Slaughter's Hound (Harry Rigby Mystery) (19 page)

Slowly, very slowly, I raised my right hand to my face and touched fingertips to my left eye. It felt swollen and gauzy. Above the swelling where my eye should have been I came upon a soft wadding. An eye-patch of sorts.

‘Where is he?’ I said.

‘Who?’

‘Ben.’

‘Ben’s fine,’ she said again. Her gaze flickered away as she tugged a sheet corner straight. ‘And you need to relax and get some rest. You really shouldn’t be awake yet.’

‘Sure. Okay.’

She plucked a pen from her breast pocket and moved away to the bottom of the bed, unhooked the chart. The sip of water sloshed around greasily as I threw back the sheet, slid out. She glanced up in time to see me pluck the tube from my arm. A three-inch needle came away too. Spots of blood spattered the sheet, Pollock-style, but Pamela had never been a fan of abstract expressionism.

‘Harry! What the
fuck
are you—’

‘Where is he?’

She backed away to the door. ‘You can’t leave,’ she said. She was firm on the principle although her voice was a bit shaky. I was still holding the tube, the needle pointing at her. I put it down on the bed.

‘Where’s my clothes?’

‘It’s not me who’ll be stopping you,’ she said. She put a hand behind her and twisted the handle, and I realised she wasn’t checking her escape route but ensuring it was still locked. This was when she told me about the cop stationed outside. There were more downstairs, waiting for me to wake up so they could take a blood-level reading.

‘For what, booze?’ She nodded. ‘They won’t find anything,’ I said. ‘I haven’t had a drink since God was a boy.’ Then it occurred to me. ‘What time is it?’

‘Nearly midnight. But look, they want to talk to you about the accident too. Best if you just take it easy for now, get as strong as you can.’

‘I’m grand, really. And I’m not going anywhere they won’t find me. All I want is to see Ben.’

‘I told you, Ben is doing—’

‘Pam,’ I said. ‘I’m not a good person. We both know this. But I’m not dangerous to you or anyone else in the hospital, and I’m definitely not dangerous to Ben. What matters now is I was the one driving when we got rammed, when Ben was my
responsibility
, so I need to—’

‘Rammed?’

‘Rammed, yeah. The guy ran us off the road.’

‘The Guards say it was a one-car accident. That you lost
control
.’

‘They didn’t see the dents in the side of the car?’

‘They’re saying the car’s a write-off.’ A doubtful note. ‘It rolled over three or four times. They say it’s a miracle you both got out alive.’

‘What else are they saying?’

She was wavering. ‘I really shouldn’t be telling you anything. I’ve been ordered to ring downstairs as soon as you’re awake, let the Guards—’

‘Ordered?’

‘That’s right.’ Her lips thinned. ‘It’s an order. Just like we were ordered to sign you in under Gerry Smith, and Ben as Francis Browne.’

‘Listen, Pam.’ I gripped the sheet as a wave of nausea rippled up my throat, the adrenaline buzz already starting to seep away. ‘Someone tried to kill me and didn’t care Ben was in the car. My only kid, and when it mattered most I couldn’t fucking protect him.’ I closed my eyes, squeezing tightly, then opened them again. The world was still fuzzy around its seams. ‘When the cops ask what happened, I’ll tell them I threatened you with the needle, you had no choice. And I’m begging you.’

I swallowed against some rising bile and maybe she thought I was choking back a sob. Anyway, she took a deep breath and let it out slow, shook her head, then went to the wardrobe to retrieve my jeans and T-shirt, laying them on the bed along with my socks and jocks.

She had to help me dress, filling me in on the events of the past four hours as she eased my limbs into various openings.

Dee had heard the accident happening, the crunching and glass smashing, rang 999 straight away. Christ alone knows how long we’d have been in the gully if she hadn’t. I’d taken a blow to the face, from the steering wheel they guessed, which had
fractured
my cheekbone and left my eye so swollen it was completely closed. On the plus side, and apart from the concussion that was causing thirst, blurred vision, nausea and disorientation, I’d had a solid four hours of sleep for the first time in a week. I’ve walked away from stag parties in worse shape.

Ben didn’t walk anywhere. The Audi had hit passenger-side first. They’d had to cut him out and he had yet to regain
consciousness
. His left arm was broken in two places and he had a compound fracture in his left femur. A tangerine-sized lump on his right temple was bleeding into the brain pan.

