‘What was he like as a baby?’
‘Truth be told he was as good as gold once I got him home. He fed well, slept through most nights.’
‘I bet you breast fed him.’
May looked at her daughter in law and her surgically enhanced chest. ‘What makes you say that?’
Debbie Anderson looked at her mother in law, opened her mouth to fire back a caustic comment, then noticed the smile simmering on her lips and decided to accept the gentle leg pull. ‘Bought, paid for and enjoyed, May.’
‘Bought with the proceeds of one of his jobs, like everything else.’ And enjoyed by many more than just her son she had no doubts.
‘You don’t hear me complaining.’
That was something May had to concede about her long suffering daughter in law. She took the problems her son gave her, and there were many of those, as stolidly as she welcomed the rewards.
He wasn’t sure how much more he could take in. He had so many memories of his father, from the occasional fleeting days spent together when he was a boy usually playing football in the park, to the irregular prison visits when he was older and his mother deigned to take him along with her, through the beginning of their working life together.
Emotional pictures of his father began to churn over and over with the flashes from his birth and his mother’s obvious love for him. Then his wife made an appearance in his thoughts, her dyed hair, her fulsome body, and the scenes and phrases began to chase each other around his mind, tripping over one another in their speed to gain prominence.
It was like one of those old fashioned tape loops with the pictures and sounds repeating over and over, the same memories swaying back and forth in front of his mind’s eye.
Debbie was at the window now. ‘It was a clear fresh day like this when we got married, remember?’
‘I should do the amount it cost Frank and me.’
The younger woman shot her a look and May held up her hand in surrender. ‘Just tired that’s all. We never begrudged you your big day you know that.’
Debbie shrugged. It was true enough. The wedding was a big showy affair that her parents would never have been able to afford. The Anderson’s, Frank and May, especially big Frank, were the main attraction of the day, and yes she did resent that, but it was a small price to pay for the wedding of her dreams.
It was a former priory in mid Essex with beautiful grounds and a collection of buildings that dated back five hundred years or more. Jamie was totally besotted with her that day.
Frank spent most of the occasion receiving guests in a small side room. It was like that wedding scene in The Godfather her dad joked, but no one laughed because that was pretty much the truth about the day. May made Debbie’s parents a full part of it and she was grateful for that. The presents were lavish, each guest trying to outdo the next to keep in favour with Frank Anderson.
‘It was a good day,’ Debbie moved away from the window. An ambulance had just pulled up outside and she had no wish to watch another sick soul brought inside. She had enough grief of her own.
‘It was. You looked beautiful, love.’
‘Thanks. It was everything I could have wished for.’
‘You’ve been a good wife, Debbie, I’ll give you that. He couldn’t have asked for better.’
‘Blimey you’ll have me in tears next.’
May looked at her son and his immobile face and body. ‘You never know when we’ll need one another.’
‘He’s not dead yet.’
‘And neither will he be. Not today. Not any time soon. He’ll soon be out of the coma, you’ll see.’
Both women had stood but they now shuffled back to the institutional hard chairs that weren’t designed for long term sitting.
He remembered the wedding day as if it was yesterday. Him and Debbie stayed in the hotel part of the venue that night and had a great time. Earlier in the day he’d taken his cousin Val up the room and practiced some moves he used on Debbie later on.
For a second he was back in that room with it’s arch shaped windows and the four poster bed with the deep red drapes. It was almost peaceful.
Then the restless thoughts and recollections came rolling back. Spinning and turning behind his eyes. His father, his wife, the wedding speeches, the swing in their back garden when he was six, images and voices pinballing around his brain.
He was so tired with it. The constant activity. Not being able to switch it off, and if anything the myriad of thoughts were getting faster. There were certainly more and more of them all the time. Every sound he heard triggered more images. Listening to his mother and his wife talking was like being plugged into an electric socket feeding more and more into his mind.
There was a knock on the door and a blue uniformed nurse entered the sterile room.
‘How’s he doing today?’
‘Shouldn’t we be asking you that?’
The nurse smiled at May. ‘I’ve only just come on duty. Let’s have a look at the charts.’
‘That monitor hasn’t dipped or moved at all,’ Debbie said. She had been watching the ICU monitor for eight days now and she had become alert to the slightest degree of variance in the bleeping lights patterns. They were depressingly constant.
The nurse put the chart and graphs back in the holder, after initialling the time and date. ‘No change.’
May snorted. ‘We could have told you that.’
‘Once we’re happy he’s stabilised we can think about moving him out of the Intensive Care Unit. Until then…’
‘How long can he stay like this?’
‘In a coma?’
‘He looks like he’s sleeping.’
