‘Breathed a bit, the second time,’ said Pat.
‘Could you tell whether they were male or female?’
‘No. It was just breathing.’
‘All right, well, let me know if it happens again,’ said Strike. ‘And make sure you’ve got the door locked.’
As he inserted the mobile back into his pocket, a voice called:
‘Cameron Strike?’
‘That’s me,’ Strike shouted back at the distant woman with short grey hair, who was wearing scrubs and holding a clipboard.
Ten minutes later he was sitting on a hospital bed, screened from the rest of the ward by an encircling curtain, his trousers and crutches on a chair beside him, while the grey-haired woman carefully examined first his stump and then his healthy leg. Strike had forgotten how thorough medics were. He really did just want painkillers.
‘And you fell backwards, did you?’ she said, now looking through her glasses at the irritated end of his stump.
‘Yeah,’ said Strike.
‘Can you raise it for me?’
He did so, made a muffled exclamation of pain, then let it fall again. As soon as the stump hit the bed it began to jerk around.
‘Has that happened before?’ she asked, observing the involuntary movements.
‘A bit,’ said Strike, who’d started to sweat again.
‘How often?’
‘It’s been happening on and off for the last couple of weeks. I had spasms in it right after it was amputated, but they stopped after a few months.’
‘Your amputation was when?’
‘Six – no, seven years ago.’
‘Fairly unusual for myoclonus to start up again, seven years on,’ said the doctor. She moved around the bed.
‘What’s this mark on your leg?’ she said, pointing at the red indentation left by the steel tip of Madeline’s stiletto. ‘Did that happen during the fall?’
‘Must’ve done,’ lied Strike.
His leg was still jerking, but the doctor was now looking into Strike’s face.
‘Are you aware your face is twitching?’
‘What?’
‘The right side of your face is twitching.’
‘I think I’m just wincing,’ said Strike.
He was starting to fear a battery of unwanted tests, or, worse, an overnight stay in hospital.
‘All right, I’m going to lift your leg myself. Tell me when it’s painful.’
‘It’s painful,’ said Strike, when she’d raised the stump barely three inches off the bed.
‘Your muscles are very tight. I’m just going to have a feel of your hamstring. Tell me if—’
She felt gently down the back of his thigh.
‘Yeah,’ said Strike through gritted teeth, ‘that hurts.’
‘All right,’ she said, lowering the stump carefully back onto the bed, where it continued to jerk around, ‘I’d like to do an ultrasound. Your knee’s quite swollen, and I want to know what’s going on with that hamstring.’
‘My hamstring’s gone before,’ said Strike. ‘I’ve just pulled it. If I can just get some painkillers—’
‘I’m concerned about these spasms,’ said the doctor, looking intently into his face again. ‘I’d like to do some blood tests and have a colleague take a look at you. I’ll be back in a bit.’
‘Why blood tests?’ said Strike.
‘Just to exclude any underlying problem. Calcium deficiency, for instance.’
She disappeared through the curtain, pulling it shut behind her, leaving Strike to raise his fingers to his face to see whether he could feel twitching, which he couldn’t. As he sat there in his boxers, hating his surroundings, loathing the feeling of vulnerability and enforced dependency hospitals always gave him, he heard his mobile buzz. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, dragged his coat off the back of the chair and retrieved the phone, only to see a long text from Madeline which began:
Corm, I’m truly sorry, I was drunk,
I’d just run into Charlotte and
He deleted the text without reading it, then blocked her number. As he did this, he felt for the first time a muscle in the right-hand corner of his mouth twitching: a slight movement, but nevertheless perceptible.
He’d barely stretched his legs back out on the bed when a middle-aged female nurse arrived to take blood.
‘You’ll want to take that off,’ she said, nodding at his shirt. ‘We won’t be able to roll that sleeve up high enough.’
Thinking resentfully that she was entirely wrong in thinking that he wanted to take off his shirt, he nevertheless did as he was told. As the nurse strapped the tourniquet around his upper arm, then inserted her needle and drew a syringe of blood from him, his mobile buzzed yet again.
‘You can’t answer that yet,’ said the nurse unnecessarily, as Strike glanced towards it.
When she’d departed, taking two tubes of Strike’s blood with her, he pulled his shirt back on, then picked up the phone and saw a text from Midge, who’d attached a video clip.
Only sighting of Gus Upcott so far. Do we know who the massive weirdo is?
Strike opened the video and saw the unmistakeable form of Nils de Jong ambling up the Upcotts’ street, a cardboard box under one enormous arm, and his mobile in his other hand. Wearing his old cargo shorts, a crumpled shirt and sandals, his blond hair falling over the peculiar Greek mask of his face, he appeared engrossed in whatever he was reading on his phone. Shortly before reaching the Upcott residence, Nils paused, put down the cardboard box, typed something, then picked up his box again and headed to the front door. He knocked on the door, which opened, and Strike saw a glimpse of Gus before both retreated into the house. The video ended.
Nils de Jong, Strike texted back. Owner of North Grove Art Collective. Possibly handing over some of Josh’s possessions to Katya
He’d just sent this message when a black male nurse pulled back the curtain. With some misgivings, Strike saw that the man had brought a wheelchair.
‘Ultrasound?’ said the nurse, who had a heavy Brazilian accent.
Strike wondered fleetingly what would happen if he said, ‘No thanks, just had one.’
‘I can walk.’
‘No, sorry, the doctor wants you in here,’ said the smiling nurse, patting the arm of the wheelchair. ‘You can bring your blanket.’
So Strike, still holding his mobile, was wheeled off the ward with a thin blanket covering his naked legs and boxer shorts, just one more specimen of injured humanity, transported against his wishes towards an assessment he’d have preferred not to have.
The probe was icy against his leg and painful when pressed over his hamstring. The face of the male doctor who was watching the monitor beside the bed displayed no emotion until Strike’s mobile buzzed again, and then he glanced irritably at the phone before looking back at the screen. After a few minutes the grey-haired female doctor reappeared to speak in a low voice with her colleague. Strike might as well not have been present.
‘All very inflamed,’ said the man, pressing the probe to the side of Strike’s knee cap.
‘Torn ligaments?’
‘Possibly minor tearing…’
He moved the probe painfully around to the back of Strike’s thigh again.
‘That’s a grade two… possibly three.’
He pressed the probe even harder into the back of Strike’s stump, and Strike attempted to distract himself from the pain by imagining punching the doctor in the back of the head.
‘Can’t see anything here that’d necessarily explain the myoclonus. The muscles are very tight…’
Strike was wheeled back onto the ward by the Brazilian nurse, who helped him back onto the bed, told him a doctor would be back to see him shortly, and left Strike alone in his curtained cubicle again.