Not Dead Enough

77

Grace pulled his Alfa Romeo into the front car park of the Royal Sussex County Hospital, where he had come to visit an injured officer, and cruised slowly along, looking for a space. Then he patiently waited for an elderly lady to unlock the door of her little Nissan Micra, climb in, do up her seat belt, get her ignition key in the slot, fiddle with the interior mirror, start the engine, figure out what the round wheel in front of her did, remember where the gear stick was and finally find reverse. Then she backed out with the speed of a torpedo propelled from a tube, missing the front of his car by an inch. He drove into the space she had vacated and switched off the engine.

It was shortly before half past two and his stomach rumbled, reminding him he needed some food, although he had no appetite. Visits to the mortuary seldom left him feeling like eating, and the image of the grim tattoo on Sophie Harrington’s back was still vividly with him, puzzling and disturbing.

Because You Love Her.

What the hell did that mean? Presumably her referred to the victim, Sophie Harrington. But who was you? Her boyfriend?

His phone rang. It was Kim Murphy to update him on the day’s progress so far. The most important news was that the Huntington laboratory had confirmed they would have the DNA test results by late afternoon. As he was finishing the call, the phone beeped with a caller-waiting signal. It was DCI Duigan, also calling in with a progress report on Sophie Harrington, and he was sounding pleased.

‘An elderly neighbour living opposite went over and spoke to the scene guard officer about an hour ago. She said she had noticed a man acting strangely in the street outside Sophie Harrington’s building at about eight on Friday night. He was holding a red carrier bag and wearing a hoodie. Even so, it sounds like she had a good look at him.’

‘Was she able to give a description of his face?’

‘We’ve someone on their way to interview her now. But what she has said so far fits Bishop, in terms of height and build. And am I right in understanding from the time-line report he has no alibi for his whereabouts around that time?’

‘Correct. Could she pick him out in an identity parade?’

‘That’s right at the top of the list.’

Grace asked Duigan if they’d managed to find out if Sophie had had a boyfriend. The SIO responded that there was no information on that yet, but they would shortly be interviewing the friend who had reported her missing.

When his colleague had finished, Grace checked his emails on his BlackBerry, but there was nothing relevant to either of the two investigations. He slotted the gadget back in its holster on his belt and thought for some moments. Duigan’s news was potentially very good indeed. If this woman could positively identify Bishop, then that was another significant piece of evidence stacked up against the man.

His stomach rumbled again. Fierce sunlight burned through his opened sunroof and he pulled it shut, grateful for the momentary shade. Then he picked up the bacon and egg sandwich he had bought in a petrol station on the way here, tore off the cellophane wrapper and levered the sandwich out. The first bite tasted vaguely of bacon-flavoured cardboard. Chewing slowly and unenthusiastically, he picked up the copy of the latest edition of the Argus newspaper he had bought at the same time, and stared at the front-page splash, amazed how fast, as so often, they managed to get a story out. At some point he was going to have to get to the bottom of Spinella’s insider sources. But right now this was the bottom of his list of priorities.

Brighton Serial Killer Claims Second Victim.

There was a particularly attractive head and shoulders photograph of Sophie Harrington, wearing a T-shirt and simple beaded necklace, her long brown hair billowing in sunlight. She was smiling brightly at the camera, or the person behind it.

Then he read the article, bylined Kevin Spinella, which spilled over into the second and third pages. It was well dressed up with a series of lifestyle photographs of Katie Bishop, as well as all the usual grief-stricken sound-bites from Sophie Harrington’s parents and her best friend that he would have expected to see. And the small photograph of himself that the paper always wheeled out.

It was typical Spinella, sensational reporting intended to create maximum possible panic in the city, and boost the circulation of the paper over the coming days, as well as to enhance Spinella’s CV and the oily creep’s undoubted ambitions for a position with a national paper. Grace supposed he could not blame the man, or his editor – he would probably have done the same in their positions. But all the same, deliberate misquotes such as ‘Brighton Police Divisional Commander, Chief Superintendent Ken Brickhill, advised all women in the city of Brighton and Hove to lock their doors,’ were not helpful.

