Legacy (12 page)

But there was no sign of any impact on the ground whatsoever – no cracks, no indentation that anything had hit it with force – and certainly no trace of blood from either of the two men who had moments before been fighting to the death.

But no matter how vigilantly the policemen searched, they could not find the tiniest sign of either man anywhere and they both realized how serious their situation had become.

How could they explain that two men had managed to make their way past a police guard and put the person they were supposed to be protecting into grave danger?

One of the officers made his way back up to the 6
th
floor and as he stepped inside the hospital, a taxi drove slowly past his colleague and headed out of the hospital grounds onto the main road.

The only thing that was in their favour right now was the woman they were watching was luckily still alive, but both policemen knew that Detective Inspector Harran would still throw the book at both of them.

So maybe it would be a good idea for the two policemen to come up with a believable story between themselves as to how all hell had broken loose in a room they were supposed to be guarding.

If anyone knew that the two policemen had been in a room having sex with a nurse, then they would be thrown out of the police immediately.

But their hope of coming up with the same story would have to wait as a familiar car made its way into the hospital car park.

A car which had Harran in the front passenger seat.

The policeman left outside knew that he had the worst end of the deal as he had to face Harran’s wrath alone while his colleague was temporarily away from the firing line – but little did they know that things were going to go from bad to worse incredibly quickly.

Nobody was at the reception desk on the 6
th
floor when the policeman arrived and there didn’t seem to be any signs of life anywhere, but after a few moments of searching, he heard a noise from one of the rooms close by.

As he looked inside, he was immediately greeted by the nurse who had been caring for Naomi and had also tended to him and his colleague in ways they shouldn’t have been doing whilst on duty.

She smiled at him as she noticed him in the doorway.

              “Such a shame we had to come to a stop so suddenly earlier – looks like the only satisfaction I’m going to get now is a cup of coffee!” she joked, but the policeman was not impressed.

              “Where’s the girl gone?” he immediately asked as he noticed they were the only two in the room.

              “Don’t you worry your handsome face, officer. She’s just popped into the bathroom a couple of doors up. I’m making her a nice cup of tea to steady her nerves. Can I tempt you into anything?”

              “I think you’ve got me into enough trouble already!” the policeman answered, “Has anyone been in the girl’s room since I’ve been gone?”

The nurse just shook her head and continued with her tea making.

Without uttering another word, the policeman turned and headed towards Naomi’s room in order to seal it off, therefore hopefully saving crucial evidence from being destroyed.

But as he did so, he noticed that every door of the three rooms he had to pass on the way were open – one of which was the bathroom where Naomi was supposedly in.

Evidently, she was not in there.

Harran will most certainly skin them alive now.

As the policeman frantically checked all around the 6
th
floor for the missing woman, he was completely oblivious that his colleague was just behind him – but he was accompanied by two other men.

Harran and Short.

The nurse happened to be in the corridor as they entered and she immediately told them about the search for the missing woman which made an already livid Harran completely lose his cool.

Harran immediately ran towards Naomi’s room and stopped in the doorway to take a look inside while Short and the other policeman joined in the search.

Glass was everywhere, one of the walls was damaged and virtually anything that could be broken was.

The nurse had joined Harran in the doorway and she shook her head at the sight inside.

              “What a mess!” she said.

Harran turned to her.

              “And you are?” Harran asked.

              “Nurse Jenkins.” Came the reply.

              “Were you here when all this happened?” he asked.

              “I certainly was.”

              “Did you see who did this?” he asked again.

              “I didn’t – I was doing something else at the time. The first I knew was when your policemen ran out looking for two men who had supposedly fallen out of that window.”

              “And what happened to the girl?” Harran asked.

              “She was with me for a few minutes, but then she said she felt a little unwell so she went to the bathroom while I made us both a hot drink. As the kettle boiled, one of the policemen returned and asked me where she was, but when he checked, she had gone.”

              “Did you see her leave? Did she say she was planning to leave?” Harran asked.

The nurse just shook her head.

Harran looked at the bedside cabinet and suddenly sprung to life as he did so.

              “Short!” he shouted at the top of his voice as he pushed his way past the nurse into the corridor.

Short immediately came out of one of the rooms and the two met.

              “What is it, Sir?” Short asked.

              “I want a patrol car out on the road right now looking for that Gallagher woman!”

              “I’ll radio through immediately, Sir!” Short answered.

