Page 2 of Watching You
Body Two of Eight
Detective Sergeant Lively from Edinburgh’s Major Investigation Team was sitting in a church and hoping he didn’t spontaneously burst into flames given the fact that he’d spent decades telling anyone who’d listen what he thought of religion.
Still, there were days when the job took its toll, and recently it had taken far too many people he cared about, hence the visit.
He hadn’t quite managed to get as far as actually praying when his mobile started playing ‘Black Hole Sun’ which meant the call was coming from the station.
‘Give me strength,’ Lively muttered. ‘Can a man not get a single moment of peace?’ He answered the call. ‘It’d better be fucking good.’
‘Define good,’ DS Christie Salter replied. They were of equal rank in spite of their age difference – Lively in his fifties and Salter in her thirties – but he’d taught Christie all she knew and rarely let her forget it, something she secretly loved.
‘Either I’ve won the lottery or Scotland has become a territory of the Bahamas and we all have the right to move there in our retirement,’ Lively said, already moving out into the graveyard and resenting having his personal time cut short.
There were grave markers close by that belonged to some of his former colleagues, and he’d wanted to pass a few minutes with them, too.
Paying his disrespects, as he thought of it.
Dead friends didn’t want to be respected, they wanted to be remembered in their best moments.
‘You’d get bored of the money and sunburned on the beach.
Besides, we need you here now that the squad’s down a couple of members.
Actually I was hoping you were free to go to St Columba hospital.
A homeless male was found with multiple stab wounds.
Paramedics are blue-lighting him there for surgery. ’
‘Multiple stab wounds and he’s still alive?’ Lively picked up the pace to his car.
‘Probably due to the number of layers he was wearing, which seem to have prevented deep penetration by the knife. Even so, it must have been a frenzied attack. Looks to have happened last night. He was found against the fence of an industrial unit car park in Bankside this morning by the early shift security guard.’
‘All right, I’m on my way. And how did I pick this particular short straw, given that you’re the one calling me about it?’
‘I’m heading to Juniper Artland,’ Salter said. ‘A dog walker found some remains. I don’t have many details yet, only that the pathologist is unhappy about the scene.’
‘Unhappy as opposed to which other emotion, given the pathologist’s chosen career path?’
Salter ignored him. ‘Just get there fast, would you? I don’t know if the stabbing victim will make it, and no one’s got a coherent word out of him yet.’
‘I’ll be there in ten,’ Lively said. ‘Make sure they’re expecting me. I’ll see if I can get anything from him before he’s anaesthetised. Some first week back for you, isn’t it?’
‘It’s Edinburgh,’ Salter said flatly. ‘I wouldn’t have expected anything less.’
St Columba hospital, a new build, should have been an architectural atrocity, but Scotland understood a thing or two about maintaining the integrity of landscapes.
The only requirement not properly catered for was parking, in true Edinburgh tradition, and so it was that Lively abandoned hope before even entering the visitor car park and simply pulled his car up onto a patch of grass and took his identification from his pocket before the security guard was within shouting distance.
‘Police,’ he said. ‘I’ve not got time.’
‘There’s a sign,’ the security guard blustered.
Lively turned his head to read it.
‘Aye, but it only says not to walk on the grass. I drove on it. Totally different thing.’
‘That grass has only recently been planted. I’ll get hell for this,’ the guard said, dropping his head.
Lively sighed, reached into his pocket, and tossed his keys to the guard. ‘All right then, I don’t want to get you in trouble. Feel free to move it for me. I’ll find you for the keys when I’m done. Which way’s A&E?’
The guard sighed and pointed. Lively checked his watch, tried to run a few paces to make up for lost time, then decided better of it.
Any more of that nonsense and the only way he’d be getting to accident and emergency was on a stretcher with someone pumping his chest. It really was time to lose those extra few pounds – stone, his brain whispered maliciously – he’d been promising himself for the past … well, he’d lost track of that one.
The exterior of St Columba was Scots baronial, and might have been built in a different century with its miniature spires, sandstone blocks, multitude of windows and carved details that could make the most stoic of stonemasons weep.
The few steps from outside to inside were an exercise in time-travel.
