Taste of Blood

Chapter Twenty-One

Eddie was wearing his usual leather jacket, but was otherwise very smartly dressed in a white shirt, washed-out jeans and cowboy boots. He was holding a bunch of roses.

He smiled. ‘Hey, this was fortunate. I was just over at my dad’s work site and hoped you might be home.’

‘Well, I am. I just got in. Come in and I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

‘I’m fine. Anyway, these are for you.’

Jane took the flowers and he walked ahead of her into the kitchen.

‘I was doing an interview and felt a bit sick so came home, otherwise I would have been at the station.’

‘You feeling all right now?’

‘Yes, I’m fine. Look, it’s good to see you. Are you sure I can’t get you anything?’

‘No, honestly, I can’t stay long.’

He eased out a chair and sat down. Jane went to the fridge. There was a half-bottle of white wine open and she hesitated, about to pour herself one but then closed the fridge door.

‘OK, I’ll make this brief, and maybe I should have talked it through with you a long time ago, but after that row we had it sort of brought it all to a head.’

‘I think I may have said a few things that I regret now,’ she said, sitting down.

‘No, whatever you said was right, because the truth is, it’s not been really good between us for some time. So I’ll be totally honest with you: I’ve been seeing someone else for quite a while. At first it wasn’t that serious, but now it is, and so I felt that you should know.’

‘I’m not quite following,’ she said, even though it was perfectly clear what he had just said.

He sighed and shook his head.

‘Like I just said, it was not really serious. I saw her a few times, and then things changed.’

‘Who are you talking about?’ Jane said, suddenly feeling sick again.

‘I’ve been seeing Caroline, the girl at the mobile call centre. We just started having these conversations and then we met and now...’

‘Now what?’ Jane said, her mouth dry.

‘Well, we’re together, and I know I should have talked this over with you days ago, but I just didn’t have the bottle because part of me wasn’t exactly sure what was happening. Anyway, I felt you should find out from me and not someone else.’

Jane was hardly able to take in what he was saying. She took a deep breath. ‘So you were seeing this Caroline before we had that row, is that what you are telling me?’

He hesitated. ‘Look, I’m sorry if I have lied to you or not been exactly honest about my whereabouts for a while, but now we’re living together. I’ve moved into her flat until we find a place for both of us.’

‘I see, well, I’m sorry because I’ve missed you and was hoping we could sort things out between us, but obviously that was stupid of me.’

Eddie pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘Listen, I’m really sorry it’s ended this way, but I want you to know I really cared about you.’

Jane couldn’t think of anything to say. She remained sitting at the kitchen table as he walked round to her and kissed her cheek.

‘Take care, and if you ever need any work done, you just call me.’

She nodded.

‘Did you get the house keys I put through your letterbox?’

‘Yes, I did, thank you.’

‘OK, I’m going to go, and like I said, if you need anything you can call me at my dad’s.’

Eddie walked out of the kitchen, into the hall and closed the front door behind him. Jane sat at the table, trying to come to terms with what had just happened. Eventually she got up and opened the fridge, taking out the wine and pouring herself a glass. She drank it quickly and then another glass more slowly, and then turned off the lights and went upstairs. She needed a cigarette. Sitting on the side of her bed, taking deep drags on the cigarette, she wanted to cry, knowing that was exactly what she should be doing, but for some reason she couldn’t. She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another, saying out loud, ‘The bloody two-faced cow.’

The following morning Jane woke with a violent headache, feeling that she hadn’t really slept. The last thing she felt like doing was going into the station, but she forced herself to take a shower and get dressed and was feeling a little better by the time she got to the station. Stanley wasn’t around so she couldn’t tell him what she’d learned at the undertakers. Instead, she had to force herself to concentrate on the slew of cases that had come in overnight, but from the excited chatter around her it quickly became obvious that something big had gone down the previous night. According to an exhausted and still shaken DC Burrows, the police wagon and five uniformed officers had been called out to a major incident at a housing estate, and they had brought in the big guns from the armed section to be on standby.

Stanley, it turned out, had been involved in negotiations with a pair of drug dealers holding two women and a child hostage. It had been a long, tense night with Stanley placing himself in jeopardy by entering the corridor of the flats. He used all his old skills, ordering in pizza and Cokes, constantly keeping up the conversation with the hostage-takers as the estate was surrounded, ramming equipment at the ready. Finally it was Stanley who led out the terrified hostages and then returned to persuade the young and by then hysterical teenagers to give up their shotguns.

The boys were now being fingerprinted and the duty solicitor was ready for the interviews.

