Where Wolves Fear to Prey (Manor Park Thrillers Book 1)

by G H Mockford

  ‘Good, let’s go then.’

  ‘We’ll be back later,’ Stokes said to Booth as he looked back at the fellow detective. And stopped.

  ‘What’s up?’ Rees asked as he almost bumped into him.

  Without saying a word, Stokes strode back into the living area and got down on his hands and knees next to the sofa.

  ‘What have you found?’ DS Rees asked.

  Stokes drew a pen from his jacket pocket, thrust it into the semi-darkness below the corner group and, after a flick of his wrists, deftly withdrew it again. A large bunch of house keys slid down the pen with a tinkling clatter.

  ‘How the bloody hell did you miss those?’ Rees barked at the Exhibits Officer.

  Fifty-Two

  It was past ten, and I had drunk three coffees and was now half way through a bottle of Lilt. I was desperate for the toilet but didn’t want to move in case I missed anything important. The uniformed officers were still hanging around, though slowly paying less attention to me and chatting more with the hospital security staff and nurses. I just wished they would speak to me. Why weren’t they taking a statement? Were they watching to see if I did anything guilty?

  I was about to give in and go to the loo when my name was called out. It was the nurse with the warm smile. I stood up.

  ‘Alex,’ she began, ‘we’re taking Sarah up to the ICU now. If you follow me, I’ll take you up.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said as I began to shuffle after her. I’d got stiff from sitting in the uncomfortable chair, despite my constant fidgeting. The nurse looked even more tired and drawn than I did. I wondered how many shifts she'd done back to back.

  ‘I’ll show you to the Relatives’ Room, and the registrar will see you shortly.’

  I nodded. A deep sense of anxiety filled me. All I could think about, all I had thought about for the last hour and a half, was what Bernie had said - brain injury. It was hidden damage that could be so brutal, the most damaging. Bones could be put back together, but brain damage was something else. Would Sarah be able to return to work? Would she even be Sarah anymore?

  As I followed the nurse, I deliberated these questions and their possible answers. What I kept coming back to was who was I really thinking about? Myself? The loneliness I would feel? The dreams that would never even be dreamed let alone pursued and completed?

  We rode in a security carded lift with orange doors, the words For Designated Theatre Staff Only clearly stencilled on them. I assumed it was okay for us to ignore the blatant message since the nurse was using them.

  We took many twists and turns around the hideously painted orange corridors, which felt nondescript and unfeeling. The paint and endless doors with names and roles on them made me feel increasingly stressed.

  ‘Here you go,’ the nurse said as she pushed open a door and led me into a room. ‘There’s a kettle and everything you need. Make yourself comfortable. Dr Howell will be along soon.’ She left me in the room, stepped across the corridor and swiped her ID card so she could disappear into ICU.

  Funny, schools and hospitals are meant to be safe places, but these days we have to make them safe. Bad people still find their way in occasionally. I thought about the business at Stepping Hill and the caretaker at Soham. They were the ones that made the headlines. Sadly I knew there would be many others. Richard Rollins was among, no…he might…be among them.

  I couldn’t stomach any more to drink and by the time I’d thought to ask about a toilet, she was long gone. I sat down. There were plenty of chairs to choose from. They were just like the ones in our staffroom. Utilitarian office furniture that looked more comfortable than it was.

  There was a gentle knock on the door, and I stood up as two men walked in. One was a bit younger than I expected, but, like the nurse, they both looked shattered. I noticed through the open door that the police were waiting outside.

  ‘Hi Alex, I’m Dr Howell, the registrar, and this is Mr Wilson, the surgeon who operated on Sarah. He’s finished for the day so thought he’d pop by,’ he said, stepping forward and holding out his hand. I shook it, and then the surgeon’s. He had a firm, steady grip.

  ‘How is she?’ I asked, bracing myself for the worst.

