by Rob McCarthy
Harry listened, chastened for his ignorance, until he worked out where she was going with her thoughts.
‘And she would have come into hospital,’ said Harry. ‘Which we know there’s no record of.’
Wynn-Jones nodded, and they were silent for a while. Outside, two of the morticians were locking up and heading home, laughing about something, and the sound felt out of place.
‘So what do you think happened, then? She got an illegal termination?’
‘I think that’s one explanation,’ the pathologist said. ‘There are two possibilities here. Firstly, that for some reason Keisha induced her own miscarriage, but she didn’t want to come into hospital. Even though I can’t fathom why anyone, even in the most desperate of circumstances, would do that.’
‘How?’
‘There are plenty of ways,’ Wynn-Jones said. ‘Read any medical journal from the 1950s. Pessaries, drugs. All she would have needed to do is Google it.’
Harry nodded, the gravity of what he was finding out starting to strike him. Twenty weeks didn’t sound like a lot, but that was the lower bound that Wynn-Jones had set for the length of time Keisha Best had been pregnant. The upper bound had been twenty-four, and it wasn’t unheard of for babies born at twenty-four weeks to survive into adulthood.
‘I think that’s the better of the two possible scenarios,’ Wynn-Jones said. It didn’t take Harry long to work out what the worse one entailed.
‘Jesus.’
Wynn-Jones nodded. ‘I think it’s very possible that somebody who didn’t want Keisha’s pregnancy to be known about decided to take matters into their own hands. I’ve had a case like that before. A man threw his pregnant daughter down the stairs.’
Harry leant forward, his voice hushed. In the time since they’d been speaking, the giggling morticians had departed, and the pathology lab was now a silent, dark place.
‘Was there any evidence of anything like that?’ he said. ‘On the post-mortem?’
‘Not on the post-mortem,’ Wynn-Jones said. ‘But there was the matter of what the police found in her bedroom. A blister pack in the bin under her desk, one which had compartments for two pills. Now, I don’t know about you, Dr Kent, but I can’t think of too many prescription medications which only require two doses.’
Harry felt increasingly uncomfortable. After the first sip that she’d taken, Wynn-Jones hadn’t touched her coffee. Harry could tell that Keisha Best’s death had troubled her greatly, but that she’d compartmentalised it since, put it in a box, which Harry had opened with his phone call that afternoon.
‘The morning-after pill?’ Harry suggested. ‘But it failed, and she miscarried anyway?’
‘That’s exactly what DC Kepler said,’ Wynn-Jones muttered.
‘Kepler?’ said Harry.
‘Yes, do you know him?’ Wynn-Jones said. ‘Seemed like a nice bloke, but he gave me the usual spiel about investigative resources when he was saying that they weren’t prepared to spend time on it. But I don’t believe for one minute that was the morning-after pill. She must have emptied that bin in her room fairly regularly and she’d been pregnant for at least twenty weeks.’
‘Would it work?’ Harry said. ‘The abortion pill, at twenty weeks?’
‘It would,’ Wynn-Jones said. ‘But like I said, it would be unpleasant. She should’ve wanted to come to hospital.’
‘But she didn’t,’ said Harry.
‘No. And a week or so later, she throws herself under a train,’ said Wynn-Jones, her eyes rolling down so she was looking at the floor. ‘And that, Dr Kent, is why in my opinion this wasn’t a straightforward suicide. It might just be my imagination running wild, and I don’t have anything concrete, but it just isn’t right. The Met lost interest about two days after I cut Keisha up, so if you can get anything out of it, then I owe you one. If there’s anything else you need, I’m here.’
Harry opened his mouth to say something, but Wynn-Jones slid a copy of the post-mortem report over the desk towards him. He realised that what she’d said told him a lot about Solomon Idris.
They killed Keisha. And the feds didn’t give a shit.
Harry got up, picking up the report. He wondered if Idris had lost a child as well as a lover, or if he’d even known about the baby. Assuming that it was his, of course.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘And you’re sure you checked all the records, and that she hadn’t been to any kind of GP or hospital since 2008?’
