by Alex Scarrow
‘Her lungs are filling up with fluid and she’s showing signs of ventilator-associated tracheobronchitis. They’re having to pull her out of the induced coma so they can remove the endotracheal tube and… well, hopefully she’ll be able to breathe on her own.’ She shook her head. ‘I mean it’s godawful that she’s got to be brought round… but they’ve got no choice.’
‘How serious is this?’ asked Boyd.
‘Very. If she can’t breathe by herself, she could die of hypoxia. If they don’t balance the barbiturates, she’s going to be fully awake and in agony. And they can’t leave her on mechanical ventilation because… of this, because of the build-up of fluid.’
‘We won’t be able to talk to her?’ asked Boyd.
‘No. No way. If she can breathe on her own, then they’ve got to make sure the air mix is getting enough oxygen into the system, then they’ve got to balance the meds, then they’ve got to deal with the infection. So no… not today.’
A phone rang. She looked at them apologetically and headed off to answer it. ‘Her family?’ Boyd called after her.
She pointed to the family room. Boyd could see through a small window in the door Lena Bajek talking to a much older woman in a wheelchair, presumably Margot’s mother.
‘Right then,’ he said to Okeke. ‘Are you okay staying here with them?’
‘What? Because you’re…?’ She looked at him to complete the sentence.
‘I’m heading back to the station,’ he said. ‘I want to check in on the others.’
She tipped her head to one side with her lips pursed, not breaking her hard stare.
‘And you’ve established a connection with them,’ he continued. ‘And you’re better at this kind of thing than I am.’
She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. ‘This kind of thing?’
‘People,’ he replied. ‘Look. There’s no point us both sitting here. And if you’ve got the chance to talk to her daughter, her mother, well, maybe Henry was right… Maybe there was more than a carer–patient relationship developing. Maybe you’ll be able to get the truth out of them.’ Boyd smiled apologetically and looked down at his watch. ‘Pick you up at half five?’
Okeke sighed. ‘Don’t worry, guv. I’ll ask Jay to get me when I’m done.’
29
Boyd returned to the Incident Room to find Lane, Warren and Minter in a huddle around a monitor. O’Neal was on the phone.
Lane looked up and waved Boyd over, who circumnavigated the conference table to join them.
‘What have you lot got there?’ Boyd asked, peering at the screen.
‘Public space CCTV for London Road,’ said Warren. ‘We think we’ve got our man.’
Minter made room for Boyd so that he would have a better view. ‘Show the boss the previous file,’ he said.
The screen was cluttered with opened AVI files showing frozen, grainy, pixelated images of Hastings by night. Warren found the first file and opened it.
‘And maximise it,’ said Lane.
The image filled the monitor. It showed a five-way junction with traffic lights. ‘This is from the CCTV outside the Clarence pub in Silverhill,’ said Warren. ‘It’s aimed across London Road and southwards.’ Warren put a finger on the screen. ‘That’s the entrance to Eagle House.’
The two stone eagles were barely visible, almost lost amid the overgrown trees that spilled over the low flint wall.
‘So this is the very end of the trail,’ said Minter. ‘Or the beginning, actually, since we’re working backwards. That dark smudge there, beside the wall, is our man. Warren, hit play.’
The frozen video began to fidget as compression pixels jittered around the screen. ‘Since it’s not in the centre of town, it’s a fixed camera,’ said Warren.
‘But luckily for us it’s facing the right way,’ added Lane.
The black smudge wasn’t walking past the house. It had stopped. Boyd checked the timecode in the corner – 22:37.
‘So, he lingers there for quite a while. Several cycles of the traffic lights, in fact,’ said Minter.
‘What’s he doing?’ asked Boyd.
‘No idea. He’s just waiting most of that time. I think he gets something out, lingers a bit longer… then wait for it…’
Boyd watched the dark shape – quite honestly, if he hadn’t been aware of the scale of the wall, the figure could have passed for an urban fox standing on its hind legs to peer into the undergrowth. The figure was still as several cars passed by, winking red tail lights as they descended down the hill towards the front, then lurching quickly it was on top of the wall and disappeared into the foliage.
