Mr. Nobody(8)

He could be in shock, she thinks; it certainly looks like it. In which case whatever has happened to him has already happened, this is the aftermath of something. Whether he is the victim or the perpetrator remains uncertain.

“Sir, I’m going to need you to respond to me. Can you do that?”

He doesn’t answer.

Tricky, she thinks. They usually run at you or away from you at this point. Either they’re being chased by you or rescued by you. She can’t tell which she’s doing here. The other shoe usually drops at this point.

But then he has no shoes.

    “Sir. I’m going to need you to look at me.” He briefly glances away in the other direction as if he hears something in the distance.

She tries again.

“Sir, I’m going to need you to turn around—”

He turns, calmly, and looks straight at her.

His features are striking though softened with age. An attractive man in his late thirties or early forties, she guesses. She takes in his thick dark hair, his brown eyes, the shadow of stubble across his jaw sprinkled with the first signs of gray.

Then their eyes lock and the sounds of the beach around them seeming to fade away, a bubble forming around them, a connection.

There is something odd in the way he looks at her.

When questioned afterward she will struggle to accurately articulate how his look made her feel…but after some thought she will settle on the adjective “peculiar.”

A calm descends over them, like being underwater, like falling through the air, together. Like a dream.

A gull shrieks and the female officer’s attention flicks up and away for the fraction of a second, but the spell is broken.

She looks back just in time to see the man’s eyes flutter as he slumps softly down onto the wet sand, unconscious.

“Oh shit,” she mutters. Her words again lost in the wind.

Her eyes dart up the beach to where Officer Poole and the old man stand, both dumbly staring back.

Officer Poole starts running, sand flying out behind him.

She snaps back into action, diving forward onto the sand, moving the huddled body into a recovery position, gently adjusting his head and freeing his airways. Her hands coming away streaked with slick, wet smears. A head wound.

Officer Poole stumbles to a halt over her. “What happened?” he pants.

She looks up at him, depressing the button on her radio, pulling it toward her mouth, by way of explanation.

    “This is Officer Graceford, come in, over.” She eyes Officer Poole as she waits. “Check for ID,” she prompts Poole.

The radio crackles to life. “Received, Graceford. Go ahead, over.”

Poole is on his knees now, his hands urgently searching the man’s body, probing pockets for identification.

Graceford speaks quickly and clearly into the radio. “We have a medical emergency on Holkham Beach eastern. Closest access point Holkham car park. Requesting immediate medical assistance. Over.”

Poole shakes his head. “No ID. No bag, nothing.”

Graceford depresses the button again. “Assistance required for unidentified white male, in his thirties or forties, unconscious, potential head injury, initial assessment indicates early stages of hypothermia and shock. Unclear if drug related. Please advise. Over.”

Static.

“Sierra Four-Three. Be advised. Paramedics are en route from King’s Lynn, ETA eight to ten. Are you able to administer first aid on-site? Over.”

Poole nods to Graceford and starts to remove his jacket. He throws it to her and immediately sets about unlacing his work boots.

“Yes, yes, we’re administering basic first aid on-site,” she says into her radio. “ETA acknowledged, Dispatch. We’ll try to keep him warm out here. Do not advise moving at this stage.”

“Received, Graceford. Stand by.”

Graceford clips her radio away with numb fingers and shrugs off her own coat. She shifts the unconscious man onto it and places Poole’s coat over him.

Officer Poole, having removed both of his boots, begins to remove his socks too, one bare foot dancing on the cold sand to keep his balance. Gingerly, he thrusts each of the unconscious man’s feet into his still-warm socks.

    Next Graceford tosses Poole his own discarded boots, which he pulls onto the end of each limp leg.

Poole looks down at his watch. “That’s five minutes. Another three to five to wait.” Now coatless and shoeless, he rubs his hands together briskly to warm them.

Graceford nods. She releases the man’s wrist. “Pulse is fine.”

Poole scans the horizon. Three hundred and sixty degrees. Nothing. Nothing but the fading form of the old man. On his way home.

“What do you think this is then?” he asks Graceford.

“Hard to say.” She looks pensive. “No ID…No shoes. He could have wandered off from the hospital, maybe? I checked with Dispatch about Bure Prison, that was my first thought, but the prisoners are all accounted for there. Could be drugs, a mental health problem?”

“What was he saying to you?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. Which was…weird.”

“You think he might have attempted suicide?” He studies her blank face.

She looks down at the silent body. “He’s soaking wet. So he definitely went into the water—for whatever reason. Either he planned to get out again or he didn’t, but I don’t see a towel.”