by Rob McCarthy
Harry kicked what was left of the corpse away into a ditch at the side of the road. As he eased the bushy tail from the wheel arch, a modified hatchback with rear spoiler sped around the corner and swerved theatrically to avoid his car. He got a loud horn blast for his trouble and watched its tail-lights disappear into the darkness, blurred by the rain.
Harry looked down at the tail he was holding, threw it into the ditch, shivered and got back into the car.
The receptionist always changed at Marigold House. Despite Harry’s twice-weekly visits, usually at night or other unsociable hours, he had never to his knowledge seen the same one. Today’s was black, young, male, with dreadlocked hair.
‘Oh, hello,’ said the receptionist, looking up from his iPhone. He was playing a game where a gorilla was chasing an avatar through a temple.
‘Hi,’ said Harry.
‘You’re here for Room Nine, aren’t you?’
‘You remember me?’
‘Nah, mate. I’ve heard about you. The midnight visitor. The man who never sleeps. Legend is you stayed up with him one night for eight hours, then went straight to work.’
Harry said nothing. The receptionist laughed.
‘Hope you ain’t a doctor like he was.’
‘Is,’ Harry said. ‘He’s still a doctor.’
‘Oh, of course. Sorry.’ The receptionist put on his sympathetic face and went back to running away from the gorilla.
Harry knew the way to the first floor, Room Nine, with his eyes closed. He watched every corner for fear of hitting another fox.
He opened the door without knocking first, and upped the dimmer switch slightly so the light in the room was enough to make out the face of the man in the bed. Peter Tammas stirred and looked across. He moved his head slowly but definitely, as if everything was planned with military style and took great precision to execute. His eyes flickered, with the scared look of a child whose bedroom door opens in the night.
‘Harry?’
The voice, hoarse and measured, sounded almost rushed. Having lost the ability to breathe to the bullet which had transected his spinal cord, Tammas could speak only when his mechanical ventilator wasn’t pumping.
‘Evening, boss,’ Harry said. He pulled up a chair and poured a glass of water from a jug on the bedside table.
‘Aren’t you. Working. Tomorrow?’
‘Short day. Nine to five.’
‘Go home. Harry. Anyway I. Need my sleep. I’ve got. A squash match. Tomorrow.’
Harry laughed and drank some water. The ventilator pulsed, moving Tammas’s chest as it did. He looked at his friend and saw Solomon Idris, the same muscle wastage despite Tammas’s daily physiotherapy. Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Tammas had been a legend, a twenty-year veteran of Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Iraq, Afghanistan and the army rugby team, who could carry a man on his back without breaking a sweat. Now, in winter, he looked frail.
‘Good day?’
‘Had better,’ said Harry.
‘You look. Like shit.’
‘Thanks, boss. You’re the second consultant who’s told me that today.’
‘Do you need. That shrink?’
Harry shook his head. ‘I haven’t seen a shrink in two years.’
‘Do you want. A fucking. Medal?’
Tammas made a sound that was a little like a rattle. Harry decided he was trying to laugh while breathing in.
‘Do you still. Take those pills?’
‘Not much. Once a week or so, just when I need it.’
Ironically, he’d started taking amphetamines because of his trouble sleeping. He’d started feeling tired at work, about six months ago. Registrars’ rotas were often unkind, switches between night shifts and long days without time to reset the body clock, and he’d had one incident where he’d slept through his bleeper. One of the nurses had heard it going off and opened up the doctors’ office to wake him. Thankfully, the page had only been for a chest drain that had fallen out, but Harry had decided it was better to use a few chemicals to stay awake than risk a patient dying or coming to harm because he was asleep.
Tammas was quiet for a while. ‘Don’t worry. Harry. I believe. You.’ Another rattle. ‘Just wondering.’
Harry closed his eyes and was back in the fried chicken restaurant, with cold air blowing in from outside and a sick teenager with a gun on the table. The pain and pressure under his right arm. He felt briefly sick and when he opened his eyes he wondered how long he’d been silent. Maybe a few minutes. Tammas had been waiting, the ventilator wheezing in even beats, twelve times a minute.
