The Ink Black Heart, page 95
‘Ultrasound?’ said the nurse, who had a heavy Brazilian accent.
Strike wondered fleetingly what would happen if he said, ‘No thanks, just had one.’
‘I can walk.’
‘No, sorry, the doctor wants you in here,’ said the smiling nurse, patting the arm of the wheelchair. ‘You can bring your blanket.’
So Strike, still holding his mobile, was wheeled off the ward with a thin blanket covering his naked legs and boxer shorts, just one more specimen of injured humanity, transported against his wishes towards an assessment he’d have preferred not to have.
The probe was icy against his leg and painful when pressed over his hamstring. The face of the male doctor who was watching the monitor beside the bed displayed no emotion until Strike’s mobile buzzed again, and then he glanced irritably at the phone before looking back at the screen. After a few minutes the grey-haired female doctor reappeared to speak in a low voice with her colleague. Strike might as well not have been present.
‘All very inflamed,’ said the man, pressing the probe to the side of Strike’s knee cap.
‘Torn ligaments?’
‘Possibly minor tearing…’
He moved the probe painfully around to the back of Strike’s thigh again.
‘That’s a grade two… possibly three.’
He pressed the probe even harder into the back of Strike’s stump, and Strike attempted to distract himself from the pain by imagining punching the doctor in the back of the head.
‘Can’t see anything here that’d necessarily explain the myoclonus. The muscles are very tight…’
Strike was wheeled back onto the ward by the Brazilian nurse, who helped him back onto the bed, told him a doctor would be back to see him shortly, and left Strike alone in his curtained cubicle again.
Strike now read the text that had just come in, which was from Robin.
What’s happening? How’s your leg?
Still waiting for them to tell me, Strike replied.
Anomie’s behaving very oddly on Twitter
Yeah I’ve noticed
The curtain around Strike’s bed opened again, to reveal a new nurse: short, plump and Hispanic-looking.
‘The doctor’s going to be a little while. Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘I really just need painkillers,’ said Strike, who was as keen not to be a burden on the NHS as any overworked doctor could wish, and found this offer of tea ominous, because it implied he wouldn’t be leaving any time soon. However, when the nurse simply looked expectant, he said,
‘Tea would be great, thanks.’
‘Milk and sugar?’
‘Everything you’ve got.’
Maybe chuck in some co-codamol.
Strike sat back against the pillows and looked dispiritedly around at the inside of his curtains. Footsteps clattered and scuffled past his bed. Somewhere in the distance a baby was crying. His mobile buzzed again, and on picking it up he saw another text from Robin.
If you want a display of real hypocrisy, go and have a look at Tim Ashcroft’s Twitter feed right now. His own, not the Pen of Justice
So Strike opened Twitter, and went to look at Tim’s account.
One hour previously, Tim Ashcroft had tweeted a link to a Daily Mail story, above which he’d written:
Tim Ashcroft @TheWormTurning
As a close friend of Edie Ledwell’s, and as somebody who works with schoolchildren and takes safeguarding seriously, I’m frankly appalled
www.DailyMail/ParentsDisgustedAs…
3.10 pm 11 June 2015
Strike clicked on the link, the headline of which read:
Parents “Disgusted” as Teacher Questioned Over Murder Remains in Post
He scanned the news story, which, as he’d expected, concerned Phillip Ormond, who was currently suspended from his job pending investigation by his school board. The story managed to suggest that Ormond was an unpleasant and unpopular teacher, but stopped just short of saying he’d stabbed his girlfriend and her ex-lover. Most prominence was given to the remarks of the mother whose daughter had been instructed by Ormond to lie for him, when he’d left her detention early to track Edie’s phone.
‘He threatened Sophie if she told the truth. She was too scared to tell us for days. Then she came to me in tears, because she’d seen his girlfriend had been killed that afternoon, and told me the whole story. I called the police straight away. I don’t care if he wasn’t charged, that’s not the point. The fact remains that he told a fourteen-year-old to lie for him, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s a sacking offence.’
