Road Kill (3 page)

“That depends,” the doctor said, stony, “on whether we can save her legs.”

She paused and must have seen the blank shock in my face. She let her breath out heavily, took pity on me. “Look, your friend came in with her pelvic girdle completely fractured in three places. Before we could do anything else we had to put her in an ex-fix in A&E to stabilise her. You know what one of those is, right?”

“Right,” I said. You can’t ride a bike and not have seen people hobbling round with their busted limbs wired back together in an external fixator.

She eyed me for a moment before she went on. “I won’t go into technical details, but basically your friend’s left femur is in too many pieces to count. Her right’s not as bad but it’s still a mess. If whatever vehicle that hit them had run over her torso instead of her legs, she’d be dead right now. As it is, she’s got nerve and blood vessel damage to both limbs. If we can’t repair it—” she shrugged, “—she’ll lose her legs.”

I was silent for a moment. “Would it help if you had the best orthopaedic surgeon in the country to work on her – someone who specialises in motorcycle injuries?”

She bridled at that, waving me away. “I can assure you that the surgical team here is excellent—”

“As good as Richard Foxcroft?”

She began to form an affirmative reply on a reflex, then stopped as the name went in. “Mr Foxcroft?” she said and the wariness was back in full force. She threw me a short, assessing gaze. “He used to be one of the consultants here but I can’t—”

I grabbed a pen from her clipboard and scrawled a rapid set of digits across the corner of a sheet of paper, ripping it off and handing it to her. “That’s his home number,” I said. “He could be here in an hour and a half. Will you at least call him and see what he says?”

She was eyeing me now with outright suspicion, fingering the torn scrap I’d given her. The temptation was clear but she was still dubious. “And how do I explain to Mr Foxcroft where I got hold of this?” she demanded.

I gave her my most winning smile. “Tell him it came from his daughter,” I said.

***

Half the secret of being pushy is knowing when to stop pushing and let the weight of your argument roll all by itself. I went back to the waiting area prepared to dig in for the long haul.

Sam had returned successful from his coffee-gathering foray and seemed to have broken the ice a little with William. When I reappeared they were sitting talking about their own past accidents and lucky escapes, their faces sober.

It was the kind of talk bikers always seem to fall back on at times like these. Any moment now, one of them was going to show the other his scars. I hoped nobody asked to see mine or we’d be here all night.

Sam looked up at my approach, mirroring the hopeful expression I’d worn earlier myself, but I shook my head. I wasn’t quite willing to share the news that Clare might be facing amputation, not quite yet. Not until the young doctor had made that phone call, at any rate.

“Where’s Pauline?” I asked.

“Gone to see if she can track down Jacob,” Sam said. “He’s not answering at home or on his mobile. Pauline said she’d have a run out to Caton and see if the Range Rover’s outside the house.”

The jacket pocket of William’s leathers started playing the theme from
Mission: Impossible
. He got to his feet, bringing out a mobile phone, and moved away to take the call before the nurses could pounce on him. I took his seat beside Sam.

“So what are you up to these days?” Sam asked then, handing me a coffee. “You’ve been right off the map since the winter.”

I nodded my thanks. “Not much at the moment,” I said, evasive. “Apart from working on the cottage, of course. It belongs to my parents, really. I’m just sorting out the renovations for them and in return I get to live there rent free.”

If I’d hoped that might distract him, it didn’t work. He was regarding me with those sorrowful spaniel’s eyes of his. Eyes that didn’t miss much.

“Rumour had it you’d gone off to be a mercenary and were either dead or in prison.” He said the words with a smile that wasn’t entirely present in his voice.

“Interesting,” I returned, neutral, dipping my nose into my coffee cup again.
And close
, I thought. “But wrong on all counts.”

“But you’re still tied up with that Meyer bloke, aren’t you.”

It was posed more as an accusation than a question and there was enough hint of sulkiness in Sam’s tone to bring my head round in surprise.

“If you mean Sean, then yes I am,” I agreed calmly, watching him flush and allow our eye contact to slide. “You seem very well informed on the subject.”

He squirmed a little at that. “Yeah well, it just seems kind of odd that this guy turns up out of the blue and next thing I know you’ve gone off gallivanting all over the world with him.”

I refrained from reminding Sam that, not only had I never for a moment given him any cause to believe he was more than just a friend to me, but also that I’d do as I damn well pleased.

“Sean and I were in the army together. We go way back,” I said instead, deliberate, too irritated by his moody behaviour to much care how he put that one together. “He runs his own close protection agency now. I needed a job. He offered me one. I took it.”

What I didn’t add was that my first proper assignment in the States that spring had gone terribly wrong and since then I’d been in a kind of limbo, both with Sean and with my fledgling newfound career. Over the last few months I’d felt almost as though I was watching life from the sidelines without joining in. It was not, I recognised, a state of affairs that could go on much longer.

Sam drained the last of his own coffee and crumpled the plastic cup between his fingers, taking his time over it.

“You’ve changed, Charlie,” he said then, rather sadly.

I glanced at him.

“Yeah well,” I said. “Everything does.”

***

Sam might have been about to say more but at that moment a mismatched couple came storming down the corridor and burst into the waiting area.

The guy was short and squat with huge sloping shoulders inside his badge-covered leather jacket. He had big hands tattooed with snakes and old engine oil and he looked like a brawler. The scar from what was most likely a long-time healed glassing stretched the left-hand side of his upper lip back slightly, giving him a permanent sneer.