  ‘I’m not really supposed to tell you as you’re not a relative, but… well, Dr Howell will come to that later. The x-ray revealed she had a compound fracture in her left femur. We’d expect that. I’ve pinned it. Quite a delicate procedure. We have to insert a long pin all the way up through the bone,’ Mr Wilson moved his hands as if he was carrying out the operation before me as he said it. He seemed to be enjoying telling me this. Maybe he was one of those surgeons who had a god complex.

  ‘The tibia and fibula have been put back together with screws and plates. A difficult job too, but it’s a good job. One of the best I’ve done, wouldn’t you say Dr Howell?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Wilson,’ he answered without enthusiasm. I nodded in confirmation of receiving both sets of information, the clearly telegraphed and the hidden.

  ‘She also had broken ribs. I was surprised the ambulance crew didn’t pick up on that,’ Wilson went on before looking up at me. He'd probably realized that in his arrogance he shouldn’t have said that, perhaps opening the hospital to the possibility of legal proceedings.

  Dr Howell took over. ‘She’s also had a CT scan. I’ve ruled out any spinal injury, but I’m afraid that the skull has sustained some damage and therefore it’s likely the brain has too. The specialist will be along shortly.’ They both stopped talking, probably expecting me to ask questions. I couldn’t think of any, or rather, I didn’t want to know the answers.

  ‘I’ll pop off then,’ said Mr Wilson. ‘Good luck to you both.’

  ‘I’ll take you through to see her in about half an hour or so,’ Dr Howell continued. ‘It’s important that everyone has some settling down time now. I must warn you that she has been intubated, and we’ve connected her to a machine to help her breathe. She’s asleep, of course. We’ll keep her that way for the next twenty-four hours.’

  Again he paused, giving me the space to ask questions.

  ‘We do have one problem, which Mr Wilson just alluded to. We’ve managed to use our IT system to find out some information about Sarah, and we’ve also been able to access her records at Loxley House, what with her being a City employee. Sadly we’ve discovered she has no next of kin.’

  ‘No, she isn’t married. She lives on her own,’ I said.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not what I meant, Alex.’

  Then it all fell into place. The expensive car, the expensive flat had come at an even more expensive price.

  Sarah’s parents were dead.

  Fifty-Three

  When I walked back into the relatives’ room, having been to the toilet, I found the police officers had gone, but two other men were waiting for me instead.

  You hear people saying that you can spot a copper a mile away, and it was certainly true of these two - one of them at least. He looked to be in his early twenties, far too young, and he was wearing a suit that looked similar to the one I was wearing. Good quality, but from one of those discount places. He was tall and handsome like a model from a clothing catalogue. I wondered how long it would be before some hardened criminal would change those good looks forever, or the job took its toll and he looked haggard and stressed.

  The second policeman was middle-aged, maybe ten years older than me. He was larger than me too. His tie, a cheap polyester one, had several coffee stains on it.

  ‘Alex Freeman?’ the younger one asked. I nodded my head. ‘I’m Detective Constable Stokes and this is Detective Sergeant Rees. We’re investigating Miss Alec’s…fall. We need to ask you a few questions. Have the uniforms taken a statement from you yet?’

  ‘No, they’ve just watched me, but I’m happy to tell you everything I can,’ I said. In fact, I was glad to be talking to someone at last. It would kill the time before I would be allowed to see Sarah and, more importantly, would get them tracking down
whoever had done this.

  I sat next to the kettle and flicked it on. ‘Would you like one?’ Both officers shook their heads, so I turned it back off. ‘I was given to believe that you guys, like teachers, existed on the stuff,’ I said, laughing at my own joke. They both looked at me before sitting down on the chairs opposite. I hoped I hadn’t made a mistake. I decided to play it straight from now on and not try to be smart or funny.

  ‘Where were you at approximately seven thirty this evening?’ DC Stokes asked, getting a notepad out.

  ‘I was at Sarah Alec’s apartment,’ I answered.

  ‘Inside?’ Stokes asked, his eyes looking at me closely.

  I sat back, trying to look as confident as I could. ‘Well, yes, eventually.’

  ‘What do you mean, eventually?’

  ‘I went in after I saw the other man run out.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said DS Rees as he looked at his partner. ‘Let’s take it from the beginning.’

