If I Should Die (Joseph Stark) (11 page)

‘Where is it?’ Stark demanded.

‘Piss off!’

Stark could have kicked himself. He should’ve seen it that morning. The pallor, the sweat, the stiffness, the boots, the clothing, the
vocabulary. ‘Don’t fuck with me, soldier, you’re no good dead! Where are you hit?’ He felt round the man’s limbs and torso.

The tramp’s feeble struggling subsided. ‘Little prick was quicker than he looked.’

‘Here?’ A squeeze of the man’s upper right arm elicited a wince. Not enough for the way he’d moved, despite the drink. ‘Where else?’

‘You ain’t no medic.’

The desk officer was standing over them now. ‘Ambulance, now!’ barked Stark.

‘Don’t want no fucking ambulance!’

‘Too bad.’ Stark’s hand pressed against the man’s lower left abdomen and this time the wince came with a groan. There was a slash in the jacket, unnoticed among the general disintegration. They locked eyes. ‘Show me!’ The man tried to roll away but Stark pinned him. ‘Show me or bleed out. It’s your choice, soldier!’

‘All right, all right!’ The tramp lifted his jacket. The various layers beneath were stained with blood. He pulled them up to reveal a yellowing medical dressing held in place with black gaffer tape. Blood was leaching through. ‘Kept me old field kit, just in case. Can’t be too …’ He belched. ‘Behind enemy lines. Stitched ’em up myself. Arm’s just a nick, but little fucker got the point in here.’

‘This needs looking at now.’

‘I ain’t going to no fucking hospital!’

‘We’ll let the paramedics decide that, shall we?’ said Stark. ‘What’s your name?’ The man tried to get up, but Stark held him down. ‘Name, soldier!’

‘Maggs, Harry Maggs, corporal, serial number five nine seven … something. Now piss off and let me –’

‘Lie still.’

‘Piss off!’

‘Who was quicker than he looked? Have a little run-in with some delinquents in the park last night, did we?’

‘At last!’ cried the tramp, holding out his hands, wrists together, just as he had that morning. ‘A blue top with ears!’

Stark sat near the ICU nursing station at Lewisham University Hospital, yawning and rubbing his eyes. God, he hated hospitals. Footsteps clipped to a halt beside him and he looked up.

‘Dinner,’ said Fran, handing him a packet of crisps. She must’ve come straight from the pub. She sat in the next chair and opened her own. ‘Bit tasteless, reading him his rights in the ambulance?’ She smirked. ‘I like it.’

‘He actually seemed relieved,’ said Stark, opening his packet and staring at the meagre contents.

‘Feather in your cap. The guv might not be so happy, though. Nice juicy murder and he doesn’t get his name on the arrest sheet.’

‘It won’t go to murder, though, will it?’

Fran shrugged. ‘Knife in the back is pretty suggestive of intent.’

‘But Maggs has two knife wounds himself. He’s in surgery.’

‘Did you get a statement?’

‘The paramedics and doctors shut me out before I could get anything coherent.’

‘Probably for the best. Gives the defence less chance to argue duress.’

‘But CPS will call it self-defence, though, don’t you think?’

Fran shook her head. ‘Manslaughter maybe, but they do love reaching for the stars … He really stitch himself up?’

‘Not very well. I’ve never seen angry paramedics before.’

‘They teach you that in the army too?’

‘Up to a point. Field dressing, tourniquet, compression, CPR and the rest, but you’re supposed to leave the needle-and-thread stuff for the field hospital unless you have to.’

‘Have to?’

‘If the helicopters can’t get you to the field hospital quickly.’

‘Not enough helicopters.’

Like most ‘common knowledge’, this was partially correct. Circumstance
played just as much a part as availability. You could only ask a helicopter crew to put themselves, the onboard medical team and protection party in so much danger because you had a hole in you. If your position was still hairy with enemy contact you needed to move, or wait.

‘What happened with you?’ asked Fran.

‘I was lucky.’ If he’d had to wait he’d have died.

‘Well, our suspect isn’t going anywhere. The guv sent PC Barclay here to take over guard duty, plus this arrest sheet for you to fill in and a uniform car outside with orders to take us both home so we’re fresh as daisies first thing in the morning. I’m sure he’ll be ready to congratulate you by then.’

The guv’nor’s congratulations consisted of an early start and a shitty assignment. Forensics had taken Maggs’s outer garments but the ripe layers beneath had arrived from the hospital. He might not be in the cells but Maggs was in police custody and his belongings were in their trust. Stark was to help Mick catalogue it all. Another tick in Stark’s Professional Development Portfolio. If Groombridge relished assigning him a thankless, smelly task, he knew even less about army life than Stark suspected. The trolley would be dropped back round to the supermarket; everything else had to be carefully described, bagged, labelled and stored. Stark was amused to find an army hexamine stove, the bane and blessing of many a bitter moorland exercise. He also found a battered Swiss Army penknife, the blades and tools showing signs of heavy use, plus a sharpening stone. There were signs of old blood on the blade. Stark labelled it for testing.

