by Rob McCarthy
‘My work number’s in there,’ he said, nodding at the phone. ‘Gimme a text if there’s news about Idris.’
Harry nodded and headed off, the thin fleece little protection against the cold. He took the high street up towards the railway station, where there’d be a taxi rank for sure. On the way, he passed a pair of freezing-looking students in Goldsmith University hoodies, carrying football kit, one white, one Asian. Mirrors of himself and James Lahiri, taking the train from Guy’s down to the medical school sports ground in Brockley every Wednesday afternoon, then the bus up to Tommy’s Bar for the obligatory post-match beers.
He’d never drink with him again. Even though they’d not really spoken for months, Harry was coming to realise that he’d viewed it all as temporary, a phase they were going through, that they’d eventually reconcile. But there’d be none of that now. Lahiri had died angry and scared, seeing in Harry a broken, paranoid, unfaithful man, ready to accuse him of murder.
He found a cab at the station and got in. He had cash. Forty quid in dried-out tenners he’d rescued from his wallet the previous evening.
‘Where you going, mate?’
‘John Ruskin University Hospital.’
‘Right you are.’
Most days, the noise of the hospital excited him, even made him feel at home, but today the feeling was different. The buzz of activity that made the place feel alive was ominous in light of the knowledge that a man capable of the acts he’d just witnessed could be walking the same corridors.
The news would already have spread among the staff, he knew. Nobody would talk about much else for weeks. But then one of the consultants would be spotted in a local restaurant with a new house officer, or something like that, and Lahiri’s death would be old news. A&E would find another locum, Burgess Park would find another GP, and the world would turn again. Unless the police’s investigation became public knowledge, or the rumours of paedophilia and sexual abuse began to spread. Then he’d make the headlines again.
Harry reached the ICU but walked past the corridor to the ward, heading into the changing room instead. Unlocked his locker and found the aspirin bottle, deciding whether to take three or four. Two was the usual – he’d never taken four at the same time before. And this would be his third day in a row, which was breaking another rule. But he hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours, and it would a long day yet before he got the chance.
He washed four pills down with water and popped his trust ID badge into a lanyard, aware that in his police-issue fleece and chinos he didn’t much look the part. The ward round was done, and he found the duty consultant sitting at the nurses’ station, making notes at the computer. Rashid’s three days on call had finished, and it was a new consultant waiting, Dr Amos. She looked up and it took her a while to recognise him.
‘Harry,’ she said. ‘What happened to your face?’
‘Cycling accident,’ Harry said, air rushing through his chest again.
‘Oh,’ said Amos. ‘You’re on the rota today?’
‘No,’ Harry said. ‘I was hoping to check in on Solomon Idris.’
‘Sure, let’s go,’ she said, standing up and heading for Idris’s side room. ‘Marek told me about what you did on Sunday night, he sounded very impressed.’
Harry ignored her. Amos had only been at the hospital since Christmas, so maybe she didn’t know about Lahiri and his connection to Harry, or maybe she hadn’t yet heard. He arched his head to look into the side room at Idris’s monitor as they washed their hands and donned gloves and aprons. The vital signs were stable, particularly his blood pressure, which from the look of the infusion pumps running into him no longer needed stabilising with drugs. Only forty-five per cent oxygen going in through the ventilator. They stepped inside and Harry nodded at the police officer on protection duty, who was reading the Mail.
‘What’s the plan?’
‘The surgical team are happy,’ Dr Amos said. ‘Touch wood, he shouldn’t need to go back to theatre. It’s just a case of clearing his lungs up now. Continue with the physio, get him off the ventilator.’
Harry felt a tight band around his chest as he looked down at Idris. There were only slightly fewer tubes and lines than there had been yesterday, but the wasting in the muscles between his ribs was becoming more pronounced. The worst thing wasn’t the teenager’s frail appearance, though, it was the reminder of the last time he’d seen him. Begging the man with the mechanical voice not to make him rape his own girlfriend, the sedatives taking all of the fight out of him. The tears in his eyes as he’d hit Keisha, all to satisfy some other bastard’s sadistic tastes.