When Jane finally caught up with Stanley, he was heading down the corridor, on his way to the exit. He had been told to go home and get some sleep, before returning to go through the lengthy process of taking statements. Like Burrows, he was exhausted, unshaven and his eyes were red-rimmed.

‘Christ, Stanley, are you OK?’

He managed a tired smile. ‘Shaken and very stirred. It was a hell of a night. Hyperactive, drugged-up kids with two sawn-off shotguns, one not yet sixteen, and a stack of cocaine, a lot of it up their own nostrils. I was just going home when it went down; in fact, I was going to come over to see you.’

She put her hand on his shoulder. ‘You get some rest. We can catch up later.’

‘Yeah, sort of puts everything into perspective, you know, like we’re wasting our time with this bloody Clarendon Court situation when there’s fucking drug dealers working out of a high-rise estate and holding one of their grandmas hostage.’

‘I heard it was a nightmare.’

Stanley gave one of his gruff laughs. ‘Yeah, but it made me ask myself why I am sitting it out here; when that buzz kicks in there’s nothing like it.’

He walked out to the car park and Jane followed. When he got to his old, battered car she couldn’t resist asking him one question. ‘Did you get anything useful from the hospital?’

He opened the driver’s door and got in, one hand on the open door. ‘Yeah, from the scruffy young Dr Wilde, you know, the bloke with the biro all over his white coat. Fill you in later. I gotta crash.’

He slammed the door shut as Jane stepped back, feeling bad that she had asked him about it. Walking down the corridor towards the incident room, she saw DCI Hutton was heading towards her with a thick file of police records.

‘I was just seeing Stanley off,’ Jane said. ‘Is there anything I can do? It sounded like quite a night.’ Hutton nodded. ‘It was, and I have to say Stanley was incredible. I doubt any other officer here could have remained calm and in control in such a high-pressure situation.’

They walked together towards the incident room. Hutton stopped. ‘You know, I heard such a lot about him, as an undercover officer and with the Sweeney, that he was known to be a bit of a risk-taker. But without him last night, someone could easily have died. At one point I thought it might well be him, the way he sat on the stairs outside the flat they were threatening to shoot their way out of, eating pizza.’

The incident room was now filling with officers who had been on duty the previous night, and you could feel the charged atmosphere.

‘OK, Jane, if you give me ten minutes to go through these records we’ve pulled up from the kids’ previous arrest sheets... my main objective is to get one of them to talk about who was supplying them with the cocaine and shotguns... and then we hand it over to the drug squad.’

Hutton went into her office as Jane returned to her desk. She could hear the teams talking about Stanley and what he had accomplished, and she felt sure that Hutton was going to put him forward for a commendation. Having worked alongside him many times over the years, Jane knew it was well-deserved. At the same time, she’d felt a tinge of annoyance when Hutton had said there was no one else at the station that could have handled the situation; in her battered emotional state, it made her feel even more demoralised.

Stanley returned later that afternoon, shaved and smelling of cologne and, unusually for him, wearing quite a sharp suit. He received a cheer from everyone gathered in the incident room before Hutton called her into his office to go over the statements made by the woman and young girl the two boys had held hostage. They then went downstairs to meet the solicitors representing the boys, before interviewing them.

Jane put her head own, and by the time she’d finished her assignments it was almost five thirty. She tidied her desk, and having no more orders or pressing requests, put the hood over her typewriter. Her headache had persisted all day, and she had a pain in her right side that felt like her period was due and that no amount of paracetamol had eased. She went over to see Dora Phillips, the head of clerical staff.

‘I’m taking off now, Miss Phillips. I’m not feeling very well. Think I’m getting a migraine.’

‘You should maybe see if our nurse is here. You know she comes in every other day. I do hope that migraine won’t mean you have any more days off.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ Jane snapped.

‘No offence, dear, I used to have them myself. Very debilitating.’

Jane walked out, unsure whether she’d overreacted. All she wanted to do now was go home and get into bed. She wasn’t feeling hungry, so as soon as she got home she got changed and was about to get into bed when the pain in her side sharpened. She took two more paracetamol and made her way slowly downstairs into the kitchen to warm up some milk, hoping it would help. She was sitting at the kitchen table and about to take the pan off the stove as the milk was boiling when the pain suddenly became excruciating. Jane buckled over, taking deep breaths. She knew this was not any kind of period pain; it had to be something more serious, maybe her appendix. Deciding not to wait for an ambulance, she put on her raincoat and made the slow walk to her car then drove herself to the A&E department at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup, gritting her teeth in agony all the way. After finding a parking space, she staggered into the casualty department and was approaching the reception desk when she collapsed.

