by Phil Rickman
‘That’s not quite true, Dad. No beers.’
Norman looked down on him, breathing through his teeth. ‘You were in a club called the Saint Moritz, that right?’
Maiden said nothing.
‘Where you picked up a brass.’
‘Not quite right.’
‘And where you drank five Scotches and four pints. The barman remembers every one, lad, because he recognized you. Then you and the brass left, wi’ your hand up her jumper.’
‘No.’
‘You got in a minicab and you went to your flat. About an hour later, a witness saw you come out chasing t’brass. What were up, lad? Wouldn’t she take a credit card? By Christ, I always knew you weren’t up to much. I were bloody amazed when you made DI. Bloody amazed.’
‘Dad-’
‘I thought you’d maybe sorted yourself out at one time. When you married Elizabeth. Bonny lass. Woman wi’ a bit of go in her. Could you keep her? Could you buggery. You’re a dead loss, lad. A bloody dead loss.’
Norman took his weight off Maiden’s chest. Moved away, brushing at his jacket in case bits of his son had come off on him.
At the foot of the bed, he looked over his shoulder, Sporting Life and the farter both watching keenly.
‘You left your front door open, son,’ Norman said with a visible sneer. ‘But it’s all right. Nobody wanted to nick your pictures.’
The storeroom was full of boxes of paper towels and toilet rolls, cartons of soap, bleach, industrial cleaning fluids. All the non-human hospital smells began here.
Maiden stayed behind the door as someone went past with a trolley. He was sweating. His left side had shut down. The blue-white light from the fluorescent tube was squeezing his head like an accordion.
Sister Andy had told him, You won’t be walking a straight line for a wee while.
Take it slowly. This was the furthest he’d been; taken himself to the lavatory and that was it. He looked down at his trousers. No bloodstains, anyway. Somebody had given the suit a brush. There was a hole in his grey jacket below the breast pocket. It would do.
Normal thing would have been for the suit to go to forensic; always a small possibility of paint traces. Somebody obviously wasn’t trying very hard to find the car that ran him down.
He still needed a sweater or a shirt. The crash team had obviously torn his off in a hurry to get at his chest. Maybe he could find some kind of surgeon’s smock in here.
He had no watch. He opened the door a crack to look up at the clock at the end of the corridor. Five-thirty. Teatime. They’d be missing him soon. Checking out the toilets and the day rooms. Could have tried to sign himself out, but that would have led to arguments, drawn too much attention. Especially with the state he’d been in …
… when, not five minutes after Norman’s final exit, there’d been this sudden activity down the ward and the screens went up again round the old man’s bed, and there were murmurs, the ward darkening, the air clotting with death, a purple-grey cloud almost visible over that bed. Maiden’s stomach had gone cold with dread. He had to get out of here. Out of the hospital, out of the town, out of the grey, out of the cold. The need stifling him.
… take a breath before you jump in …
No. He’d found his suit in the locker, rolled it up into a ball around his shoes. Made his exit before they removed the body.
He found the T-shirts wrapped in Cellophane in a box marked Liquid Soap.
The T-shirts were white, all one size. He held one up. Across the chest, it said, ELHAM GENERAL HOSPITAL LEAGUE OF FRIENDS FUN RUN 1997.
Maiden put one on, his jacket over the top. Switched off the light and relished the darkness, until he realized he was going to sleep, even though he’d spent most of the bloody day asleep.
All you have to do, Bobby, is rest, rest and rest.
Wondering if he could ever really rest again.
Anybody to look after you at home? Girlfriend? Mother?
Liz would have known how to look after him. Would’ve known all about the care of head injuries. But he knew that if he’d still been with Liz she’d have sent him straight back to the hospital in a taxi. Then told Riggs. Liz liked there to be a framework, structure, hierarchy, organization, rules, discipline …
He clutched his head, suffocating. No wonder Norman liked her.
When the lift let him out in the reception area, his legs felt weak. The place was full of visitors and cleaners and auxiliaries. There was a small shop selling tea and coffee and snacks, a few tables and chairs, and he sat down for a moment, eyes going at once to a framed print on the cream wall opposite.
