by Cari Hunter
“Almost done,” Meg said, watching her mum wince and clack her false teeth. “Do you want chocolate biscuits or would you prefer custard creams?”
Her mum remained silent as Meg wrapped a bandage around her wrist. Once her injuries were hidden from view, some of the distress eased from her expression. “Custard,” she said, patting the back of Meg’s hand.
Meg secured the bandage with a piece of tape and kissed her mum’s cheek. “Excellent choice.”
*
In a bus shelter on Avalon Road, Sanne used Nelson as a sneaky windbreak while she consulted notes she’d gleaned from a late afternoon of door-to-door enquiries.
“Twenty-six A has spent the last week on a bender, thanks to Universal Credit paying him all his benefits in one fell swoop,” she said, summarising the first entry. “He can’t afford his rent now, and he might have to mug a granny if he wants to eat, but he reckons it was worth it.”
Nelson shook sleet from his hair. The sky was already dark, and the temperature had dropped close to freezing. “I’m guessing he didn’t hear his neighbour being stabbed in a violent frenzy, then?”
“You are correct. I’m not sure he even knew he had a neighbour. Twenty-seven A is eighty-six, slightly demented, and very deaf. She didn’t see or hear anything either, but on the plus side she does make a decent brew. Twenty-seven B is empty. Its previous tenant is currently serving time for GBH in Strangeways.” She closed her notebook. “How did you get on?”
“One elderly lady touched my face, made the sign of the cross, and gave me a KitKat. I had a ‘fuck off, you fucking nigger scum’ from Twenty-eight B—he might need revisiting—and the nineteen-year-old with three toddlers at Twenty-nine A just sighed and said that all she ever hears is screaming. She did see Culver in the corner shop on Monday morning, though. He bought chocolate and Rizlas, and loaned her twenty pence when she was short at the till.”
Sanne did a quick mental calculation. “That’d definitely put Hopkins in the clear. He was an inpatient by then. When we get to the office, I’ll phone the Royal and double-check the dates of his admission.” Stomping her feet to try to restore some circulation, she looked out at a post office with bricked-up windows, and a Bargain Booze whose blue lights were drawing a steady, shambling parade of customers. “Time to head back? We could start chasing down a few of the names Hopkins gave us and set up some—”
“Detective Jensen!”
The enthusiasm in the hail made Nelson snigger. Sanne kicked his boot and turned toward the approaching officer. PC Zoe Turner, one of three constables working overtime to help canvass the estate, was the officer who had responded to Hopkins’s 999 call. Looking past Nelson, she fixed her attention on Sanne.
“I might have a witness,” she said. She paused to catch her breath and patted her hair self-consciously. “There’s a chap at the corner of Pellinore and Avalon who remembers seeing a dark-coloured van parked up on Pellinore on Monday night. He’d never seen it before, and he’s not seen it since.”
“Did he get the reg?” Sanne asked, and felt a twinge of guilt when Zoe’s face fell.
“No, but it was a Vauxhall Combo, navy blue or black.”
“That’s great.” Sanne jotted down the information and smiled at Zoe. In the background she could hear Nelson briefing the other officers over the radio. “I think we’re going to call it a day. When you’ve written up your interview notes and your statement from this afternoon, you can e-mail them to me at this address.” She handed her card to Zoe, who studied it carefully before slipping it into her pocketbook.
“Can I call you if I think of something after I’ve submitted my paperwork?”
Although the question sounded innocent, the accompanying glint in Zoe’s eye was anything but. Pushing six foot, with long blond hair and a full figure, she reminded Sanne of a Valkyrie, or at the very least someone more suited to a Scandinavian name than Sanne herself. The intensity of her focus was a little unnerving.
Sanne took a step back and bumped arses with Nelson. “Sorry,” she muttered. Then, to Zoe, “Call me or e-mail, whichever’s easiest. Thanks for all your hard work today.”
“My pleasure.”
Sanne raised a hand in farewell, as Nelson stifled a laugh.
