A Quiet Death

by Cari Hunter

  “He’d already hurt her by then,” Nelson said quietly.

  Sanne nodded. She couldn’t think of any other reason for the girl to be missing half her clothing. “Most likely. Enough that she was desperate to get away from him. Maybe he was taking her to Sheffield, or maybe he’d just planned to kill her and dump her body out here.”

  Nelson kicked at the edge of the nearest pothole. “He left her out here anyway.”

  “Yeah,” Sanne said, gazing across the vast black expanse of moorland. “But if he’d had his way, no one would ever have found her.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Meg stood by the nurses’ station, watching a porter steer Anca Miklos’s bed toward the main corridor. Two steps behind, Anca’s husband paused to look at Meg, his lips curling back like a dog’s just before it goes for the throat. The translator had left over an hour ago, her attempts to gain an honest history stonewalled by Anca’s refusal to deviate from the original story: she was clumsy, she had lost her grip on a pan of hot water, it was her fault. A specialist had admitted her onto the Burns Unit, and her husband—sweet and attentive at all times—had successfully petitioned Donovan for permission to return to her bedside.

  A file thudded onto the desk in front of Meg, spilling its contents and making her jump. She hadn’t heard Donovan approach.

  “Why haven’t you discharged Six yet?” he demanded, his pinched cheeks mottled white with anger. He never really had a colour to him, being either pallid or moribund, dependent on his mood, and right now Meg had seen corpses with healthier complexions. He shoved the file closer. “He’s going to breach.”

  “He’s intoxicated with a head injury, and he’s vomiting.” She spoke slowly, as if explaining something tricky to an impatient infant. “CT are backed up after a technical hitch, or I’d have flirted him to the ward for observation. I can’t do that if there’s a chance he’s chucking off a subdural.”

  “He might’ve made it to CT had you not wasted half your shift interfering in your F2’s case.”

  She clasped her hands together and clamped her jaw shut, which stopped her from smacking him in the mouth or suggesting precisely where he could stick his breach targets. She counted to three and then picked up the phone. “I’ll chase CT and see if they can hurry things along.”

  He nodded, oblivious to how close he’d come to losing his front teeth. “The patient in Two needs a bladder washout before he goes over to Urology. Get a nurse to do it while you finish his chart, and book an ambulance on an eight-minute response.”

  She lowered the phone. “A washout will take longer than eight minutes.”

  “So we hold the crew until the patient’s ready for transfer.” Donovan’s smirk made him even more cadaver-esque. “It’s our targets I’m concerned about, not theirs.”

  “Right.” She didn’t have the energy to argue. At least the crew would be able to get a brew and put their feet up when they arrived to collect their “immediately life-threatening” enlarged prostate. Once Donovan had stalked out of earshot, she smacked her forehead with the phone.

  “Ouch,” Liz said, walking over. She gently peeled Meg’s fingers loose and exchanged the receiver for a sandwich. “Here, eat this before you do anything else.”

  “I have to call CT,” Meg said. The sudden switch from Donovan’s bollocking to Liz’s simple kindness made her want to lay her head on her arms and sniffle for a bit.

  “The scanner’s still buggered, and Clara’s already doing the washout,” Liz said. “You, meanwhile, are twelve hours into a fourteen-hour shift, and I know you’ve not had a break, so eat your damn butty.”

  Meg peeled back the plastic wrapper and took an obedient bite from the sandwich. Claggy white bread, limp lettuce, and rock-solid tomato, along with a salty layer that might have been ham, combined to taste like shit and stick to her palate. She devoured the first half in four huge mouthfuls.

  “Better?” Liz asked.

  “Craptastic.”

  “Only the NHS’s finest freebies for you, Dr. Fielding.” Liz’s smile grew fainter the longer she looked at Meg. “You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped, hon. You know that as well as I do.”

  “I know.” Meg didn’t state the obvious, that Anca Miklos would probably be too terrified or too brainwashed to seek the help she needed.

  “How about you finish your butty and I’ll book the ambulance?”

