Hospital Corners

by William Stafford

  Lina got wind that Little Timmy was going to be written out. She begged the producers to reconsider. I’m a single mother, she reminded them; I cannot work and look after my children at the same time.

  Little Timmy got a stay of execution while the show was on summer hiatus. Lina fretted while the boys played in the yard. Their life was not ostentatious but they were comfortable. That comfort could not last long if Little Timmy kicked the bucket.

  Every evening she drilled Luka with tongue-twisters and elocution practice but he never seemed to make progress. She sought medical advice. He’ll grow into it, the doctors shrugged. There’s nothing wrong with him. Some kids just speak better than others sooner than others. Luka asked why he had to keep repeating the same things over and over while Oskar got to watch extra TV. Lina told him it was because he - Luka - was going to be a big star some day and then he would thank her when all her hard work paid off.

  Oskar was a bright kid. He knew his mom was upset about something. Money, probably. Grown-ups were always worried about money. His screen parents, Willy and Wendy, were always arguing about money, but they were funny. Their arguments always had jokes in them - Oskar didn’t understand most of them - but the people who came to watch always laughed and clapped, the way they laughed and clapped when Oskar said something on cue and facing the right direction. Isn’t he cute, that Little Timmy? People would always say that. Oskar knew he wasn’t Little Timmy. He knew he was Oskar and Luka was Luka, and Little Timmy was just a story.

  He heard his mother on the telephone asking for something called an extension. He had no idea what that might be. He heard her in the kitchen going through papers and sobbing. The papers had numbers on them and big red letters across the top.

  “They’re bills,” his mother said, stuffing them back into a drawer.

  “Let Bill have them back,” was the three-year-old’s advice.

  “Oh, darling,” she hugged him too tightly and almost smothered him against her chest. “If only it was just me and you and not Luka!”

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she tried to snatch them back before they reached the boy’s ears. A shameful thing to say! For a mother to think! She kissed Oskar again, making him squirm and told him Mommy was just being a silly Mommy.

  Oskar went back outside to play.

  A week or so later, Lina heard him calling to her to come outside. Lina dashed out of the back door. Oskar was standing near the back porch. She seized him by the shoulders and asked him what the hell was wrong. There was not a mark on him.

  “It’s Luka,” he said and pointed across the yard to the foot of a tree. Lying on the ground like a marionette with the strings cut was his twin brother.

  At first, Lina dared not approach. She feared the worst. But then her instincts took over and she hurried to kneel at her son’s side. He was alive but unconscious. At least three of his limbs were broken.

  “Is he dead?” said Oskar, appearing at her shoulder.

  Lina grabbed him, making him shout in surprise and pain. “What happened? What did you do?”

  Oskar was crying, wailing like a police siren. Lina shook him to be quiet and to tell her what had happened.

  Oskar pointed at the tree. “Luka fell,” he said.

  ***

  “It wasn’t your fault,” said David Brough. He wondered if he should reach across the table and take Oscar by the hand.

  “It might have been,” the movie star wiped tears from his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I can’t remember. I was - we were so young.”

  “What happened next?”

  “Well, he went to the hospital, of course. They said he would be in there for months. Meanwhile, I went back to work as Little Timmy. That season was our most successful and I still think it’s some of my best work.” He grunted an ironic laugh.

  “And Luka?”

  Oscar shook his head. “One day Lina was waiting for me when we finished for the day. Usually, by that point, I had a chaperone who would bring me home - Mom was always at the hospital. I was the man of the family, earning our living. I was four years old.

  “I knew something was up as soon as I saw her. Her eyes were rimmed with red and when she touched me, her handkerchief brushed against my face and it was soaking wet.”

  “She’d been crying,” said Brough. Oscar sent him a look that said ‘you should be a detective’.

  “She told me Luka had gone to a better place. I didn’t know what that meant. I asked the chaperone the next day and she said she was sorry but it meant my brother had died. I couldn’t understand that either. I guess I adapted. Kids do at that age. It seems easy for them. And Little Timmy had no brothers or sisters, so I spent more and more time being him, even when I was at home.

  “Well, the series limped on for another couple of seasons. Little Timmy was going to school by this point, and I was having lessons on set. It really was a lot of work for a little boy but then again, I had nobody to play with, did I?

  “Next job was a movie about a kid whose dog dies saving some firemen who get themselves trapped in a burning building. And at the end, I had to collect a medal with my dead dog’s name on it, and I couldn’t do it the way they wanted. They wanted tears - real tears - they said, and they were getting impatient with me. But I couldn’t cry. And then I saw my chaperone whispering to the props guy. We went for another take and when the Chief Fireman or whoever puts the ribbon around my neck and everyone claps and I hold the medal in my hand, I look at it, and they’d engraved the name LUKA on the medallion. Well, the tears came all right. I couldn’t get them to stop. They ended up using an earlier take anyway. I got my first award for that movie.”

  “Heavy,” said Brough.

  “I asked my Mom why it had upset me so much. I couldn’t remember having a brother. All I could remember was vague stuff about Little Timmy. If someone had told me I had a brother, I would have said his name was Little Timmy. I was a dumb kid, right?”

