The ambulance pulled up finally, and a tall, matronly woman with warm hands helped me out, and with a strong grip on my arm, she led me over to the entrance to A&E.
A couple of hours later, with the sun fading completely outside the narrow hospital window, I had regained painful feeling in all my fingers and toes and, though still shivering, I no longer felt like ice was running through my blood. The tingling as blood flow returned to my extremities had been painful, and I had to grit my teeth as I rubbed my cold, waxy-feeling feet.
I was sitting on a small, hard hospital bed, still wrapped up in three blankets, and sipping a cup of soup when Sam burst in.
“Darren!”
I was so startled, I almost spilt soup all over the bed covers. Hastily putting it aside, Sam hurried across the little room and threw herself into my arms, holding me tight. She was shaking slightly, or maybe it was me, still shaking off the cold.
“You idiot, you complete idiot,” she choked out.
“That’s what Stephen said,” I said weakly.
She released a gasping laugh and pulled back. I was taken aback to see that she was crying and seeing her so upset made my own eyes sting.
“Hey, hey,” I said gently. “I’m fine. I’m gonna be okay, don’t worry, alright?”
She shook her head at me, still crying, and dragged an across her face. She was still wearing her coat, which was speckled with rain from outside, but I couldn’t give a damn when I gathered her back up in a tight hug. I ached all over, and even my chest muscles flinched with pain from the swimming I’d done, and from dragging Robbie along behind me, but I wanted to hold Sam tight more than I cared about the pain.
After a while, she pulled back, perched on the edge of the narrow mattress. I pulled a couple of tissues from the box beside my bed and gently wiped her face, before giving her a kiss.
“I’m okay,” I told her again.
She looked at me, her brows pulled up tight with obvious pain. “We’re talking about this later,” she told me, less stern than hurt and worried. “Okay? When you’re better.”
I guessed that that was inevitable and gave a nod, repressing a wince even at that movement.
“Is the guy-? Stephen told me you did it to save someone,” she said hesitantly. “Is he okay?”
“I don’t know. Stephen just went off to ask around. The last I saw him, he wasn’t great.” I grimaced, before adding quietly, “But he was alive.”
She nodded, leaning in to kiss me again. Even with how much I’d warmed up, her lips were still much warmer than mine.
“I kind of hate you for risking your life like that,” she said softly, “but I also kind of love you for it too.”
I met her hazel eyes, which looked paler in the bright white hospital lights, and a tired smile spread over my face.
“I kind of love you too.”
She pressed a hand to her mouth, but I could see the smile behind it, and she wrapped her arms back around me, curling up close. We stayed like that for long enough for me to stop shivering and to fall asleep finally.
Fifteen
I took the weekend to recover: no running and no gym. I ached like a bus had hit me, and it took until Saturday for me to feel like the warmth had fully returned to my bones. Sam stayed over both nights, fussing over me in a way that left me both fond and exasperated.
“You didn’t have to go to all this trouble,” I said as I peeled carrots for the roast dinner she was set on making.
She wouldn’t let me do anything else to help, and as much as I wanted to, my legs still felt achy and weak. I had several bruises on my knees and thighs, from Robbie kicking me in the water and me dragging us up the bank, no doubt, and I was on the strongest dose of over-the-counter painkillers I was allowed right now.
“I wanted to.” She rolled the halved potatoes in oil and herbs and stuck the pan in the oven. “There’s nothing like a roast to make you feel more yourself.”
I had to smile at that. It was nice having her in the apartment, even if she did leave coffee-cup circles on my table and liked to watch terrible quiz shows in the evening.
“Any news from Keira?” Sam asked as she took away the carrots I’d chopped and handed me the cauliflower.
I hummed. I’d filled her in on the situation with Keira’s brother, and Keira had texted me a couple of times on Saturday to thank me and let me know that Robbie was awake and recovering in hospital.
“He’s still in hospital, but he’s doing well.”
Sam nodded. “Will you and Stephen visit him tomorrow?”