‘No,’ said Wynn-Jones, finally sipping the coffee Harry had bought her, only to realise it was cold and throw it into the bin.
‘I’ll do everything I can,’ he said weakly. ‘I think you’re on to something.’
Wynn-Jones slouched back in her chair, looked up, and brushed her hair out of her face again.
‘I called DC Kepler, a week after Keisha died,’ she said. ‘I wanted to know why the police weren’t launching a full investigation. You know what he said? He told me that there was no evidence a crime had been committed.’
She leant forward and pointed at the report in front of her, still open at the page where it listed the organs. Heart, 293g, unremarkable, no ischaemic changes. Brain, only 468g present for examination owing to massive traumatic injury and distribution at the scene. He followed her finger to where she was tapping. Uterus, gravida 1, para 0. A former home for a former future child.
‘Twenty weeks, Dr Kent. How the hell can that not be a crime?’
It had taken Harry most of the walk upstairs from the pathology department back to the ICU to make the decision, and he enacted it by calling the number on the business card Duncan Whitacre had left him.
‘Burgess Park Practice.’
‘Dr Lahiri, please. It’s the Ruskin,’ Harry lied.
‘He’s with a patient at the moment. Can I put you on hold?’
Harry held, leaning against the wall in the stairwell. A sweat-drenched student leapt past him, taking the stairs three at a time. The medical school’s sports teams made their members run up to each one of the hospital’s three ten-floor wings in turn and back down again. In Harry’s day, it had been a simple race to the top of the thirty-three-storey tower at Guy’s, with the last to finish being punished with a quarter-pint of London Dry Gin. In their first years, he and Lahiri had both been on the football team, and Harry recalled spraining his ankle on the penultimate floor and Lahiri carrying him to the top, only to be rewarded with an unpleasantly generous measure of the spirit.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s Harry.’
‘Is there a problem?’
‘There might be,’ Harry said. ‘It’s Idris.’
‘Is he dead?’
There were few people in the world who Lahiri would, or could, be that frank with. The concern appeared genuine, at least.
‘He came close. Somehow he ended up getting co-amox even though he’s penicillin-allergic. VT arrest, shocked him out of it.’
‘Ah, Jesus. How the hell does that happen?’
Harry didn’t answer that question.
‘That’s not why I’m calling,’ he said.
‘Care to elaborate? I’m running thirty minutes late.’
‘When do you think you’ll be done today, then?’
‘Last patient’s at five-twenty. Paperwork, letters, seven or so, I would guess,’ he said. ‘What the hell’s this about, Harry?’
‘Are you free this evening?’ Harry said. ‘I think we should talk.’
Harry pictured Lahiri in his office, with cold eyes and clenched teeth. ‘Do you, now?’
‘About Solomon Idris,’ Harry clarified. ‘You knew him. You mentored him.’
‘We should leave that to the police,’ Lahiri said.
‘Sure. But they’re not investigating it, and there’s a lot that’s suspicious. Like the gun going off outside the shop, and his allergy mysteriously disappearing. I think there’s something going on.’
Another student, much portlier than the first, came up from the basement in pursuit.
‘I don’t see how I could help you out,’ Lahiri said.
‘Did he ever tell you about Keisha Best?’ Harry asked. One final gambit.
‘He mentioned a girl called Keisha,’ Lahiri said. ‘A while back, though. Maybe October or something.’
‘She’s dead,’ Harry said. ‘Suicide, last November. In the chicken shop, Solomon told me he was doing it all for her.’
There was static on the line and background noise, and Harry could almost hear the conflict in his friend’s head. Lahiri was weighing up the decision about whether his patient, the kid he felt he’d been somehow responsible for, who was fighting for his life in the ICU, was worth letting Harry back into his life for.
‘You know where I’m living now?’ Lahiri said.
‘The boat?’
