Nick Oldham: Psycho Alley

She assisted him to get out of the car, then provided a shoulder to help him hobble in through the back door of the station, where he propped himself up against a wall in the corridor. His face was screwed up agonizingly.

‘Let’s have a peek.’ Jane reached for his belt buckle, but Henry checked her hand.

‘I can manage.’

He unfastened his black leather belt and began to flick open the buttons on his Levis, his eyes holding hers as his fingers moved down the fly. As he reached the bottom rung, Jane’s eyes looked down and her eyebrows arched.

‘Let’s see what’s behind the facade, shall we?’

Painfully he eased the jeans down to his knees, exposing his Marks amp; Spencer Y-fronts, new ones, unstained, he was glad to report, and his thighs.

Jane’s playfulness left her suddenly as she laid eyes on the side of his right thigh where the car had glanced him. He looked down and saw a thick lump of flesh turning purple and black and swelling up. ‘That needs looking at and quick,’ she said.

Henry felt quite faint.

Over the years Henry had spent so much time on business in the casualty department at Blackpool Victoria Hospital that he had got to know the long-in-the-tooth staff there pretty well. This was fortunate, because the unit was heaving and under real pressure when he landed there just before midnight.

It was the usual fare. Drunks who’d been assaulted, drunks, drunks who’d drunk too much, more drunks, sober people who’d been assaulted by drunks, drunks, drunken drivers who’d crashed their vehicles and mangled themselves, victims of drunken drivers and an array of uniformed paramedics and cops coming in on the back of the assaults and road crashes. It was not a location for the faint-hearted, this unit that resembled the chaotic scenes from MASH but without the army helicopters and the constant sound of artillery. This was the place where the offenders and the victims of the town that was the country’s biggest holiday resort were dumped, and could be one of the most violent places anywhere on a Friday night if the combination of people and drink was just right.

Henry was tossed into the middle of this, limping through a melee of smelly people to find his way, eventually, to a stern-faced triage nurse, who he did not know. She quickly assessed him — ‘You walked in, can’t be that bad, can it?’ — handed him two paracetamols and dispatched him to X-ray. Jane snaffled a stray wheelchair for him, which seemed to have a mind of its own, and pushed him through the corridors. It took half an hour to get that sorted, then he was pushed back to the main waiting room where Jane reversed him into a tight corner. He glowered in a depressed way when he saw the scrolling LCD message announcing that the minimum wait for treatment was two hours.

‘Drunken fucking pissheads,’ he moaned.

‘Now, now,’ Jane admonished him. ‘This is your community. The people you serve.’

He grunted and shook his head. ‘I need to call home.’ He eyed Jane hesitantly. She nodded and walked away.

‘Tell her I’ll run you home,’ she said over her shoulder. Henry opened his mouth to protest. ‘No … it’s all right,’ she said. ‘If you give me your car keys I’ll get one of the section lads to pick your car up from Fleetwood and get it dropped off at your house.’

‘Thanks … you don’t have to, y’know?’

‘I know I don’t.’ Jane left him.

Henry fumbled for his mobile phone, called home and spoke to a sleepy Kate Christie. She was still his ex-wife, actually, the mother of his two daughters. He lived with her and was trying to keep to the straight and narrow, trying to get his wayward life into some semblance of order once and for all.

As he talked to her, he heard his name being called by a nurse. At first he thought he had misheard. When it was called again, he shouted ‘Here!’ as though he’d just won a full house. The stressed-out, pretty nurse, who was holding his notes, walked towards him with a look of resignation on her face.

‘I thought I’d be here two hours at least.’

She regarded him and sighed. ‘The doctor knows you, apparently,’ she said in a way which made Henry believe she was somewhat pissed off at him.

‘Henry, it’s me, Jane. Sorry to wake you at this time.’

Henry Christie closed his good eye tightly and rubbed it, feeling woozy and confused. Kate had actually handed him the bedside phone, having answered it by reaching across him, then shaking him awake from a deep, drug-assisted sleep. He had not heard it at all, hadn’t even moved, even though the thing was only inches from his ear. He tried to look at the clock, focusing his uninjured eye, unable to do much with the one Jane had punched, which was swollen and caked up. It was five fifteen. At first Henry thought he’d been in bed over twelve hours, then his heart sank when he realized it was more like four. It was five fifteen in the morning.

His voice sounded disconnected to him when he replied, ‘It’s OK, what is it?’

‘I deleted your name from the scratch pad, put mine down instead,’ Jane explained, meaning she had amended the call-out rota at HQ comms so that her name was on first instead of Henry’s. Had she phoned to tell him that? Very nice and thoughtful, but …? ‘So they’ve called me out,’ she said.

‘Right,’ he said dubiously, brain groggy, not with it at all. He sat up slowly, the pain in his leg numbed by the strong analgesics doled out to him at A amp; E.

‘They’ve found the car.’ Henry did not respond to this statement. ‘The one Uren was driving, the Astra, the one that clipped you. Been found burned out.’

‘Oh great.’ To be one hundred per cent honest, he wasn’t completely interested. He wanted to be asleep. Desperately. ‘And? Have they caught him?’

‘No, but I presumed you’d want to turn out with me … I know we’ve had bog all sleep.’

‘Why do we have to turn out for an abandoned car?’

‘Because your instinct about Uren was on the button,’ she said.

‘Explain.’

Briefly, she did.

‘In that case, I’ll come. Are you en route to the scene?’

‘Er, sort of … if you look out of your window, you’ll see me.’

Henry stood up and staggered to the window with the cordless phone, pulled back the curtain and saw Jane outside in her car in the grey dawn looking up at him. Her mobile phone was clamped to her ear. She smiled and tinkled her fingers at him. He waved, dropped the curtain.

‘Be with you soon,’ he said and thumbed the end-call button.

Kate was propped up on one elbow, her pretty mouth twisted sardonically. She was wearing a long tee shirt bearing a slogan about how dangerous women can be when their hormones are in the ascent. Her hair was ruffled. She looked sleepy and gorgeous.

‘Mm?’ she said.

‘I know, I know,’ he said glancing down at his naked and rather sagging body. Too much time spent on long investigations wreaks havoc with diet and fitness regimes. There was a massive, ugly bruise which had spread in an oval shape around the outside of his thigh, almost up to his waist and down to his knee. It looked worse than it was, the A amp; E doctor had assured him, but it felt pretty bad just at that moment. He crossed the bedroom and began to dress, pulling on the exact same clothes he had divested earlier. When dressed he bent over and gave Kate a kiss, inhaling her intoxicating night body aroma which often drove him crazy. ‘See you later, honey.’

‘Ho-hum,’ she mumbled. ‘Don’t wake the girls.’ She flopped back into bed, asleep before Henry had even closed the bedroom door.

‘How did you explain the shiner?’ Jane asked with a smirk.

Henry shrugged. ‘Winged it.’