I hesitated. “Aye, I think we have to.”
If it’d been up to me, I would’ve liked to give him another day to recover, but we couldn’t afford it. I felt some measure of pity for him, I couldn’t help it after I’d seen him so overtaken with panic in the river, but I never forgot that he could be a murderer. We had to speak to him and see what he had to say for himself. As far as we knew, the bottle of blood that’d arrived at the station belonged to someone who was being held prisoner right now. The thought made me pause in my chopping, and Sam looked over.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” I forced a smile and got back to what I’d been doing. “Just achy.”
She came over, laying a careful hand on my shoulder. “You should have a lie-down-”
“Sam,” I protested, “if I have any more lie-downs, I’m going to go mad, okay? I promise I can survive cutting up veg.”
“You’re the worst patient,” she complained, but she left me to it and returned to rolling the stuffing mixture in between her palms, making the kitchen smell pleasantly of herbs and warmth.
Despite feeling like a walking bruise, it was the most relaxing weekend I’d had in a while, and I fell asleep that evening with my arm wrapped around Sam and my head falling against the back of the sofa.
The peace couldn’t last, though. We might have Robbie, but we didn’t have any conclusive answers. So, I pulled myself out of bed on Monday and hobbled my way down the apartment block stairs and into the car. Sam had returned to her own place on Sunday night, so at least I didn’t have to hide my grimaces and flinches as I moved about.
I hadn’t seen Stephen since I left the hospital on Friday evening, but he’d sent me a number of worried texts, only reassured when I told him that Sam was staying over for the weekend. Still, he looked relieved to see me on Monday morning and moved as if to hug me, but I put up a hand.
“No bear hugs,” I told him firmly.
His briefly chastised look turned into a grin. “Okay, okay, I get it. You’re feeling a bit fragile.”
“I’m not fragile,” I huffed. “I just don’t want my ribs crushed.”
“Hint taken,” he teased, before heading off to get us both mugs of steaming coffee.
Once we were sitting down, I flicked through my neglected emails.
“Any news I should know?”
“Yeah, actually.” Stephen swivelled his chair to face me. “While you were off doing your idiot heroics and ending up in hospital-”
I shot him a look.
“Okay, okay.” He continued. “Walker’s PM took place while you were healing up. They sent over the results.”
I perked up. “Aye? What’s that then?”
“You could just read the report,” he grumbled, before giving in with a wave of his arm. “Basically, you were right about the blood on the first threat matching Walker’s. There was a half-healed cut on his finger that they took it from.”
“Okay.” I sat back, thinking that over. “So the blood wasn’t taken from the cuts to the feet or knees, that’s good, right? Maybe the other threat we’ve received… maybe the next victim is still alive.”
I was speaking of the bottle of blood that had turned up. We hadn’t had a DNA match on the system, so we couldn’t know who the victim was going to be. Right now, they could be locked up, scared out of their mind. The killer could attack them any day now. I rubbed my head, which was already starting to ache.
“I hear you,” Stephen said, smoothing a hand over his stubbly cheeks, “but there’s a difference between a smear of blood, and a bottle full of it.” He grimaced. “I’m inclined to think that the next victim is already dead.”
I was silent for a moment. I couldn’t fault his reasoning.
“Can they test the blood in the bottle for that?” I wondered aloud. “To see which part of the body it came from?”
Stephen gave an apologetic shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s in the report. I didn’t get a chance to read the whole thing, what with you being hypothermic-”
“Oh, give it a rest,” I grumbled, already opening up the report to read it through properly.
But Stephen interrupted by reaching over to clasp my shoulder. I sent him a quizzical look, though I had an idea of what he was going to say, and his stern expression only confirmed it.
“We’ve argued about this before,” he said, sounding weary. “I asked you not to go running off into situations like this, ones that could get you killed-”
“Steph, can we not?” I sighed. “Sam’s already done this. I know it was dangerous, okay? But how could I just let Robbie, Keira’s brother, float down the river and drown?”
