by Andy Maslen
“Yeah, that would have done it, too, I guess. We’ve seen enough junkies do the floppy dance after a bit too much Special K, haven’t we?”
“Piss off! She’s coming back.”
Brushing her hands together as if she’d just finished a particularly gruelling Times crossword, Miss Petersen arrived back at Stella’s cubicle.
“Sorry about the delay. Silly old dear does that about once a week. Never had to give her the old chemical cosh before though.”
“Who’s Bobby?”
“Her baby.”
“Bit old to have a baby, isn’t she?”
“She had him in 1950. At fifteen. He was taken away immediately for adoption. Poor old Elsie lost the plot. She’s been in and out of institutions ever since. She shouldn’t really be here but they can’t find a bed for her in a nursing home so here she stays, grieving for Bobby and occasionally finding new and ingenious ways to test the resources of the NHS. Now, let’s get this rather flamboyant laceration closed up and those scratches tended to, and you can be on your way.”
15
Accident & Emergency
As the stitches went in, Stella surveyed the comings and goings of one of London’s busiest A&E departments. Young guys with hands wrapped in towels, still cocky enough to flirt with the nurses despite the blood dripping onto the vinyl flooring. White-faced mums and dads accompanying stunned-looking kids with cut hands or amateurishly bandaged wrists. Drunks with smashed faces – what happens when the pavement or the boot of someone more sober than you comes up to greet you at high speed – railing against the bastards who’d kicked them into this state and relieved them of their wallets.
And the oddities. The rarities. The freaks who would fuel after-hours unwinding sessions in the pub. Police, nurses, paramedics, doctors, firefighters: they shared a macabre sense of humour that was never so acute as when they were “rescuing,” treating or just generally dealing with members of the public who’d decided on the spur of the moment to do something fucking stupid. All were processed at the entrance to the machine that sucked them in broken and spat them out whole again.
Highlight of her afternoon was a portly middle-aged man wearing a mustard-coloured waistcoat over a Tattersall shirt and a pair of rose-pink trousers that he clutched to his legs at mid-thigh. He’d a pale-pink bath towel wrapped round his middle. Without even needing to overhear the consultation occurring in the cubicle next to hers, Stella knew already what he’d done. Not the details. But the general proposition. His furiously blushing cheeks said it all.
The doctor treating him was in her midthirties. An Indian woman with high cheekbones, kohl-rimmed eyes of the deepest brown and a thick mane of jet-black hair.
“You had an accident, is that right?” she asked in an educated voice Stella decided was clearly calibrated to carry to all four corners of the room.
“Yes,” the man mumbled.
“What kind of an accident?”
“Well, you see, doctor, I had just got out of the shower in the en suite when the lightbulb in the bedroom ceiling went, so I had to change it, you see.”
He cleared his throat, presumably hoping the doctor would take pity on him and not force the rest of the confession from his reluctant lips. No such luck.
“And—?”
“And I’d got the light bulb out of the box when I slipped off the chair I was standing on. My feet were wet from the shower, you see. And then, well, and then—”
“—and then you fell on your bottom and the lightbulb was accidentally inserted into your rectum?”
His reply was all but inaudible. Stella smiled despite the grimness of her own situation.
“Well, we’d better get it out then, hadn’t we?”
The curtain was whisked aside so that the metal rings whistled along the thin pole suspended from the ceiling.
“Nurse!”
“Yes, Doctor?”
“I need a speculum, a pair of artery forceps and some KY Jelly, please.”
“Yes, Doctor.” Stella watched the two exchange complicit glances. Not smiles, but not far off, either.
The nurse reappeared a few moments later clutching a couple of stainless steel implements, fresh from the autoclave, which sat in a corner, like an oversized microwave oven, emitting clouds of steam each time the door was opened.
“Now then,” the Indian doctor said. “Let’s just insert this,” a sharp indrawing of breath from the man, “into there,” a gasp, “and open it up like this,” a groan, “Aha! A sixty-watt energy saver. Shame you haven’t power up there or we could do a routine colonoscopy at the same time.”
