Cold to the Touch

by Cari Hunter

  “Right then, that’s where we start.” Sanne handed her the phone and picked up a dustpan and brush. “You call Emily. You don’t have to tell her all the gruesome details, but you need to tell her something. I’ll get cracking in here, and I’ll sleep over tonight while you’re at work. How does that sound?”

  Meg sagged against the closest kitchen unit. “That sounds great. But don’t you have someplace you’d rather be?”

  “Yes, of course.” Sanne made a shooing motion with the brush. “I had a hot date with my sofa and a tin of soup. Now go phone Em, before I phone her for you.”

  “Okay, I’m gone.” Meg dodged around the dustpan. “Bin bags are in the second drawer down.”

  *

  Meg took the phone upstairs, where she played for time by clearing a space on her bed and folding all of her discarded clothing into neat piles. Finally, having run out of excuses to delay, she sat cross-legged on her quilt as she dialled Emily’s number. Emily had phoned every twenty minutes since the start of the twilight shift that Meg hadn’t turned up for, and she answered immediately.

  “Meg? Where the hell are you?” She sounded pissed off, which was understandable given Meg’s radio silence.

  “I’m still at home. I got burgled, so I changed onto a night shift.”

  Meg heard Emily’s sharp intake of breath as anger switched to concern. “You what? Jesus! Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. The house is trashed, but they didn’t take much.” Meg stared at her reflection in the mirror as she rattled off another lie. “The police said there’s been a spate of break-ins since Christmas, that they always get a run of them this time of year.”

  “God, that’s so horrible. Do you want me to come over?”

  “No, there’s no need.” Realising she’d answered too quickly, she tried to explain. “By the time you got here, I’d be heading into work anyway. I’m going to tidy what I can and then set off.”

  “You poor thing.” Emily covered the phone to reply to someone in the background and then came back on the line. “I’ll come down and see you when I can, okay?”

  “Okay,” Meg said, feeling as if she’d dodged a bullet. “I’ll see you then.”

  Downstairs, she was greeted by the smell of frying garlic, making her stomach rumble and her mouth start to water.

  “I’m starving, and I’m guessing you’ve not eaten either,” Sanne said, spotting her lurking by the door.

  A large pan of pasta sat on the hob, and Sanne was busy sprinkling herbs into a pot of tomato sauce. In addition to preparing the food, she had swept the floor and cleared the countertops of debris. Meg went over to the stove, wondering what else Sanne had found that was still edible.

  “You know that salami’s been open for about six weeks, don’t you?” she asked.

  Sanne shrugged. “I cut the end off it, and the rest seemed fine. I’m not surprised Luke left half his sandwich. The cheese he’d used was a month out of date.”

  “I hope he gets listeria.” Meg strained the pasta and looked around for something to serve it in.

  “Voila,” Sanne said, setting two mismatched Tupperware tubs in front of her.

  “Really? Is this what we’ve been reduced to?” Meg shrugged. “Oh, what the hell. It’ll taste exactly the same.”

  “That’s the spirit.” Sanne wiped a cloth over the table, removing remnants of fingerprint dust, before they sat down.

  “I told Emily I’d been burgled,” Meg said, pre-empting the inevitable question. “I don’t think she needs to know anything else.”

  Sanne stabbed a piece of pasta in a non-committal fashion, keeping her counsel. If it was one of her interrogation techniques, it worked; Meg duly felt obliged to fill the gap.

  “I don’t want to tell her about Luke. Not if I don’t have to.”

  “Mmhm.” Sanne chewed deliberately. “Did you tell her I was here?”

  “No, I didn’t.” Defeated, Meg dropped her fork into her tub. “I’m fucking everything up, aren’t I?”

  “You do seem to be making things difficult for yourself,” Sanne said, with the tact of a consummate diplomat. “But you’ve got your reasons, and I can see why you’d want to keep Emily out of this.” She put the fork back into Meg’s hand. “Eat your tea, or you’ll be keeling over on your patients later.”

  Meg took another mouthful, but it seemed an age before she could swallow it. “Luke’s really lost the plot this time,” she said quietly. “If he could do all this, what the fuck is he going to do next?”