‘Harry? You OK?’
Harry looked up at Amos.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘How’re the haemodynamics?’
‘Not bad, in light of his arrest,’ Amos said. ‘We’ll do another echo later, but the numbers look good.’
‘OK,’ Harry said. Looked at Idris and silently promised him again that he’d have justice, that Harry knew about Keisha now and he’d punish the people who’d made him do what he’d done. Then he balled up his apron and his gloves and threw them into one of the clinical waste bins. He thanked Dr Amos and headed out of the ICU, aiming for the staircase that led down to A&E. He almost made it before he heard his name called.
‘Harry?’
He turned. Traubert was standing in his office doorway, leaning against the wall, a pained smile on his face. Harry stood his ground.
‘Come here.’
He swore under his breath as he walked over to Traubert’s office. The consultant retreated into the room and sat on his desk, his hands folded into one another, as if he’d read a book about body language and was trying to imitate the picture beneath the heading ‘compassionate’. Harry didn’t shut the door. He had no intention of staying.
‘I’m so sorry, I only just found out,’ Traubert said, his voice lowered. ‘How are you doing?’
Harry garbled fragments of stock phrases, Been better, Pretty crap, As expected.
‘What the hell happened? Have they caught who did it?’
Harry opened and closed his mouth for a while before he found the words.
‘My friend’s dead,’ he said. ‘I feel terrible, Dr Traubert. And I need to go.’
‘Well, I’m shocked you’re even here, Harry. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to let you know that I’ve already sorted the rota, and you can take as much time off as you want. A whole month, if you need it. Just do let me know when you think you’ll be ready.’
Harry looked at Traubert, the consultant smiling with every word, and waited for him to trail off.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I really need to go, I’m sorry.’
‘I was wondering if we could sort out some kind of tribute to James,’ Traubert went on. ‘Perhaps something—’
The impulse was so strong, it happened before Harry could stop it. He looked down at the shaking base of the door he’d just kicked, and then back up at the horrified expression on Traubert’s face.
‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m not thinking straight.’
‘Go home,’ Traubert said. ‘Look at yourself. Go home, Harry.’
Harry tried to focus on the consultant’s mouth, but the room was spinning. He got up and left, his head pounding with pain and terror. Started down the staircases towards A&E, slipped on the bottom step of the first flight and fell, his hands crumpling against the wall. As he pulled himself up he felt a shooting pain go up his jaw, and then came the palpitations. He stood upright against the wall, and caught his breath. Four pills had been a mistake.
A&E was busy as he walked through. Two nurses were trying to restrain a screaming young girl with disturbed, psychotic eyes. In another bay, Bernadette Kinirons was writing up a prescription chart for a woman with an obviously broken nose and a black eye, while a uniformed police officer texted on his phone in the background. Kinirons made eye contact and touched her scrubs where her heart was, and Harry nodded back.
; He came out of Resus and found the triage desk, the large room where the senior A&E nurses decided how urgently patients needed to be seen. It was the front line, quite possibly the most difficult job in the hospital, and the nurses who did it were all formidable in their own right. The first one Harry saw wasn’t the one he was looking for.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Is Josh working today?’
‘Aye, he’s just in the charge nurse’s office. And I’m so sorry to hear about Dr Lahiri. I know youse two were close.’
The use of the past tense made him wince, but not in the way he’d expected. It wasn’t the statement that Lahiri was gone which cut him, it was the implication that they had been close, once, and the knowledge that the reason they no longer were was his doing.
Harry arrived at the office, and was met by the sight of a man in a grey tabard hunched over a computer screen. People often underestimated Josh Geddes. He looked young, though he was well into his thirties, his hair styled with great effort like a nineties pop star, edges of tattoos poking out of his sleeves. Truth was, Geddes was perhaps the best nurse Harry had ever worked with. He lectured at the nursing school, had written two books, and he would still take an hour out of his day to hold the hand of a homeless man who was dying alone, or calm a frightened, senile patient.
