A Quiet Death

by Cari Hunter

  *

  Crouching by the pushchair in cubicle six, Meg high-fived the toddler she’d just discharged. His little paw, sticky with paracetamol syrup, left a smear of pink goo on her palm.

  “Cheers, pal.” She wiped her hand on her scrubs and stood, putting her on the level with his painfully young parents. “Okay, here’s more paracetamol to take home. One spoonful every four hours if he’s still warm and grizzly. And what don’t we do if he’s so hot he’s started to shiver?”

  “Wrap him in a blanket and put him in front of the fire!” The dad almost shouted his answer, as if determined to beat his girlfriend to the title of Star Pupil.

  “Excellent.” Meg rewarded his progress with a Feverish Child leaflet. “Any problems, phone 111 for advice,” she said, choosing not to add that the call-takers manning the helpline would most likely dispatch an ambulance to return the child to A&E.

  Completing her paperwork made Meg half an hour late, not too bad for a twilight shift, the end of which coincided with closing time at most of the local pubs. She changed in the staff room, swapping scrubs for clothes that didn’t smell of strawberry medicine and baby sick, and leaving the rest of her belongings in the locker to collect on the way out.

  After buzzing to no avail, she used her ID card to let herself into the ITU, passing the empty nurses’ desk on the way to John’s room. Frantic activity and shouts of “Clear!” at the far end of the main bay explained the dearth of medical personnel. The door to room two sat ajar, an irregular clicking sound replacing that of a ventilator. She took a moment to curse every deity known to man, plus a few more she’d made up, before she went any farther. The clicking stopped as she stepped inside, Teresa lowering her knitting so she could pay attention to her visitor. Given the late hour, she had probably expected a nurse, and her face brightened when she saw Meg instead.

  “What on earth are you doing here, love?” She stood to hug and kiss Meg, holding on tightly until her grip faltered and she began to cry.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay,” Meg murmured. She could see John over Teresa’s shoulder, his vent removed, a thin oxygen tube resting beneath his nose as he breathed for himself. “Come and sit down.”

  They sat together, still holding hands, and stared at the bed.

  “I promised Sanne I’d come up after my shift,” Meg said. “She was on a surveillance job until late, and she barely slept last night.”

  “She phoned earlier, but I didn’t answer.” Teresa shook her head, guilt stark in her eyes. “I didn’t want to tell her.”

  “I’ll tell her,” Meg said. “Don’t fret about that.”

  “He woke for a few minutes. I don’t think he recognised me, and I know I should’ve reassured him, but I couldn’t bear to say a word.” Teresa spread the tiny half-finished sweater across her knees, her fingers pulling at a thread. “Look at this. I keep dropping stitches.”

  Meg took the sweater and folded it away. “Come on. I’ll give you a lift home.”

  It was over an hour later that she crawled into bed at Sanne’s, chilled to the bone and woozy with fatigue. Sanne nudged into Meg’s arms, mostly asleep but generous about sharing her warmth.

  “Everythin’ okay?” she mumbled.

  “Everything’s fine.” Meg kissed her forehead. “Shh, go back to sleep.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The frozen ground sent shockwaves through Sanne’s calves as she pushed her tired legs into a sprint. She cut left, leaving the path and relying on the sky for navigation. Keeping Orion’s Belt on her right, she traversed a section of no man’s land, cracking the ice on frosty bogs and using the thicker patches of heather as stepping stones. The exertion cleared her head, forcing her to focus on her route and not on the simple, half-stupefied exchange that had sent her out running in the first place.

  She found the homeward path without difficulty, lengthening her stride as the terrain became less tricky. An owl glided silently in front of her, its wings outstretched in the moonlight. She stopped to track its flight, losing sight of it when it swooped behind a dry stone wall, the early morning so still that she heard the terrified squeak of its prey. Continuing at a less frantic jog, she let Rigel guide her home, the bumps and dips on the path familiar enough that she could admire the shadowy hills without fear of falling.