Part of the purpose of carefully managed press conferences, such as the one earlier today, was to inform the public of the crimes that had been committed, with the hope of getting leads. But all scaremongering like this did was to jam the police switchboards with hundreds of calls from frightened women.

He ate as much of the sandwich as he could manage, washed it down with a tepid Diet Coke, then climbed out and dumped the remnants of his meal and its packaging into a bin. He dutifully bought a pay-and-display ticket and stuck it on the windscreen. Then he walked over to the pre-fab Hospitality Flowers booth and chose a small bouquet from the stall. He walked along in front of the sprawling front façade of the hospital, some of it painted white, some cream and some grey, and entered under the large Perspex awning, past an ambulance with the wording on its bonnet in large green letters in mirror-image.

Roy hated this place. It angered and embarrassed him that a city of Brighton and Hove’s stature had such a disgusting, run-down dump of a hospital. It might have a grand name, and an impressive, sprawling complex of buildings, and sure, some departments, such as the cardiac unit, were world class, but in general the average makeshift shack of a medical centre in a Third World nation put this place to shame.

He had read once that the Second World War was the first time in history that more soldiers died from their actual wounds than from infections they picked up in hospitals while being treated for their wounds. Half of the citizens of Brighton and Hove were terrified to come into this place because, rumour was rife, you were more likely to die from something you picked up inside, than from whatever brought you in here in the first place.

It wasn’t the fault of the medical staff, who were mostly quality people who worked their tired butts off – he had seen that with his own eyes enough times. He blamed the management, and he blamed the government whose policies had allowed healthcare standards to fall so low.

He went past the gift shop and the chintzy Nuovo Caffè snack bar, which looked like it belonged in a motorway service station, and sidestepped an elderly, vacant-faced patient in her hospital gown who was wandering down the sloping floor straight towards him.

And then his anger at the place rose further as he walked over to the curved wooden counter of the unmanned reception desk and saw the sign, lying beside a spray of plastic flowers.

Apologies the Reception Desk is Closed.

Fortunately, Eleanor had managed to locate his young officer for him – she had been moved out of the orthopaedic ward a few days ago into one called Chichester. A list on the wall informed him that it was on the third floor of this wing.

He climbed up a spiral staircase, on the walls of which a cheery mural had been painted, walked along a blue linoleum-covered corridor, up two further flights of wooden-banistered stairs and stopped in a shabby, grimy corridor. A young female Asian nurse in a blue top and black trousers walked towards him. There was a faint mashed potatoes and cabbage smell of school dinners. ‘I’m looking for Chichester ward,’ he said.

She pointed. ‘Go straight ahead.’

He walked past a row of gas cylinders through a door with a glass window covered in warning notices, and entered a ward of about sixteen beds. The smell of school dinners was even stronger in here, tinged by a faint, sour smell of urine and disinfectant. There was an old linoleum floor and the walls were filthy. The windows were wide open, giving a view out on to another wing of the hospital, with a vent from which steam was rising. Horrible curtains were partially drawn around some beds.

It was a mixed ward of what looked mostly like geriatrics and mental patients. Grace stared for a moment at a little old lady with tufts of hair the colour of cotton wool, matching the complexion of her sunken cheeks, fast asleep, her toothless mouth open wide. Several televisions were on. A young man in bed was babbling loudly to himself. Another old woman, in a bed at the far end, kept shouting out something loud and unintelligible to no one in particular. In the bed immediately to his right was a shrivelled little old man, fast asleep, unshaven, his bedclothes pushed aside, two empty bottles of Coke on the table that straddled him. He was wearing striped pyjamas, the bottoms untied, his limp penis clearly visible, nestling against his testicles.

