The Operator (Bruce and Bennett Crime Thriller 2) (39 page)

‘The lads saw you,’ she improvised. ‘They looked
back and saw you. They didn’t come forward before - they don’t like the police
but they told me. I’ve told them to tell the police.’

‘Those scruffy bastards – no respect for the law!
You see what you and Kingston have done? I, who have played golf with city
magistrates, have been turned into a criminal, like those scum!’

‘What about Chambers and Gupta?’

‘What about them? I’ve no sympathy for Chambers,
he was above me on the list, another stuck-up quack like Kingston. And that
other bloke, the day they let his sort in the club, I’ll resign. Bad enough
they let them in the country. I’m not standing any trial, but I want you to
know, you interfering little bitch, it’s all your fault!’

‘The nails, what about the nails?’ She was still
stalling.

‘The police and those psychiatrist types can puzzle
that out! My life is over!’

Suddenly he turned and went out into the storm,
and stepped up onto the first railing, leaning out over the wild sea. Curtains
of water fell over him, falling back to show him still there, clinging on with
one hand, the other still holding onto his golf club. She darted out after him,
and put out her arms to grab him. He turned towards her, his face contorted,
and struck out at her. She didn’t hear her wrist snap as the heavy club caught
it. She barely felt it at first, numb with cold and flooded with adrenaline as
she was. But she knew it was broken. There was a strange electric buzzing up
her arm. At the same moment a huge wave curved up over him, and he vanished
behind a smoke of grey water. When the wave fell back, he was gone.

She hung over the rail,
holding on with her good hand while the water hit her like a bomb blast. She
could see his golf sweater bright orange among the waves, just a glimpse… oh
god. Why me?

She climbed through the rail, holding her wrist
against her body, and jumped. She’d loved it all her life, but the sea doesn’t
love you back. That’s the deal. Don’t fight the sea, she clung to the thought
like a life raft as she sank into darkness and surfaced. The intense cold
seized her like a steel fist, keeping her ribs from expanding so she couldn’t
inhale but bobbed in the water, uttering shallow gasps. She forced herself not
to struggle. You don’t need to breathe, she told herself. Not yet. Don’t fight
the sea, don’t ever fight the sea. Go with it. Be with it. Like fish. Small,
weak, yet they can go where they want. Fish swim near the rocks, the waves
pounding above. Relax, become part of the water, then you can move within it.
She repeated her meditation mantra in her head, her chest slowly relaxing a
little. She tried to breathe out as much as possible when her face was under
water. Whenever she felt air against her mouth, she took whooping sips of
breath.

She tried moving through the water, kicking her
trainers off her numb feet. The water was not swimming pool water, it was
opaque, dark, salty, burning her throat. She swallowed it repeatedly, retching,
making breathing even harder. Using her legs, stiff with wet clothing, and her
right arm, keeping her left tight against her chest, she tried to search for
Archer on the surface. Except there was no surface. The waves were high, and
she was often underwater, trying to see through the water left in her eyes
whenever she was in a trough of the waves. She wouldn’t survive long in that
cold.

At least it dulled the pain caused by her attempts
to wrench herself through the thick, resisting water. Where was the murderous
old sod? The swinging swell of the water tried to carry her out past the piers
into the worst of the storm, but she managed to keep just within the lee of the
pier. Sea, sea, I love you, don’t kill me, love me back, let me be part of
you...

She looked up through streaming stinging eyes to where
the pier wall swayed above. There was a dark figure there, waving. Something
orange burned the air like a flare; a lifebelt. She swam for it, gracelessly
crabbing one-armed through the water, latched onto the plastic ring with its
life-saving rope, and then, freed from the fight to stay afloat and breathing,
tried again to look for Archer. The figure on the pier pointed. A shape in the
water….she struggled towards it. Archer was unconscious, clinging for life to
that bloody club with both hands. She was glad he was out of it. She didn’t
fancy another swipe with that thing. She was glad she’d done a lifeguard
course, but she’d never practised with one useless arm. She dropped out of the
lifebelt and forced it over his head, clinging to the outside of the plastic
ring. Just a pathetic man with sparse grey hair, his face bluish and calm.

