by Nick Oldham
She nodded. ‘And he’ll be under guard for every second of that time.’
‘Whatever,’ the doctor shrugged.
Jane looked at Verner. ‘What’s your name?’
He lay back and closed his eyes, making no response, but making it plainly obvious she would get nowhere with him.
‘Suit yourself.’
Verner opened one eye, surveyed her, then closed it.
‘Henry Christie!’
He looked up. Amazingly a nurse was calling his name. He managed to raise his hand and she led him to a treatment room, where she sat him down and left him. ‘Someone will be here to see you soon,’ she promised him with a smile and swished out of the cubicle.
Henry eased himself into the chair and settled himself down for what he imagined would be another protracted wait.
They took the prisoner down to X-ray in a wheelchair. He was making the most of it, playing very poorly and not responding to any questions from the cops. Jane let him go, accompanied by the two armed officers and his handcuffs now replaced.
‘Watch him,’ she hissed to one of the officers. He nodded.
Verner was wheeled into the waiting room of the X-ray department, where a nurse took his newly created record from one of the cops. She went into the little office and began tapping the sparse details into her computer.
‘I have the right to make a phone call,’ Verner said.
The officers did not respond, but stared impassively at him.
‘If you deny me my rights, I’ll sue you both, take you to court. I’ll name both of you in the petition.’
‘Do I look like a guy who gives a shit,’ one of the officers commented.
‘Look, I know I’ve been a bad boy, but I need to make a call, OK? To my solicitor. He needs to know I’m here. He’ll have me back on the streets in no time and you two will lose your jobs because you denied me my rights.’
The officers glanced at each other and shrugged. They were not for budging and neither was going to be drawn into any conversation with this man.
‘It’s not as though you have to release me from the cuffs,’ he said, getting to his feet. The officers backed off. Their hands touched their weapons. ‘Hey, I’m not about to do anything. I’m not stupid. Look, my mobile phone is still tucked down the back of my pants. You lot missed it when you searched me. You found the knife but not the phone.’
They remained wary.
‘Look, guys,’ Verner said reasonably, ‘I honestly won’t do anything stupid. If I turn round, one of you gets the phone from down the back. I’ll tell you the number I’m going to dial and you can listen to my end of the conversation. If you don’t like what you’re hearing, just grab the phone off me.’ He turned round. ‘Come on, guys, be reasonable.’ The officers, tense, did not move. Verner held up his cuffed wrists. ‘I can’t do anything, can I? These cuffs make sure of that.’
‘I don’t know,’ said the officer who had spoken to him before.
Verner gripped the back of the wheelchair. ‘I’ll keep my hands here, out of your way, OK? The phone’s down the back of my pants. How you missed it when you searched me, I don’t know. You’ve got to take it off me sometime — why not now and why not let me make my phone call?’
They eyed each other uncertainly, then gave a slight nod. One slid his MP5 off and placed it by the door, well out of reach. The other had his weapon at the ready, aimed at the prisoner, covering his partner.
The phone was hooked down Verner’s combat trousers. It was easily missed, but should not have been, and the officer wasn’t too surprised when he found it. No doubt it would have been discovered once the guy had been taken to a police station, but the quick search in the open had failed to find it. The officer stepped back and had a quick look at the phone.
Verner turned round.
‘Anything other than a straightforward conversation, and I grab it off you — OK?’
‘Sure, anything.’
He handed the phone to Verner, who began thumbing the keypad.
‘This is the number I’m going to call,’ he said.
Henry was being treated at last: the knife slash down his ribcage, having been cleaned, was now being pulled together with strips of plaster. It was not a deep cut and did not require stitches. Henry was assured it would heal easily and scar less, which was nice to hear. His body was a mess of lines and impact marks anyway. He did not want to add another to his history of collateral damage.
‘Your man’s down in X-ray,’ Jane Roscoe said to him. She had appeared as the last piece of plaster was being applied to Henry’s abdomen.