“Don’t say a word,” Sanne warned him, once Zoe was well out of earshot.
In an elaborate mime, Nelson locked his lips and threw the key over his shoulder.
“Tosspot,” she said, and ignored the note he held up that read: She proper fancies you!
He screwed up the note and unlocked the car. “Am I allowed to speak now?”
Busy wrestling her phone from an inside pocket, Sanne narrowed her eyes. “About case-related matters, yes. About lascivious police constables who are much taller than I am, no.”
“Okay, fine.” He pulled away from the kerb but hesitated at the first junction. “Damn. Left or right?”
“Left,” she said, without looking. She had just noticed a missed call from Meg, time-stamped earlier that afternoon. Indicating another left turn to Nelson, she accessed her voicemail and keyed in the code. When Meg’s message finally began, the sound of her voice sent butterflies swirling into Sanne’s stomach even before she registered the message’s content.
“Shit.” She lowered the phone and stared at its call log. Meg had phoned her more than five hours ago. She hit “return call” immediately, oblivious to the months that had passed without regular contact and to the reasons for her self-imposed isolation, but Meg’s phone rang out and flicked to voicemail.
“Meg, it’s me,” Sanne said. “I only just got your message. Phone me as soon as you can, okay? No matter what time it is.” She hung up but kept hold of the phone.
“Everything all right?” Nelson asked.
Sanne shook her head. Everything was far from all right.
Chapter Five
With a sandwich clamped between her teeth, and her scrubs top midway over her head, Meg kicked open the door of the staffroom and stumbled in the approximate direction of her locker.
“Here, let me get that.”
She felt Emily’s hands tug at the scrubs and came blinking into the glare of the overheads like a cantankerous newborn. She had missed the shift handover by almost an hour and had wanted a couple of quiet minutes alone to finish her supper before anyone saw her.
“You didn’t have to wait for me,” she said.
“I was late off myself.” Emily kissed Meg’s cheek, avoiding the sandwich. “How’s your mum?”
Meg swallowed her mouthful and retrieved the remaining portion of her makeshift meal. “She’s okay, just a few lumps and bruises. The staff are going to keep a close eye on her.”
“Shame they weren’t doing that before she fell.”
“Yeah.” Turning to her locker, Meg busied herself trying to remember her code. The lie had come easily enough in her brief call to Emily earlier, but maintaining it was less straightforward when she had to look her in the eye.
“One nine eight two,” Emily said. “You went for super-cryptic and used the year of your birth.”
“So I did.” Meg entered the code and hunted down her stethoscope and medical formulary. Her phone started to ring as she slid it into her trouser pocket.
“Are you not going to answer that? It might be Rainscroft.”
Meg glanced at the caller ID: Sanne. “Unknown number. I’m not really in the mood for a solar panels sales pitch.” The phone stopped vibrating as it switched to voicemail. “Hell, I better get out there or Donovan will have my arse.”
“Tell him I saw it first.” Emily pulled her into a hug. “Try to stop your F2s admitting everything to my ward, will you? It’s full to bursting, and we’re all rather stressed.”
“Damn these people for getting sick!” Meg kissed her and then wiped off a transferred smear of mayo. “Sorry about that. I’ll head home tonight, save disturbing you when I finish here.” She made the suggestion lightly but saw Emily frown.
“You’re on
again tomorrow, so it’d be much easier for you to stay at mine. I don’t mind if you wake me.”
Unable to tell Emily that she needed to be at home in case her criminally deranged brother decided to pay a visit and smash the place up, Meg just plastered on a smile and nodded her accord. “Okay. I’ll see you later, then.”
Appeased, Emily shooed her out of the staffroom. Meg jogged past a row of offices and entered an A&E verging on collapse. In the corridor, five ambulance crews waited in a queue for beds, a couple of them playing on their phones while their patients dozed on stretchers, and the remainder administering drugs and fluids to patients who clearly ought to have been in cubicles. The Hospital Arrival Screen showed another three ambulances en route, and as Meg walked toward the nurses’ station, the Bat Phone rang again. She answered it, grabbing a Magic Marker in lieu of a pen. The dispatcher relayed the details in an apologetic tone.
