Bloodstains

by Andrew Puckett

  Her eyes opened and focused on me.

  ‘Tom? Are you all right? I thought…’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I think so.’

  The woman returned with a cup which I put to her lips. When she finished, I said, ‘Are you sure you’re not hurt?’

  She nodded uncertainly.

  I turned to Hill. ‘What did you have in that thing?’ He gazed at me blankly. ‘Come on, what kind of shot?’

  ‘Birdshot.’

  ‘What’s the spread pattern of the gun? Is it choked?’

  Again, the uncomprehending look, then his face cleared.

  ‘Yessir, it’s choked.’ He held up his hands to indicate the narrow shot pattern and I sighed with relief. It was unlikely she’d been hit.

  I turned back and examined her face minutely, then her neck and shoulders.

  ‘You’re sure you can’t feel any pain?’

  ‘N-no. No pain, Tom.’ Her voice was faraway, she was still in shock.

  I wanted to comfort her, get her away as quickly as possible, but my head told me that this was the best time to get the truth from Hill, while he was still vulnerable.

  I held her hand and turned to the old woman.

  ‘Could you find a blanket, please.’

  She returned quickly, and I wrapped it round the still form and kissed her forehead.

  ‘Could you look after her, please?’ I said to the woman, and then turned to Hill.

  ‘She gonna be all right?’ he asked, still dazed.

  I grabbed his collar and gave him a shove. ‘No bloody thanks to you.’

  ‘Weren’t my fault—’

  Another shove.

  ‘Shut up and listen. Sit down there.’ I pointed to a chair. ‘I want to know what happened that night when Mike Leigh was killed.’

  ‘You the police or sumthin’?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Well, near enough. ‘You’re in enough trouble already, Hill, so tell. Did you kill him?’

  ‘Me? Why should I kill ’un—’

  ‘I know you and David Brown were stealing blood, so it has to be one of you. Which was it, you or Brown?’

  ‘Dave? You mus’ be jokin’, why should me or Dave kill un?’

  I leaned over him. ‘Because he caught you at it, stealing blood. He was on call that night, wasn’t he, so which of you was it?’

  He shook his head from side to side. ‘You’ve got it all wrong, mister—’

  ‘I’ve got it right, Hill. Who was it?’

  ‘Weren’t neither of us,’ he shouted. ‘Ask Dave, he’ll tell you.’

  ‘Brown’s dead,’ I said brutally.

  His mouth fell open. ‘Dead? How?’

  ‘Fell off the roof of the hospital. Sergeant Bennett thinks he jumped because he killed Leigh, but I’m—’

  ‘Dave couldn’t, ’e wasn’ even there.’

  ‘So, it was you!’

  ‘No!’ he screeched. ‘I found ’un and scarpered. Don’ you understand? Me and Dave wouldn’ kill Mike, ’e was one of us, ’e thought the whole thing up in the first place.’

  In the silence, a huge piece of coloured jigsaw fell into place.

  From the sofa, Holly wailed, ‘Tom, who are you?’

  I quickly crossed over to her.

  ‘Better now?’

  ‘Who are you?’ she whispered.

  I knelt and kissed her forehead. ‘Tell you later. Promise.’

  Hill’s story came quickly now. Leigh had approached him when he was ripe for plunder, after Falkenham had banished him to permanent night duty.

  ‘I jus’ wanted to pay that bastard back,’ he said with clenched fists. ‘Though I s’pose the money came in handy.’

  They got their system working before the computer was there, when it was ridiculously easy, taking a little to start with, then gradually working up. David had made sure that returned blood was hidden in a corner of the Bank, and Hill had squeezed off the plasma after the night shift had gone. Leigh looked after marketing and dispatch.

  Then the computer had been installed, but this had been by-passed. I wondered how much Leigh’s influence as a section-head had to do with the loopholes in the system.

  Then he’d become greedier and started on the fresh plasma, about five months before.

  ‘Why? Did he have debts or something?’

  Hill shrugged. ‘Don’ think so, he just ‘ad it in for the bosses, like me. Dave needed the money, mind, what with wife ’n’ kids to feed.’