  I did as they said, returning to my first encounter with Sarah’s attacker outside the Galleries, and retold the story until the moment the police arrived at the scene. I did not share the lads’ suspicions that I was the attacker, and I hoped that they hadn’t either.

  ‘So, when did you see Sarah last? Before the accident I mean,’ Stokes said. He seemed a little green and his questioning a little clumsy.

  ‘That’ll be at school,’ I answered. ‘I told her I’d see her later. I left work early because…because I wanted to get ready for tonight. We had a date you see. I had things I needed to sort out first. There will have been other people at Byron Comp, where we work, who would have seen her after me though. Maybe other people who live in the apartment block too.’

  Stokes nodded his head before asking, ‘Do you know of anyone who might have wished Miss Alec harm?’

  And that was the sixty-four thousand dollar question right there. Did I tell them about Rollins?

  ‘Had she had any arguments that you know of or received any threats?’ Stokes prodded gently.

  I looked down at my hands. This should have been easy. I should have dropped Rollins right in it after the way he had talked to Charlie, maybe even treated her and Sarah.

  ‘Have you seen these before?’ the young detective asked. He took his phone out of his pocket, flicked about on the screen a few times, and showed me a photo of a bunch of keys. I could tell by their style that they were all house keys, and I assumed they didn’t belong to Sarah. They were grouped into three colours. Some were gold, some silver and some bronze.

  ‘No,’ I answered. Then I remembered that Richard had taken Sarah’s keys earlier that day. ‘I’ve not seen them before but…’

  I told them everything about Richard and Sarah, but for some reason didn’t tell them about Charlie.

  Fifty-Four

  Paul Blackmore was lying on his sofa; a pair of Homer Simpson slippers that Charlie had given him last Christmas keeping his large feet warm. In his hands was a book. He still hadn’t gotten over the fall out they'd had the other day and some of the hurtful things she’d said. He’d had gone out that morning with the plan to buy a book to read. Was Charlie right? Maybe he was uncultured and thick. She’d not actually said that, but it was how she’d made him feel. He took it on the chin. He’d deserved it after what he had done.

  He’d stood in Waterstones, bewildered at first by the sheer size of the shop. The last time he had been in a room this full of books was over twenty years ago when he was in the school library. He wasn’t there for books; what did he need them for? He already knew he was going to join the army by then. He was there watching Charlotte working with her friends.

  Paul asked a shop assistant to help him, and she had showed him the Chris Ryan and Andy McNabb books. Paul decided quite quickly that he had been there and done that for real, so why did he want to read about it. In the end, he went for a book about a pair of adventurers in search of Atlantis. He liked the sound of it, a sort of modern Indiana Jones film, but in a book.

  He had started reading it as soon as he got home in the early afternoon and hadn’t stopped. He’d surprised himself. Who would have thought that reading could be so much fun? He blamed his dislike of reading on secondary school. Who in their right mind would read Of Mice and Men? And why was Charlie reading it now, twenty odd years later?!

  With his thoughts turning back to Charlie, he began to worry. She still wasn’t home. It was gone ten o’clock now, and she should have been.

  Paul reached for his mobile and went to his text messages. He looked at the last one she’d sent him. I am at Js, he read. The message had been sent at four o’clock giving him plenty of time to know not to cook any tea. Maybe she had decided to stay over as well. She should have sent him a message to tell him though, as it was what they had agreed yesterday when they had had a good talk over everything that had happened. He’d text Mr Freeman in the morning and ask him to say if she were at school. Or not. After all, Paul knew where she was, and Jackie’s family was one he knew he could trust.

  Fifty-Five

  When I awoke the next morning, I was tempted to phone in sick. I was tired, but I knew Sarah would want me to go to work and do the job rather than be at her side. There was a lot I didn’t know about her, but I knew that.

  I'd stayed late at the hospital and after the detectives had finished with me, I rang Mrs Forrest and told her about what had happened. She was shocked, as you would be, and said that she would talk to Miss Arnold and get things sorted.