‘I wish I’d smashed his head harder,’ Henry admitted wistfully. ‘Then maybe he’d be in a mortuary.’
‘Then you’d be in trouble, wouldn’t you?’ Jane yawned and stretched, fighting off the tiredness of the long night shift. ‘Once he’s been taken to a ward, I’m off.’ She rolled her neck. She only lived around the corner from the hospital, in Fulwood.
The nurse who had been treating Henry withdrew, her job finished.
‘Have you told hubby you’re busy?’ Henry teased.
‘Yes,’ she said stiffly. ‘Have you told wifey?’
Henry nodded.
A silence fell as they regarded each other, a deep longing there, a big sense of unfinished business.
‘I’m sorry,’ Henry said.
‘Don’t be. We all have to make decisions. You decided to be with Kate. I had to stay with hubby, as you call him. . so, no, that’s actually wrong, I didn’t make a decision, Henry. You made it for me, didn’t you? Anyway,’ she tried to sound bright and upbeat, ‘it’s all history now. Onwards and upwards, eh?’ She was close to tears. ‘Trouble is, I still want to hold you. .’
Henry gritted his teeth. Get me out of here, he thought in panic. And again: I should not have gone to the Wicksons’. With my reputation, there was no way it could have gone smoothly.
‘FB back in force, eh?’ he said: quick subject change.
‘Your big friend, isn’t he?’
‘Hardly,’ Henry snorted. ‘But I think we understand one another. Sorry, that should be: we hate one another. I’m just useful to him on occasions, when it suits him. Otherwise, I’m just disposable.’
Once again an uncomfortable silence hit them.
They looked longingly at each other, but before either of them could say anything they would regret, a uniformed constable literally skidded into the cubicle. In the corridor behind him a rush of cops hurtled past, together with some nursing staff.
‘What is it?’ Jane demanded.
The look on his face said everything. Henry knew it was bad and even before the young lad had a chance to respond, Henry was pulling on his blood-stained T-shirt.
‘Dunno. . sounds like shots’ve been heard down in X-ray.’
‘Shit.’ Jane glanced quickly at Henry, who was already moving fast and with purpose.
‘Come on.’ He dropped off the bed and followed the officer out of the treatment room, twisted left down towards X-ray, which, Henry knew from previous experience, was a long way from Casualty.
All three began to pick up speed.
‘I hope this isn’t what I think it is,’ Jane pleaded.
From then on they raced silently, following the signs overhead and the arrows underfoot.
Two minutes later they were on the corridor. Ahead, a group of people were gathered around the door to the X-ray department. A cop was pushing them back, out of the way.
Jane fished out her warrant card in case she wasn’t immediately recognized. She slowed down and elbowed her way through the onlookers. ‘Excuse me, excuse me.’ Henry settled in her slipstream. She flashed her card at the officer on the door. ‘DI Roscoe. Blackpool CID,’ she announced. She thumbed Henry and said, ‘He’s with me.’
The officer stepped aside.
In the X-ray waiting room it was carnage. Three bodies were splayed out on the tiled floor, the two armed officers and the reception nurse. All had head wounds,
all three were face down in their own pools of black-red blood and brain fragments. Blood splashes were all over the walls and furniture.
A doctor was kneeling beside the nurse, his fingers at her neck checking for vital signs. He stood up, his face a terrible mask, and shook his head. ‘All three dead,’ he announced quietly.
Jane said nothing, but she could feel her feet becoming leaden, the pit of her stomach burn.
Henry looked at the scene.
This was not his murder, and he knew he could go no further into the room for fear of destroying evidence.
Two police officers had been gunned down and one nurse.
And the prisoner had escaped.
Henry wondered if he had an accomplice.
For a very quick moment Henry actually felt relief that he was on suspension. Not my problem, he told himself, trying to make himself believe it. Not my job. Well maybe it wasn’t in theory, but he knew damn well that if it had been he knew exactly where his next port of call would be once the practicalities of scene preservation and search for the escapee had been taken care of.