  She’d left her kitchen light on and set a towel and a glass of water in readiness by the back door. She drained the glass and tiptoed upstairs in the darkness, trying not to make any noise as she showered and dressed. Notification of her failure came in the form of warm hands helping her to tug on her sweater until her head popped out through its narrow polo neck.

  “Hey,” Meg said. She scratched her scalp, obviously troubled. “Are you okay? I found your note, but I feel like I missed something.”

  Sanne walked her back to bed and tucked her in. “I’m all right. I woke up early and asked whether my dad was off the vent. You said yes, and I went for a run so I didn’t stick my fist through a wall, that’s all.”

  “Fuck.” Meg got caught in the sheets as she struggled to sit up again. Conceding defeat, she thwacked her head onto the dip in her pillow. “Shit, San, I’m sorry. I meant to break it gently, but I don’t…I don’t even remember speaking to you.”

  Sanne ran her hand through Meg’s bed-tufted hair. She hadn’t intended to blindside her, and Meg’s blunt answer had been preferable to any attempt at beating around the bush. “It’s not your fault. You were pretty much asleep, I think.”

  “Yeah, I got in late.” Meg checked Sanne’s knuckles just in case. “Don’t punch walls. Nothing good ever comes of it.”

  “I won’t,” Sanne said, crossing her heart. “Have another hour or two in bed. I’m not leaving for a while yet.”

  “Mm, I’m getting up.” Meg yawned, her eyes already drifting shut. “I’ll just hang on till you’re done in the bathroom.”

  “That’d be a first.” Sanne toed her slippers from their hidey-hole beneath a chair and hopped into them on the landing. Famished, and finding herself spoiled for choice when she opened her fridge, she decided on sausage and eggs and started her laptop while the grill warmed.

  She hadn’t realised how many photos she and Nelson had amassed the previous day until she accessed the camera’s memory card and saw more than a hundred thumbnails begin to open. Her eggs were scrambled in readiness and the sausages sizzling before everything had finished downloading. For convenience’s sake, she loaded her breakfast onto toast, eating it left-handed so she could operate the computer with her right. She deleted the blurred or poorly lit images and sorted the remainder by gender and age, comparing them again to Parry’s gallery of rogues in case anyone had been overlooked. The kitchen grew lighter as she worked, although clouds were quickly rolling in to cover the patches of blue sky and dull the sunshine. Squally showers of sleet were pattering against the window by the time Meg came down, dressed in so many layers she could barely fit through the door.

  “Central heating, San,” she said, rubbing her upper arms with gloved hands. “I thought we had an agreement about this.”

  “Bugger, yes, we did. I meant to set the timer before I went to bed. Sorry.” Sanne left the table to stack another log onto the burner and refill the kettle.

  “At least the shower was hot. I’ll check the thermostat for you and see if it needs tweaking.” Meg’s voice faded, as if she’d abruptly lost interest in the topic.

  Sanne glanced up from the stove. “You all right over there?” She tapped the spoon on one of the mugs, trying to attract her attention. “I saved you some sausages, if you fancy them for breakfast.”

  Meg didn’t answer. She had sat in Sanne’s seat and was peering intently at the computer. “What are you doing with his picture?” she said.

  Abandoning the mugs, Sanne went to crouch by Meg’s side. The image she had been about to file now filled the screen. She tilted the laptop, blocking out the window’s glare so she could see the person properly. It was one of the two men assume
d to be Polish. “Do you know him?” she asked.

  Meg nodded. “It’s Cezar Miklos.” She slapped the table impatiently as Sanne hesitated. “You know, that Romanian shithead from A&E.”

  “Christ. The one who brought his wife in with the burns?”

  “Yes, and then disappeared with her. Where did you get this?”

  “From our stakeout,” Sanne answered slowly, her brain working ten to the dozen. “Did Fraser ever find proof that Miklos was actually married to the woman you treated?”

  “No. Every detail he gave was false—the names, her date of birth, their home address—and then they vanished into thin air.”

  “Apparently not.” Sanne clicked to the next photograph, hoping to find a car in the shot. She remembered the men parking close to the shop, but she’d never thought to capture the vehicle. The edge of a Saab had been caught in frame, but none of its plate was visible. “Fucking hell!” She shoved away from the table and paced to the window.

