Fragile Cord (16 page)

Enough
.

Alex closed the file on her desk,
logged off her computer. Time to go home and see my little angel,
she thought, then smiled. Well, he looked like an angel, and when
she held him close he sure as hell smelt like an angel, it was
hardly surprising he was the apple of her eye.

Stood to bloody reason…

Coupland sat in his
car watching the officers coming off their shift, heads up, hands
in pockets as they headed towards the car park or took a detour
home via the Volunteer Arms. A couple of officers nodded in his
direction, making the universal hand gesture for
fancy a swift one?
Followed by under the thumb gestures when he shook his head.
Although his shift was due to end he wanted to call at the hospital
to check on Ricky Wilson, see if there was any progress.

He enjoyed the peace that being on his
own brought, for it enabled him to think things through at a deeper
level. He thought about Ricky Wilson and Tracey Kavanagh, the
parallels between the two cases: two families - one sticking
together despite the odds, the other imploding at the first
hurdle.

He thought of Roddy Lewisham and his
dignity in the face a living nightmare. He felt ashamed; his job
brought him into contact with families cruelly blown apart yet
instead of counting his blessings he’d as good as aimed a grenade
at his own front door. He closed his eyes; hoped to Christ tonight
would be the night he made inroads with Lynn.

The alternative was unthinkable.

Carl was in the kitchen
designing a stencil of the planets he wanted to paint in Ben’s
room. Alex leaned over his shoulder as he sat at the table. ‘Not
bad.’ She observed a little grudgingly, she didn’t have a creative
bone in her body. ‘Is it Pluto?’

‘That’s not even a planet
anymore.’ He corrected, ‘It was relegated.’ He pointed to a book on
the Solar System he’d borrowed from the library, he’d propped it
open so that its centre pages fell open to display a range of rocks
around the sun with names she could barely pronounce. It wasn’t the
solar system she remembered from school, had the earth moved into
another galaxy when nobody was looking? ‘It’s life, Carl,’ she
conceded, ‘but not as I remember it.’

Ben sat beside his father,
‘helping’. He seemed to have inherited Alex’s artistic style, his
planets distinguishable by neither shape nor colour. The orange
blobs resembled a field of pumpkins rather than anything
astrological. ‘That’s lovely Ben,’ she encouraged automatically,
‘We can put it up on the wall when it’s dry.’ She kissed the top of
his head, revelling in his bubble bath smell.

She put a pan of milk on the
stove, spooned generous heaps of powdered chocolate into three
mugs, her mind flitting back to something Sergeant Coupland had
said about the Kavanagh’s home, the noticeable lack of Kyle’s
artwork on the walls. Maybe Angus and Tracey were more critical of
Kyle’s efforts than most parents, more discerning when it came to
what their offspring produced. Either way, Alex wasn’t sure that it
signified anything, other than some parents praised their child’s
every action, others preferring to hold back. There was no right
way or wrong way – most of the time.

She was brought back to the
present by the sound of hissing, as though several snakes had slid
into the room and were discussing what to do next. The milk had
boiled over the pan, forming brown puddles around the gas ring.

‘Shit.’ She muttered, mouthing
sorry to Carl as he shot her a filthy look over the propped up
planet book. Beside him Ben chuckled into his chest, his hand
gripping onto his paintbrush like a Jedi Knight holding a light
saber. ‘Mummy said ‘shit’ again Daddy.’ He giggled.

‘I know, son.’ Carl said
gravely, enjoying the view from the moral high ground for once.

Coupland ranked hospitals the
top spot on his list of most hated places to be. Something about
the smell of cheap bleach and piss that didn’t do it for him, made
him want to give the place as wide a berth as possible. Even Amy
had been born at home, though more through impatience on her part
than any plan of Lynn’s, so apart from a boil on his backside ten
years earlier, when he’d been side-lined to a ward beside an
insurance rep with polyps who’d tried for three days to sell him a
funeral plan, he could honestly say he’d been successful in keeping
away on a personal level.

