TWENTY-FOUR
He sprawled on the living room carpet with his back propped against a sofa, hands clamped to a wad of bloodied cloth against his chest. The room was a riot of disorder. A coffee table sagged in splintered halves, a heavy armchair lay overturned by what could only have been the impact of a human bulk. Glass from smashed ornaments was splashed across the carpet.
Rossiter’s teeth were bared and clenched, the breath hissing through them in rapid jerks, sweat sheening his face and slicking his sparse hair to his brow. The carpet was a Pollock painting of cream fabric and spattered blood, a broader smudge marking his path across the floor to his current position.
Elle had said, ‘Where are you,’ and he replied, ‘At my flat,’ and she said ‘We’re two minutes away. I’ll call an ambulance.’ He said, ‘No. No ambulance, it’s not that serious,’ the sibilants drawn out like air from a tyre. Elle seemed to Purkiss to be debating. Then she hung up and hauled the wheel sideways. The car crossed the corner of a pavement.
The flat was a second-floor one. They took the stairs three at a time, Purkiss and Elle in the lead, Elle holding the pistol from the car low at her thigh, Kendrick in the rear with the rifle, doing what he could to conceal it across the short distance between the car and the entrance to the block. The door to the flat itself was shut but unlocked when Purkiss tried it. They piled in.
Close up, Purkiss could see that Rossiter had been wrong, that it was in fact serious. His face had the hue and texture of lard, except at his lips where a veiny blue was apparent. His eyes rolled like those of a horse after a fall. Purkiss took his hands, prised them away from his chest, bringing the soaked wad of cloth with them. Rossiter was in shirtsleeves. The front of the shirt was wallpapered to his chest, apart from low down on the left hand side where a ragged tear started to weep fresh blood as its covering was removed. Shreds of cloth from his shirt were mingled with the torn flesh.
Purkiss used the tail of Rossiter’s shirt to sponge the wound, feeling the chest flinch under the pressure. He watched the blood well again. No spurting. He put the back of his hand near the wound, felt no air against his skin. Nor, when he put an ear close, was there any tell-tale sucking sound. Rossiter started coughing and there was foam at his lips, but it was clear, not pink or bloody.
Purkiss watched Rossiter’s chest, his throat. His eyelids were fluttering and his breathing was quickening and becoming shallower until it was no more than a rapid sequence of tiny gasps, the breaths barely slipping across the threshold of his blueing lips. Purkiss put three fingers of his hand on his throat, the middle one on the thyroid notch and the ring and index ones on either side. The cartilage was off-centre. He pressed his ear against Rossiter’s ribs, first the right side and then the left, trying to avoid the blood. It was a poor substitute for a stethoscope, but even so Purkiss could detect the difference between the two sides.
On the right, the echo of air through the pulmonary tubes. On the left, ominous silence.
Purkiss turned his head to Elle. ‘Give me a pen.’
She stared back. ‘What?’
‘Give me a bloody pen, will you? A ball-point.’
She fumbled in her pockets, passed one across, a cheap and basic piece of plastic.
‘Got a knife?’
This time she was quicker and handed him a pen-knife. Purkiss removed the cap from the pen, pulled out the nib with its inky tail, and picked off the round plastic tab at the other end, leaving a hollow tube. Carefully he broke the other end so that the plastic came to a sharp point. He probed Rossiter’s chest just in front of the armpit on the left, feeling for the space between the fourth and fifth ribs. Then he opened the smallest of the blades on the pen-knife and made a shallow slit with the tip. Rossiter gave a tiny cry, as much as he could muster given the minimal quantity of air that was getting into and out of his lungs. With his finger Purkiss enlarged the slit a little before positioning the thin end of the hollow plastic tube against the hole and pressing it in. There was the faintest crackle as the tube slid through the subcutaneous fat and fibres before he felt resistance. He pushed harder and the membrane gave and he was through into the pleural space. The air shot through the tube with a hiss. As it escaped, so did a long, drawn-out groan from Rossiter’s mouth. Purkiss felt the thyroid cartilage again. It had shifted back to the midline.
He took a long breath.
