Fragile Cord
Authors: Emma Salisbury
Tags: #police procedural, #british, #manchester, #rankin, #mina, #crime and mystery fiction, #billingham, #atkinson, #mcdermid, #la plante
Table of Contents
Contents © Emma Salisbury
2011
The right of the above author to
be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in
accordance with the Copyright, designs and Patent Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of
this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a
retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the prior
written consent of the copyright owners.
This is a work of fiction. All
names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are a
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Can a story exist without
someone to read it?
I hope you enjoy this book, I
hope more than anything it makes you stop and think. You’ve been
kind enough to purchase it, can you do me one last favour? Once
you’ve read it would you be kind enough to post an honest review on
Amazon.
Thank you
Emma
With thanks to Alina Cincan for
her beady eye. All mistakes are my own.
For my family, for keeping
eyebrows raised and eye rolling to a minimum.
Most of the
time
.
‘Where does one go from a world
of insanity?
Somewhere on the other side of
despair.’
T.S. Eliot
Tracey Kavanagh stroked her
swollen belly absentmindedly as she reached for the drawing Kyle
proudly held up for her inspection. It was three thirty on an
uncomfortably hot day and the infant inside her shifted
lethargically; the playground was full of red-faced mothers with
excitable offspring and the sound of happy chatter reverberated
around the red brick walls.
She swallowed
hard as she studied Kyle’s picture, her hands began to shake
uncontrollably as an uneasy, anxious feeling worked its way through
her chest. She could hear her heart pounding, the
thump, thump, thump
increasing its crescendo until it drowned out the babble from
the children around her and startled her unborn child.
Her troubled gaze slid to the
beaming face of her ruddy-cheeked son and in that moment she knew
she must kill him.
By the time the main exit doors
of Hope Hospital’s Accident and Emergency department were in full
view Detective Sergeant Kevin Coupland had a cigarette clamped in
his mouth ready and waiting for the lighter that was winging its
way towards it like an Exocet missile. He glanced sympathetically
at the bored looking receptionist logging in details of the walking
wounded; mouth down-turned in disapproval as she keyed in
descriptions of injuries sustained whilst half-cut, she didn’t
bother to return his smile. Three more strides and he was out into
the forecourt, the end of his cigarette glowing as he dragged on it
hungrily, glad to be free of the smell of piss and disinfectant and
unpleasant stains on the waiting room floor.
Wild goose chase by the look of
it, as far as he could see, yet an army of plods were still caught
up at the scene. Three rapid response vehicles had been dispersed
to contain the braying mob locked inside the wine bar in Swinton,
several teenage girls had already been off-loaded to Salford
Precinct Station for questioning in relation to theft, yet it
wasn’t the theft that had required urgent police attention; it was
the savage attack that had followed it, setting everyone’s teeth on
edge.
Ricky Wilson, a self-employed
builder and father of three had been out with his family
celebrating his wife’s birthday when her hand bag had gone missing
from beneath their table and a group of young girls standing nearby
began to snigger. The rest of the details were hazy – opinions from
Wilson’s family, who’d only really begun to pay attention when the
atmosphere turned sour – but when he’d challenged the girls they’d
handed over his wife’s bag quick enough - minus her purse.
It was a clammy Sunday night in
a town fractured by unemployment and tempers frayed easily when
thirsts were quenched with happy-hour shots – officers unlucky
enough to work the weekend shift spent most of their time locking
up drunks and breaking up fights. It was a tough eight hours, but
there was a predictability about it. When the call came through
that a man had been seriously assaulted on Swinton Precinct the
officers responding thought at first it was a typical pissing
contest, an altercation got out of hand, but all preconceived ideas
flew from their minds when they rounded the corner that took them
onto the pedestrianized square, saw that apart from the victim and
his family, no-one else was in sight. No drunken bystanders braying
at each other in the aftermath of a fight, no over-made-up women
shouting the odds at passers-by, no underage drinkers pausing to
gawp as they cut across the square to the decent kebab shop up
along the top road. Both taxi rank and bus stop remained empty.
The only people to be seen were
Ricky Wilson slumped awkwardly on the hard stone flags, his wife
leaning over him stemming the flow of blood that leaked from his
stomach with her jacket, their children stood around them,
motionless. Cars continued their journey along Chorley Road, their
headlights illuminating the figures on the ground, but none of them
slowed down.
‘Fuckin’ great.’ The first officer on
the scene had muttered to his colleague as they’d approached
Wilson. They’d been nearing the end of their shift, knew
instinctively they’d be held up until the immediate area was
secured. He looked at his watch and cursed, tried not to step in
the blood pooling around the man lying by his feet. He’d turned
back to his colleague once more, ‘Better call it in,’ he hissed,
‘and where the fuck are the paramedics?’
