‘You ask me, they’ll section him,’ the male paramedic was saying, his green overalls glowing in the still flashing lights of the ambulances and police vehicles crammed into the dusk-dark yard.
Over my dead body they’d section him. Sectioning meant losing your human rights. Drugs? ECT? I didn’t know what they’d use, but I’d bet it wouldn’t be as good as home cooking and home TLC.
I surged forward. ‘Josie Welford,’ I announced, as if the name should mean something. ‘I’m here to talk to your patient. Mr Thomas. Is he sedated?’ Without waiting for an answer – what did I know about any pharmaceuticals they might have shoved into his arm? – I stepped up into the ambulance, to find Nick in steady tears.
‘Come on, let’s get you out of those dirty things,’ I said. One of the police or forensic team would have a spare paper suit, for goodness’ sake, and it was better for anyone to be cold than be dirty and wet.
As if he were a child, he let me strip him off, mopping him with paper tissues and swathing him in a blanket. Why the hell had no one got round to this basic kindness? I yelled from the ambulance for a paper suit. One appeared as if by magic.
‘And an evidence bag for his clothes,’ I snapped. ‘What planet are you people on? Come on, more blankets here.’ Yes, I liked a bit of round-eyed, if tight-jawed, respect. ‘Isn’t it time we headed off to A and E? I’d like him checked over. Now. And one of you –’ I summoned a PC with apparently little to do but hang round nattering to his mates ‘– tell DCI Evans where I’m going. We’ll need to talk later. Here are my car keys. The car’s parked outside the yard, a hundred yards to the south. Get someone to bring it to the hospital.’ In my experience, if you assumed people would do things, they did.
I sat beside Nick on the long journey to Exeter, holding him till his sobs subsided and he fell into a silence I didn’t dare break. From time to time the female paramedic checked his vital signs, largely, I suspected, because she liked to look busy and efficient.
‘Any problems?’ I prompted, nodding sagely when she reeled off a set of figures – I’d watched enough hospital dramas, after all.
‘You saved my life, you know,’ I told Nick at last. ‘Without you I’d be dead. No doubt about it. None at all.’
There might have been a twitch of interest.
‘It must have taken a lot of doing,’ I continued, ‘to pick up one of those guns and load it and fire it, knowing you’d got no time at all to do it.’
‘It just came back. And it was easy. Wasn’t so easy, seeing the girl die.’
‘Girl?’
‘The one attacking you.’
‘It was a bloke, Nick. A bloke. One of the guys from the rending plant. The ones holding you prisoner. The one trying to kill me. And he didn’t die.’ Though I wouldn’t give much for his chances.
‘I think I must have had one of my blackouts. I saw it all this time, Josie. I was in the Kings Heath nick canteen, just eating a sarnie for lunch and watching the TV. There was this news programme about CCTV, with this guy sitting in front of a whole bank of them. And then the shout went up. This emergency. It was spitting distance from the station. There was procedure in place. The team was scrambled. But we got there first. It was supposed to be a watching brief. No action, just containment. But the guy heard us arrive. And he brought this girl down the stairs using her as a shield, we thought. Not that we had any guns, anyway – we were waiting for the Armed Response Unit. I had to do something. I was in charge, remember – the inspector. All the responsibility but none of the experience. That’s the trouble with being a high flier. Well, I was being groomed for higher management, not a lifetime on the beat. That’s what they said. So there I was, wet behind the ears, a couple of sergeants with twice my experience taking my orders. Supposedly. Orders. I couldn’t have ordered a burger in McDonald’s. So we all just stood there looking at him and this pregnant girl. And I started to tell him to put the knife down and let her go. And he moved his hand – I thought he was going to give me the knife. So I reached forward to take it. But he laughed, and shoved it into her belly. And all her guts –’ He started to sob again.
What should I do? I was like him all those years ago – quite out of my depth. Perhaps if I engaged his brain it would be easier for him.
‘The first time I saw you black out was when you were in Comet or whatever. It looked as if you might be buying a TV. But you just stood there, frozen, clutching an electric kettle.’
‘Don’t remember it at all.’
‘Or the first time you saw young Lucy in church? Apparently you gave everyone a wobbly.’
‘Not that. Nor any of the brown studies you lambasted me for. I didn’t mean to put you at risk, Josie – I’m sorry.’
I squeezed his hand. ‘Forget it. Whoops!’
‘Not the best thing to say in the circumstances,’ he said, producing a pallid grin. ‘I’ve felt that parts of me have been missing, Josie. Great chunks.’
‘Post-traumatic stress disorder,’ I intoned solemnly, ‘I should imagine.’
He nodded. ‘The police do things much better these days, apparently. You get properly de-briefed, offered support, that sort of thing. There’s an ex-policeman who’s a real expert in the subject living down here. I might just get in touch with him.’
‘Sounds a good idea. Looks like we’ve arrived.’
‘Where?’
‘A and E in some Exeter hospital.’
‘Why? We’re both OK, aren’t we?’
So he wasn’t as up to speed as I’d hoped. ‘Physically, yes. But they weren’t at all sure about your – your mental state.’
He picked at his paper suit. ‘I suppose I must have had another …moment.’
‘A pretty major one, I’d say. Nick, there was talk of …hospitalising… you.’
‘Why? My God, I was that bad, was I? Did I hurt anyone? Apart from the guy I shot?’
‘No,’ I said carefully.
‘In that case, they’ll have to section me,’ he said. ‘I’m not going voluntarily, believe me.’
Now was not the time to talk about the paramedics’ earlier theory. I stared down this one lest she shove in a helpful oar.
‘I think you might need some therapy, though,’ I ventured.