  “You think Anca Miklos was trafficked, don’t you?” Meg said.

  Sanne leaned against the sink, its edge chilling a line across her back. “I think there’s a very good possibility of that, yes. And if she was, then this bloke showing up at this particular shop is one hell of a coincidence.”

  “Unless he simply went there to buy food.” Meg folded her arms, rocking her chair onto two legs as she spoke. “This Romanian chap, with his friend, at almost nine p.m., in an area that’s pretty much one hundred percent Pakistani.”

  Sanne grinned and picked up the phone. “Precisely.”

  *

  “Bloody Nora.” Fred swung his chair around, eyeing Sanne as she walked toward him with Meg. “No one told me it was ‘Bring Your Girlfriend to Work’ day.”

  “That’s because Martha’s already got you in enough trouble.” Sanne paused for introductions. “Meg—Fred Aspinall.” She lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “The dancer with the dodgy back.”

  “Oh, salsa man!” Meg shook the hand he proffered. “Try a dollop of Brufen gel, mate, and maybe some warm-up exercises next time.”

  Sanne steered her away before Fred could start comparing notes on Meg’s preferred type of warm-ups. Nelson met them by Sanne’s desk, setting his paperwork down so he could hug Meg.

  “The boss and Parry are waiting in the briefing room,” he told Sanne.

  “Right, cheers.” She bit the inside of her lip, but her teeth relented slightly when Meg leaned into her.

  “Best not keep them,” Meg said.

  Unable to get hold of Eleanor on the phone, Sanne had left a message and immediately hot-footed it to HQ with Meg in tow. Word of a possible development had obviously got round, because most of the EDSOP detectives tagged along to the briefing room, where Eleanor waved them all inside.

  “Detective Fraser is caught up in an interview and asked that we start without him,” she said. “And for those who don’t know, this is Dr. Meg Fielding from the A&E at Sheffield Royal.”

  “Morning, all.” Meg smiled at her audience, clearly in her element. She found a USB port for Sanne’s memory stick and opened the first image, a cut-and-paste composition of Cezar Miklos outside Sadek Foods plus the hospital CCTV photograph that Fraser had sent to her mobile phone. The two men were unmistakeably one and the same.

  Sanne stepped forward when she saw Nelson’s double take. “For the past week, Domestic Violence have been trying to find this man—a Romanian national—in connection with suspected non-accidental injuries inflicted on a young woman he claimed to be his wife. He booked her into A&E using a forged European Health Insurance Card and false details, and he took her from the Burns Unit the following day before she could be properly treated. DV have been unable to locate him since.”

  “What was the nature of her injuries?” Parry asked.

  “Extensive partial thickness burns to both hands,” Meg said. “If I had to guess, I would say that someone held her by the wrists and forced her hands into hot liquid. She supported his story of a dropped pan, but the wounds didn’t tally with that, which is why I spoke to Detective Fraser.”

  “I took the second photograph during our surveillance last night,” Sanne said. “This man and another white male spent approximately twenty minutes inside Sadek Foods.”

  “Looks like they did their weekly shop,” George said.

  “Yes, it does.” She adjusted the image to show Miklos’s carrier bag. “But then it looked like he’d brought his wife to A&E after a simple accident, and that turned out to be a load of crap.”

  “There were three Romanian women in the Cheviot Road brochure,” Nelson said. “And we’ve never established the nationality of all the vics held at Nab Hey. If Rafiq Sadek is involved in any of this, it would make sense for him to have Eastern European connections.”

  Parry turned in his chair so he could address the whole room. “I don’t recognise either of these chaps, but there’s a large market for women trafficked from Eastern Europe, and thanks to the EU’s freedom of movement policy the logistics are far simpler than shipping in women from Asia. My team are still attempting to trace all the women in the Cheviot brochure who weren’t found in the house, plus the ones recorded as having passed through the property and shipped elsewhere, but the majority of them were EU nationals.”