With him was a small woman, so slightly built she must have been able to pick her wardrobe from children’s departments. She had a lot of piercings and long dark hair that was scraped back and held tight almost at her crown by a scrunchie. So many silver bangles dangled out of the sleeves of her tasselled leather jacket that she jingled when she moved.

Beside me, Sam murmured, “Uh-oh,” under his breath and I raised an eyebrow at him. “Slick’s missus,” he added, catching the look.

I hadn’t known Slick had a regular girlfriend, never mind someone who was permanent enough to qualify as a wife. He’d never behaved as though he had any commitments, that’s for sure.

Now, she came storming across the waiting area heading straight for William, with the big biker stalking in her wake.

“What the fuck was he up to, William?” she demanded, her voice harsh and shrill. She was, I realised, quite a bit older than her first impression. There were deep lines etched in round her eyes and from the outer edges of her nostrils down to the corners of her mouth.

“We don’t know any more than you do, Tess,” William said, sounding snappy rather than sympathetic.

Tess was shivering violently. She gave a sniff, wiping her face with the back of her hand. I winced in case the bundle of silver rings on her fingers became entangled with the pewter ones in her nose but, remarkably perhaps, she came away unsnared.

“Stupid bastard,” she muttered bitterly. “How could he do this to me? Just when he was about to do something right for once, he chucks it all away over some blonde bimbo.”

There was enough blonde in my own hair for me to feel included in that insult. I got to my feet and moved in deliberately. The big biker who’d arrived with Tess took one look at my face and put himself between us.

It would have been easy to dismiss him just as muscle, but the eyes that stared out of his slightly flattened face like two hard grey pebbles were bright with intelligence.

“Leave it, Tess,” he snapped, the way you’d speak to a dog. “We dunno what happened to Slick.”

William looked momentarily surprised at this reasoned argument. “Yeah, Tess. Don’t say or do anything in haste you might have cause to regret at leisure,” he said, with a meaningful glance in my direction. “Like while you’re having your jaw wired back together, hmm?”

A picture floated into my head of Slick’s grinning, cocksure face. I would have sworn Clare had been just as disdainful of him. I could see him on that flashy gold and blue custom-painted bike of his, setting off just about every time up on the back wheel. Always close to the edge. This time over it.

“No way would Clare ever cheat on Jacob, so before you start accusing her of anything,” I said, making an attempt to keep my voice level and hearing the sting the effort of doing so was putting into it, “you might want to think about the fact that Slick Grannell was asking for trouble.”

Tess’s face darkened and she took a step forwards, bristling. With the hairstyle and the thin pointed features the overall effect was that of a Yorkshire terrier on speed. It seemed to take her a moment to realise that neither of the two men had made any moves to back her up. She stopped and glared at them, then turned back to me.

“Oh yeah?” she jeered. “Well, if everything’s so lovey-dovey between them, why isn’t her old man here by her bedside?”

I didn’t have an immediate answer to that one but at that moment I heard footsteps along the corridor and turned, hoping for Jacob himself or, at second best, my father. Instead, it was Pauline who hurried back into the waiting area. She’d clearly caught the tail-end of the conversation and was staring at the group of us, white faced.

“Pauline!” I said, relieved. “Did you find Jacob?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “The house is locked up with the dogs still inside, and the car and Jacob’s bike were both there but . . .” She hesitated a moment, uncertain. “It’s like Jacob himself has just, well, disappeared.”

I sat on one of the chairs in the now deserted waiting area, absently building a stack out of the empty paper cups from the coffee I’d drunk during the last five hours.

Maybe it was just the caffeine that had sent my mind into overdrive, flitting from one subject to another without seeming able to concentrate on anything.

Still there was no news of Clare.

And no sign of Jacob.

Things hadn’t been quiet, though. I hadn’t quite come to blows with Slick’s widow, but that was more down to the intervention of his friends than any particular self-restraint on my part.

That and the fact that the police had chosen that moment to turn up, as I’d known they were bound to do at some point. Two uniforms, laden down with handcuffs and CS gas canisters and body armour, had swaggered into the waiting area.

They hadn’t seemed to notice the almost tangible resentment their arrival had caused. Everyone concerned had suddenly turned into one of the three wise monkeys. Tess and her oversize companion, I’d noticed, had slipped away almost immediately.

“Officious bastards,” William had muttered under his breath when the pair of coppers had gone away empty-handed. “Anybody want to take a bet they’re going to put all the blame on Slick for either cocking up or just riding too damned fast?” Nobody was foolish enough to take him up on the wager, least of all me.

When it became clear that they weren’t going to get to speak to Clare today, William and his mates had departed. Before he left, William had given me his mobile number and asked me to let him know any developments. I’d had a momentary picture of Tess’s sullen face but promised to call him, nevertheless.

Sam had gone not long after, with much the same request. Pauline had stuck it out the longest, but she finally threw in the towel around six o’clock.

“I suppose I’d better go and feed that hound of mine before he eats any more of the sofa,” she’d said, reluctant. “You will let me know of any changes, won’t you, Charlie?”

“Of course,” I’d said, smiling at her.

Now, sitting and thinking while I drank too much bad coffee, my mind went round and round what might have happened until it felt like a washing machine on a fast spin cycle. And, tucked away right at the back was the sneaking guilty suspicion that it might have been all my fault.

Or at least something that I could have prevented.

***

Sometime during the week before I’d seen Slick Grannell for the last time at Devil’s Bridge, I’d had another visitor. One even less welcome and not just for the message he brought.