  “Cheers, Liz.” Meg picked up the remaining half. “I might take this outside, get a bit of fresh air.”

  “Hmm. You mean you’re going to feed your crusts to the sparrows.”

  Meg kissed Liz’s cheek. “It’ll be nesting season soon, and spadgers are hungry little blighters. I’ll be back in five. If Donovan comes snooping, tell him I’ve gone to kick arse at CT.”

  She took a roundabout route to the ambulance bay, where she arranged her crusts on top of the litter bin and pulled out her mobile phone. An absence of messages from Sanne probably meant she was on a new case, so Meg left her in peace and selected another name from the directory. A familiar voice answered within three rings.

  “Detective Fraser, Domestic Violence.”

  Meg leaned against the metal grille of the oxygen store. It had only been a few days since she’d spoken to Fraser, and his assured manner always calmed her nerves.

  “Hiya. It’s Meg Fielding. Am I interrupting anything?”

  “No, not at all. Are you okay?”

  “Oh, I’m fine. I’m not calling about the case.” She twisted her fingers around the thin metal behind her. “I was wondering if you could give me some advice about a patient, only there are images in her file, so it might be easier to discuss things in person.”

  “Are you on shift now?”

  “Yes, till nine.”

  A knocking sound came over the line, as if Fraser was tapping his pen on a notepad. “Is this off the record, Meg?”

  “Yes.”

  If he was perturbed by that, he hid it well. “Okay. Will Den’s at nine thirty suit you?”

  She chuckled. The diner was a complete shithole, but it did the best twenty-four-hour breakfast in Sheffield. “Only if I can treat you to the greasy spoon special.”

  The tapping stopped abruptly. “You got yourself a deal.”

  *

  At the end of the darkened EDSOP corridor, light was blazing through the window of Eleanor’s office like a beacon. Sanne and Nelson both raised their hands to knock on the door, until she stepped back and let him do the honours.

  “Come in,” Eleanor called. She sounded hoarse, as if every hour since she’d left the moor had been spent fielding phone calls. Given the nature of the case, the top brass would be keeping a close eye on the investigation, and with the time now ticking on for eight p.m., they would have had plenty of opportunity to offer their two penn’orth.

  Sanne’s ears pricked up at the sound of a boiling kettle, and as the door opened, she was greeted by the glorious sight of three mugs and a packet of biscuits. The scent of HobNobs made her mouth water. She’d hiked a good few miles that afternoon, and she couldn’t remember the last thing she’d eaten.

  “What the hell have you been paddling in?” Eleanor asked. She passed Sanne the first mug, arching an eyebrow as she caught a whiff of the thick matter coating Sanne’s trouser hem.

  “Dead sheep, boss.” Sanne threw Nelson a dirty look. She’d changed her boots in the car park while he’d danced around and reminded her how cold he was, after which he’d persuaded her that no one would notice the muck on her trousers. Too busy warming his hands on his cup to feign sincerity, he shrugged in half-arsed apology and helped himself to a biscuit.

  “Of course, how could I forget?” Eleanor leaned back in her chair. “What was the verdict from SOCO?”

  “They concurred,” Nelson said, picking crumbs from his knees and dropping them in the bin. “In all probability a vehicle hit the sheep and was forced to a stop. The broken glass on scene indicated two distinct areas of damage, which is i
nconsistent with a single head-on collision. Although most of the debris had been thrown aside or redistributed by subsequent traffic, the tech found ground-in fragments of tinted glass farther back from the point of impact, suggesting a rear window had been smashed. It also suggests that the car was travelling in the direction of Sheffield.” He paused to sip his tea, allowing Sanne to conclude their summary.

  “SOCO found no trace of the vic or the potential perp, but we’ll need a fingertip search of the immediate area come daylight. They’re optimistic they’ll be able to get a make and model of the vehicle, and we have a tiny partial of the number plate.”

  “That’s better than nothing,” Eleanor said. “Even if you did have to dig it out of some poor creature’s liver.”

