Approaching Zero

by R. T Broughton

  She could see that Malcolm Scott had turned to acknowledge her fleetingly, but he hadn’t moved from the spot. The fact that the children had been unleashed from the school was clearly keeping him too busy to pay too much attention to the woman on the bike hurtling toward him. And now the smell was unbearable. The fridge door was wide open and there was rotten chicken crawling with maggots and bowls of unidentifiable, pus-filled fur. Just as Kathy was about to throw up, she took a deep breath, now just metres from the pervert, and shouted, “No brakes!” The fact that she was still pedalling hard would forever go unnoticed.

  With no time to react, Malcolm could do nothing but throw his hands out in front of him, as if they were going to offer some kind of protection against the wild woman on the bike on course to hit him head on. An animal-like noise also burst out of him, which offered equally little protection, and then he was hit. The bike took his legs out from under him with such force that the sound of his head cracking on the pavement rang out over the din of the children. A thin trickle of blood crawled out of his ear, but this was the only movement left in him.

  Kathy had imagined this moment for days, but it all happened too quickly for her to enjoy or see anything of the actual smash. In her mind, she had been an observer; up close, she was just as vulnerable as her prey and her grip was useless against the force of the collision. As the front wheel buckled under, her fingers slipped off the handlebars and she would swear that they came alive, rose up and smashed her in the face. It all happened too fast to know more than this. In reality, her body performed a manoeuvre that would have been a perfect gymnastic ten if not for the lack of finesse and the terrifying crack as the dismount was landed. And then everything went black.

  Chapter 2

  Kathy didn’t want to open her eyes. She could hear the beep, beep, beep of the heart monitor machine and knew that it was serious. So she remained in the darkness and mentally assessed the damage. Starting at the bottom, her feet felt fine and they were covered in a cool cotton sheet; she was definitely in hospital. She wiggled her toes and mentally shifted her focus up each leg. The muscles all the way up responded as she clenched and then she moved up to where the vital organs lived and took a deep breath. Surprisingly nothing hurt. Heart, liver, kidneys all seemed to be absolutely fine, unless, of course, she was paralysed and her movements weren’t movement at all but figments of her imagination. And then she was hit with a sudden surge of something resembling guilt, but not quite; it was more of a dawning sensation that she had actually done it and the thought made her stomach lurch. A hundred questions fluttered out of that sensation. Should she have done it? She knew the answer to that one. What kind of condition was he in? She knew what she hoped the answer would be. Was it really her place to go around running people over? Just how many children had she saved by taking that sorry pervert out? Why hadn’t she thought of the danger she was putting herself in? Just what was the damage of her mission? Suddenly she had the urge to open her eyes, to get a realistic picture of her injuries, but as she began to move the muscles in her face, a razor-sharp pain cut into the bones there. This was actually a relief: if she could feel the pain in her face then the absence of pain in the rest of her body was probably also real. But then there was the constant beep, beep, beep. They didn’t bring out the heart monitor unless it was serious.