He was folding a foul-smelling pair of thermal leggings when he felt something. There was a crudely stitched U-shape, a secret pocket; once upon a time it had been a common way of concealing personal effects in case of capture. He reached in and pulled out a small bag made from the threadbare toes of a drab-olive sock, stitched closed.

‘Found something?’ asked Mick. Stark showed him. ‘Open it up, then.’

Stark hesitated. It felt invasive. Mick passed him some scissors and Stark pulled himself together. He was police again: he’d pounded beats, stopped and searched, catalogued belongings many times. It was time to get his head back in the game. He carefully snipped open
the stitches and tipped out a neatly folded waxed-paper parcel on to the plastic tray.

Inside were three medals.

Stark recognized two as campaign medals: the General Service Medal, with a Northern Ireland clasp on its purple and green ribbon, and the South Atlantic Medal, with its beautiful sea-green, white and empire blue ribbon embellished with a little silver rosette, indicating that Maggs had muddied his boots. Stark had two: the Iraq Medal and the Operational Services Medal (Afghanistan clasp), both ribbons bordered in sand brown. They were in their little boxes in a drawer at his mum’s. She pretended she wanted never to see them again, part of his ongoing penance, but he knew she took them whenever she visited his dad’s grave. He wished he didn’t know that.

So Maggs had done his bit. Like most servicemen Stark was slightly in awe of Falklands veterans. They’d fought and won far from home in shitty conditions, outnumbered, under-resourced, ill-equipped and undermined by years of politically motivated cutbacks. Northern Ireland was no stroll in the park either.

The third medal sparked a memory. Stark’s drill sergeant at Chilwell had worn one like it at Stark’s passing out, he was sure, but the drill sergeant was not a man to invite enquiry. It had a red, white and blue striped ribbon and the Queen’s profile, and the wording on the reverse side read ‘FOR BRAVERY IN THE FIELD’. This was no campaign medal.

As soon as they’d finished he rushed upstairs and searched online. The answer came quickly. The Military Medal, awarded for ‘acts of gallantry and devotion to duty under fire’. He’d not recognized it because it had been discontinued in 1993 when they finally stopped differentiating between bravery in officers and bravery in the ranks. Since that time all ranks had been eligible for the Military Cross, previously for officers only.

Stark stared at the screen for several seconds, picturing the Maggs he’d met. More research revealed only thirty-three awarded for the Falklands conflict, ten naval, twenty-three army. Oddly though, no H. Maggs was listed, only a Corporal A. Maggs, 2 Para. Either Harry wasn’t his real name or the medal belonged to a relative. The former seemed more likely.

He tried to tell Fran when she bustled in but she cut him off. ‘Where the hell have you been, the meeting starts in two minutes – and what’s that
smell
?’

Stark explained.

‘Who sent you down there?’

Stark opened his mouth to reply but stopped. DS Harper had sent him, relaying, he said, DCI Groombridge’s orders. Sniggering broke out across the office and Stark closed his eyes. Cataloguing property was a legitimate task, for a
uniformed
constable; he simply hadn’t questioned it.

Fran smirked. ‘Did they tell you to drop by Supplies for some left-handed handcuffs too?’

‘Bastards,’ said Stark, firmly, smiling wryly.

Sniggering became outright laughter. Harper was doubled over, almost crying.

‘Children.’ Fran rolled her eyes and slapped a sheet of paper on Stark’s desk. ‘Preliminary pathologist’s report. I persuaded my contact to email me an advance copy.’

Stark wondered if ‘persuaded’ was how Marcus would describe it.

‘The autopsy leaves cause of death open to some interpretation. It says the knife in Kyle’s back certainly contributed, but the blow to his windpipe might have killed him too. They won’t know till they’ve completed all the tests.’ She looked at Stark for some kind of reaction but he didn’t know what she wanted him to say. ‘Still looking like a murder charge, I reckon.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘You suppose nothing of the kind,’ said Groombridge, entering the room. Stark was beginning to suspect the man of deliberately hovering in doorways. ‘We’ve got some corners of the jigsaw, but we’re a long way from a picture.’

‘Guv.’

‘Chin up, Trainee Investigator. You collared your first killer last night.’ Harper smirked. ‘We’ll get the arrest sheet framed – you can give it to your mum.’

‘Right.’ Groombridge clapped his hands together. ‘DS Millhaven’s illicitly gained pathology update has narrowed the time of death to between one and four a.m. We’ve got nothing on the phone-location
traces as per usual. The graveyard shift scanned through CCTV … We have the gang leaving the pub at eleven twenty and heading up towards the park. Parks CCTV shows figures climbing in via St Mary’s Gate, just like before, and just like before we’ve nothing showing them leaving or travelling home. I’ve got …’ he checked his watch ‘… six hours or so until I should start letting our guests go home. We’ll take another crack at them, see if we can persuade one of the delightful little sods to turn on the others, but our main hope of shedding any light on Kyle Gibbs’s unfortunate demise is Harry Maggs. Minor surgery to repair his insides, awake and unhappy with his care, apparently. Docs say he should be fit to interview today. What do we know about him?’

