Resnick remembered how it ended: the mud that had sucked, thick, about his feet as he had run across the field- end, awkwardly towards her, helicopter hovering noisily above; the way the blood had pumped, jaggedly, from his heart when he knew that she was safe.
In the months since then, all conversation between them had been formal, withdrawn, as if what each had glimpsed in that despairing clutch of arms was more than they would dare acknowledge. And Michael Best was in custody awaiting trial for kidnapping and murder. His days in court and Lynn's still to come.
The single door which Resnick knew led through to the 11 rear of Accident and Emergency was directly in front of him and he pushed it open and went in.
They sat in small groups of relatives and friends or else they sat alone, staring off into that space where time, long since, had decided to stand still. For so many of the people here, Resnick thought, this was how they spent their lives; uncomfortably, on institutional chairs in institutional rooms, waiting for the number clicking slowly over to correspond to the one clutched in their hands. Social services, the housing department, medical centre, the dole; the bored clerk checking their answers, painstakingly scrawled upon this form or that. Rent rebate, clothing allowance, disability benefit. The women, pregnant, or with three kids under five who ran and chased between the lines of chairs, defying all the shouts and threats, sporadic and half-hearted, until finally they went flying, arse over tip, crashed into the wall and cried. Men with short moustaches, tattoos and sallow faces, shutting out all noise, clenching and re clenching their fists at their children's screams the futility of dreams.
An Asian family sat off on its own, near the door, the man in a brown suit, bandage lopsided about his head, his wife in a said, pale blue and green, carpet slippers on her feet, a small child, little more than a baby, sleeping fitfully inside her arms. Close to Resnick, a middle-aged man with tight grey hair and lined face, wearing someone's cast-off Fair Isle pullover pocked with holes and small burns, sat smoking a cigarette, after each drag carefully tapping the ash into the empty can of Strongbow cider clenched between his knees.
The nurse Resnick intercepted was wearing a sister's uniform and the badge on its lapel told him her name was Geraldine McAllister. Almost certaintly she was older, but all she looked was twenty-five or six.
'Excuse me,' Resnick said.
'But you had somebody brought in earlier, a stab wound…'
'We had several.'
'This one…'
'Three, to be exact.' Resnick had expected Irish and what he got was Scots, not broad but unmistakable, musical.
'The one I'm interested in…' he began.
She was looking at the warrant card he held out in one hand.
'That would be John Smith, then, I expect.'
'Is that his name?'
She smiled.
'Probably not. But we had to call him something. He refused to give a name.' The smile was still there, broader if anything.
'Not very inventive, is it?'
'I'm sure you've got better things to do.'
'Than be inventive? I doubt that. Not round here.'
'Gerry,' a male nurse called from round a curtain, 'can you take a look at this a minute? '
'You,' she said to Resnick.
'Inspector. Don't go. Two shakes now and I'll be back.'
One small emergency extended into another and it was not so far short of half an hour before they were sitting in a cramped office behind the receptionist's desk. A polystyrene cup of lukewarm grey coffee sat, unwanted, between Resnick's feet.
Gerry McAllister held an X-ray in her hand, slanted up towards the light.
'You can see, the wound isn't very deep, a couple of inches at most. Even so,' she shook her head, 'a little bit higher and to the left. '
Her hair was not chestnut as Resnick had first supposed, but auburn, redder at the ends than at the roots. And she was older, a cross-hatch of worry lines around her eyes. Thirty-four or five?
'Was it consistent with, I mean, did it seem to have been made with a knife?'
13 'Rather than what? A knitting needle, something like that?'
It hadn't been precisely what Resnick had in mind.
'A couple of weeks back,' Gerry McAllister said, 'we had this woman come in. She'd nagged down a taxi on the road; didn't have any money, but the driver brought her here just the same. There was a knitting needle sticking out from the corner of her eye. '
Automatically, Resnick cast his mind back, trying to recall whether the incident had been reported.
'There'd been a row at home, apparently. Things had got out of hand.'
Resnick nodded.
'Boyfriend or husband?'
The sister shook her head firmly.
'Mother. Should they go to the bingo or stay in and watch Blind Date. 1 She smiled.
'Alarming, isn't it, the way things get blown up out of all proportion? Arguing like that over something like Blind Date.'
'Our Mr Smith,' Resnick said.
'He didn't say anything about how he came to be stabbed?'
'My hand slipped a little on the needle,' Gerry said, 'when I was giving him his injection. Punctured the skin more than I'd intended.
He didn't even open his mouth then. '
Resnick grinned and got to his feet.
'I've checked up on the ward, it's okay for you to go up and see him.
Maybe he'll talk to you,' she said.
Resnick doubted that were true, but thanked Gerry McAllister and followed her out of the room. Immediately, three voices were calling her from three different directions, each as urgent as the next.
The anonymous victim had been put into a side ward which he shared with two men way past pension able age and a nervous-looking youth whose bed was marked
'Nil by Mouth'.
He was lying on his side, face towards the wall, a tray of barely browned toast and soggy cereal on the bedside cabinet, untouched.
'Not hungry?' Resnick asked, pulling out a chair and setting it down close to the bed.
The man raised his head enough to look into Resnick's eyes, then rolled away.
'Whatever happened,' Resnick said, 'you were lucky. Lucky someone found you, brought you to us; lucky to be here. That whoever did this wasn't stronger. '
He reached out and, without force, rested his hand on the upper edge of the sheet, bone and flesh of the man's shoulder beneath. At his touch, the man flinched but nothing more.
'Listen,' Resnick said, 'if there's somebody out there attacking men, men who put themselves in a vulnerable position we need to bring them in. If we don't, well, you understand what I'm saying. The next person might not get off as easy as you. ' His voice was soft beneath the squeak of passing trolley wheels, the muffled inanities of breakfast television from the main ward.
'You wouldn't want to be responsible for that, would you? Someone dying?'
Beneath his hand, Resnick felt the muscles tighten through the loose flesh of the man's arm.
'Whatever you were up to, last night, no reason that shouldn't remain your business. No need to broadcast it around. Time to time, we all do things we'd rather nobody else knew. Family. Friends. It's something I can understand.'
For an answer, the man shuffled further across the bed, shrugging off Resnick's hand; sheet and blanket he pulled up until they half-covered his head.
Resnick leaned low across him, close enough to sense the damp ripeness of the man's sweat. His fear.
'Think on what I've said. Talk to us. Co-operate. You'll 15 find it easier all around.' Resnick raised his head
