Angels of Mourning. John Pritchard

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      I turned, and eased the door open. The changing rooms were empty. I scuttled across to the main door, rubbing my palms down my uniform: trying to wipe away the pistol’s oily feel. Brendan was already waiting outside: ready to hand me his street clothes. The V-neck of his scrub top revealing matted hairs on his chest. The stubby bundle he carried was now wrapped in an old towel.

      The twin muzzles of a sawn-off shotgun stared vacantly out from between its folds.

      I pressed the call button for the lift: it lit up beneath my finger. Somewhere, floors away, machinery began to move.

      I stepped back, peered up at the indicator. Watched the lights come counting down towards us. Anything to avoid looking at the others. Anything.

      After all these hours of waiting, we were down to the last few minutes. I’d half-hoped my adrenal glands would have worn themselves out by now, but they clearly hadn’t. I felt clammy and short of breath; my heartbeat punching through my chest.

      The silence was tense: icy. They knew I wasn’t one of them – and that I might prove a hindrance, screw things up somehow. If things went wrong, they’d probably shoot me first. At point-blank range.

      I’ve had to reason with violent people more than once – especially when I worked in A&E. Sometimes they’d had knives. Almost always they’d been drunk, on drugs, or just mentally disturbed. But this pair carried guns; and whatever else they might be, they were stone cold sane. Killing me would be a swift, pragmatic act; the outcome of a tactical decision. And no amount of reasoning would stop it.

      The lift arrived. The doors rolled smoothly open. In we got.

      I waited until we were on our way up before finally mustering the nerve to say: ‘Please don’t hurt the coppers.’

      Jackie glanced at me. There was the faintest sheen of sweat on her pale forehead; wisps of her fringe were growing damp.

      ‘Depends if they behave.’

      I looked to Brendan. He stared back, his face unfriendly. The lift came smoothly to a stop.

      We were one floor short.

      The doors slid open to reveal a middle-aged couple – obviously visitors, although chucking-out time should have come and gone. ‘Going down?’ the woman beamed.

      ‘Going up,’ I countered, already reaching for the button. It came out sounding like a croak.

      ‘That’s all right; we might as well take the tour, eh George?’ They came in across the threshold before I could say anything more. And though I’d held the button down, the door was going to close in its own sweet time.

      Jackie had rather obviously turned her face away, and was staring hard at the wall. Brendan looked down at the toes of his scuffed shoes. All I could do was gaze out down the corridor into the Surgical Unit. It was empty, apart from a nurse at the far end.

      ‘Busy day, love?’ the woman asked me kindly.

      I managed a non-committal smile.

      ‘They should double your pay,’ she added, with great sincerity. ‘You’re angels, you really are …’

       Come on, close, you bastard.

      The door finally obliged; we lurched and continued upward. Next stop Orthopaedics. With a murmured goodnight, I led the way out.

      The corridor here was empty. No sign of a guard.

      I let my breath wheeze out as I got my bearings. We were starting where I’d finished last time; the closed ward was just along the corridor. I looked down at my watch. Between five and ten past nine now. Most of the nurses would be in Sister’s office for handover. And the coppers, into the last hour of their shift, might just be caught napping.

      Another linen skip had been left here for emptying: the bulging laundry sack topped off with a couple of pillows. Brendan checked both ways, unwrapped his shotgun and pushed it in between them. I stiffened my muscles against a shudder.

      His face was quite immobile now: a mask cemented into place. Watching him, I felt Jackie close behind me – so tense that my bare nape almost tingled with the static.

      A thought fled through my mind, then – and blazed into a horrible conviction, like a spark setting off a blasting charge.

       They’ve come to kill him.

      No wonder they hadn’t discussed what they might do if he was bedridden, in traction, immobile. No talk of borrowing a wheelchair, or hijacking a trolley. They were here to stop him talking. Shut him up.

      And me? Shut me up too? I stared wide-eyed at Brendan as he wheeled the trolley forward; nodding to Jackie as if I didn’t exist.

      Jackie prodded me in the ribs. I jumped, swung round. Her other hand was buried in her coat’s false pocket.

      ‘C’mon.’

      Instinctively I complied, walking on to the next set of fire-doors and pushing them open; holding them for the trolley even as I tried out-thinking my own mind.

       That’s mad. They’re here to free him. He’s their friend …

      Ward closed, said the sign ahead. No entry.

      ‘You go first,’ said Jackie in my ear. ‘Say we’re here to check on the patient; anything. Just give us the chance to get close …’

      I came to the ward doors. The guard was there beyond them, under the light. Not the one I’d talked to; this bloke had ginger hair. We’d caught him napping right enough: he’d nodded off. Just slumped there, chin on chest; arms loosely folded.

      I eased the door open; the trolley slid through. One of the wheels was squeaking, but it didn’t rouse him. Three yards, two, one …

      And Brendan grasped the topmost pillow and lunged, clamping it over the copper’s face. Shoving the dozing man back upright, his shotgun jammed into the soft white mass – and in that moment I knew for sure there’d be no quarter: just one stifled blast, and the poor bloke’s brains all over the wall. I opened my mouth in horrified protest, sucking in air for a shout …

      It seemed to clog in the back of my throat. The taste was warm and rancid. Suddenly I wanted to gag, and spit it back out. Instead of which, I saw – and almost spewed.

      The policeman’s arms had dropped to his sides; he’d made no other move. Between the open flaps of his anorak, a clotted crimson slime was bulging outward. A chunk of it broke clear even as I gawped, and plopped to the polished floor like a stewed tomato.

      Brendan reacted like a man electrified: standing rigid for a stupefied moment – then flinging himself clear, still grasping the pillow. The side that had pressed against the copper’s face was already dyed bright crimson. The mouth and nose that had soaked it were streaming blood now; the rest of the face as pale as sallow cheese. The eyes had rolled right upward: two sightless, sour-milk slits.

      Jackie recoiled past me, knocking me to one side. Her own eyes stared like saucers.

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