Without the use of those muscles, Fletcher would be unable to flex either knee or ankle joints; unless they repaired themselves healthily, he would experience, at best, difficulty in walking or otherwise using the damaged leg.
“At worst?” Resnick had asked.
Salt had simply stared back at him without expression.
“The wounds to the leg, then?” Resnick had said. “Quite a different nature to the rest?”
“More serious,” Salt had agreed. “Potentially.”
“More deliberate?”
Salt had swiveled in the Sister’s chair, shaken his head and allowed a smile at the corners of his mouth. “I cannot speculate.”
“But they could suggest an attacker who knew what he was about?”
“Possibly.”
“One with a knowledge of anatomy, physiology?”
“A member of the St. John Ambulance Brigade, Inspector? Anyone, I should have thought, with basic knowledge of how the body works.”
“And without wishing you to speculate, Mr. Salt …”
“Please, Inspector.”
“You wouldn’t have formed any opinion as to the kind of weapon that was used in the attack?”
“Fine.” The same smile narrow at the edges of the consultant’s full mouth. “Sharp. Other than that, no, I’m afraid not.”
Resnick had thanked him and left the room, taking with him one further piece of knowledge that Tim Fletcher had yet to learn: the injuries to the tendons of his hand were unlikely to heal completely; the chances of him furthering his career in surgery or some similarly deft area of medicine were slight.
Fletcher was sleeping, Karen Archer’s hand trapped beneath his bandaged arm. The roses beside the bed were already beginning to wilt. Resnick couldn’t tell if the girl were bored or tired, sitting motionless in the centrally heated air. He wondered why Lynn Kellogg had felt about her as she did, the antagonism evident even in her verbal report. Half a mind to go over and talk to her, Resnick turned away instead, back into the main ward, reasoning that Fletcher needed all the rest he could get.
He sidestepped the drugs trolley and nearly bumped into a student nurse wearing a uniform that resembled a large J-Cloth with poppers and a belt. Just before the door he turned and there was the Sister, looking at him from the nurses’ station in the middle of the ward. Resnick hesitated, wondering if there were something she wanted to say to him, but she glanced away.
Resnick ignored the lift and took the stairs, no lover of hospitals. There was a queue of cars at the entrance to the multi-story car park as he drove out. If whoever attacked Tim Fletcher had found his victim by more than chance, if he had sought him out … He? Resnick took the exit from the roundabout that would take him along Derby Road, back to the station. He was thinking about the medical student who had been Karen Archer’s previous boyfriend: somebody with motivation to cause hurt, maim. Knowledge. The long trajectory from hip to knee and beyond. Resnick shuddered, realized that his own hand was touching his leg, as if to make sure it was still sound. He had to brake hard so as not to run the light by the Three Wheatsheaves, swerving into the left lane around a Metro which had belatedly signaled its intention to go right.
Ian Carew.
He would find out where he was living, pay a visit. Because something seemed obvious, that didn’t have to mean it was wrong.
Nine
“Debbie!”
Kevin Naylor pushed the front door to, slipped his keys into his coat pocket and listened. Only the hum of the freezer from the kitchen. Faint, the sound of early evening television from next door. Walls of new estates like these, you need never feel you were all alone. Perfect for the first-time buyer, one point off your mortgage for the first year, wait until you’d painted, roses in the garden, turf for the lawn, something more than money invested before they hit you with the full rate, fifteen and a half and rising. A couple across the crescent, one kid and another on the way, they’d had their place repossessed last month, moved in with her parents, Jesus!
“Debbie?”
There were dishes in the bowl, more stacked haphazardly alongside the sink. In a red plastic bucket, tea towels soaking in bleach. Kevin flipped down the top of the rubbish bin and then lifted it away; the wrapping from packets of biscuits lying there, thin coils of colored Cellophane pushed down between torn cardboard, treacle tart, deep-dish apple pie. He knew that if he checked in the freezer the tubs of supermarket ice cream would be close to empty.
The neighbor switched channels and began to watch the evening news.
The baby’s room was neat, neater than the rest; creams and talc on the table near the window, a carton of disposable nappies with its top bent back. A mobile of brightly colored planets that Lynn had bought at the baby’s birth dangled above the empty cot, suns and moons and stars.
“Where’s the baby?”
Debbie was a shape beneath the striped duvet, fingers of one hand showing, her wrist, a wedding ring. Light brown hair lifelessly spread upon the pillow. Kevin sat on the edge of the bed and she flinched; her hand, clenching, disappeared.
“Deb?”
“What?”
“Where’s the baby?”
“Who cares?”
He grabbed at her, grabbed at the quilt, pulling at it hard, tugging it from her hands; she pushed her hands down between her knees, curling in upon herself, eyes closed tight.
“Debbie!”
Kneeling on the bed, Kevin struggled to turn her over and she kicked out, flailing her arms until he had backed away, allowing her to seize the duvet again and pull it against her, sitting at the center of the bed, eyes, for the first time, open. She loathed him. He could see it, read it in those eyes. Loathed him.
“Where is she?”
“At my mother’s.”
Kevin Naylor sighed and looked away.
“Is that wrong? Is it? Well? What’s wrong with that, Kevin? What’s so terrible about that?”
He got up and crossed the room, opening drawers, closing them.
“Well?”
“What’s wrong,” he said, facing her, fighting to keep his voice calm, “is that’s where she was this morning, yesterday, the day before.”
“So?”
Kevin made a sound somewhere between a snort and a harsh, humorless laugh.
“She is my mother, Kevin. She is the baby’s grandmother. It’s only natural …”
“That she should look after her all the time?”
“It isn’t all the time.”
“Good as.”
“She’s helping …”
“Helping!”
“Kevin, please! I get tired. You know I get tired. I can’t help it. I …”
He stood at the end of the bed, staring down at her in disgust, waiting for the tears to start. There. “If want to see my own child,” he said, “I have to make a phone call, make sure she isn’t sleeping, get back into the car and drive half-way across the fucking city!”
He slammed the door so that it shook against its hinges. Switched on the radio so that he couldn’t hear the sound of her sobbing. On either side of them, television sets were turned up in direct retaliation. At least, Kevin thought, when their kids cry I can sodding hear them.
There were tins of baked beans in the cupboard, packets of soup, chicken and leek, chicken and asparagus, plain chicken; four or five slices of white bread inside the wrapper but outside the bread bin. Eggs. Always too many of those. He could send out for a pizza, drive off for a take-away, curry or Chinese.
On the radio someone was pontificating about mad cow disease, the effects it might have on children, force-fed beefburgers for school dinners. Kevin switched it off and instantly he could hear Debbie, bawling. He switched back on, changed stations. Del Shannon. Gem-AM. Poor sod who shot himself. Well …
There was one can of lager left in the back of the fridge and he opened it, tossing the ring pull on to the side and taking the can into the living room. If Debbie’s mother were there, she’d be tut-tutting, Kevin, you’re not going to drink that without a glass, surely? But she wasn’t there, was she? Back in her own little semi in Basford, caravan outside the front window and his bloody kid asleep in her spare room.