‘Yeah,’ Lahiri said. ‘South Dock Marina, over in Surrey Quays. You can get the Overground to Canada Water. Ask the guy at the gate to give me a call.’
The line went dead, and Harry stood for a moment in the stairwell, watching as two more students in sports gear continued their run. All of them were drenched in sweat – maybe they did the East Wing last of all. He and Lahiri had met in medical school, and after both had been accepted for army cadetships, had lived together for three years in a dingy student bedsit off East Street. Now Harry had his sixth-floor flat with his rooftop terrace and the double bed only he occupied. From the terrace, he’d often pick out the flame-scarred New Cross tower block he’d shared with his mother. Lahiri had grown up in an East Sussex fishing village surrounded on three sides by the sea, before his stockbroker father had sent him to boarding school. After separating from his wife, he had traded their stylish house in Dulwich Village for a forty-three-foot motor yacht he used as an upmarket houseboat. He had a mooring on the Thames and another on the south coast. He’d chosen life at sea, or as close as he could get to it.
He must know something’s wrong, Harry thought as he walked down the stairs towards the hospital’s basement exit. He knows I wouldn’t want to spend an evening with him unless I thought something was at stake. The first medical student he’d seen overtook him, now on his way back down, heading on into the car park. The captain was waiting, stopwatch in one hand, bottle of gin in the other.
Harry thought, that used to be us.
Sunday’s snow had returned and it melted in Harry’s hair as he stepped off the 345, joining the human throng moving through Peckham High Street. Plenty of those on the bus, pressed up against their fellow commuters, had been hospital staff going home after a long day. He looked up and down the road, pulling his coat tight to his body, and though there were no blue lights it was obvious from the two police vans parked near the junction with Peckham Hill where the crime scene was.
The road was open and the traffic flowing, but the bookmakers was closed, the door sealed off with a cross of blue-and-white police tape. The closest Harry could get was a cordon set up between two lamp-posts, blocking the pavement immediately in front of the betting shop. A young, long-haired man in plain clothes ducked underneath the tape and nodded to the two uniformed officers, and Harry got his attention.
‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘Is DI Noble through there?’
‘Who are you?’
Harry dug in his wallet for his police ID. The detective laughed.
‘Don’t think we need a doctor, mate, but I’ll ask.’
As Harry turned, he noticed a sidearm on the officer’s belt and raised his eyebrows. A bus drove past, its wheels digging into a puddle of melted snow and splashing the back of his coat. He patted himself down, and Noble emerged from the betting shop, exchanging words with the long-haired detective. She approached the cordon and Harry held it up for her.
‘Evening,’ she said. ‘I hope you don’t mind coming down here.’
‘Not at all,’ Harry lied. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Gang job,’ Noble said. ‘Two hours ago, seven teenagers burst into the place, all of them waving knives about. One of them, the oldest, goes up to the counter and puts a gun up against the glass, says he’ll start shooting unless they hand over everything they have. While the poor bastards are emptying the till, the rest of them rob everyone else in there. They’re in and out in three minutes, get away on foot, disappear into the local estates.’
‘They get away with much?’ said Harry. The cold was starting to numb his fingers, and he found himself tapping out random rhythms on his thigh to keep them warm.
‘Eight grand from behind the till,’ Noble said, ‘not to mention eight or nine phones and wallets from the punters.’
‘They got away with eight thousand and you’ve got time to chat to me?’
‘It’s an armed robbery. Flying Squad take the lead. I’m just here to supervise the usual shit – evidence collection, CCTV, cataloguing the witnesses. Shall we get in my car? I don’t fancy freezing to death.’
Harry nodded.
‘I’m in the car, if DS Alcock needs me,’ Noble shouted, and they set off. She was parked around the corner, near the library, and they practically ran through the thickening sleet to get there.
‘Get the bloody heater on,’ Harry said as they slid into the seats. ‘Shouldn’t you be at the station? Doesn’t look like you’ve got much to do round here.’
