No Good Reason (22 page)

“Seriously?” she muttered, slowing to a jog and then a cautious walk. Fifty yards narrowed to ten, until she was close enough to hear his yelps every time something snagged him. “Cross the street at the west end of Prospect,” she said into her mike, struggling to keep the tremor from her voice. “We’re in the ginnel immediately after that, and I don’t think we’re going much further.”

An affirmative response and the wail of sirens reassured her somewhat—until Ned abruptly stopped and turned to face her. She held one hand up in an attempt to placate him, using the other to direct her torch at him.

Shielding his eyes, he took a step forward. “Officer Sanney?”

She stood her ground, angling the light to impede his vision. “Yeah, Ned. We met on the moors.”

He nodded, and his bottom lip began to quiver. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

She instinctively moved closer. “Who didn’t you mean to hurt?”

He pointed back over her head. “That cop. I was just watching
Emmerdale
, and those blokes scared me. I wasn’t doing nowt wrong.”

In the corner of her eye, she saw blue and red flashes. “It’s okay, Ned. We just need to have a chat with you, that’s all. Shall we get out of these nettles?”

“I’m allergic to nettles.” He was staring past her, mesmerised by the strobes, and without being prompted, he held out his hands in surrender. Technically, they hadn’t come to arrest him, but that was before he assaulted a detective, so she snapped her cuffs around his wrists and recited his rights as they picked their way back to the street.

“Sorry I hit you,” he said. He tripped over his flopping shoelace, and she had to grab his arm to right him, keeping hold of it to steer him toward the closest police van. When he saw the officers charging over to meet them, he hid his face in his hands and started to cry.

“This our chap?” one of the officers asked. He kept glancing over Sanne’s shoulder, as if waiting for something more exciting to emerge from the shadows. His team was obviously geared up for a scrap, not for a compliant, blubbering perp wearing nothing but boxers and nettle rash.

“Aye.” Sanne handed him over and waited until the van pulled away. “Fuck me,” she whispered to herself. Her legs felt like jelly, and she had to keep her mouth shut to hold back a hysterical bubble of laughter. Still shaking her head in disbelief, she went to find Nelson.

*

Meg injected the morphine into Hilda Ratcliffe’s IV and watched as her eyes flickered before finally closing. Even in sleep, the patient continued to mumble, her words nonsensical and tangled. Meg took hold of her hand, nodding at Emily as she did so.

“You should be okay, now that she’s more settled. Soon as you’re done, we can get her up to Ortho.”

Emily opened a suture kit and picked up a syringe of local anaesthetic. “Right. Are you sure about this?” The back of her wrist bore vivid scratches where Hilda’s fingernails had raked across it. Her multiple attempts to insert the IV had not been appreciated, and Hilda’s screeches had brought Meg running to the cubicle.

“I’m sure. She’s pretty out of it.” Meg touched a hand to Hilda’s brittle hair. Blood matted a large area where she had hit her head, but it was the fractured hip that would probably prove fatal. For a ninety-one-year-old already in fragile health, a general anaesthetic would be high-risk and her recovery fraught with complications. She was unlikely to be able to fight off any kind of post-operative infection. Her nose twitched as Emily began to inject the lignocaine, but she remained asleep.

“Poor old sod,” Meg whispered. The woman was covered in bruises and scars from previous falls, and her skin tented where Meg pinched it, showing how dehydrated she was. “We’d put a bloody dog down if it ended up in this state.”

Emily stiffened slightly but didn’t contradict her. “Which home is she from?”

“Juniper Bank. It’s a proper shithole. Care Quality have threatened to shut it down twice, but somehow it keeps rising from the ashes. The manager couldn’t even be bothered to send an escort with her.” Meg encircled Hilda’s wrist with her index finger and thumb. The woman was so emaciated that Meg’s fingers easily met. Alzheimer’s had left Hilda utterly dependent on care home staff, and it was evident that they were failing her. “The paramedics are going to report the home again. They think she’d been on the floor for a few hours before anyone found her.”

“That’s awful. I could never put a member of my family in one of those places.”

In retrospect, Meg wasn’t sure if it was the pious tone of Emily’s voice or the bald naivety of the statement that made her hackles rise, but she replied without thinking.

“My mum’s in one of those places.”