‘Oh, Christ,’ Geddes said, spinning on his chair. ‘Shut the bloody door, won’t you. I’m so fucking sorry.’
‘So am I,’ said Harry.
‘You look like shit,’ said Geddes. ‘When did you find out?’
‘Last night,’ he said. ‘I was there. I watched him die.’
Geddes clasped a hand across his mouth. ‘There’s nothing I can say, Harry. Sit down.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Harry said, closing the door behind him. ‘Not now.’
Geddes was a good friend – when Harry had worked in A&E they’d often been on night shifts together, and had spent many a morning at the pub just uphill from the hospital, indulging in a morning Guinness and fry-up before heading home to sleep. He needed someone he could trust for this.
‘I need you to find a patient for me,’ Harry said.
‘Sure,’ Geddes said, turning back to the computer. ‘What’s the name?’
‘I’ve only got a partial surname. But don’t search now, they’re not in at the moment.’
‘How do you know that they’ll be on the system, then?’
‘I don’t,’ Harry said. ‘But the patient’s local and he drinks twelve Special Brews a day.’
Geddes looked up at him, his face changing as he followed Harry’s thought processes. Few hardcore alcoholics managed to go a year without at least a short stay in hospital, and for every admission there were usually numerous A&E visits. Falls, fights, gastric ulcers, detox, seizures. Assuming Fitz’s habit was as entrenched as Wilson had thought, then he’d be on record, and the Ruskin would have his address.
The problem was, it was against the rules to access someone’s personal medical record unless you were involved in their care, and Harry wasn’t at all. If he passed that information to the police, then he could well be struck off. And from the expression on Geddes’s face, that wasn’t lost on him.
‘Harry, they’re auditing all of our computer use after what happened to that ICU patient. You know that, right?’
‘I know,’ said Harry. ‘If they come asking, say that you stayed logged in but I did all the searching. I’ll take the rap.’
Geddes threw himself back in his chair.
‘If I help you find this man’s address, what are you going to do? Give it to the police?’
‘No,’ said Harry. ‘It looks like this man sold the gun that killed James to whoever did it. I’ll pay him a visit, and maybe he’ll tell me who he sold it to. I’m sure he won’t report me to the GMC.’
Geddes got serious again, and bowed his head. Looked from side to side like he was checking if there was anyone else in the room to hear what he was going to do.
‘No police.’
‘No police,’ said Harry. ‘They’d never be able to use it in court, anyway.’
‘Give me the name.’
‘We’ve got a partial surname. Begins with “Fitz”.’
Geddes winced.
‘Christ, Harry, there’ll be hundreds.’
‘You’ll narrow it down,’ Harry said. ‘Our man is white, he’s aged between twenty and fifty, and he’s a double amputee, both his legs. His address will be near Elephant & Castle, either SE17 or SE1, and he’s a drinker. Look for alcohol-related admissions.’
Geddes nodded.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in touch. I never enjoy my lunch breaks, anyway.’
Harry took a deep breath, and felt the air in his chest twist, and made the mistake of closing his eyes. Saw James’s face turn and then disappear, the red spray on the fuselage of the boat. He made to leave, then turned back.
‘Oh, Josh, one other thing.’
‘This illegal, too?’
‘No,’ Harry said. ‘Did you have a trauma call come in yesterday? Just after six? An Eastern European guy, gunshot leg.’
Geddes nodded.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Emile Giurescu. He’s up on Kipling Ward now, in traction, but he should do alright. When he came in, he still had some geezer’s belt around his thigh. HEMS doctors said it saved his life.’
Harry took Geddes’ number, put it into Wilson’s phone, and then drop-called him so he had a number to call when he found Fitz’s address.
‘Thanks for this, Josh,’ Harry said. ‘I owe you one.’