‘What happened. Today?’
‘I got a call-out from the police. There was a kid in a takeaway restaurant, he’d taken hostages. He had pneumonia and was coughing his guts up. They wanted to trade three of the hostages for me.’
‘I forget you’re a. Police surgeon.’ Another rattle-laugh. ‘What a joke. Harry Kent. A surgeon.’
Tammas had trained as a surgeon, and naturally viewed all other specialities with disdain. Anaesthetists especially.
‘Yeah. Turns out it’s one of the teenagers from Lahiri’s practice. One of his kids.’
‘That poisoned. Chalice,’ said Tammas. ‘I told him. Not to get. Involved with. That. Noble work. Perhaps but. It’ll always end in. Tears. Just leave. It to the. Social workers.’
‘Yeah,’ said Harry. ‘Kid was seventeen. Probably HIV-positive. Just walked into the place with a gun, took hostages, demanded the BBC and a lawyer. Said he was doing it all for some girl called Keisha.’
Harry let the words ring in the room. Tammas turned his head awkwardly, as if asking Harry what comment or opinion he was being asked to offer.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘The coppers shot him.’ Harry leant forward, bringing a trembling hand up to his forehead. ‘Just fucking shot him. Right there in front of me.’
‘For an unarmed. Police force. They shoot a lot. Of people.’
Harry shook his head, giving a sarcastic laugh. Tammas turned his eyes back to the ceiling. Harry stood up and moved over to the desk in the far corner, kicking the chair, feeling an awful rage come up inside him. There was something new on the windowsill of Tammas’s room. An iPod dock with speakers either side.
‘When’d you get this?’
‘James brought it. He says he loaded. It with all my. Favourites.’
Typical Lahiri, Harry thought. He often wondered how regularly Lahiri had trod the same path as him, down to Marigold House, up into this room. Without the same guilt, though. With the shame replaced by a shining fucking halo.
‘Do you want me to put something on?’
‘It’s two. O’clock. In the fucking. Morning, Harry. I’ve got. Neighbours.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘What. Happened to. The kid?’
‘He’s alive, just,’ Harry said. ‘He’s in ICU. He’s got what looks like a PCP pneumonia, but damage control went well, and we’ll have to see what happens when they open him up tomorrow. It could go either way. But for now he’s fighting.’
‘Well done.’
‘Lahiri was there. He was working in A&E tonight. There for the trauma call.’
‘Ha. Just like. The old days. Then.’
‘Yeah.’ Harry went back to the chair and sat down. ‘He said that. Then I said that, and he told me to fuck off. It was weird. He came up to the ICU to check on this kid, and just sat there in front of me. Had a bit of a moment, like he expected me to break down, confess my sins.’
The altered pitch of the ventilator and the rolling of Tammas’s head told Harry he was about to be interrupted.
‘Because. He saved your. Life. And look how. You. Repaid him.’
‘Yeah,’ said Harry. ‘First time I’ve had to speak to him properly since he got back.’
‘You two. Don’t speak?’
‘You know what happened, boss. Of course we don’t speak.’
‘I don’t. Understand. How can you not. At least
. Have caught up?’
Tammas looked vulnerable, painfully vulnerable, like the father to estranged sons. He rolled his head back so he was looking at the ceiling.
‘Boss, he came back from the Ghan three weeks after saving both our bastard lives and seeing us flown back in comas. He was at home, what, a month, and then he’s on a plane back out there, and then he returns to find out that I’d been shagging Alice all the time he’d been gone.’
‘Bloody shame. You two were. A good. Team. You must have. Your work. Cut out to. Avoid him.’
‘He’s only in A&E two nights a month.’
Harry felt acid burning on the back of his throat and picked up the glass of water to take a drink.
‘Brave man,’ said Tammas.
Harry slammed the tumbler down on the table by Tammas’s head and was briefly disappointed that it didn’t smash. ‘Don’t wind me up, you son of a bitch! I know he’s a fucking brave man, boss, all anyone ever goes on about is how fucking brave he is! What a fucking hero, dragging me to the chopper under fire, saving all those people’s lives. James fucking brave fucking Lahiri!’
