Resolution (The CRIME series), page 18
Waiting for several beats before he opens his eyes, Lennox witnesses the man limping off into the darkness. Then sees blood coming from his torso. Pats it with both hands. Realises that he’s numb from his hips down: his legs won’t move. Raises his head to see there’s a gash on the right one, so deep that the bloodied white of what he presumes is his shin bone is grotesquely visible. Struggles out of his hooded waterproof and tourniquets above his knee with the sleeve. With the rest of his garment he tries to cover his shin. This is not good. His heart pumps frenetically as if trying to burst out of a tight corset.
Ray Lennox cannot move. He believes that his hip bones and spine have shattered. He knows it’s important to stay awake, but he just can’t.
Day Twelve
30
Grafting at the Marina
The darkness.
The light.
Your frenzied pedal through the tunnel; heavy, burning legs pumping, hurtling towards the radiant freedom of the blue-and-green arch ahead. But the bad people are in crazed pursuit: pounding steps, tyrannical taunts … menacing voices distorting as they ricochet off the curving walls, dissolving into a cacophony of lunatics screeching in bedlam …
Naw naw, Raymie …
You fookin idiot, get after him …
… your legs now barely moving. As if you’re wading through a glue, pulling on the leaden soles of your feet … a touch on your shoulder, calling you back …
— Raymond … yes, you’re with us …
Lennox opens his eyes. A big mass of a man looks down on him. Fear and panic rise in him, and don’t completely abate, even when George Marsden pulls into focus.
— Finally, his partner ticks. — You’ve been out cold right through the night. The Royal Sussex County Hospital, George’s eyes widen as he consults his Rolex, — 11.17, Tuesday morning. He shakes his head. — Ending up here, in this state, George raises his voice to blast through a debilitating burr in his windpipe, — I told you that place was bloody dangerous!
Lennox’s own throat, glass-gargling raw, has sealed up. Noting his distress, George takes a cup of water from the bedside locker. Presses it to his lips. Lennox sips gratefully. Ascertains he’s in a room ranked in gradations of green: bottle, emerald, lime, mint. Plastic bags hang overhead, delivering two sets of tubes into him. Then his glance shifts down to where his legs would be. He croaks in urgent despondency, — What the fuck –
A cage tents out in front of him. The fearful raising of his bedsheets exposes a heavily bandaged right leg. On his opposite thigh, a dressing stained by spots of blood seeping through. If his limbs appear badly damaged, their very presence still occasions massive relief.
— You have thirty-two stitches, George gravely explains, as if to an unruly child. — Skin grafts from the inside of your other thigh. You’re on antibiotics to prevent infection. Now we have to go, they need your bed.
On cue a nurse comes in and starts removing the drips from his arm, as Lennox expels a long breath. Looks at George in disbelief. — Like, this moment?
— Quite so. I shall leave you to get dressed, George curtly nods in departure.
The nurse looks at Lennox, raises her eyebrows, follows his angry partner outside.
Lennox struggles to get out of bed. It isn’t the slashed leg; the graft on his other thigh burns with greater severity than that wound. The problem is his tailbone. The excruciating agony produced by every step taken that tells him it has to be fractured. He vocalises this to a doctor who enters, accompanied by a medical student. Under Lennox’s interrogation, he insists that the X-rays show nothing other than bad bruising, before beating a hasty retreat.
Pushing on, Lennox moves slowly-sharply, as if on hot coals, to the bathroom. Through a mirror, under jangling light, he examines the extent of the damage visible to him. The whole of his groin and perineum area is inky black, purple and yellow.
Just putting on his clothes is an ordeal.
Outside, George is on hand to help him down the corridor. As they leave the building, crossing the car park, Lennox hears his tranquilliser-fevered brain send confused mutterings to his partner about the balaclava man; how he will find out who has done this. But they only underscore his impotence, sounding nugatory and performative to his own ears.
