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‘Been ages since we’ve been on a stake out together,’ Hardy points out, dropping crumbs from his breakfast roll into his lap.
Carl’s hugging his coffee like it’s a hand grenade that’s lost its pin. ‘I still can’t believe we’re doing DCI Bruce a favour. When’s he going to find the people who shot us?’
‘Look at it this way. Now he owes us a favour.’
‘He could start by finding the people who fucking shot us.’
James beams at him; there’s nothing Carl hates more than people who are cheery first thing in the morning. ‘You’re not your usual sunny self today.’ He gets a grunt in reply.
The garage lockup they’re watching, on behalf of a department-wide operation to catch a man who allegedly murdered his own parents, is across from the car, diagonally in front of them. But when he looks, Carl’s eyes are focused on the rearview mirror, ‘What’s up?’
‘That white van.’
James doesn’t try to look. ‘What about it?’
‘I’m not sure. It pulled in, turned around, and has sat idling for the last ten minutes. Like the driver’s waiting for something.’
‘Could be anything.’ But he understands, it’s their job to be suspicious.
At night, this area of the city is a breeding ground for would-be hooligans, drug dealers, gang affiliations. This time in the morning… even Edinburgh’s corrupted youth have to sleep sometime.
James watches as a young girl, maybe twelve, maybe younger - difficult to tell these days - skips her way down the path that descends from the park to the north of them. She’s in school uniform, rucksack over one shoulder, focused on her mobile. As she gets closer, he realises she’s got ear buds in, that she isn’t skipping, she’s dancing.
She passes the car, and a second or two later Carl swears brightly, opens his door, drops his coffee on the pavement and runs to intercept her. With no idea what’s going on, James reacts to his partner’s actions, opening his own door, grabbing his mobile, connecting to the control centre.
Everything always happens too fast. The driver is out of the van, heading for the girl, but Carl gets to her first, warrant card out, obviously instructing her to go back to where Hardy’s out of the car, propped up between the door and roof. He sees the attack coming, shouts a warning, but it’s too late. Carl turns, gets a punch into the driver’s gut, and he throws one in return. Carl staggers back, doubles over. And in that moment, James knows what’s happened.
He yells out, ‘POLICE’ and starts towards them, swearing, shouting, trying to run, his body simply unable to comply. A detached part of his brain is telling him he looks like Frankenstein’s fucking monster just off the slab, and that’s actually what he feels like trying to get his damaged nerves to send the right messages to his legs. Carl’s been stabbed, his knows this, knows the clock’s ticking and if the guy decides to have another go….
But luckily, he’s spooked. He’s already dropped whatever he had in his hand and is making for the open door of the van. A second later, he’s in gear and away. James memorises the numberplate more out of habit than conscious thought, focused on trying to persuade his body to do something it’s not done in over a year. Carl’s on the ground, hands pressed to his abdomen, he might as well be a hundred miles away. Over the phone, the woman in the control centre is asking what he needs - ambulance is his first answer, then back up. He gives Moira’s name and rank - that usually does the trick.
Then, to his surprise, the young girl they just might have saved, puts her arm around his waist and helps him over to his partner, taking his mobile from him and calmly explaining to the controller what’s happened.
She lowers him to the ground at Carl’s side, kneels down with him and presses her hand to Carl’s wound, telling him to lie back, to breathe, that he’s going to be fine.
These are all the things James should be doing but he’s shaking with the exertion, and his voice won’t work.
‘Jesus, mate…..’
There are tears blurring his vision.
Meanwhile, the young girl has shrugged off her cardigan and wadded it up, using it to stem the bleeding. And she’s talking, none stop, to the woman on the phone and to Carl, demanding he doesn’t go to sleep, insisting he stays awake because the road is a stupid place to take a nap and the ambulance will be here soon. She tells him that he’s absolutely not allowed to die, because what will that do to her, mentally? She’d need years of therapy which the police would have to pay for, and the police are broke, it’s all over the news every day….