OK. Now we are both in icy cold water, losing body
heat fast. We are at the bottom of a high, sheer pier wall, and if we go close
to it, we’ll be dashed against it by the waves. For the same reason the tall
dark figure on the pier wouldn’t be able to do anything with the rope from up
there. Just stand and watch them die. Assuming the coastguard had been notified...
That was her only chance.

As if she’d spoken to him, the figure high above
her, still holding the end of the rope, dived into the sea. He began to swim,
not very elegantly bearing in mind he had two arms, towards them, along the
rope hand over hand. It was Will, gasping, and making squealing noises as he
struggled to breathe against the tight grip the cold had on his ribs. He was
beginning to panic, not as used to water as Erica, unable to force his ribs to
expand, unable to time any possible inbreaths and outbreaths, but they eventually
met, the three of them attached to the lifebelt in water which was like chilled
syrup, then more like setting cement as Erica weakened. She knew that as
hypothermia set in, she’d find it hard to think clearly and to move. Her leg
kicks were erratic. Most of the time her face was under sideswipes of water.
She fought not to breathe except when the sea allowed it, for that way lay
drowning, your blood full of seawater. She was becoming lightheaded, and a
drowsy warmth was invading her body. This was when people dying of cold in the
snow crawl out of their sleeping bags under the illusion they’re too hot.

It all seemed like too much trouble. Timing the
breaths to coincide with her mouth being above water… such hard work. It would
be easier to stop breathing. She’d always wanted to do that. Be free from the
drudgery of breathing, so happy in the sea like a seal… Will reached out for
her, but she shrank from him, terrified he’d pull her arm, managing to gasp
out, ‘arm - broke’ in fits and starts. He understood. He was over the first
shock now and able to breathe. He had more strength left than Erica and, making
sure Archer’s mouth was above water as much as possible, held onto Erica as her
numb hand lost the power to grip the lifebelt. ‘Why bother?’ she thought. ‘Just
let it all go.’

She thought of her mother, Jamie, her sister, her
friends, her patients who needed her, but mostly she thought of Craig Anderson,
Archer, Gupta; if she just gave up, she’d never know what happened. She had to
know. She saw something dark ahead, heard the throb of an engine and realised
the inshore lifeboat, run by volunteers now that the local coastguard station
had been closed, was on its way, called by the harbourmaster presumably.
Everything was being taken care of. Will was looking towards the boat. She lay
back, looking up at the darkening sky and the lighthouse rising and falling,
and like Ben Gunn she longed for toasted cheese, could even smell it, oily and
salty.

She didn’t get any cheese
on toast or sympathy.

‘Erica, you crazy fucking stupid idiot!’

Someone was dragging her into the inflatable
lifeboat. It was Will, his hair plastered to his skull, water running off him.
Hassan was there too, as was the harbourmaster, they’d dragged Will on board,
and now all three men were bringing Erica and Archer onto the boat.

The euphoria of incipient
hypothermia, the numbness of her broken arm, not to mention all her other
extremities, the peace of that little boat and all that followed seemed
dream-like as she was hoisted, wheeled, moved, wrapped in silver foil like a
roasting chicken, horizontal, helpless, reduced to a patient, a victim. She
could hardly move or speak, her throat burned by salt, and after being taken in
the ambulance to the very hospital she’d visited in search of information, she
lay in Resuscitation while the nurses cut off her clothes and chatted to each
other as if she wasn’t there. The cold had chilled right into the core of her,
and now it was chilling her again on its way out, drawn out by osmosis in the
overheated hospital, and she convulsed with shivering.

‘I expect Jamie Lau will want to know about this
one,’ said one voice knowingly. ‘He is
interested
in this case, if you
know what I mean.’

‘So are the police,’ said another. ‘They’re
hanging about out there now, making the place look untidy. Still, that
Inspector is well fit. I wouldn’t mind cutting
his
clothes off and
checking his vital signs.’

 ‘He’s with the old bloke they fished out.’

Archer! She tried to speak, to ask what had
happened to him.

‘Just lie quiet now and we’ll soon have you sorted
out,’ a blur of a face shouted into hers as if to a fool. They continued their
conversation.

