The nurse came back with Max’s dad and showed them both in. Stephen and I lingered back at the door, not wanting to crowd into the small room. Max seemed, to my inexpert eyes, to be stable, though he looked sick as a dog.
“Do you think they’ll know anything about Jackson?” I asked Stephen quietly.
“Maybe, if he and Max were friends.”
We gave Angela and Nigel time with their son, and Stephen went off to get us all cups of tea. I found a chair to collapse into and pulled out my phone, running a basic search online for Jackson Lowe. There were several men with the same name in York, and I wasn’t able to pin down which one was our guy. I gratefully accepted the cup of tea and the energy bar that Stephen brought back for me, the sugar and hot drink making me feel almost immediately better. It’d been a while since I had dinner, and I had been starting to feel light-headed.
“Thanks, Steph, I needed that.”
“I know,” he said with a faint smile, taking a bite of the Twix bar he’d bought for himself.
“Of course you did,” I said, huffing a laugh and shaking my head.
Stephen was my best mate as well as my partner at work, and he knew me probably too well. After spending a fair amount of my youth isolating myself from others, it felt good to have a friend that understood me like he did, not to mention a girlfriend I loved. I hadn’t been sure about this move to Hewford police station at first since I’d been coming from a small town, but it’d been one of the best decisions of my life.
Max’s parents emerged from his hospital room not long later, red-eyed and with their shoulders slumped. Angela’s eyes turned teary again when Stephen offered them both cups of tea, and her husband pulled her into a gentle hug.
“Thank you,” he told Stephen appreciatively, accepting the cups and packets of biscuits Stephen had got for them.
“Tea’s the best thing for after a shock,” Stephen said sympathetically.
Nigel took a sip of his tea with a sigh, sitting down when I gestured to the seats beside us.
“That’s the thing,” he said, his gruff voice suggesting a decade or so of smoking cigarettes, “it’s not a shock. We’ve been expecting this call for months.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” I said.
“We tried to help him, we really did,” Angela said quickly, her voice shaking like she thought I might be thinking that they were terrible parents. I wasn’t at all.
“I’m sure you did. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want it,” I said carefully.
“Exactly,” Nigel said with an edge of sharpness before misery overtook his features again, and he rubbed a hand over his face.
His greying hair was sticking up at the back, and his t-shirt was on back-to-front; clear signs that they’d both raced out of bed as soon as they heard. I got the impression, from Nigel’s nice shoes and his slightly stiff manner, that he was probably a man who normally liked to look his best. The police were always seeing people at their worst, I thought.
“We need to ask a couple of questions, I’m afraid,” I said after a short while had passed.
They’d been drinking their tea, and Angela had managed a couple of the biscuits, putting some colour back in her pale cheeks. Nigel’s eyes narrowed slightly, and he stayed silent, looking suspiciously at me, whilst his wife just appeared teary and tired.
“Max was with another man, called Jackson Lowe. Do you know him?”
Even before I’d finished the question, I saw the change on the pair’s faces. Angela’s brows drew together in obvious anger, and a muscle twitched at Nigel’s jaw.
“Where is he?” Nigel snapped out. “He did this, that-”
I patted the air with my hands, asking him to calm down. He shut his mouth with a click of his teeth and glared vaguely past me, his hands screwed up in his lap.
“He’s Max’s cousin,” Angela said quietly.
“Oh?” Stephen said beside me, clearly as surprised as I was.
“My sister’s son,” she said with a nod.
“Could we have your sister’s contact information?” I asked.
“No, I’m afraid not,” Angela said, with a humourless little laugh. She looked to be on the verge of tears again. “She died over ten years ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear it. Who would Jackson’s next of kin be?”
“Well, us, I suppose,” Nigel said when his wife failed to respond. He was looking between us, and I got the feeling he’d guessed what we were going to say next.
“I’m sorry to tell you, but Jackson passed away earlier tonight,” I told them solemnly.
I’d seen the anger on their faces when I’d first mentioned his name, but Jackson was still their nephew, and I tried to be gentle as I told them the news. The most prominent response I got from them was shock, and they both looked at me blankly for a long moment.
