Nick Oldham - Fighting for the Dead

‘Hey, man, how’re you doing?’

‘Another day above ground,’ he said croakily. ‘Gotta be good, eh?’

‘Can’t argue with that.’

Colin exhaled painfully and closed his eyes. Flynn and Diane exchanged glances. Then Colin’s eyes opened again. ‘Thanks for coming

… y’know, the shop and all that… appreciated.’

‘Not a problem.’

A great weariness seemed to enshroud him and he closed his eyes and fell asleep instantly.

Diane sat on a chair next to the bed and took her husband’s hand. She looked desperately at Flynn, who did not know how to react to the expression.

‘Bugger,’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ she agreed.

‘Look, I’ll go and have a mooch around and be back a bit later to see where you’re at, eh?’

She nodded.

‘Shit,’ Flynn said under his breath as he walked out of the unit with one last glance at Colin.

Following an interminable wait for an X-ray, Henry was back in the casualty unit for an equally long wait to be seen by a consultant. He sat miserably in the waiting area, but fortunately the pain was ebbing slightly after he’d been given some analgesics. He was eventually summoned to a curtained cubicle where he was told to lie on an uncomfortable couch and wait for a doctor who would be along soon. The whole unit was moderately busy, but being short-staffed, everyone was chasing their tails doing several jobs at once.

He tried to relax, lying back and thinking through the day.

It seemed such a long time since he had looked at the frozen body of the unknown murder victim, and he hadn’t given her any consideration since. She had lain unforgotten for such a long time, he almost thought that another day would not make any difference. The more urgent incidents that had happened seemed to insist on being dealt with first… but Henry dismissed that idea.

Her death had to be investigated properly and it wasn’t going to wait any longer. It would be all too easy to let the new stuff take precedence — after all, it was new and it had resulted in him being battered, and he was fuming about that — but he would not allow that to happen. Just by having her drawer pulled out of the fridge, he had obliged himself to get to grips with her murder.

Not that anyone would be bothered even if he did nothing for another two weeks. Except it did matter, would matter to her family, whoever and wherever they were. She deserved to be treated properly and professionally, and so far it looked as though that was not the case.

And that was one of the things Henry prided himself on… fighting for the dead.

Then he started to think about Jennifer Sunderland and what little he knew about her and her husband, Harry. Rich people, good life — on the surface. But what was there underneath, what would Henry find when he scraped away the veneer?

‘Behind closed doors,’ he heard himself say and thought about Harry Sunderland, whose reaction to the news of his wife’s death did seem genuine… except for one niggling thing… which was giving Henry a very strange sensation.

Could I be wrong? he wondered. But if he was right, what significance did it have?

He didn’t know.

His face hurt — a lot — and all of a sudden he didn’t care.

All he wanted was to get out of hospital and go to bed.

He opened his good eye when he heard the curtain swish back — and the most beautiful sight in the world stood before him.

‘Babe,’ he whispered.

‘God, Henry,’ Alison Marsh gasped on seeing his battered face. She swooped across the gap towards him, her eyes taking in all his injuries. ‘You didn’t say you were hurt this badly,’ she complained.

‘Looks worse than it is,’ he lied.

‘I don’t believe that,’ she said, cutting through the fib. ‘I was a military nurse, you know.’

Alison Marsh was Henry’s ‘lady-friend’. He wasn’t exactly certain what the correct term was. ‘Girlfriend’ seemed inappropriate, ‘partner’ not quite right, because they didn’t live together, yet ‘lady-friend’ sounded like something from a Jane Austen novel. Whatever… the fact was they were together, madly in love with each other, and the future looked as bright as it could be.

Alison was the landlady-owner of a pub called the Tawny Owl in Kendleton, a village deep in the countryside far to the east of Lancaster. Henry had met her when he stumbled into the pub and the middle of a blood-soaked stand-off between rival gangsters.

Henry and Alison began their relationship tentatively after Kate’s death, fully aware of the sensitivities surrounding it. Even now, several months after Kate’s death and months after they had started seeing each other, Henry was still getting untold grief from his youngest daughter, Leanne; his eldest, Jenny, was much more sanguine about the matter.

Despite this, Henry and Alison were moving forward.

He guessed that one day, in the not too distant future, the question of marriage might be raised. Surprisingly for him, it didn’t faze him at all. The prospect of living in a country pub was very appealing. As well as being with Alison, who he adored, of course.

‘Is there any part of you I can kiss?’ she asked.

‘Lots of parts,’ he said, ‘but here will do nicely for the moment.’ He puckered his lips and she kissed him softly, before sitting on the edge of the examination couch and gripping his hand.

The curtain was yanked back and a young Asian doctor appeared with an X-ray of Henry’s head in his hands.

‘I’m going to stay the night. The nurse has told me there’s a room close by and I can get some sleep if I need to.’

‘That’s fine,’ Flynn nodded to Diane. ‘Is it OK for me to keep hold of your car? You can call me any time — and I mean, any time — to get picked up or whatever you need. Middle of the night…’ He grinned stupidly.

‘Thanks.’

‘Do you need anything now?’ he volunteered.

‘No, I’m fine.’ She patted the bulky shoulder bag she had brought along with her. ‘Night essentials just in case.’

‘Just let me know. I’ll go and get something to eat now, probably down at the Victoria, then I’ll bed down for the night in the boat, then open up the shop tomorrow and hold the fort.’

‘You’re a love,’ she smiled weakly. ‘An alley cat with a mushy heart. At least that’s what Colin calls you.’

‘I’ve heard worse.’

‘But look — I’ll be here all night and I don’t want to tie you down to the end of a phone line. And I’ll bet you’re gagging for a pint, so just go back, enjoy a drink with your meal and don’t worry about me. I’ll call you in the morning.’

Flynn gave her a peck and a hug and watched her walk back into the post-op unit to be with her husband.

‘Snapped like a desiccated twig,’ declared the doctor gleefully, holding up the X-ray and pointing. ‘Even through the swelling, the X-ray has managed to pick out the fracture. See!’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Alison said, peering. ‘Look, Henry.’

Henry could not see the detail, but he was fascinated by the X-ray that clearly showed his skull — cranium, jaws, teeth. Pretty ugly and an unsettling insight into what he would look like once the maggots had eaten away his flesh.

The doctor lowered the sheet. ‘There’s not much we can do about it, unfortunately. Can hardly put a plaster cast around your head, can we?’ he chuckled. ‘It’ll be down to time and good pain relief.’

‘Like last time,’ Henry said.

‘It’s been broken before?’ Henry nodded and the doctor examined the X-ray closely again. He sighed. ‘Can’t see the previous break, so it could be in exactly the same place. But it should still heal well.’

‘Didn’t last time.’

‘I’m sure it will this time,’ the doctor answered him.