by Nick Oldham
She explained Henry had been flown to Royal Preston Hospital (RPH), where there was a helipad and the necessary set-up to deal quickly with patients arriving by air.
‘What did Jake say about Henry’s condition?’
‘He thought he was dead at first, then saw some signs of life, but that he is badly injured from the accident – and he thought he’d also been shot.’
‘Shot?’ Rik exclaimed.
‘Seems to have a bullet wound in his right bicep,’ Makin said. ‘That’s only Jake’s interpretation of what he saw, but there were bullet holes in the rear window of the car and shell casings on the road where it went over the edge.’
‘What the hell’s all that about?’ Rik mused.
The explosion really had rocked his brain.
Jake wished he’d had the foresight to cadge a lift in the air ambulance up onto the road because his only quick way back up was by rope. However, by the time he got back to the Navara, more traffic cops had appeared and he was heaved up by three of them, who quizzed him incessantly. The road-crash investigator was particularly probing and was keen to get down to the vehicle and have a closer look with the CSI.
‘Be my guest,’ Jake said and both were lowered by rope.
Jake sat on the low wall by the roadside and waited for a signal to appear on his phone, then called Alison, knowing this would be one of the most difficult phone calls he had ever made in his life.
‘I don’t necessarily see a connection,’ Karl Donaldson said. It was just after midnight and into the next day as he and Rik tried to get their collective, flagging brainpower around the day’s events. They were in the Tawny Owl dining room. ‘In fact, I don’t think there is one. Something happened to Henry on that road that we have no answers to as yet … like Tod, maybe he stumbled into something bad.’
Rik nodded. ‘I think we have two separate investigations here. The guy attempting to take Ginny being the same one who killed Tod and Ray Bower, our CSI – and us. The only connection is Henry himself and I think that’s just accidental.’
Donaldson agreed.
Rik had a desolate look on his face. He had cancelled his honeymoon with no argument from Lisa, his wife, Henry’s sister. She was presently in the bar with Karen, Donaldson’s wife, and Anna Niven, Jake’s wife, all awaiting news of Henry.
Alison and Ginny had been whisked by a traffic car from Lancaster Infirmary down to Preston where Henry was being treated and she was keeping in touch from there. At Alison’s request, and because she now worked full time at the pub, Anna Niven had assumed control of the keys and had closed at the end of the day, shooing many of the regulars out at eleven thirty p.m. It was doubtful at this moment if the pub would reopen to the public the next day, but Anna was determined it would.
Alison had told Rik that the facilities of the Owl were available to him and his officers for the next few days and had instructed the chef to come in and help out with food and drink for the troops by putting on a breakfast buffet and packed lunches and constant hot water for brews.
She would be home when she would be home.
However long it took.
A mobile incident room had been set up on the car park and Rik intended to run the concurrent investigations from there, rather than at Lancaster where the nearest office facilities were. He had told staff to get around the phone signal problem, whatever it took.
DS Makin walked into the dining room, clearly flagging on her feet as were the rest of them. Rik had offered her a room at the Tawny Owl if she needed it, but she had declined the offer. She wanted her own shower, bed and a change of clothes. Even so she had stayed on to help set up the mobile incident room for a real push that would begin in the morning with a proper large-scale search for the offender.
‘Hi, Jess,’ Rik said.
She nodded and took a seat at the table. There were two sheets of paper in her hand, a printout from the Police National Computer and one from the National Fingerprint Database.
She looked puzzled.
‘What’s that?’ Rik asked.
‘Well, odd thing,’ she said. ‘Obviously we’ve checked the camper van on PNC and there is no registered owner, which is not that unusual. Someone will follow that up tomorrow morning with previous owners et cetera. There’s nothing back from the DNA database yet.’ She sighed and stuck out her bottom lip. ‘But this’ – she held up the printout from the fingerprint database – ‘is the strange thing. We’ve run all the partial prints we found in Ginny’s room, no full ones, but what were lifted from the syringe and the gaffer tape, and all of them were enough to get an identity of anyone on the system, though not enough for a court.’
