The Treatment (34 page)

She examined the handcuff again, jerking on it. She ran her fingers around the copper piping—there were stories sometimes in the
National Enquirer
about lumberjacks carrying their own arms across miles of hickory and balsam forest. Maybe she should hack off her foot—the papers said that Carmel Peach had nearly severed her hands trying to get out of the handcuffs.
My God, is she a better mother than I am because she almost pulled her own hands off?

She sat back and looked around the room. Featureless. She palmed her way along the skirting board, trawling for telephone wire, and when she found nothing she sat, her hands pressed against the radiator, coaxing her tired, desperate brain. Could she get under the floorboards? Maybe find a joint in the piping? Slide the cuffs off the end of it?

“If it kills me,” she muttered. “If it kills me.”

“Not again,” the nurses whispered to each other, exchanging glances when Alek Peach was brought into ICU.

The endoscopy staff thought they could see a stress ulcer down there—Mr. Friendship, the consultant, knew a stress ulcer instantly; they were a common problem in Intensive Care. Shock could starve the intestines and stomach wall of blood, but although patients were routinely prescribed cimetidine, occasionally one boomeranged back and turned up a few days after discharge “hosing blood,” as Friendship put it. Endoscopy had shot a dose of adrenaline into Peach's ulcer, to try to stem the blood loss, but it looked as if it had already developed into peritonitis—po-tentially fatal if they couldn't pump him with enough antibiotics. This time Friendship wasn't taking any chances: the press were interested enough as it was and he intended to guard Alek Peach's life like Cerberus.

Ayo Adeyami hadn't been on duty when he was admitted. She arrived this morning fresh from two days off—af-ter all the champagne she'd drunk with Ben she'd only had the energy to lie around on the sofa and feel the baby move inside her—she wasn't expecting to come back to a ward in chaos. Police officers were at both entrances and all the nurses were twitchy. One of the juniors, the one who drove Ayo mad sometimes with her speculating and gossip, naturally had a story about the Peaches. This time even Ayo had to admit it was worth listening to. When the ward had settled a little they sat in the nurses' coffee room, drinking machine coffee and eating a family-size bag of cheesy footballs, the windows open, a delicious breeze shifting calmly across them. In the hallway outside, an armed officer, in full body armor, sat discreetly next to the door.

“Well, listen, OK?” The nurse turned to face Ayo, crimping one hand casually at the side of her face to shield her mouth from the police officer. “My sister, yeah?” she mouthed, orange-painted lips moving with precision.

“Yeah.”

“Well, she's a medical secretary and guess who she works for?”

“I dunno.”

“For
their
doctor. The Peaches' doctor.”

Ayo, who in spite of her reservations spied the markings
of a prime piece of gossip, glanced at the doorway then turned her body round, getting her stomach comfortable by wedging it sideways against the chair back. She pulled her eyebrows down and moved a bit closer, mirroring the nurse's hand gesture. “Ree-uh-lly?”

“Yes, really. And, anyway, she took a call from the mum about a month ago. She was in tears, said she wanted to see the doctor, that her hubby had hit the little boy because—”

“God.” Ayo looked nervously around herself, trying not to lick her lips. “That wasn't in the papers.”

“I
know
. She wanted to see the doctor because the little boy had been pissing on things. You know, really weird, like on the carpets and stuff.”

“An
eight
-year-old?”

“Uh-huh.” The nurse licked her finger and used it to press a curl against her cheek. She flashed a smile across at the officer as if they were talking about nothing more important than
Friends
or
The X Files,
then turned back to Ayo and covered her mouth again. “Never kept her appointment and the next they heard Dad's in hospital and the boy's—well, you know …”

“That's
screwy
.”

“Isn't it?”

“Creepy.” Ayo tapped her teeth, thinking about a child peeing on a bed. Just like Ben's old dog had done. Just like Josh had done in the bathroom.

“So you think that's why police are here now?”

“You watch. I think we'll know soon enough.”

