Chapter 26

26

THE PAIN IN my back kicked me awake.

It started in the lower ribs and worked its way round to the spine, like some new pain meeting up with the pain that was already there. A bright bar of winter sunshine came through the crack in the curtains, telling me I had not been out for more than a few hours.

I groaned and slowly got out of bed.

They had me in one of those hospital smocks that reveal your behind to the world. I tore it off and found my clothes in the small room’s wardrobe. I was sitting on the bed struggling to put my socks on when the nurse came in, a large-bosomed bossy matron – the type that expect to be obeyed. This one was Jamaican.

‘How’s the boy?’ I said, my skin crawling at the thought of PC Greene alone in the pit, trying to put out the fire with nothing but his bare hands and his jacket. The effort of speaking set off a leaden throb at the back of my skull and I touched my head, expecting bandages or blood. There was nothing. Only the thud of pain.

‘You’re getting back in bed right this minute,’ the nurse said.

I couldn’t get my socks on. My back would not bend forward far enough. So I tossed them away. Slipped my shoes on. Stood up.

‘How’s the boy?’ I said.

Now I had upset her.

‘Do you think I’ve got all day for this nonsense? You have possible concussion. We’re keeping you here for observation. Do you want me to get the doctor? Is that what I have to do?’

I was fully dressed by the time she came back with the doctor. Fully dressed apart from my socks. The doctor was young and Indian. Far too tired and busy to argue with me. Or too experienced. But he clearly thought I was stupid.

‘I’m not discharging you,’ he said. ‘Is that quite clear? You’re leaving at your own risk.’

‘I get it. Where’s the boy?’

‘Intensive Care Unit. Top floor. Let me take you.’

PC Greene slept the sleep of the heavily drugged. Both his hands were wrapped in bandages. There was an IV drip by his side.

That was it. Just his hands. But it was probably enough to end his life as a copper.

‘He has second-degree burns on both hands,’ the doctor said. ‘That means the burns penetrated the deeper skin but as far as we can tell there’s no damage to muscle and bone. When he’s well enough to be moved, we’ll get him down to the Queen Victoria in West Sussex. It’s the best burns hospital in the south-east of England.’ The doctor turned to leave. ‘He’s a very brave young man,’ he said, almost as an afterthought.