Death Row - Mark Pearson [23]
He winked at her and the smell of his body odour once again assaulted her nostrils and for the second time that morning she felt like being physically sick,
Men. Every one of them pond scum. Jennifer slipped her hand into her pocket and closed her hand around the comforting handle of the knife. It had already killed one of them – maybe there was time for one more before she made her move. One more for luck.
*
Kate Walker stifled a yawn as she walked along the corridor, past the geriatric ward and up to the intensive-care unit. She nodded to Bob Wilkinson, who was standing outside one of the rooms looking in through the window. Kate joined him and watched as a doctor and a nurse inside checked the patient’s vitals, took the readings of the machines that were keeping him alive, made sure the drips were still connected properly and functioning.
‘No change, then?’ Kate asked.
‘No,’ said Bob Wilkinson. ‘Still touch and go.’
‘And the prognosis?’
Bob shrugged, a world-weary who-can-tell gesture that he had spent most of his life on the force perfecting. ‘Doctors. They ever tell you anything you want to know?’
Kate gave him the bent eyebrow.
‘Sorry, present company excepted …’ He paused for a moment. ‘Some of the time, anyway.’
‘Who caught the case?’
‘DI Bennett.’
Kate looked at him blankly.
‘DI Tony Bennett. I kid you not.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘A flashy-tied immigrant from up north somewhere.’
‘Immigrant?’
‘To London. Just transferred down.’
‘He around?’
Bob Wilkinson shook his head. ‘Been and gone. Early hours.’
Kate cast a critical gaze over him, seeing more than the usual world-weariness in his eyes. ‘You been here all night?’
‘Yeah. Three more stabbings came in after this one.’
‘You know what I think they should do?’
‘Go on.’
‘Ban knives.’
Bob laughed dryly. ‘Why not? Sure as shit worked for drugs.’
Kate turned and held her hand out to the intern who was coming out of the high-dependency room. He was in his twenties with a face still shy of the pessimism she imagined he would soon learn to develop. Hospitals boiled the optimism out of you as powerfully as they tried to wipe out germs. The nurse in her forties behind him looked as though she could eat him and three more like him for breakfast.
‘Doctor Kate Walker. I’m a police surgeon.’
The doctor shook her hand with a surprisingly powerful grip, glancing back at his comatose patient. ‘I’m Doctor Hake.’ He smiled slightly self-consciously. ‘Timothy. You were the first person attending at the scene?’
‘I was. The sergeant and I were on our way back from a domestic call and found him unconscious off the road. If a slightly drunk young lady hadn’t tried to take a pee in the alleyway there we might never have found him.’
The young doctor nodded. ‘You probably saved his life.’
‘He’s going to come through?’
Doctor Hake gave his shoulders the slightest of lifts. ‘I don’t know. That’s why I said “probably”. You don’t know how long he was out there before you found him?’
‘No idea.’
‘He lost a lot of blood and there were hypothermia complications because of it. We’re trying to stabilise him, but there are internal bleeding issues – together with the wound, the shock, the possibility of serious infection.’
‘I know the score, doctor. I was a forensic pathologist for quite a number of years.’
Hake looked at her, puzzled. ‘You were? And now you’re a police surgeon?’
‘Not just that. I work here on the teaching staff and in the students’ clinic.’ Kate smiled. ‘I’m a multitasker. The police-surgeon work is just the odd shift here and there.’
‘Voluntary.’
‘More or less.’
‘So isn’t that …’ He hesitated. Trying to find the right words.
‘A backward step?’
‘Well, yeah. I