“Dead?” Nigel said finally.
“Aye. I’m sorry.”
“Christ. What happened? Did he take the same stuff that Max did?”
“That’s what we think at the moment,” I agreed.
Angela covered her face with her hands and started crying in earnest. Nigel looked like he couldn’t decide what to think, settling on concern for his wife after a moment as he gathered her close. I could see that it was time for us to go.
“I hope Max makes a quick recovery,” I told Nigel quietly, handing him one of my cards with my contact details on. “If you could get in touch with us as soon as possible, we’d appreciate it.”
Nigel looked down at the card dully for a moment before he just nodded and put it in his pocket. Stephen and I left them alone, casting one last glance towards Max’s room before we headed out of the hospital.
“Not how I wanted to spend my Friday night,” Stephen said as we crossed the hospital car park, heading for my car. We’d driven over together in my car since Stephen had got a lift over from the officer who’d been first on the scene.
“What were you up to when Rashford called? I never did ask.”
“Nothing much. Annie and I had just gone to bed. Damn, I was really looking forward to a good night’s sleep and a lie-in.”
“Aye, ‘fraid that’s not on the cards now. Bright and early at the station tomorrow, Steph.”
“I guess it is what it is.”
“Sure is,” I agreed with a short chuckle.
My short-lived amusement slipped away as I pictured Max’s pale face lying there on the hospital bed and of Jackson’s too-still one. They hadn’t looked much alike, but then Jackson had been in the dim light of the alleyway, and he’d looked ghostly pale.
“Thanks for the lift, man,” Stephen said, clambering sluggishly out of the car with a yawn when I reached his house.
“Don’t mention it.” I gave him a wave before pulling out into the road and heading off home.
There’d be plenty of work to do tomorrow, but for now, there was nothing I wanted to do more than to fall asleep in my own bed with Sam in my arms, Chance curled up at our feet.
Three
The voice down the phone was unforgiving, tinged with a cold casualness that made Lucy’s chest feel tight with both anger and fear.
“Listen here, sweetheart,” he said, “I don’t care where Jackson is. I care about getting the goods shifted. If they don’t get where they need to go, it’s gonna be a you problem, and you won’t like what happens, Lucy-loo. That clear enough for you?”
“But this is Jackson’s deal. He’s the one that works for you, not me. I don’t want anything to do with any of it-”
“Tough luck, cupcake. You should’ve stopped Jackson from ditching out on you if you didn’t want this to be your problem. What was it? Did he get sick of all the whining?”
Lucy pressed her lips together tightly and clenched her fist tight enough around her phone that the plastic creaked. She didn’t have the money for a new one right now, or ever really, and forced her fingers to relax.
“Last I heard, he was passed out cold. He could be dead, I don�
��t know,” Lucy had to choke the words out, her mouth painfully dry. “This isn’t-”
“It’s your problem,” he said, flat and hard. “You have the goods, you sort it. I’ll leave you to imagine what’ll happen to that precious little princess of yours if you don’t.”
He hung up, the line going dead in her ear. Lucy swallowed around the lump in her throat.
She swore quietly, pinched the bridge of her nose. She had a hellish headache, waves of nausea left her curled over, and her skin itched like she had chickenpox. It was a harsh wake-up call of how reliant she’d become on the little baggies Jackson would bring home and share with her. She’d been wary of them at first, but he’d kept pushing her to try just a little bit, and she’d given in. The high had been perfect, leaving her ecstatic and drifting on clouds of carefree happiness. Even thinking about it now made her fingers twitch, aching for another hit. She told herself it would only be a tiny bump, just enough to help her through all of this. Jackson had dumped her in this mess after all, so why shouldn’t the stuff he bought, the stuff he got her into, help her out now?