  “We’re looking for him, Meg. Officially and unofficially.” Sanne squeezed Meg’s fingers. “We’ll find him.”

  Meg kept hold of Sanne’s hand, her own suddenly cool and clammy. “He’ll probably find me first,” she said.

  Chapter Nine

  On Meg’s computer, alarm clock icons were blinking beside the names of eight patients, and as if that wasn’t warning enough, the names were now highlighted in red.

  “Donovan’s on the warpath,” Liz muttered, injecting antibiotics into a small IV bag. “And he’s got someone in a fancy suit with him.”

  “Breach manager.” Meg clicked the mouse to discharge a patient with her left hand while she filled out a drugs chart with her right. “It is a nice suit, isn’t it?”

  Liz appeared to consider that as she untangled the IV tubing, a task so familiar she could do it blindfolded. “Can Ms. Fancy Knickers magic beds out of her arse?”

  Meg chuckled. “Not according to my little flashing clocks, no.”

  “Well, that’s what they get for downgrading County.” It was a refrain so popular that staff were threatening to get it printed on T-shirts. Government targets stated that ninety-five percent of patients attending A&E should be seen within four hours, a figure that had been barely achievable even before the Royal had become the only A&E in Sheffield. Add the pressure of a particularly harsh winter, and it was the perfect recipe for a bed crisis.

  Meg shoved her steth into her pocket and studied the board, not in the mood to handle any kind of crisis. “Is Asif dealing with Four?”

  “Yep, slowly but surely.” Liz came alongside her. “Cubicle Six is an intoxicated fall, these are for Two, and the rest are stuck here or in the corridor until the lady in the swanky suit works a miracle.”

  “I’ll take Six.” Meg wrote her initials by his name. “Tell me honestly, Liz, do you think I’d look good in a suit like that?”

  Liz’s hoot of laughter followed Meg into the cubicle, where her patient was sprawled on the bed, drooling bloody saliva and vomit onto the sheet.

  “For fuck’s sake,” she muttered.

  Roger Clemens was smartly dressed and old enough to know better. According to the ambulance paperwork, his nose was probably broken and there was a two-inch laceration hidden somewhere under his thatch of black hair.

  Standing with one foot each side of a puddle of vomit, Meg pulled on a pair of gloves and shook his shoulder. “Mr. Clemens? My name’s Dr. Fielding. I need to take a look at you and sort your head out, if you could just wake up for me, okay?”

  Roger snored and blew out a spit bubble. Meg envied his oblivion, if not his incontinence.

  “Mr. Clemens? Roger?” She raised her voice and shook him again, to no avail. Concerned that the severity of his head injury might have been underestimated, she set her pen against his nail bed and applied mild pressure.

  The effect was instantaneous. Swearing incoherently, he gripped her wrist and twisted it hard enough to make her gasp. She tried to pull away, but that only made him clamp down harder, so she resorted to a technique half-remembered from training, using her free hand to push at the base of his damaged nose. That worked. He let out a howl and released her, pawing at the injured part as the tears streaming down his face mingled with snot and fresh blood.

  “Call yourself a doctor? You broke my fucking nose!” His yell came out wet and nasal, and smothered by his hands.

  Cradling her throbbing wrist, Meg watched as he took aim and
spat at her. At three a.m., it was the final straw of a particularly lousy day. Without saying a word, she pulled back the curtain and walked out.

  *

  Tucked into a corner of the staffroom, Meg was trying to open an icepack with her teeth when she felt a kiss on the top of her head. She swivelled around to find Emily smiling at her.

  “God, it’s like a zoo out there. I thought you might appreciate a pick-me-up.” Emily’s smile vanished and her voice trailed away when she saw what Meg was wrestling with. She abandoned the two chocolate muffins on the table and extracted the pack from Meg’s mouth. “Is this for you? What happened?”

  Too weary and sore to couch the truth, Meg motioned toward her arm. “Drunk bloke didn’t take kindly to being woken up,” she said. Ugly, finger-shaped bruises already encircled her wrist, and rotating it made her feel sick. She closed her eyes in relief as Emily laid the icepack against it, a relief that lasted until Emily spoke again.

