The Infirmary (DCI Ryan Mysteries prequel)
L.J. Ross
“First, do no harm.”
—Hippocrates
CHAPTER 1
Sunday 6th July 2014
The Sunday Market on Newcastle’s Quayside was bustling. Traders touted everything from chocolates to knitted tea caddies, and the air was heavy with the scent of fudge and fried onions as John Dobbs fought his way through the crowd.
He walked with his head bent, avoiding the faces of those who jostled him along with impatient nudges and irritable sighs.
“’scuse me, mate.”
A meaty hand thrust him aside and Dobbs stumbled backwards into the path of an oncoming buggy laden with children.
“Mind out o’ the way, man!”
A rake-thin woman raced towards him, shoving the buggy out in front of her like a battering ram.
“Sorry,” he muttered, ducking between the stalls.
Dobbs risked a glance between the flaps of colourful tarpaulin and waited. He searched the passing faces of the crowd and began to think he had imagined the creeping, paranoid feeling of being followed.
Then he spotted them.
A man and woman weaved purposefully through the stream of people and came to a standstill, craning their necks as they searched the faces with hard, focused eyes that set them apart from the common herd. It was the same pair he’d seen yesterday, and the day before that.
It could mean only one thing.
Police.
He felt his stomach jitter, one slow flip that brought bile to his throat. They had come for him.
“Oh, God,” he whispered, and shuffled backwards, trying to make himself invisible. His chest shuddered in and out as he battled to remain calm, sucking in deep breaths of sickly-sweet summer air.
The policeman must have sensed him, because he turned suddenly and their eyes locked. Time slowed, the crowd became a blur and, in the second that PC Steve Jessop hesitated, Dobbs took his chance.
He spun around and burst through the brightly coloured canopies that billowed on the air, running along the quayside without any idea of where to go, driven only by the need to get away, to find somewhere safe.
“Hitchins! He’s leggin’ it!”
Dobbs heard the man shouting to his partner and knew they wouldn’t be far behind. His feet slapped against the pavement and he’d barely gone a hundred yards before he began to tire, muscles screaming as he urged his useless body to go faster.
“We’re in pursuit of subject heading west along the Quayside! Surveillance is blown. Request further instructions. I repeat, request immediate instructions!”
Dobbs cast a glance over his shoulder and saw the pair of them shouting into their radios as they gave chase. When he turned back, he lost his footing and careened into a group of teenagers, falling awkwardly to the sound of jeers.
He didn’t stop to listen but scrambled up again, the pads of his fingers tearing at the rough paving stones as he fought to stay ahead. There was a buzzing in his ears as he leaped into the road.
Horns blared, brakes screeched as he ran beneath the enormous bridge connecting Newcastle and Gateshead. It towered high above his head in a graceful arch of painted green steel, its underbelly spattered with the faeces of a thousand birds who nested in its nooks and crannies. Their noise was deafening, a cacophony of squawks and cries as he searched for a way to escape, a quiet hollow where he could breathe and think clearly. He pressed his hands to his ears.
“Please, God,” he muttered. “Make them stop.”
Beneath the wide arches was a granite tower supporting the north side of the bridge. Usually, its doors were kept firmly locked to the public, but vandals seeking a new dumping ground had tampered with the chain and it lay in a heap of rusted metal on the floor, leaving the door tantalisingly ajar. Dobbs squeezed behind the barrier railing, yanked the door open with a creak of hinges, and hurried inside.
He blinked as his eyes adjusted to sudden darkness, retching at the overpowering smell of birds and mildew. Ahead of him, a staircase beckoned, and he followed it up to an enormous tower room. Its steel framework was still visible from the days when it had been used as a warehouse in the 1920s and, as the sun broke through the dusty window panes, he looked up to its high rafters in a kind of wonder. Tiny pigeon feathers and a haze of dust motes floated on the air and, to his fevered mind, it was a kind of cathedral, a place of sanctuary.
But not for long.
The sound of running footsteps followed him upstairs, and Dobbs flew up another staircase leading to the upper level. In the distance, he heard the long wail of police sirens outside and knew they were for him.
Sweat coursed down his face and into his eyes as he hurried upward. His legs burned, and his gasping breaths echoed around the high walls as he clambered higher.
“Up there!”
He heard them in the tower below, then the crackle of a police radio.
“Subject is inside north tower of the bridge and heading for the roadway exit on the top level. Requesting immediate support!”
“Where the hell is Cooper?”
Dobbs didn’t stop to wonder who Cooper was. His lungs laboured, dragging stale air into his exhausted body. Clammy hands pushed against the crumbling wall as he struggled to reach the top of the stairs and whatever fate awaited him there.
“John!”
He heard the woman calling out to him, warning him to stop, to stay calm. All the things he couldn’t do even if he wanted to.