She continues that litany, saying Paula’s going to muscle in on Jack because she’s not there to keep the ‘boyfriend stealing bitch’ away, but she’s also missing double Geography, so it’s not all bad. She’s keeping Carl awake, keeping pressure on the stab wound, keeping the control room updated, until finally - finally - they hear sirens.
*
The ambulance arrives, Rose and Akram in tow, Moira minutes behind them.
After a quick check on Carl’s wound, the paramedics seem more concerned about Hardy, worried he might actually have had a minor heart attack. He’s in half a mind to play on that in order to go with his partner to the hospital, but as they lift Carl on to the trolley, he grabs James’ sleeve and makes him promise to ensure the girl - Molly - is safe and that, quote, ‘the useless cunts at the station find the van and arrest the driver for being an evil, perverted twat’. He’s not sure they can charge him with that exact offence, but promises he’ll try, and that he’ll get to the hospital as soon as he can.
He dispatches Rose to travel with him, wanting one of them there so he’s not alone, and he stays behind to do his job because so far this morning, as far as he’s concerned, he hasn’t exactly done it very well. He picks up the fucking penknife - who carries a penknife these days? - and drops it into an evidence bag, trying not to stare at the blood drying on the blade and down the handle.
He hands it to Akram, not needing to tell him what to do with it. Not sure what might happen if he does, because while he’s always quiet, calm, methodical and controlled, today there’s an anger simmering under the surface that has a sort of shockwave to it, the usual kindness in his big, dark brown eyes replaced by accusation and suspicion, not aimed at James directly, but definitely close to him.
It’s rankling a little bit. James gets that while he wasn’t able to be here, the man somehow managed to get through Carl’s extremely well-built defences, established the kind of uneasy kinship his partner has with very, very few people. On one level, James is glad about that, because Carl needs more friends. He has so few. Yet now and again, he feels a little slither of proprietary possessiveness around Akram which feels horribly unfamiliar, and while he understands it’s more likely to be about the physical side of their relationship than the professional one, the lines are blurring, the distinction between the two becoming less and less clear.
Still, it’s ridiculous. He’s ridiculous. Carl would laugh his fucking arse off if he found out.
‘Jim?’ Snapped out of his nonsense, he focuses on Moira, crouched in front of where he’s sitting side-on in the Sierra’s drivers seat. The car smells of fry-up ad coffee, a faintly stale, musty smell coming from the back seat which Carl never cleans out because he hates the pile of junk and is waiting not all that patiently for its replacement. ‘Are you all right?’
He looks at her and says, ‘no’.
‘What happened? You were just supposed to be watching the garage in case Malcolm turned up.’
‘There was a white transit van. It pulled in around eight thirty, turned around, then sat with its engine running. Carl was suspicious of it from the start. Molly was taking a shortcut to school. As she got closer to the van, Carl must have seen the driver get out. He was out of the car before I could stop him, got to her, told her to come to me. I saw the driver going for him, shouted a warning, but it was too late. Carl got a punch in but the guy stabbed him.’
‘With the penknife?’
‘Aye.’
‘Paramedics said he's going to okay.’
‘They said it hadn’t done too much damage, that it looked worse than it was. Molly had stopped the bleeding by the time they got here.’ He glances over to where she’s safely waiting with a couple of uniformed officers until her Mum gets here, on her way from work in a marked police car sent to pick her up. ‘She was brilliant. I was fucking useless.’
‘We’re not expecting you to be Superman right now.’
‘Can you stop Louis Lane from putting himself in danger?’
She chuckles. ‘Not sure I can mentally parse the idea of Carl as a hero. You go, I’ll make sure Molly’s all right. Akram can drive you to the hospital.’
He’s not sure he wants to be in a car with Akram at the moment, but he definitely wants to get over to the infirmary. ‘Okay.’
Before they leave, he checks on her. She’s seems fine, the resilience of the young, posting to SnapChat, or Instagram, or whatever platform they use these days, chatting to her friends at school over FaceTime, lots of unexpected excitement in what should have been a boring Wednesday.