‘Bucketfuls, I should imagine. But not as an in-patient, thank you very much. Will you wait for me?’ he asked ambiguously.
‘Of course. They might even want to cast their beadies over me, since I seem to have blood all over my clothes. I’m fairly sure it’s not mine, though. And I shan’t weep for the guy whose it probably is. How on earth do you do that job of yours, Nick? It fair turned my stomach, that yard. I might even become vegetarian for a bit.’
He threw his head back and laughed. ‘You! Vegetarian! Oh, Josie – please don’t. It’d tie your culinary hands far too tight.’
It was in this vein we continued to natter until we were parked in the waiting area of A and E. He was summoned almost immediately, thanks, no doubt, to the paramedics’ reports. His hand fastened convulsively on mine. ‘You won’t let them section me!’
I returned the squeeze. ‘Over my dead body! Whoops!’
So at least he went off laughing.
The sound rang out unnaturally in a place as cheerless as an undertaker’s waiting room, and I choked my responding chortle immediately. What, more specifically who, was emitting such palpable misery?
‘My God, Lucy! What are you doing here?’ I darted over, hardly realising that there was a middle-aged woman sitting protectively beside her.
‘Oh, Mrs W! It’s Dad!’ She turned to me her face so washed with tears it seemed to be melting.
I sat down, putting my left arm round her shoulder to pull her into my embrace. ‘What’s happened?’ I waited while she collected herself. Some sort of drunken accident, no doubt. I always thought he shouldn’t be trusted with anything more lethal than a can opener.
The woman – on reflection she probably wasn’t even as old as I was, just more resigned to her years – shook her head in a minatory way.
Lucy ignored the warning. ‘Blew himself up, didn’t he?’
‘“Blew himself up”? How?’
‘Fertiliser, of course. Blew himself up. Didn’t even have the sense to do it in the outhouse. Did it in the kitchen!’ She sounded more outraged than distressed.
This time the woman spoke. ‘You shouldn’t be saying anything yet, Lucy. It’s a legal matter now.’
I leaned across Lucy, extending my hand. ‘Josie Welford. I’m a friend of Lucy’s. She works for me at the White Hart. The village pub,’ I added, still waiting for the woman to introduce herself and shake my hand.
Lucy beat her to it. ‘This is Ms Barnet, Mrs W. She’s supposed to be my social worker.’
Supposed to be? Something amiss there, by the sound of it. Time for a social smile as a flaccid paw barely touched mine. I responded by crunching its bones. Painfully. I was wrong, of course. I knew social workers had impossible jobs and that however they toiled against insuperable odds they were always blamed by the red-top press for all society’s ills. But every single one detailed to me while Tony had been doing his bird had had the self-same handshake. I knew I was stereotyping, that I was prejudiced, that I was doing all the things I loathed myself for. I even knew I was getting angry with her so I didn’t put my head against Lucy’s and weep with her – not for her death-wish of a dad but for all that had happened this afternoon, to me and to a decent man I’d bullied into mortal danger. I swallowed and made myself smile.
‘How do you do? How much are you allowed to tell me?’ There, adult to adult, woman to woman.
She didn’t respond. All she granted me was a thin-lipped sketch of a smile. ‘It’s all sub judice.’
‘Lucy too?’
‘Very much so.’
Lucy lifted her head. ‘Too much so! She’s only threatening me with Care, Josie. I mean, Mrs W.’
Another hug, this one even more maternal. ‘You mean Josie. Come on, what’s this about Care?’ I gave it the same meaningful capital as she did.
‘Care. All of us. Split up and shared between foster homes. All because I’m not old enough!’ she raged.
‘To be a responsible adult,’ Ms Barnet explained. There was sufficient note of apology in her voice to make me soften towards her. ‘In any case,’ she continued, almost giving me a hint, ‘the family home’s in no fit state … If you could see the kitchen … And possible damage… We don’t know the state of the structure…’
Almost a hint? Josie, you stupid woman, each and every one of these half-finished sentences is a hint! ‘So whatever we mustn’t talk about has made a good deal of mess. And the children can’t stay at home?’
‘No way.’ The youthful cliché came oddly from that tired mouth.
‘And we’re too many for Auntie Pen down Falmouth way, or Uncle Dave in Sidmouth.’
Because we are too many. Where had I heard that before? Wherever it was, it tugged so angrily at my chest, I couldn’t stop the words coming out. ‘If it’s a matter of room and an adult, I can offer both. I’m geared up for bed and breakfast accommodation, currently unused, and can offer myself and an ex-policeman as temporary guardians. I know you’ll have to vet us properly. Oh, and there’s a barman you’ll need to look up too. Robin Somethingorother.’ I slapped my forehead. ‘Hang these senior moments! I’m getting quite hopeless with names.’
We talked practicalities nine to the dozen, me because I didn’t want Lucy to have time to get emotional with gratitude and Ms Barnet, I suspected, because that was what she did best. OK, for another reason, too: Nick was being kept suspiciously long and I was having to work very hard at not storming up to the kid on reception and demanding instant access to him. It was far easier to think about turning the pub into a temporary orphanage – hell, it had better be temporary, or what would happen to my bijou restaurant? – than worrying about how to fight against the Mental Health Act on Nick’s behalf, not to mention how to deal with Nick if he stayed on at the White Hart. The implications were beginning to overwhelm me. I dug in my pocket for a few coins, which I thrust at Lucy. ‘Be an angel and find a machine. I reckon we all need a good fix of chocolate.’
She stood, gazing at me steadily, adult at irresponsible teenager. ‘Me and Ms Barnet, maybe. But what about you, Josie? Shouldn’t you be sticking to that diet of yours?’