Роберт Гэлбрейт - Lethal White

‘Is he doing all right?’ Strike asked, not bothering to disguise the plea in his voice. ‘How’s everything looking?’

‘He’s stable. No need to worry. This is what we expect at this stage. Tea?’

‘Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks very much.’

He realised that his bladder was full once the curtain had closed behind the nurse. Wishing he’d thought to ask her to pass his crutches, Strike hoisted himself up, holding the arm of the chair to steady himself, hopped to the wall and grabbed them, then swung out from behind the curtain and off towards the brightly lit rectangle at the far end of the dark ward.

Having relieved himself at a urinal beneath a blue light that was supposed to thwart junkies’ ability to locate veins, he headed into the waiting room close to the ward where, late yesterday afternoon, he had sat waiting for Jack to come out of emergency surgery. The father of one of Jack’s school friends, with whom Jack was meant to be staying the night when his appendix burst, had kept him company. The man had been determined not to leave Strike alone until they had ‘seen the little chap out of the woods’, and had talked nervously all the time Jack had been in surgery, saying things like ‘they bounce at that age’, ‘he’s a tough little bugger’, ‘lucky we only live five minutes from school’ and, over and over again, ‘Greg and Lucy’ll be going frantic’. Strike had said nothing, barely listening, holding himself ready for the worst news, texting Lucy every thirty minutes with an update.

Not yet out of surgery.

No news yet.

At last the surgeon had come to tell them that Jack, who had had to be resuscitated on arrival at hospital, had made it through surgery, that he had had ‘a nasty case of sepsis’ and that he would shortly be arriving in intensive care.

‘I’ll bring his mates in to see him,’ said Lucy and Greg’s pal excitedly. ‘Cheer him up – Pokémon cards—’

‘He won’t be ready for that,’ said the surgeon repressively. ‘He’ll be under heavy sedation and on a ventilator for at least the next twenty-four hours. Are you the next of kin?’

‘No, that’s me,’ croaked Strike, speaking at last, his mouth dry. ‘I’m his uncle. His parents are in Rome for their wedding anniversary. They’re trying to get a flight back right now.’

‘Ah, I see. Well, he’s not quite out of the woods yet, but the surgery was successful. We’ve cleaned out his abdomen and put a drain in. They’ll be bringing him down shortly.’

‘Told you,’ said Lucy and Greg’s friend, beaming at Strike with tears in his eyes, ‘told you they bounce!’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, ‘I’d better let Lucy know.’

But in a calamity of errors, Jack’s panic-stricken parents had arrived at the airport, only to realise that Lucy had somehow lost her passport between hotel room and departure gate. In fruitless desperation they retraced their steps, trying to explain their dilemma to everyone from hotel staff, police and the British embassy, with the upshot that they had missed the last flight of the night.

At ten past four in the morning, the waiting room was mercifully deserted. Strike turned on the mobile he had kept switched off while on the ward and saw a dozen missed calls from Robin and one from Lorelei. Ignoring them, he texted Lucy who, he knew, would be awake in the Rome hotel to which, shortly past midnight, her passport had been delivered by the taxi driver who had found it. Lucy had implored Strike to send a picture of Jack when he got out of surgery. Strike had pretended that the picture wouldn’t load. After the stress of the day, Lucy didn’t need to see her son ventilated, his eyes covered in pads, his body swamped by the baggy hospital gown.

All looking good, he typed. Still sedated but nurse confident.

He pressed send and waited. As he had expected, she responded within two minutes.

You must be exhausted. Have they given you a bed at the hospital?

No, I’m sitting next to him, Strike responded. I’ll stay here until you get back. Try and get some sleep and don’ t worry x.

Strike switched off his mobile, dragged himself back onto his one foot, reorganised his crutches and returned to the ward.

The tea was waiting for him, as pale and milky as anything Denise had made, but after emptying two sachets of sugar into it, he drank it in a couple of gulps, eyes moving between Jack and the machines both supporting and monitoring him. He had never before examined the boy so closely. Indeed, he had never had much to do with him, in spite of the pictures he drew for Strike, which Lucy passed on.

‘He hero-worships you,’ Lucy had told Strike several times. ‘He wants to be a soldier.’

But Strike avoided family get-togethers, partly because he disliked Jack’s father, Greg, and partly because Lucy’s desire to cajole her brother into some more conventional mode of existence was enervating even without the presence of her sons, the eldest of whom Strike found especially like his father. Strike had no desire to have children and while he was prepared to concede that some of them were likeable – was prepared to admit, in fact, that he had conceived a certain detached fondness for Jack, on the back of Lucy’s tales of his ambition to join the Red Caps – he had steadfastly resisted birthday parties and Christmas get-togethers at which he might have forged a closer connection.

But now, as dawn crept through the thin curtains blocking Jack’s bed from the rest of the ward, Strike saw for the first time the boy’s resemblance to his grandmother, Strike’s own mother, Leda. He had the same very dark hair, pale skin and finely drawn mouth. He would, in fact, have made a beautiful girl, but Leda’s son knew what puberty was about to do to the boy’s jaw and neck . . . if he lived.

Course he’s going to bloody live. The n urse said—

He’s in intensive fucking care. They don’t put you in here for hiccoughs.

He’s tough. Wants to join the military. He ’ll be OK.

He’d fucking better be. I never even sent him a text to say thank you for his pictures.

It took Strike a while to drop back into an uneasy doze.

He was woken by early morning sunshine penetrating his eyelids. Squinting against the light, he heard footsteps squeaking on the floor. Next came a loud rattle as the curtain was pulled back, opening Jack’s bed to the ward again and revealing more motionless figures, lying in beds all around them. A new nurse stood beaming at him, younger, with a long dark ponytail.

‘Hi!’ she said brightly, taking Jack’s clipboard. ‘It’s not often we get anyone famous in here! I know all about you, I read everything about how you caught that serial—’

‘This is my nephew, Jack,’ he said coldly. The idea of discussing the Shacklewell Ripper now was repugnant to him. The nurse’s smile faltered.

‘Would you mind waiting outside the curtain? We need to take bloods, change his drips and his catheter.’

Strike dragged himself back onto his crutches and made his way laboriously out of the ward again, trying not to focus on any of the other inert figures wired to their own buzzing machines.

The canteen was already half-full when he got there. Unshaven and heavy-eyed, he had slid his tray all the way to the till and paid before he realised he could not carry it and manage his crutches. A young girl clearing tables spotted his predicament and came to help.

‘Cheers,’ said Strike gruffly, when she had placed the tray on a table beside a window.

‘No probs,’ said the girl. ‘Leave it there after, I’ll get it.’