It might have been a medical facility on a new planet, with an atrium four storeys high, lighting that bloomed ahead of you as you walked and dimmed behind, a series of balconies with designer couches and large areas of planting, each with its own spray keeping the soil just damp.
It smelled of pine needles and nutmeg, and the sounds of birdsong and bees buzzing was being piped in from some secret speaker.
Lively felt the familiar murk of the police station slip from his shoulders as he strode as briskly as he could manage to find the man who, he hoped, was still clinging to life.
He was directed through doors that excluded the general public, down a long white corridor and into a scrub room where he was given shoe covers, a surgical gown was draped over him, and finally he put on gloves.
It occurred to him that there wasn’t really all that much difference between a modern-day crime scene and an operating theatre.
‘Dr Hall, the anaesthetist, is already in the prep room and the surgeon’s on her way,’ he was told. ‘She gave permission for you to enter but you’ll only have a minute. The patient’s in bad shape. And don’t touch anything as you’re not scrubbed in.’
Lively walked through an automatic door.
Through a window to his left he saw a team of eight people preparing for surgery, getting implements into trays, adjusting lights, tying gowns and hooking up monitors.
In stark contrast, the patient on the trolley in front of him looked to be in his forties with a mess of matted ginger hair and the inevitable scars of long-term outdoor living marking his face and arms. He might as well already have been dead for all the colour in his cheeks, and his breathing sounded like a clogged whistle.
As Lively stepped towards the man’s head for a few vital seconds of conversation, a woman walked through an opposite door, smiling gently with quiet good cheer and an aura of absolute calm.
‘Thank you, everyone, I hope we’re good to go. We have a visitor so let’s give him the space to do his job.’ She nodded in Lively’s direction and he couldn’t help but smile back at her.
‘DS Lively,’ he said.
‘I’m Beth Waterfall, trauma surgeon. You don’t have long, I’m afraid. Go ahead, just try not to cause the patient too much stress. I understand he’s been slipping in and out of consciousness since he was brought in.’
On the trolley, the patient’s eyes flew open. He looked up at the anaesthetist, then to Lively and across to the surgeon.
‘No, no, no!’ He began shaking his head and flailing his arms, snatching at the tubes attached to his arms. ‘Help me. Someone help.’ It came out as a mush of sounds, spittle flying from his mouth.
‘He’s tachycardic, acidotic with high lactate and low haemoglobin,’ Dr Hall insisted. ‘We’re losing time.’
Beth Waterfall shook her head. ‘We’ve got to get in there and stop the bleeding. Detective, you have only seconds.’ Waterfall adjusted her mask and moved to the patient’s bare abdomen where three wounds were bleeding through temporary dressings.
Lively didn’t hesitate. He positioned himself above the man’s face and tried to make eye contact.
‘Sir, I’m a police officer. Can you tell me anything about the person who attacked you?’
‘You fuckin’ crazy?’ the man mumbled. ‘Gonna die here. Ge’ me out!’
‘Anything you can remember at all will help,’ Lively said.
‘Blood pressure’s dropping!’ Dr Hall’s voice was raised.
‘He’s been bleeding too long. Get him under now,’ Waterfall said. ‘Ten seconds, detective.’
Lively leaned in closer to the man’s thrashing head. ‘Give me something. Anything.’
The man grabbed Lively’s hand with surprising strength as the anaesthetic flowed into his veins. He opened his mouth to speak, then his eyes rolled and his head drifted sideways.
‘Patient’s ready,’ the anaesthetist said. ‘Blood pressure’s borderline and his heart rhythm is weak. If I keep him under long, chances are he won’t wake up.’
‘Detective, no offence, but I need you out of here,’ Waterfall said. ‘You can wait in the café and I’ll find you afterwards if it’ll help.’
‘It’s a date,’ Lively said.
‘Oh, you don’t want to date a surgeon,’ she said as a surgical assistant handed her a sheet of paper that she began reading as she spoke.
‘We’re workaholics who do antisocial hours, come home with our hair smelling of blood, and all our stories feature bodily fluids.
Damn it, he’s been bleeding into his abdomen for hours.
Hang some more O neg and prepare for some serious suction. ’
‘Sounds like we’re soulmates.’ Lively gave Waterfall a smile she didn’t see as she walked through into the operating theatre. ‘I’ll be waiting.’