‘Are you sure it’s male? Please tell me you’ve managed to get better images.’
Warren looked up and grinned. ‘Further down, there’s CCTV from a camera mounted outside the Methodist church. He’s definitely male, sir.’ He clicked on another open media file and maximised the image. ‘We’re looking southwards and downhill again; this is two minutes earlier.’ He pressed play.
Boyd could see another sodium-orange monochrome view of Hastings at night. On the far side of the road there was a row of shops: a betting shop, a plumbing supplies place and a kebab takeaway. On the nearside was a row of terraced houses.
The dark figure was on London Road walking towards the camera. ‘There’s our man again,’ said Minter.
Other than the time sequence fitting – and Boyd presumed the three of them had verified that – the only thing this figure had in common with the other one was that he was clad in dark clothing.
‘He’s got a rucksack, or a shoulder bag,’ said Lane. ‘See?’
Boyd nodded. It was big enough to hold a container of fuel. ‘Can you identify the petrol stations close by. We might catch footage of someone filling up a jerrycan or something,’ said Boyd.
‘O’Neal’s on that now, boss,’ Minter said.
The figure loomed closer into the shot, walking casually towards the camera seemingly without a care in the world, then, finally, was out of shot again.
‘Have we got anything better further down into town?’ Boyd asked.
‘We’re working our way through it,’ said Lane. ‘Hopefully we can timeline him all the way to a parked vehicle.’
‘Wouldn’t that be handy,’ said Boyd. ‘Excellent work, everyone. Well done.’
Warren and Minter high-fived. Boyd turned to head back to his desk and Lane came with him. ‘How was your visit with Henry Sutton?’ he asked.
‘Interesting. He seems to be a chip off the old block.’
‘How did he come across?’
‘Apart from talking like a prize prick, you mean? He did seem concerned about Margot Bajek.’
‘How so?’
‘He says she’s a gold-digger. He seemed wary that she was going to run off with all the family silverware.’
‘They were close? I thought she was his housekeeper-slash-carer?’ Lane said.
Boyd nodded. ‘Well, I did too. I just hope she pulls through. She’s our only potential witness to what happened in Sutton’s house that night and, from the sounds of it, the only one likely to know why.’
30
Boyd was grabbing his car keys from the desk and his jacket from the back of his chair when his work phone buzzed. It was Okeke.
‘Hello, is everything okay there?’ he asked.
‘Guv, it’s touch and go. Margot’s out of the induced coma, and the doctors are seeing whether she can breathe unassisted.’
‘Well, that’s good news, right? And can she?’
‘At the moment… but that’s likely to change over the next six hours. Look, I’m going to stay here this evening with the Bajeks. Margot’s under sedation and pumped full of drugs, but the doctor says she’ll be in and out of consciousness. They’ve allowed us to sit with her. If there’s a moment or two, I could…’
‘Right, got you,’ Boyd said. ‘Do what you can.’
‘I’m thinking the best we’re going to get is a yes/no answer. She won�
��t be able to talk.’
Boyd saw that the others were getting ready to clock off for the day too. Lane was gathering his jacket and looking his way, tilting his hand to ask if Boyd was up for a pint.
Boyd held a finger up for him to hold on.
‘You want me to think up a couple of questions?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. That’d be good. Thanks, guv.’
‘It’s the least I can do. Thanks, Okeke. I’ll text you.’
He heard Okeke sigh. ‘Right, I suppose I’d better let Jay know he’s fending for himself tonight.’
‘See you tomorrow. Keep in touch tonight and let me know when you head home.’
‘Yeah. See you tomorrow, guv.’ She hung up.
Lane came over. ‘What’s up?’
‘Okeke’s sitting with Margot Bajek tonight. It’s touch and go there.’