  ‘What about Adrian Hodges, wasn’t he involved?’

  ‘Naow!’ scoffed Hill. ‘That stupid bugger. Mike an’ Dave used to fiddle what ’e’d told the computer, an’ ’e never twigged.’

  They’d continued for four months, Leigh becoming confident and taking more and more fresh plasma, until he’d come to Hill one evening, looking troubled.

  ‘“John,” ’e says to me, “I think we bin rumbled. Better stop for now, an’ if anyone says anything, jus’ look surprised and say you don’t know nothin’.”

  ‘Did anyone say anything?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘So, after a week or two I asks Mike what was goin’ on. He jus’ grinned all over is face an’ says…’ Hill’s brow furrowed in concentration. ‘It was somethin’ like, “You jus’ never know, do you? The holier they are, the dirtier they are!” Or somethin’ like that. Then ‘e claps me on the back an’ says, “We’re gonna do all right out of this.”

  ‘What did he mean?’

  ‘I dunno. A week later ’e tells me to forget all about it.’

  I thought for a moment. ‘And that’s all he said? What about David, did he know anything?’

  ‘I asked Dave a few nights later when ‘e was on call. ‘E looked at me a bit funny an’ says that Mike ’ad bin really worried. Then ’e said…’ The brow furrowed again. I got it. ’E said Mike ’ad bin worried until about a week before, then Dave found I’m cornin’ out of the freezing-room, ’orrible place that, Mike was blue, Dave said, but grinnin’ all over’s face an’ saying’ that there won’t be no trouble. Dunno why I remembered that — I ’ate that place,’ he finished reminiscently.

  ‘Are you sure Mike didn’t say anything else? Think.’

  He shook his head. ‘Nope. Jus’ that our troubles were over.’

  ‘But they weren’t, were they?’ I said harshly. ‘Mike got himself wasted. What happened that night?’

  He shuddered. I never wanna go through that again.’ He collected his thoughts. ‘Mike came an’ found me in the Issue Room. Like a cat with the cream he was—’

  ‘This was Sunday night, wasn’t it? What time?’

  ‘Bout eleven. He says he’s gonna fix things an’ I was to stay put an’ say nothin’.’

  ‘Nuthin’! I stayed put for an hour an’ thought he’d gone home. Then the phone rings, someone asks about some blood so I says I’ll go and check…’ The fear slid back into his eyes.

  ‘Go on.’

  I went to the Bank to look, the door wasn’t quite shut, funny I thinks… He swallowed. ‘I pulls it open and there he was on the floor with his head bashed in an’ blood all over the place an’ a gurt big spanner beside him…’ He stared at a space over my shoulder as he re-lived it. ‘I picks it up, dunno why, then I hears a door bang down the end of the corridor an’ drops it with a gurt clang…’ He swallowed again. ‘There was footsteps, I was shittin’ meself, I ran through Plasma, through the Wash-up an’ out the other side, I could hear the footsteps after me. I runs straight out the lobby, on me bike an’ away.’

  His chest heaved. I leaned forward. ‘John, who was it? Didn’t you look behind you?’

  ‘Not ferkin’ likely, would you?’

  I suppressed a smile. ‘Perhaps not. So, you’ve no idea who it was?’

  He shook his head.

  He had gone to his digs, and then on impulse stuffed a few things in his pockets and cycled all the way to his sister, for that was who the old woman was.

  They’d both been born in this cott
age; the Forestry Commission had allowed her to stay in it and she’d watched the trees grow up around her.

  Hill’s story guttered out like a spent match, there was nothing more I could get from him.

  The silence was self-consciously broken by Holly.

  ‘Tom, I don’t feel well. Can we go, please?’

  Guilt caught up with me and I knelt beside her.

  ‘Of course. Do you feel up to walking?’ I turned to Hill. ‘Is it possible to get a car up here?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Holly. ‘I can walk.’ She stood up, gripping my hand so fiercely that I winced.

  Hill said, ‘It’s only bout a mile to the road.’

  ‘Can you manage that?’

  She nodded and walked to the door.