  I had just got off the phone when a nurse came and got me. I was able to see Sarah. Nothing could have prepared me, despite the nurse trying to explain to me what I would see and how poorly Sarah was. She looked like someone else, or maybe even something else. The ICU was big, bigger than a usual ward and there were no curtains, presumably so the patients could always be seen and got to if necessary. Staff were everywhere and not sitting around drinking coffee like they always seem to be on a normal ward.

  Sarah lay in her bed. She was covered, shrouded, in fact, her head bandaged and a long, flexible pipe went into her mouth. I could hardly see her beautiful face. If I hadn’t been told it was her, I would probably have walked right past. She was surrounded by machines and monitors all beeping or flickering as they measured her life, or at least what accounted for her life right then.

  I didn’t stay long. I couldn’t bear it, and I couldn’t stay awake. The nurse sent me home telling me that I needed my rest too.

  I got a taxi to Fletcher Gate and picked up my car. It was a miracle I drove home without having an accident. I collapsed into my living room chair and sat there for a while. When the tears came, they didn’t stop until my eyes stung and I had an almighty headache. After taking some pills, I went to bed. I just lay there and eventually fell asleep, but the last time I looked at the clock it was two AM.

  At school, in the morning, I sat in my darkened classroom holding a cup of coffee. There was no one else around, but I didn’t mind because I felt numb. I stared off into space wishing I was somewhere else. Still, it was the holiday tomorrow. A week off. A week of free days so I could visit Sarah. I only hoped that I was strong enough to see her every day lying there like that. The doctor had said they would keep her asleep for a day and on antibiotics, and then they would remove the tube. With a bit of luck, it wouldn’t be there when I went back tonight. I didn’t like seeing her like that.

  Poor Sarah was completely alone. She had no parents and, as it turned out, no siblings, aunts, uncles or grandparents either. No one. She had no one except for me and maybe some friends, but I didn’t have a clue who they were, or how to contact them. Her phone must have been somewhere in her apartment, and that would have them on. I assumed I wouldn’t be able to get anywhere near it though, or that the police already had it as evidence.

  How didn’t I know this sad and terrible truth about Sarah? I guessed it was something that you didn’t go around telling everyone about, especially if they'd died tragically.

 
; I lifted the cup to my lips. It had gone cold. I must have been sat there longer than I realized.

  ‘You okay?’ I slowly turned my head and looked at Mrs Forrest, I hadn’t been aware she had come in my room let alone sat beside me. I nodded, and I felt a tear spill from my eye as if the movement of my head had shaken it loose.

  ‘You should go home,’ she said. I just shook my head again, freeing yet more tears as the dam began to collapse. ‘She’ll be okay.’

  ‘How can you know that?’ I snapped. The bitterness and anger in my voice shocked me. ‘I’m…I’m sorry. You were only trying to be kind.’ She smiled and nodded her head and repeated that I should go home. ‘Sarah wouldn’t want that. I’ll be okay. I’ll go and sort myself out and I’ll be back. Ready to battle. I’ve got a free period…’ I couldn’t remember when and I wasn’t sure if it was the stress or the lack of sleep that was stopping me from recalling it.

  ‘If you’re sure,’ Mrs Forrest said once again and I knew that this was my last chance to take her up on her offer. Perhaps I was being too brave. Maybe I should have stayed at home.

  I went to the staff toilets and freshened up, throwing water over my face, not to wash away the tears, but to try and wake myself up. I could feel my stubble. I hadn’t shaved. There hadn’t been time, and I couldn’t see clearly enough in the mirror. I looked in the mirror in the gents. I looked worse than I thought.

  The door creaked behind me, and I jumped. I was a nervous wreck, but then who wouldn’t be? Someone had hurt a person I cared about.

  It was James. He stopped when he saw me, like a deer caught in the headlamps of an oncoming ten ton truck.

  ‘Morning, James,’ I said, thankful that my voice held steady.

  He just stood there and finally said, ‘How is she?’ He didn’t say her name, as if he thought if he didn’t say it then maybe what had happened to her wasn’t true. Did everyone at school know? Or was it just him?