‘I’m not doing it for you,’ Geddes said. ‘I’m doing it for James.’
Harry nodded and headed for the door.
‘Where are you going, anyway?’ said Geddes. ‘You’re not working, are you?’
‘Nah. I’m off to see the doctor.’
Noble didn’t want people to speak to her while she smoked, so she got into her car and lit up. She sat back, inhaling deeply, thinking about Harry. He’d been wrong, what he’d said last night. There had been many men since Jack had died, probably too many, though none as intense, none as desperate as Harry had been. Understandable given the circumstances. In a different light she would have seen that as passion, but Christ alone knew what it had been in him. She finished the cigarette, and, after ensuring she was unobserved, ducked into the glove compartment where she kept the hip flask engraved with the Metropolitan Police’s logo and a blue number fifteen, the number of years that Jack Noble had served as a police officer when he’d received it. She unscrewed the top and let that day’s second taste run down her mouth, the heat in her throat a glorious contrast to the cold outside.
And then it came, the feeling that every drinker seeks. Every hair on her body stood on end, all the stress and hatred left through her skin, and her hands and face glowed with life. For that single second, the hollow inside her was full of bright warm joy.
A tap on her window made her jump. ‘Didn’t mean to startle you,’ DCI Fairweather lied.
Noble got out of the car and Fairweather backed off. She made a point of standing downwind, scrabbling in her pockets for chewing gum. ‘Can I help you, guv?’
‘You can indeed, Frankie, you can indeed. Come with me.’
They walked alone through the car park. Only a year or so older than her, Fairweather was already a chief inspector, almost certain to be in command of a unit within a few years, maybe even the Met’s first ever black commissioner, some said. He was already ticking one of the boxes with an anti-corruption job. She could shoot him in the back of the head right now and few would be the detectives who turned up to arrest her rather than take her to the local and buy her a drink.
She followed him into the station, to the room where they’d had the briefing, now littered with coffee cups and empty water bottles. DCI Marsden sat at a table, laptop open in front of her. When they came in she smiled and shut it. Fairweather locked the door and pulled down the blinds. Noble looked across at Marsden, tryi
ng to read her, to work out what she was there for. The presence of Fairweather, the only other senior-grade detective on the investigation, was ominous.
‘Sit down, Frankie,’ said Marsden.
Noble did so, thought for a moment, and then decided she had to take the high ground. ‘With all due respect, guv, will this take long? I’m halfway through organising the interviews—’
‘This can take as long as you want it to,’ Marsden said. Fairweather stayed standing, leaning against the wall to her left. A classic pincer movement. If they wanted her to feel like a suspect, they were going to have to try harder than that. Noble looked between them, trying to work out who was in charge. They’d spoken about this, planned it. It was Fairweather who spoke first.
‘How much do you know about Harry Kent?’
‘How long is a piece of string?’
Fairweather rolled his eyes and refolded his arms. ‘Come on, Detective Inspector. Let’s not make this harder than it has to be.’
‘Harder than it has to be?’ Noble said. ‘Why does it have to be hard? What’s going on here?’
Fairweather looked over at Marsden, then back at Noble.
‘What I’m asking,’ he said, walking over towards her, ‘is how much you know about Kent’s past.’
‘He grew up near here,’ Noble said. ‘Ex-forces. Studied at Guy’s, where he met Lahiri. Served together with him in Afghanistan for a year and a half. Got wounded in action, Lahiri saved his life. Came back in 2011, been working at the Ruskin ever since.’
Fairweather nodded. Leant back a little.
‘Is he married?’
Noble shot through every piece of information she’d gleaned. He lived alone, no ring, never mentioned any woman. He didn’t act like a married man, or a divorced man. Men with families who stood for the things which Harry Kent stood for had something to lose, and acted accordingly.
‘No,’ she said. ‘What are you getting at here?’
‘Any recent relationships?’
‘Sir, I’ve got a growing feeling that you know the answers to these questions much better than I do, so why don’t you enlighten me?’