  “Perhaps Sadek started small but fancied establishing a multinational organisation,” Eleanor said. “Especially now we’ve taken Bashir out of the loop and potentially created a power vacuum.” She looked at Parry, who raised an eyebrow and blew out his cheeks.

  “Bollocks, I didn’t think of that,” he said.

  “At any rate,” she continued, “it’s enough to bring Sadek in again. Sanne and Nelson, if you could do the honours, please?”

  Sanne nodded, having already prepared herself for the request. As the meeting splintered into smaller groups, Eleanor excused herself from a conversation with Parry to approach her and Meg.

  “I appreciate you coming in,” she said to Meg. “I’ve booked Interview Two for you, if you’re still sure about doing this.”

  “I’m sure.” Meg’s eyes flickered to Sanne’s for a split second, the only hint that she wasn’t as indomitable as she appeared. As one of the few people to have seen Anca Miklos in person, she had agreed to look through the photographs from Cheviot Road to establish whether Anca was among them.

  “I don’t know what would be worse,” she said as Sanne escorted her down the corridor. “Finding her in there, or not finding her and never being able to trace her.”

  Sanne changed the sign on Interview Two to “In Use” and held the door for Meg. “This investigation has gone off on so many tangents that Cheviot Road might be completely unrelated,” she said. “A date matched, that’s all. The raid opened up a can of worms, but they might not connect to anything—not the body at Greave, nor the women who were kept in that barn.”

  “You sound fed up,” Meg said, taking a seat on the main sofa. “You like all your ducks in a row, don’t you?”

  “Aye.” Sanne sat next to her, close but not touching, wanting for all the world to simply lock the door and forget what was happening beyond it. “In a row, and getting fat on that can of worms. I should know better by now, but I always hope there’ll be a resolution, that someone will be held accountable. With this case, though, we’re just wandering into grey area after grey area.”

  Meg turned on the lamp, throwing a mellow spotlight onto the file in the centre of the coffee table. She moved it toward her but stopped short of opening it.

  “Emergency medicine is far simpler,” she said, toying with the edge of the binder. “If it’s broken, we can try to fix it or drug it into submission. If that doesn’t work, the patient either gets better on their own or slips off the plate. I couldn’t do your job. It’s far too messy.”

  “Says the doctor who regularly ends up elbow-deep in gore.” Sanne leaned forward and stilled the motion of Meg’s hand. “Do you want me to stay?”

  “No. Don’t
you have an arsehole to arrest or something?”

  “We have a person of interest to bring in for further questioning,” Sanne declared in clipped Queen’s English.

  “The same person of interest who decided you were his very favourite detective the last time around?” Meg asked, her tone suddenly serious.

  Sanne regretted telling her about that. “Yes, that’s the one. I’m sure he’ll be delighted to see me.”

  “No doubt.” Meg patted Sanne’s jacket, using one hand and then both when she didn’t find what she was searching for. “Where’s Sparky?”

  “Locked up safe and sound, and that is not its name.”

  Meg shooed her away. “Just be sure to take him with you.”

  “I always do,” Sanne said. “Call me if you need me.”

  Meg nodded and picked up the file. “I always do.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Sanne leaned over the bathroom sink, turning her face toward the far wall and checking her hair in the mirror. She couldn’t see anything amiss, but she dampened a handful of tissues regardless and blotted the side of her head, gently at first and then with more force until the area felt well and truly sanitised. She used her fingers in lieu of a comb and straightened her shirt collar.

  Rafiq Sadek smiled at her as she walked into Interview One and took her place beside Nelson. The tape recorder was already running, the introductions concluded. The same solicitor as before had accompanied Sadek to HQ, the delay incurred by contacting him being largely to blame for what had happened outside the shop.

  Sanne sipped from the mug Nelson had set by her notes, disinclined to start the interview until she was ready. She’d offered to take the lead again, given that Sadek would probably address all of his responses to her anyway. Blowing on her tea, she regarded him over the brim of her mug. The small radiator behind him packed a punch, and a thin film of sweat gave an unflattering shine to his face. Failing to conceal his irritation this time around, he changed position restively, taking several sly glances at his watch.