  Sanne winced in remembrance. “Yeah, it’s been a day of new experiences.” She placed her HobNob on the table, her appetite waning. “SOCO removed the body just before we left. There was no obvious cause of death, but there were indicators of sexual assault. She looked about twelve, maybe thirteen.”

  Eleanor pushed her glasses up and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I’ll be observing the PM first thing in the morning, so I’ll know more for the briefing. Full team at seven. Prepare a quick overview for presentation, and we’ll sort the rest out from there. You can add the extra hours to your time owing. The brass has given me free rein with the budget for this one, for now at least.” She tossed the biscuits to Sanne, who caught them neatly. “Here. I’ll put these on the tab.”

  “Cheers, boss.” Sanne stood, considering that a dismissal.

  Eleanor dropped her glasses back into place as her phone began to ring. She raised a hand in farewell and reached for the receiver.

  *

  Meg peeled off her scrubs top with a sigh of relief. A last-minute cardiac arrest had pulled her into Resus in Donovan’s stead, and she’d been forced to spend half an hour jumping up and down on the chest of a sixty-eight-year-old. Given that the alternative was having Donovan hang around to see out the end of her shift, though, she’d take the chest compressions any day.

  Removing her clothes made her acutely aware of how bad she smelled. She dropped the thin cotton outfit into a linen skip and ran the locker room shower hot enough to cloud the mirror, so that she didn’t have to see what multiple cycles of CPR had done to her hair.

  Stepping beneath the spray and feeling it pepper her back with blissful needles of water, she closed her eyes and let hours of stress drain down the plughole. It wasn’t as if today had been any different from the countless other shifts she’d worked. A&E departments across the country had been overstretched for years, as too many people used them for non-urgent complaints, and increasing longevity meant a rise in chronic and degenerative conditions. Add to that a high local rate of alcoholism, drug addiction, mental health crises, and young incapable parents, and it created the perfect storm twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Fortunately, Meg was a strong swimmer who rarely took her work home with her, even if the occasional case did sneak beneath her radar.

  Mindful of her meeting with Fraser, she kept her shower far briefer than she would have liked, stepping out into a bathroom so chilly it made her hop on its slippery tiles. Her regular off-duty outfit of combats and a hooded top, selected only with driving home in mind, had spent fourteen hours screwed up in her locker. In deference to Fraser, she shook out their creases before throwing them on. Finally feeling warmer, she wiped the mirror and grinned at the state of her hair. It was short, shorter than it had been for the duration of her ill-fated, six-month relationship with Emily Woodall—F1 doctor, and lover of designer clothing, meat-free food, and not swearing—and all it took to create some semblance of a style was for her to run her fingers through it. In contrast to Emily’s penchant for hair that needed pinning and clipping and buggering about with, Sanne had enthusiastically endorsed Meg’s hassle-free style, and she had a real knack for taming the most rebellious bit. Meg grabbed her bag and coat, mentally adding “Hair Whispering” to her reasons for loving Sanne. “Good Sense of Humour” and “Shared Interests” were so passé these days.

  Ideally placed for Sheffield Royal’s multitude of shift workers, Den’s Diner was a five-minute walk away, which left Meg just enough time to make a detour to the Burns Unit. She used her ID card to let herself in and followed the corridor to the nurses’ desk.

  “Hiya,” she said to a bored-looking staff nurse. “I treated Anca Miklos in A&E and wondered how she was getting on.”

  The nurse selected a chocolate from the box in front of her. A collection of discarded wrappers implied this hadn’t been the busiest of shifts. “She’ll probably need skin grafts,” she said. She bit into the chocolate and sucked out the filling. “Try explaining that to someone who doesn’t speak a word of the Queen’s. A translator was in with her for a while, so that’s another three hundred quid of the NHS’s budget down the Swanee.”

  “Aye.” Meg was too tired to enter into a debate on the subject. “Is her husband still here?”

  “No, he left at the end of visiting hours. She’s in Side Ward Three, but she was asleep the last time I checked.”

  “I’ll just pop my head round the door,” Meg said. “I won’t disturb her if she’s out for the count.”