Strike returned to Twitter. Tim, he saw, hadn’t been content with his first remarks, but had followed up the first tweet with a couple of others.
Tim Ashcroft @TheWormTurning
(Btw, apologies for linking to that fascist rag, but seems like the parents spoke to them directly so that’s where the story is)
Tim Ashcroft @TheWormTurning
Point is, asking a 14-year-old girl to lie for you is disgusting behaviour. This man isn’t fit to work with children or teenagers.
Andi Reddy @ydderidna
replying to @TheWormTurning
You’re one of the good guys, Tim
Strike texted back:
Superb bit of performative nice-guying from Ashcroft there. Paedo 101
The nurse returned with his tea, which was far too milky. As he thanked her, his stump began to jump around again. Sitting up straighter, he pressed down hard on it with his right hand, forcing it to stay still, willing it to behave, not to give him away, not to make these well-intentioned medics advise that he stay here for more tests.
‘You all right?’ the nurse asked, watching him pin his stump to the bed.
‘Fine,’ he said. He could feel the flickering muscle in his right cheek now.
The nurse left. Strike’s mobile buzzed yet again: another text from Robin.
And we missed a row about Kea Niven last night. Search #FuckKeaNiven
Strike did as he was told.
There had evidently been a small Twitter storm around Kea shortly before midnight. The trigger had been Wally Cardew’s arrest, which had clearly been hotly discussed online. Left-wingers who’d always despised him were now gleefully anticipating his imprisonment, while his long-time defenders were equally certain there’d been a mistake and that he couldn’t possibly be a member of a terrorist cell. The battle had generated the hashtags #FreeWally and #NoCookiesInJail, and in the midst of the furore someone had dug up the old tweets between Wally and Kea that indicated at best some form of acquaintance, and at worst an affair. It hadn’t taken long for Kea’s tumblr post from 2010 (‘all my friends telling me “rebound sex with his best mate ain’t the answer” and I’m like “well that depends on the question”’) to be posted to Twitter, at which point the Ink Black Heart fandom had turned on Kea with the ferocity of a hungry alligator.
Inkheart Lizzie @inkylizy00
OMG look at this, Kea Niven and actual Nazi Wally Cardew were actually… fucking?
Wally C @walCard3w
replying to @notaparrottho
u lookin fine
Spoonie Kea @notaparrottho
replying to @WalCard3w
u too ♥
10.37 pm 10 June 2015
Loren @lºrygill
replying to @inkylizy00
Oh wow. I’ve always supported her, but if this is true…
Moonyspoons @m<>nyspoons
replying to @paperwhiteghost @inkylizy00 @lºrygill
if you screw fascists you *are* a fascist. End of. #fuckKeaNiven
Johnny B @jbaldw1n1>>
replying to @m<>nyspoons @paperwhiteghost @inkylizy00 @lºrygill
So you must’ve screwed a whale #FreeWally
Drek’s Cock @drekscokkk
replying to @dickymacD @marnieb89
At this moment, the doctor with the short grey hair returned.
Strike listened with divided attention as she told him what he already knew: that both his hamstring and his knee were damaged, and that only time and rest could heal them.
‘You should make an appointment with your specialist, but at a bare minimum I’d advise you to keep weight off your leg for four weeks. You might need six.’
‘Four weeks?’ said Strike, his attention no longer drifting. He’d been banking on being told to keep his leg up for a week, which he’d been planning to interpret as three days.
‘It varies according to the patient, but you’re a tall man,’ said the doctor. ‘You’re asking your stump to bear a lot of weight. I strongly advise you contacting your specialist and making an appointment for a fuller assessment. In the meantime, keep your prosthesis off, keep that leg elevated, rest, apply ice to the swollen areas and take care of the end of your stump, because you don’t want that skin to break down any further.