Except that every time she got tempted, she remembered Max’s slurred voice on the phone and how he’d said that Jackson looked dead. Those words haunted her. If she’d been alone, perhaps she wouldn’t have cared much, but she needed to be here for Eva. That little girl would never see the inside of the foster system if Lucy had anything to say about it, and it was that thought and the memory of Max’s words that kept her away from the drugs stashed in the garage. Jackson would’ve been surprised that Lucy knew where they were, but he didn’t have a subtle bone in his body, and she was more observant than she wanted to be sometimes. If Lucy hadn’t known where they were, maybe it would’ve been that much easier to stay away from them.
She blew out a breath, lowering her phone from her ear. Eva was at school right now, thank God, and Lucy knew this was the perfect time to start going around the hospitals, trying to find Max and Jackson. She was dreading it. If she stayed home, there remained the possibility that both cousins were still alive and doing fine. Jackson might’ve not come home because he’d taken a random trip across the country without telling her, which had happened before and scared the hell out of her. It had happened before, but Max’s phone call told her that this wasn’t one of those times.
Screwing up her courage, she dragged her aching body upstairs and into the shower. She knew she looked exactly as bad as she felt right now, and she didn’t want to be turned away from the hospital or to have attention drawn to her. So she got washed up and put on enough makeup to hide the worst of her pallid skin and circles under her eyes before she headed out of the house and climbed into the car.
Lucy had to pause behind the wheel, her stomach cramping painfully. The nausea could’ve been from withdrawal or from nerves, she couldn’t tell, and it didn’t really matter. She’d maxed out and then some on the amount of ibuprofen and paracetamol she could have, the only pills she’d allowed herself to take. Eva, Eva, Eva, Lucy had thought on repeat every time she was tempted.
She got the car started up and drove slowly and anxiously over to the hospital, flinching at loud noises and cars that passed too close to hers. Lucy hadn’t realised how long it’d been since she’d driven until she got in the car, but it came back to her steadily, and she was driving more or less normally by the time she pulled into the hospital car park. Still, it was a relief to park up, and she took several deep breaths, her damp hands clinging to the steering wheel. She hoped to hell that this was the right hospital and that she wouldn’t have to trawl around any other hospitals. Google had told her that there were several in York, though some were private and some for palliative care only. She’d picked the biggest one to start with, York hospital in Clifton, hoping that they’d be able to tell her where Max and Jackson were.
“Come on,” she muttered, trying to force herself to get out of the car.
She’d been trying hard not to imagine Jackson dead, nor Max’s young face all pale and lifeless. The grim images kept needling their way in, however, and she pressed her fingers to her lips as she tried to keep calm despite the panic threatening to rise up her throat. She needed Jackson to come back and deal with his nasty little friend, and she needed Max to be okay, too. If the teenager was dead, she knew she’d never forgive herself. There was only one way to find out what had happened after Max had called her, and it felt like a monumental task.
Getting out of the car was exhausting all in itself, and she felt weak-legged as she stepped out unsteadily across the car park and towards the hospital. The sight of two police cars parked up outside made her freeze briefly before she made herself keep moving. The cop cars had nothing to do with her, and she couldn’t afford to worry about them right now.
The queue for reception was only a few people long, but it seemed to take forever as she shifted from foot to foot, antsy and worried. Her skin was itching again, and she had to resist the urge to scratch at it. She finally got to the front of the queue and managed to stammer out who she was looking for.
“Let me have a look,” the receptionist said, her voice peppy and kind. Lucy pushed her hands into her pockets so that she could clench her fists without being seen as she waited impatiently for the receptionist to talk to her.
“You’re family, you said?”
“Yeah, they’re my cousins,” Lucy lied, fully aware that they wouldn’t let her see Jackson if she said she was just his girlfriend, and they definitely wouldn’t let her see Max.
“I have a record for a Max Rider here,” the receptionist finally told Lucy, who exhaled in relief. The receptionist gave her instructions for how to get to the ward before she gave Lucy a solemn look, her chipper tone fading into something more serious. “You’ll need to talk to the doctor up there about Jackson Lowe.”
Lucy blinked. As muddled as her mind felt right now, cloudy with withdrawal and running on nothing more than coffee, she could guess what the receptionist was saying. But she pushed it away, focusing on Max and on finding the ward he was on.