(Later, Martin will find her social media posts for them, putting James’ mind at ease that she didn’t tell the world how he’d - in his words - lost his shit during the incident.)
*
Akram’s silent all the way to the hospital.
James, not so much.
‘This wasn’t my fault, and it wasn’t Carl’s either.’ He watches the city pass by slowly as they crawl through the late rush-hour. ‘I told him on Monday evening that he needed better back up, that being partners wasn’t a lifelong commitment to one another. He just said if I wanted to quit, he’d quit right along with me, which wasn’t what I’d meant. He’s so stubborn about it. I called him my ‘ex-partner’ one time, when I was in hospital, didn’t hear the end of it for months. Talk about taking it to heart.’
He glances at Akram, then back out of the window. There are roadworks snarling up the traffic and it’s starting to rain, the first droplets chasing each other down the glass.
‘The problem is, it’s been the two of us for years, ever since he made DCI, however the fuck that happened.’ He knows how it happened, of course he does. One of the most complex cases the murder squad had seen in its lifetime, and Carl had solved it pretty much single handedly, after the rest of the team had long-since decided it was going to be one for cold-case storage. James remembered it, remembered the first time he’d thought Carl Morck might be someone he’d like to get to know better.
‘Don’t get me wrong, when I called him my ex-partner, it was because a part of me resented the idea of having to. One moment, a split second, and my entire life was torn apart. I thought I’d lost everything; my legs, my independence, my job, my family because that wouldn’t have been fair on them. And Carl. Honestly, I don’t know why, because it’s not like he wasn’t showing up at the hospital every single day and hanging around like a fucking homeless puppy.’
He can guess where all this is coming from; he can feel the adrenaline from that morning still sticky in his veins, the terror, wondering if Carl had been fatally wounded. He would have been had the guy been carrying anything longer and more deadly than a penknife.
‘Then there was the afternoon on Mhòr, when you found Merritt and that crazy little shite Lyle Jennings tried to kill both of you…. I heard the shot, then silence, and I imagined the worst. What else was I going think, after the last time? All that was going through my head was how far away he was, how I should have been there with him. Before that, I’d had this crazy notion that if it had happened once to us, it couldn’t happen again. That we were safe, impervious to any future danger because we’d survived one shooting. Carl never saw it that way. He has the opposite crazy notion, that because it’s happened once, it’s more likely to happen again. Logically, I know we’re both wrong. The odds of us getting shot haven’t gone up or down. They’re the same as they were before Leith Park.’
They’ve made it to the turn on to Craigmillar Castle Road, and he can see the hospital buildings up ahead.
‘He was the one who pulled me back from the brink after that. I honestly don’t know what I’d do....’ It’s proper Scottish rain now, impossible to see out of the passenger side window through the water streaming across it. The windscreen wipers on the Sierra aren’t the best; Akram’s slowed the car to make up for the fact he can’t really see out.
‘So I’m stuck. He wants me out here with him, I want to be here. But on the other hand, I know most people develop the urge to punch him after a few minutes in his company, so he’d be better off with you. Safer, that’s for sure. Christ, this morning he was better off with Molly. I don’t know how to make him see that or, selfishly, if I want to make him see it.’
Finally, thankfully, they turn into the entrance of the Royal Infirmary.
‘Please, say something? Because this is weird, and that’s coming from someone who’s used to riding with Carl.’
Akram slots the Sierra into a parking spot, pulling on the handbrake, then doing it again when it fails to stay on. He turns to James and says, completely deadpan, ‘I don’t know how he drives this piece of shit car. He needs to get a new one. It’s a deathtrap.’ It’s not until they’re halfway across the car park, in the rain, that Akram asks him, ‘Do you feel better?’
‘Aye. Actually, I do.’
‘Then you didn’t need me to talk. You just needed me to listen, and to hear.’