His face a series of horizontal slashes, Lennox hobbles towards the BMW. Every step in the biting cold is an excruciating dagger twist into his tailbone, his hips seizing up under each stiff, tentative movement. The leg wound itches. The donor skin on his thigh graft pulsates in petulant rage at the blowtorch sear of the cold air. It’s as if it will tear itself off and creep away from the laceration it vexatiously covers.
In the car, he reactivates his phone; messages truculently tumble into it like drunks jostling to get to the bar at a sports event. The voicemails are all Stuart’s, except one each from Cardingworth and Carmel.
Cardingworth: — Who the fuck are you? Your friend attacks and disfigures me, probably because of you! What do you want from me, you utter fucking psychopath?
Vengeance, ya noncing paedo!
Carmel: — I don’t know what the hell is going on with you, Ray. If you want to leave it there that’s fine with me.
He looks at George, who, after helping him into the passenger seat, has taken a call of his own. His pained face tells its own story. Finally, his partner gets in and starts up the BMW. — It was getting close to the hour mark and I hadn’t heard from you, so I left the car and walked up to the factory. I heard these crazy sounds coming from there, like all hell was breaking loose. The guard came running outside, terrorised, badly beaten about the face. Said he’d only started last week and wasn’t getting paid enough for all this bollocks.
Lennox thinks back to the guard. The poor bastard genuinely didn’t have a clue.
— I went in, saw someone running away, well, sort of limping quickly, then you lying there completely poleaxed, almost wrapped up in this metal stairway, George adjusts the side mirror, pulling out the car park, — I really thought … well … when I saw you were still with us, I loaded you into my car and drove you straight here.
— Unlike you not to call the police, the accusing jab flies from Lennox.
No, it wasn’t wise. George raises a hand. — I bloody well should have! And you’d have ended up in the bloody jail! Not a good place for an ex-cop, Ray. Note the ex. We’re security men now!
George’s rage demoralises Lennox. They have rarely had a cross word in their many years of friendship.
Perhaps you aren’t thinking straight. Maybe it’s you who is doing all this to yourself. Not George or anyone else.
Mistrustful of his own judgement again, Lennox decides to let some time elapse before calling Carmel back. Slips his phone into his pocket. Looks out at bustling streets full of Christmas shoppers.
It’s evident that George finds the strained, silent discord between them equally galling. Suddenly pulling into the side of the road, he places an affectionate arm around Lennox’s shoulders. Regards his friend with a searchlight gaze. This unnerves the recipient; neither man inclines towards the tactile with his own sex. — This is where you have to cool it on this moonlighting. We have a business, Ray. You do see that, yes?
— Aye, Lennox concedes. — It’s way past that time.
— Dark stuff is going on here. You’re getting close to something, George further softens. — Only a fool would dispute that after the acid attack, and now this. But you’re not as close as they seem to think you are. All you have is circumstantial stuff and conjecture. So, either back off and take it to the cops, or let me help you. I can do more digging.
All Lennox can do is cough out, — Appreciated.
— I’ll set up an off-the-record chat with Tony Robson. A decent sort … for a copper, George laughs, delivering a theatrical salute. — I think you met him earlier.
Aye, he couldn’t give a fuck.
Easing back in the BMW’s upholstered seat, Lennox attempts to negotiate a new status quo of misery. The pain remains pervasive but at least it’s now steady. Dreads exiting the vehicle, grimly aware the horrendous assault at the base of his spine is on the cards to reappear with a vengeance. Checks his voicemails again. The ones from Stuart immediately tell him: the self-indulgent cunt is back on the piss big time.
— I have news! Called at your office, but no El Mondo. Had a long chat with the lovely Ria. A stunner, Raymie! Bet you appointed her … fucking sex case!
Lennox feels his blood crystallise in his veins as a deep, incalculable loathing for his brother rises inside him.
— Just decided I’m madly in love with your secretary or receptionist or admin assistant … or whatever designation you give the gorgeous Ria in your post-polis patriarchal pensioner protection project …
For fuck sake, ya alcoholic mess, there’s nae time for this pish …
— … I’m going to pull her and there’s not one single fucking thing you can do about it!