And in the next-door bed, to his horror, surrounding by dusty-looking apparatus, he saw the person he had come to visit. And now, as he slipped his hand into his pocket and removed his mobile phone, storming past the busy nursing station, his blood was really boiling.

One of his favourite young officers, DC Emma-Jane Boutwood, had been badly injured trying to stop a van in the same operation in which Glenn Branson had been shot. She had been crushed between the van and a parked car, and suffered massive internal damage, including losing her spleen, as well as multiple bone fractures. The twenty-five-year-old had been in a coma on life support for over a week, and when she came round, doctors had been worried she might never walk again. But in recent weeks she had made a dramatic improvement, was able to stand unaided and had already been talking eagerly about when she could get back to work.

Grace really liked her. She was a terrific detective and he reckoned she had a great future ahead of her in the force. But at this moment, seeing her lying there, smiling palely at him, she looked like a lost, bewildered child. Always thin, she now looked emaciated inside her loose hospital gown, and the orange tag was almost hanging off her wrist. Her blonde hair, which had lost its lustre and looked like dried straw, was clipped up untidily, with a few stray wisps falling down. On the table next to her bed lay a crowded riot of cards, flowers and fruit.

Her eyes said it all before they even spoke, and something snapped inside him.

‘How are you?’ he asked, holding on to the flowers for the moment.

‘Never better!’ she said, making an effort to perk up for him. ‘I told my dad yesterday that I was going to beat him at tennis before the end of the summer. Mind you, that should be easy. He’s a crap player!’

Grace grinned, then asked gently, ‘What the hell are you doing in this ward?’

She shrugged. ‘They moved me about three days ago. Said they needed the bed in the other ward.’

‘Did they, hell. You want to stay here?’

‘Not really.’

Grace stepped back and scanned the ward, looking for a free nurse, then walked over to a young Asian girl in nursing uniform who was removing a bedpan. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘I’m looking for whoever is in charge here.’

The nurse turned around, then pointed to a harassed-looking nurse of about forty, with pinned-up hair and a bookish face behind large glasses, who was entering the ward, holding a clipboard.

In a few quick, determined paces, Grace cut her off, blocking her path. The badge hanging from her blue top read Angela Morris, Ward Manager.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘can I have a word with you?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she replied, in a brittle, distinctly hostile and haughty voice. ‘I’m dealing with a problem.’

‘Well, you have another one right now,’ he said, almost shaking with anger, pulling out his warrant card and holding it up to her face.

She looked alarmed. ‘What – what is this about?’ Her voice had suddenly dropped several decibels.

Grace pointed at Emma-Jane. ‘You have exactly five minutes to get that young woman out of this stinking hell-hole and into either a private ward or a women-only one. Do you understand?’

Haughty again, the Ward Manager said, ‘Perhaps you should try to understand some of the problems we have in this hospital, Detective Superintendent.’

Raising his voice almost to a shout, Grace said, ‘This young woman is a heroine. She was injured performing an act of supreme bravery in the line of duty. She helped save this city from a monster, who is now behind bars awaiting trial, and to save the lives of two innocent people. She nearly damn well sacrificed her life! And her reward is to get put in a mixed, geriatric ward, in a bed next to a man with his dick hanging out. She’s not spending one more hour in this ward. Do you understand me?’

Looking around edgily, the nurse said, ‘I will see what I can do, later.’

Raising his voice even more, Grace said, ‘I don’t think you heard me properly. There’s no later about this. You’re going to do this now. Because I’m going to stay here, in your face, until she’s moved into a bed in a ward that I’m happy about.’ Then he held up the phone and showed it to the woman. ‘Unless you’d like me to email the photos I’ve just taken of Brighton heroine DC Boutwood being stripped of all dignity by you cruel incompetents to the Argus and every damn newspaper in the land, you’re going to do this right now.’

‘You are not allowed to use mobile phones in here. And you’ve no right to take photographs.’

‘You’ve no right to treat my officer like this. Get me the hospital manager. NOW!’