  “No,” said Brough, and this time he did reach for the film star’s hand. Oscar allowed it but did not return the pressure.

  “I was never out of work,” Oscar continued. “You’ve seen my filmography. I was the hardest working kid in Hollywood. When I started to grow up, Mom was worried it would all be over for me, but the studios had other ideas. Can he sing, they asked? Hell, it don’t matter if he can’t. And so, my career in pop music was launched. I sang, after a fashion, and jumped around in a couple of videos and, well, it’s all rather embarrassing to look back on. But it did the trick - it kept me in the public eye, kept me out there working, and kept the money rolling in back home to Mom.

  “So I did a couple of movies for Disney and after I graduated, I said I wanted to go to college and get my degree. But Mom was always pushing projects onto me. Just this one more movie, she’d say. Just this one more guest appearance. Before I knew it, I was twenty-two and exhausted.

  “I never took drugs or drank much. I was snapped in the papers with a couple of pretty girls on my arm - the kind the studios link you with for film premiers and the like - and suddenly everyone thinks we’re a couple and on it goes. And all the gossip serves to keep you in the public eye, so you have to go along with it. There’s a lot of interest in my private life - even back then when I didn’t have one - but I’d rather be talked about for my work, you know?”

  Brough nodded. “But if you call it ‘your craft’ I’m going to have to call you a wanker.”

  Oscar laughed. There was the DB he knew from online. “You always keep me grounded,” he smiled, and this time he did squeeze Brough’s hand in return.

  “So, how did you find out Luka was still alive?”

  Oscar gaped. “How did - what makes you think he’s alive?”

  “I am a detective.”

  “A few years ago,” Oscar resumed, “it came out in the pa
pers. Someone was doing a retrospective feature about me in time for my thirtieth. They got hold of the actors who’d played Willy and Wendy and asked them what I’d been like as a child star. And they let the cat out of the bag. They said I was great - of course! - but my brother had been a nightmare. And the reporter had delved a little deeper and I was confronted saying where was my brother, what had I done to my brother? And I went to Mom and confronted her and she said I had a brother - past tense - and he’d had a terrible accident and he’d died. She even managed to produce a death certificate - God knows who she paid and what she paid to get that knocked up. So I became a tragic figure. Lonely star pines for lost twin on his thirtieth birthday. They even quoted me as saying I would have to be successful enough for the both of us. I never said that. I’m cheesy but not that cheesy.

  “Well, all that died down - things always die down eventually; that’s why there’s always pressure in this business to keep your name out there, in the gossip columns, your face seen at all the right, and some of the wrong, places. But it’s so tiring, David - weird calling you that after all this time. I never got any time for myself.

  “I started sneaking around. I was spotted at gay bars in New York City. Research for his next role, my publicists put it about. And I’m more than certain several of my liaisons have been bought off with huge sums of cash - more than they would get if they went to the press. These guys are there one moment and gone the next. Off to spend their hush money, I guess.

  “It was why I found you so refreshing. There was no bullshit with you. You weren’t after anything and you weren’t trying to glom onto my limelight. You talked to me like I was a real person and I’d never had that before my whole life.”

  Brough was touched. But he had to steer the story back to the lost brother. All being well there would be time for a little mutual appreciation afterwards.

  “Mom was hit hard by word of my brother getting out and she just drank and drank. She’d always been fond of a tipple. Keeps me warm at night in my empty bed, she’d say. But it got out of hand. I wasn’t there. Ironically, I was always working on projects she herself had insisted I do. She drank herself to death five years ago. You may have seen it on the news.”

  “I did,” said Brough.

  “But you knew better than to bring it up during our online chats,” said Oscar. “Another reason why I liked you so much. You didn’t try to interview me. We just... chatted.

  “I set out to find where my brother was buried. I thought maybe my Mom would like to be laid to rest next to him. But there were no records of a grave for him anywhere. I went through all Mom’s papers. And researched all the places we had lived. There was nothing.

  And then I found a postcard in the bottom of a drawer - I was reminded of all those red-lettered final demands she used to try to hide from me - and there was an address. A farm in Nebraska.

  “I flew out there right away. You can do things like that when you’re a big shot movie star. And I met this old couple who told me they’d adopted a little boy over thirty years ago and the boy was a little simple, they said, and a little ungainly on his feet, on account of some terrible accident he’d had. They’d been led to believe the boy’s entire family had been wiped out in this accident and so they’d taken him in, the poor little orphan, and brought him up as their own son.

  “I was just scraping the top layers of the iceberg of my Mom’s deceit. She should have been a writer, that woman. My brother, the orphan! I tried to understand why she’d done it, why she’d given Luka away. At first I thought it was to protect me - so I could keep working; Luka had always been a liability on set. And then I remembered one night I’d come home and found her out of her head with booze and we had a fight and I had to grab her to stop her from falling down the stairs and she looked at me with such horror in her eyes - such fear - as if I was going to throw her down those stairs myself. And I thought, she wasn’t protecting me - she was protecting Luka. She’d sent him away, given him up, so I couldn’t hurt him. She believed to her dying day that I’d had something to do with him falling out of that tree.”