  I caught Hill’s arm and said quietly, ‘What you’ve told me will have to come out, but if you tell the truth, you’ll get off lightly.’ I hoped this was true. ‘But you’d better stay here for now, OK?’

  He nodded. There was no more fight in him.

  ‘I’ll come and see you in a couple of days. We’ll forget about the gun, I’d hide it if I were you.’

  A minute later he pointed the way we should go, and we left them on the doorstep of the sad little house.

  As soon as we were out of earshot, Holly said, ‘Tom, what is your job?’

  Briefly and unsensational, I told her. She didn’t seem surprised, her voice still seemed to have a dreamlike quality.

  ‘What will you do now?’

  ‘I don’t know. Have a good think — I think. Write a report and tell my boss.’

  ‘Are you going to the police?’

  ‘How much did you understand of what Hill was saying?’

  She hesitated, then shook her head. ‘Not very much. Something about stealing plasma.’

  ‘How do you feel now?’

  ‘Pretty rotten.’ She slipped her hand into mine. ‘Tom, are you going to the police?’

  ‘Not yet, there’s something I’ve got to sort out first.’

  ‘You’re not going back to the Centre, are you?’

  ‘Don’t worry about me, the important thing is to get you to bed. Yours, not mine.’

  She smiled wanly.

  We emerged from the forest and saw that we still had a mile to go to the road. That mile was longer than the rest of the walk put together. She began to flag, her feet dragged, and she seemed close to collapse by the time we got there. It was another three miles up to the road to the Metro.

  I waved down the first car that appeared, and the owner rather reluctantly took us there.

  Holly was in no state to drive, so I did. Then the air from the window seemed to revive her and by the time we reached Tamar, she sat up and gave me directions to her home.

  She retired to bed immediately and her father, a tall man whose white hair accentuated the seamy tan of his face, drove me home.

  I was too late for dinner, of course, so I made do with some cheese sandwiches before going up to my room for a shower, where I bandaged my thumb, then down again to the bar for some lubricated thought.

  If I were a computer, so went my thoughts over the first pint, then I could easily handle the mass, or rather mess, of data input by Hill. First delete his ramblings, then correlate what was left with what I already knew.

  But I only had my poor brain, which had to do it the hard way and hope for the occasional flash denied to computers that we call inspiration. Not that my record was very impressive in that department.

  So, it was Leigh all the time, not only in it, but the instigator. It had been too easy for him with such readymade accomplices to hand, the disgruntled Hill and the neurotic David for whom life wasn’t doing enough.

  But had David killed Leigh?

  It was possible, if he’d found out that Leigh was moving up to better things and cutting him out.

  Another pint.

  No, it wouldn’t do, hadn’t Leigh told Hill that bigger fish were up to bigger games? ‘… the holier they are, the dirtier…’ Perhaps one of these pike had killed Leigh for being too greedy, and later perhaps, also killed David.

  But why?

  Because David had found out what Leigh had found out and become a security risk.

  Yet Bennett was convinced it was suicide.

  No, no, it had to be murder. Leigh had gone in that Sunday night to boogie with a big fish, not to appease a minnow.

  But how, how…? Leave it, get another beer and go back to what you know.

  ‘… The holier they are the dirtier…’ What was there in the Centre that was worth killing for?

  Holier, that would have to mean Falkenham, Chalgrove or Trefor. I couldn’t see any of them as murderers.

  But what if Leigh had meant his own peer group? Pete, Steve, or maybe this was where Adrian fitted in.

  Leigh and David had been killed as soon as they had become nuisances. A cool ruthless brain.

  Who? Who?

  I shook my head. Go back a space.

  How had Leigh found out? I closed my eyes and tried to remember what Hill had said. Leigh, looking pleased with himself.

  Yes, but when?

  Coming out and grinning. David said that, but where?

  Then I had it: coming out of the freezing-room.

  Would what Leigh had seen still be there? Surely ‘they’ would have moved it?

  Why? ‘They’ didn’t know how Leigh had found out, only that he had.

  It was still there, and I was going to have to find it.