‘As for your spasms,’ she went on, ‘inflammation and muscle tightness might have triggered a renewal of your nerve symptoms, but we’ll know more when we get your blood results back.’
‘Which’ll be when?’ said Strike, who now wanted nothing more than to leave the hospital before they could stick any more probes or needles into him.
‘Shouldn’t be long,’ she said. ‘I’ll come back when we’ve got them.’
The doctor left again, leaving Strike to wonder whether he was indeed deficient in calcium. He ate plenty of cheese, didn’t he? And it wasn’t as though he’d broken any bones lately: surely, if he was calcium deficient, he’d have fractured something in one of his recent falls?
But thinking of these brought back memories of the time he’d fallen downstairs several years previously, and of the time his hamstring had packed up while following a suspect, leaving him crumpled on the pavement. He thought of the junk food that made up most of his diet, of the smoker’s cough that attacked him every morning, and remembered crawling through the gutter last night, pausing only to pick up the cigarette he’d dropped. He felt like calling the doctor back and saying, ‘I know why this has all happened. It’s because I take no care of myself. Write that on the chart and let me go home.’
Seeking distraction from self-recrimination, he picked up his mobile again and scrolled on down through the Twitter comments about Kea Niven.
Max R @mreger#5
replying to @drekscokkk @dickymacD @marnieb89
SJW slags pretend they want pacifists but only real men get them wet #FuckKeaNiven
Max R @mreger#5
replying to @drekscokkk @dickymacD @marnieb89
she fucked Wally because she knew he was a killer. That’s what slags like.
The curtain opened: the doctor was back.
‘All right, your bloods look normal, which is good. It’s possible,’ she added, ‘that these spasms are psychogenic.’
‘Meaning?’
‘They could be caused by psychological factors. Are you under a lot of stress at the moment?’
‘No more than usual,’ said Strike. ‘Any chance of painkillers?’
‘What have you been taking?’
‘Ibuprofen, but they’re having about as much effect as Smarties.’
‘All right, I’ll give you something stronger, just to get you through the next week, but they’re no substitute for rest and ice packs, all right?’
After the doctor had left, and while Strike was pulling his trousers back on, two contradictory thoughts fought for dominance inside his head. His rational side was telling him firmly that the investigation into Anomie was finished, at least as far as their agency was concerned. With the senior partner off his feet for at least a month, and a dearth of available subcontractors, there was simply no way to cover the necessary work.
But that streak of stubborn self-reliance that more than one ex-girlfriend had called arrogance insisted it wasn’t over yet. Barclay hadn’t reported back on Paperwhite, and there was a chance Strike’s forthcoming visit to Grant Ledwell, if handled correctly, might at last lead them to Anomie.
97
Was she a wicked girl? What then?
She didn’t care a pin!
She was not worse than all those men
Who looked so shocked in public, when
They made and shared her sin.
Mathilde Blind
The Message
When Strike woke at eight o’clock the following morning, it was to a realisation that the whisky he’d drunk the previous evening definitely didn’t mix well with tramadol. Now he felt sick and unbalanced, sensations that hadn’t entirely worn off by eleven, when he received a phone call from Barclay.
‘News,’ said the Scot.
‘Already?’ said Strike, who’d been hopping unsteadily to the bathroom when Barclay called, and now stood clutching a chair back to balance.
‘Yeah, but it’s no’ whut you’re expecting.’
‘Nicole’s not at her parents’?’
‘She’s here, aye, I’m with her now. She’d like tae talk tae you. FaceTime, preferably.’
‘Great,’ said Strike. ‘Would she be OK if Robin joins the call?’
He heard Barclay relay the question.
‘Aye, she’d be OK wi’ that.’
‘Give me five,’ said Strike. ‘I’ll let Robin know.’
Strike’s phone call found Robin still in her dressing gown in her claustrophobic bedroom at the Z Hotel, even though she’d been hard at work for three hours. What was the point in getting dressed if you never left your room?