Behind Stella’s head Miss Petersen paused from stitching to emit a stifled laugh.
“Now, I’ll just grip that— damn! Missed it – there we go, with these, and then we just pull gently, but steadily—”
“Oh, Jesus, that really hurts, Doctor.”
“Yes, it will. Your anus is not designed to expel lightbulbs. Or to receive them, come to that. Now for the tricky bit. Can you take a breath and let it out slowly, please?
Stella heard the man inhale dutifully, noted a shudder in his breath. Waited.
He yelped in pain.
“Bingo!” the doctor said, the note of triumph detectable.
A couple of the patched-up drunks gave a slurred cheer.
“Well done, Doc!” one called out.
“Bet that’s taken a weight off your mind, mate,” another called.
Over the good-natured banter, Miss Petersen finished her final suture.
“There we are,” she said, in a voice that, unlike her colleague’s, was clearly only intended for her patient’s ears. “They’ll dissolve on their own in a couple of weeks. When your hair grows back, nobody will ever know. Can you find your way out? I think Hamesh is waiting for you in A&E reception.”
“Yes, and thanks.”
Stella stood, turned and shook hands.
Miss Petersen nodded her head sideways at the neighbouring cubicle.
“Sometimes I think they should call these places Accident & Stupidity.”
Stella smiled. And for a moment, their statuses were equal, consultant and cop, not doctor and patient.
As predicted, Hamesh was sitting at the end of a row of blue-upholstered chairs, the wheelchair by his left hip.
“Ah, there you are!” he said, beaming. “All done?”
“Good as new.” Stella plonked herself down into the wheelchair. “Home, James, etc.”
“You not feeling strong enough to walk, then?”
“It’s not that. I just fancy being pushed.”
She leaned back to look up at Hamesh, whose face bore an expression part indignation and part tolerant good humour.
“Cheeky mare!” he said, seizing the handles and waltzing her off down the corridor.
As they entered the psych ward, Stella and Hamesh were greeted by Dan Hockley. He limped towards them, brow furrowed.
“Stella! I am so sorry. Are you OK?”
“I’m fine, Dan. Really. Nothing I haven’t had worse on a rough Saturday night. On duty,” she hurriedly added as Dan’s eyebrows shot up.
“Can you come to my office please? There’s someone here to see you. To ask you some questions about the attack.”
Stella followed Dan through the communal area, avoiding a drooling young man whose antipsychotic medication clearly needed a dose adjustment, and towards his office.
Reaching the door, Dan held it open and motioned for Stella to precede him.
“Thanks,” she said, turning her head to him as she stepped over the threshold.
The gesture meant she heard the visitor’s voice before she saw his face. Or his crisp, black uniform, adorned with silver.
“Hello, Stella.”
Stella whirled round at the first syllable, trying to control her emotions.
16
Victim Impact Statement
Adam Collier rose to greet her. Through a determined effort of will, Stella stopped herself fr
om attempting to break his neck with her bare hands.
“I’ll be here to look after Stella’s interests Detective Chief Superintendent,” Dan said with a solicitous smile, “but the interview’s your remit. I shan’t interfere unless Stella becomes distressed.”
Stella noticed that Collier had installed himself behind the desk. Ever ready to assume the power seat in any room. Dan took a seat in one of the armchairs.
She sat facing Collier across the desk. Behind her eyes, she could feel a wild fury spreading like a forest fire. Not just a rage, but a person that embodied it. She knew she had to retain control. If Other Stella pushed her way through the psychic membrane that separated them, she’d try to decorate Dan’s office with Collier’s entrails. Then Dan would intervene, sedate her, and that would be that. They’d transfer her to a high-security psychiatric hospital and she’d never see the light of day again.
“I’m so sorry you ended up in A&E, Stella,” Adam opened.
“Thank you, sir.” Because you wanted me to end up in the morgue, didn’t you?
“I hear you sustained a nasty head wound.”