              “Also tell them that if they see her, inform me immediately!” Harran added.

Short nodded his head and as he did so, Harran spotted the two other policemen and called them over.

              “You two had better pray that nothing has happened to that woman! What the hell were you thinking leaving her alone when I specifically told you to watch her? Her bag is still on her bedside cabinet in her room which means there’s a massive possibility she may have left against her will! Thanks to you two, we’re wasting our time playing hide and seek instead of bringing this case to a close! Now, get out of my sight and search every part of this hospital for her!”

Short waited until Harran stopped talking before informing him that a car had been sent out with full knowledge of his orders.

Harran nodded his head and spoke quietly to Short, almost whispering.

              “I’m going to take a look outside – everyone is saying these two men fell out of the window, but there’s no sign of glass on the ground outside or two bodies for that matter. There’s loads of glass inside the room which indicates someone smashed it from the outside. Seal off the room and get in touch with crime scene – also have a word with hospital security and see if you can get hold of the CCTV footage when everything kicked off.”

And without uttering another word, Harran turned on his heels and headed down the corridor towards the stairs.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Harran made his way down the stairs at a good pace and by the time he reached the ground floor, Short had done everything that was asked of him – the crime scene team were preparing to leave for the hospital and the hospital security were gathering whatever footage they had to be checked by Harran and Short later.

Short lined a row of chairs across the doorway of the room completely blocking anyone from entering and to definitely make sure nobody passed, he sat on one of them.

All the time he was doing this, he couldn’t help but notice that the nurse who Harran had been talking to earlier seemed very interested in what he was doing and as Short turned to look at her, she quickly looked down and pretended to work.

The uneasy silence between the two of them lasted for just over a minute before it was broken by another nurse entering the corridor who immediately joined her colleague at the reception desk.

Short could hear the two of them whispering and he tried to make out what they were saying, but to no avail.

Then the nurse who had just walked in spoke to him.

              “Excuse me officer, would you like a cup of tea or anything while you’re sitting there?”

Short shook his head, but thanked her for the offer.

              “Are you going to sit there all night?” she asked, “Because if you are, I’m taking over the shift, so I can make you one later if you wanted.”

              “That’s very kind of you,” Short replied, “but I’m hoping not to be here too long. We’ve got our crime scene unit making their way right now so you’ll be inundated with police soon. I hope you’ve got plenty of cups!”

The two nurses laughed as half a dozen people suddenly opened the doors.

              “Looks like they’re here already!” one of them said.

Short immediately stood up to greet them and after explaining what had happened, Short stood aside and let them get on with their duties.

He walked towards the reception desk and spoke to the two nurses.

              “They’ll be here for a while, but they’ll be as quiet as they possibly can as not to upset the patients who are on the floor. We have a couple of officers in the hospital so you don’t have to worry about security – I am going to speak to security and I’ll return later with my commanding officer to check how things are progressing, okay?”

The two nurses nodded their heads and Short left them while Harran was looking perplexed outside in the car park.

No matter how many times he looked up towards Naomi’s room, Harran couldn’t find any possible way for two men to make their way into the room – there was no ledge for them to scurry across and the nearest window was too far away for them to stretch either.

There were another five floors above, so it was just as far to go up as it was to go down – so how could two men survive a fall so high completely undetected.

The case was strange enough before Harran had brought his chief witness to the hospital and with her being contained inside a hospital ward, it was the perfect opportunity for him to place Naomi under police protection just in case any of the two men who were responsible for the killings tried to contact her again giving them the chance to arrest them.

His hunch was right, but not only had they failed to catch their men – they had also managed to lose their chief witness at the same time.

The only thing Harran was thankful for was the fact that there was no dead body at the scene, but with Naomi being God knows where right now, he was unable to protect her from being attacked or possibly killed - and if that did happen, then Harran knew he was fully responsible as he had personally chose the men to keep her safe.

He kept thinking to himself that if he was in Naomi’s shoes, he would have fled from the hospital anyway.

After all, she must have been scared to death when the police failed to protect her and to be left alone after what she had endured must have sent her into blind panic – even to the point where she may have felt it would be just as dangerous going it alone.

But Harran also knew that there was a slim chance that Naomi had also left the hospital unwillingly – after all, there was no sign of her or the two men and she had left her bag in her room, so he couldn’t exactly rule out foul play either.