‘They’ll give the case back to us in a couple of weeks, once it becomes obvious that it’s a local lot who’s done it,’ said Noble. ‘It sounds like the TPB. They’ve done this sort of thing before.’
‘TPB?’
‘Tiny Peckham Boys. They’re the dominant street gang in Southwark. Most of the local outfits we see round here are offshoots. They’re relatively new, compared to their competition in Brixton and Lewisham, but they know how to rob a bookies.’
‘It doesn’t sound to me like a professional job,’ said Harry. ‘Speaking as an amateur, of course. Sounds like bloody chaos.’
‘Nah, they know the system,’ said Noble. ‘They go in, seven black guys, all dressed identically, all similar ages, masks and gloves. Not one ID under those circumstances will stand up in court. They bring the gun, even though they’re not gonna use it, because they know that if there’s a firearm involved, we won’t turn up until we’ve got armed back-up. That buys them an extra five minutes, even in Peckham. They hassle the punters so they’re not gonna be paying attention to the guy doing the real work, and none of them will try any heroics. Then they get out, disappear into the estates, and they’re laughing.’
A wave of hot air passed over Harry’s knees and he shuffled in his seat. Both of them still had their coats on.
‘So what about Idris?’ Harry said.
‘The poor bastard who shot him’s been suspended on full pay,’ Noble said. ‘But that’s standard procedure. Word from the top is that this one can get brushed under the carpet. No one needs to be made an example of. There’s been hardly any media coverage, which is fortunate. For us, that is.’
Harry nodded as if he cared. His opinion was firmly that Solomon Idris had posed no threat to anyone, and that it had been quite obvious at the time. He could see how someone could have got a different impression – hearing a gunshot, seeing Harry on the floor – but armed police officers didn’t act on impressions, or on things that civilians like Harry did or didn’t shout at them. Just as he had, they took their jobs knowing that they would have to make brutal choices, and that they’d have to accept the consequences if they made the wrong ones.
‘Come on then,’ Noble went on. ‘What happened today? Cause if you came up here to come on to me, I’ll deck you.’
Harry ignored the joke and leant forward, directing more of the warm air around his legs.
‘Basically, Idris had an allergic reaction to one of his antibiotics, and it almost killed him. We knew he was allergic beforehand, and it was on our electronic patient record system, both from his previous visits and after he came in to A&E last night. But when we checked this afternoon, it wasn’t there. Vanished mysteriously. Someone deleted it.’
Noble shifted in her seat and turned towards him.
‘Do you know where I live?’
‘No.’
‘Kew,’ said Noble. ‘That’s another thing the Met does when you piss them off; they stick you on the other side of the city, so you’ve got to spend an hour and a half on the tube to get to work every day. And the same again to get home. So that means every bloody day I get to read the Metro and the Standard, cover to cover. So even I know that the NHS makes a mistake every now and then.’
‘People don’t delete allergies,’ said Harry. ‘That just doesn’t happen.’
‘What are you suggesting happened?’ she said. ‘I mean, you’ve obviously got suspicions or you wouldn’t be here. Spit it out.’
Harry shook his head.
‘The hospital are investigating it internally,’ he said. ‘Not necessarily because they’re suspicious, but because it was a serious incident and a patient almost died. I’ll keep you updated with what they find. But it still doesn’t sit easy with me.’
‘Bollocks,’ said Noble.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Stop with the cover-your-arse bullshit,’ Noble said. ‘You think someone deleted that allergy off the computer system so that Solomon Idris would be given a drug he was allergic to, because they wanted to kill him.’
Harry didn’t know whether to be relieved at the fact that she’d verbalised the scenario in his head, or concerned that she had read him so easily.
‘I think it’s a possibility,’ said Harry. ‘I can’t explain what happened any other way, what with the wristband, too.’
‘The wristband?’ said Noble.
‘Patients with allergies have red wristbands,’ said Harry. ‘It’s meant to prompt nurses to double-check before they give the drugs. But Idris’s wristband was gone. Someone got rid of it.’
‘Maybe someone just forgot to give him a wristband at all?’
