‘Me an’ me dog’s on t’outside of the X-ray department,’ the dog handler said and just to prove he had a dog, it barked. ‘I’ll stay in the vicinity till further notice.’
‘Roger,’ the communications operator said.
‘I’m in A amp;E now,’ Dermot Byrne called in. ‘Meet me somewhere, John. You name the location.’
‘Er. . X-ray reception, Sarge,’ said the less than certain Taylor. ‘He must be here somewhere, must be.’ He sounded harassed.
‘Inspector to PS Byrne.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Situation report, re the female prisoner, please.’
‘Standby.’
Henry pushed the underpowered car through its gears, taking it to the limit at each change. He ran red lights, depending rashly on the protection afforded him by the meagre flashing blue light on the car roof. It was a false sense of security, he knew. Other cops had relied on the same in the past with fatal consequences. But at that time in the morning on the almost deserted streets, he felt reasonably confident of not wiping anybody out.
‘PS to Inspector.’
‘Yo!’ said Henry in the middle of a sharp bend, one hand on the wheel, tyres squealing, the other hand on his transmit button.
‘Bad news — she’s dead, sir.’
Henry had real problems controlling the car coming out of the bend, it was swerving all over the place. He narrowly missed a milk float trundling innocently down the street, the milkman’s terrified face was a sight to behold.
‘I’ll get you next time,’ Henry growled.
Because it was now a fully fledged crime scene, the young girl still lay in the bed and would remain there until all the necessary scenes-of-crime and forensic work had been carried out. It was a very inconvenient arrangement for A amp;E, but Henry Christie was resolute. They would have to work round it until he was satisfied the police had done their job, so nothing was going to change. He came close to a very nasty head to head with the charge nurse — a woman of formidable stature — but the determination on Henry’s face and in his body language made her back down submissively. When he was on a roll, he could be irresistible.
He allowed himself just one extended look at the dead girl through the curtains. He was not going to be drawn in by morbid fascination. And, anyway, his presence would only contaminate the scene. However, his experience of murder scenes told him all he needed to know for the time being. Geri Peters was dead. From the way in which the pillow was laid across her upper chest and underneath her chin, there was a better than average chance that she had been suffocated.
Henry was angry with himself that he had not been switched on enough to see the danger she had been in.
Ducking under the police crime scene tape which now criss-crossed the A amp;E ward like a huge spider’s web, he made his way to the staff rest room.
PC Taylor was there, doubled over, head in hands, rocking slightly. Dermot Byrne sat next to the well-built officer, a hand on his shoulder.
When Henry entered the room, feeling stern and unforgiving, Taylor looked up through his fingers, then rose unsteadily to his feet, ready for the broadside. His arms dropped open by his side, hands palm outwards in a sort of acceptance of blame. He had been crying. Henry felt great sympathy for him but he did not let it show. He had no plans to let Taylor off the hook. Yet.
The officers from the night shift who could be spared had spent the best part of the last hour carrying out as methodical a search of the building as their few numbers allowed, which was not easy in a hospital as huge and sprawling as the Blackpool Victoria. Henry had them carry out a room-by-room, corridor-by-corridor search from beyond the point at which PC Taylor said he last saw the killer. The officers went up and through the X-ray department, right to the end of that particular leg of the hospital. To do more would have been impossible. Henry had even won the battle with the staff nurse to bring in an unhygienic and slavering dog to assist the search. The pooch had found nothing either. The guy had disappeared into the ether. Now Henry had several cops roaming the corridors and outside he had a few officers positioned at strategic points in the grounds with orders to ‘turn over’ anyone found wandering. Now Henry wanted some hard information.
Byrne, seeing the grim expression on Henry’s face, stepped in between the inspector and PC Taylor.
‘Don’t be hard on him, boss,’ Byrne said protectively.
Henry regarded his sergeant stonily. Byrne stood aside and Henry transferred the hard-edged gaze to Taylor, who wilted visibly. The PC sat down and stared glumly at the floor.
‘Tell me what happened — again.’
‘Well, as I said, I came to the hospital with her like you instructed-’
‘Like I instructed,’ Henry cut in patronisingly, unable to stop himself. ‘Yes, like I instructed — and what did I instruct, PC Taylor?’
‘To look after her,’ he said lamely.
‘Exactly,’ growled Henry through clenched teeth, his face a sneer.
‘Y-yes,’ Taylor muttered feebly, sounding frightened.
‘Right — what went wrong?’
‘Er, she got treated and they put her in the bed — where she is now — down at the far end of the department and I went to sit with her — next to her.’
‘Go on,’ Henry urged him on as he seemed to come to a full stop.
‘It’d been such a long night, what with the trouble up on Shoreside, that I was tired out. I couldn’t keep my eyes open and I thought that if I had a coffee, maybe it would keep me awake.’ Taylor paused. ‘So I went for one.’
This time Henry did not prompt.
‘I was away for what? God, less than two minutes and as I came back through the curtain with my coffee I just saw the back end of someone going out the other side — it was so quick. I looked at her, saw the pillow, saw her face and I just went into autopilot and went after him. I realised I had to get him, whether she was dead or not. I legged it. I went like hell for leather down the corridor.’ Taylor’s head wobbled in disbelief at the vivid recollection in his mind. ‘I couldn’t get near him. He was bloody fast, like a shadow — and as I came round the next dog-leg in the corridor I was running down he was gone!’
‘Description?’ Henry said coldly.
Taylor hesitated, marshalling his thoughts. ‘I didn’t get a good look, really,’ he admitted. ‘Like I said, he was like a shadow. I just saw his back.’
‘His back? Are you certain it was a man?’
‘Yeah, yeah, hundred per cent. Ran like a man. About my height and build — say around six feet. Wearing dark clothing and something pulled over his head — balaclava, I reckon.’ Henry was expecting more but Taylor had apparently finished his description.
‘Is that it?’ Henry’s brittle voice held utter disbelief.
Taylor nodded worriedly.
‘Not very much to go on,’ Henry commented dryly.
‘I know, I know,’ Taylor bleated forlornly. ‘But that’s all I saw. I’m wracking my brains to dig more out, but it’s just not there. I’m really, really sorry.’
‘So you bloody well should be — sorry for that girl.’ Henry’s voice started to rise, but he got a grip and sighed down his nose, flaring his nostrils.
‘Oh God, I feel ill.’ Taylor got to his feet abruptly and swallowed. His face was the colour of best-quality typing paper. ‘I wanna spew.’ He swallowed again.
‘Well, don’t fucking well do it here,’ Henry shouted, ‘go and find a bog.’
‘Urrggh!’ Taylor pitched himself out of the office, holding his guts with one hand, the other clamped over his mouth.
‘Poor sod,’ Byrne said.
‘You’re too bleedin’ soft,’ Henry muttered. He plonked himself down next to Byrne on the sofa, clasped his hands behind his head and crossed his legs. He cogitated awhile, arranging his thoughts.
‘We can’t afford to wait for the circus to turn out. I want to get a start on names and addresses of everyone in A amp;E at the time of the murder and I want statements to start being taken. Staff, patients — anyone. I want you to get going with that, Dermot. I know we haven’t many spare bods, but let’s start the ball rolling, get a tick in the book.’