‘Yes, yes.’ Rik was feeling sore, irritable and exhausted. He was holding a cold wet towel to his facial burns and was almost overdosing on paracetamol and ibuprofen, the effects of which were wearing thin. He needed something much stronger.
‘We got a response,’ Makin said.
Donaldson and Rik leaned eagerly toward her.
‘Surely that’s good?’ Rik said. ‘But the expression on your face says not so.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘They’re blocked.’
‘What do you mean, blocked?’ Rik demanded.
‘I mean there is a match on file but for some reason the system will not tell us who … There is a London phone number to ring and reference number to quote for assistance.’
‘I take it, hope, you’ve rung it.’
She nodded. ‘No reply, goes straight to voicemail, on which I’ve left a message. And, no, there is no indication who I’m actually phoning.’
‘Blocked fingerprint ID?’ Rik said, screwing up his nose. ‘Don’t like the sound of that.’
The three of them, all experiencing brain freeze, looked helplessly at each other, but then they all turned their heads at exactly the same time as Karen, Lisa and Anna appeared at the dining-room door with expressions of horror on their faces. Anna was clutching a mobile phone.
TWELVE
Although Jake Niven was correct when he checked Henry Christie’s vital signs – his heart was still beating, he was still breathing – things changed dramatically almost as soon as the air ambulance lifted away from the river bed and tilted to fly south.
His heart stopped.
The paramedic treating him responded instantly and while his colleague prepped the defibrillator pads he applied CPR, heaving on the centre of Henry’s chest with one hand above the other. When the pads were charged they were applied and discharged, sending a shockwave across his heart that jerked him like a cow-prod.
But did not restart his heart.
They were charged again and reapplied, jerking him like a monster in a Frankenstein movie, then the straight line on the monitor became a series of steep mountain crests as his heart began to beat strongly again.
The helicopter banked and the two paramedics eyed each other with relief and got on with treating Henry’s other injuries.
The air ambulance landed at RPH ten minutes later, greeted by the already alerted crash team. Two minutes later Henry was in the emergency treatment room surrounded by doctors and nurses.
A traffic car picked Alison and Ginny up from Lancaster Royal Infirmary and blue-lighted them south via the A6 and M6 to RPH, where they then had to wait tremulously for news.
Alison did manage to glimpse Henry once because she forced her way into the ETR and almost collapsed with the shock of just how bad he looked. If she hadn’t been told different, she would have said he was dead. A nurse gripped her gently and steered her back to the waiting room and promised to keep her updated of any developments.
It was already a long day, one which now seemed likely to stretch to infinity.
Ginny – ever resourceful and recovering all the time from her own ordeal – kept Alison plied with liquids, although she could not entice her stepmother to actually eat anything.
Late into the evening, the consultant who had been in charge of Henry from admittance came to see Alison.
After removing his surgical gloves, he shook hands and introduced himself as Mr Basheer, then sat alongside her.
‘I believe you’re Mr Christie’s partner,’ he said.
She nodded.
Basheer paused.
Many years ago Alison had been a medic in the British Army and served in several fields of conflict, including Afghanistan, where her husband Jack had been killed. She saw the same look on Dr Basheer’s face as she had on many army doctors about to deliver bad news.
She swallowed and braced herself, but was unable to look the doctor in the eyes.
‘He is badly injured, as you’ve seen yourself. I’ve been briefed about the circumstances of the accident in which he was involved. He has been shot and a bullet has torn quite a big chunk out of the rear of his right bicep before exiting. It is not a life-threatening injury and I have sealed the wound.’ He sighed: that was the good news portion, and Alison knew it. ‘He has also sustained quite severe head injuries. I cannot tell you how severe, unfortunately, until the swellings have gone down, but I can tell you he does have a fractured skull.’
Alison gasped. Ginny gripped her arm.
‘As far as fractures go, it looks minor …’
‘But?’ Alison said.