“Twenty-two-year-old,” Meg repeated. “Anaphylaxis, systolic of sixty, wheezy, with airway oedema. Got it. ETA?” She’d run out of room on the paper, so wrote “15” on her palm. “Cheers for that.” She saw Liz approaching with an armload of linen and waved the paper at her. An experienced A&E nurse, Liz rarely allowed the pressure to affect her, but even she looked fraught. By contrast, Meg relished the chaos, grateful for the distraction it provided.
“Welcome to hell,” Liz said, scanning the information and then turning Meg’s hand over to check the ETA. “Buggeration. We need to shift someone out of Resus.”
“I’m supposed to be in there with you. Is anyone well enough for Majors?”
Exasperation coloured Liz’s cheeks as she shook her head. “We’ve got an MI waiting for transfer, but all the ambulances are snared up in the corridor. Donovan yelled at their control an hour ago, but she just yelled back and refused to give us a deflection, even though St. Margaret’s is half-empty.”
Meg followed Liz down the line of curtained bays in Resus. As well as the heart attack victim, there were two elderly patients clearly at death’s door, and an obese woman in the end bed who was relying on a CPAP machine to do most of her breathing for her. A lone and painfully young doctor regarded Meg like the second coming as she approached.
“Well, fuck me,” she muttered, pulling on a pair of gloves. “What a fucking disaster.”
“Mr. Johnson keeps having runs of VT,” the junior said, too panicked for introductions.
“Righto.” She noted the name and designation on his ID badge. He was an F2, one year away from becoming a registered doctor. “Can you hold down the fort for another five minutes, Asif?” His Adam’s apple went into a noticeable spasm, but he nodded. “Good man. I’ll be right back. Liz, break out the usual for the anaphylaxis, will you?”
She left Resus and headed for the mass of green uniforms still lining the corridor. “Okay, lads and lasses,” she called, and the ambulance staff fell quiet. “Anyone finishing in the next hour?”
One crew raised their hands, but their patient looked too poorly for Meg to ship into the waiting room, so they were fine to queue for a cubicle. Starting at the head of the line, she began to assess the other patients in turn, quickly bypassing two before stopping at a third, more promising one. She pulled the paramedic aside.
“What’ve you got?”
He sighed. “Nineteen-year-old, vomiting for three hours. Says she feels faint.”
The patient was engrossed in her phone, probably updating Facebook to tell everyone how critically ill she was.
“Obs okay?” Meg asked.
“They’re all perfect.” He displayed his paperwork for Meg.
“Grand.” She beamed at him. “Stick her in a chair and put her in the farthest corner of the waiting room. Hopefully, people will steer clear of her if she starts puking. Then how do you fancy bluing an unstable MI over to the cath labs?”
The paramedic’s eyes lit up, and Meg knew she had him. He must be a new recruit, fresh out of university and keen to practice his skills.
“How unstable?” he said.
“Tendency to go into VT, so he could be a tricky one. He’s in the first Resus bay.”
In his excitement, the lad had forgotten a salient point, and his face fell as it dawned on him. “Uh, Doc, I don’t think it works like that. We have to go through control, and they might not authorise the transfer.”
“You leave it to me.” Meg clapped his shoulder. “I’ll see you in there.”
While passing through Majors, she had already spied her next target, and she honed in on him before he could do a runner.
“Are you our ambulance liaison?” She held out a hand and managed not to wince at the sweatiness of his. “I’m Meg Fielding, one of the A&E consultants. I’ve just commandeered Alpha three nine six for a transfer.”
“You’ve what?” The man’s face turned scarlet as his blood pressure rose. Meg quietly hoped he wouldn’t pop something vital, because she really didn’t have a bed for him. “You can’t just commandeer one of our ambulances! We have jobs outstanding!”
A flurry of movement in the corner of the department caught Meg’s eye. She saw Richard Donovan, the Senior Consultant, beginning to close in.