‘What happened?’ Elle’s voice was raised in volume a notch but the pitch was calm.
‘It’s called a tension pneumothorax. Air was getting sucked into the sac around his lung but couldn’t escape, and it was compressing the other side. I’ve relieved it for now, but he needs medical attention urgently.’
Through lips that were pinking up rapidly Rossiter hissed, ‘Impressive.’
‘You pick up a few things here and there.’ Purkiss’s hands were roving, probing at Rossiter’s abdomen. There was no wincing, no involuntary resistance from the muscles. ‘It didn’t get you below the diaphragm, luckily for you.’ To Elle: ‘He needs an ambulance.’
‘No.’ Rossiter spoke perhaps more loudly than he’d been intending, and grimaced. ‘Too many… questions. Slow us down.’
After a moment Purkiss said, ‘He’s right. The ambulance crew would call in a stabbing. We’d have the police to deal with. They’re bound to be on the alert tonight and they might get difficult with us, especially given how messed up Kendrick and I look.’
‘But you said he needed a doctor.’
Kendrick came back from the sideboard with masking tape. He tore off a length of Rossiter’s sleeve and began binding the stab wound. Purkiss said, ‘He does. We take him to the hospital, drop him off and get out of there.’
He used some of the tape Kendrick had brought to secure the shell of the ballpoint pen in place where it protruded from Rossiter’s chest. Rossiter gasped against the sting of the dressing, nodded. ‘I can… spin them a yarn. It’ll give you three a chance to keep working.’
Elle sighed, shook her head. She helped Rossiter to sips of water from a glass from the kitchen, then hoisted one of his arms over her shoulders. Purkiss took Rossiter’s right hand and curled it around the protruding plastic tube.
‘Keep hold of that.’
Ideally there should be a sealed bag on the end to prevent re-entry of the air, but there wasn’t time to look for something suitable. He supported Rossiter from the right and the injured man half stumbled between them towards the door. Kendrick went ahead, checked that the coast was clear on the street below. They moved as quickly as they could to Elle’s car, and lowered Rossiter into the back, Kendrick sliding in beside him.
Purkiss turned in his seat. ‘What happened?’
Another bout of coughing from Rossiter. His voice was a rasp. ‘Went home for some clean clothes, knowing... I’d be at the office all night. Teague was there – surprised him, he was rummaging through drawers and didn’t hear me come in – and just went for me. Wasn’t… armed, just grabbed a paper-knife when the fight started going against him. Stuck me.’ He paused for breath. ‘He didn’t... didn’t hang around after that. Must have thought he’d got me somewhere vital. The heart, perhaps.’ He gave a bitter, choked laugh. ‘Not the first to have difficulty finding it. My heart.’
Purkiss wondered if the man was starting to rave. He cursed himself inwardly that he hadn’t checked for signs of head injury.
Elle watched the rear mirror, her foot down. ‘He obviously lied about following the removal vans from the Rodina offices. What was he doing in your flat, do you think?’
‘God knows.’
Purkiss watched him in the wing mirror. Again Rossiter appeared to be drifting away. Was there more blood, escaping the makeshift dressings?
Kendrick, who hadn’t spoken a word since they had arrived at Rossiter’s, said, ‘This other bloke, Teague. You said the fight was going against him.’
Rossiter nodded.
‘Is he injured?’
‘Hurt his arm, I think. Got a few blows in to his face and neck. Probably not enough to affect his – to affect his mobility.’ In the mirror Purkiss saw a fresh tide of pain ripple across Rossiter’s face.
Blue strobes were suddenly swarming before them. Elle swung into the forecourt of the hospital’s casualty department. She and Purkiss were out the doors, helping Rossiter from the seat, his face paling again in the harsh fluorescent light over the entrance.
Among the cries and jostling of the Friday night custom they found the triage desk. Elle shouted something in Estonian to the young nurse who was rising from her chair, and three more nurses ran forward to support Rossiter and turn him on to his back on a stretcher.
As Purkiss and Elle were turning to go Rossiter grabbed Purkiss’s forearm and whispered, ‘Thanks.’
Purkiss nodded, and they took off.