The sharpness of the retort made Emily hesitate midway through tying off a suture. A flush crept up her neck, but she didn’t apologise; she just looked at Meg in curiosity.

“She is? Why?”

Meg had to give her credit for audacity. She might still be useless at cannulation, but she had apparently developed a backbone during the last few days of Meg’s unofficial tutelage.

“Early-onset dementia.” Meg shrugged off Emily’s sympathetic wince. “I couldn’t afford to give up work and look after her, my brother’s an idiot who can barely look after himself, and I’ve not seen my dad in years, so full-time care was the safest option. San helped me check out all the homes in the area, and we picked one with an excellent rating. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than the alternative.”

Emily placed a dressing over her neat row of sutures and started cleaning the blood from Hilda’s neck. “My dad’s been screwing his secretary for five years, and my mum pretends she doesn’t know.” She continued to scrub at the blood, her tone that of someone chatting about the weather.

Meg blew out a breath that rippled her fringe. She didn’t know what to say to that, which wasn’t a situation she often found herself in.

It was Emily who cracked first. A hint of a smile broke into a full grin. “With families this messed up, how did we turn out so normal?”

“Damned if I know.” Meg held up a hand in apology as her phone began to ring. Seeing Sanne’s name on the caller ID, she ignored the department’s rules and answered it. “Hey, you. What’s up?”

There was a short delay before Sanne spoke. When she did, Meg had to strain to hear her over the noise in the background.

“Hiya. You’re on a late today, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Sanne’s sigh was cut short by the unmistakable sound of someone vomiting. “You couldn’t free up a cubicle for Nelson, could you?”

*

For the second time in less than a week, Meg met Sanne in the ambulance bay. On this occasion, however, Sanne pulled up in an unfamiliar car. She gave Meg a quick hug before going over to the ambulance she had been escorting, and as they waited for its doors to open, Meg took the opportunity to eyeball her. She was a little rumpled, and her coat-sleeve was torn, but she seemed hale enough.

“Dare I ask?” Meg said.

“We went to bring a chap in for questioning, but he didn’t take too kindly to us. Nelson took a couple of punches. He didn’t want to come here, but he’s bleeding like a stuck pig.”

Meg pulled her to one side. “What about you?”

“I’m fine.” Not only did Sanne look Meg in the eye as she answered, but excitement had her practically bouncing on the spot. She put her lips to Meg’s ear and whispered, “I ran after the bloke and arrested him on my own.” Her grin stretched from ear to ear.

Meg’s kneejerk horror quickly turned to pride. She slung an arm around Sanne’s shoulders. “How the hell did a tiddler like you pull that off?”

“I used my feminine wiles.”

“Yeah. You don’t really have any of those, love.”

Sanne tilted her head, considering and then conceding the point. “Okay then, I chased him into a shitload of nettles.” She displayed hands sporting a mass of raised welts. “Don’t suppose you have any calamine lotion?”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Meg smiled at Nelson as he stepped off the ambulance, holding a wad of gauze to his nose.

“The boss insisted he get a check-up,” Sanne said. “Then I’m taking him back to HQ so we can watch the interview.”

Meg nodded, but she was only catching occasional words, and even those weren’t making much sense to her. Exhilaration had left Sanne’s cheeks rosy, and the flecks of green in her eyes were glinting brightly, a combination that was very pretty and extremely distracting. When she smiled at Meg for no reason, Meg had to have a stern word with herself about maintaining her professionalism.

“Cubicle four,” she told the paramedics, with all the authority she could muster.

“Righto.”

Meg took a breath, satisfied that no one had noticed a thing. She caught Sanne’s eye and swiftly corrected herself: no one, that was, except for Sanne.

*

Even walking down a noisy, over-lit hospital corridor, Sanne couldn’t mistake the expression on Meg’s face. Everyone else appeared to be oblivious, but it made nerves that were already humming pleasantly begin to sing in full-throated chorus. When she poked out her tongue to wet lips that had suddenly gone dry, Meg arched an eyebrow at her, making her stumble.

“You okay there?” Meg’s voice was hoarse but amused.

“Yep.” Looking up, Sanne saw Nelson and the paramedics rounding a corner and took the opportunity to slap the back of Meg’s hand. “Will you bloody behave yourself?”

Meg widened her eyes, feigning innocence. “I am behaving in an impeccable manner.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

“I may well be that too.”

