Читать книгу The Women's Club - Abusive partners are winding up dead… Criminals who target women are the victims of nasty accidents… Pretend it's not happening, you might live longer - Michael Crawley - Страница 10

The doors to Emerg crashed open. The sweat on the creased grey face of the old-young woman who was being helped in told Edna that this was a real emergency, not an, ‘I’ve got a sniffle I’d like to share with you.’ Edna dropped her pen on the counter and rushed over. She caught the victim’s pink plastic handbag as it fell from her twitching fingers.

‘Tell me!’ she told the hunched woman.

The pathetic little creature looked sideways at the big brute who was supporting her.

‘Tell the nurse,’ he growled.

‘My baby!’ the woman gasped.

The man’s fist tightened around the woman’s upper arm until she winced. He ordered, ‘Tell her what happened.’

She gave him a dazed look. ‘What happened?’

‘You fell over, right? On your belly, on the end table.’

Edna’s bile rose. No matter how often she’d seen it, pregnant women who just ‘happened to fall’ instead of actually being the victims of some animal’s boot or fist still made her nauseous.

The team took over. Edna was left to walk the illiterate bastard through the forms and swallow bile. By the time the T87(a) was properly filled in, Dr Halmer was back to break the news. Both the woman and her unborn daughter had died. The internal haemorrhaging had been massive. The foetus had been early into its second trimester. She – Edna refused to think of the child as an it – hadn’t stood a chance.

The man, Steven Chapel, of Apartment 510, 3112 Adama Street, unemployed electrician’s helper, swore and threatened to sue the hospital. Security escorted him out. His eyes were dry. Edna’s welled up. Her bile rose again. She rushed to the ladies’ room. Old pros like Edna don’t cry and they don’t vomit, at least not where anyone can see.

When she returned to her desk her face was set in stone. Steve might think he’d got away with something but Edna knew better. She wasn’t going to let him off as easily as that.

Her fingers flew over the keys of her computer. For all those female corpses she’d shipped from Emerg on down to the morgue over the years, some who’d come in for the first time and others she’d gotten to know during their repeated visits to the hospital, all the Sallys and Shelaghs and so on and on and on – she’d do this for all of them. And love doing it.

Two nights later four women who wore flat white shoes opened the door to Apartment 510, 3112 Adama Street. One’s latex-sheathed fingers put the keys back into the pink plastic handbag she’d brought with her and set it on a sideboard. The four moved with the quiet precision of an Operating Room team.

Steven Chapel was sprawled on his unmade bed, passed out, stinking drunk. One woman tossed a thick rubber sheet over him. The youngest slid under the bed to do up the sheet’s buckles and straps. The grey-haired one allowed herself a smile of satisfaction. They’d brought a quart of rye with them; not the same brand as the almost-empty pint on the bedside table, but she’d been right that he’d be a rye drinker. The smell on his breath had been unmistakable.

Two of them turned Steve’s face up. His mouth sagged open with a foul sigh. The plastic tube was halfway down his throat before his eyes opened. He tried to sit up. The sheet held him fast. He tried to scream, but the intubation blocked that. All Steven could do was stare, crazy-eyed, as a funnel was fitted to the end of the tube and booze was poured in. He didn’t even have to swallow. By then, the tube reached down to a stomach that was already half-full with one-topping pizza and alcohol. He heaved. The tube blocked that, as well. His ruddy face grew darker. Stinking beads of sweat oozed from the pores of his face.

Steven’s eyes bulged. The woman who was handling the plastic tube mumbled, ‘You’re a dead man, you bastard,’ and would’ve gone on had she not received stern glares from her companions. She zipped her lip.

Steve’s eyes bulged even more, making him look like a cartoon character. They rolled up and dimmed. The big woman retrieved the intubation tube. She imagined two little x’s over Steve’s dead eyes but she didn’t crack a smile. Murder was a serious business.

Steve’s head lolled to one side. Vomit spilled from the corner of his mouth.

Three of them removed the rubber sheet and folded it. The fourth held Steven’s wrist and consulted the watch that was pinned upside down over her left breast. She nodded. ‘I’m declaring him at 01.32. Cause of death – acute alcohol poisoning.’

The others nodded back. All four filed out, leaving the empty quart bottle beside the almost empty pint.