Page 19 of No Safe Place
Field shook it, briefly wondering how many lives it’d saved.
‘David Moore?’ she asked, but Wheatley was already nodding his head. She was glad he wasn’t one of those doctors who liked to leave a long pause for dramatic effect.
‘He’s stable, but critical,’ he said bluntly, crossing his arms. ‘The blood loss was severe. We’ve put him in an induced coma and he’s on a ventilator. The medical examiner is in with him now.’
Still alive.
After a detour to the vending machine on the corridor outside, Field opened the door to David’s hospital room with her back. She had to be careful to avoid spilling scalding instant coffee from the lidless polystyrene cups.
‘It’ll have to be black coffee, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘The machine doesn’t do bloody oat milk.’
Dr Debra Young looked up. ‘You know you sound like a proper boomer when you say stuff like that?’
In spite of everything, and where they were, Field cracked a smile.
Field and Young had worked a case together over twenty years ago, and been friends ever since.
Their boys were the same age, and Young’s divorce had come a year or two after Field’s. Now they were both single empty-nesters in their early fifties. It was always good to have someone to split a bottle of Pinot with on a Friday night, even if Young’s vegan phase was dragging on.
Young nodded at her gloved hands and then at the bedside table, and Field put the coffee down on it.
‘Right,’ Young said. ‘Let me talk you through what I’m thinking.’
Young lifted the covers away from David Moore, folding them over the end of the bed. ‘We have nine wounds in total.’
Field looked solemnly down at his injuries.
She was sure that David was a healthy, active ordinary bloke, but in the bed, against the sterile blue sheets, his legs looked thin and pale and vulnerable. The machines he was hooked up to were breathing for him, and the rise and fall of his chest was exaggerated.
‘I think I have a reasonably good idea of the order they were inflicted. The tearing of the skin on these makes me think we’re looking for a kitchen knife. Incredibly sharp, with a serrated blade.’
‘So, someone with access to a kitchen,’ Field said softly. ‘Great.’
She didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. At least Young got straight to the point. Most forensic examiners described how they reached conclusions in excruciating detail, while loading their findings up with arse-covering caveats. Field was impatient at the best of times and, as a trainee detective, would physically bite her tongue to stop herself from snapping at them.
‘I think this is the first wound.’ Young pointed to his abdomen, just below the ribs, the slash now neatly stitched together. ‘It’s on the right, which suggests a left-handed attacker. It’s hard to tell, because of the treatment he’s received but, from the bruising, I think the knife was angled slightly upwards. A shorter attacker, perhaps.’
Young mimed the action. Fist raised, a sharp jab upwards.
‘Then the wound pattern becomes – unusual.’
‘Unusual how?’ Field prompted.
Young frowned. ‘Well, with this number of injuries I’d expect to sense that it was frenzied, uncontrolled. I think the second injury was the neck.’ She mimed a slashing motion. ‘The perpetrator wanted to do maximum damage, but the victim took a step backwards, perhaps, and the wound wasn’t as deep as they expected.’
Field looked at the man’s face. Under all the tubes he looked older than forty-nine, his features sunken and withered compared to the photos on Penny’s mantelpiece.
Young straightened up. ‘Then he collapses to the ground. There are slashes to his left arm, which he raises to defend himself.’ Young pointed to David’s bandaged hands with a gloved finger. ‘And here to the hand. I think he grabbed the blade with his left hand. The skin between his thumb and index finger is cut down to the bone.’
Field felt a little sick.
‘So our victim is on the ground, hands over his head. Probably twisted over onto his right side, trying to protect the wound he’d already sustained.
‘That’s when the attacker uses a sweeping downward motion—’ Young mimed ‘—to stab him four more times on the left side, where his leg was raised.’
‘So, he stabs him below the ribs, then goes for the neck as David stumbles backwards,’ Field said slowly. ‘David falls, raises a hand up to protect himself – gets those injuries. Then four more, in quick succession.’
‘That’s right. The bruising on those four is particularly bad. They must have been standing over him. That would allow a lot of room to swing their arm back and bring it down hard.’