‘He should be OK. But it looks like he’s in big
trouble with the police. Anyway, you know I’d heard Jamie was going out with
some kind of alternative therapist. I expect she’ll be a right pain. Probably
make a fuss about meds and so on.’

‘Well they’ve filled her full of antibiotics
already, like it or not. That water is filthy. An attempted suicide they
brought in here, his arm got infected, and when they analysed it, it was a
bowel infection! In his arm!’

‘Gross! You wouldn’t get me swimming in there.
Hate being a patient, me. You’re no better. When that traction weight dropped
on your foot, what a bleeding fuss! Even the great Kingston was a right wuss
where his own health was concerned.’

‘It’s not as if he ever had any sympathy for
anyone else.’

‘Story goes, few years ago, His Godship had a
minor op and came straight into work. Only fainted, didn’t he! Gasping like a
landed fish he was. Delayed shock. Silly sod.’

‘Yeah, he’d have thought he was above human
reactions. Git.’

‘Dead git now.’

‘Good riddance. Let’s get that arm immobilised.
Here’s some gas and air pet!’

This was for Erica to hear apparently. ‘Just take
a whiff with each breath. It’s good stuff.’

‘I often have a puff meself when I’m passing,’
confided the other nurse. ‘She’s quite bonny, isn’t she? I bet that hair’s
lovely when it’s not full of mucky water and worse.’

‘More bony than bonny if you ask me. Don’t know
what Jamie Lau sees in her. He’s a cutie.’

The gas and air sent waves of anaesthesia through
her. Jamie’s face swam into her field of vision. She tried to smile; he would
hover over her like a beautiful angel, stroking her fevered brow, not like
horrible Will Bennett. No chance. He looked grim. He looked mainly at her arm
instead of into her eyes, and when he did pay her any attention, it was only to
say angrily, ‘What the hell have you been doing to yourself?’

The nurses exchanged looks across her body. Dr Lau
wasn’t normally like this. She made a huge effort.

‘Good thing you’re so good in bed,’ she croaked in
an alien whisper.

Amid much giggling from the nurses, Jamie’s face
vanished. She heard him saying something about theatre, and then they rigged up
a drip and she lost interest in the proceedings again.

She came round gradually.
She still felt the swaying of the sea, she was back in the lovely little boat,
heavy all over with water, her hair spread out like seaweed… she saw Archer’s
distorted face smoothed out by the merciful sea… golf club swishing, golf
balls… she saw Kingston fall in the dark... no, she was there, bending over
him, it was light, hot and stuffy, she was at the swimming pool, that’s why her
hair was wet of course… the lifeguard was insisting on calling an ambulance for
him… he’d fainted after an operation, a little operation…. Just a little prick
with a needle, I know you are, doctor, but what are you going to do…

‘Erica darling!’ Her mother’s voice. ‘That nice
Inspector Bennett called me. Wasn’t that kind of him with all he’s got to do?
And a nice young Chinese doctor was in here holding your hand when I arrived. I
suppose that was Jamie? I’ve brought you some big tee shirts, I know you’ve got
no nighties and that hospital one is horrible. And some flowers darling, and
fruit. Don’t try to talk. I’ve moved into your place for a bit, so I can visit
you every day. They’ve put a wire in your arm and a plaster cast on it, that’s
why it’s so heavy.’

Into her place? At least her skull collection
would get dusted for once. It’s an ill wind. There was something important she
had to say, but she couldn’t think what it was. Awkward lie... She went back to
sleep.

She had a room to herself.
That was one blessing anyway. Because of the police interest in her, or because
of Jamie’s, she didn’t ask. The sheets were beautifully crisp thick cotton.
Everything else was purgatory. The food. If food it could be called. The drugs,
given out at set times whether you wanted them or not or needed more, sooner.
Being woken at the crack of dawn for no obvious reason, having spent all night
trying to get to sleep. She managed to sit up and do things for herself though
it’s surprisingly hard to give yourself a bed-bath with one arm, on a slippery
bed when exhausted, black and blue and suffering from exposure. The pain in her
arm was held at bay by drugs, but it was nothing compared to the muddled merry
go round of thoughts that whirled in her brain.