Rebecca was cold. It was bright outside her flat, the top of the Greenwich roofs all rusty-colored against the blue, but this wasn't weather cold: it was a different cold, a cold inside her, like stone. She stood in the kitchen unloading shopping bags—three cartons of orange juice, milk, two bottles of vodka and a ready-made meal, chicken and tarragon. She knew she needed to eat—she had been drunk all yesterday, hadn't eaten and had slept for just three hours, waking with the sun, her skin damp, her hair matted. The flat had been a mess—sometime in the night she'd
broken another glass, in the studio this time, and there were rolled-up edges of Rizla packets everywhere. No food in the kitchen, only a year-old bottle of Baileys, curdled in the heat on the windowsill. Her brain had been swooshing around so much that she'd had to take a deep breath, get her keys and venture out to get paracetamol. Now she put her hand on her head and stared at the groceries. No paracetamol. She had gone out intending to get paracetamol but had come back with vodka.

Oh, God.
She didn't think she could face going out into the sun again so instead of painkillers she found a dusty glass in the back of the cupboard, rinsed it, opened one of the bottles of Smirnoff and poured herself a weak vodka and orange. Just to soothe her head and send her off to sleep again—she wasn't going to get drunk but,
God, it's so difficult to sleep when the sun is up.
She sniffed the drink, turned the glass around and tasted it. After the first sip it didn't taste bitter—it tasted sweet. She rolled up her shirtsleeves and took the drink into her studio to close the shutters and that felt better. Now all of Greenwich couldn't look in and see how transparent and substanceless she was. The sunlight had found a way in from the kitchen, so she went back in there and closed the blinds, stopping to refill her glass on the way.

“Jack,” she muttered, walking unsteadily back into the studio. “Oh, Jack—”

In the relatives' room at King's Hospital ICU, Caffery woke up with a jolt, as if someone had said his name. He lay there for a while blinking, trying to piece together why he was here. Last night Souness had come over to the unit and together they had tried a little pressure on Mr. Friendship. But for health professionals the police come a long way down the chain of priority, and the answer was: No, not yet. “There's a life to be saved—whatever it is can wait until he's stabilized.”

So Souness went home with Paulina, and Caffery spent another night away from home, sleeping on a banquette in the relatives' room, waiting for news. The relatives' room could have been Gatwick airport for all the
makeshift sleeping arrangements. Except for the tears. A woman with a massive brain hemorrhage had come onto the ward in the night, and her husband, unable to bear his wife's almost dead face on the pillow, sat in a corner on his own, staring at the floor, not moving. He hardly seemed to notice the baby in the car seat on the floor next to him, who cried and made faces and curled its little fists and didn't have any idea how wildly its future was pivoting in the neighboring ward.

Blinking, Caffery sat up and rubbed his face. His neck was sore from sleeping on the banquette. He went straight to the main doors of the intensive care unit, straightening his shirt, flattening his hair back with his palm. Time to get moving. The armed officer let him in, but the unit manager inside the unit was ferociously tall, heavily pregnant and quite determined that Caffery was not to trouble her patient.

“I'm sorry, sir, Mr. Friendship talked to you about this last night. He says he'll let you have access to the patient when he's ready but until then I've been told not to let you inside. You can wait here with the officer.”

“Look, I was the one with Mr. Peach when he got ill. I'll only be a moment.”

“Mr. Friendship said he's sorry. Not for the time being.” She nodded to the PC sitting in an alcove just inside the door. “You've been allowed him.”

“Fine, fine. I don't suppose if I said please …”

“No—really.” She smiled. “I'm sorry. Honestly, I'm sorry.”

“It's OK.” He scratched the back of his neck and looked around the small area where the officer was posted. “I suppose I couldn't just sit here for a bit? In case there's any change.”

“There won't be.”

“Well, OK, but maybe if I could.”

“I can't stop you, but nothing's going to change until Mr. Friendship says it's changed.”

“OK.” He took off his jacket and sat down opposite the uniformed officer, stretching out his legs, watching the manager walk away with her small, clipped steps. From the storeroom a nurse, unpacking a box of ventilator tubes,
watched him, her eyes big and unblinking. The armed officer nodded at Caffery but neither of them spoke. Eventually the nurse took the endotrachial tube and went back to her patient, and presently the unit manager reappeared, wandering over to where Caffery sat. She leaned against the wall, her arms crossed. “Why the urgency, then?”

He half stood, thinking she'd changed her mind. “We just want to speak to him about what happened.”