  Now.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The taxi slid silently through the city and deposited me at the bottom of the hill. The sun had set, but its afterlight glowed on the main block. I walked up past the young trees. Not a leaf trembled. I began to sweat and took off my jacket, wishing for a moment that the taxi had taken me to the top. No — the orderly might have seen me and asked questions.

  I glanced at him through the Blood Issue window, he was smoking a cigarette, immersed in his TV. I replaced my jacket and slipped in by the glass door, tiptoeing past the thin crack of light through which the fulsome tones of Dallas or some such filtered. Into the main corridor, shadows stippled as before, they didn’t bother me now, nobody knew I was here. Left, into the Blood Bank corridor which led to the freezing-room. It was pitch dark.

  I closed the door softly and switched the light on for a moment to get my bearings. The door leading to the freezing-room lay about five yards ahead. I walked past the Bank, through the door and pressed the next switch before going back to turn off the first. Wouldn’t do to excite the orderly’s curiosity if he came in for blood.

  Then back to the freezing-room corridor, where I stood for a moment in front of the massively insulated door before gently pulling the handle. With a snap, the catch was released, and it swung open. Glacial air washed gratefully around me.

  It was dark inside, where was the switch? Beside the door. I turned the knob and a red lamp on the panel glowed as the room lit up. I stepped inside, pulling the door almost closed behind me.

  Where to begin? The slatted shelves were filled with crates of bottles, wire baskets filled with tiny containers, and cardboard boxes.

  I pulled out a plastic tray filled with thin cardboard containers. Opened one. Inside was a pack of frozen plasma. Replaced it and walked slowly round the perimeter, looking for what Leigh must have seen.

  The cold pulled at my face.

  Past the light which hung over one of the huge refrigerator units, silent for the moment because the door wasn’t closed. The hairs in my nostrils froze as I breathed in.

  Think: why had Leigh come in here in the first place? Obviously to get something, but what?

  I pulled out a metal basket, picked up a glass container. Nothing, just chilled fingers that I had to blow on to thaw.

  Why would he come in here? He worked in Plasma, so something to do with that.

  I walked round again, trying to read the labels on the crates and cardboard boxes through the thin l
ayers of frost. Nothing. My eyelids prickled, and I blinked. God, it was cold! The icicles hanging from the fridge unit were like delicate coral.

  The shelves in the centre of the room were stacked with aluminium boxes marked FFP followed by a number. I pulled one out and prised off the lid with my fingernails. Inside was a row of frozen packs of plasma, lined up like ice-creams in a grocery.

  FFP — Fresh Frozen Plasma!

  Hill had said that Leigh had recently started on the fresh plasma…

  I picked out one of the packs and rubbed at the number on it. Another. Odd, they’re quite different — shouldn’t they be consecutive? Tried some more, but my frozen fingers wouldn’t grip properly.

  Put down the box and rubbed my hands together. No good, they were too cold. As were my feet, the concrete floor had sucked the warmth from them through the thin soles.

  Better go and thaw out, take the box with me.

  I picked it up and hurried round to the door, the cold pinching through my jacket. As I reached to push it open, it shut before my eyes with a gentle click. The fans in the freezer units hummed to life and a wave of freezing air hit my face.

  Unbelievingly I pushed at the door. It wouldn’t budge. Pushed the knob that Trefor had shown me, the one that released the catch from outside. It slid uselessly in and out. I pulled, it came free and the hole at the end where the pin should have been emptily mocked me.

  I threw it down and shouted. No response, not a sound other than the fans.

  The alarm siren! I reached up for the cord, pulled and held it. No sound. But there wouldn’t be, would there? The room was insulated.

  I waited as the pain stroked my frozen knuckles, where was the orderly? Come on, come on!

  Then I realized that whoever had shut me in would have first ensured that the siren wouldn’t work.

  The lights snuffed out, leaving me with utter darkness and the cold breath of the fans.

  I shouted again, beat at the door with my fists, screamed, kicked, begged…

  Pull yourself together, I told my body as it shook as much from fear as coldness.

  Think: The words of my instructor came back to me, as he had lectured us on exposure: A man can survive intense cold for longer than most people realize… yes, but what else?