  The nurse was already rummaging for her next chocolate. “Yeah, that’s fine.”

  The risk of infection meant that most patients on the Burns Unit were given their own rooms. Meg saw the flicker of televisions behind the blinds of those she passed, but Side Ward Three was in darkness. She tapped on the glass and pushed the door open a crack.

  “Anca?”

  The light from an IV showed that Anca was lying on her side, facing the door. She wasn’t asleep, and she stiffened in response to Meg’s voice. The device for self-administered pain relief sat beyond her reach, its syringe driver still full of morphine. It was a stupid thing to have given to someone with damaged hands, and as Meg approached the bedside she could see sweat beading on Anca’s brow. The translator had probably left prior to the medication being prescribed, and the nurse clearly had better things to do than explain how the pump worked or suggest a more appropriate alternative.

  “Here, like this. See?” Meg clicked the button. Operating the pump didn’t require much pressure, and she hoped that a steady dose of morphine might dull the pain enough for Anca to be able to use it. Within seconds, the lines of discomfort disappeared from Anca’s face, and she curled her left hand around the button. Meg tapped the timer on the pump.

  “At zero,” she said. She clenched her fist to indicate the number and mimed pressing the pump. “Yes?”

  Anca nodded once. “Zero,” she repeated.

  “That’s it. Good girl.” There was more that Meg wanted to tell her, about shelters and helplines and the support network that existed for victims of domestic abuse, but Anca’s eyes were already beginning to droop as the morphine took effect.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Meg smiled, even though she felt like crying. “You’re welcome,” she said.

  *

  Caught in the lull between pre-pub customers and kicking-out time, Den’s was mostly empty. The man himself brought Meg’s order to the table, his trademark sweat-stained bandana a testament to the heat wafting from the kitchen.

  “Hey, Doc.” He smiled at Meg and nodded at Fraser. “Does Sanney know you’re moonlighting with this fella?”

  “Nope. San-ner”—Meg emphasised the correct pronunciation, even though she knew Den would never get it right—“has absolutely no idea.” She bit the end from a rasher of crispy bacon and crunched it loudly.

  Den laid a hand over his heart. “I don’t know what she sees in you when she could have me.” He set down the bottles of ketchup and HP sauce. “If you want more toast, give me a yell.”

  He returned to the kitchen, shutting the door and cutting off a blast of sixties music. Meg swapped the bacon for her glass of water, taking a couple of sips to rinse away the grease.


  “Thanks for coming,” she said to Fraser. “I didn’t drag you away from anything vital, did I?”

  Fraser was tucking in with gusto, and he wiped egg yolk from his lips before answering. “Nothing that can’t wait, and you gave me a good excuse to call it a night. How’ve you been?”

  “Not too shabby.” She kept hold of her glass, resisting the urge to touch her face. Sanne wasn’t the only one to bear scars from the winter months; the thin line marring Meg’s cheek was still raised and pink around the edges. Her colleagues believed she had slipped on the ice, unaware that her brother Luke had punched her and then fractured her ribs by smashing her back into the kitchen sink. He was still in custody, pending trial, and Fraser—the investigating officer—had kept in regular contact with Meg to update her on the case.

  She wiped her damp fingers on her trousers. Even after six weeks, remembering the hours she had spent bleeding and vomiting on her kitchen floor was enough to bring her out in a cold sweat. “Work has been the usual nightmare, which helps,” she said. “And Sanne steps in if I get too mopey.”

  “Good for her.” Like most emergency service employees, Fraser ate at record speed, and he had already finished his meal. He uncapped his pen and dabbed its nib on his tongue, the ink adding another spot to the day’s tattoo. “So, this patient of yours…”

  “Anca Miklos,” she said, glad to change the subject. She spelled the name for him. “A twenty-four-year-old Romanian lady with burns to both hands, who was brought to the hospital by her husband. Both say the injuries were caused by her dropping a pan, but the pattern of the burns says that’s a load of crap, and she was obviously terrified of him.”

  “Was she spoken to separately?”

  “Yes, via a translator.”