  Despite the pain in her face, which seemed to begin in the back of her eyes, dance over each of her teeth individually and then down her chin, she slowly heaved her eyelids open. A clinical light immediately attacked her, but she was determined to keep her eyes open and battled on until the fierce, bright white began to give way to the shapes and shadows. Very soon she had a clear picture of the hustle and bustle around her. Contrary to the ideas she had had, of an operating table and doctors and nurses fussing to maintain her health, or a private room where the staggered beeps counted each strained breath of her ephemeral existence, it was like feeding time at the zoo. She was on a ward with nine other women and at least eight of them were surrounded by children. The beeping, which had sounded so urgent just minutes before, was actually coming from the hand-held game of the little boy beside her, who didn’t take his eyes off it for the remaining fifty minutes of the visit despite the fact that his poor mother was desperate for some affection from her son. In fact, as Kathy looked around, she saw that none of children were paying attention to their poor mothers, who were laid up with a range of conditions, from visibly cast and bandaged bones, to secret illnesses that made visiting times silent and sombre. Husbands and boyfriends were attentively chatting with their partners, but every one of the children looked so excited to be somewhere new, yet bored that this somewhere new offered no real opportunities for play, that they were making their own entertainment: dancing, chasing each other, staring at iPads, but mostly playing games of their own making where the only objective seemed to be to make as much noise as they possibly could. If they were Kathy’s she would put them across her knee or ground them or whatever other punishment all of these parents were clearly too inept to implement. How hard could it be to be a parent? Kathy smiled at the thought, realising how harsh she was being and knowing that it’s so much easier to judge from the outside, but the smile was short-lived as the pain cracked in her face again. Having a child in her life would be an absolute nightmare, let alone the tribes of little critters that these parents had managed to accumulate. She smiled again at the irony of this thought, considering that it was protecting ‘these little critters’ that had landed her in hospital with a broken face, and again she was pained into keeping her face still. But the pain didn’t completely leave her. Every shriek and laugh and cry tore through her damaged face. And then a child seemed to come flying through the air, running backwards to catch a funny-shaped ball and almost landed on top of her. He shifted around quickly, was clearly going to smile but then saw Kathy’s face and provided a mirror of honesty of which only children are capable.

  “Bloody hell!” he shrieked, unable to take his eyes off her damaged face and then ran away to continue his game.

  “You’re no oil painting yourself, you little shit,” she said quietly—she didn’t want to draw attention to her face or her filthy mood—then closed her eyes again. She was in hell, a living hell. And nobody had even noticed that she’d woken up. They’d just plonked her in with a load of other women and their families and then what? Was she supposed to nurse herself now? Take out any stitches she may have had? Take herself to x-ray? Go and make herself a cup of tea? Had the NHS become a self-service type of setup now? What exactly was she paying her taxes for if this was…?

  “Miss Smith?” a gentle voice interrupted her mental rant.

  Slowly Kathy opened her eyes and saw that a nurse, who looked about fifteen years old, was looking down on her. Despite her youth, or because of it, she was a perfect model of nursedom with her immaculate uniform, neatly swept-back, blonde hair and modest makeup. Her sweet expression and the concern in her eyes immediately diffused the frenzy that Kathy was whipping herself into.

  “How are you feeling?” As she spoke, the young nurse set about gathering her own evidence, touching Kathy’s face, taking her pulse, blood pressure, and temperature and sizing her up with the in-built medic-o-meter that all nurses seem to develop at nursing school.

  “It’s a bit noisy in here.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that. It will settle down in a bit when visiting time’s over. Does it hurt when I do this?”

  “Aw!” It did.

  “What about this?” She was pressing Kathy’s cheeks gently but the pain was intense.

  “Yeah, it really hurts. Am I okay?”

  “Yup, nothing broken, just a few bruises. You might like to steer clear of mirrors for a while, but it’ll clear up in a week or two.”

  “Oh.” Kathy didn’t know if she was pleased or disappointed. Surely all of this pain warranted more than a few bruises. She was in agony.

  “We’ve given you Paracetamol and we’re going to keep yo
u in overnight just to keep an eye on you, but you should be good to go in the morning.”

  “Paracetamol? Can’t you give me anything stronger?”

  The nice nurse smiled kindly and said, “I’ll see what I can do. Do you think you might try a little something to eat?”

  Kathy paused to see if she was hungry. “Thank you,” she smiled and then a sudden thought hit her. “My bag! Where’s my bag? Tell me someone picked it up! I can’t live without my bag!”

  “Okay,” the kind nurse said soothingly. “Just relax, Miss Smith. I’ll see if I can find out for you. Is there anyone I can call for you in the meantime?”

  “No, don’t worry about that! I just need my bag!”

