This was a dreadful fall, possibly a pretty serious suicide attempt, but something was not quite right. How does anyone actually fall out of such a small window? If the man did jump, why from there? What about that snapped leg? How did he do that at the same time as skewering himself on the ironwork below? These questions gnawed away at Andy.
Good cops don’t ignore their niggles. The hair standing up on the back of the neck can be as good a clue as any at the outset of an enquiry. Good old copper’s nose is something you learn to trust. Sometimes you just can’t put your finger on why you feel suspicious but that is no reason to shrug off your hunches.
As I moved up the ranks, I was always sure to help junior officers listen to their inner feelings and encouraged them to follow lines of enquiry on the sole basis that ‘something just didn’t add up’. If it didn’t feel right it probably wasn’t; the trick was to find out why.
Andy waited at the hospital, working the phones in an attempt to find out more about this mystery man and how he ended up fighting for his life.
Having been told the ward where he had been taken, Andy emerged from the groaning lift at Level 7 of the hospital’s Thomas Kemp Tower, and quickly orientated himself while absorbing the distinctive ‘Eau de Hospital’, an aroma of disinfectant and disease combined with death.
Quite miraculously, after just a few hours and against the odds, the casualty, his body wrecked and saturated with morphine, regained consciousness. Despite his best efforts Andy still had little to go on other than it all seemed a bit odd. He therefore charmed his way through the medics to see him.
Breezing past the maelstrom of activity at the nurses’ station with a quick flash of his warrant card, it didn’t take his years of detective training to locate his man. Mummified neck to toe in plaster and bandages, the victim was wired up to the same squawking machines and slowly bubbling drips that shocked Ashley in Dead Simple, when she visited the same hospital to see the aftermath of her fiancé’s disastrous stag night.
An unannounced visit from the CID often provokes a prickly reception. This can be rooted in curiosity, guilt or just plain irritation. The reaction Andy received was no exception but he was accustomed to frostiness.
‘Hello, mate,’ he said. ‘I’m DC Andy Mays. Looks like you’ve had better days.’
‘Piss off,’ grunted the stricken man.
‘Now let’s not be like that. I don’t do pissing off when people are lying half dead in hospital beds and in your state you’re stuck with me. Why don’t we start by you telling me who you are and see where we go from there?’
‘Fuck, well, I suppose you will find out eventually. I’m Angus Sherry, that’s all I’m telling you.’
‘That’s better. Look, you’re not in trouble, Angus, not with us anyway, but it would be nice to know how you managed to take the dive out of the window today.’
‘I just fell out. I was taking some air and I fell.’
‘Look, mate, you and I both know that’s a load of old bollocks. No-one falls out of windows like that, let alone big blokes like you. Just tell me what happened, I can go and satisfy my bosses everything is OK and, tough as it may be, we won’t need to see each other again,’ suggested Andy.
At this, a nurse entered the ward wheeling an aged payphone on a trolley.
‘Angus, there’s a friend of yours on the phone. Would you like to take it now or shall I get them to call back?’ she chirped.
Andy gave a nod of permission and settled back in the chair as she plugged the phone wire in. Angus lifted the receiver, struggling with pain.
His face took on a deathly pallor. His eyes widened to the size of saucers as he listened intently, spluttering to get a word in. Andy could hear shouting coming through the earpiece.
Eventually Angus managed to speak.
‘You fucking leave her out of this. Fucking touch her and I’ll rip your fucking head off. Do what you want to me but I’m fucking warning you. Harm one hair on her head and you are dead,’ he ranted as Andy sat up, riveted by this angry call.
A short pause, then, ‘I fucking told you yesterday. It’s safe but now you’ve done this to me it’s going to take a bit fucking longer.’ Angus slammed the phone down as the other incredulous patients stared on, fascinated by this dramatic interruption to their tedium.
Recognizing that his intuition had, as usual, proved right, Andy swiftly arranged for Angus to be moved to a side room and made a flurry of calls to get some uniform back-up at the hospital in case it all kicked off. Once the emergency actions had been put in train, he returned to get to the truth.
‘Right, Angus. Shall we stop pissing around now? Something’s going on. Someone has hurt you and, unless you co-operate, sounds like someone very close to you is going to be in the next bed or even the morgue. Start talking and make it quick.’
‘First things first, get someone round my girlfriend’s house in Kemp Town and get her out of there. They are going to kill her and, as you can see, this lot don’t fuck about.’
He gave a name and address, which Andy scribbled down, before dashing out to the nurses’ station to put in the call that would send a marked police car straight round to protect her.
He slid back into Angus’s room and quietly clicked the door shut.
‘Right. She will be safe. Now everything, please.’
‘Well, I’m not a grass so you ain’t getting everything, but as you will have worked out, I’m in a bit of shit. I’m no angel and I’ve fallen out with some very bad people.’
‘Well, that was a bit careless,’ quipped Andy.
‘Yeah, right. Anyway, I’ve pissed them off big time.’
‘Right, I want to know how much shit you are in and what we need to do. No doubt we will need to speak to you later in more detail about what you’ve done but for now let’s just see if we can keep you and your girlfriend alive, shall we? What happened today for you to end up in here?’
‘Well, I had a visit. They’ve been after me for a couple of weeks. They reckon I’m trying to cut them out of a deal. Anyway, they were in a bad, bad mood. They came down to beat the crap out of me until I gave them what they wanted. When I wouldn’t play ball the three of them started on me. First it was just a few slaps, then they got more and more angry. Kidney punches, cigarette burns, knives at my bollocks, the whole lot.’
‘So what happened then?’
‘They could see that I was holding out and they were livid. They knocked me around so much I was just a heap on the floor. Then they rolled me on my back, held me down, and put my leg up on a chair. I couldn’t move. My leg was completely locked out. I had one bloke holding me down and another sitting on my foot; I was trapped. I couldn’t work out what was going to happen. Then the third bloke climbed onto the table just by my side. The penny still didn’t drop. Then the bloke on my foot yelled, “One more chance ’cos this will fucking hurt.” I stared back at him and told him to fuck off.
‘He then just nodded to the bloke on the table who jumped in the air and, with both feet, crashed down onto my leg, crunching right through my kneecap. The last thing I remember was a crack like a gun going off and seeing my foot flipping up towards my face. I was in fucking agony; it shot through my whole body. They knew they had gone too far, as I was screaming my head off. They needed to shut me up. The next thing, I was being grabbed, the lounge window was opened and they carried me over to it. Thank God I can’t remember being chucked out or landing on the railings. They wanted to kill me. They will next time.’