  “Did you provoke him?”

  Meg snapped her eyes open. Emily was watching her intently, as if to gauge the honesty of her answer.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Meg said.

  Emily’s hands went up in surrender, a gesture she habitually made when she realised that she had stepped out of line but didn’t really regret it. “I know you can go in all guns blazing at times, that’s all.”

  Meg moved her arm away as Emily reached for it, and the pain that shot through her wrist fuelled the anger in her reply. “He had a head injury, and he didn’t respond to voice, so I tried a pen on his nail. That’s when he grabbed me. The fucker had been playing possum all along.”

  Emily frowned. “What makes you think that?”

  “Because he knew I was a doctor rather than a nurse, which means he’d heard me introduce myself when I first walked in there. I didn’t go looking for trouble, Em. I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’m not stupid.”

  “I know you’re not,” Emily said, but she looked piqued by the unsubtle reference to her own inexperience, and she changed the subject quickly. “Have you had it X-rayed?”

  “No.”

  “Have you even reported it?” Her voice had risen a pitch.

  “I warned the doc who took over the patient from me.”

  “But you’ve not done anything officially?” She huffed in exasperation. “This is how they get away with it, Meg. This is why people think it’s okay to assault medical staff.”

  It wasn’t okay, Meg knew that, but she didn’t have the time to write up an incident report, file a complaint, and give a statement to the police. All she wanted was to get to the end of her shift and go home to lick her wounds in peace. “I don’t need a lecture, Em,” she said.

  The strain in her tone made Emily relent. She touched the fingertips of Meg’s bad hand. “Have you taken anything?”

  “Diclofenac. It should kick in soon.”

  “You could have a fracture in there.”

  Meg carefully flexed her wrist. “It’s just a sprain,” she said, once she was certain she could speak without throwing up. She slipped the icepack into a carrier bag to keep it incognito and forced herself to stand. “I should get back out there. No one’s had a break tonight.”

  “You should be going home.”

  Meg paused in her efforts to wrap the bag around her wrist. “Home sort of looks like a bomb’s hit it. I’m probably better off here.”

  The reminder made Emily wince. “Heck. With all this, I’d forgotten the break-in. You sleep at mine when you’re finished, and I’ll go round and start tidying.”

  Meg’s imagination rapidly conjured a scenario in which Emily walked in on Sanne’s one-woman slumber party: a slapstick comedy, except that no one was laughing and Meg wound up with a lot of explaining to do.

  “I got some of it sorted this afternoon, and I’ll do the rest tomorrow.” She cupped Emily’s chin and kissed her, cutting off any chance of a protest. “Thanks for the offer, though, and for the muffin.”

  Emily smiled. “Poor thing, you’ve not had a good day, have you?”

  Meg shook her head and said nothing. Emily scarcely knew the half of it.

  *

  It had snowed overnight: not enough to impact on Sanne’s commute from Meg’s, but enough to make the towpath of the Sheffield and Tinsley canal precarious underfoot. The cold air was irritating Sanne’s nose and making her sneeze. She snuffled into a tissue and nodded her thanks when Nelson blessed her.

  “I checked the FWIN first thing this morning,” she said, folding the tissue away. “No updates. No mention of Luke being sighted or, better still, arrested. I managed to get everything at Meg’s cleaned up, but he’d not left her a plate to eat off.” She paused to squint at a bridge number. “Cadman Bridge should be the next one down.”

  “Why didn’t her neighbours hear anything?” Nelson asked. He had halted, too, and he set off again as she did, their footsteps crunching in synch on the frozen layer of snow. It was a good question, and it made Sanne glad to have confided in him. He was guaranteed to pick up on the salient points, some of which she might have overlooked. This one, however, had a simple answer.

  “She’s in an end terrace. The couple next door were at work, and next door but one are both hard of hearing. Luke might’ve been waiting for her and run out of patience.” Thinking about this possibility sent a chill straight through Sanne. She shoved her hands in her pockets and tried not to shiver too noticeably. Luke had always been impetuous, and it was that trait, coupled with his temper, that made him so unpredictable. If Sanne had her way, Meg would be staying at Emily’s until he was apprehended, but she suspected Meg might have something to say about that.