The cops were downstairs in the canteen, scarfing free coffee and complaining about the stale muffins. Pamela was supposed to tell the doctor the minute I woke up.

‘Do it,’ I said, trying to tie my trainers in through a blur of
fingers
and laces. ‘I don’t want to cause you any problems.’

‘A dollar short and a decade late.’ The hint of a sad smile. ‘Wait here.’

She unlocked the door, went outside. I snuck up to the door, heard her tell the cop I was coming round, I’d be fit for interview in another ten minutes or so. No, he couldn’t use his mobile phone, and she didn’t care if his two-way was on the blink, the use of mobile phones was banned on this floor in case they
interfered
with hospital equipment. Twenty seconds later she slipped inside again.

‘I’d say you’ve about fifteen minutes,’ she said.

She stuck a Band-Aid on the needle’s oozing wound and told me the ICU was three floors up. Then she gave me two Dilaudid and a ten-minute start. Which is as fair as you can ask of any woman.

The corridor looked no longer than the Marianas Trench. It
didn
’t help that I’d been operated on by some fiend who’d replaced every last bone with a strand of hot cotton wool, which left me zig-zagging a course between wheelchairs and beds, stern-faced nurses and blank-eyed porters. Dizzy, weak and sick, the polished floor lurching up then falling away.

The elevator lobby was a safe haven. I propped myself between two doors and dry-swallowed one of the Dilaudids waiting for the lift to arrive. My vision seemed to be getting worse. Not only was everything shorter and narrower due to the patch on my left eye, but I was suffering a kind of blurring in the good one. Or maybe that was just the artist’s impression of a fiery sunset hanging on the opposite wall, a vermillion blaze that did my thumping headache no favours.

Three minutes burned up already. The elevator door dinged, then opened. I staggered inside. The doors closed and the floor rose and I stared at the fuzzy reflection in the mirror, something that looked a lot like the Elephant Man after fifteen rounds with Jake La Motta. I found myself wondering why they put mirrors into elevators and decided it was for the claustrophobics, fully aware that I was trying to distract myself from the dread
slithering
up my spine at the prospect of what lay three floors above, a tangerine-sized lump bleeding into his brain pan.

By the time I left the elevator and stepped out onto the ICU floor, the Dilaudid had gone off like a depth-charge. I was queasy below and woozy upstairs, giddy as a three-legged donkey on wet cobbles. I went through to a waiting area of low chairs, low tables and people who paced, fretted or wept quietly. No worst there is none, Hopkins reckoned, although he’d never had a child
comatose
in ICU. You could taste the desperation on the dead air. Salty, like an offshore mist in the early dawn.

Two of the people were Dee and an angular guy in his early forties, sandy hair brushed across his forehead, wide eyes. A chin like a soft-boiled egg. He was wide in the shoulders and wore a mauve shirt under a checked sports jacket with leather patches at the elbows.

She saw me coming. Closed her eyes, allowed her chin slump forward onto her chest. Then she turned her head away and held up a hand to ward me off.

‘Don’t even come near me,’ she said. Sounding dull, raspy. The guy unfolded from his seat and got up in stages. I had to peek under his armpit to speak to Dee.

‘Whatever they told you, it’s not true.’ My own voice was a croak. ‘We were rammed, ran off the road.’

‘Jesus, Harry. Do you really think I give a fuck
how
it happened?’

She had a point. I looked up at the guy. ‘Hey, d’you mind? I’m trying to talk about our son here.’

‘She says she doesn’t want you near her.’ He sounded smooth, controlled. Or maybe it was just that he didn’t rasp or croak. He pointed over my shoulder. ‘Why don’t you sit over there? There’s a seat free.’

‘Why don’t
you
sit over there?’

‘I’m already here,’ he said.

‘I don’t know who the fuck you think you are,’ I said, ‘but—’

‘Frank.’

‘Right.’

I gave Frank some fish-eye. By now someone had iced the cobbles and the donkey was down to two legs. I tilted my head to peek under his armpit again and the room swam away, seemed to loop around on itself, then settled down into a whirlpool groove. Frank put out a hand, maybe to steady me, maybe to fend me off, as I began to topple in towards Dee. I swiped at it, missed, and wound up with my jaw planted on Frank’s chest.

