Wesley’s shout of surprise and pain merged with another from the front of the car, as Preston pressed the open edge of the razor-blade tight against the artery at the side of Evan’s neck. They veered abruptly into the outside lane and drivers, cruising in excess of eighty, sounded their horns and flashed their lights in warning. “I’ve just sliced your mate’s wrist,” Preston said. “Get him to a hospital fast and he’ll be okay. You too.” As yet, the blade had barely broken the surface of Evan’s skin. “Now pull over on the hard shoulder. Do it now, don’t even think.”
“I don’t know,” Evan said aloud, as much to himself as anyone else.
Blood was spooling over Wesley’s fingers as he gripped his wrist. “Evan,” he said, “for Christ’s sake, do what he says.”
Evan started to swing in without indicating and almost brushed the side of a cattle lorry thundering off to Harwich and the Hook of Holland.
“Take it steady,” Preston said, the hand holding the razor blade not wavering in the slightest. “Right, pull over. Over now.” Before the car had stopped, he was holding his cuffed wrist out toward Wesley, the razor blade still fast against Evan’s neck. “Unlock this.”
Though the blood made it difficult to keep a grip on the key, Wesley did as he was told.
“Right,” Preston said. “Now the car keys. Give them to me. Now!”
For a long time, Evan would remember what he saw in the mirror as he passed back the keys, the resolution bright and certain in Michael Preston’s eyes. And moments later, Preston was running away from them, fast, across a field of rape.
Eight
Resnick had been close enough to the Victoria Centre to nip into the market for a quick espresso. Two quick espressos. He was on his way back down the escalator by the Emmett water sculpture when his mobile phone rang. The sound of Millington’s voice immediately put him on the alert. “Graham, where are you?”
“Back at the station. Prisoner escaped on the motorway not far south of here. Category A.”
“Our concern?”
“Our patch. Seems he was at his mother’s funeral.”
“Under escort?”
There was no hiding the sneer in the sergeant’s tone. “Not so’s you’d notice.”
Resnick cursed. “Someone we know?”
“Preston. Michael Preston.”
It had been a while back, Jack Skelton’s case and not his, but Resnick remembered the details well enough. “Anyone hurt?”
“One of the prison officers as was with him. Getting himself patched in Queen’s. Pal’s there with him, holding his hand.”
“Okay, you know the drill; airports, railway stations, buses, all the usual.”
“In hand. And I made a quick check, wives, girlfriends, the like. Looks as if closest family he’s got left’s his sister. I’ve told Carl to get over there, soon as he can free himself up at Burger King. See what she’s got to say for herself, nose around.”
Resnick adjusted his step so as to avoid a heavily pregnant woman coming out of Boots. “How about the hospital?”
“Sharon’s on her way there now.”
“Tell her I’ll meet her there, A and E. Ten minutes.” Resnick switched off his phone and cut through Jessops on to Mansfield Road in search of a cab.
Still a rarity in the Force, not only a woman detective, but also black, Sharon Garnett was doing her best to fill Lynn Kellogg’s shoes.
Before joining the police in London, she had worked as both singer and actor-all the stereotypes, as she liked to say, it’s a wonder I missed out on boxer-and had first met Resnick in the course of a murder inquiry when she was stationed in Lincoln. From there, it had been a comparatively short journey west across the Wolds.
She took the entrance into the hospital grounds just short of the University Park, left and left again, and within minutes she was inside and on the main floor, making her way between chairs and benches crowded with the city’s walking wounded: young men with shaved heads and tattoos, and old men who cursed whenever the name called was not their own; women who by now could have walked in blindfold and sometimes did, eyes swollen and closed from too much crying, from the swing of an angry fist; babies who howled and toddlers who bawled, and kids who ran up and down the aisles until one or another slipped or someone’s temper snapped and the tears they’d been warned it would end in finally arrived.
Resnick was standing near the inquiry desk, hands in the pockets of his shapeless gray suit.
“Third cubicle along,” the harassed nurse said in response to his question, head turning away before the words were fully out.
Wesley was stretched out on a narrow bed, eyes closed. His left arm lay folded across his abdomen, bandaged and strapped. Evan, who had been sitting in a chair alongside, scrambled to his feet when Resnick and Sharon Garnett entered, mistaking them initially for medical staff, but quickly realizing the truth.
“How is he?” Resnick asked, nodding in the direction of the bed.
“Okay. He’ll be, yeh, okay.”
“Sleeping?”
“They gave him something, you know, for the pain.”
“And you?”
Without willing it to, Evan’s hand went to the plaster that had been taped across his neck after the small wound had been cleaned. “I’m fine.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, fine.”
“Good. Let’s find somewhere, get a cup of tea or something, and you can tell me what happened.”
Avoiding Resnick’s eyes, Evan nodded: it wasn’t a prospect that filled him with enthusiasm.
“Sharon,” Resnick said, pushing aside the curtain as they left the cubicle. “Perhaps you could have a word with the doctor on duty. Anything that might be useful. Catch up with us in the canteen.”
“Sure.” Sharon smiled. “Mine’s coffee, black.”
Evan had been running over the events in his mind, deliberating how much of the story he should tell, how much it was wise to hold back. Decisions he’d taken that at the time … well, he wasn’t stupid, he could imagine how they might sound to anyone outside, anyone who hadn’t been in the actual situation. Think on your feet, son, his dad had liked to say, judge each case on its merits, that’s what you’ve got to learn in this world. Which was what Evan had done, only he’d landed flat on his face from the edge of a high cliff.
In the cubicle earlier, waiting for the doctor to come and stitch up Wesley’s wrist, Evan had asked him if they shouldn’t agree beforehand on a version of events.
“Events, Evan? Only one event anyone’s gonna give Jack shit about is we lost our prisoner. Okay? Far as the rest of it goes, you do the talking, right? You been doing it pretty good so far.” And Wesley had turned his face away to the wall.
Gratitude, Evan thought, after me leaping out into that bloody motorway, risking life and limb flagging somebody down to get you to the hospital, instead of chasing off across the fields after sodding Preston. He supposed that had been wrong, too.
“Okay,” Resnick said, having secured a table in the corner of the visitors’ canteen. “Tell me what happened.”
And, of course, Evan did. Every move in such detail that the party still hadn’t left the chapel when Sharon arrived and slid into the vacant seat.
By the time Evan had finished, his voice was little more than a whisper and Resnick’s receptive listener’s expression seemed to have frozen, immovable, to his face.
“Just one thing, er, Evan,” Sharon said, breaking the silence. “Before you put the prisoner into the car for the last part of the journey, you didn’t search him or anything?”
Evan succeeded in looking hurt. “Of course I did. We did. Wesley held him on the cuffs and I patted him down.”
“Patted him down.”
“All right, it wasn’t a strip search, I agree. But then I didn’t see any need. But it was thorough, I did a proper job.”
“Yet he had a blade,” Resnick said.
“Yes.”
“A razor blade.”