Stephen pulled back, frustration etched into his complicated frown.
“We’ve talked about this, too,” he said sharply, again. “You can’t risk your life for everyone, you’ve got to still be there to help victims in the future, and you can’t do that if you jump in the bloody river!” His voice had risen, and he gestured irritably at me.
Someone cleared their throat behind me, and I startled, turning around. Gaskell was standing there, his frown serious but with an edge of amusement in the quirk of his thin mouth.
“Sir?” I said, surprised. Usually, he called us to his office when he wanted to speak to us, rather than approach us at our desks.
“Mitchell,” he said, which could have been the start of a sentence or a greeting, I couldn’t tell. “I was intending to have a stern talk about throwing yourself into a flooded river after a suspect, but it seems that DI Huxley has the talk well in hand.”
I hoped that Gaskell hadn’t been standing listening when I mentioned Sam having told me off for my recklessness as well.
“Uh, aye, sir,” I managed.
“You’re a good officer,” Gaskell told me soberly, “but you need to stop acting like you’re invincible. It’s going to catch up with you.”
“Yes, sir.”
He looked at me for a long moment, before nodding and striding away. I groaned once he left and rubbed a hand over my hair. Stephen was watching me.
“You wouldn’t change your decision, would you?” he asked finally, looking more serious than I’d seen him in a long time. “You’d still jump into the river after Robbie.”
“Aye,” I admitted.
“Even knowing that you could’ve so easily died? Of the grief it would’ve caused Sam and me and everyone else at the station?”
I swallowed, hating the tightness of his voice, but I couldn’t lie.
“Aye,” I said again, quieter.
“Why?” Stephen threw out his hands. “Seriously, Mitchell, why?”
I looked up to frown at him. “You damn well know why. And I bet that if you’d been the one to see Robbie jump into the river, you’d have been hard-pressed not to do the same.”
He jabbed a finger at me. “There, you’re wrong. I care for all civilians, of course, I do, but Robbie chose to go into that river. He took that stupid, stupid risk. I have a family-”
I winced and turned away. “Fine, then we’re different, aren’t we? I wouldn’t be leaving any kids without a father. And I couldn’t live with the guilt of accidentally chasing Robbie towards the river and standing on the sidelines to watch him drown. Alright?”
Stephen stared at me, and I looked back, unhappy but defiant. I hated arguing with him, but I wasn’t going to change my mind on this. It was my life, and I’d weighed up the risks and decided to do it, anyway.
“Fine,” he said finally, his tone hard and resigned. “You’re gonna continue to do your ridiculous heroics, and I’ll just have to prepared myself that, any day I come into work, I could lose you.” He stood up jerkily, rigid with tension, and I had to press down the impulse to start backwards.
“I hope you have your affairs in order,” he snapped before walking away.
My jaw set in anger and hurt, I watched him walk away. I’d known even as I was going into the river after Robbie that my actions would have a fall-out. I knew that Stephen and Sam would be worried and angry. And I could see it from their perspective. Of course, I could. If I imagined either of them doing what I’d done, I’d be just as frightened and angry as they’d been. And maybe it was stubbornness or stupidity, but I still couldn’t regret going in after Robbie.
Because of my actions, Keira’s brother was still alive. Whatever he’d done, she wouldn’t have to lose him. And beyond that, I’d rescued a key witness who might otherwise have taken what he knew to the grave. If he could shed light on the investigation, the case could be solved before there was any more blood and future, innocent lives saved.
Of course, if my risk hadn’t paid off, and I’d died, I’d have left Stephen trying to solve the case while dealing with my death. Or the higher-ups would have handed the investigation off to other officers, who wouldn’t nearly have the same connection to the case as Stephen and me, delaying the whole thing and causing more deaths.
The whole thing was giving me a headache, not to mention the sick feeling in my stomach that might’ve been guilt. It was done now, I told myself, and I tried to focus back on my work. That was the important thing now.
