Jane hung up her telephone, shocked at what she had heard. Kate Walker was more than just a dear friend, she was like a younger sister to her.
She drummed her fingers on her desk for a moment, then snatched up her telephone and pushed the button to connect with her administrative assistant. 'Adrian, it's Jane. Can you cancel my tutorials for this morning and rearrange as best you can? Thank you.'
She hung up again and looked out of the window at a group of nurses who were walking across the quad, their traditional black cloaks flapping in the wind like a storytelling of ravens. She always thought the collective noun rather odd. Less sinister, she supposed, than a murder of crows. The cloaks were originally coloured blue with the founding of the hospital, but with the death of Prince Albert they had been changed to black. Like the ties of Harrow schoolboys, the colour was originally only to last for a hundred years as a memorial to the German father of nine, but like the school, again, South Hampstead Hospital had stuck with it. Jane watched them thoughtfully as they walked out of sight, hurrying out of the persistent rain into the main part of the hospital. She came to a decision and picked up the telephone once more and punched in a number. 'I'd like to speak to Dr Caroline Akunin please.'
She waited for a moment while the call was put through. 'Caroline. It's Jane Harrington. Have you left for the frozen steppes yet or are you still on call as a police surgeon?' She listened and nodded tersely. 'Good, I need a favour.'
*
The sight of a man's penis would not normally have alarmed Valerie Manners. She was a nurse after all and nearing retirement. She had seen more examples of the male reproductive organ than most women of her generation, even including those who had lived through the free love era of the sixties and the wife-swapping fad of the seventies. This one, however, was attached to a raggedy man, and although not impressive, was unpleasantly semi-priapic and being wagged in her general direction as she cut though the lower part of South Hampstead Common on her way home after a late shift at the hospital. Caught off guard, she ran off the path and through some trees and bushes into open grassland, running uphill and not looking back. She ran for three and a half minutes and then stopped, realising that she wasn't being followed. Panting for breath she leaned against a tree and willed her wildly beating heart to calm down. She berated herself for a fool, flashers weren't rapists. They might develop into rapists but at the flasher stage of their development they were usually harmless. She knew that much from reading American crime novels. She put her panicking down to tiredness and being too wired after far too may cups of coffee to get her though the night shift. She was getting too old to work nights, she told herself. Her breathing slowed eventually and as she smoothed down her rumpled uniform, a bird fluttered noisily up through the branches of a tree nearby, startling her again. She looked across at the undergrowth beneath the tree and something caught her eye. She moved a little nearer, tentatively, and bent down to have a closer look. When she saw what it was, Valerie Manners, who had been a nurse for more years than she remembered, who had always despised those trainees who fainted or screamed at the sight of blood and injury, screamed, backed against the tree, all colour drained from her face, and fainted.
Sally Cartwright spun the wheel, kicking up loose bits of gravel, and parked her car next door to a brand-new Land Rover Discovery. She turned to Delaney. 'You got any coins, sir?'
Delaney looked across at her puzzled. 'What for?'
'The parking meter.'
Delaney shook his head in disbelief and opened her glovebox and pulled out an on police business sign, which he put on the dashboard.
'Anybody clamps this car, Constable, and they'll have their bollocks as Adam's apples.'
'Yes, sir.'
Sally smiled and opened the door, looking up at the neo-Gothic splendour of the grand entrance to the South Hampstead Hospital. Delaney followed her glance, taking in the familiar sight. One thing the Victorians were good at. Hospitals and cemeteries.
They walked in through the main reception and headed towards the intensive care unit, or ICU; just like the acronyms with the Met, Delaney had trouble keeping up. Why they couldn't just stick with what people knew and what made sense, was a puzzle beyond the capabilities of his detective brain. Too many middle managers in unnecessary jobs, he suspected.
Sally followed him as he walked up the long sweeping staircase at the end of the corridor. The floor was cool, tiled and clean, but the smell of the place was just as every bit unpleasant to Delaney as it always had been. Even as a kid he had hated the smell of hospitals, the particular ethyl odours hanging in the air like an anaesthetist's gas. As a child it had reminded him of boring hours at sick relatives' bedsides, and of operations he had had, once for a broken wrist and another when a kidney was removed. But as an adult the smell reminded him of just one thing: the death of his wife. He strode forward purposefully as he reached the top of the staircase and turned left to the intensive care unit. At least now, maybe, if Norris survived, he could learn something about why his wife had had to die four years ago on that cold station forecourt in Pinner Green. He could finally learn who did it. And, more importantly, with that knowledge he could visit retribution on those responsible. It wouldn't ease the guilt he still felt over her death, nothing would do that, but the need to root out and hurt the people who had cut short her life was as powerful in him as the need for his lungs to draw breath and his heart to pump blood.
Since his mid-teens Kevin Norrell had been a larger-than-life character. Now, however, as Delaney looked down at his massive frame he looked as harmless as a beached and rotting whale. He nodded at the armed and uniformed police officer who stood on guard outside the intensive care room and turned to the young doctor who was adjusting a drip that protruded, like a number of others, from the comatose Norrell's arm. 'What's the prognosis?'
The junior doctor shrugged. 'He lost a lot of blood from the stabbing. He had to be resuscitated on the way into hospital and again on the operating table.'
Sally looked down at the grotesque figure on the bed. 'What does that mean?'
Delaney answered. 'It means his brain was deprived of oxygen for a while, he could be brain-damaged.' He turned back to the young doctor. 'How bad is it?'
The junior doctor shrugged again. 'We'll wait and see. If he doesn't come round we'll do some more tests. Check his brain activity.'
'When will you know?'
'Check back later in the day.'
Delaney nodded. 'Can I see the other guy?'
'He's in surgery now. When he comes out you can see him. You won't be able to talk to him though, not for a while.'
Delaney and Sally walked back down the corridor, outside and across the car park to a small canteen that was run by volunteers to provide refreshment to the hospital visitors. It was a wooden A-frame and built like an alpine ski lodge, as incongruent in the rain-slashed English morning as a palm tree in Piccadilly.
Sally went inside while Delaney held back, taking advantage of a lull in the rain to spark up a cigarette. He drew deep on it, ignoring the disapproving glances from passers-by as he let out a stream of smoke. He felt conflicted. Ordinarily, seeing Norrell in intensive care would have brightened his mood. But the steroid-enhanced, bonehead muscle for hire had information stored somewhere within his Neolithic brain that Delaney needed. The thought that the man might die was almost too much for him to bear. Not when he was this close, not after so long.