The Book of Souls (Inspector McLean #2)(107)

‘Only, I thought you were calling me.’ The man’s voice was all wrong too. There was warmth in it. Concern even.

‘Sorry,’ McLean wheezed after a while, forcing himself upright. ‘I thought you were someone else.’

‘No bother.’ The man gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder. ‘Happens all the time, y’know.’

She lay on pristine white sheets, propped up by a couple of heavy pillows. Her arms hung limp by her sides, wires and tubes disappearing into both. Monitors clustered around the bed like trainee doctors, watching her constantly, checking she was still breathing through the tube that forced its way past her lips and on down her throat.

McLean stood at the door to the intensive care ward, staring through the glass, not daring to go in. He wanted more than anything for this not to be happening.

‘Oh, sir. I’m sorry. I didn’t realise ...’

He turned to see DS Ritchie approaching down the corridor. Unlike him, she wasn’t carrying a bunch of cheap petrol-station flowers. Like him, her face looked like she’d been several rounds with Muhammad Ali. The cut on her temple was neatly stitched, the flesh around it a riot of swelling and colour.

‘Any change?’ Ritchie nodded towards the IC ward.

‘I don’t know. I only just got here.’

‘You going in?’ It wasn’t as stupid a question as it sounded.

‘I guess I should.’ McLean took a deep breath and went inside.

It smelled of antiseptic and alcohol hand-wash. The ever-attendant machines beeped and whirred like some nightmare sci-fi computer gone mad. As he approached the bed, McLean noticed that Ritchie hung back, and he was grateful for her sensitivity. This was a terrible kind of torture, seeing Emma lying comatose, surrounded by the same apparatus that had kept his grandmother’s body alive for so long. Some would have seen the technology as a reason for hope, but he’d been down that road already and knew the odds all too well.

There was no bedside table; the monitors took up all the space. The flowers hung heavy in his grasp. He couldn’t think of anything to do with them now, and wondered why he’d brought them. It wasn’t as if Emma could see them, and they had virtually no scent. But they were a splash of colour, he had to admit that. So he laid them on the blanket at the end of the bed.

‘I should go,’ Ritchie said from the other side of the room. ‘I just wanted to ... You know ... See if there was any ...’ She shrugged.

McLean nodded. ‘OK. I’ll see you tomorrow. And Kirsty? Thanks.’

He didn’t feel any more comfortable after she had gone, but he did manage to find a chair. Placing it carefully down amongst the tubes and wires, he sat beside the bed and took Emma’s cold hand in his own.

‘She could wake up at any time.’ He looked around to see a young doctor standing in the doorway through which DS Ritchie had just left. Or had he been sitting there unthinking for hours? It was difficult to tell.

‘That’s the thing about a blow to the head. They say recovering consciousness quickly is essential, but sometimes it’s best if the patient doesn’t wake up. Gives the brain time to heal itself.’ The doctor crossed the room, raised a single eyebrow at the flowers, and then picked up the chart hanging from the end of the bed. McLean knew a prop when he saw one.

‘There’s a “but” in there somewhere, isn’t there.’

The doctor tried a reassuring smile, too weary to be really effective. ‘It’s an amazing thing, the brain. There’s so much we don’t know about it. Sometimes what looks like enormous damage leaves no discernible after-effect. Sometimes the smallest injury can kill. We’ve done all the scans and tests we can, but until she wakes up, we just don’t know. You need to prepare yourself. There’s every possibility that she might have suffered irreparable damage.’

Irreparable. McLean tried not to dwell on the word as he stared at Emma’s face. Her eyes were sunken, rounded with dark bruising. Her once-spiky black hair now hung around her ears in rat-tails. Her skin was sallow, her lips pale. It was hard to think of her as the woman he’d woken up with just three days ago. One more person’s life destroyed because he’d let them get too close.

‘Erm, technically visiting hours are over for today,’ the doctor said. ‘But seeing as you’re a police officer ...’

‘It’s all right.’ McLean released Emma’s hand and stood up. She didn’t move, didn’t protest, didn’t do anything to make him stay. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow.’

And the day after that, he thought as he pushed his way out into the corridor. And the day after that.





Epilogue



The ceilidh band was in full swing, the party warming up nicely. On the dance floor, Mr and Mrs Jenkins whirled and jigged their way through an eightsome reel to much whooping and cheering. Drink flowed freely, and everyone was filled with fine food. Nobody noticed the best man slip out through the back door of the hotel and climb into his shiny red car.

The speech had gone OK, McLean thought as he pulled slowly out of the car park. It was debatable whether or not Phil would ever talk to him again, but then that was the nature of these things. He should never have confided so drunkenly in his flatmate if he didn’t want the world told all on his wedding day. Maybe one day Phil would get to return the favour. Maybe.