So, while Stephen was away cooling off, I meticulously read through Walker’s postmortem report. Stephen returned when I was halfway through reading and didn’t seem inclined to talk to me, so I read on. There was disappointingly little there. The mutilations to Walker’s body were much the same as the previous two, and he’d died in the same way; blood loss.
It had been Hewford’s own lab who’d added a brief note to say that Walker’s DNA matched the blood on the threat, so I sent an email to them to ask if they could look into the bottle of blood. I could have gone up and asked directly, but I honestly didn’t want to face the painful awkwardness that had happened last time with Sam’s colleague, and besides, it wasn’t an urgent request. They were usually fairly snappy at replying to emails, and I could wait.
“Have you finished it?” Stephen said, his voice crisp.
I glanced over at him but couldn’t quite read his face. He looked irritated, still, but determined to stay focused on the case. Inwardly, I sighed.
“Reading the report? Aye.”
Stephen closed the tab he was reading. “Anything I should know?”
“Nope.” I wrinkled my nose. “There’s nowt there that’s different from the others. Just the small cut the blood was taken from.” Stephen made a noise of acknowledgement. I chewed my lip as I considered our next step. “We need to go to the hospital, really. I don’t know that we’ll be able to speak to Robbie, even, but we should try.”
“Alright.” He frowned, muttering, “I’d like to have words with the idiot, anyway. Who thinks that jumping in a river is better than police custody?”
His question was rhetorical, I knew, but it was one that was already on my mind.
“Option one: his background in triathlons made him too confident that he could escape. Option two: he’s guilty and desperate, preferring to take the risk than face the music.” I hesitated before finishing, “And option three: I spooked him, he panicked, and did something completely stupid.”
Stephen eyed me, his expression impenetrable. “One other possibility is that he thought something worse would happen if he got caught by police.”
I frowned. “Something bad at our hands? Surely he wouldn’t think-”
Stephen shrugged. “Or something would happen to him in prison, I don’t know.”
“If he was being blackmailed, or threatened, you mean?” I considered that and thought that it was certainly worth considering. “Anyway, if he’ll answer some of our questions, we’ll find out.”
“I’ll call the hospital, then,” he said. “See if he’s up to visitors.”
“Aye, that’d save a wasted trip.”
I fetched fresh drinks for us both whilst Stephen did that, putting them in takeaway cups in case we were heading out to the hospital. Stephen’s manner was strained, and I knew he hadn’t forgiven me for acting so rashly yet. I was sure he would in the end, but the atmosphere between us was uneasy in the meantime.
Stephen was standing up and getting his coat on when I returned, passing him his cup of tea.
“We’re good to go, then?”
“Yeah, they were hesitant about it, but we can come and see how he’s doing. Talk to the doctor.”
“And Keira,” I thought aloud, pulling on my jacket and gathering up my phone and keys. “She’s staying with him, I understand.”
We headed out of the station, down the stairs that made me wince at the lingering pain in my legs. It was good to keep moving, though, and not to let them stiffen us too badly, so I forced myself not to take the lift and to keep up with Stephen’s long stride.
“I wonder what she thinks about all this,” Stephen said, mostly to himself, as we got into the car. Stephen took the wheel by silent agreement, even though he’d ended up driving a lot recently. He knew I was still in pain and, despite him still being annoyed with me, willingly took over the driving.
“What who thinks?”
Stephen started up the car, turning up the heating to take the chill out of the cool morning, and set off towards the hospital. “Keira. Her brother might be a serial murder. And he’d be dead if it wasn’t for you diving in after him.” Like an idiot, went unsaid, but I heard it anyway.
“I don’t envy her. It must be a hell of a shock.” I looked away, out of the window. The day had started with a watery blue sky that didn’t seem sure whether it would stay around or not. It at least promised a short break from the eternal rain. “Family entanglements are so messy.”
Snakes in the Grass (A DI Mitchell Yorkshire Crime Thriller Book 5) Page 16