Chapter 34

ICU, St Thomas’ Hospital, London.

Monday 22nd August 2011; 1pm.

 

Max looked into the screened cubicle holding the frail body of Mary Akuta and tears welled in his eyes. The nurse had warned him in advance about her appearance, but no warning could have prepared him for the sight before him.

Mary’s face was bloated beyond recognition with bruising and fractures. Her eyes were slits in swollen lids, each of which resembled half a tennis ball. Her face was covered in blood from numerous lacerations, her nose was destroyed and her mouth had stitches in one corner where the flesh had been torn. Max allowed the tears to flow freely down his cheeks as he took the heavily bandaged hand and rested it gently on his own.

“Please be careful, Mr Richmond,” the nurse requested. “We think that someone stamped on her hand, breaking the bones. We won’t know for certain until it is X rayed.” They both knew it would never be X rayed, unless it was done post mortem.

Mary Akuta was wired up to every monitor in the cubicle, and tubes connected her to a saline drip, pain relief and oxygen. She was close to death. Her monitors were set to silent because the alarms would otherwise have been constantly ringing as her heart and body fluttered, teetering on the very cusp of the eternities.

Max looked at the face of the woman who had been so kind to him and who had helped him expose criminality on the Broadwater Farm so many times. His face set rigid, and his eyes again took on a rabid intensity when, looking closely at the old lady’s face, he saw the distinct and unmistakeable imprint of shoelaces fastened in the crossover style.

“Bastards!” he muttered none too quietly under his breath. Mary stirred, and the nurse stepped forward.

Removing the tube from her mouth, she gently wiped away a little saliva and said kindly, “Relax, Mary, it will be better if you just try to sleep. Are you in pain?”

The old lady shook her head almost imperceptibly and tried to speak. The nurse dipped her head to hear better and heard the word “Max.” She looked at Max. “Please don’t tax her. She now has minutes rather than hours.”

Max leaned in and spoke through his tears. “Mary, I’ll get them, every last one, and they’ll suffer. Believe me.” Mary again shook her head and Max wondered how anyone could be beaten like this and still not want revenge. She again tried to speak, her voice a croak.

“It was them!” Was all she said but Max knew exactly what she meant. Mary collapsed into the pillow from the exertion, and moments later she passed away. The monitor flatlined and an alarm sounded. The nurse turned off the alarm and picked up a blue telephone which led directly to the resuscitation team, the crash team. “Hello, this is Sister Salmon. Hold the crash trolley. We won’t be needing it.” She set the phone down and saw the question in Max’s eyes. “There was just too much damage. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

Max pressed his face down into the bed cover and sobbed, the first time he could remember doing so as an adult. He came to realise that he was holding Mary’s shattered hand tightly, but he knew that it didn’t matter anymore.

 

***

When the nurses came to move Mary’s body to a quiet room where her relatives could view her body, Max started to leave. As he passed the nurses station he thanked Sister Salmon and asked rhetorically, “How could someone do this to a frail old lady?”

Sister Salmon shook her head in bewilderment before adding, “She isn’t the only one, unfortunately. There was a second victim. She must have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was visiting from the North West.”

Max looked puzzled. The nurse continued.

“You might know her, as she was a friend of Mary’s.” The sister consulted her bed plan. “Her driving license says she is Mrs Burchill, but she insists that her name is Fogarty. May Fogarty.”