Paul Finch - Stalkers

She slipped the print-out into her briefcase. ‘Leave me to worry about that.’

‘This is a total fuck-up, ma’am.’ Such comments were a measure of Palliser’s stress. An old-fashioned type, he rarely used foul language in front of female colleagues, especially not his feisty boss. ‘We should have supported Heck in the first place. I don’t mean covertly. I mean openly. If we were going to do this, we should have stood up to Laycock and demanded the case be kept open.’

‘There were no grounds for that.’ Gemma dragged her coat on. ‘So don’t be so bloody ridiculous.’

‘What’s bloody ridiculous is that Heck may be in danger, and we’re just sitting here.’

‘ He’s lucky we’re sitting here, Des! ’ she snapped. ‘I sent him out there with a remit to run down a single lead! And to keep me fully and regularly informed. I also told him to keep things low key. For whatever reason, he has disobeyed those direct and explicit orders. I’ll never trust him again.’

‘You won’t trust him?’ Palliser said, as she pushed past. ‘That’s a good one. Have you stopped to think that if he actually trusted us , we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place?’

She whirled around and glared at him. But there was no argument. Palliser was being entirely truthful. If not, he wouldn’t have stood there and boldly returned her gaze.

‘I’ll leave you to turn the lights out,’ she finally said. There was an unusual fluster to her cheek. ‘Remember what I said about Ezekial?’

When the two Greater Manchester Police detectives emerged from the private room attached to the recovery ward, they had a young doctor with them, though it was only the white coat and stethoscope that revealed the doctor’s profession. Aside from that, he wore jeans and an open collar shirt, and thanks to the long hours he’d worked, his jaw was covered in stubble. By contrast, the two detectives were fastidiously neat. The detective superintendent, whose name was Smethurst, was a stone-faced, early middle-aged man with cropped, iron-grey hair and a clipped grey moustache. He wore a shirt and tie under his jacket, none of which were even creased despite the lateness of the hour. His compatriot, Detective Inspector Jarvis, was a woman about ten years his junior. She wore flat shoes, a trouser suit, and carried a shoulder-bag. Her hair, which was mouse-brown, was cut almost as severely as that of her boss.

She beckoned to the two uniformed constables — PCs Hallam and Belshaw — who were waiting on the other side of the passage. They were both young men, not long in the job, still probationers in fact, and they came over smartly; after weeks of checking town centre properties and handing out parking tickets, they were eager to get involved with some ‘real’ policework.

‘So what are the chances of us interviewing him tomorrow?’ Detective Superintendent Smethurst asked, glancing back into the room, where a blanketed shape lay flat on an orthopaedic bed. One of the patient’s arms was attached to a drip, the other to a bank of bleeping monitors.

The doctor shrugged. ‘Give it a try … why not?’

‘So he’ll be fit?’

‘Possibly, but he suffered quite a beating. Apparently he said something to a nurse about one of your lot being responsible …?’

‘That’s one of the things we want to speak to him about. We didn’t manage to get much out of him earlier on. Nothing that made sense, anyway.’

The doctor half-smiled. ‘I’m not sure what you expected, given the state he was in.’

Smethurst remained po-faced. ‘This is a murder enquiry, Doctor. So all I need from you is a straight answer. Will he be fit to be interviewed tomorrow — yes or no?’

The doctor shrugged again. ‘It’s hard to say, but I think it’s worth your while calling around at some point. The sedatives will have worn off by then.’

Apparently pleased to have been as ambiguous as he possibly could without actually obstructing them, the young doctor sauntered away. Smethurst gazed sourly after him, before moving back into the room to look long and hard at the unconscious patient.

DI Jarvis turned to the waiting PCs. ‘What time you two on ’til?’ she asked.

‘Ten officially, boss,’ Belshaw said. ‘But we’ve got overtime ’til three. Nights are taking over then.’

‘No nodding off, eh?’

‘No problem, boss.’

‘I mean it, lads. This bloke may just have come out of surgery, but he played his part in a vicious bar-fight yesterday which was the prelude to one of the nastiest murders I’ve ever seen. So we’re watching him around the clock until he’s fit to be interviewed. We don’t want anyone coming in to have a word with him, and we certainly don’t want him leaving here. You nod off and something happens, you’ll be on the dole this time next week … clear?’

They nodded, still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

‘There’s a coffee machine down there.’ She pointed along the otherwise deserted passage. ‘Sup plenty. I don’t care if you’re pissing for England by morning.’

Again, they nodded.

‘I’ll say it one more time, lads, this bloke could end up being a crucial witness. So no one gets in to see him unless it’s one of the nurses or doctors. That’s no visitors, no cleaners … not even any bobbies unless you know for sure who they are. In fact, even if you are sure, you get on the blower and speak to us first. Whatever time it is.’

Detective Superintendent Smethurst reappeared, car keys in hand. He was clearly uncomfortable about leaving the hospital — even more so when he eyed the pair of youngsters who’d be standing on guard in his absence — but he was nearly fifty, and the extra-long shift he’d put in was finally getting the better of him.

‘Sorted?’ he asked Jarvis.

‘Reckon so, Sir.’

He glanced again at the uniforms. ‘If there’s anything suspicious at all …’

‘We’ll call it in, Sir,’ Belshaw said. ‘Guaranteed.’

But once the detectives had left, and despite their genuine enthusiasm, it wasn’t long before the two uniforms were starting to wilt through inactivity. It was now close on twelve, and both constables were surprised at how quickly and effectively the hospital — such a hive of frenetic activity during the day — had closed down on itself. A deep quiet seemed to fill the entire extensive building. Most unnecessary lights had been switched off, and there were minimal signs of life down at the recovery ward admissions desk. Occasionally a member of staff would move back and forth down there, but that was all.

PC Belshaw was the first to start feeling the weight of this tedium. He was seated outside the door to the private room, but was already regretting the measures he’d taken to make himself more comfortable. He’d removed his helmet, and then his anorak, draping the waterproof garment over the back of his chair and slumping against it. As a result, sleep was creeping up on him and he constantly had to shake himself and sit upright again. Hallam was posted inside the room, so there was no possibility of lively conversation — not that there ever was with Hallam anyway.

Eventually, Belshaw got up and tried to walk around. He avoided strolling down to the ward-proper. The night staff would be chatty enough — of the two he’d met, one, a young trainee, Nurse Goldenway, was particularly attractive — but he didn’t want to get too distracted from what he was supposed to be doing here, so he headed in the other direction.

He passed the vending machine, which stood alone with a single light shining down on it, and reached a T-junction. On the right, the passage ran fifty yards to an exit door, which appeared to be firmly closed. On the left, it receded into dimness, and, aside from a single red emergency light, its farthest end lay almost completely invisible. Several darkened doorways opened off this, but there was no sign of movement. Belshaw was about to head back to his post, when he heard a sound — only brief, like a click or snap . He held his position, listening. He hadn’t been here long enough to apprise himself of the hospital’s layout; he didn’t know whether anyone was supposed to be down that left-hand passage or not, but the absence of working lights suggested that nothing official was going on.