‘Right. Sad, but not unexpected. Poor thing.’ He turned to look at Minter and the other two. ‘They’re off down to some place called O’Connors. There’s a World Cup warm-up match with Poland this evening. You coming?’
Boyd shook his head. ‘Football’s never really been my thing. You’d think they’d have had enough of looking at a bloody screen today.’
Lane laughed. ‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘See you in the morning.’
Boyd waited until the others had gone, then followed them out into the hall. He could still hear their voices echoing up the stairwell, O’Neal absolutely certain that England was going to thrash the Poles tonight.
He stepped out into another pleasant summer’s evening. He had the car today, but actually rather fancied walking home along the beachfront as it was so nice.
Sod’s law, he thought. If he left his car here – guaranteed – it’d be pissing down tomorrow morning.
On impulse, Boyd went out through the gates and looked up and down London Road. Downhill he could see his team on their way to wherever O’Connor’s was. Uphill… Eagle House called softly to him.
Five minutes later, he was standing opposite the overgrown entrance. There was police tape across the driveway, running from one old eagle to the other. The smell of bonfire had finally faded. He looked around to where the CCTV footage had come from – on the wall outside the Clarence pub.
He carried on uphill for another fifty yards until he was outside the pub’s entrance. A sign on a chalkboard advertised that there’d be a big TV screen in the beer garden for England versus Poland.
Boyd turned to look back down the road towards the two eagles. He had roughly the same view as the camera now – just lower down. He recalled the video; the black smudge had been about a dozen feet short of the entrance. He could see, where the figure had lingered, that the ivy that was spilling out from beneath the trees and completely obscured the old flint wall. Presumably that’s why he’d chosen that spot.
Boyd walked back down to the place he’d picked out, past the two eagles.
‘Evening, fellas,’ he muttered.
He came to a halt at the point where the figure had disappeared into Sutton’s hidden grounds.
The exposed flint wall was chest high and so easily scalable. It wasn’t even a vertical wall; it had sagged back on itself over the centuries, almost as if recoiling at the prospect of bordering such a busy road. A person could scramble up it effortlessly. There were flint stones sticking out or missing from the old crumbling cement, creating footholds. But that wasn’t the only thing that caught Boyd’s attention.
It was the graffiti from the photo in the paper. A lazy loop in black spray with what looked like an inverted V inside it. Or it could as easily be an A without the cross bar. Like that anarchy sign from the 80s.
It didn’t look old, but then he was no expert on graffiti lifespans. And it was sprayed right where that figure had been lingering.
Warren said it looked like he’d reached into a bag for something.
Boyd pulled out his work phone and took a picture of it. Then, after checking around for a few minutes for a forensic gift like a footprint (he found none), he headed back down to the station to get his car.
31
Okeke was the only person in the ICU room who was awake. It was gone eight o’clock and the muted small TV on the wall was showing Phil Mitchell scowling at someone across Albert Square.
Lena had her face buried in her knees, legs drawn up onto the bucket chair she was sitting on; her grandmother was sagging in her wheelchair like wilted broccoli. The beeping of the machines and the rustling of Margot’s breath behind the oxygen mask had produced a soothing soundscape.
Fifteen minutes ago, the nurse had popped in to note down the readings on several of the screens and to offer Okeke a polite nod. Margot had been asleep.
But she was awake now.
xxy
Okeke stood up slowly so the movement wouldn’t startle her. Above the pale-blue plastic rim of the oxygen mask, Margot was barely visible beneath the thick swirls of antiseptic and analgesic creams. There was no hair left on her head. The flames had all but destroyed her face. The only human features were two wide staring eyes, both of them settled on Okeke.
‘Hey,’ she said softly. ‘Margot… it’s okay. You’re in hospital. Your daughter and mother are right here.’
I have no idea how good her English is. Okeke suspected she must speak some if she worked closely with Sutton. She couldn’t imagine he’d taken the trouble to learn any Polish.
Margot tried to raise one of her mottled arms.