“See that ETA?” Meg tapped the arrivals screen. “In approximately seven minutes I’m getting an anaphylactic patient who could die in the back of the ambulance if I can’t clear a space in Resus. Meanwhile, I have an MI waiting to ship out to the cath lab and a vehicle ready to do the transfer. None of us would be up shit creek if your lot had granted the deflection we requested, and I’d be willing to tell the press as much, should they come nosing around looking for someone to blame.”
“Is there a problem, Dr. Fielding?” Donovan’s question cut across the liaison’s enraged intake of breath.
“I don’t know,” Meg said, and turned back to the liaison. “Is there?”
“No,” he spluttered. “No, I’ll clear everything with the resource manager.”
“Thank you.” Meg turned to Donovan. “Sorry I was late.”
Donovan nodded, still eyeing her suspiciously as he tried to fathom what had just transpired. “I heard your mother had an accident.”
“She had a fall, but she’s all right. Minor injuries,” she said, before adding the only thing Donovan would care about, “I’ll work the hour back.”
“Fine. Stay on tonight,” he told her, already walking away.
“Prick,” she muttered, but she was feeling too smug to inject any real venom into the insult. Her next patient’s bed was sorted, the heart attack might yet make it to the catheter lab, and she still had four minutes to spare.
*
“Okay, great. Thanks for your help.”
Sanne hung up the office phone, keeping one eye on her mobile. The fact that Meg hadn’t returned her call didn’t necessarily mean anything awful had happened. She was probably with Emily, or at work. In the months since they had last spoken properly, Sanne had lost track of Meg’s shifts. The A&E at Sheffield Royal was rarely out of the headlines these days, thanks to a bed crisis following the downgrade of a neighbouring A&E, and if Meg was on duty, she was likely to be swamped.
Stacking all these reasons into a logical pile had helped Sanne get through the last few hours. She couldn’t afford to lose her focus, not when she had Eleanor watching her like a hawk and Carlyle waiting to pounce the moment she took a wrong step.
“Hopkins’s alibi is solid,” she said as Nelson cracked his knuckles in sequence. “The hospital confirmed he was admitted to the Medical Assessment Unit on Saturday evening and discharged this morning. Visiting Culver must have been one of the first things he did when he got out, the poor sod.”
“You’re a soft touch, Sanne Jensen,” Nelson said without malice. A stranger might have expected her to loathe addicts of all types, but she’d always had a peculiar affinity for those dependent on heroin.
She tossed a pen at him and held up her mouse mat as a shield when he readied himself to launch it back. Neither of them noticed Eleanor standing b
ehind Sanne until she cleared her throat.
“Evening, boss.” Nelson converted his throwing motion into an ear-scratching.
Eleanor gave a slight shake of her head but withheld comment. “I’ve taken a look at your files on Roberts and Harrison, and they’re fine for the CPS. Am I to understand that Burgess is also ready to submit?”
“Just added the finishing touches to it,” Nelson said.
“Good.” Eleanor pulled up a chair and sank into it. She never complained of fatigue, but it was written in the lines of her face and the blue-black shadows beneath her eyes. “How did it go at Malory?”
“About as well as could be expected,” Sanne said, appreciating Nelson’s tact in leaving her to respond. If she didn’t speak to Eleanor now, the lingering nerves from the morning would multiply a hundredfold overnight. “You’ve seen the photos? Right. So, the lad who found him—good friend and key holder—has an airtight alibi. There were no signs of forced entry, and nothing obvious was taken from the flat, although we can’t rule out a missing stash. We’ll have unis back on the estate tomorrow, and we’re trying to trace a dark-coloured Vauxhall Combo van spotted close to the address on Monday night. One of the known associates Hopkins mentioned was a lad called Liam Burrows. Apparently, Culver had had issues with him about dealing. The mobile number Hopkins gave us has been disconnected, but Burrows has a record as long as your arm, so he’s one we’ll be keeping an eye out for.”