Gerald Seymour - A Line in the Sand

The pictures would have to come down, of course. The photograph frames would have to be put into the drawers, and she wondered if she would be allowed to take out the photographs and stick them to the walls, if they would permit that. In the bathroom, at the back of the house, she couldn't have said they lingered on anything that was hers. They were merely indifferent to each item that belonged and mattered to her. Better if they had lingered on them because then the items might have seemed important. They went into the spare room and discussed what should happen to the pictures, the mirror and the ornaments there. They paused on the landing outside the last door. It was as if they had kicked the fight out of her, and the resentment was flushed on Frank's cheeks, but neither of them protested. She could hear her boy's voice, making the noise of a lorry. They didn't ask her to go first, or Frank. The short one went in, the tall one behind him.

"Hello, sunshine my word, aren't they brilliant?"

"Great lorries, sunshine, proper little haulage business."

"Just call me Uncle Joe…" and I'm your uncle Dave, that's a real good one, the Seddon Atkinson."

"The Seddy's good, Dave, but the Volvo's fantastic."

"It's a great fleet, sunshine… No, sorry, don't touch."

"What's your name? Stephen? Well, Stephen, you mustn't touch what's on Uncle Dave's belt. It's gas, it's handcuffs and it's the Glock… Like what?… He did what? That must have been fun, sunshine. You hear that, Joe? DS Davies chucking his Glock round the playground that's nice to store away for when he gets all pompous. I expect it's time you were in bed, sunshine…"

The door was closed softly. They had come, she thought, effortlessly, into her family's life and brought with them their gas, their handcuffs and their guns. And, in the morning, her home would be prepared for defence against a sniper's attack and against the devastation of a rocket launcher's explosion. When they had gone outside, into the back garden, she went for the vacuum cleaner to remove the mud they'd left on her carpets, and before she started it up she heard Frank's voice.

"Don't ever do that again. Don't dare ever treat me and my wife like we're rubbish. We're human beings and deserve to be treated with decency and respect. This is our home, so show a bit of sensitivity when you come into it. Don't look at me in that dumb, insolent way, just don't. We live here. If that's not convenient, soft shit."

She didn't hear their reply.

When they'd finished in the garden and gone out through the front door, and it had been bolted and locked again, while she was in the living room with the vacuum cleaner, she heard Blake's voice.

"You shouldn't have done that, sir, bawled them out. They're at the end of a pretty long day. But don't worry, they won't take it personally, they're used to principals being stressed up. But you shouldn't have bawled them out, sir. One day you might depend on them to save your life, one day soon."

"This is not a zoo. You don't come here to rubber-neck. It's a working area you're causing disruption."

He'd been told but it had slipped in his mind. It could have been the fourth time the detectives had confronted the duty doctor, but it was more likely to have been the fifth.

"I will say when you can talk to my patient and it is the same answer as the last time, and the time before that. No. My patient is severely concussed, quite apart from the effect of the drugs alleviating the pain of a triple femur fracture. No."

They were at the end of the ward. Beside the door to the partitioned cubicle, Geoff Markham hovered a pace behind the two Branch detectives. The doctor was young, harassed, probably sleep-walking and on the edge of his temper.

"It is not my concern what my patient is alleged to have done, my concern is his health and welfare. I understand he has been neither cautioned nor charged. So, he is in my care, and I decide if he is to be questioned. My answer… No."

A policeman was sitting beside the bed on a hard chair, facing the door, his hands on the snub weapon resting on his legs, his face impassive. The second uniformed policeman sat outside the door, cradling his own gun, a wry smile flickering at his mouth.

"I tell you, it's bad enough for my patients to have guns paraded around, but right now they are trying, unsuccessfully, to get the rest they need. They are not resting, as they should be, because this ward is being treated by you like a high-street pavement. Just get out, go away.

Geoff Markham's fingers were locked together, clasped tight, flexing hard enough to hurt. He thought Littelbaum was somewhere behind him. The American had said this was the big and lucky break, but it didn't seem as if they knew how to use it.

"Just listen to me. You are interfering with the running of this ward. I will protest most strongly in the morning to the administrators about that interference. If the condition of this patient, or any other patient in the ward, were to deteriorate because of your refusal to accept my guidance, then I will make it my personal business to see you broken. Get off my territory."

There was a dull blue sheen of light in the cubicle. Geoff Markham thought, could have sworn to it, that he saw an eye glinting from the mound of white pillows. The head of the patient, the face that Rainbow Gold had identified as Yusuf Khan, was half hidden by the left leg raised in traction. The glint was momentary, but he'd seen it.

The patient now seemed unmoving, unconscious. The detectives turned away.

Markham said, "He's fooling you."

"You're a doctor? Familiar with this case history, are you?"

Markham persisted, "He's alert, listening. He's feigning."

"You're an expert on concussion? You know about the effects of pain-depressant drugs?"

"What I am telling you-' "No. I do the telling on my ward, and I am telling you to get out." Markham spat, "There could be blood on your hands."

"I doubt it."

"A man could be murdered because of your refusal-' "Get out."

He had failed to exploit the break. The faces of the uniformed policemen were expressionless, as though they didn't need to tell him that he'd made a right idiot of himself. Geoff Markham turned angrily and walked up the central aisle of the ward towards the low light at the far end where the night sister sat at her table. The detectives were alongside and he could hear the soft pad of the doctor behind him. He saw the American sitting on a visitor's chair, in deep shadow, against a patient's locker. The patient was passing him a grape, and before he took it the American had his finger on his lips. Markham kept walking.

Beyond the ward's swing doors, there was a last snapped question: "How long?"

The doctor said that it might be two days and it might be three, or it might be a week, before his patient could be interrogated.

He walked on down the empty corridors. The Branch men were with him, said they were looking for a coffee machine. His footfall stamped to the stairs.

There was a fight in Casualty reception. A drunk with blood streaming from a forehead wound swung a fist at the security people. He didn't care and threaded his way past them.

He went to the parking area and his car.

He wished he smoked. He wished he had a hip flask. He wished he was warm and wet-sweaty with Vicky. He wished he worked for a fucking bank.

He sat in the car.

The wail of a siren approached, and he watched the staff gather at the door to meet it, the flurry as the stretcher was hurried inside. He waited. He was cold, tired. He had seen how the bastard had watched them, listened to them, fooled them, and the first day of the week was ten minutes off its end. And he couldn't imagine why Littelbaum had found it important to stay behind.

He was slumped in self-pity, and wondered whether the bank would turn him down by letter or by telephone. Damn sure they wouldn't accept him. He wouldn't tell Vicky what he'd said, about playing God, or tell her how her buzz phrases had been sneered at… The American eased the car door open and lowered himself into the seat.