  “But you didn’t,” said Brough.

  “I don’t remember any of it,” said Oscar. “Anyway, I asked what had happened to the boy and they said he was still there, all growed up big and strong, they said, and an invaluable help to them on the farm in their old age. And they asked if I wanted to meet him. He’d be tickled, they said, to shake the hand of a big old movie star he’d seen on the TV. But I said I had to go, catch my flight, and they said stop by any time and I said I just might.

  “I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Was that wrong? If someone asked you to meet a ghost, would you do it? So I never laid eyes on my brother. I went back to work and well, time passes as it does, and here I am.”

  “And here he is,” said Brough.

  Oscar was incredulous. “You can’t think - you can’t think Luka is responsible for all this!” He made a wide sweeping gesture to signify everything that had happened. “My brother, the psycho killer!”

  “Do you have the address of that farm?”

  “I guess. I can find it.”

  “Please do. If Luka’s still there, he’s in the clear.”

  “And if he’s not?”

  “Well, then, we’d better catch him and stop him, don’t you think?”

  17

  “Where is he then, your Hollywood boyfriend?” was how Wheeler greeted Brough when he entered the Serious briefing room.

  “He’s not my -” Brough stopped himself from rising to her bait. “I’ve brought him in; he’s in your office.”

  “Well, aren’t I fucking honoured!”

  “He’s not a suspect, Chief. I wasn’t going to lock him up.”

  “Says you,” Wheeler sniffed. “All I’m saying is he’s been spotted - or rather somebody like him has been spotted - at certain times and certain places, which to the trained eye could be said to be fucking incriminating. Now, there’s him, who looks like him. And there’s you, who also looks like him. You haven’t been committing horrible murders, have you, David? People can get pretty fucking saft when it comes to fan-worship.”

  “Of course not!” But then he saw the mocking smile curling her thin lips. “There’s his brother.”

  “Ah, yes! The forgotten twin. Have a seat. When the gang’s all here, I’ve got something to show you.”

  Brough opted for an armchair; he didn’t want to risk anyone sitting beside him on one of the sofas. And by ‘anyone’ he was really thinking of Pattimore.

  Stevens arrived, bouncing in like a kangaroo on crack.

  “Somebody got the cat who got the early bird who got the fucking worm,” Wheeler observed. “Or have you been licking car batteries again?”

  Stevens grinned and clapped his hands together. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Here we go... ” Wheeler muttered.

  “The way I clobbered that bloke with the tin of toffees - I reckon I might be in with a chance.”

  “A chance of what?”

  “Being in a film. One of them producer blokes come up to me and give me his card and said we’ll have a chat.” Stevens produced the rectangle of card from a pocket in his tan leather jacket. “Exhibit A,” his grin broadened.

  Neither Brough nor Wheeler seemed overly impressed. Stevens carried on, undaunted. He sprawled on a sofa. “My big break,” he stroked his moustache. “About bloody time and all.”

  Harry Henry arrived, holding the door for Miller who was not far behind. Miller grunted in response to Wheeler’s greeting and headed straight for the coffee.

  “Fucking hell!” Stevens was jolted out of his reverie of fame and fortune. He sneered at Miller. “I’ve pulled better-looking things out of a plughole.”

  Miller flashed two fingers at him and tottered to a chair. “Up half the night,” sh
e groaned. “With my friend, Bunny Slippers. I think I might be allergic to sherry.”

  She got no sympathy from the rest of the team. Pattimore arrived to a chorus of hellos and mornings. He tried to catch Brough’s eye but Brough was looking pointedly at his smart phone.

  “Right, then,” Wheeler signalled to Harry Henry to dim the lights. She aimed the remote control at the projector suspended from the ceiling. Nothing happened. “Fucking bastard.”

  Pattimore leapt to her rescue. He took the remote, turned it around and gave it back.

  “Smart arse,” she growled. This time the white board behind her lit up. An overweight man appeared in the uniform of an American county sheriff. He squinted at them.

  “Howdy?” he said uncertainly. “This thing on?”

  Wheeler spun around to face him. “Sheriff Hardacre?” she smiled.

  “Yes, sir!” He peered more closely, “Yes, ma’m.”

  Wheeler’s smile remained on her lips but was gone from her eyes. “Thank you for your help with this matter.”

  Hardacre touched the brim of his hat. “A pleasure, ma’m. Anything to help the boys in blue over the pond.”

  “What can you tell us?”

  Hardacre removed his hat and scratched his head. “It ain’t a pretty story, folks, I’m sorry to say.”

  “We can fucking take it,” said Wheeler, showing her teeth.

  “Well, I went up to the farm, only there weren’t nothing left of it. Was all burned to the ground.”

  “Was anyone hurt?”

  “I don’t reckon they was hurt, ma’m. They was dead. Farmer and his wife.” Hardacre held his hat to his chest and shook his head sadly.

  “And their son?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Was there son, ah, Luka, also killed in the fire?”