Perhaps, if like Lynn, he
worked on the Special Care Baby Unit, or SCIBU, he’d feel
differently, seeing fear turn to joy in the faces of new parents
who traipsed through the ward each day. As it was he was more
acquainted with the discrete entrance at the back of the hospital,
where the clientele were called cadavers and sirens no longer
wailed to signal their arrival. Instead, ambulances took their time
as they made their way into the parking bay; careful not to draw
attention to the cargo they were carrying.

It was quiet too. Dead quiet, he often
quipped. Footsteps were never hurried in a hospital mortuary; the
urgency had gone, along with the deceased’s last breath.

He could fill The Willows rugby
ground with the number of grieving relatives he’d chauffeured back
and forth over the years to identify the bodies of loved ones who’d
found themselves in the wrong place at the worst possible time. He
breathed out a long slow breath, just because he could. It was no
surprise then, when he thought about it like that, why hospitals
came way down on his list of places to visit. But this time he had
a live one, and though Ricky Wilson still hadn’t regained
consciousness there was hope. If he could just get the family
talking, jog their memories a little more; he’d be able to put the
bastards who’d put them through this away for a very long time. So
far their descriptions of Ricky’s attackers were hazy and there was
still nothing solid as yet to link the incident to Brooks and
Horrocks but there was definitely something Ricky’s family could
clear up for him.

Lynn had agreed to meet him at
the hospital’s main entrance at the end of her shift. He’d promised
to text her when he was finished in ICU, and from there they’d go
for a drink then on for a meal depending how things progressed.

He walked down the wide
corridor to the lift and pressed the button. The metal door slid
open and a gaggle of nurses stepped out, shift over, going on
somewhere, by the look of it. He recognised a couple of usually
scrubbed faces, now sporting bronzing powder and glossy long hair.
He stood to the side to let them pass before stepping in alongside
a porter pushing a woman in a wheelchair, her patient file
balancing on her lap. At the second floor he got out of the lift,
following signs to the Intensive Care Unit along a grubby looking
corridor before entering a double set of doors which lead to the
small reception area.

Melanie was standing in the
relatives’ room with Ricky’s consultant; a grave-looking nurse
stood beside her, rubbing her back. The waiting area was airless
and smelt of painted heating pipes. Coupland tugged at his tie,
felt as though he was stepping into a vacuum. As he reached the
threshold of the relatives’ room he hovered momentarily, and all
three faces turned towards him before Melanie’s legs buckled from
beneath her and as he held out his arms to catch her he was
reminded once more why he hated hospitals so much.

A girl in dirty jeans and a
bird’s nest up-do played an old guitar badly and sang ‘Tried to
make me go to Rehab,’ in a dull monotone. Beside her on the
pavement a blanket displayed a collection of euros and dimes, the
odd twenty pence piece scattered among them. A couple of clouds
were starting to form overhead causing passers-by to speculate on
whether the freak hot weather was coming to an end.

Coupland was past caring. Ricky
Wilson was dead. After a discussion with his consultant he’d spent
ten minutes fending off Melanie’s angry relatives demanding answers
he couldn’t provide. It was tactless to tell them that Ricky’s
death had now escalated the case into a murder investigation,
automatically increasing the resources available. Instead he
assured them that his officers were doing everything they could to
bring the perpetrators of this evil crime to justice, whilst
backing out of the room.

With half an hour to kill
before Lynn’s shift ended he had chosen to take a drive around the
city centre to clear his head, found himself listening to the
Winehouse wannabe as he sat at a set of traffic lights waiting for
them to turn green.

Lynn had been quiet that
morning. It could have been a thick head from the night before but
he doubted it. In truth the only one who was well oiled by the time
she’d come home had been him. The whisky had made him arsey, firing
questions at her without listening or even waiting for her answers.
This morning there’d been a quietness about her, a preoccupation
that delayed her responses, made her oblivious to the round of
toast he’d made for her, the pot of tea freshly brewed placed
beside her favourite cup. Conversation had been sparse, limited to
the barest of details surrounding their day: who was doing which
shift, who had time to pick up a ready meal for Amy’s dinner. In
the absence of anything more to do or say he’d set off to work,
wondering how in hell his marriage had disintegrated so
quickly.