The next thing she knew, Jane was in a cubicle in the casualty department and a nurse was drawing back the curtain. She had only a vague memory of what had happened, but the pain was now even worse, and it was all she could do to stop herself crying out loud. It was almost midnight when Jane, after being examined by two doctors, was told that she needed an emergency operation.

‘It’s my appendix, isn’t it?’

The young female doctor bent towards her and took hold of her hand.

‘No, you have an ectopic pregnancy. This means the foetus is growing in one of your fallopian tubes between your ovaries and uterus. It’s important we get you into surgery. We’re just waiting for the surgeon.’

It was hard for Jane to take it all in as the pain made it hard to think until finally the medication she’d been given started to kick in, but by then she was exhausted. By the time the surgery went ahead it was almost four o’clock in the morning.

Waking up later in a private room, Jane slowly began to regain her senses, but she was still very confused when the matron came to check on her.

‘Good morning. I’m Matron Jameson. I’m afraid I have a few forms that will need to be filled in. The duty doctor will be checking how you are feeling shortly, then later this morning the surgeon will be doing his rounds.’

Jane tried to sit up but quickly fell back against the pillows again. The matron moved round to the bedside table, opening the small door in the cabinet. ‘Your handbag is in here and your clothes are in the cupboard by the door. The bathroom is directly across from your room, and if you require any assistance this morning, you have a pull cord by your bed.’

Jane could hardly take it all in. ‘I need to make some calls.’

‘We do have a phone that can be brought in for you to use, but we do need some particulars first. Now, we know your name is Jane Tennison, but we also require a date of birth, your doctor’s details and your address, and who you wish to be contacted.’

Jane somehow managed to give the matron all the details, and then a nurse came in wheeling a blood pressure monitor. Jane was helped to sit up and ease her legs to the ground as her blood pressure was taken, and then the nurse helped her back to bed and gave her some pills.

‘Antibiotics,’ she explained, holding a cup of water to Jane’s lips. ‘And let me know if you need any pain medication.’

Jane shook her head. ‘Not at the moment. Thank you.’

She closed her eyes, listening to the sounds from the ward and the chatter of nurses and patients, before trying to piece together what had occurred the previous night. She recalled parking her car and making her way painfully to the A&E reception, but then everything blurred, and her brain felt like a dead weight.

Sometime later a young doctor came and examined her, then explained what had happened. ‘If the fallopian tube had burst, it could have been life-threatening, which is why we had to operate.’

Jane tried her best to make sense of it all, unable to understand how she could have had no warning signs. But perhaps the stress she had been under with the Eddie situation, and then her near obsession with the Sebastian Hoffman investigation had blinded her to how fatigued and irritable she had felt, along with the persistent headaches. She did recall feeling the pain in her side, and dismissing it as period pain. But on reflection she realised she had not had a period for more than two months.

It was close to lunchtime, and Jane had managed to go to the bathroom unaided, then had returned to lie down. She had been checked by two different nurses and had asked both if she could be brought the telephone to make important phone calls. The telephone had not been brought to her and she was beginning to get very anxious about no one being contacted at the station. Sometime after lunch the matron ushered in Mr Kenneth Halifax, her surgeon, a tall, angular-faced man wearing dark-rimmed glasses.

‘Good afternoon. This must have been very stressful for you, Miss Tennison, but you are a very lucky lady. How are you feeling?’

‘Fine, thank you.’

‘Jolly good. Now I would like to examine you. If you have any questions, or need to know the exact procedure that took place, or have any worries or concerns, I am all ears.’

‘It’s actually Detective Inspector Tennison, Mr Halifax. I am a police officer. I had the doctor explain it all earlier but I am still somewhat confused.’

He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his index finger. ‘My apologies, Inspector Tennison. You were brought into the theatre for an ultrasound scan by the nurse on duty. I was called in immediately. You had the possibility of a rupture occurring in your right fallopian tube. You were given general anaesthesia, and I removed the fertilised egg along with the affected fallopian tube and ovary by keyhole surgery.’

He began to examine her.

‘How does that... I mean, will I be able to get pregnant again?’ Jane asked. Mr Halifax looked at the notes on the clipboard at the end of the bed, then looked up and smiled.

‘Hopefully, yes, because you still have one fallopian tube intact and an ovary in good shape.’

‘How long will I need to recover?’

‘That rather depends on how you feel. It is by no means major surgery; uncomfortable, yes, but it should not be too painful. It is quite a common procedure and occurs in about one in every ninety pregnancies a year. In very simple terms what occurs is that the fallopian tubes connect the ovaries to the womb. If an egg gets stuck in one of them, it won’t develop into a baby and your health would be at great risk the longer it remains growing.’

Jane nodded. ‘I understand.’