“Thanks,” Lucy said absently, backing away before she turned slowly and headed for the lifts.
She was sweating, her shirt clinging to her back, and she tried to surreptitiously wipe her forehead with her jacket sleeve. A passing couple gave her a sideways look, and she stopped herself from giving them the finger. Instead, she made a beeline towards the lift. She had to squash in alongside a number of others, several of whom grumbled at her, but she couldn’t wait for another lift to arrive. Her nerves felt shot already, and she wanted nothing more than to bolt out of here. But she needed answers about Max and Jackson first. That was the first step if she wanted to survive all of this and stay around to look after Eva, which she was absolutely determined to do.
The hospital felt like a maze deliberately designed to disorientate her, and she went the wrong way twice before she found the ward the receptionist had directed her to. Lucy dithered at the end of the corridor, feeling adrift and alone. She wished that Jackson was beside her right now, though it was wishful thinking to imagine that he would’ve been supportive and caring.
More likely than not, he’d have been impatient and irritable about spending his Saturday morning in any way that didn’t make him more money or make himself feel good. He’d probably say that it was Max’s own damn fault and that his parents would deal with the fallout. In fact, he likely never would’ve agreed to come with her in the first place, and he probably would’ve nagged her out of coming here either. She closed her eyes for a brief moment and tried to take a breath, mentally pushing Jackson’s voice out of her thoughts.
“Hello, are you alright?” a gentle, male voice asked, and she startled, opening her eyes immediately.
“Y-yeah, I’m fine.”
The man was a nurse, tall but slender, and he looked at her with a kind expression despite the tiredness under his eyes.
“Can I help with anything?” he asked.
“Uh, I was actually looking for m
y cousins.”
“Okay, I’m sure I can help with that. What are their names?”
“Jackson Lowe and Max Rider.”
She fiddled with a loose thread in her coat pocket and tried to stop herself from shifting on the spot. It felt like there were ants under her skin and eels churning up her stomach, and she wanted badly to sit down.
The nurse noticed straight away, and his expression turned quickly to concern.
“Here, how about you take a seat, and I’ll have a scout around for you? See where your cousins are. How’s that?”
“Yeah. Good. Thank you,” she said from behind half-gritted teeth as she fought the nausea. Maybe she should’ve waited longer before trying to find Jackson and Max considering the state she was in herself, but she needed to know for sure.
The nurse wasn’t away for long, striding quickly towards her on his long legs.
“Here we are. Max is just down the hall.”
“And Jackson?” she said faintly, already knowing the answer.
“I’ll fetch the doctor to talk to you about that, okay?” he said. His gentle tone confirmed what she already knew.
“Okay,” she said hollowly.
Lucy let him lead her over to Max’s room, leaving her there while he left to find a doctor. She looked through the thick glass window in Max’s door and swallowed when she saw the pale figure on the bed. Sat next to him was a woman who Lucy assumed was his mum, and she pulled quickly back from the window before she was seen.
So Max was alive. Sick and hurting, but alive. Some of her nausea seemed to abate at the realisation, and she leaned weakly against the wall. Max would be okay, but Jackson wouldn’t, and that was the truth of it. She didn’t need a condescending doctor to come and tell her that. They’d most likely start asking questions that she couldn’t answer, seeing through her thin facade of normalcy to the mess she was underneath. She had the information she’d come here to get, and it was time to leave.
Just as Lucy was turning to go back the way she’d come, she caught sight of two men in suits with a very official bearing coming up the corridor towards her. Detective was the first thing that came to mind, and she muttered a curse, spit flying from her lip, and turned hurriedly around. She could walk in the opposite direction to the officers, but she was honestly a little afraid of getting lost in the hospital’s labyrinth hallways again. Besides, the police officers had probably already seen her, and it would look odd if she hurried away just as they were arriving. She spotted a water fountain a short distance away and seized it as the lifeline she needed. Her mouth was dry and thick, and her tongue felt as rough as tarmac, so the lukewarm water felt like bliss as she gulped it down.
Country Lines (A DI Mitchell Yorkshire Crime Thriller Book 8) Page 3