“It was terrible, wasn't it?”

“Terrible,” Caffery agreed. “And God forbid it should happen to someone else.”

“Oh, crumbs—don't say stuff like that.”

“These people don't stop at one. There's too much fun in it.”

“Stop it. You're not being serious, are you?”

“As serious as a heart attack.”

She frowned. “We don't use expressions like that here.”

“I'm sorry.” He straightened and came to stand next to her, looking at the name on the staff badge hanging around her neck. “Sorry. Didn't mean to offend. Ayo.” She smiled and half put her hand over the badge, slightly embarrassed, slightly flattered. For the first time in months she wished she hadn't got this football up her sweater. “That's OK. It was horrible how it happened, wasn't it?”

“Yes.” He scratched the back of his neck and leaned a little closer. “And he's very clever—whoever it was who attacked that little boy was very clever. And I'm sure that if I spoke to Mr. Peach now I'd get that final …” he made a quick fist “… that final bit of the puzzle. Anyway,” he rapped his knuckles on the wall and looked around him, “do you, uh, mind if I use the gent's?”

“Back through the door, first on the right.” She gestured down the corridor.

“Thanks.”

In the gent's Caffery closed the door and counted to five. Then he turned around and went straight back to Intensive Care, buzzing urgently on the door. Ayo opened it.

“Is that one of your patients?”

“What?”

“On the floor in the gent's. He's got a drip with him. I thought …”

Ayo dithered, confused, not certain what to do.

“He's just inside the door. Do you want me to call someone?”

“The consultant!” She hurried down the corridor, her name tag swinging wildly on its chain. “Four fifty-five for an air call.”

“Will do.” He waited till she was through the doors, then nodded at the uniformed officer and slipped inside the unit.

The carpet came away quickly—like Elastoplast coming away from skin—the tacks pop-pop-pop-pop-popping. She scrabbled away the underlay, dropped down and pressed her ear to the naked floorboards. Silence. For a moment she lay there, comforted by the texture of the wood—the lovely grained surface, the outdoorsy Canadian smell of forest and rain. But she had to keep going. She took a deep breath and sat up, looking at the area she had cleared.

The grip rod, the little wooden strip with tacks in it, was nailed into the boards so she leaned over, found the wiring from her bra and slotted the end under the rod, sliding it down as far as it would go. “Hey, Smurf,” she muttered. “Check out Wonder Woman.” She took off her shirt, double-wrapped it around her hands and pulled on the wire. The grip rod creaked, rose quickly and broke away from the floor. “Good.”

Quickly she rolled over and looked at it. Projecting from the strip of wood, like renewable shark's teeth, a gully of sharp tacks. A tool. And if not a tool, then a weapon. She shuffled forward on her bottom, bending her knees up so that she was as close as possible to the radiator, and jammed the strip against the copper pipe, moving it back and for-ward—a makeshift saw—back and forward, back and forward. She wasn't going to sit here and die. She was going to get water and then she was going to get out. Simple as that.

The intensive care unit was quiet, only the soft bleeping of the monitors, the occasional sucking noise of a nurse testing a mouth aspirator against her hand. There were eighteen
beds ranged around the room and the nurses, in their blue theater scrubs and soft white mules, moved calmly among them. There was no fluster, no panic. Caffery felt as if he were watching them through a plate-glass window. No one questioned him as he walked along the ward, and when one of the nurses turned to him briefly, her fair eyebrows raised slightly, he thought the game was up—thought she'd point, challenge him, call her colleagues—but all she did was smile and continue along, rolling a portable drip stand in front of her. Alek Peach was in a private room with two beds. Caffery checked through the window and entered, closing the door quietly behind him. The curtains were drawn around one bed and in the other lay Peach, on his back, his eyes closed, his arms flat on the covers. Catheters snaked from his chest and arms, up and out to an array of bags suspended above the bed: some were clear and contained drugs, some were garish, multicolored “Nutrison” feeding bags. At least one was feeding him blood. Colored lights flickered along the bank of monitors, the electrocardiogram, the pulse oximeter, leaping and dancing.

Caffery closed the curtains around the bed, went to Peach's side, rested both fists on the side of the bed and bent until his mouth was next to his ear: “It's time you were straight with me, Alek.”