‘Sweet FA, Guv,’ replied Fran. ‘I’ve checked. No Harry Maggs on the crime register, the MoD deny all knowledge and, according to Google, he’s either an octogenarian silver surfer from California or a student in Bath.’

Stark smothered a laugh.

‘Something amusing about that, Stark?’ asked Groombridge.

‘Harry probably isn’t his real name, Guv. Army nickname more likely – Dirty Harry, Dirty Maggs as in porn magazines. It would be something around the word Grot now, but back in the eighties …’ Conscious all eyes were on him, Stark explained about the medal and the initial A. ‘Given his antipathy to the world around him, it’s not that surprising he’d lie.’

‘And when did you discover this?’ asked Fran, tersely.

‘This morning.’ He wasn’t in the right forum to add that he’d tried to tell her already: he was getting enough sideways looks without that. Harper muttered something about Miss Marple.

‘Very amusing, DS Harper,’ said Groombridge. ‘Why don’t you get on the radio to whoever is preventing our comedian doing a bunk and get me a real name? I’d like to know who I’m interviewing at the very least.’

Stark and others spent the morning on phones, trying to corroborate or undermine the string of alibis and denials that had emerged from the previous day’s exchanges. They weren’t getting far. The mothers, fathers, stepfathers or mothers’ boyfriends were proving elusive and uncooperative. The ones Stark spoke to either didn’t care
or freely admitted giving up. Some became abusive. Stark quickly became despondent. Days of punishment had left his hip throbbing into the night. The morning dragged and he had to fight it off with coffee and a bacon roll.

‘Do you ever stop eating?’ demanded Fran.

‘Have you ever considered decaf?’

‘
Touché
.’ She sipped from her steaming mug. ‘Thought you’d like to know that your arrestee is ready for questioning. I’m heading up there with the guv’nor now.’

‘Did uniform come back with a name?’

‘Several. All of them derogatory.’

The bacon roll only got him so far. Lunch could not come quickly enough but, first, the unwelcome break. Another day, another hospital: the Queen Elizabeth, and the interminable Dr Hazel McDonald.

‘You look tired,’ she said.

‘I may have mentioned that once or twice before myself,’ replied Stark.

‘More tired, then. Has something happened?’

‘Nothing I can discuss in detail,’ said Stark.

She raised an eyebrow, probably thinking her professional code should excuse some relaxation in his. It was a grey area. ‘I heard something on the news. More killings?’

‘Two.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘You might have thought my past would’ve inured me to new horrors.’

‘The first, the old vagrant, made you angry, you said. These new ones?’

Stark looked away. ‘A teenage girl. Made me sick and guilty and …’

‘And?’

Stark thought of telling her about the flashback and barely keeping a lid on his reaction in the mortuary, and about Stacey’s mother, but she would seize on it, let it distract her. The thought of her jack-hammering was too awful to contemplate. Perhaps when he wasn’t so tired.

‘Why guilty, then?’ she asked.

‘I put the spotlight on her. She might’ve been killed for it.’

‘Are you sure you’re not inflating your responsibility?’

Again, she meant. She didn’t understand guilt. She thought it was something to be negotiated, compartmentalized and moved beyond. She didn’t understand its value. Remorse should be held close as both recompense and warning. ‘Perhaps.’

‘And the third?’

‘Teenage boy. Some might say he had it coming.’

‘What would you say?’

‘He was a casualty of his own war.’

‘You feel indifferent?’

‘That’s not what I said.’

‘Then what did you mean?’

‘Look, Doc, with all due respect, could we just focus on the actual problem?’

‘Which is?’

Stark bit down on his retort. ‘Sleep. I just want to sleep. If you can’t help with that, then what are we doing here?’

Hazel tilted her head in her calculated manner, thoughtful, reassuring, depressing. ‘You have a prescription for Zopiclone. Do you use it?’

‘Dire need only, doctor’s orders.’ Headley Court cautioned against prolonged use. Among the potential side effects were dependency and depression, two dangers Headley patients faced already.

‘Define dire need.’

Stark glanced at the clock but the ponderous second hand offered no quarter.

He had just got back and was heading to the canteen for a late lunch when Dixon intercepted him. ‘Guv’s on the line for you, not in a patient mood.’

Stark stared mournfully at him and took the phone.

‘Stark, get your arse up here in the next twenty minutes or you’ll be back in uniform till hell freezes over!’

‘Of course, Guv. Is there a problem?’

‘Yes, there
is
a chuffing problem! Not only will this bearded git still not tell me his real name but he also insists he will only speak to you. I’m choosing not to quote him verbatim for fear of offending your innocent sensibilities. I’m sure you have a rational explanation for this but I can’t hear what you’re saying because you’re no longer on the
phone to me. You’re already on your way here at the closest thing to a dead run your dicky hip will allow.’