The Cold Calling

Teatime. They’d be missing him soon. Checking out the toilets and the day rooms. Could have tried to sign himself out, but that would have led to arguments, drawn too much attention. Especially with the state he’d been in …

… when, not five minutes after Norman’s final exit, there’d been this sudden activity down the ward and the screens went up again round the old man’s bed, and there were murmurs, the ward darkening, the air clotting with death, a purple-grey cloud almost visible over that bed. Maiden’s stomach had gone cold with dread. He had to get out of here. Out of the hospital, out of the town, out of the grey, out of the cold. The need stifling him.

… take a breath before you jump in …

No. He’d found his suit in the locker, rolled it up into a ball around his shoes. Made his exit before they removed the body.

He found the T-shirts wrapped in Cellophane in a box marked Liquid Soap.

The T-shirts were white, all one size. He held one up. Across the chest, it said, ELHAM GENERAL HOSPITAL LEAGUE OF FRIENDS FUN RUN 1997.

Maiden put one on, his jacket over the top. Switched off the light and relished the darkness, until he realized he was going to sleep, even though he’d spent most of the bloody day asleep.

All you have to do, Bobby, is rest, rest and rest.

Wondering if he could ever really rest again.

Anybody to look after you at home? Girlfriend? Mother?

Liz would have known how to look after him. Would’ve known all about the care of head injuries. But he knew that if he’d still been with Liz she’d have sent him straight back to the hospital in a taxi. Then told Riggs. Liz liked there to be a framework, structure, hierarchy, organization, rules, discipline …

He clutched his head, suffocating. No wonder Norman liked her.

When the lift let him out in the reception area, his legs felt weak. The place was full of visitors and cleaners and auxiliaries. There was a small shop selling tea and coffee and snacks, a few tables and chairs, and he sat down for a moment, eyes going at once to a framed print on the cream wall opposite.

He knew the painting. Turner. Staffa: Fingal’s Cave. Skeletal ship in an angry, glowering maelstrom of sea and sky and rocks. Small, struggling sun. There was a sudden heaviness in his chest, a memory rolling around in there like an iron ball. It meant something, this picture. It had the essence of something. He felt its violence.

The picture was groaning with half-spent violence and the threat of more to come.

More to come. Maiden felt sick, as though he was on that ship among the black elements.

Couldn’t look at it any more. Stood up. Didn’t hang around, didn’t look to either side until he was in the hospital car park, on the hillside overlooking the town and the dying sun.

XII

‘Shit!’

Slamming the flat of his hand into his head.

An elderly man steered his wife away from the bus stop, throwing Maiden a glare of disgust. Bloody drunks, he’d be thinking. Bloody drunks on the street before seven o’clock, that’s what you get with all-day opening.

Maiden rocked on the kerb, hands pushing at his eyes. So he was making an exhibition of himself. So what?

He’d only left his wallet in the hospital safe.

So no money. Not even a few coins for a cup of tea with three sugars — he needed the sugar, he felt as though his brain was floating out of his skull like a balloon on a string.

Made himself take three deep breaths. Think.

OK. It wasn’t as if he was breaking gaol. It was only a hospital. He could go back and demand his wallet from the safe.

Except they’d probably know he was missing by now and, as he was a policeman, who would they tell?

Not worth the risk. He wanted to be well away before Riggs found out. Not that even Riggs could stop him; it wasn’t a police hospital. And, as he was hardly fit for work, he could do what he liked, go where he wanted.

Anybody to look after you at home? Girlfriend? Mother?

Girlfriend, no. Mother, no. Home. Get back to the flat. Must be some money there, a spare chequebook. Pack a suitcase, take a bus out of town — don’t even try to drive the car — find a hotel, sleep, sleep, sleep. Then consider stage two.

He wanted to worry Riggs, if that was possible. Make him lose some sleep about where Maiden might be, who he might be talking to. Worried people made mistakes. One day, Riggs would have to make a mistake; you could only hope somebody would be there to pick up on it.

Maiden started to walk, avoiding the town centre, slinking into the back streets like a vagrant, walking slowly, trying not to sway. Passing people were glancing sideways at him, as at some kind of downmarket street-theatre performer. The sneering sun hung like a cheap, copper medallion. He felt naked. He tried to run, but the pavement came up at him before he even realized he’d stumbled. Slow down; it was no more than half a mile to Old Church Street, he could manage that.

Oh no. Please, no. Fuck.

Now he was kicking a lamp-post. Again and again and again. Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Because his pockets were empty: not only no wallet, but no bastard keys.

He was supposed to break into his own flat?

Shit! Shit! Shit! Where had his mind gone? Not thinking like a copper any more. Not even like a human being. And he’d actually believed he was putting it on, for Riggs. Shit, he was half vegetable. Couldn’t work out really, really simple things. He looked wildly around him. No money, no keys. Nowhere to go, now. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to sleep.

The street swayed. His left leg had gone dead. He wanted to smash his head into the lamp-post. Again and again and again. His useless, damaged head.

He gave the post a final kick. Its light began to flicker on; he backed away in alarm. Then saw that lights were coming on all down the street.

Because it was dusk.

He started to laugh, pushing away the memory of a woman under a sputtering lamp in Old Church Street only seconds before … and walked on towards a row of mostly darkened shops, resting his right shoulder against the windows as he passed from doorway to doorway. Only one shop was lit. Or, half lit, drably, around a window- display.

H. W. Worthy: monumental mason.

Mottled, grey, marble gravestone, with a glistening black flowerpot, empty, and a dark green, tangly wreath. No bright, beckoning lights, no flowers, no fountains. Worthy had it right. The dark and true nature of death.

Bobby Maiden rested his forehead against the cool of the plate-glass window, staring death in the face.

And the face of death stared back, from the drab wreath. The dark leaves framed it, a face made of compost and fibre, broken twigs clenched in its earth-blackened teeth, its deep-set eyes darkly glowing, its hair and beard writhing with voracious organic life.

The face of death grinned at Maiden; his stomach pulsed, an acrid bile rose into his throat. He was only vaguely aware of a grey car gliding to the kerb, the passenger door swinging open before it slid to a stop.

‘You look lost, Bobby,’ Suzanne said.

‘We have a problem,’ Jonathan said on the phone to Andy. ‘Your friend has checked out of Lower Severn without leaving a forwarding address.’

‘Bobby Maiden? What’s he doing on Lower Severn?’

‘Dr Connelly had him moved. Couldn’t see why he was still in Accident and Emergency. Now he’s gone.’

‘Brian Connelly wouldnae see his own-He’s gone?’

‘Taken his clothes and left.’

‘You mean you let him just walk oot? ‘