Not Dead Enough

editor – he would probably have done the same in their positions. But all the same, deliberate misquotes such as ‘ Brighton Police Divisional Commander, Chief Superintendent Ken Brickhill, advised all women in the city of Brighton and Hove to lock their doors, ’ were not helpful.
    Part of the purpose of carefully managed press conferences, such as the one earlier today, was to inform the public of the crimes that had been committed, with the hope of getting leads. But all scaremongering like this did was to jam the police switchboards with hundreds of calls from frightened women.
    He ate as much of the sandwich as he could manage, washed it down with a tepid Diet Coke, then climbed out and dumped the remnants of his meal and its packaging into a bin. He dutifully bought a pay-and-display ticket and stuck it on the windscreen. Then he walked over to the prefab H OSPITALITY F LOWERS booth and chose a small bouquet from the stall. He walked along in front of the sprawling front façade of the hospital, some of it painted white, some cream and some grey, and entered under the large Perspex awning, past an ambulance with the wording on its bonnet in large green letters in mirror-image.
    Roy hated this place. It angered and embarrassed him that a city of Brighton and Hove’s stature had such a disgusting, run-down dump of a hospital. It might have a grand name, and an impressive, sprawling complex of buildings, and sure, some departments, such as the cardiac unit, were world class, but in general the average makeshift shack of a medical centre in a Third World nation put this place to shame.
    He had read once that the Second World War was the first time in history that more soldiers died from their actual wounds than from infections they picked up in hospitals while being treated for their wounds. Half of the citizens of Brighton and Hove were terrified to come into this place because rumour was rife you were more likely to die from something you picked up inside than from whatever brought you in here in the first place.
    It wasn’t the fault of the medical staff, who were mostly quality people who worked their tired butts off – he had seen that with his own eyes enough times. He blamed the management, and he blamed the government, whose policies had allowed healthcare standards to fall so low.
    He went past the gift shop and the chintzy Nuovo Caffè snack bar, which looked like it belonged in a motorway service station, and sidestepped an elderly, vacant-faced patient in her hospital gown who was wandering down the sloping floor straight towards him.
    And then his anger at the place rose further as he walked over to the curved wooden counter of the unmanned reception desk and saw the sign, lying beside a spray of plastic flowers.
    A POLOGIES THE R ECEPTION D ESK IS C LOSED .
    Fortunately, Eleanor had managed to locate his young officer for him – she had been moved out of the orthopaedic ward a few days ago into one called Chichester. A list on the wall informed him that it was on the third floor of this wing.
    He climbed up a spiral staircase, on the walls of which a cheery mural had been painted, walked along a blue linoleum-covered corridor, up two further flights of wooden-banistered stairs and stopped in a shabby, grimy corridor. A young female Asian nurse in a blue top and black trousers walked towards him. There was a faint mashed potatoes and cabbage smell of school dinners. ‘I’m looking for Chichester ward,’ he said.
    She pointed. ‘Go straight ahead.’
    He walked past a row of gas cylinders through a door with a glass window covered in warning notices, and entered a ward of about sixteen beds. The smell of school dinners was even stronger in here, tinged by a faint, sour smell of urine and disinfectant. There was an old linoleum floor and the walls were filthy. The windows were wide open, giving a view out on to another wing of the hospital, with a vent from which steam was rising. Horrible curtains were partially drawn around some beds.
    It was a mixed ward of what looked mostly like geriatrics and mental patients. Grace stared for a moment at a little old lady with tufts of hair the colour of cotton wool, matching the complexion of her sunken cheeks, fast asleep, her toothless mouth open wide. Several televisions were on. A young man in bed was babbling loudly to himself. Another old woman, in a bed at the far end, kept shouting out something loud and unintelligible to no one in particular.