‘No,’ said Okeke. ‘Please don’t need to move. Stay still, Margot.’
Her steady breathing became erratic as she struggled to speak.
Okeke hastened over to her bedside. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay. Shhhh.’
Margot’s eyes fixed on her. From beneath the oxygen mask, there came a horrific gurgling sound.
‘Matka?’ Lena lurched in her chair. A split second later, she was right beside Okeke, looking down hopefully at her mother.
Margot tried to raise her arm again and Okeke was unsure whether to steer it gently back down. The gurgling grew louder, more insistent.
She’s trying to say something.
Her arm raised again, it looked as though she was trying to indicate something.
‘Mama, what is it?’ said Lena. ‘What do you need?’
Okeke could see the agony of the movement, the effort to talk was killing her. ‘No. Please. Just relax, Margot. We can talk another time.’
‘Ah… Ah… Azzz…’ Her hand continued to waver uncertainly in the air.
The effort had triggered one of the machines, which was beeping insistently, and within seconds the nurse was back in the room, shouting, ‘Back. Get back from her! Please!’
Okeke pulled Lena away from the bedside to give the nurse room to move around. He tapped on the screen of one of the units and then reached for a pager clipped to his breast pocket.
Margot’s rasping voice was getting louder. ‘Azzuh… Azzuh…’
‘Margot!’’ said the nurse. ‘We’re going to raise the pain meds. Just hold on, love. Hold on!’
Another machine began to beep and the room, an oasis of calm barely a minute ago, was beginning to feel small, chaotic and loud.
‘Mama!’ Mama!’ Lena was crying over Okeke’s shoulder, squirming, to get round her and back to the bed.
‘Lena! Come on! Let him do his job!’
Okeke steered, almost wrestled, the girl through the door and into the hallway as a consultant came running down.
‘What’s going on?’
‘She’s awake and in pain!’ said Okeke as the doctor squeezed past her, disappearing into the room.
The door closed on the chaos, with Lena’s grandma still inside. The old woman was calling out Margot’s name, adding to the confusion.
‘Lena… stay! I’ll bring your grandma out.’
Okeke stepped back in, unlocked the wheels on the wheelchair and brought the old woman out, sobbing and distraught. Together they went down the hall to the family room.
‘It’s going to be okay,’ Okeke said to Lena, who had started to cry. ‘Her painkillers needed increasing, that’s all. They’re dealing with that right now. They’ll sedate her again so she can rest.’
That wasn’t all, though, was it?
Okeke was sure the woman had been trying to tell her something.
Between sobs, Lena was trying to explain to her grandma what Okeke had said, trying to calm her down, reassure her.
‘Ask your grandma if she’d like a hot chocolate or tea. Or something to eat,’ Okeke said.
‘Yes. Hot chocolate, please,’ Lena replied, wiping her eyes.
‘Can I get you one?’
Lena nodded. Okeke left the room and headed down the hallway towards the Costa concession café on the ground floor, hoping it was still open while she went over what had just happened.
Margot had seen her – presumably worked out she was the police and had been trying desperately to tell her something. Okeke was sure about that. Az – something? She’d lifted her arm and Okeke thought she’d been trying to draw something in the air. Maybe the letter A? And doing that had cost her a lot in pain. It had been that important.
The café was closed, but she found a vending machine and returned to the family room with two paper cups of watery hot chocolate and a couple of Mars Bars in case either of them felt hungry.
She set them down on the table and waited until Lena had passed one to her grandmother.
‘Lena?’
She looked up.
‘Your mum… She was trying to say something to me. A word.’
‘What word?’
‘I don’t know. It began with “Az” or maybe “Azsh”?’
Lena frowned, the little puzzle clearly a welcome distraction. ‘Az…?’ She pondered that for a moment, then shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’
Her grandma perked up and said something to her in Polish. Lena turned and then for the next minute there was rapid back and forth between them. Finally, Lena turned back to Okeke.