Upon reaching the cubicle, Sanne watched Meg smoothly return to doctor mode, running Nelson through a brief but thorough assessment. Envying her ability to compartmentalise, Sanne took a seat in the corner, where she plucked a leaflet from a collection on the wall and began to educate herself about otitis media. She was halfway through the section on treatment, when a young-looking doctor poked her head around the curtain.

“Sorry to interrupt, Dr. Fielding, but I wondered if you needed any help.”

“We’re just about finished, thanks.” Meg beckoned the woman into the cubicle. “Sorry, Emily, this is Sanne Jensen. I think you’ve met Nelson already.”

“Yes, he took my statement after Josie went to surgery.” Emily smiled at Sanne and extended a hand. “Good to meet you.”

Her grip was warm and firm, and she held on a little longer than Sanne thought necessary. She was attractive, in a well-brought-up, designer-clothing, perfect hair and makeup kind of way. She didn’t make Sanne’s nerves tingle, though. She just made her wonder whether there were any straight people left in the NHS these days.

The buzz of Sanne’s phone came as a welcome interruption. Emily took it as her cue to leave, and Meg followed her out to collect Nelson’s painkillers.

Sanne leaned forward on her chair and accepted the call. “Hey, boss.”

“Everyone still alive down there?” Eleanor asked.

“Alive and kicking. Nelson’s got some sort of Tampax thingy shoved up his nose, but he’ll be fine.”

“Good. George and Fred got here about fifteen minutes ago, looking quite sheepish.”

Sanne tried not to laugh. “They ran the wrong way. Could’ve happened to any one of us.”

“Any one of us who doesn’t know their west from their east,” Eleanor said dryly. “Anyway, I’m sending you Ned Moseley’s mugshot. Could you take it up to Josie and see if it rings any bells?”

“No problem. Are you interviewing him tonight?”

“We’d planned to, but the bastard really is allergic to nettles. The doc gave him an antihistamine, and he’s in one of the holding cells, sleeping like a baby.”

“Sorry, boss.”

Eleanor scoffed. “What the hell are you sorry for?”

“Um. Chasing him into the nettles?”

“Don’t be a berk. We’re going to leave him till first thing in the morning, so once you’ve seen Josie and finished your report you can head home.”

“Wilco,” Sanne said, but the line was already dead. She dropped her phone back into her pocket and turned to Nelson. “Looks like we’ve got the night off.” Relief flitted across his bruised face. She patted his shoulder. “Sit tight, and I’ll see where Meg is.”

Outside the cubicle, she checked the image Eleanor had sent her: a standard mugshot of Ned that perfectly rendered his confusion at the booking process. With tear-smudged cheeks and a hangdog expression, he hardly fitted the stereotype of a cold-blooded kidnapper, though Sanne knew better than to be fooled by appearances.

Meg approached with pills in one hand and a cup of water in the other. “What’ve you got there?” she asked.

Sanne showed her the photo. “Prime suspect Ned.”

“He’s the one who kicked the crap out of your buddy?”

“Yep.”

“And the one you followed into an unlit alley?”

“Uh, yeah.” She ran a hand across the back of her neck. The height marker by Ned’s head indicated he was six foot two.

Meg touched her knuckles to Sanne’s chin. “Hey, I’m just relieved you came out the other side, that’s all.”

“Me too,” Sanne admitted. After the high of the chase, the reality of the risks she had taken was beginning to set in. Putting thoughts of a bath and bed out of her mind, she steeled herself for another hour or two of work. “I have to go and speak to Josie. Will you get Nelson a coffee?”

“Sure.”

“Two sugars.”

“You know I’ll forget that.”

Her nonchalance made Sanne smile. “Yeah, I know you will. Just try not to make him tea.”

*

The doctor in the ITU wasn’t happy about Sanne’s request for another interview with Josie only hours after the first, but he grudgingly gave permission, along with a stern warning not to cause undue stress.

“Fifteen minutes,” he said, escorting her to the room. “She started physio this afternoon, and she’s exhausted.”

Sanne knocked out of habit, expecting Josie to be asleep or with company, but she was alone, staring at a book that lay unopened on her lap. At some point during the day, the dressings had been removed from her head, leaving her surgical scars exposed.

“Hi.” Her greeting was subdued. She had probably worked out that a solo, junior detective would not be conveying any significant developments.