Nick Oldham - Bad Tidings

Henry checked his watch, his mind swilling with ghosts of Christmases ruined.

‘Finish what you’re doing but leave it at a point where you can pick it up straight away when you come back in, and go home. I apologize for dragging you in, so go and have a nice rest of the day with Marina’ — that was Tope’s mono-browed, moustachioed wife — ‘and be in bright and early on the twenty-seventh.’

Henry thought he could actually feel the wafts of disbelief as Tope’s eyelids fluttered rapidly.

‘You certain, Henry? You mean I can actually have Boxing Day off?’

‘Yeah, go for it,’ Henry said, ignoring the cheeky irony. ‘Have you got some special home-made wine ready?’

‘Oh, yeah.’ Tope suddenly became enthusiastic. He was a purveyor of home brewing and wine making. ‘A special nettle wine. Been laid down for six months. Lovely.’

Henry blanched, but said, ‘Go — enjoy, see you day after tomorrow.’

‘Oh, did you discover anything interesting?’

‘Nah, bit of a waste, really.’

Henry ended the call and checked the time. Three p.m. and the day was already beginning to draw in, dark winter clouds thickening across the sky, spats of icy rain starting to blob down on the car windscreen. He called up Rik Dean, who answered this time and gave Henry a succinct account of his day, which was also quite fruitless. Henry told him to go home, too, and come back in on the 27th when they would start to pull together a murder squad of some description.

Henry then sat in his car, mulling. More than anything he wanted to see Alison again today, especially since things had progressed in their relationship — and though he knew it was very base of him, he was eager to jump into bed with her and consummate the event. He couldn’t quite see how that was going to happen, at least not today.

His mother was awake and she watched him enter the room through watery, almost sightless eyes. Leanne was still by the bed, a grim expression on her face. Henry gave her a reassuring wink, then said to his mother, ‘Hi, Mum, how you doing?’

‘Is that you, Henry?’

‘It is.’

‘Where have you been?’

‘Working, Mum.’

She looked at Leanne. ‘Sweetie, can I have a moment with your dad?’

Leanne rose and left the room, grimacing. She touched Henry’s arm on the way out. He settled into her vacated chair and asked, ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Grim,’ she gasped, and lay her head back on the plumped-up pillows.

‘What do you know?’ he asked her.

‘Everything. . my heart stopped, didn’t it?’

‘It did, so they zapped you and restarted it. Simple. Like jump-starting a car.’

She took a long breath. ‘Don’t let them do that again, Henry.’

His throat instantly went dry and dread skittered through him, suddenly making him feel very weak. ‘What d’you mean, Mum?’

‘Henry.’ She reached out blindly for him and he took her hand. ‘I’ve passed the ninety mark, outlived your father by fifteen years — and most of the people I’ve ever known. I’m lucky. I’ve never been really ill and I don’t want to start being a burden on anyone. . no, shush. I know what would happen. I’m not stupid. I knew I was OK last time. . this time I know I won’t be. I’m tired. My body’s had enough and I’d rather go out on top than as a root vegetable.’

‘Mum!’

‘That said, if I get better — great, but I won’t. So if the ticker packs up again, do not let them restart it . Hear me?’

Henry stared mutely at their interlocked hands.

‘Promise me.’

‘OK,’ he muttered, not certain if he would or wouldn’t.

The subsequent discussion with Leanne was very tense and tearful as Henry brought her into the picture about DNR. It ended with a long hug that made Henry feel quite good, actually. The last few months had been quite fraught with Leanne, especially after she had ended up back home after a disastrous break-up which had been followed by using the house, in Henry’s words, as ‘a knocking shop’, as a series of boyfriends came and went — and always went if Henry was about, hence the friction.

They had patched things up, more or less, and ironically it seemed that his mother’s ill-health had helped things between them.

Henry wondered briefly about the living arrangements at his house in Blackpool.

With Lisa there on and off, Leanne a permanent fixture, and his other daughter Jenny on the way up from Bristol (she would want to spend time there with her aunt and little sister, no doubt), and if Alison came and went, he would be completely surrounded by women again, as he had been all his life. He partly pined for a son and often worried why his issue hadn’t ‘manned-up’.

But that train had long gone, not even worth thinking about.

And as much as female relatives annoyed the crap out of him, he had a bit of a warm glow to think they were all going to be back in one place.

Plus Alison: an addition who had been met with much hostility from Leanne, but who had recently moved into the toleration phase, if not quite acceptance. He did worry about how Leanne might react to the news of the engagement, though. It would probably set her back.

‘Chaos,’ he thought and shook his head at the prospect.

Leanne looked up at him with moist eyes and said, ‘What are you thinking about?’

‘Life, death and the universe,’ he said philosophically and smiled. ‘Let’s just see how it all pans out, eh?’

‘Hey.’

‘Hey you,’ Alison replied.

Henry was walking down a hospital corridor, mobile phone attached to his ear, having called Alison on the landline at the Tawny Owl. The mobile phone signal out there in the wilds was iffy at best.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked lamely.

‘Good. We’re about to open for the afternoon-stroke-evening. The locals are already queued up outside and the dining room’s fully booked until eight, which means we’ll get through about eighty covers all told. Forty quid a head, plus drinks. . it’s a living. What’s happening with you?’

‘Mum’s awake.’ He told Alison of the DNR conversation he’d just had with Leanne, which brought from her noises of genuine sympathy.

She asked what his next move was. ‘I really want to be up there with you,’ he moaned, ‘but I’m going to stay here for the rest of the afternoon. Jenny’s imminent and I’d like to see her. And I still need to speak to Lisa, because it’ll be me and her who make the final DNR decision. When mum’s bedded down for the night, I’ll come up.’

‘You don’t have to. I’ll be exhausted, and so will you.’

‘In which case you’ll be unable to fend off my advances. . and I’d like to make some.’

Alison giggled. ‘OK, look forward to it. What about your work, though?’

‘Sacking it for the day, unless something really compelling turns up.’

They exchanged a few lovey-dovey words and ended the call.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent by his mother’s bedside. Jenny, his eldest, did arrive, weary and bedraggled from her long journey up from the south-east, but still looking particularly beautiful to Henry. His first child, still very, very special. There were lots of hugs and kisses and tears, then she went to freshen up at Henry’s house, promising to return to the hospital later.

One person who failed to appear was Lisa. Henry called her a few times but got no answer.

Only as he walked along another hospital corridor did he have a lurching thought. Here he was, waiting for someone to be reported missing from home who could be the possible victim of a kidnapper/killer, yet he’d never considered that Lisa, his own kid sister, fitted the profile of the previous two victims. She was about the right age — being quite a bit younger than Henry — and had been born in Hyndburn.