He knew the painting. Turner. Staffa: Fingal’s Cave. Skeletal ship in an angry, glowering maelstrom of sea and sky and rocks. Small, struggling sun. There was a sudden heaviness in his chest, a memory rolling around in there like an iron ball. It meant something, this picture. It had the essence of something. He felt its violence.
The picture was groaning with half-spent violence and the threat of more to come.
More to come. Maiden felt sick, as though he was on that ship among the black elements.
Couldn’t look at it any more. Stood up. Didn’t hang around, didn’t look to either side until he was in the hospital car park, on the hillside overlooking the town and the dying sun.
XII
‘Shit!’
Slamming the flat of his hand into his head.
An elderly man steered his wife away from the bus stop, throwing Maiden a glare of disgust. Bloody drunks, he’d be thinking. Bloody drunks on the street before seven o’clock, that’s what you get with all-day opening.
Maiden rocked on the kerb, hands pushing at his eyes. So he was making an exhibition of himself. So what?
He’d only left his wallet in the hospital safe.
So no money. Not even a few coins for a cup of tea with three sugars — he needed the sugar, he felt as though his brain was floating out of his skull like a balloon on a string.
Made himself take three deep breaths. Think.
OK. It wasn’t as if he was breaking gaol. It was only a hospital. He could go back and demand his wallet from the safe.
Except they’d probably know he was missing by now and, as he was a policeman, who would they tell?
Not worth the risk. He wanted to be well away before Riggs found out. Not that even Riggs could stop him; it wasn’t a police hospital. And, as he was hardly fit for work, he could do what he liked, go where he wanted.
Anybody to look after you at home? Girlfriend? Mother?
Girlfriend, no. Mother, no. Home. Get back to the flat. Must be some money there, a spare chequebook. Pack a suitcase, take a bus out of town — don’t even try to drive the car — find a hotel, sleep, sleep, sleep. Then consider stage two.
He wanted to worry Riggs, if that was possible. Make him lose some sleep about where Maiden might be, who he might be talking to. Worried people made mistakes. One day, Riggs would have to make a mistake; you could only hope somebody would be there to pick up on it.
Maiden started to walk, avoiding the town centre, slinking into the back streets like a vagrant, walking slowly, trying not to sway. Passing people were glancing sideways at him, as at some kind of downmarket street-theatre performer. The sneering sun hung like a cheap, copper medallion. He felt naked. He tried to run, but the pavement came up at him before he even realized he’d stumbled. Slow down; it was no more than half a mile to Old Church Street, he could manage that.
Oh no. Please, no. Fuck.
Now he was kicking a lamp-post. Again and again and again. Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Because his pockets were empty: not only no wallet, but no bastard keys.
He was supposed to break into his own flat?
Shit! Shit! Shit! Where had his mind gone? Not thinking like a copper any more. Not even like a human being. And he’d actually believed he was putting it on, for Riggs. Shit, he was half vegetable. Couldn’t work out really, really simple things. He looked wildly around him. No money, no keys. N
owhere to go, now. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to sleep.
The street swayed. His left leg had gone dead. He wanted to smash his head into the lamp-post. Again and again and again. His useless, damaged head.
He gave the post a final kick. Its light began to flicker on; he backed away in alarm. Then saw that lights were coming on all down the street.
Because it was dusk.
He started to laugh, pushing away the memory of a woman under a sputtering lamp in Old Church Street only seconds before … and walked on towards a row of mostly darkened shops, resting his right shoulder against the windows as he passed from doorway to doorway. Only one shop was lit. Or, half lit, drably, around a window-display.
H. W. Worthy: monumental mason.
Mottled, grey, marble gravestone, with a glistening black flowerpot, empty, and a dark green, tangly wreath. No bright, beckoning lights, no flowers, no fountains. Worthy had it right. The dark and true nature of death.
Bobby Maiden rested his forehead against the cool of the plate-glass window, staring death in the face.
And the face of death stared back, from the drab wreath. The dark leaves framed it, a face made of compost and fibre, broken twigs clenched in its earth-blackened teeth, its deep-set eyes darkly glowing, its hair and beard writhing with voracious organic life.