What about rearrange your fucking face?
— Cancel that. You’re off the hook. She has a boyfriend. I saw him round there, a right narky wee strop-bag. Where the fuck are you! I have news!
Lennox sucks in a breath. Goes to his texts. They are more Carmel’s territory. He reads the last one first:
We need to talk.
Responds:
Come over?
No, meet me at the Marina.
Café Rouge.
The texts ruthlessly shred any testosterone-fuelled triumph of hope over experience; that niggling delusion make-up sex could possibly be on the agenda. In any case it’s more than his crushed body could take.
He’s vaguely aware that George, pulling out into heavy traffic, is in discussion on speakerphone with a woman he assumes to be the Sonia he’s been seeing on and off: — We can’t go there just now, sweet pea … you do know that my partner Raymond is sitting next to me in the car.
— How convenient … Sonia hisses.
George starts to cough, and hacks out some phlegm, spitting it into a hanky. — I think I’ve got this bloody flu coming on … later … He hangs up.
Lennox bursts with intent to inform Carmel that Cardingworth tried to kill him in an abandoned concrete factory. Knows this would only make him seem even more ludicrous in her eyes. But he no longer trusts her, unsure of the extent of her relationship with Cardingworth and the university project.
George drops him off at his rendezvous point. Helps him out of the vehicle. When he puts his weight on either foot Lennox feels like he’s being smashed in the coccyx with a hammer and chisel. — Are you okay, Raymond? George asks, now looking watery and baggy-eyed himself. — Listen, you’re more than welcome to stay at my place while you recover.
— No, I’m fine, but I appreciate the offer, Lennox grimaces, almost reflexively adding, besides I’ve got Stuart, but reasons that’s an excuse not to go home.
He watches the BMW depart. George seemed to sail through life, but as another maverick ex-cop, he doubtlessly had his own demons. Were they now starting to manifest? Could he have been the assailant? It was a rugby-style tackle that brought him down. George has two gold teeth. Was he limping? Lennox couldn’t ascertain, blinded by his own pain … Cardingworth wasn’t the perpetrator; too heavy, not athletic enough. Was it the same person who got at him with the acid? You wouldn’t let it go. If it wasn’t George, at either library or factory, where was he on both occasions? Why did he lie about being at lunch with Polly?
Semi-crippled from grasping that grated metal that collapsed around him and the cold, Lennox’s stiff fingers work his phone from his pocket. The freezing wind says, you don’t really want to do this, do you? but he perseveres, hobbling into the bizarre city state of bad shopping and cheap drinking that has grown up on the town’s east side, around a complex originally planned for affluent high rollers. Its original design envisaged boats in a coastal inlet with brown stone cliffs towering above. It manifested differently, as a rash of crass, shabby developments seemingly designed to puncture the pretensions of the yachtspersons who look up from their sleek, moored vessels into that sprawling, concrete farrago of fast-food chains and bars. If England’s proletariat ever gained some measure of revenge on the bourgeoisie for thirty-five years of neoliberalism, then Brighton Marina is a monument to it. Lennox presses on in pain, through the strangulating rash of tired-looking outlets. This dripping of dirty money tinting the opaque pool of opulence dark; it seems to point to the inevitable appearance of Cardingworth.
He huddles in the doorway of a disused shop unit, aching hand once more checking phone messages. The silent treatment from Ally Notman continues. Lennox calls him again, but it goes straight to voicemail. The synthetically chipper tones on the other end of the line almost feel like those of a deceased man, a previous version of his now dishevelled friend. It’s difficult to see Notman being any help with information on Cardingworth. Could George’s police contacts assist? Are they really in Cardingworth’s pocket, or is it seriously time to reveal all? Not yet, a voice comes back: the one that never provides solace. The one that confirms to him he was always just a vigilante in state clothing.