If it was his job, he would be muscling very heavily into John Lloyd Wickson’s personal space because he was certain that he had a bloody good story to tell and Henry would have wrung it out of him with his hands around Wickson’s neck if necessary.
Henry had seen enough. With very mixed emotions churning around inside him, he drew back to let the real cops get on with the business. He would have loved to be involved in it, despite the fact that two colleagues had been gunned down, plus the nurse. The other side of him still said it was nothing to do with him, that he had enough problems of his own, so fuck the lot of them. His experience and expertise would be invaluable, but fuck the lot of them.
He wandered back to the waiting room.
Just before his treatment he had phoned Kate and arranged for her to come down to the hospital in her car with a change of clothing for him. He expected her in about an hour and was going to kill time with fresh air, coffee and painkillers.
The coffee came first. Once that was in hand he left the hospital and walked to the car park, next to which was a grassed area from which he could view all arrivals. He sat down and stuffed two more paracetamols into his mouth, washing them down with the coffee.
Police activity increased.
Uniforms and detectives and scientists arrived. The helicopter appeared again.
He watched it all with an air of detachment.
Two van loads of Support Unit officers landed; two dog vans screeched in.
He knew there would be an extensive search of the hospital and its grounds and the surrounding streets. He would have laid odds there and then that there was no way on this earth that the prisoner would be found.
There would be no chance of him now being dressed in his combat gear. It would not surprise Henry if he had tied up some poor unfortunate and stolen his clothes, wallet and any other belongings which were of use and dumped him dead in some out-of-the-way broom cupboard in the hospital. He would have hot-wired a car and be well on his way down the motorway by now.
The fresh air was reviving him. The coffee was hitting the mark. The drugs were doing their work.
He was watching traffic travelling along Sharoe Green Lane outside the hospital. It was a busy road. He could see as far as the traffic lights at the junction with the A6. He frowned as a big American Jeep turned off the A6 and came in his direction. His bottom lip drooped stupidly. It was the sort of car he would recognize anywhere. And the bulk of the driver confirmed the recognition. It was Karl Donaldson.
What the hell was the Yank doing here? Had Kate asked him to come to pick Henry up for her? Henry knew Karl was working on the murder case they had briefly discussed in the pub last night. He had said he was spending the day up north before returning to London. But why was he here?
Henry stood up, his side pinching painfully.
Donaldson signalled to turn right and entered the hospital grounds, easily spotting Henry on the grass, pulling in nearby. Henry hobbled down to him. The American lowered his window and from that moment, Henry knew that Donaldson had not come to see him.
‘What the hell’re you doin’ here, Henry?’
‘I could ask you the same thing.’
Donaldson’s eyes narrowed. ‘Anything in connection with John Lloyd Wickson?’
‘Could be,’ Henry said mysteriously.
Donaldson’s eyes narrowed even further as he surveyed his limey friend. ‘Yes or no,’ he demanded.
Henry relented. ‘Remember I mentioned the little investigation job last night?’
‘At the Wicksons?’ Donaldson said in disbelief.
‘H-hm. I sorta caught a guy who was taking potshots at Wickson earlier this morning,’ said Henry, recalling that he had not mentioned the name Wickson to Donaldson whilst they were in the pub.
‘You’re the one who caught him!’
‘More or less.’
‘I didn’t get told that.’
‘And now he’s escaped — after killing two police officers and a nurse.’
‘Jesus. I wasn’t told that either.’
‘Only just happened.’ Henry looked at all the police cars which had been abandoned outside Casualty. ‘Hence all the cop cars. Er. . what were you told?’ Henry smiled. ‘Why are you here? Has this something to do with Zeke?’ Donaldson’s face changed. ‘It bloody has, hasn’t it?’
Donaldson avoided the question and said, ‘We need to talk — later.’ He squinted at Henry again and tilted his head. ‘You’ve been hurt, haven’t you?’
