“Catford Bridge station, hurry! What d’you mean, you can’t—? What’s he done to you? NOT YOU!” he bellowed at the confused cabbie. “Go! Go!”
“No… it’s your bloody… rape alarm… stuff… in my face… oh… shit…”
The taxi was speeding along, but Strike had to physically restrain himself from urging the driver to floor it.
“What happened? Are you hurt?”
“A—a bit… there are people here…”
He could hear them now, people surrounding her, murmuring, talking excitedly amongst themselves.
“… hospital…” he heard Robin say, away from the phone.
“Robin? ROBIN?”
“Stop shouting!” she said. “Listen, they’ve called an ambulance, I’m going to—”
“WHAT’S HE DONE TO YOU?”
“Cut me… up my arm… I think it’ll need stitching… God, it stings…”
“Which hospital? Let me speak to someone! I’ll meet you there!”
Strike arrived at the Accident and Emergency Department at University Hospital Lewisham twenty-five minutes later, limping heavily and wearing such an anguished expression that a kindly nurse reassured him that a doctor would be with him shortly.
“No,” he said, waving her away as he clumped towards the reception desk, “I’m here with someone—Robin Ellacott, she’s been knifed—”
His eyes traveled frantically over the packed waiting room where a young boy was whimpering on his mother’s lap and a groaning drunk cradled his bloodied head in his hands. A male nurse was showing a breathless old lady how to use an inhaler.
“Strike… yes… Miss Ellacott said you’d be coming,” said the receptionist, who had checked her computer records with what Strike felt was unnecessary and provocative deliberation. “Down the corridor and to the right… first cubicle.”
He slipped a little on the shining floor in his haste, swore and hurried on. Several people’s eyes followed his large, ungainly figure, wondering whether he was quite right in the head.
“Robin? Fucking hell!”
Scarlet spatters disfigured her face; both eyes were swollen. A young male doctor, who was examining an eight-inch wound in her forearm, barked:
“Out until I’ve finished!”
“It isn’t blood!” Robin called as Strike retreated behind the curtain. “It’s the damn spray stuff in your rape alarm!”
“Stay still, please,” Strike heard the doctor say.
He paced a little outside the cubicle. Five other curtained beds hid their secrets along the side ward. The nurses’ rubber soles squeaked on the highly polished gray floor. God, how he hated hospitals: the smell of them, the institutional cleanliness underlaid with that faint whiff of human decomposition, immediately transported him back to those long months in Selly Oak after his leg had been blown off.
What had he done? What had he done? He had let her work, knowing the bastard had her in his sights. She could have died. She should have died. Nurses rustled past in their blue scrubs. Behind the curtain, Robin gave a small gasp of pain and Strike ground his teeth.
“Well, she’s been extremely lucky,” said the doctor, ripping the curtains open ten minutes later. “He could have severed the brachial artery. There’s tendon damage, though, and we won’t know how much until we get her into theater.”
He clearly thought they were a couple. Strike did not put him right.
“She needs surgery?”
“To repair the tendon damage,” said the doctor, as though Strike were a bit slow. “Plus, that wound needs a proper clean. I want to X-ray her ribs as well.”
He left. Bracing himself, Strike entered the cubicle.
“I know I screwed up,” said Robin.
“Holy shit, did you think I was going to tell you off?”
“Maybe,” she said, pulling herself up a little higher on the bed. Her arm was bound up in a temporary crêpe bandage. “After dark. I wasn’t paying attention, was I?”
He sat down heavily beside the bed on the chair that the doctor had vacated, accidentally knocking a metal kidney dish to the floor. It clanged and rattled; Strike put his prosthetic foot on it to silence it.
“Robin, how the fuck did you get away?”
“Self-defense,” she said. Then, correctly reading his expression, she said crossly, “I knew you didn’t believe I’d done any.”
“I did believe you,” he said, “but Jesus fucking Christ—”
“I had lessons from this brilliant woman in Harrogate who was ex-army,” said Robin, wincing a little as she readjusted herself on her pillows again. “After—you know what.”
“Was this before or after the advanced driving tests?”
“After,” she said, “because I was agoraphobic for a while. It was the driving that really got me back out of my room and then, after that, I did self-defense classes. The first one I signed to was run by a man and he was an idiot,” said Robin. “All judo moves and—just useless. But Louise was brilliant.”
“Yeah?” said Strike.