She swung left off the main road and turned quickly left again opposite the disused lido, bringing the car to a halt facing the university lake. Without thinking, she had been heading, not towards her own place, not back to the station, but to Ian Carew’s. God’s gift, that’s what he thought he was. God’s sodding gift! The way he’d come prancing past her while she was sitting behind the wheel, hours watching the short length of street, front of his house. Clever bastard, just to prove he could do it, show he didn’t care. Sneaked out the back and gone off who knows where. A lot of people would have gone back in the same way, left her thinking he was inside all the while, a good boy, doing whatever good boys did. But, no, not in his nature. Cocky! Couldn’t resist letting her see him, supercilious grin on his face and knowing she’d be looking at the way the material stretched tight across his behind. Much as Lynn hated to admit it, he had a great arse!
That wasn’t what she was doing, was it? Fancying the man? Fantasizing about him? If she were, one picture of Karen Archer should do the trick.
Did you want him to have sex, make love to you?
The marks on Karen Archer’s face, the eyes that could never once return your gaze.
He said he didn’t believe me. Said I was dying for it.
The police in Devon had reported no sign of her; she still had not contacted her parents. What happened next? Posters in shopping centers and outside police stations up and down the country? An urgent message on Radio Four, between the weather forecast and the news? Or wait until a body turned up somewhere months from now? The wasteland south of Sneinton, along by the railway line. Wedged between the lock gates on the Trent Canal. Under a mulch of leaves and earth in the middle of Colwick Woods.
And now …?
Amanda Hooson had been murdered in the early hours of Saturday afternoon, exactly when Carew had apparently been out of the house she had been so uselessly watching. Common sense told Lynn that if he had had anything to do with that, the last thing he would have done was strut past and throw suspicion on himself. Not with Lynn sitting there, unwittingly providing him with an alibi.
Or would he? It depended just how clever, how cool he really was.
Lynn locked the car and walked towards the lake, not the crowds today of youngsters waiting to hire rowboat or canoe and get out on the lake; lads who splashed each other with oars, occasionally overturning their boats and falling in; couples who moored alongside the small island and made love in the undergrowth, feeding the condoms afterwards to unsuspecting ducks. A stroll around might clear her mind of this, at least, encourage her to think of other things: whatever was going on with Kevin and Debbie Naylor, whether they’d get through the year without divorce; if her mother could persuade her dad to talk to the doctor about his depression, and if ever he did what the doctor might say. There were days, Lynn thought, buying herself one of the last ice-creams of the year, when she wished she had more problems in her own life, save her worrying so much about those of others.
“I was wondering,” Resnick said, “if you had five minutes? Couple of things you could help me with. Perhaps.”
“Five pairs of hands might be more useful.” Sarah Leonard brushed an arm across her forehead; a curl of dark hair had escaped beneath the front of her blue and white cap. Something about a woman, Resnick thought, almost as tall as yourself; the closeness of the mouth. If last time she had reminded him of Rachel, now there was no such misrecognition: he knew who she was and she was herself.
“Let me change this catheter and I’ll be with you,” Sarah said.
“Fine,” Resnick nodded, wincing a little at the thought.
“Don’t worry, I’ll wash my hands first.”
They went out into the corridor and stood at a window, looking down onto Derby Road. “I don’t know how you do it,” Resnick said.
“What? Catheters, colostomy bags, enemas, that sort of thing?”
“I suppose so. Partly, anyway.”
Sarah grinned. “It isn’t all piss and shit, you know. James Herriot without the friendly collie dog yapping encouragement round your feet. A lot of the time it’s a good laugh.”
Resnick looked back at her, disbelieving.
“The other day,” Sarah said, “this young lad on the ward. Asked one of the student nurses to fetch me over, something seriously troubling him. ‘Staff,’ he says, ‘I don’t know what to do, I’ve got this erection and it won’t go away. Can you help me do something about it?’” Sarah laughed again, remembering.
“Dare I ask?” said Resnick.
“Took him along a bucket and told him to get on with it.”
“What I wanted to know …” Resnick began.
“Not you as well?” A knowing grin, sending him up just a little.
Resnick could see his own reflection in the glass, a mixture of embarrassment and pleasure. One day, he thought, if I should ever get to know you better … “What I need,” Resnick said.
“Yes?”
“More in the nature of information.”
“Go ahead.”
“An ODA.”
“What about them?”
“What do they do? That would be a start.”
“Operating Department Assistant. Attendant. Some hospitals, they call them Anesthetist Technicians.”
“And that’s their function, assisting the anesthetist during an operation?”
“The main one, yes. Supervising the machines, making sure they’re connected correctly so that the right mixture of oxygen and gases gets through to the patient. But they can do more than that, act as scrub nurse …”
“Scrub nurse?”
“Handles the instruments during the operation, passes them to the surgeon …”
“Scalpel.”
“Scalpel. Exactly. Whatever he’s using. Hands them over, takes them back.”
“Responsible job.”
“And she doesn’t spend the day dealing with fecal matter.”
“Amanda Hooson,” Resnick said. “Don’t suppose you knew her?”
Sarah shook her head. “Should I?”
“Apparently she used to work here.”
“As an ODA?”
Resnick nodded.
“We’ve twelve theaters, fifteen to twenty ODAs. When was she here?”
“Left around two years ago.”
Sarah gave it a little thought. Below, traffic was driving into the hospital in a constipated stream. “No, I’m sorry. Though there is something about the name.”
“How recently have you listened to the news?”
Sarah’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, God, it’s her.”
“Afraid so.”
“At the university, the student who was murdered.”
“Yes.”
For a moment, she rested a hand on his upper arm, a grip strong enough for Resnick to be aware of each finger separately through his sleeve. “I thought,” Sarah said, “when I heard it, a woman attacked with a knife, whatever, stabbed, I thought it isn’t, it can’t be anything to do with us here, at the hospital. She’s not a doctor, a nurse, she’s a student.”
“I know,” Resnick said. “That was what I thought, too.” He knew he didn’t want her to move away, not yet, but, of course, she did, the bounce and the snap that was there before quickly returned.
“We’ll be talking to staff about security,” Resnick said. “Officially, I mean. Leaflets, possibly, I don’t know. In the meantime …”
Sarah grinned, broader than before. “Be careful out there?”
“Sorry?”
“Hill Street Blues. The sergeant, at the end of roll call … you never saw that?”
Resnick shook his head.
“Shame. I think you’d have liked it.”
Resnick didn’t think so. Police series, films, he liked his fantasies a little less close to home.