‘Just stabbed in the chest, that’s all. I’ll recover.’ He opened his jacket to reveal his shirt. ‘He only plunged a knife into my heart, nothing serious.’
‘Stay put, pal. . I’ll see you later.’ Donaldson jabbed his foot down and swung the Jeep away, parking it on double yellow lines, half on the footpath. He jumped out and trotted into the hospital.
Henry sat back down, intrigued about what was going on.
Verner had done as Henry had guessed. Once he had dealt with his captors and made the terrified nurse find a handcuff key on one of the dead cops, then killed her, he had walked calmly out of X-ray in the opposite direction to Casualty. He looked at and weighed up each male he passed in the corridors.
One, he estimated, was about right.
Within a minute the man was naked, trussed up with wire from a kettle and dumped in an empty room. Verner put the man’s clothes on and strolled out through the back of the hospital, where he stumbled into a staff car park.
Seconds later he was driving a Ford Focus out of the hospital, along Sharoe Green Lane, on to the A6 and down to Broughton, where he joined the M6 south. Fifteen minutes after escaping he was on the M61 heading towards Manchester.
An hour down the line and Kate had still not shown. Henry could imagine what she was going through, so he called her on the pay phone in the waiting room. She sounded flustered and out of breath.
‘I’m in the middle of Preston. I’m following hospital signs, but I keep looping back into the town centre.’
Henry was aware she was not familiar with the newly crowned city of Preston. She had only been there a handful of times in her life, being very much a Blackpool girl. He calmed her down, ascertained exactly where she was and directed her from that point to the hospital, which was nowhere near the centre of the city.
‘See you in a few minutes.’
‘OK, love,’ she said, sounding more relieved.
‘And I’ll make sure I meet you outside the hospital.’
He hung up.
Since Donaldson had arrived, Henry had not spoken to anyone about what was going on. He watched with more interest now, but decided to stay away from the action in spite of his inner urges to do otherwise. Something told him that his involvement with this was not over yet, anyway, so he would wait and see what came his way.
Having said that, he thought he should tell Jane that he was about to be picked up
and driven home.
He made his way back into the Casualty waiting room. There was no sign of anyone he needed to speak to. He made his way down to X-ray.
It was still a mass of confusion. Henry hoped Jane had taken firm control of the scene. As he approached the police cordon tape stretched across the corridor, his progress was halted by a constable with a clipboard.
‘You can’t go any further. Sorry, mate.’
‘I could do with talking to DI Roscoe.’
‘I’m afraid she’s very busy.’
‘Just a moment of her time, please.’
The cop shook his head. ‘I’ll take your name and a number and get her to call you, if you like.’ Then he had a thought. ‘Unless you’re a witness.’
‘I was first at the scene with the DI, actually.’
The officer shrugged, now not interested. ‘I’ve been told to let no one through.’
‘OK,’ said Henry. He fished out his phone and saw the battery was actually showing some charge now. He thought mobile-phone batteries were the strangest of things. Sometimes they go on forever with little or no charge showing, other times they just seemed to die on a whim. He keyed in Jane’s number. It rang, but was not answered. When the answer phone clicked in, Henry ended the call.
With leaden feet he began walking out of the hospital to wait for Kate, who should not be too far away now. It hit him hard, like a kick in the testicles, that he was not wanted or needed. They could do very well without him and the realization hurt him. Hurt him hard.
Once again he experienced great regret about ever turning out to help Tara Wickson. He had been a fool. If he had not got out of bed, none of this would have happened — but then something else struck him. If he had not got out of bed it was possible that John Wickson might be dead now. Or, worse still, Jane Roscoe. Yes. Actually he had done some good. He had saved lives. That realization gave him a speck of comfort.
Kate arrived the moment Henry set foot outside.
She jumped out of the car and ran to him.
‘Henry, I’ve been so worried.’