  Sensing the urgency, the young nurse shuffled away, leaving Kathy with a new set of worries. If her list was lost she didn’t know what she would do. Actually, she knew exactly what she would do: start again. What choice was there? But how many children would suffer because of this oversight? She should have left it at home. Why didn’t she leave it at home? She silently chided herself and the children around her seemed to have got even louder, as if knowing that she just needed five minutes of peace and quiet to gather herself. As if that weren’t enough, she now noticed that some of the other women were clearly talking about her. There was no real malice in them, or she would be able to read their minds. In fact, she had no idea what they were saying, but their low tones and averted eyes every time she turned toward them told her all she needed to know. ‘Poor cow, smashed up face and no kids. Probably beaten up by her husband.’ “You should leave him, luv,” one of them would probably tell her when all of the kids had left. And when would that be? Kathy wondered, scanning the walls for anything resembling a clock. Just how long had she been in this mad house anyway? Too long, she suddenly decided and threw her blue blankets back decisively. She didn’t quite know what she was going to do, dressed as she was in the thin cotton hospital couture, but as the whole room now seemed to be looking at her and whispering, she took the opportunity to drag the curtain around her bed and create a little private room for herself. The curtain may have been thin, but the simple divide seemed to miraculously transport her to a place of calm and quiet.

  She briefly looked around the space and found everything she would expect from a hospital bedside: glass of water, from which she took a long sip; bedside cabinet; empty; various buttons encouraging her to express anything from hunger to full-on panic; a rickety chair poised for a visitor; and a pull-out, pay as you go TV. As sorry as all of these accessories were, she maintained her calm as she looked around. Yes, her face hurt like hell; yes, her list may have been lost forever; yes, she was recovering in a crèche; but for the first time since she had opened her eyes she felt just a little bit like her old self, her humor and patience gradually stirring to make the situation bearable. And then he came along and spoiled it all.

  “Knock knock!” The voice came first and then a man’s hand appeared through the slit in the curtain, holding on to it and saying, “Are you decent?”

  Kathy jumped back onto the bed and pulled the blankets over her again. She noticed as she did this that the pain in her face had actually subsided quite a bit. Or maybe she just had so many other things to worry about that it had slipped down the priority list. “Hello?” she said.

  “Not the sociable kind, huh?” the voice asked and was accompanied by a head peeking through the curtain. Kathy involuntarily began to assess him, as she did with all men on first meetings, and concluded that he had the bluest eyes she had ever seen. However, his ponytail was something from the eighties and as he revealed his full figure, the jeans, leather jacket, and T-shirt ensemble lost him points. He was handsome in a rugged kind of way, but there was something about him that was immediately unlikable to Kathy. Before he had said a word, she had assessed and rejected him and was now onto the serious business of wondering just who the hell he was to be barging into her cubicle.

  “Relax, I’m DCI Spinoza. I’m here to ask you a few questions.”

  “Great!” Now she knew what that ‘something about him’ that she instantly disliked had been. “Well, I’m not up to being questioned.”

  “Oh, the nurse told me to give you this.” He held out his hand and gave her a single Paracetamol. “See they’ve got you on the hard stuff!” he smiled.

  “I wish,” she relented and downed the pill with the glass of water.

  “Do you mind if I…?” Spinoza asked, lowering himself onto the chair before Kathy could answer.

  “Be my guest.” Kathy turned and caught sight of her reflection in the TV screen. Although it lacked the HD of a mirror, she could see why the little boy had been so alarmed and suddenly felt self-conscious. The fact that she had two black eyes and a swollen, red cheek wasn’t the worst of it—she was in hospital and was expected to have injuries. But her ear-length, dark-brown hair had decided to stand out in all directions and looked like it had a clump of mud stuck in it that no one had thought to take out for her. She looked about fifty years old and didn’t actually smell too fresh she now noticed. She really could have done without the good-looking, badly dressed visitor. But all of this shifted into the background once again when she suddenly turned back to Spinoza and said, “Have you got my bag?”

