Back in Britain, he clung to his short haircut and the habit of wearing colored T-shirts under lightweight suits, at least until the weather beat him down. For months there was a touch of a transatlantic accent to his speech and he wore a watch on either wrist, one of them set to West Coast time. After two years of general surgical work, he was appointed senior staff nurse, with the expectation of being promoted to charge nurse within the next eighteen months.
Karl Dougherty had been a qualified nurse for nine years; aside from Christmas and his mother’s birthday, he had not visited his parents more than half-a-dozen times in the last four. Soon after returning from the States, he had breezed in wearing an off-white suit, a short-sleeved green T-shirt with a breast pocket and yellow shoes. He had a box of Thornton’s special assortment in one hand, a vast bouquet of flowers in his arms.
“Oh, no,” his mother had exclaimed. “There’s been a mistake.”
“Hello, Karl,” one of the patients called. “How was your night off?”
“About as exciting as yours.”
“Hi, Karl,” said a nurse, swinging the bedpan she was carrying out of his path.
“Is that accidental,” said Karl, “or are you just not pleased to see me?”
Karl liked to get on to the ward a little early, have a sniff round before handover, things he might notice and want to ask questions about that might otherwise go unremarked.
“Where’s Sister?” he asked.
A student nurse glanced up from the care plan she was adding to and pointed her Biro towards the closed door. “Hasn’t shown herself for the best part of an hour.”
Oh, God! thought Karl, moving on, in there wrestling with the menopause again!
He turned into the side ward and found Sarah Leonard sitting on Tim Fletcher’s bed, holding his hand.
“This isn’t what you think,” Sarah said.
“You mean you’re not taking his pulse.”
“Absolutely not. This is therapy.”
Karl raised an eyebrow.
“Comfort and consolation,” Sarah smiled. “Tim’s feeling forlorn today. His girlfriend failed to pay him a visit.”
“There’s a singularly ugly man with halitosis and very little bowel control, back down the ward; he hasn’t had a visitor in three weeks. Perhaps you’d like to hold his hand as well.”
Sarah Leonard poked out her tongue and got to her feet. “I’d better go, before Karl here asserts his authority.” She gave Fletcher a smile, Karl a toss of her head and hurried away.
“Impressive!”
Tim Fletcher nodded agreement.
“How are you feeling?” Karl asked. “Apart from horny.”
“Sore.”
“No more than that?”
Fletcher shrugged. “I’m okay.”
“You don’t want anything for the pain?”
“Thanks. I’ll be all right.”
Karl patted his leg. “I’ll check with you later.”
Helen Minton came out of her office just ahead of Karl as he walked back down the ward, making a slight nod of acknowledgment in his direction and nothing more. Karl didn’t think it was that she felt threatened by him, not that alone. She spent her days on duty as if everything around her might explode or evaporate unless she held it together by sheer force of will.
Poor woman! Karl thought. He had stumbled across her late one evening, standing with Bernard Salt beside the consultant’s BMW. Whatever they had been talking about, Karl didn’t think it was hospital business.
“Sister,” he said breezily, catching her up. “Another fifteen minutes and you’ll be finished. A free woman.”
The look she gave him was not brimming with gratitude.
Naylor and Patel had found Ian Carew sitting in the small yard at the back of his rented house, drinking pineapple juice and reading about ventricular tumors. For several moments, it seemed as if he might tell the two plain-clothes men to go and play with themselves; he might even have been tempted to take a swing at them, Naylor in particular. But then he grunted something about being left in peace, something else about people who could have been making better use of time and resources, grabbed an Aran sweater and followed them along the narrow alley at the side of the house.
“I don’t have to put up with this,” Carew said as soon as he was in Resnick’s office. “This is harassment.”
Resnick was careful to keep his hands down by his sides. “Coming from someone who not so many hours ago beat up a young woman in her own home and …”
“That’s a lie!”
“… and forced her to have sex with him …”
“You’ve got no right …”
“… that comes over as a bit rich.”
“You can’t say that.”
“What?”
Carew looked at the inspector, standing behind his desk, at Lynn Kellogg, in a white blouse and a mid-length pleated skirt standing off to his right. “I want a solicitor,” Carew said. “Now. Before I say another word.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” Resnick said. “And you don’t need a solicitor. Just listen.”
Carew opened his mouth to say something more but thought better of it.
“In accordance with Home Office instructions,” said Resnick, “I am issuing you with a warning about your future behavior, in so far as it concerns Karen Archer. Although, up to the present, she has declined to press charges, there is little doubt from what she has alleged, backed up by medical examination of her injuries, that you have been guilty of an assault upon her person.”
“What assault?”
“Shut it!”
“What …?”
“Shut it and listen!”
Carew retreated the half-step he had taken towards Resnick’s desk.
“That girl,” said Resnick, “was elbowed in the face, she was punched in the mouth, she was struck in the body. You’re a big man, you’re strong and my guess is you’re used to having your own way.”
“That’s bullshit!”
Resnick was around the desk more quickly than either Lynn or Carew would have given him credit. He didn’t stop until his chest was all but touching Carew’s, face almost as close as it could be.
“We’ve got photographs of her injuries, Polaroids of the bruises and they’re going on file. Your file. I hope for your sake I never have to refer to them again. Stay away from her, that’s my advice. A wide berth. She doesn’t want anything to do with you. That’s over. Leave it.”
Resnick moved his head aside, rapidly swung it back, so that Carew blinked. “Word you’ve got to learn: no. Doesn’t mean, yes. Doesn’t mean, maybe. Girlfriend, wife, whatever. No means no. Understand it any other way and you’re for it.”
Resnick stepped back: not far. He stared at Carew for ten seconds more. “Now get out,” he said quietly.
Carew had to walk around Resnick to get to the door, which he left open behind him, anxious to leave the building as fast as he could. Lynn Kellogg wanted to go over to her inspector and say well done, she wanted to give him a hug; she settled for offering him a cup of tea.
Before Resnick could accept or decline, his phone rang.
“Yes?”
“Someone down here asking for you, sir,” said the officer on duty. And then, before Resnick could ask further, “Think it’s personal, sir. Should I …?”
“I’ll be down,” said Resnick. “The tea,” he said to Lynn.
“Some other time.”
All the way down the stairs, Resnick’s insides danced themselves into a knot. He knew what he would see, when he pushed his way through into reception: Elaine standing there, that distraught expression on her face, impatient, who do you think you are, keeping me waiting-what was it? — ten years?