The Brighton businessman wasn’t Balaclava Man, while George’s story about the mask-wearer’s egress was as lame as both Lennox himself and his limping assailant. But if the assailant was his partner, why not finish Lennox off instead of taking him to the hospital? Easy meat for an ex-SBS man. Lennox casts his mind back to the tunnel: if the other men were both older than Cardingworth, they’d now be in their late sixties. Lennox certainly didn’t feel that way at the moment, but logic stated it would take an exceptionally strong and fit man of that age to overcome him. The money was on a hired gun; cash bought you muscle. The grim truth is that Cardingworth, over forty years on from the tunnel, is still wrecking his life. Lennox is broken, having fallen almost to his death. His friend languishes in prison, though he knows Cardingworth will get his way with dropping charges. He is estranged from his girlfriend, the first romance he’d had in a while that offered affection, laughter, vigorous sex and the hope of a lot more to come.
All this is happening because of your obsession with Cardingworth and that tunnel. Maybe just let it go, Ray.
No!
And … you had a decent pair of Doc Martens ruined …
That intermittent voice in his head: sly, not his own. How it annoys and torments him. He takes a slow, jarring walk up the steps in the whipping wind, to the upper deck of the complex, overlooking the harbour. Reaching the Café Rouge, Lennox immediately sees Carmel sitting at a window table. She pours Diet Pepsi from a bottle into a glass of ice and lemon. As she looks up, they swap stiff, civil nods. It’s an acknowledgement of former work colleagues rather than lovers. It stings him perhaps more than it should, given the still-fledgling nature of their relationship. He orders a pint of Stella from an approaching waitress and joins her, sitting down slowly, visibly pained.
This does not escape Carmel. — You’re limping … what’s wrong?
— Industrial accidents, he says. It was originally a phrase Keith Richards would use in reference to yet another rock’n’roll casualty. They’d adopted it at Serious Crimes, which had a higher rate of suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction and divorce than any other division on the force. — But I’m okay.
— What sort of –
— Please listen, Carmel, he emphatically begs, — I need to say something to you.
Carmel seems to fight down her confusion, before raising her brows to declare: yes, you do.
He has no option but to go for it. Clearing his throat, Ray Lennox starts telling her the story he’d recently told George: about two boys with their bicycles, back in Edinburgh, many years ago. And the dark tunnel they vanished into, only to partially re-emerge from. He falters a few times; despite reliving the tale with depressing regularity, he is unused to performing it in front of others. To his own ears, he sounds like one of the many sex abuse victims he’s interviewed down the years in his professional role; monotone voice indicative of the detached, fatalistic frame of mind they called disassociation.
Carmel listens mutedly, her initial impatience dissolving first into horror, then a head-shaking disbelief. As he concludes, her eyes are misty, but she refrains from reaching for his hand across the table, as he hoped she might. — It was forty years ago, Ray. Have you ever thought that you might just be mistaken?
— Both of us? Les hadn’t clapped eyes on Cardingworth since then. He knew nothing about all this until that visit to the hospitality suite. Whatever you’ve heard about him, he isn’t in the habit of glassing strangers.
— And you didn’t mention this to him: about your suspicion of Mat?
— No, Lennox concedes, self-punishing by clenching his buttocks to induce a searing shot of pain from his tailbone through his nervous system, — and I’m fucking ashamed of myself. Obviously, if I thought there was a chance of him acting like that, I certainly would have.
Liar!
Carmel shakes her head. — I know Mat Cardingworth. He’s done great things for this town, and for my university. This just isn’t him, Ray.
Lennox feels you know fuck all about him freeze on his lips. Forces himself into the investigative mode. — Okay. So, tell me, what’s really going on with this research?
— As I might have mentioned, Carmel says in accusatory tones as if to state you never listen, — it’s about making stronger, cheaper, more durable, energy-efficient and green building materials.
The wind changes direction as buckshot rain lashes the pane of glass. It briefly warrants Lennox’s strung-out attention. — Cardingworth owns an old concrete plant out on the road to Shoreham. What does he want with that if he’s massively investing in new technology at Falmer?
— I don’t know, Carmel says in exasperation, — Ask him, for fuck’s sake! The only involvement I have with Mat relates to the purchase of the land and the development of the university facility!