Dee whipped around, using the heels of her palms to swab her cheeks. Eyes red-limned and raw. A mascara tear-streak had curved outside her right cheekbone to head for her ear. ‘Christ’s sakes, Harry, I’m trying to fucking
pray
here.’

I’ve had worse moments, although most of those were idled away in front of a gun. ‘Pray?’

It was bad, then. I struggled away from Frank, which is to say he stood me upright, just as a barrel-shaped Sikh doctor came through the double swing-doors at the end of the room. Every head turned but he barrelled straight for us, a clipboard tucked under one arm. I don’t know why, he didn’t refer to it once. Dee stood up, a hand to her mouth. Frank put an arm around her. He looked solid, dependable, so I lurched up against him.

‘Mizz Gorman?’ the Sikh said.

She nodded. He took a deep breath. ‘I am very sorry,’ he said, not so much rolling his Rs as bowling them at skittles, ‘but I have very little to report. No significant change, yes.’

‘O Christ,’ Dee whimpered.

The Sikh held up a forefinger. ‘This means, you understand, that he has no deterioration. But soon he will need the
transfusion
. He has lost a lot of blood.’ A hint of reproach, as if it were Ben’s fault. ‘The boy has had two transfusions in four hours. At this rate …’ He tailed off with a shrug, turning his palm upwards.

From behind her hand Dee emitted a sound that was
somewhere
between sob and stifled screech. Frank squeezed her shoulders. The Sikh glanced from one to the other as if waiting for applause.

‘So give him the transfusion,’ I said.

‘It’s not that simple,’ Frank said over his shoulder.

The Sikh looked at me for the first time. ‘Who is this?’ he said.

‘The father,’ Frank said.

There followed a conversation I didn’t fully follow, its natural flow clogged up with AB negatives, anti-Ds, antigen factors and incompatibilities, but as the room swirled away, then came rushing back, I realised they were all staring at me, waiting for an answer.

‘What the fuck are we waiting for?’ I said, ripping the dressing off my forearm. Drops of blood flew, spattering the tiles, the Sikh’s penny loafers.

The effort, or the momentum, tugged me sideways. Frank half-turned to grab at me. The donkey, down to one leg, gave one last kick.

I don’t remember making it all the way down.

More tubes, crisp sheets, muted beeps. A different room,
another
nurse, this one a pert blonde with a luscious overbite. Tohill leaned against the wall at the foot of the bed, hands jammed in his pockets, his face now looking like they’d just pulled the boot out of a canal.

‘Don’t mind the cop,’ I told the nurse. I felt sharp enough, even though I heard myself chewing tinfoil. ‘It’s what they call
community
policing. He’s just taking an interest.’

She flushed a little, averting her eyes as she fussed around, checking this, measuring that. My jaw still throbbed but the Dilaudid had bedded in. The pain was there, constant but
tolerable
.

I’d slept again. Long enough to allow them round up the
donkey
, take him away to some sanctuary in the hills. The nausea was gone and my vision had cleared, although the world was still shorter and narrower than God intended. ‘How’s Ben?’ I croaked.

The nurse glanced at Tohill. He blinked once. ‘No change,’ she said. ‘Stable but no change.’

‘I’m compatible?’

‘Already done,’ Tohill said. ‘They’ll be giving him a transfusion once they know it’s clean.’

‘You won’t find any booze in it,’ I said. ‘And even if you do, you’d have needed prior permission before it’ll stand up in court.’

He nodded, grim. ‘You nearly finished?’ he asked the nurse.

‘Nearly,’ she said. When she was done, she asked if I wanted a cup of tea, some toast.

‘Coffee’d be nice.’ But my heart was a cotton puff, so tea it was. The nurse left. Tohill locked the door, opened the window and produced a battered pack of Marlboro Lights, sparked us up.

‘Sorry about the kid,’ he said.

‘He’s not gone yet.’

The niceties observed, he jumped in. ‘Tell me again,’ he said, ‘how you weren’t boozing.’

‘We were rammed. Maybe it looks like a one-car deal to you, but we were rammed.’

‘By who?’

‘The fuck would I know? He came up from behind, hit me blindside.’

He had himself a drag while he thought about that. ‘Convenient,’ he said, ‘that the only person who can verify your story is in a coma.’

‘So we wait ’til he comes out of it.’

His stare was a deadpan ‘If’.

‘We found the stuff,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’ll be telling me the guy who rammed you planted it.’