The nurse half opened the door and pulled a small trolley into the room behind her. ‘Coma patients do look as if they’re sleeping but they’re not. Their brain activity is still to some extent normal but slowed right down. The monitor…’ She pointed to the all too familiar machine at the head of the bed. ‘This monitors all the activity of his body but especially his brain. Any changes, anything that indicates he’s coming out of the coma, and we’ll know straight away.’
She set about changing the nearly empty Intravenus drips of fluid and pain relief for new ones. The drips fed into his right hand, the one with the tattoos of a lizard and a lion. The IV lines dripped slowly but constantly.
No! He wanted to shout at the nurse that she was wrong, so wrong. His brain activity hadn’t slowed down. It was getting faster by the minute. Why couldn’t the fancy monitors show that?
Every thought he would normally have, no matter now small, even thoughts that wouldn’t usually register, everything was playing out like a DVD movie playing scenes at random, continuously.
He was having thoughts about the nurse putting the cannula into the back of his hand, the way her mouth twitched disapprovingly when she saw the tattoos. The same way people reacted when they knew who he was, what he did, what his father and his family were.
The nurse was wrong. It was all wrong. He couldn’t lose a single miniscule thought. Each wave in his brain stayed at the forefront, and it was getting crowded, it was getting painful.
‘There are two gentlemen to see you,’ the nurse said as she pushed the trolley out of the room.
May looked at her watch, they weren’t expecting anyone until the evening when Frank himself was coming. He had to visit late at night, after official visiting times. It was dangerous for everyone if he was seen too often in the hospital.
The nurse looked at her shoes. They needed a polish. ‘It’s the police again.’
May looked at Debbie and an unspoken bond passed between them. Silence was the natural order of behaviour for any family member or anyone associated with the business.
‘You’d better let them in then. Don’t want to keep the long arm of the law waiting around do we?’
The nurse was glad to be out of the oppressive room. Outwardly professional she read the news, she knew the stories, knew what the Anderson family was capable
of. The police were welcome to them.
Detective Chief Inspector Ralph Wood had plenty of places he would rather be. He had crossed swords with the Andersons for over twenty years. Frank mainly but recently Jamie had shown every sign of being vicious enough to take over the family business completely when the time was right.
‘I hate these places.’ Detective Constable Radash Patel said,
DCI Wood looked at his colleague and wondered what could have affected him in his short life to make him averse to hospitals. What was he? Twenty three, four? Mind you a lot of people disliked hospitals; there was a natural aura about them, by association and by fact being linked forever with illness and death, and every permutation in between.
‘I mean there’s this smell about them isn’t there?’ Radash said.
Wood was sure he saw him shudder but he might have imagined that part. ‘Never mind about that for now, keep your prejudices well buttoned.’
‘I’m not…’
‘Enough. Listen to me. He might be wired up like a Christmas turkey, he might be sleeping like a baby on a whisky drip but that bastard in there is the nastiest piece of humanity you’ll have the misfortune of meeting. Don’t forget that. His mum and his wife will hate you for being a copper and hate you for being Indian.’
Radash didn’t ask why. He was momentarily grateful his boss didn’t share the same deliberate mistake so many of the Hendon training college officers regularly made and called him a Pakistani. Small things like that endeared him to Ralph Wood. He would learn a lot from the older more experienced DCI.
‘They hate me for putting Frank Anderson away. Not for long mind, not long enough but it slowed him down for a few years and that was a cause for celebration.’
Radish nodded. ‘Actually this place is so new it doesn’t smell too bad.’
‘It’s too quiet.’
‘That’s because it’s the ICU. Try A&E on a Friday or a Saturday night and you’ll not hear yourself think.’
The door to the room they wanted opened and a nurse stepped out, a trolley pushed in front. She looked at Wood and nodded. ‘He’s still comatose. Mrs Anderson, mother and Mrs Anderson, wife are with him.’
‘Thanks.’
‘There are no other visitors planned for at least four hours.’
Wood held the door and indicated for Radash to go inside. ‘I can’t think who you mean, nurse.’ The smile barely reached his eyes.
When Wood went into the room the first thing that struck him was how cold it seemed. He expected a frosty welcome from the two women but the temperature in the room was far lower than the corridor outside.
Radish had positioned himself at the foot of the bed and was making a decent enough pretence at reading the medical charts.
‘I doubt he understands any of that any more than I do.’ It was Debbie Anderson who spoke.
‘May as well be in a different language the sense it makes to me,’ Wood said affably.
‘Perhaps that’s why he can read it then,’ May said and started defiantly at Radash.
‘That’s not very PC, May. Times have moved on for the rest of the world even if it’s still 1970 in your little corner of it.’
May opened her mouth but thought better of it.’
Debbie pushed her chair away from the bed. ‘He’s totally out of it. What do you think you’ll get out of him?’
‘And we’re telling you nothing,’ May said. She unfolded two sticks of gum and started chewing, her mouth open, the motion furious.
