62
King’s College Hospital was sandwiched between Coldharbour Lane and Denmark Hill, about two and a half miles south of the river, and it was a building I didn’t have a single good memory of. In my days as a journalist, one of my sources had bled out in A&E after being stabbed in the chest. Then, four years later, Derryn and I had sat together in the oncology department, waiting for a second opinion we hoped would change the course of our lives. It didn’t. The second opinion was the same as the first, except delivered with none of the tact, and when we left, we left the hospital system for good and she died six months later. I hoped my third time would be better, hoped it would bring some small glimmer of light – but given what I’d seen on the DVDs of Pell, and how the girl had looked when I’d found her in Adrian Wellis’s loft space, I wasn’t holding out much hope.
Healy was waiting in the car park at the rear of the campus. As I swung the BMW into a space, I killed the engine and watched him in the rear-view mirror for a moment. He was scanning his surroundings, eyes everywhere, trying to see if anyone had followed him here. He probably had good reason to be suspicious, but there was a look on his face, a mixture of anguish and paranoia, which he’d have to lose if we were going to get anywhere with the girl.
We walked across the car park, light rain drifting from right to left, and headed inside. The corridors were cool and smelt faintly of boiled food and industrial-strength cleaner, even though every window and door was open for as far as the eye could see. The intensive-care unit was on the other side of the campus, so we followed the signposts through the bowels of the hospital, neither of us talking, just moving silently from one end to the other. About twenty feet short of the ICU front desk, Healy took me aside and brought me up to date.
‘She opened her eyes for the first time yesterday,’ he said, ‘but she’s still pretty screwed up. Cheekbones and nose were smashed in, and one of her ears has been torn. Plus she has all the cuts and bruises you’d expect a woman to have after being kept in a loft and raped repeatedly by a couple of f*cking animals.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Marika.’
I nodded, and let Healy lead the way.
Marika Leseretscu was at the end of a long ward, the smell of food and cleaning products giving way to the oppressive tang of sickness. Outside her door stood a young, uniformed officer, an empty seat next to him with his hat perched on it and his jacket over the back.
‘Morning,’ Healy said to the officer.
‘Morning.’
He got out his warrant card. ‘I’m DC Healy.’
The officer nodded, and his eyes fell on me.
‘This is …’ Healy paused, just for a second, and I realized he’d tried to think of a cop who might have accompanied him here, who might have wanted to partner with him, and he couldn’t think of anybody. Not one person. ‘This is James Grant, our psychologist.’
I nodded at the officer.
He was young, which worked in our favour. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘We’d like a few minutes alone with the girl,’ Healy said, and moved us towards the room. The officer stood aside and we headed in and closed the door.
The room was tiny: twenty feet across, with one partially open window, a faded painting on the wall above her bed, and a cream-coloured bedside cabinet. She was propped up on some puffy white pillows, but asleep. Next to her an ECG beeped, and a metal stand held an IV drip. She was wearing a nightdress stamped with the hospital’s logo, and her face was almost entirely covered in bandaging. I could see her eyes, both of them closed; and, through the clear plastic of the ventilator helping her breathe, her mouth showed. Nothing else. A spot of blood had soaked through at her right ear.
I stepped in closer to the bed, and then noticed Healy. In the depressed light of the room, it looked like he had tears in his eyes. Sometimes I struggled to read or understand a single thing about him, but in that moment, as he looked down at the girl beaten and broken in front of us, I thought I understood where his head was at: Leanne.
‘Healy,’ I said gently, and he looked at me. There was nothing in his face. ‘I need you to tell me what else is going on.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t want you doing anything stupid.’
He didn’t answer.
‘Has it got something to do with Leanne?’
His body shifted, some of the rigidity leaving it as if a part of him had deflated – as if he’d been found out – but as he went to answer, as I readied myself for what was to come, the girl moved on the bed between us, the sheets tightening around her legs.
And she opened her eyes.