It was pretty low, Harry thought, as he heard his curses echo back to him, to transfer the responsibility for what he’d done onto his friend for having the audacity to be such a good man. Of course James had flaws, as all men did, but none that could have deserved the betrayal Harry had committed. Tammas knew this, of course, and had chastised Harry for such thoughts on multiple occasions, but now he said nothing, just breathed in perfect time. One of the night nurses peeped in through the window of Tammas’s door, saw that it was Harry in with him making the racket and walked away.
‘He was. Lucky, too.’
Harry looked up. ‘What?’
‘The attack. He was lucky. That’s all. Lucky. That he needed. A piss. And you. Didn’t. He found. Us and treated. Us and did his. Job. Because he. Needed a. Piss. If you’d had a. Full bladder. It would be. You. With the medals. And him. Coming to. See me three. Nights a week. And trying to. Break my. Furniture.’
‘And going back?’ Harry said.
‘You can’t. Blame him. For that. He enjoyed the. Military life. Wanted to. Make a difference. I’m sure what. Happened. Fucked him. Up. As bad as. It fucked us.’ Tammas rattled again.
‘Doesn’t change a thing, though, does it?’ said Harry. ‘So we both got back, fucked up. What does he do? He goes back to Helmand. What do I do? I go back to work and start shagging his wife.’
‘It’s funny what. People think a hero. Is. A man was. Visiting his daughter. Car crash. Drunk driver. Waist down. Very sad. I heard them. Talking about me. In the corridor. As soon as he. Heard those words. Helmand Province. Neck down. He’s in here. Telling me what a. Hero I am. How proud I. Should be. Fucking. Self-righteous. Wanker.’
Harry nodded. Tammas had managed to guide the conversation away from Harry’s self-pity, a dance at which he had by now become expert.
‘Bet they do the. Same to you. The women, you know. When they see. All the scars.’
What women? Harry thought. There’s been no one since Alice. And she knew all about the scars. Lahiri had told her everything. Of course he had, Harry thought, she was his fucking wife, wasn’t she?
‘I don’t know, boss. I know I’m not a hero. Not like he is.’ Harry got up. ‘I should leave,’ he said.
‘Sometimes I. Worry about. You, Harry.’
‘Why?’
‘Cause you’re. Hollow.’
Harry had been looking at a painting of mountains and birds from somewhere up in Scotland, on the far wall. It was a fine thing for a quadriplegic to look at for most of his life. He turned to Tammas.
‘T.S. Eliot,’ said Tammas. ‘Wrote about. Hollow men. Lost souls. To violent. Causes. I worry. That you’re one. Of them. I think he. Meant that. We all are. Born. Hollow. We each have a. Deep.’ He paused, to think, to gain energy. ‘Hollow inside us. And we all have to. Find something. Which can fill it.’
Harry touched the place on his chest where the bullet had entered, and felt the wind go through it and out where it had exited, an inch or so to the left of his own spinal cord. That felt like a hollow sometimes. It was what had hurt in the fried chicken shop.
‘What do you fill yours with?’ he said.
‘Ha. Good question. Used to be God. You know they put. My breathing tube. Right where my. Crucifix. Used to sit. Ha. Ha. Not any more. Now it’s. A machine. I have a machine. For everything else. Lungs. Voice.’
Tammas turned and looked Harry straight in the eyes.
‘Might as well. Run my. Soul, too.’
Monday, 21 January
‘Hello, you must be Dr Kent. Bit early, is it? I’d have thought an early start would be bread-and-butter for a junior doctor.’
The detective showing Harry through to the bigger offices on the upper floors of Walworth police station was bouncing from one wall to the next as they navigated the maze of corridors. Most of the police station was quiet at this time of the morning. They’d come in opposite the custody suite and even that wasn’t busy, the desk sergeant munching a bacon roll and reading the Express, nodding to them as they passed. They eventually arrived at a relatively pleasant-looking interview room, one with a window at least.