“I’m just grateful it was only a gash. If Gloria had got her way, it’d be me with my head smashed in at the bottom of the stairwell instead of her.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“She said she was going to help me get out of here. Said she’d stolen a key from one of the nurses. She took me out into the stairwell, then attacked me. She got a couple of kicks in, then she tried to heave me over the bannister. I fought back using what I considered reasonable force to defend myself. I think if you get a CSI to take scrapings from under my fingernails you’ll find Gloria’s blood and skin. As we struggled, she lost her footing and fell over the railing. I tried to save her, but she was much too heavy. You saw what happened, what got left behind. I was in shock.” You hear that? ‘Reasonable force.’ That’s the law on my side for one. Two, a fucking great gash in the back of my skull. Three, my attacker’s tissue under my nails: classic evidence of self-defence. Four, no witnesses. So it’s my word or nothing.
Collier shook his head and then leaned forward, steepling his thick fingers under his chin.
“There’s no need for CSIs, Stella. It’s pretty clear what happened. I just wanted to let you know you are in my thoughts. Even in here. I won’t forget you.”
His dark eyes were boring into hers.
She stared back.
Heard a distant scream of rage deep in her mind.
Felt red-painted fingernails scratching at the backs of her eyeballs.
Tried to ignore the shouted threats to Collier issuing from somewhere not so far from the surface of her consciousness.
Collier blinked first. At once, the murderous pressure building inside her evaporated.
You’re scared, she thought. You sent some Maltese Ma Barker in here after me, and all you have to show for it is the world’s grottiest rubber glove. With Moxey and Ferenczy pushing up daisies, I make that nought for three.
“Thank you. Sir. And I won’t forget you either. Not while I have breath in my body. And if … when … Dan is able to satisfy himself I’m no danger to myself or anyone else and lets me out of here, believe me, you will be the first person I come to see.”
Collier stood.
“I look forward to it, Stella. Really, I do. I’m afraid I have to go. Meeting at Scotland Yard. Take care of yourself, OK? Maybe avoid any more clandestine meetings in stairwells for a while.”
Stella ignored his outstretched hand, not caring whether Dan made a little note on his ever-present clipboard about “diminished social skills.” She stared straight ahead until she heard the door close behind Collier. Turning, she met Dan’s gaze.
“What?”
He smiled.
“Nothing. But I think after today’s little adventure, I tend to agree with your boss. Let’s stay within the ward, OK?”
“Fine by me.”
Dan was sliding into the Porsche’s driving seat at 6.30 p.m., inhaling a wonderful aroma of leather, wax polish and petrol. The car was twenty-five years old but it made him feel like a small boy. His phone rang.
“If you want to hold onto that little Dinky toy I bought you, there’s something you need to do for me.”
“Look, I did what I could to give that Zerafa woman a clear field. I even saw to it she kept those ridiculous gold rings. And she fucked up. Christ! She must have weighed at least twice what Stella does. I don’t know how she ended up on the losing side but—”
“It doesn’t matter! Listen, you’ve got all kinds of powerful psychoactive drugs in there, haven’t you?”
“I have, but—”
“So you could put her under permanently.”
“— I’m also a doctor. The principle of primum non nocere is sacred. First, do no harm.”
“Oh, come on, Dan. I think we’re way past the Hippocratic Oath, don’t you? Just because you don’t have blood on your hands doesn’t mean you get to walk away with a clean conscience. Or did you think I gave you a Porsche because you made an honest woman out of my sister? And let’s not even get started on the drugs charge that I and my friends made vanish. You’d have been lucky to get a job as a cleaner, never mind a promotion to consultant. We own you, lock, stock and barrel.”
Hockley looked down at the key he’d just inserted in the ignition.
“Fine. What do you want me to do?”
“Patients must have psychotic breaks all the time in there, yes?”
“Yes. Goes with the territory.”
