Part of the purpose of carefully managed press conferences, such as the one earlier today, was to inform the public of the crimes that had been committed, with the hope of getting leads. But all scaremongering like this did was to jam the police switchboards with hundreds of calls from frightened women.
He ate as much of the sandwich as he could manage, washed it down with a tepid Diet Coke, then climbed out and dumped the remnants of his meal and its packaging into a bin. He dutifully bought a pay-and-display ticket and stuck it on the windscreen. Then he walked over to the pre-fab Hospitality Flowers booth and chose a small bouquet from the stall. He walked along in front of the sprawling front façade of the hospital, some of it painted white, some cream and some grey, and entered under the large Perspex awning, past an ambulance with the wording on its bonnet in large green letters in mirror-image.
Roy hated this place. It angered and embarrassed him that a city of Brighton and Hove’s stature had such a disgusting, run-down dump of a hospital. It might have a grand name, and an impressive, sprawling complex of buildings, and sure, some departments, such as the cardiac unit, were world class, but in general the average makeshift shack of a medical centre in a Third World nation put this place to shame.
He had read once that the Second World War was the first time in history that more soldiers died from their actual wounds than from infections they picked up in hospitals while being treated for their wounds. Half of the citizens of Brighton and Hove were terrified to come into this place because, rumour was rife, you were more likely to die from something you picked up inside, than from whatever brought you in here in the first place.
It wasn’t the fault of the medical staff, who were mostly quality people who worked their tired butts off – he had seen that with his own eyes enough times. He blamed the management, and he blamed the government whose policies had allowed healthcare standards to fall so low.
He went past the gift shop and the chintzy Nuovo Caffè snack bar, which looked like it belonged in a motorway service station, and sidestepped an elderly, vacant-faced patient in her hospital gown who was wandering down the sloping floor straight towards him.
And then his anger at the place rose further as he walked over to the curved wooden counter of the unmanned reception desk and saw the sign, lying beside a spray of plastic flowers.
Apologies the Reception Desk is Closed.
Fortunately, Eleanor had managed to locate his young officer for him – she had been moved out of the orthopaedic ward a few days ago into one called Chichester. A list on the wall informed him that it was on the third floor of this wing.
He climbed up a spiral staircase, on the walls of which a cheery mural had been painted, walked along a blue linoleum-covered corridor, up two further flights of wooden-banistered stairs and stopped in a shabby, grimy corridor. A young female Asian nurse in a blue top and black trousers walked towards him. There was a faint mashed potatoes and cabbage smell of school dinners. ‘I’m looking for Chichester ward,’ he said.
She pointed. ‘Go straight ahead.’
He walked past a row of gas cylinders through a door with a glass window covered in warning notices, and entered a ward of about sixteen beds. The smell of school dinners was even stronger in here, tinged by a faint, sour smell of urine and disinfectant. There was an old linoleum floor and the walls were filthy. The windows were wide open, giving a view out on to another wing of the hospital, with a vent from which steam was rising. Horrible curtains were partially drawn around some beds.
It was a mixed ward of what looked mostly like geriatrics and mental patients. Grace stared for a moment at a little old lady with tufts of hair the colour of cotton wool, matching the complexion of her sunken cheeks, fast asleep, her toothless mouth open wide. Several televisions were on. A young man in bed was babbling loudly to himself. Another old woman, in a bed at the far end, kept shouting out something loud and unintelligible to no one in particular. In the bed immediately to his right was a shrivelled little old man, fast asleep, unshaven, his bedclothes pushed aside, two empty bottles of Coke on the table that straddled him. He was wearing striped pyjamas, the bottoms untied, his limp penis clearly visible, nestling against his testicles.
And in the next-door bed, to his horror, surrounding by dusty-looking apparatus, he saw the person he had come to visit. And now, as he slipped his hand into his pocket and removed his mobile phone, storming past the busy nursing station, his blood was really boiling.
One of his favourite young officers, DC Emma-Jane Boutwood, had been badly injured trying to stop a van in the same operation in which Glenn Branson had been shot. She had been crushed between the van and a parked car, and suffered massive internal damage, including losing her spleen, as well as multiple bone fractures. The twenty-five-year-old had been in a coma on life support for over a week, and when she came round, doctors had been worried she might never walk again. But in recent weeks she had made a dramatic improvement, was able to stand unaided and had already been talking eagerly about when she could get back to work.
Grace really liked her. She was a terrific detective and he reckoned she had a great future ahead of her in the force. But at this moment, seeing her lying there, smiling palely at him, she looked like a lost, bewildered child. Always thin, she now looked emaciated inside her loose hospital gown, and the orange tag was almost hanging off her wrist. Her blonde hair, which had lost its lustre and looked like dried straw, was clipped up untidily, with a few stray wisps falling down. On the table next to her bed lay a crowded riot of cards, flowers and fruit.
Her eyes said it all before they even spoke, and something snapped inside him.
‘How are you?’ he asked, holding on to the flowers for the moment.
‘Never better!’ she said, making an effort to perk up for him. ‘I told my dad yesterday that I was going to beat him at tennis before the end of the summer. Mind you, that should be easy. He’s a crap player!’
Grace grinned, then asked gently, ‘What the hell are you doing in this ward?’
She shrugged. ‘They moved me about three days ago. Said they needed the bed in the other ward.’
‘Did they, hell. You want to stay here?’
‘Not really.’
Grace stepped back and scanned the ward, looking for a free nurse, then walked over to a young Asian girl in nursing uniform who was removing a bedpan. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘I’m looking for whoever is in charge here.’
The nurse turned around, then pointed to a harassed-looking nurse of about forty, with pinned-up hair and a bookish face behind large glasses, who was entering the ward, holding a clipboard.
In a few quick, determined paces, Grace cut her off, blocking her path. The badge hanging from her blue top read Angela Morris, Ward Manager.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘can I have a word with you?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she replied, in a brittle, distinctly hostile and haughty voice. ‘I’m dealing with a problem.’
‘Well, you have another one right now,’ he said, almost shaking with anger, pulling out his warrant card and holding it up to her face.
She looked alarmed. ‘What – what is this about?’ Her voice had suddenly dropped several decibels.