The text he’d sent her mid-morning had
been brief, not wanting to set off on the wrong foot he’d asked
simply:

Fancy a drink
after work?

Meal if
you’re up for it……

He’d not had to wait long for a
reply, within ten minutes his mobile vibrated, signalling Lynn’s
answer:

OK. Need to
talk anyway.

Don’t book
anything,

see how it
goes….

He wasn’t sure
he liked the sound of them
needing
to talk, but the fact she’d been willing to meet
him at all had made him feel that all was well with the world,
right up until he’d had to peel Melanie Wilson from the floor of
the ICU Relatives’ Room where she’d thrown herself in sorrow,
moaning for the man she’d spent her entire adult life
with.

Coupland’s shoulders sagged. He
was such a fucking idiot; he’d come close to throwing away all that
he held dear. He didn’t deserve Lynn’s forgiveness but he craved it
anyway. The thought of her leaving him, of starting a new life on
her own, terrified him. He scowled at the slow moving traffic. The
last thing he could afford right now was keep Lynn waiting on top
of everything else.

A billboard outside a
newsagents announced: WILLIAM AND KATE TO VISIT SALFORD. Poor sods,
he thought.

Lynn was standing at the mouth
of the hospital’s main entrance as Coupland pulled into one of the
disabled parking spaces. She hadn’t spotted him drive in, was too
busy watching the cars approach from the other direction. Coupland
climbed out of his car and flicked the doors locked with his key.
Lynn had changed out of her uniform into jeans and a V-necked
t-shirt, her long shiny hair spilling over her shoulders. She’d
kept her figure trim over the years, and not for the first time
Coupland found himself wondering what the hell she still saw in
him. It was at that point, as he moved towards her, that he
registered two things: firstly, that she’d applied eyeliner and
refreshed her lipstick, which he took to be a good sign, and
secondly, something altogether more worrying caught his
attention.

She wasn’t alone.

In his dream he is drowning.
The water is clear and warm like fresh urine. He swallows a
mouthful as he panics and it tastes sour and salty at the same
time. The water is high above his head and still rising; his hands
thrash about for something to hold onto, to give him some leverage.
An air bubble escapes from his lips, followed by several more.

He is sinking.

A shadowy figure comes into view, her
silhouette dark against the backdrop of white tiled walls. An arm
extends itself and plunges into the water and he raises his hand to
touch it, to pull himself up. He feels a pressure on his shoulder,
sharp and heavy, and he realises too late that she’s not there to
save him.

She’s holding him under…

Coupland’s eyes snapped open.
Pushing himself into a sitting position he glanced around the room,
his gaze lingering in the darkest corners, listening to the rhythm
of his heartbeat as it returned to normal. He puffed out his cheeks
and blew out a long, slow, breath. At least his lungs – which
moments ago felt heavy and full – were in perfect working
order.

He leaned over to the small
table by his bed and lifted a cigarette out of the packet of Silk
Cut he’d left there the night before and lit it, blowing smoke
rings into the humid air. A glance at his watch told him it was
five thirty am. Already the sky was bright with the promise of
sunshine. Beside him Lynn’s chest moved rhythmically, and he
swallowed hard as a bubble threatened to rise in his throat. He
slipped carefully out of bed; stepping into the suit trousers he’d
worn the day before and lifted a freshly-pressed shirt out from his
wardrobe. He felt light headed and his stomach rumbled, yet he
couldn’t believe he was hungry. They’d not bothered with dinner the
previous night, turned out neither had had the stomach for it.

Unable to face Lynn he slipped
out of the house. He climbed into his car, started the engine
before realising he didn’t have the stomach for work either.

The Ship was a grubby, tired
docker’s bar left over from a time when Salford Docks had a
shipyard and a purpose. Every morning at six it opened its doors,
prompt, as though the national economy depended on it. The local
economy certainly did, Coupland thought dryly as he passed several
punters making their way unsteadily towards it like toddlers
towards an ice-cream van. It was a place for the burnt-out and the
bewildered, street girls at the end of their shift, battle-scarred
coppers at the start of theirs…