The face of death grinned at Maiden; his stomach pulsed, an acrid bile rose into his throat. He was only vaguely aware of a grey car gliding to the kerb, the passenger door swinging open before it slid to a stop.
‘You look lost, Bobby,’ Suzanne said.
‘We have a problem,’ Jonathan said on the phone to Andy. ‘Your friend has checked out of Lower Severn without leaving a forwarding address.’
‘Bobby Maiden? What’s he doing on Lower Severn?’
‘Dr Connelly had him moved. Couldn’t see why he was still in Accident and Emergency. Now he’s gone.’
‘Brian Connelly wouldnae see his own-He’s gone?’
‘Taken his clothes and left.’
‘You mean you let him just walk oot? ‘
‘It was before I came in, Sister Andy. He had visitors, apparently. His father and the Superintendent. Nobody liked to disturb them. Then they had a death on the ward and tea was delayed, and when they brought Mr Maiden’s, he was gone. And his clothes from the locker. The man in the next bed says he simply got up and strolled out.’
‘Staggered, more like. You checked around the building?’
‘Virtually everywhere except the ventilation tunnels. We assume he became disoriented. Wandered off. Sister Fox has informed the police. I thought you’d want to know.’
‘Taken his clothes? Aw hell. The boy’s no fit to be out.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘Like I havenae enough problems,’ Andy said.
The half-packed suitcase lay on the bed. If she didn’t leave soon she wouldn’t make St Mary’s before Mrs Willis was asleep.
‘Just let me know, OK?’
She sat in the back with him. Thigh to thigh. Just like before.
‘This is nice, Inspector.’ She was luminous in the dimness of the car. Wearing an orangey sweatsuit, her hair down. A lot was different about her. ‘This is really nice. In fact, when we spotted you I really couldn’t believe it. We thought you’d be in hospital for a long, long time.’
He said nothing. Same driver too. Victor Clutton, father of the late Dean. No mistaking him this time.
The old Sierra rattling off into the twilit town centre. Suzanne gazing at him, looking genuinely, spontaneously happy. A glow about her that shone through the ubiquitous grey, kindling something half forgotten in the late Bobby Maiden.
Don’t get fooled again.
‘This the very same car, isn’t it? Bit of a risk.’
‘Not a dent on it, Bobby. You went whizzing over the bonnet, banged your head on the kerb. Jesus, I really can’t believe this. In the papers, it was touch and go. Touch and gone, in fact. Inspector Lazarus, you might say. Pretty scary all round, Bobby. Especially as Vic was trying so hard to avoid you. As it was, in fact, all your own fault.’
‘That’s the story you’ve agreed, is it?’
‘That’s the truth.’
‘Just like Tony’s your uncle?’
‘Well, yeah, that was a lie. I also know a Van Gogh from an Atkinson Grimshaw. And a Wordsworth from a Larkin. I was just having fun, Bobby. You know that. Hey, I’m not kidding.’
Suzanne crooked her head to peer directly into his eyes.
‘Whether you remember or not, it was a genuine bloody accident. We just couldn’t believe you didn’t get out of the way.’
Vic Clutton said, ‘Ask him why he was walking down the middle of the road, sorter thing. Ask him what he thought I was supposed to fucking do.’
‘You did look awfully strange, Bobby. Like you’d been dropped out of a UFO.’
‘I was walking towards you. You were under a street-lamp. You were waiting.’
‘I was in the car, Bobby. I went straight back to the car. Vic’d been parked round the corner the whole time, hadn’t you?’
‘You were under the bloody-’ The faulty streetlamp, coming on, going off, lighting the figure of the woman. Had he imagined her?
‘Waste of bleedin’ breath.’ Clutton hit the accelerator to overshoot the junction with Old Church Street. ‘Like I said. He’ll either finger us or he won’t.’
Suzanne said, ‘Just do the driving, Vic.’
‘He thinks we fitted up his son, isn’t that right, Mr Clutton?’