Wood looked at Radash and smiled. He walked over to the monitor and tapped it.
‘Oi, careful.’
‘Wouldn’t want poor Jamie to suffer would we, May?’
‘You can’t intimidate people any longer, Mr Wood…it’s not the 70’s you know.’ She smirked.
‘I used to like The Sweeney, did you May? These two are probably a bit young for it but I used to watch it. Every Monday night.’
‘What do you want, Wood?’ Debbie said.
Wood looked surprised. ‘Didn’t DC Patel and I mention? My apologies ladies.’ He leaned over the bed and picked up Jamie’s right hand, the one the IV drips were attached to. ‘The driver of the security van, the one Jamie here shot, he’s died.’
‘We’re here to charge him with murder.’
His flickering thoughts suddenly exploded with vivid images in high definition.
He had planned the old fashioned job as a kind of homage to his father, the sort of job Frank cut his teeth on when he was clawing his way to the top. A couple of the boys he commanded tried to talk him out of it, get him to change his mind. To be fair that was brave of them, and he wouldn’t forget that.
The security van had a set routine for the bank deliveries, relying on technology and CCTV for protection. The plan was simple, one of the boys even said it was an insult to call it a plan, and they all laughed.
Jamie didn’t laugh a lot. He had always wanted to impress his father and now they had begun working together on more sophisticated jobs he wanted to show that he could get his hands dirty and get the basics done as well as anyone.
Trouble was it hadn’t gone well.
He was getting up close and personal with the delivery man, the one who transported the case from the van to the bank and back. One of the boys was holding a shotgun to the driver. The third was pointing a pistol at the scene in general.
The driver decided to be a hero. Somehow he knocked the van door against the shotgun and got out. Instead of running away he came round to the bank side of the van, where the delivery man was in the process of being persuaded to hand over the money. The driver tried to intervene. Jamie had the Glock ready and he didn’t hesitate. He fired, more than once, and the driver fell, there was blood and the delivery man fumbled with the keys to release the wrist strap to the case.
Someone in the bank must have pressed the alarm.
As soon as they got the last of the Mondeo’s doors shut they heard the sirens. The police sealed off the High Street so they had to double back and try the side streets. Soon they were lost in a maze of dead ends and speed calming schemes.
The crash was caused by the tyres blowing out when they ran over what the police call a ‘stinger’, a strip of nail sharp fingers they spread over the road to burst all four tyres. None of them were wearing seat belts, they didn’t worry about being arrested for that misdemeanour.
The two men in the front went straight through the windscreen, bounced on the road a few times and were dead by the time they stopped rolling. The one next to Jamie became embedded in the seat in front of him. Jamie smashed his head on the side window, the headrest of the driver’s seat and then back against the rear windscreen.
He was the only one taken out alive.
Alive! Joke.
‘So what are you going to do? Read his rights?’
‘Think he knows them by heart don’t you, May?’
The monitor began to bleep in a faster tone. Louder, persistent.
Debbie was the first to react. She ran to the door, opened it and shouted. ‘Nurse.’
Two nurses rushed into the room. One leant over the bed while the other fiddled with the monitor.
Within seconds the slow regular beat and the meandering lines of light were restored to monotonous normality.
‘Panic over,’ one of the nurses said as they left the room.
‘What happened?’ Debbie said.
The nurses looked at one another. ‘You’ll have to ask the doctor.’
‘We’re asking you.’
‘Don’t quote me, but I’d say there was an escalation of brain activity.’
They were all there, queuing up to torment him.
The three dead men from the crashed car, a couple he’d known from school. The security guard kept walking past and smiling, walking and smiling. When he went out of view the place was taken by cousin Val, then when she moved on there was his father, whispering words of advice.
It was relentless. Thoughts tumbled over
one another for attention. People’s faces, names he had long forgotten. Voices, accents and tones, and thoughts, random thoughts that weren’t linked together by anything logical except they were colliding round and round inside his head.
He felt as if his brain was on fire. His head was going to explode.
All he wanted was some peace, some quiet, even for a few minutes, just to catch his breath, to collect his thoughts.
But his thoughts weren’t keeping still long enough to get a second of rest. He was thinking about everything. Incidents from his life, ideas, songs, sounds, people. People kept appearing, and instead of taking someone’s place they were all jammed in together, all wanting a piece of his attention.
He was full, he couldn’t take any more in.
His thoughts just wouldn’t switch off, they were getting faster and faster, flashing strobe like on his consciousness. The beating rhythm was incessant. Haunted by his own memories, by his own life.
Silent turmoil was unfolding inside his mind and he knew he would never be able to rest again.
‘You know,’ May said, once Wood and Radash had left.
Debbie let out a long sigh. ‘What?’
‘He looks really peaceful just sleeping there. Not a care in the world.’
THE END
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