Cutting Edge

Twenty

It had taken William Dougherty the best part of two hours to calm down his wife, stop the persistent tremble in her hands, persuade her to focus on his words. Pauline listened and nodded and said something William couldn’t catch. Before he knew what she was doing, her hands were under the sink, fumbling for the scouring powder, cream cleanser and cloths. He watched while she lifted the hard plastic bowl from the sink and set it on the draining board, upside down; slowly she began to rub at the already spotless metal; painstakingly, she twisted a thin strip between the links of the chain that held the plug.

“Did you understand what I said?” he asked. “Any of it?”

Her permed hair, not so much as a comb through since morning, sat lopsided, like an ill-fitting wig. “Yes, William. Of course I did.”

As she went back to her cleaning, Dougherty left the house. Asking the neighbor across the way to call in again and sit with Pauline, he caught a bus to the hospital. Without entering the unit he could see Karl’s bed was empty and his knees buckled beneath him. Had Patel still been waiting, likely he would have reached Dougherty in time to steady him before he fell. As it was, Patel had left a note of where he could be contacted and returned to the station and it was a good ten minutes before one of the porters found William Dougherty slumped against the wall.

Nurses helped him to his feet and sat him down with a hasty mug of tea.

“Now then, Mr. Dougherty,” one of the nurses said as she took his pulse, “we can’t have this. We don’t want the whole family in here, sure we don’t.”

“Karl …”

“Oh, we just had to pop him back into theater. Don’t you fret now. He’s in recovery, doing fine. He’ll be back on the ward in a while and then you can see him. All right now? I’ll leave you to finish your tea.”

He sat there, one hand to his head, staring at the floor, uncertain whether he should be more worried about his wife or son.

Kevin Naylor tried Debbie a third time and still there was no reply. Probably round at her mum’s but he wasn’t going to phone there, he’d be buggered if he was.

“Okay?” Lynn Kellogg was standing further along the corridor, near the doors, arms folded across her chest.

“Yes. Why shouldn’t I be?”

“Thought you looked a bit worried, that’s all.”

“I’m fine.” Heading past her, hoping she wouldn’t follow.

“Kevin …”

Naylor stopped short, breathed in slowly, then turned to face her.

“It’s not Debbie, is it?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Only …”

“Do us a favor, Lynn.”

“Yes?”

Naylor jabbed a finger at her like a hammer, like nails. “Go out and get a bloke of your own. Then you won’t spend so much time fussing round me.”

She flinched like she’d been hit. Naylor glared and walked away and Lynn watched him-whatever it was between us, she thought, now it’s gone. Just another man who didn’t like what he was feeling: choke it down until you’re not feeling anything at all. Her notebook was in the bag that hung from her shoulder, all of the staff she’d talked to had known Karl Dougherty, thought he was wonderful-efficient, funny, caring: an outstanding nurse. The impression she was left with was that none of them knew him at all.

She would go and talk to Tim Fletcher before leaving; see if there wasn’t something he could add.

Fletcher was sitting in an easy chair beside his bed, learning Italian care of his Walkman, eyes gently closed as he repeated the phrases over and over: “C’e una mappa con le cose da vedere?” “C’e una mappa con le cose da vedere?” “C’e …” He broke off, aware of someone’s presence.

“Sounds really impressive,” Lynn said.

Tim Fletcher smiled. “It could sound like La Traviata, I’m afraid I still wouldn’t understand it. Most of it, anyhow.”

Lynn introduced herself and sat on the edge of the bed. After several minutes’ polite conversation about his injuries, she asked him if he’d heard about Karl Dougherty and then how well he’d known him.

“Hardly at all.”

“You haven’t worked together, then? I mean, on the same ward or anything?”

Fletcher shook his head. “Not for any length of time. Not that I recall.”

“Wouldn’t you remember something like that?”

“The way it’s organized, I’m attached to a consultant, Mr. Salt as it happens. Now it’s likely the bulk of his patients will be in one or two wards, but, especially with the bed situation the way it is, the others might be just about anywhere.” For several moments he stared at her, vaguely aware that beneath his bandages there was an irritation waiting to be scratched. “You don’t think there’s a connection, something more than coincidence, what happened to the two of us?”

“Oh,” said Lynn, “I really don’t know. Except, well, it is a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? If that’s what it is.”

Fletcher didn’t want to talk about it, not any more. Bad enough being reminded of what had happened every time you tried to turn over in the bed, each faltering move you made under the physio’s eye. In the waste of night, his senses recreated for him the hot smell of hard rubber from the bridge floor with uncanny accuracy.

“All these flowers,” Lynn said, seeking a polite note on which to leave, “from Karen, I suppose?”

“Not all of them.”

“They’re lovely.” She got up from the bed and moved in front of Fletcher’s chair. “How is she? Karen.”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought …”

“I haven’t seen her.”

“Oh?”

“She called, left a message with the Sister. Bit off-color.” He glanced round at the bedside cupboard. “She sent a card, lots of cards. I’m sure she’ll be in tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Lynn said, “I’m sure.”

Last thing she was likely to do, Lynn thought as she walked back through the ward, show herself with her face looking like a relief map of somewhere Wainwright might have hiked. Probably she was hiding in her room, waiting for the bruising to subside. No reason to think it was any more than that. Taking the stairs instead of the lift, Lynn glanced at her watch. It wouldn’t be far out of her way and if nothing else it would set her mind at rest.

