Page 55 of Watching You
‘Poor you!’ she murmured. ‘I can fetch you a cushion if it’s that bad. Old age is no fun.’
‘All right, that’s enough of the piss-taking. If there’s no coffee in that flask, you can just leave the food and skedaddle, lady,’ he muttered, doing his best not to smile.
‘Oh, would you like to share my coffee? I’ve more than enough for two. There’s no sugar, I’m afraid. We do encourage our patients to cut down.’ Lively managed not to respond as she poured him a capful and handed it over.
‘Lovely day to be catching some rays. You’re recuperating by the look of it.’
‘I’m starving, is what I am. Don’t make me break character and rob you of that carton. What did you bring me?’
‘Homemade sausage rolls with a cheesy pastry, some cherry tomatoes and a few Jaffa Cakes. I know they’re your favourite but I’m rationing you.’ She opened the box and Lively couldn’t help but grin.
‘Damn, that smells good.’ He took a sausage roll and destroyed most of it in a single bite. ‘You know I can’t let you sit with me for more than a minute, don’t you?’ He very much wanted to take her hand.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘But I couldn’t not check on you, at the very least. You’re still a patient here, technically, and I’m in my scrubs after all, so it’s not like I shouldn’t be here. My shift ends at six. Will you be done for the day by then?’
‘We don’t really have set hours during operations like this.’ He took a cherry tomato to make Beth happy and to justify the Jaffa Cakes he was about to consume. ‘Something could happen in the next half hour or nothing could happen for a week. Sooner or later we’ll call it a day, but that’s down to the superintendent who’s watching from the security centre. She’s stepped in while Connie isn’t able to come onto the site, which is amazing given that the last time she got her hands dirty was probably in the previous millennium.’
‘You’re rude to her,’ Beth said softly. ‘Maybe if you were all a bit kinder, she’d soften.’ She took one of the cherry tomatoes herself.
‘I think probably the superintendent enjoys the banter. She wouldn’t know what to do with herself if we didn’t give her a hard time. She’s good at her job though. You don’t last this long in the service if you’ve got no idea how to lock the bad guys away. And much as I’m enjoying this, you’d better make yourself scarce. I don’t want you in the area if anything happens.’ He took two Jaffa Cakes from the tub and mentally congratulated himself for not taking all four.
‘And you’re sure you don’t want me to see the image of this person? I hate to think I might walk right past him in a corridor and miss a chance to save a life.’ She stood and put the lid back on her flask.
‘I know it’s hard with us in a relationship and me knowing something you don’t, but I think this is best. If you saw him and reacted, he might notice and hurt you. We’ve got this covered, I promise. St Columba’s has never been more secure. My team would lay down their lives, if need be, to protect your staff and patients.’
‘Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,’ she said. ‘Do try tocome home tonight though. You’re not at full strength yet. Just a few hours’ sleep would do you the world of good.’ Her cheeks flushed. ‘It would do me good, too. I’m happier when you’re around, Sam. It’s like a different house.’
‘Then I’ll make sure I come back. I might be late, so don’t get worried about me. If you’ve not fallen asleep yet we could have a game of cards or watch some TV together. Sound good?’
‘Sounds more than good,’ she said. ‘You stay safe, Sam. I don’t like this.’ She went back inside.
Lively closed his eyes and turned his face up to meet the sunshine.
He let himself feel the joy of having someone to go home to. He allowed himself to believe that, just possibly, Beth might end up being the someone he would be going home to for a very long time. He didn’t want to eat the two Jaffa Cakes that were melting in the palm of his hand, because he wanted to look better and feel better and live longer if he had Beth Waterfall in his life.
All of these thoughts and dreams meant that he didn’t see the car driving slowly along the road in sight of the geriatric rehabilitation unit. He didn’t know that both he and Beth had been spotted by the very man he’d been waiting for. Lively had no way of knowing that he had been the single worst person to dress up as a patient and position himself outside the doors the suspect preferred to use. And he would never know how close his squad had come to catching the man he would later find out was Karl Smith, without violence, without trauma and without any loss of life.
Karl, wearing a charity shop football shirt for a team he’d never supported and a beanie hat he’d found left on a fish and chip shop chair, simply drove on past. The hospital had been compromised, it seemed, but he himself had been saved so theuniverse was in balance. He’d known it couldn’t last forever. Sooner or later his time following Beth Waterfall around had to come to an end. That was all right. He was resourceful and determined. And after all, there was more than one way to skin a cat.
Chapter 38
Body Six of Eight
The Watcher
17 June
By the time Karl got home, he had to acknowledge that everything had changed. His mother was hanging around almost all the time he was in the house now, his father’s carer was starting to side-eye him with a look that a freak-show audience might give a performer billed as half-man-half-slug, and he hadn’t been paying anything like as much attention as he should to his investments, so their money was dwindling. On top of that, he was out so often that the carer bill was going up and up. Something had to give.
Two days earlier he’d called the doctor out to his now mostly unresponsive father and reported that his dad was increasingly refusing food, often inhaling soup or choking on tiny morsels of bread. He’d also made it clear that there were multiple occasions when his father had seemed to stop breathing for periods of time. Karl had sat dutifully and held his father’s hand, looking suitably sombre but hopefully also looking as if the doctor might have some solution to the problem. The doctor had listened to his descriptions of each incident and kindly but firmly explainedthat it seemed likely that his father was reaching an end-of-life situation, and that strokes did take their toll long-term. He was told not to be afraid to ask for a hospice place if everything was too much. Karl had put on a suitably brave face (turning to dash away what he’d hoped the doctor had assumed were tears) and said he would look after his father at home, where they’d lived so happily as a family. The doctor left telling him what a good son he was, and how he wished all his patients had such doting adult children.
Karl had seen the good doctor out, then sat down with his notebook and pen. He had big plans and there was still much to do, but it all had to happen in the correct order. The first two items on his agenda were complete:Cancel the carer(tick),Make it clear to the doctor that things are getting really very shaky(tick). Next, it was time for soup. He tipped a can of chicken and vegetable broth into a pan and heated it up. Not too hot. He didn’t want to burn his father’s tongue. Then he took a slice of white bread from the loaf and carefully cut the crust off it. He placed the meal on a tray with a glass of water, a napkin and a metal straw (better for the environment), taking it into the lounge where his father lay, watery-eyed, sort of staring at the television but mainly at the wall.
‘Lunchtime, Dad,’ he said. ‘Come on now, can’t have you getting too weak.’
Karl put the tray on the side table next to his father and stroked back the stray hairs that were hanging down his face. He didn’t sit him up for lunch. That wasn’t going to work. Instead, he made sure the curtains were fully closed, double-locked the front door, and put the TV up loud enough but not so loud that the neighbours would consider coming round to complain.
The first spoonful of soup he gave his father went down just fine, annoyingly so in fact, given that the old man was on hisback. Karl tried again with a fuller spoon. A little of that one rolled down his cheek and onto the pillow and that time his father coughed and spluttered, but managed to turn his head to one side to get control of it.