‘A few days’ rest and you should be fine, but I will leave a booklet for you, and I suggest you spend the rest of the day and night here and then consult your GP if you have any further concerns.’

After the surgeon left, Jane felt very tearful. Eventually a phone was brought in and Jane called the station and spoke to Miss Phillips. She then called her parents and asked her father to collect her the following morning, hoping it would be all right to stay with them for a few days’ recuperation.

The following day, after a final examination, Jane got dressed and made ready to leave the hospital. Her father drove her home to collect everything she would need for the next few days, and then she followed him in her car back to her parents’ house. She had been given some antibiotics and painkillers, plus the leaflet explaining her ectopic procedure, including a section to help with the sense of grief at losing her baby.

Her father had been his usual quiet self, obviously concerned about her but didn’t ask her anything personal, and didn’t mention Eddie. Jane knew that when she got home it would be a different story as her mother would no doubt want a blow-by-blow account of everything that had happened, and would be sure to bring up the fact that Eddie was not with her at the hospital.

Jane was beginning to feel very tired by the time she had unpacked her bag in the little bedroom, having managed to avoid her mother’s queries until she’d got into a nightdress and dressing gown. Mrs Tennison had prepared a light supper of chicken soup with thinly sliced brown bread and a portion of cheese flan. She had carried up the tray even though Jane said she would join them in the kitchen, insisting that bed was the best place for her. She plumped up the pillows so Jane could sit up.

‘So, tell me all about it,’ she said.

Jane had planned to tell her parents that she’d had a burst appendix, but suddenly found she was telling her mother the truth. Mrs Tennison took a tissue out of her pocket and dabbed at her eyes, asking if it meant that Jane could never get pregnant. Jane leaned over to the bedside cabinet and handed her mother the leaflet she had been given in the hospital.

‘No, it doesn’t,’ Jane said. ‘And you can read all the details in there. Right now it’s the last thing I want to think about.’

‘I understand, darling, of course I do. I’ll read this over with your father later. Is there anything else I can get you? Maybe a cup of tea, and I’ll let Pam know you’re here. She’ll be worried because I called her after you rang to get Daddy to collect you from the hospital.’

‘Cup of tea later would be nice,’ Jane said.

Jane managed a few spoonfuls of the soup and half of the flan before she put the tray on the floor and went into the bathroom. She felt a bit woozy as she cleaned her teeth, and splashed cold water over her face before returning to bed. Mrs Tennison appeared a moment later with a cup of tea, but Jane was fast asleep.

It was almost seven when Jane woke up, having slept through the night. She still had a slight headache, so took two paracetamol. Mrs Tennison tapped on the door and brought in a cup of tea.

‘How are you feeling, dear? I looked in on you last night, but you were fast asleep. Would you like a little scrambled egg and toast, or poached eggs? Whatever you want.’

‘No, Mum, I’m fine. I’ll just stay put for a couple of hours.’

‘Whatever you feel like doing. I’ll be in the kitchen if you want anything.’

A few hours later, after taking a shower, washing her hair and changing into a fresh nightdress, Jane felt well enough to join her mother in the kitchen. Mrs Tennison was peeling potatoes for a shepherd’s pie, and Jane knew she was trying her hardest not to ask why Jane had come home to recuperate.

‘The thing is, Eddie and I have separated. It had been sort of coming on for some time but it’s final now. And it’s perfectly amicable.’

‘Well, your father will be disappointed as he had a few jobs lined up,’ Mrs Tennison said, trying to be light-hearted about it. ‘We’ve still got problems with the boiler and the timer isn’t working properly. It seems to have a will of its own, and we never know when the hot water is coming on. My bedside light keeps flicking on and off, too, and I think we have a leak from one of the central heating panels.’ She paused. ‘I suppose it was his?’

‘What?’

‘The... pregnancy.’

‘Of course it was, but I didn’t even know I was pregnant and so I never told him. And we had already separated.’ Jane took her dirty dishes to the dishwasher.

‘Was it just that you were incompatible, or had you met someone else?’

Jane couldn’t help laughing. ‘Yes to the first query and no to the other.’

Mrs Tennison started rinsing the dishes before stacking them in the dishwasher, and Jane headed down the corridor to the spare bedroom to get dressed. She was just going in when she overheard her mother talking to her father.

‘She just told me that she’s separated from Eddie, so you are going to have to get the porter to find an odd-job man to fix my bedside light. I keep on thinking I am going to be electrocuted.’

‘I liked him,’ her father said with a sigh, ‘but whatever is best for her is fine by me.’

‘Well, I said I didn’t think it would last, didn’t I?’

‘Yes, you did, but he did a hell of a good job on her house. I had another look around when I went to collect her from the hospital. I think it’s probably doubled in value.’