‘We don’t know the condition of his brain yet. My plan is to keep him stable and let everything settle and then see where we are. There are other internal injuries, too, and I am investigating them. He will need twenty-four-hour monitoring for at least two days, firstly in intensive care.’ He paused again. ‘At the moment, he is in a critical condition.’
Alison closed her eyes in despair and did not initially see the worried-looking nurse rush into the waiting room. She opened her eyes when she heard the words, ‘Mr Basheer, please come quickly.’
Alison recognized the nurse as the one who had brought her back into the waiting room earlier.
‘Quickly,’ the nurse stressed.
Basheer hurried away.
Following the harrowing phone call from Ginny bringing everyone up to date with Henry’s condition and the fact the doctor had been called urgently back in to see him, Karen, Donaldson’s wife, after speaking to Ginny, volunteered to drive to the hospital to be there to bring back Alison and Ginny in the Jeep when they were ready.
Rik Dean, Donaldson and Makin retired to the front steps of the pub, which was becoming the gathering area. It was well after midnight, but the air was still tepid and pleasant, quite possible to sit out without coats, drinking the whisky that Donaldson had pilfered from the bar. They were now waiting to see why the doctor had been dragged back so urgently.
They had been joined by Jake Niven, who brought them up to date with his hypothesis surrounding Henry’s accident, in which he was certain it wasn’t an accident, but a deliberate attempt to kill Henry, as a result of which Rik Dean had asked Preston police to get an officer to the hospital to keep a watch on Henry and be there when he either woke up or died.
The medical confirmation of a bullet wound in Henry’s upper arm made it more than conjecture.
The ‘why’ pertaining to that scenario had yet to be established.
In backtracking Henry’s movements, Jake had visited Lord Chalmers’ house but had got no further than the front gate because there was no reply either to his repeated finger-stabbing of the intercom button or calling Chalmers’ home number, which he’d managed to acquire from the Tawny Owl phone book.
Jake was as exhausted as any of them. He had been in regular contact throughout with Ginny and Alison for updates on Henry, which had been worryingly few and far between – and the toll was getting to him.
He sat out with the others mulling over the day as the other two reflected on theirs. Jake was focused on trying to piece together Henry’s travels after he’d left the Tawny Owl in Alison’s Navara.
‘If we say Henry went to see his good lordship, and we assume he did, then the next assumption is that he conducted his business, then left – meaning he left Brown Syke ahead of Chalmers. Now I can’t get a reply from the house to confirm it, but it is logical.’
‘And an assumption,’ Rik reiterated.
‘But if it is right, and presuming Chalmers left by road, wouldn’t he have come across Henry’s “accident”?’ Jake twitched the first and second fingers of both hands to represent air speech marks around the word ‘accident’. ‘And if he did, why didn’t he stop, help, report it, or whatever? Or do lords not do things like that? Help plebs? And obviously we don’t know the exact time Henry’s car went off the road, but it couldn’t be long after that Dr Lott drove in the opposite direction and found it. He tells me he didn’t see any other vehicles on the road, by the way.’
Jake shook his head. His brain was in meltdown and despite the fact his liver was still recovering from the assault he had suffered many months ago, and he’d had too much to drink at Rik’s wedding, he said, ‘I could do with a shot of that firewater,’ and pointed to the bottle of Bell’s.
Donaldson reached for the bottle, but as he did, Anna reappeared from inside the pub, once more clutching the phone and followed by the other two ladies.
‘It’s Ginny,’ she said.
Henry had come out of surgery that had lasted just short of ninety minutes, during which Alison had been sick several times.
‘Please live,’ she had intoned whilst walking trance-like through the hospital corridors. ‘Please live.’
Ginny had walked with her, holding her hand.
Other than what Alison was muttering, they said nothing to each other, wrapped up in their own thoughts.
Mr Basheer found them in the waiting room, where they had just sat down. Alison shot back to her feet, her hand cupped fearfully over her mouth.
