Shooting in the Dark

and I want you out of the town.’
    ‘What’s Geordie got to say about this? It’s Geordie’s house just as much as Janet’s. I bet he doesn’t want me to go-’
    The detective raised his eyebrows. ‘You mess about with somebody else’s woman, how do you think the guy’s gonna feel? There’s two hundred quid there,’ Turner said, fingering the wad. ‘Enough to get you wherever you want to go, keep you in a bed and breakfast for a few days. If you’re still around tomorrow, I’ll pass the evidence of the note over to the fuzz.’
    Ralph watched him go. He walked to the door of the ward and saw Turner’s broad back disappearing along the corridor. He walked back to the bed and picked up the twenties, slipped them into the back pocket of his jeans.
    They gave him some dinner at midday and the little nurse with the body told him his brother and sister-in-law were here to see him.
    ‘What do they want?’ Ralph asked.
    She smiled. ‘To see how you are, I should think. They’ve got a bag with them.’
    ‘Tell them to leave the bag,’ he said. ‘I don’t wanna see them.’ The reproachful looks from young Geordie he could live without. And Janet would be on her high horse, strutting about as if she’d got something left in. To hell with them, he’d managed OK without them all his life, now it would just go on as normal. Ralph thought he’d probably go back to his wife and family, somewhere to crash until he came up with some new ideas.
    A couple of hours later they gave him a cup of tea and then his medicine arrived on the ward at four o’clock. Pain-killers and some swabs for the cuts on his face. ‘Is this it?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been waiting all day for this?’
    The nurse shrugged. ‘You can go now, Mr Black.’
    No offer of a lift to the station. A cracked rib, aches and pains all over, and there you go, Mr Black, on your own, Mr Black. Only a couple of miles to the station. He picked up the bag and walked outside. Dark already and a sharp frost in the air. He could manage the bag but the weight caused a pain in his chest. He kept swapping it from hand to hand.
    He cut through Bridge Lane and across the grounds of Bootham Park. Some of the nurses’ flats were lit but most were dark. As Ralph put the bag down for a minute, give himself a rest, a tall guy overtook him, striding along in the same direction. The man looked back and stopped. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. Ralph gave him the once over. It wasn’t really necessary though; the guy’s voice gave him away. A doctor, maybe, something like that. At least a social worker or a teacher, but this being the hospital grounds, he’d be a doctor. You could bet on it. And look at the state of him, his bearing, the blond hair, the suit, the overcoat. Could be a consultant.
    ‘Yeah,’ Ralph told him. ‘Just having a rest.’ He winced to show the guy his chest hurt. ‘Cracked rib.’
    ‘You shouldn’t be carrying that, then.’ The guy walked back along the path and bent to pick up Ralph’s bag. ‘I’ll give you a hand. Going far?’
    ‘The station.’
    ‘No probs.’
    ‘I’m not sure, really,’ Ralph said. ‘I was going to the station, but I could go to my brother’s place.’
    ‘There’s a café in Gillygate. You could have a coffee and take the time to decide.’
    ‘Yeah,’ Ralph said. ‘Good idea. Specially if the café’s a pub.’
    On the corner of Union Terrace the doctor said, ‘This is really very heavy.’ He changed hands and walked alongside Ralph until they got to the Wagon and Horses.
    ‘Thanks,’ Ralph said. ‘You’re a real gent.’ He took his bag back and went into the pub. He got himself a pint of lager and felt better even before he took the head off.
    He didn’t make a decision about what to do. He spent the evening in the pub and drank at the expense of Sam Turner. Funny how the lager always tasted better when somebody else was paying for it. Towards the end of the evening he had a few whisky chasers. Why the fuck not?
    But now, at this time of night, there was no way he could go to the station and buy a train ticket. He ordered a taxi and when it came he told the guy to take him to Geordie’s house. There’d be plenty of time to sort his life out tomorrow. And, anyway, there was his passport, all his official papers locked in the drawer of his room.
    Ralph paid the taxi off and picked up his bag. There was a sharp pain like a sliver of glass in his chest, so he dropped it back to the