  “Bloody hell, San, I’d forgotten how grim it is down here.”

  Nelson’s voice broke across her train of thought. She looked around at the derelict mills crowding both sides of the canal, their brickwork sprouting ferns, weeds, and even the odd buddleia. Back at Victoria Quays—the city’s canal basin—a programme of regeneration had created an attractive centre for tourists and locals alike, but the budget obviously hadn’t stretched this far.

  “Cadman Bridge is Grade II listed,” she said. She smiled at Nelson’s incredulity. “I was reading about it on the way here. It’s one of only two original 1819 bridges on the canal.”

  His gaze took in the bridge and its wider surroundings. “I’m guessing the folk who live round here didn’t choose it for its architectural appeal.”

  They stopped at a rough construct of cardboard and plywood, examining it long enough to check that it housed only a pile of blankets and two empty cider bottles. Tucked off the towpath in a clump of hawthorn, it was the first sign of inhabitation since the narrowboats moored at the basin.

  “Let’s hope its owner got a bed at a shelter for the night,” Sanne said. The forecast had predicted a low of minus five degrees, but it had been minus eight when she’d set out that morning.

  Having worked local beats as uniformed officers, they knew that many of the rough sleepers congregated around the disused mills and warehouses that had once been the backbone of a thriving industrial area. With the slow death of manufacturing, the companies had disbanded, initially one by one and then en masse, and the drive to convert the abandoned buildings into deluxe apartments had been confined to the city centre.

  “Let’s try that mill over there first and see if someone will be kind enough to point us in the right direction,” Nelson said.

  Sanne arched an eyebrow at him. “By ‘kind enough,’ I’m assuming you mean hungry or cold enough.”

  He rustled a bag full of sandwiches, chocolate, and crisps. If those failed as incentives, they would resort to Sanne’s collection of sweaters, gloves, and woolly hats taken from a box of long-unclaimed lost property. She had drawn the line at his suggestion of a couple of six-packs.

  The mill’s main entrance had been secured with a metal grille in a half-hearted and vain attempt to deter trespassers. Most of the ground-floor windows
were shattered, and the rear door hung on a single disintegrating hinge. Nelson shone his torch through the gap and then stepped aside.

  “Ladies first,” he said, and lit up his grin with his Maglite.

  “You’ll be sorry if I go arse over tit straight through the floorboards,” Sanne said, but she ducked beneath the rotting wood and inched her way inside. To her relief, the floor was solid concrete, strewn with litter of every imaginable form.

  “Far left,” she whispered to Nelson, once he had squeezed through the gap. “You see it?”

  Taking care to shine her torch obliquely, she indicated a pair of boots sticking out of a cardboard lean-to. The boots came with legs attached.

  “Is quarter to seven too early for a house call?” Nelson muttered as they approached. “I never know what’s polite in these situations.”

  “I think we’re okay. I doubt he has to get up for work.” She gave a trio of discarded condoms a wide berth, trying not to consider what would lead anyone to have sex in such a place. As she and Nelson closed in on the shelter, a loud, sloppy snore reverberated through the Kellogg’s cereal and Walkers crisp boxes, and she realised that their silent approach had been a little over-cautious.

  “After you,” she told Nelson. Even from a distance, the smell of their quarry was making her eyes tear.

  He scowled at her and nudged the disembodied legs with the tip of his boot. “Rise and shine! We’ve brought breakfast!”

  “And hats and gloves,” Sanne added.

  The boxes shook as the legs drew out of range. “What the fuck? Fuck off!”

  Nelson and Sanne exchanged a surprised look. Neither had expected the occupant to be female. Seconds later, a man’s voice berated her for stealing the last of the cider, and the presence of the condoms suddenly made more sense.

  Using his best conciliatory tone, Nelson tried again. “Hey, we’re just trying to find someone, and we’d appreciate your help.”

  A shuffling noise suggested someone was sitting up. “Coppers or God-botherers?” the man asked.