  “Your bag. Hmm. We’ll come back to that. I just want to get a few things straight first, Miss Smith. Now tell me how you came to be riding down St Andrew’s Street earlier.”

  “I was on my way home. What’s this about?”

  “I think we both know what this is about.”

  Kathy’s heart began to beat strangely suddenly. She knew the feeling well from the numerous times she and Brady had been caught red-handed in some kind of trouble. The trick was to remain calm and deny everything until it was completely unavoidable.

  “That poor man,” Kathy suddenly realised she should say, but as the words left her lips she could see how unconvinced Spinoza was. He sat open-legged, hands on knees, leaning forward, not necessarily scrutinizing Kathy, but clearly experienced in getting to the truth of things.

  “So you didn’t know that Malcolm Scott was a known paedophile?”

  Could she risk even more ignorance? “Is that the man I hit?” she asked. “God, I have no idea how I feel about that. Is that why he was at the school? My God! Is he okay, though?”

  “He’s still unconscious. He hit his head hard and his leg is pretty mashed up. The doctors won’t know if there’s permanent damage until he wakes up.”

  We can but hope, Kathy thought, but repeated, “My God!” and covered her mouth with her hand, showing that she was now too shocked to speak.

  DCI Spinoza just looked at her, half-smiling, waiting for her to speak, perhaps willing to give her enough rope to hang herself. He was about the same kind of age as Kathy, but the years of sloshing through gutters to catch bad guys had weathered and aged him. He was naturally broad, but he clearly worked out, too. As they both sat waiting for Kathy to speak, which she inevitably would, the smell of a surprisingly subtle and stylish aftershave drifted over to her. The leather and denim were disguising a man who clearly looked after himself.

  “It was my grandmother’s bike. I don’t ride it out very often,” Kathy began. “To be honest, it’s seen better days, but I just couldn’t get that hill out of my head this morning. I used to bike down it with my friend when we were children and, I don’t know… you must have crazy days like that, DCI Spinoza”—she hoped that using his full name and looking him in the eye would throw him off balance somehow—“when you just want to be a kid again and do things that you used to do. There are so many bad things in life and everyone’s always so serious.”

  “And you decided to do this when three hundred children were about to finish school for the day?”

  “I wasn’t watching the time.”

  “Hmmm!” he said, but he didn’t write anything down or give anything away. “And you were riding on the pavement because…?”

  “Because my brakes pac
ked up. I started on the road and then I couldn’t stop. I did shout. I would have killed myself if I’d stayed on the road, so I thought if I got on the pavement I could try and slow myself down or throw myself into someone’s garden, I don’t know.” She peeked over to him. Was he buying it? “Anyway, it’s the last time I take the bike out. It’s a death trap.”

  “I don’t think anyone’s gonna be riding that thing again.” Spinoza coughed and shifted in the chair and then said, “Of course, I would believe all of this, Kathy—can I call you Kathy?” Kathy nodded. “If I hadn’t spent the last hour reading through the massive file in your bag.”

  “You’ve got no right to go through my things!”

  “I don’t think that’s the important point here, do you?”

  “You’re not suggesting…? I can’t pretend I’m going to lose any sleep over running down a kiddie-fiddler, but I couldn’t hurt a flea intentionally. You’re taking two and two and making a conspiracy. It’s ironic—yes. It’s definitely a coincidence, but what happened was an accident.” Kathy’s voice remained calm and measured. She was doing well.

  “But Scott’s on your list, Kathy. How do you explain that? In fact, let’s go back to the beginning. Just what are you doing with a list like that?”

  “I’m on sabbatical. I’m a psychologist. I’m gathering data on the behaviour of paedophiles.” Kathy smiled as innocently as she could, but her heart was doing leaps again. She ran a hand through her muddy hair and sighed before continuing. “Research cures diseases, DCI Spinoza, not vigilantism.”

  “And where did you get the information? Some of the names on here are protected; they have served their time and are trying to lead constructive lives. We wouldn’t have given you their names. So…?”