‘She wants to speak to us? Fantastic,’ said Robin, jumping up and trying to throw off her dressing gown one-handed.
‘I’ll send you details, just give me a couple of minutes,’ said Strike, who was still desperate for a pee.
Robin hurried to pull on a T-shirt and brush her hair, lest Strike imagine she’d been sleeping all morning, then hurried back to the bed, which was the only place to sit, and opened her laptop. Meanwhile Strike, whose hair looked the same brushed or unbrushed, had exchanged his own shirt for one that looked less crumpled, and sat back down at his small kitchen table.
When the call commenced, both Strike and Robin were surprised to find themselves looking not only at the pre-Raphaelite beauty that was Nicole Crystal, but two more people who could only be her parents. Though neither had red hair, her mother had the same high cheekbones and heart-shaped face, and her strong-jawed father looked precisely as tense and angry as Strike would expect a man to look on finding out that his daughter’s erotic photograph had led to an entanglement with private detectives.
‘Good morning,’ said Strike. ‘Thanks very much for talking to us.’
‘No problem,’ said Nicole cheerfully. Her accent was nowhere near as thick as Barclay’s. The room behind the Crystal family had a stylish simplicity that Strike suspected had been achieved through the use of a very expensive interior decorator. ‘Um… I’m not Paperthing. White. Whatever. In that game.’
She spoke without a trace of constraint, unease or embarrassment. If anything, she seemed intrigued by the situation in which she found herself.
‘I don’t know how my picture got in that game. I seriously don’t. I don’t even like The Ink Black Heart!’
‘Right,’ said Strike, who couldn’t see any tell-tale sign of lying in her merry face. ‘You’ve heard of the cartoon, though?’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Nicole brightly. ‘A friend of mine’s big into it. She loves it.’
‘Did this friend ever have access to your photograph?’
‘No, never,’ said Nicole.
‘Could she have got hold of the picture without you knowing?’
‘She’d have had to go into my photos on my phone. Anyway, she’s Christian Union. She’s really, you know… I mean, there’s no way she’d be into that. Sending nudes.’
Judging by the expression on the face of Nicole’s father, he very much wished that the same could be said of his daughter.
‘When was the photo taken, can you remember?’ asked Robin.
‘’Bout… two and a half years ago?’ said Nicole.
‘And did you send it to anyone?’ asked Robin.
‘Yeah,’ said Nicole. ‘My ex-boyfriend. We were dating during our last year in school, but then he went off to study at RADA and I stayed up here to do art.’
‘He’s an actor?’ said Strike.
‘Wants to be, yeah. I sent him pictures while we were doing the long-distance thing for a term.’
A muscle twitched in Nicole’s father’s jaw.
‘What’s your ex’s name?’ said Strike, reaching for a pen.
‘Marcus,’ said Nicole. ‘Marcus Barrett.’
‘Are you still in touch with him?’ asked Robin. ‘Have you got a phone number?’
‘Yeah – but you’re not going to be horrible to him, are you? Because I honestly can’t imagine Marcus—’
‘Give them his damn number,’ said Nicole’s father shortly.
‘Dad,’ said Nicole, looking sideways at her father, ‘come on. Don’t be like that.’
Mr Crystal looked as though he intended to be ‘like that’ for a very long time.
‘Marcus could’ve been hacked,’ said Nicole, looking back at Strike and Robin. ‘It happened to a friend of mine: they got pictures off the cloud – mind you, her password was so easy to guess. I honestly can’t see Marcus intentionally putting a picture of me online – we’re still friends! He’s a really nice guy.’
‘Which of you ended the relationship?’ asked Strike.
‘I did,’ said Nicole, ‘but he was sweet about it. We’re in different cities and we’re still young. He’s dating someone else now.’
‘Does Marcus have flatmates?’ asked Robin, who was trying to think who else, plausibly, could have accessed the photograph.
‘He shares a flat with his sister. She’s four years older than he is and she’s lovely. Why would Darcy want to show everyone my tits?’