In the hours that had elapsed
Coupland had worked his way through the pissed and those aspiring
to it at the bar Wilson and his family had been drinking in before
the assault had taken place, the bar where his wife’s bag had been
stolen. The Sportsman was a concrete pub made to look better by
giving it a theme. Football scarves and kits adorned the walls
alongside signed photos of United players. A large TV screen was
tuned permanently to the sports channel. There were two bouncers on
the door. Both were dumpy and shaven headed. Black suits and open
necked shirts, they wore ear-pieces to alert them to any trouble.
Coupland stifled a smile. Having been in the bar a couple of times
himself – all in the line of duty, of course – and recognising
several punters whose collars he’d felt at one time or other, he
wondered, just for a moment, the purpose of the doormen – to keep
the undesirables out – or in?
Coupland’s trip to the hospital
had been in vain. His request to question the victim had been
blocked by the consultant on call who informed him imperiously that
his patient was about to undergo emergency surgery. The knife blade
had pierced Wilson’s bowel and if they didn’t operate quickly
Peritonitis would set in. Coupland attempted to speak to the man’s
distraught wife, Melanie, but a brief word with her told him he was
wasting his time, all she knew was what she had seen – that her man
fell down and didn’t get up again.
One look at her now, huddled
with her kids in the shabby relatives’ room nodding at a male nurse
who tried to explain what was happening, told him he wouldn’t get
much more from her tonight. The couple’s children - a thickset boy
with attitude and two shapeless girls - sat numbly either side of
her; vacant behind the eyes as they stared at the nurse’s moving
lips until a defeated look settled upon them.
In the circumstances, the best
thing he could do was give them some space.
Moving out from beneath the
entrance canopy he stood away from the other nicotine addicts and
positioned himself beside a low red-brick wall surrounding the
hospital’s perimeter. An NHS sign behind him directed visitors to
the short-stay car park and his gaze followed the arrow to a bank
of hastily crammed- in cars, abandoned by relatives too stressed
about their loved ones to give a toss about leaving the car park
later. He’d parked his own car around the corner in the long stay
car park near maternity, although with hindsight he couldn’t be any
more certain the men who rushed there in the middle of the night
weren’t equally as stressed, despite the notion that the birth of
your offspring was supposed to be a joyous occasion.
Overweight and fast approaching
forty Coupland had the kind of physique Russian shot-putters would
die for – with none of the muscle. Hair still dark but starting to
thin, and eyes that had seen more than they should.
He sighed as he smoked to the
end of his cigarette and threw it down onto the pavement, grinding
it into the tarmac with the toe of his shoe, wishing for the
millionth time that getting rid of scum could be as easy. Mindless
scum that preyed on a hardworking man as he enjoyed a night out
with his family. He thought about going back inside to question
Wilson’s family, reckoned that he’d get no sense out of any of
anyone until Ricky came out of surgery and his condition was better
understood. The family were in shock; their statements could keep -
for now.
As he strode towards the
long-stay car park he passed four storeys of ward windows, blinds
drawn tightly against the ink-black sky. The lamplight from each
nurse’s station gave off a forlorn glow.
Hope Hospital. He thought of
the patients tucked up in their beds, the sick and the dying lined
row upon row and he wondered how a hospital could derive a name
that conjured up the opposite of what Wilson’s family must surely
be feeling right now, staring at Styrofoam cups as they waited for
the kind nurse to come back and translate the surgeon’s words.
As he turned the corner of the
maternity ward he located his car easily enough and opened the
driver’s door. Two vehicles up from him a man dressed in jeans and
an inside out tee shirt leaned against the bonnet of a modest
saloon car, weeping, the label of his tee shirt stuck out beneath
his hairline as he bowed his head into his chest and his shoulders
heaved.
‘Boy or girl, mate?’ Coupland
called out to him with as much interest as he could muster given
the time of night and the circumstances of his own visit to the
hospital.
The man’s head shot up, watery
eyes glistening in the summer moonlight. His words came out in a
breathy sigh:
‘A boy.’
He nodded at the proud new
father. ‘Congratulations, you must be very happy.’
‘Over the fucking moon, mate.’
The man replied, beaming. ‘Over the fucking moon.’
Coupland snorted, ‘Just you
bloody wait, pal, a few more years and you’ll have your work cut
out for you.’
‘You’ve kids yourself then?’
Coupland
nodded. ‘A daughter.’ Pause. ‘
She’s
sixteen.’ He said it on an outward breath, as though no other
explanation was necessary. A number summing up the attitude, the
mood swings, the sheer resentment of having a dad who gave a damn,
let alone one in the force. But then came the involuntary smile,
the chest puffing up as she came into his mind’s eye, the sheer
bloody pride. ‘She’s doing Drama at college.’ He added, mock
modesty implying she was the next Dame Judy at the very least.
‘Spending too much time studying the scrotes on the course if you
ask me.’