‘Sit down, Doc, make yerself comfortable,’ the detective said. ‘Anything I can get for you? Coffee? Milk? Sugar?’
Harry said yes to all four questions and the detective pulled out a BlackBerry and texted someone, before heading over to a recorder on the table and starting to set it up, inserting a fresh cassette and rewinding it. Even as he did that, he was still bouncing, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Either the man was over-caffeinated, or he was taking similar medication to the circular white pill which had woken Harry up after four hours’ sleep. And in much higher doses.
‘Innit funny how we still use these old piles of shit, eh?’ the detective said. ‘What would they think if we was typing up statements on typewriters, or using a blackboard for investigations? Don’t suppose you can say blackboard these days, eh, Doc? Probably racist, innit? Remind me, I’ll ask Fairweather when he gets in ’ere.’
The detective finished with the cassette recorder and sat down opposite Harry. He was about to speak again when the door opened, and a PCSO came in carrying two polystyrene cups of coffee.
‘Oh, Brenda, you’re a star! Pop ’em down on the table, why don’t you?’
Harry picked up the coffee. It warmed his hands.
‘Cheers,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, remind me what you said your name was again?’
‘I probably didn’t, I’m terrible at that,’ the detective said, taking a big slurp of coffee, burning himself and then spilling some on his suit and skinny red tie as he replaced the cup. ‘Fuck! Fuck me! Sorry, Doc, excuse the language.’ He stood back up, brushing down the front of his suit. ‘It’s DC Kepler. Tony Kepler. I’m normally local here – CID, Homicide & Serious, Sapphire, I’ve been around. My old beat used to be the Albany estate. I’m trying to do some time in Professional Standards now, the missus wants us to get an extension, she’s got our second on its way, reckons it’s time I got myself promoted.’
The Albany estate, Harry thought. Solomon Idris had lived his whole life there. Harry read Kepler easily after that. He was old-school police, coming to work to collar yobs and lock them up, didn’t give a shit about targets or local government initiatives, and looked with suspicion on any senior officer with a university degree.
The new-school police walked in the door as Harry sipped at his coffee. Marcus Fairweather took off his coat to reveal a much nicer suit than Kepler’s, the perks of a chief inspector’s salary. Came up close to Harry, too close, and shook his hand.
‘Good to see you again, Dr Kent,’ Fairweather said, his dulcet voice a contrast to Kepler’s rough edges. ‘And thank you for coming in at such unsociable hours.’
‘No problem,’ said Harry.
‘We’ll crack on so I don’t delay you any further,’ Fai
rweather continued, ‘Sorry about the recording, but the IPCC will be going over everything we do here with a fine-tooth comb, and I’d hate for them to get their knickers in a twist and demand to interview you for themselves.’
‘Me too,’ said Harry.
Kepler reached over and flicked on the cassette recorder.
‘It is 07.13 on Monday, 21 January 2013. This is interview code Waldron Six, subject Dr Harry Kent, force medical examiner for Inner South-East region. Present are DCI Marcus Fairweather and DC Tony Kepler.’
Operation Waldron was the task force set up to investigate Idris’s shooting. As far as Harry could tell, it was being led by Fairweather in reality, but officially it was an ‘independent inquiry’ under the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Harry took a sip of coffee.
‘So, Dr Kent, I’m aware you’ve got other commitments, but if we could take things slowly . . .’
Fairweather gave Harry the unmistakable feeling that he had been caught smoking in the school toilets again and was explaining it to the headmaster. They took half an hour as Harry described being called at home, being briefed by Noble at the scene, and the process of deciding to send him in. He recounted as best he could the exact words of everyone there, watching the two detectives as he spoke. Fairweather smiled and nodded, leaning forward, his fingers interlinked; Harry saw in him the mannerisms of a shrink, and wondered if he’d been right about his fast-track theory, if the DCI was some kind of sidetracked psychologist. Kepler had a legal pad on the desk and was furiously noting down everything Harry said. Harry watched his pen dart around, putting quotation marks around the quotes, circles around pairs of numbers and capital letters that indicated the police officers. He caught at least one absent-minded doodle.