‘Don’t be naive, Bobby. Vic knows Dean was dealing, freelance. He was a very silly boy, was Dean, God rest his poor, corrupt little soul. Had to prove he was smarter than his old man, didn’t he, Vic?’
Vic said nothing, drove down towards the suburbs, the sun low over a horizon spiked with pylons.
‘They were never close,’ Suzanne said. ‘But we won’t open that particular can of worms.’
‘OK.’ Maiden leaned his head back until it was almost on the parcel shelf. ‘If it was an accident, why, not long before this … accident happened, did you advise me to go back in the flat and lock the door?’
Suzanne was silent for a long time.
‘Oh yeah?’ Vic said, suspicious. ‘That’s what you said to him, was it?’
‘Look, there’s a kids’ playing field back there,’ Suzanne said. ‘I fancy a bit of a swing. You up to pushing me, Bobby?’
The playground was deserted in the dusk. Maiden wedged himself into a metal roundabout; Suzanne sat on the lip of a rusting slide. Maiden felt calmer than he could remember.
‘What gets me, Bobby, is not so much why a halfway decent artist like you became a copper, as how you got so good at it. Putting two and two together and making seventeen.’
‘I was pissed. Out of interest, though … purely out of interest … was seventeen the right answer?’
‘You know it bloody was.’
Vic Clutton was leaning on his Sierra, parked fifty yards away. He was having a smoke, feigning unconcern.
‘Look, I’m not saying Tony’s a good man,’ Suzanne said. ‘He’s a businessman. In the free market. First and foremost, a businessman is what he is. He can be, like, awkward, if anybody threatens his regular income, but he’s never — and he wouldn’t lie about this, not to me — he’s never done anything terminal.’
‘Terminal.’ Maiden sighed. ‘You’re really into this vintage gangland vernacular, aren’t you, Suzanne?’
‘Look, Inspector, no bullshit … it would’ve upset him quite a bit if somebody’d suggested to him that the only way of removing a particular obstacle was that he might actually do something, like … I mean, cold …’
‘You mean a wet job in cold blood.’
‘Don’t laugh. I didn’t.’
Something close to anxiety in Suzanne’s eyes. The eyes were dark but no longer black. She looked a little older, but softer. Her voice had softened too, the brittle edges planed off.
‘Are y
ou saying somebody did suggest something like that to Tony?’
She shrugged.
‘I wonder who that could have been.’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’ Suzanne looked him frankly in the eyes. ‘But you could probably expect it to be somebody who might not find it so convenient to do it himself.’
‘Or compatible with his chosen profession?’
Maiden thought about this for a while in his new state of calm. The double-glazing again; everything far below him, an insect world. Superintendent Martin Riggs had invited Tony Parker to help him decommission Bobby Maiden?
‘So …’ Closing his eyes to trap the thoughts. ‘… what I think you might be saying is that Tony thought … or was persuaded to think … before he went along with the suggestion of this other person … that he ought to have one attempt at dealing with the problem in an equally time-honoured but less drastic fashion. Based on Tony’s usual philosophy of everybody having his price.’
‘I wouldn’t know about any of that.’
‘Of course you wouldn’t.’
‘But someone else might’ve been strongly disapproving if he’d had it done. I mean the other thing.’
‘Who?’
‘Me, for a start.’
Suzanne stood up, smacking grass-cuttings from her trousers, as if she was brushing off extraneous lies.
‘Stuff this.’ Facing him, hands behind her back. ‘If you hadn’t worked it out. Emma Curtis. Nee Parker.’
Maiden grabbed the bars of the roundabout, almost losing his balance.
‘Oh,’ he said.
Tony Parker was known to have a grown-up kid Elham had never seen. A kid raised at the house he’d given his former wife in the nice part of Essex, where a daughter might attend a good school, learn languages, have riding lessons, grow up respectable.
‘Bugger me,’ Maiden said.
Of course, she’d have loved it: doing herself up like a faintly sinister tart: white make-up, little black number to spill out of when she reached for her drink.
He grinned. Surely the first time since his previous life. Was that your idea? The pictures?’
‘Not bad, I thought, Bobby, for a spur of the moment thing. I was quite proud of it. For a while. But then …’