“So, here’s the story. She freaks out in the middle of the night. When do they all top themselves? Three a.m., is it? You’re forced to administer a powerful sedative. You call me first thing in the morning because she’s one of my officers and you think I ought to know. I come to check on her and you leave me unattended in her room for a few minutes. Tragically, her heart gives out later that day. Death by misadventure. I give a statement to the press. Internal investigation clears you of any suspicion of wrongdoing. Life goes on.”
“And when does all this happen?”
“No time like the present. Do it tonight.”
17
Midnight Till Dawn
Sanity. Stella had never given much thought to it. She’d mostly been too busy studying or pursuing her career to worry about her mental health. Of course, every copper knew of colleagues who’d hit the bottle or resigned on grounds of ill health, which as often as not meant stress. Then that day when Collier had called her into his office and told her Richard and Lola had been killed in a hit and run. A hit and run he’d conspired to make happen. Well, she sure found out about mental health after that. Even when she’d reset her relationship with booze and flushed her remaining antidepressants and tranquilisers down the toilet, she’d spent a good few months living in a partial fantasy world where two-and-a-half-month-old Lola had miraculously escaped a burning car and returned to live with her.
And now? She wasn’t sure. She didn’t feel crazy. Not crazy-crazy, anyway. Not talking-to-aliens-through-the-telly-crazy. Not wandering-down-Oxford-Street-naked-crazy. But then again, there remained the small matter of the woman sitting beside her on the bed. The woman with Stella’s looks and murder in her eyes.
“Why haven’t you got the same hair as me?” she asked Other Stella.
“What?”
“How come I’ve got the whole Annie Lennox blonde crop thing going on and you kept the brown ponytail?”
“Er, hello? I’m not a real person. I don’t go to the hairdresser.”
“I know that. But shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, keeping up with me or something?”
Other Stella tilted her head on one side and put a finger to the point of her chin.
“I’ve got bigger fish to fry, babe. Like getting us out of the booby hatch before Collier sends anyone else after you.”
“So you reckon Gloria was on the PPM payroll?”
“I’m not so sure PPM is in a position
to manage anything as complicated as a payroll, Stel. I mean, who’s left? You did Ramage. Fairly comprehensively, if I may say so. Shot through both arms, kneecapped with a cleaver, a bit of self-inflicted dentistry then burnt half to death and shot in the head. Then we finished off Fieldsend, Howarth and Ragib together. That upper-class idiot De Bree popped his clogs before we could reach him. So we’re left with Collier and a ragtag bunch of foot soldiers. But do I think she was doing Collier’s bidding. No question in my mind. I mean, you know, yours.”
She winked.
“I’m getting out of here tonight,” Stella said.
“Oh, yes? How?”
“Stick around and you’ll see. Now fuck off. I need a few hours’ sleep.”
Stella lay down on the bed, fully clothed, and closed her eyes. She felt a subtle shift in the air around her. Risked opening one eye. Other Stella had gone.
She checked the time: 8.57 p.m. Her head was throbbing beneath the analgesic blanket of ibuprofen and paracetamol Becky had delivered from the pharmacy. Her ribs weren’t too happy either. Gloria, or whoever she was, hadn’t cracked any, but her kick had turned Stella’s left side a fetching shade of purple. To avoid concentrating on the pain, she tried to anticipate Collier’s next move. At some point he’d try another attack. Surely now he’d give up sending hired muscle after her? Each of the three hitters so far was dead. But if not a psychopathic gangster – of either gender – then who, or how?
SITTING in his home office and circling his fingertips over his temples, Collier was struggling to answer exactly the same question. He was running out of ideas. The bloody woman was invincible. Where she’d learned to fight well enough to defeat people like Peter Moxey, Tamit Ferenczy and Monica Zerafa, he had no idea. He suspected it wasn’t the unarmed defence tactics instructors at Hendon Police College. A few weeks earlier, he’d made a call to Special Agent Eddie Baxter at the FBI’s Chicago field office, who’d confirmed that the offer of a sabbatical was still open. Collier had said to put the wheels in motion. Maybe it was time to put some distance between himself and Stella Cole. A tentative knocking at the door derailed his train of thought, which was barely out of the engine shed.