Basheer laid his hand on her arm and gripped her gently, looking deep into her eyes. His face was serious, but then broke into a smile. ‘He had a bleed on the brain which we were unable to see initially, so I have operated on him, drained excess fluids and sealed the bleed successfully.’
Alison waited.
‘He’s doing all right. Still critical but stable.’
‘Right, right,’ Alison said, taking it in. ‘What happens now?’
‘We wait, we monitor, we care,’ he said, words that sounded corny but which he meant sincerely.
‘Thank you, thank you so much.’ Alison sank to her knees as all her strength inside her drained away.
Donaldson took the phone away from his ear, closed his eyes, blew out his cheeks, opened his eyes, looked at Rik, Jake, Makin (who still had not gone home), Lisa and Anna, and said, ‘Fuck me.’ He gave them the update, which made Rik and Jake jump up and punch the air high and low in relief. Even Makin, who did not know Henry, jumped to her feet and did a little dance.
Donaldson picked up the whisky and refilled all the glasses, including one for Jake. He gestured to Makin. ‘Want one?’
‘You know, I will,’ she said weakly. ‘I’ll get a glass.’
She returned a few moments later and held the glass, into which Donaldson tipped a generous measure of the spirit. She took a sip, cringed, then said, ‘Is the offer of accommodation still there?’
Rik said, ‘Yeah, we can sort it.’
‘In that case …’ She tipped the rest of the liquor down her throat in one and held out the glass again. Donaldson refilled it and she sipped this one. ‘I’ve been in these clothes for eighteen hours and my underwear is rubbing like mad, so I guess I’ll just have to rinse it in the sink, won’t I?’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ Donaldson said.
Rik plonked himself heavily on the wall again and said, ‘Gonna be a long day tomorrow.’
He tipped the last of his drink down his gullet, stood up, nodded and said, ‘I’m back to the bridal suite, where my bed awaits.’ He walked into the pub and collected Lisa, before sticking his head back out the door again and saying, ‘Seven a.m., guys … gal.’
‘Gonna be a honeymoon they’ll talk about at dinner parties for years to
come,’ Donaldson chuckled.
‘I need to go, too,’ Jake said and made his way into the pub to see Anna, who was in the process of locking up the bar for the night.
Jess Makin and Karl Donaldson sat side by side on the wall, sipping the last of their whiskies.
‘You know Henry well?’ Makin probed.
‘Twenty years, I guess. First met him way back when I was a field agent. We’ve worked together a few times since and we’re good buddies but I don’t get to see as much of him these days. Reckon that’s how life is.’ He shrugged philosophically.
‘Was he a good detective?’ Makin asked. ‘I never came across him, unfortunately, but I heard a lot about him. Bit of a legend.’
‘He had his moments. The thing was, what drove him, he fought for the dead, believed that was his lot in life. No matter how stupid he was, or cowardly, or brave, or intuitive or dumb, that was the underlying principle that drove him.’
‘And what about you?’
‘Me? As Clint Eastwood once described a guy in a film, I’m firmly in the category of pen-pushing asshole. I sit in an office, fiddle about with intelligence. That’s about it.’
‘But you were once a field agent?’
‘Yeah,’ he drawled, ‘too goddam dangerous for me.’
She smiled, knowing he was lying.
‘What about you?’ he asked.
Even in the darkness, Donaldson could tell she had coloured up.
‘Just wanted to be a cop because it seemed a good idea at the time. Now I just want to help victims and nail offenders.’
‘Sounds dandy to me.’
‘I’d like to be like Mr Christie eventually, an SIO.’ She finished her drink. ‘Maybe I’ll go to bed … Good night.’
‘I’ll just wait on a while,’ Donaldson said. ‘Night, y’all.’
He sat out and poured himself another drink. A short while later, Jake and Anna walked past on their way home and Anna told Donaldson to close the pub door behind him when he went to bed. He said he would.
Donaldson stood up stiffly when he saw the headlights coming into the village, recognized the sound of the engine – his Jeep. Karen pulled up at the bottom of the steps. Alison, Ginny and Karen climbed out, past exhaustion.