For what was still the middle of the day, the street seemed unnaturally quiet. The rain had stopped, leaving gray cloud overhanging the sky like a warning. The bottle of unclaimed milk on the doorstep was a crusted yellow beyond cream. Lynn had lived in shared houses and understood the tendency never to see what didn’t immediately concern you; once you started taking out the garbage, you were saddled with it until you left. Holding her breath as best she could, Lynn rang the bell, then knocked. Through the letter box she could see the same pile of unwanted mail on the low table, the telephone. She had feared it might prove a wasted journey and the silence inside the house told her she had been right. Oh, well …

As she was turning away, Lynn heard a door opening inside.

She knocked again and eventually a man appeared, blinking at the dull light. He was in his early twenties, wearing a V-neck sweater over jeans with horizontal tears across both knees. Several days’ stubble on a blotchy face. A student or out of work, guessed Lynn, she found it difficult to tell the difference.

She told him who she was and showed him her warrant card, but he was already shambling back along the narrow hall.

“Karen Archer,” Lynn said, stepping inside. “Is she …?”

The man mumbled something she failed to catch and pointed upwards. Closing the front door behind her, Lynn climbed the stairs, almost forgetting the broken tread but not quite. The picture of kissing lovers had gone from the door to Karen’s room and the catch that had once held a small padlock stood open. There was a sudden burst of music, loud from below, and the top half of her body jerked. The door to the garden had not quite been open. Almost two years now, still whenever she went through a door, uncertain of what she might find, the same images came silently slipping down. Stray ends of cloud moved gray across the moon. A bicycle without a rear wheel leaned against the wall. Her toe touched against something and she bent to pick it up. Mary Sheppard had taken her two children to her mother’s and gone out to meet a man; invited him home. What? Coffee? Mary Sheppard: the first body Lynn had found. Dark lines like ribbons drawn through her hair. Come on, Lynn. She turned the handle and stepped inside.

Stripped: stripped and gone. The box mattress, slightly stained and sagging at its center, the veneered dressing table were the only furniture left in the room. Screwed-up tissues, pale blue, yellow and pink, clustered near one corner. A single sock, purple and green shapes that had begun to run into one another, lay in the space between window and bed. Looking down over the backyards, Lynn saw short lines of washing, a baby asleep in a pram, geraniums; on the end of a square wooden post, a white and gray cat sat immobile, ears pricked. In one of the dressing-table drawers Lynn found an old receipt from the launderette, in another an empty box of tampons. Curling already at the ends, the Polaroid strip had fallen behind and, easing the dressing table from the wall, she lifted it out. Karen Archer and Tim Fletcher making funny faces with the photo-booth curtain as backdrop; no matter how distorted Karen tried to make her features, it was impossible to disguise her beauty. Or, now she looked at the photos closely, Fletcher’s hopefulness. There was a print mark on the bottom picture, the one in which they kissed. Lynn opened her shoulder bag and, carefully, placed the strip inside her notebook.

Downstairs in the communal kitchen the young man who’d let Lynn in was pouring warm baked beans over cold mashed potato.

“When did she leave?”

“Who?”

“Karen.”

“Dunno.”

Lynn wanted to force his head under the cold tap, wake some life into him. “Think.”

He struck the underside of the sauce bottle with the flat of his hand and a gout of tomato sauce flopped out, most of it on the plate. “Might have been yesterday. Must’ve been. Supposed to give us notice, four weeks. Now we’ve got to go tarting round for someone else.”

Lynn’s heart bled for him. “Any idea where she’s gone?”

He looked up at her disparagingly. “Home to Mummy.”

“She’s giving up her course?”

He shrugged and stirred the beans and potato together.

“Have you got an address for her?” Lynn asked.

“Somewhere.”

It was all she could do to stop herself from pushing his face down into his plate. She contented herself by plucking the fork from his hand, waiting till she had his attention firmly on her face, “Get it,” she said. “Wherever it is, the address, get it now.”

He didn’t like it but he did as he was told.

During all of this, Resnick had been doing more than his share of window-shopping: anywhere with male assistants wearing suits. In succession, he had feigned a passing interest in bicycles, fourteen-day trips to the Yugoslavian coast, all-in, a new sports jacket, a signet ring, a char-grilled burger with fries and a 90-Day Extra Savings account; he had considered the possibilities of walking boots, cricket bats, Filofaxes, framed posters of James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, separately or together; now he was standing between broad rolls of carpet, listening to a disquisition on the virtues (or otherwise) of underlay, when he noticed one of the salesmen leading a couple towards a central table to confirm the details of a sale.

As the salesman filled in the form, pausing at intervals to ask a question, once to laugh, several times to smile, Resnick watched him. Twenty-five or — six, but already thinning on top, hair combed from either side towards the center of his head in a vain attempt at disguise. He was wearing a double-breasted light gray suit that would have fitted somebody perfectly, but not him. Resnick waited until the final handshakes, the nod of the head, promise of delivery, beginnings of an accompanying walk towards the door. Don’t go all the way, don’t waste time, there is commission to be earned.

“Excuse me,” Resnick said evenly, approaching from behind,

The salesman blinked as he turned, moving half a pace back so as to get Resnick properly in focus. Family man, not about to spend a fortune, with any luck a three-bedroom semi in need of recarpeting throughout.

“Yes, sir.” Cheerily.

“Peter …” tried Resnick.

“Paul, as it happens. I …”

“You know a Karl Dougherty, by any chance?”

Paul Groves shot a glance towards the door and instinctively Resnick moved across to cover any attempt to escape. But: “Is it still raining?” Groves asked. “Wondered if I’d need a coat.”