John Harvey - Cutting Edge

The casualty officer injected lignocaine into the wounds before beginning the careful, laborious process of stitching them up. Outside, in the corridor, sitting in wheelchairs, chairs, slumped over crutches or girlfriends’ shoulders, stretched across the floor, the procession of those waiting for surgery grew. Traffic accidents, disco brawls, teenage bravado, domestic misunderstandings. The casualty officer, conscious of this, took his time nevertheless. As a fellow doctor, Tim Fletcher merited his best attentions-and trained professionals were not so thick upon the ground their potential could be easily wasted. The officer took especial care with Fletcher’s hands.

After crossmatching his blood, the plasma was followed up by two units of packed cells. Fletcher, who seemed to have been shifting uneasily in and out of consciousness for hours, was given injections of intramuscular pethidine to help control his pain.

When Kevin Naylor stepped, somewhat self-consciously, on to the ward, Fletcher was lying in a side room, a single bed with its attendant drip attached to the back of his arm. One sleeve of the pajama jacket he had been given had been cut to allow for bandages, which also swathed his hands and partially masked his face. When Naylor leaned over him, one of Tim Fletcher’s eyelids twitched sharply, as if in response to something dreamed or remembered.

“Are you a relative?”

The nurse looked West Indian, though her accent was local enough, Midlands born and bred. Her hat was pinned none too securely to thickly curled hair and the blue of her uniform lent a gleam to her skin.

“Relative, are you?”

Naylor realized that he hadn’t answered. “Kevin Naylor,” he said. “CID.”

“Sister know you’re here?”

Naylor shook his head. “I phoned from the station, make sure it was okay to come. Not sure who I spoke to.”

The nurse moved alongside him, glancing down. “I don’t know how much sense you’ll get out of him, sedated to the eyeballs. Still, he’ll have to be woken soon for his obs. Every half hour.”

Turning back, she saw a smile crossing Naylor’s face. “What’re you laughing at?”

“Obs.”

“Observation. What about it?”

“We call it that as well.”

“Same thing, is it then?”

“Similar.”

The nurse grinned: “If you want to know your temperature, ask a policeman.”

Naylor looked back towards the bed; maybe he’d be better leaving, trying again later.

“I’ll let Sister know you’re here,” the nurse said, heading back on to the main ward.

Tim Fletcher had been aware of various bodies around him during the preceding eight hours; pale faces, white or blue uniforms. Voices that were hushed to hide their urgency. In the midst of it all a single shout, sharp and clear. At one point he had been certain that Sarah Leonard had been standing there in her staff nurse’s uniform, smiling down at him, telling him to rest, be assured it would be all right. But when he had tried to speak her name she had disappeared. And Karen. He had not seen Karen, awake or sleeping.

This time there was a young man, twenty-three or — four, wearing a pale blue shirt, a dark check jacket, dark blue tie. Brown hair that didn’t seem to be obeying any rules. Doctor? No, he didn’t think he was a doctor.

“Detective Constable Naylor,” said the man, younger than Fletcher himself though not looking it-except now, except today. “I’d like to ask you some questions.”

Fletcher would have loved to have answers. The why and the who of it. Especially the who. All he knew for certain, it had been sudden, unexpected; he had been frightened, hurt. He remembered a black sweater, gloves, a balaclava that covered all of the head save for the eyes and mouth.

“What color?”

“Black.”

“The eyes?”

“Balaclava.”

“And the eyes?”

Fletcher thought about it, tried to formulate a picture. Identikit, isn’t that what they call them? “Blue,” he said, almost as much a question as an answer.

“You’re not sure?”

Fletcher shook his head; just a little. It hurt.

“It could be important.”

“Blue.”

“For certain?”

“No.”

“But …”

“As far as I know, as far as I can remember … blue.”

“Dr. Fletcher,” said the nurse, “if I can just put this under your arm?”

Naylor watched as the nurse slid the thermometer into the pit of Fletcher’s bandaged arm and wrapped a cuff about the other, inflating it prior to checking his blood pressure.

“Go ahead,” she said to Naylor. “Don’t mind me.”

“The weapon,” Naylor asked, glancing at his notebook, “did you see what it was?”

“I felt it,” Fletcher answered.

The nurse continued to pump up the rubber balloon, inflating the cuff.

“Then you didn’t see it?” Naylor persisted.

Downward sweep of the blade, illuminated in a fast curve of orange light .

“Not clearly.”

“Was it a knife?”

“It could have been.”

“An open blade?”

Flinching, Fletcher nodded.

“Can you remember how long?”

“No, I … No, I can’t be certain.”

“This long?” Naylor held his Biro before Fletcher’s face, tight between the tip of his middle finger and the ball of his thumb.

“Blood pressure’s fine.”

Fletcher closed his eyes.

The nurse eased the thermometer out from beneath his arm and held it against the light. “Well?” she said, glancing down towards Naylor with a half-grin.

“Well, what?”

“Temperature, what d’you think?”

“Look,” said Naylor, a touch of exasperation.

“Thirty-seven point eight.”

“Smaller,” said Fletcher weakly, opening his eyes.

“You’re doing fine,” the nurse said, touching his shoulder lightly, almost a squeeze. “Soon be up and about. Dancing.” She looked at Naylor. “The doctor here, he’s a great dancer”

“It was smaller,” Fletcher said again, an effort to breathe now, an effort to talk. “Smaller. Like a scalpel.”

Lynnie love, I know your job keeps you awful busy, but it do seem such a long time since your dad and me seen you. Try and come home, even if it’s just for a couple of days. That’d mean a lot to your dad specially. I worry about him, Lynnie, I do. More and more into himself he’s getting. Depressed. Sometimes it’s all I can do to get him to talk, sit down to his supper. Make an effort, there’s a love .

Her mother’s words jostled inside Lynn Kellogg’s head as she crossed University Boulevard, dark green of the rhododendron bushes at her back. Ahead of her was the brighter green of the Science Park, technology disguised as an oversized child’s toy. Lynn had a friend she’d gone through school with, bright, but not much more intelligent than Lynn herself. “My God! You can’t be serious? The police? Whatever d’you want to throw your life away like that for?” The friend had gone to Cambridge Poly, got interested in computers, now she was earning thirty thousand a year plus, living with a zoologist in a converted windmill outside Ely.

Thrown her life away, is that what Lynn had done? She didn’t think so, glad most of the time that she was in the job, enjoying it, something more worthwhile maybe than writing software programs to record the fertility and sexing of Rhode Island Reds. What did it matter, what other people thought? The neighbors in her block of housing association flats, who only spoke to her if someone had been tampering with their locks, trying to break into their parked car. Patients in the surgery, where Lynn was waiting for her check-up and a new supply of pills; nudging one another, staring, know what she is, don’t you? The way most men she spoke to in a bar or pub would evaporate at the mention of what she did, as if by magic.