Night Sisters. John Pritchard

quizzically. ‘Hey, you okay? Sorry, I thought you Casualty nurses were used to this sort of thing.’

      Used to what? I thought dully; my skin still recalling the chill of Alison Scott’s cubicle. I could still see the fear in her fixed, dilated stare as well. And smell the sickly sweetness of her post-operative infection …

      Cutting. Cold. Clinicians.

      I grimaced, and glanced away.

      The nearby streetlamp came on: sputtering pink that steadied to a deepening rosy glow. I looked at my watch, and was about to make my excuses when a car turned into the street and drove up to park at the kerb close by me. The man who got out wore plain clothes but was obviously another police officer, and this time it was he who recognized me first.

      ‘Hi, Sis – how are things?’

      Joe Davies, indeed: I’d last seen him a couple of months back, when he was still in uniform. About the same age as his colleague (about the same age as me, come to that), he was cooler, sharper, with straight fair hair, and pale restless eyes behind designer specs. On the beat, he’d always been careless of the finer details of uniform dress: you could count on noticing a button undone here, a scuffed toecap there. Now he was plainclothes, this tendency had been allowed to develop further, so that, though he wore a suit, his shirt was unironed, and his tie hung slack beneath an open collar.

      His question had been rhetorical: without waiting for an answer, he turned to Roberts. ‘All quiet?’

      The PC grunted.

      I gave Davies a quizzical look. ‘Thought I heard you were with the vice unit these days.’ He grinned. ‘You heard right.’

      I waited for him to elaborate. When he didn’t, I nodded towards the house. ‘So?’

      For a moment he was reticent, as Roberts had been before him. But I knew he’d come round. When it comes down to it, everyone trusts a nurse.

      He shrugged. ‘It’ll be in the papers soon enough, I suppose. The dear departed was a pimp, and probably into drug pushing too. We’d been watching him for quite a while. Bit of a bastard, by all accounts.’

      I felt a sudden warm tingle of relief go through me. After a moment my mind caught up, and realized why. ‘And you reckon this was just a sort of gangland thing – drug pushers falling out?’

      Again he shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe it was more personal – he used to beat his girls up regular: I think you had one come in to you not long back, but she wouldn’t press charges. Maybe one of them had a big brother with a nasty temper …’

      ‘Very nasty,’ Roberts put in, with feeling.

      ‘Anyway,’ Davies continued, ignoring the comment, ‘we’ll probably know more once we get the results of the p-m. The official one, I mean.’

      I hesitated. ‘There was an unofficial one?’

      ‘Yes. Oh yes.’ He gave me a chilling little smile. ‘It happened right upstairs. Every organ cut out of him, and not a knife-stroke out of place. The best pathologist in the business couldn’t have sliced him up better.’

      ‘Oh,’ I said faintly, and relief died like a candle in the cold.

      Of course they would go on looking, for vicious drug dealers, or violent people pushed too far; but now I knew they’d be wasting their time. Something way beyond the imagination of your ordinary copper had come to this dark and mouldy house – and murdered once again.

      Another drip against the stone. Cold water. Or colder blood …

      And Davies, as he turned towards the house, couldn’t resist adding one final grisly detail. ‘When the Home Office guy did his preliminary examination up there in the bedroom, he reckoned there was a possibility the poor sod was still alive when whoever it was began cutting. Still alive, and still conscious …’

      He nodded a farewell and went on into the dark doorway. Roberts smiled, half-apologetically. ‘I shouldn’t let it worry you too much, Rachel. Probably just dealers settling scores …’

      ‘I know: don’t have nightmares, right?’ I couldn’t help the edge of sarcasm in my voice, but he didn’t seem to notice.

      ‘All the same …’ He glanced up at the cold, colourless sky. ‘I’d be getting along if I was you. Soon be dark. Safe home, eh?’

      ‘Yeah. Thanks.’ I watched him re-enter the house, closing the door behind him; then turned and continued along Stone Road. And though I was glad, very glad, to get to be able to put some distance between myself and number eighteen, having to turn my back on that grim, befouled place didn’t make me feel better at all.

      After a minute, I began to walk a little faster.

Five

      Monday night it was back to business.

      I’d prepared for it in the usual way: late night on the Sunday, and as much sleep as I could get during Monday. It had been another bright day, and oblivion hadn’t come easy – not with the sounds of everyday life filtering through the curtains along with the sunlight. I was lucky this was a fairly quiet street, with only the occasional car and a few kids playing. Oh yes, and the sodding ice-cream van rolling up at three o’clock playing Greensleeves in a peal of loud, distorted chimes.

      It was well dark by the time I caught the bus up to the hospital: several other night-shift workers were already aboard, or got on with me, and most of them I knew. I swapped anecdotes with Janice, a nurse from Theatres; and cheerfully endured the jokes of Ken, a security man at one of the sites on the neighbouring industrial estate. But some of my attention was inescapably caught by the sight of the hospital itself, looming darkly into view against the dimness of the sky. Like a black fortress in the night, with many windows dark, or dimly-curtained, but others watchfully ablaze. I’ve always loved the life of Nights, the wakefulness in a sleeping world – the atmosphere of a place that’s never sleeping; merely sedated. But a hospital at night has its eerie side too; its sinister shadows. It was that aspect that struck me most forcibly now.

      It wasn’t even that I was thinking particularly about the murders and mysteries of the past few days, and weeks, and months. Routine’s the great comforter; and the prospect of a busy night in Casualty was enough to clear the excess mental baggage from anyone’s mind. I knew I still had fears lurking there below the surface; but real life went on. It had to.

      The bus pulled in across the forecourt from our department’s brightly-lit canopy, and I disembarked. At least there weren’t any ambulances parked askew outside the doors, blue lights still pulsing, so I hoped I wouldn’t be pitched straight in.

      I changed into my uniform in the locker room: fastening the close-fitting navy dress up to the collar; unzipping the cuffs and rolling the sleeves back to my elbows. I was still trying to fix my cap on with one hairgrip too few when Judith, one of my counterparts on Days, came in and joined me at the mirror.

      ‘Rachel. It’s good to have you back.’

      Sister Parsons – Judith, but never Judy. Despite her silver-grey hair she was still in her forties; and her vivid blue eyes were those of someone younger still. A northerner with a brisk – some would say brusque – manner, and I knew some of the students didn’t get on with her: but that was their loss, for she was everything that they aspired to be: competent, calm and compassionate. I reckoned she mothered me sometimes, but I didn’t mind. Sometimes I needed it.

      ‘Busy shift?’ I asked, through a mouthful of protruding hairgrips.

      ‘Not too bad. One RTA in for observation; a few cuts and bruises. One OD – a bottle of paracetamol and maybe half a bottle of vodka. And she didn’t look a day over sixteen, poor girl.’

      I grimaced. ‘Bet the wash-out was fun. She okay?’

      ‘We hope so. The Medical team admitted her, anyway.’