue waffle bedcover, his chest and throat exposed through the chequered hospital gown.

His lips were parched and he had a great big bandage over one side of his brow with a red, stitched gash showing around its white edges.

The deep brown of his eyes deepened further when he saw her.

‘Ah, and here she is,’ said Edwyn, stiffly. ‘Your friend’s arrived. I’ll file your statement back at the station. Robert, take over as security watch from Officer McNally at the door.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Robert, before turning to tell Jamie he’d be right outside.

‘Mind and get some rest,’ Edwyn told the patient as the door closed.

Left alone, Ally wasn’t sure how to act. A monitor clamped over Jamie’s finger charted his heart beats and oxygen levels on a screen attached to a trolley by his bed. It beeped reassuringly every few seconds.

She wanted to sweep across the room and hold his bruised face in her hands and kiss the web of red scratches on his cheekbone. But she stood stock-still at the end of his bed.

‘You came,’ he said simply.

‘You asked for me.’

He tried to nod, winced, and let his head press back into the pillow. The green line on the screen spiked then fell sharply again. It was enough to get her feet moving.

‘Come here.’ She fixed his pillows, thinking how this felt like a movie and not her real life at all. ‘If I asked what happened, would you tell me?’

A smile formed at the edge of his mouth. ‘I don’t remember much of it. The Garten patrol unit found me knocked out in a back alley, the suspect long gone, along with the informer. They said I’d been out cold for hours.’

‘Christ! Who did this to you?’ Her hand twitched with the impulse to touch the padded bandage over his lovely brow. Would he tip his head and rest against her hand if she did?

‘Francie Beaumont. Heard of him?’

Stumped, Ally pulled a face.

‘No reason you should have, but the constabulary have known him a long time. Small time crook but persistent, and slippery with it.’ His voice broke into a crackling cough. Ally offered him the water glass, and even though Jamie’s arms seemed fine, he sipped from it like a helpless man.

‘Where is he now?’

‘In a cell,’ Jamie said, letting his eyes close for a moment. ‘Him and nine of his pals will be paying a visit to the High Court.’

‘Nine!’

Jamie still hadn’t learned his lesson about the stiff neck and attempted a nod.

‘ Tshh! ’ He inhaled sharply.

Ally slipped her hand under his jaw and cradled his neck. He was cool to the touch.

‘Stop trying to move!’ she scolded him. ‘Silly thing.’ All she could do was smile, even though it was patently unfunny seeing him in pain. Yet, he was all in one piece and smiling back at her.

‘They were traced back to a property half a mile from where I was found. Recovered the stolen jewellery too,’ he added, his eyebrow lifting as he told her the good news.

‘Along with a fair few other things linking the gang to robberies all over the central belt and enough coke to get them custodial sentences for intent to supply alone.’

‘Wow! So you’re the hero of the hour then?’

‘Hardly, I just about got handed my own heid to play with.’

Again, they laughed. It was grim and absurd, but he was in a warm bed, in the arms of the NHS, and with Ally’s thumb softly stroking his cheek, even when she told herself she really shouldn’t.

‘Thank God you’re all right. How on earth did you know where to look for this…’ She’d already forgotten the guy’s name.

‘Francie Beaumont? I didn’t. It was all an accident, if I’m honest. Or a coincidence? Either way, I ran right into the woman who brought the stolen jewellery to the repair shop.’

‘No!’

‘Yep, and she gave me enough to go on to get a positive ID on the man who assaulted me, and she said one or two other things, enough to add coercive control to his list of charges.’

‘Oh no, that poor woman. Is she in a cell too?’ The alarm must have registered on her face because Jamie brought his hand to hers at his cheek.

‘No, no, it’s OK. She’s safe. She’s the whole reason we caught the gang. I slipped my phone with its GPS switched on into her pocket before Francie got the chance to lump me, and she led us right to their door.’

‘You might well have saved her life,’ Ally guessed.

‘She saved herself,’ he countered. ‘By confiding in a safe person.’

He was a safe person. Ally’s heart swelled with the certainty of that.

‘She’s with her mum and her little girl right now, getting the support she needs.’

‘Jeez! A little girl? Will they be kept safe?’

‘Edwyn assured me they would be. Livvie’s already made her statement and that will be more than enough to send them all down, so far as I can make out. She was very vulnerable, by all accounts, and with no way out.’

Ally couldn’t stop her eyes welling. She dropped her head, remembering the woman that day, skulking into the repair shed, then seeing her again with a black eye in the middle of the night going who knew where.

‘She won’t even have to go to court,’ Jamie pressed, rubbing at her hand reassuringly. ‘She’ll never see any of them again. Edwyn gave me his word on that.’

Ally absorbed all of this, hardly able to see her way through the tangle of feelings and all the potential other outcomes that could just as easily have happened. They were lucky to have got out alive.

‘And are you going to be OK?’ she said, breaking from him for just long enough to pull up a chair so she could sit.

They clasped hands against the blue cover.

‘The docs said I could be discharged in a few days. They had to check for concussion and brain bleeds, but so far, they seem happy with me. Ally…’ he grew suddenly serious.

‘I won’t be allowed to work for a while, and then I’ll have to make up my required voluntary hours, and then my transfer will be over. I’ll be heading home to Edinburgh.’

Her heart quickened like it wanted to burst. What was he saying?

‘I wondered if…’ he paused, wetting his cracked lips, ‘you wanted to spend some time with me? Now the case is closing?’

‘Oh!’ Ally hadn’t even thought of the ramifications of all this for the pair of them. She hadn’t even dared to hope things could change.

‘Edwyn thinks it’s all right, does he?’

‘He was the one who told Andrew to bring you in. I was asking for you when they found me, apparently.’

‘When you were barely conscious?’ This shouldn’t be an image that conjured up joy, but hearts are funny things and Ally’s was drumming a tattoo in her chest.

‘So they tell me.’ He was smiling a cautious smile, trying not to move his jaw too much. ‘Ow!’ He whipped his free hand to his face.

Ally rose to her feet again.

‘So, you’re asking me out out?’

‘I am.’

Party cannons shot confetti in her cerebral cortex while news banner ticker tape simultaneously ran the headline this guy is leaving soon; so don’t get too carried away, missy, but all Ally could do was laugh at the dizzy thrill of it all and lean over him as gingerly as she could so as not to hurt him, pressing a hand into the hospital mattress to steady herself.

The last thing she saw before closing her eyes was Jamie looking helplessly up at her, his eyes glazed with wanting.

She pressed her mouth to his, the kiss shutting down all the noise in her head and the siren and traffic sounds from the road outside.

She kissed him softly, loving the scratching sensation where his lips were dry.

He exhaled shakily, melting down into the bed, his hands holding the backs of her arms, encouraging her, pulling her closer, the urgent hunger of their kiss sending the green jagged line on the monitor soaring off the charts, and Jamie Beaton forgot all about being in pain.