*
‘At least this time I get to sit at your bedside,’ James murmurs, fingers curled around Carl’s left hand. He’s sleeping off the mild sedative they gave him after thirty minutes in surgery to sew him back up; a couple of stitches in his intestine, another couple on the outside. They’ve given him a tetanus injection too, just in case, because God alone knows where that penknife has been.
They want to keep him in overnight, just in case, but they’re confident he’ll be able to go home tomorrow, just as confident as James is that he’ll discharge himself as soon as he feels up to moving, and the first place he’ll go is to the station.
While he was waiting for Carl to be moved out of Recovery, James had called the flat, relieved to speak to Martin, asking him to tell Jasper what had happened, and to assure him his step-dad is once again going to make a full recovery. Moira called to report that they’d got the van and its driver, that he was being charged with the attempted murder of a police officer (just to scare the shit out of him) as well as the attempted abduction of a child. James hopes they’re not going to find that Molly wasn’t his first attempt.
It’s still early, lunchtime, and yet he feels like hopping up on the bed next to his partner, closing his eyes and taking a nap.
He barely hears the soft knock on the open door, looks around only when he becomes aware of someone else in the room; Rose, looking both nervous and defiant at the same time.
‘I told them I was his sister,’ she confesses, right off the bat.
‘I told them I was his partner. It’s up to them how they chose to interpret that.’ He doesn’t let go of Carl’s hand.
‘How is he?’
‘Immortal, apparently.’
She chuckles, stepping up to the end of the bed, tapping on the metal bar. ‘He was babbling, in the ambulance. He kept saying at least it was him this time.’
‘And the last time. And the time before that.’ He knows what she’s trying to say, in her own, inimitable way; dancing around the subject, not so much as glancing at it. It’s the same conversation he suspects he’s going to have with Moira in the not too distant future. ‘He was just relieved it wasn’t me.’
She nods with a sigh. ’That was the gist of it.’
The gist? ‘What else did he say?’
‘I’m not sure I should tell you. What goes on in the ambulance, stays in the ambulance, isn’t that how it goes?’
‘I’m not aware it’s a common phrase.’
‘I think it is.’
‘Rose!’
‘I think he might be a little bit in love with you.’ The way she says it makes it sound like all one word.
‘I know he is.’
It takes the wind out of her sails, so to speak. ‘Oh.’
‘We were under the impression you and Akram knew, that you saw us, that afternoon, in the basement.’
‘Well, yeah. We did. But I thought it was just partners having a moment, you know?’
‘Holding hands, having just wanked each other off?’
Her eyes widen almost comically. ‘Obviously we didn’t see that!’
He’s worried for a second that he shouldn’t have told her. ‘Strictly between us, understood?’
‘Aye. Course. So… you’re sleeping together? Does your wife know?’
‘Of course she does. Neither of us wanted to risk losing our bollocks if I didn’t tell her and she found out.’
‘She doesn’t mind?’
He cocks his head to one side, resists actually voicing the aww bless in his head. ‘You’re young. You’ll understand, eventually.’ It’s condescending as fuck, but it’s not really something he can explain to someone who still wants to believe marriage can be all hearts and flowers from beginning to end.
‘What’s it like?’
‘What’s what like?’
‘Sleeping with Carl.’
‘I’m not going to tell you that! It’s private.’
‘Oh, that’s private? But you’re happy to…’ she lowers her voice, ’masturbate in the office?’
‘That was a one off.’
‘You’ve… done it in other places though?’
‘All over.’ He corrects himself quickly. ‘Not all over the station. All over the city.’
It’s entertaining, watching her try to process this new reality, trying to work out whether or not he’s taking the piss. ‘If it helps,’ he says quietly, ‘I think I’m a bit in love with him too.’
Her expression softens to one of bewilderment. ‘But you’re so nice and he’s so… horrible.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘No. I don’t.’ Pursing her lips. ‘Still, I’m having trouble imagining Carl being in love with anyone. Except himself.’
He understands that. He and Carl have been… well, he and Carl for so long that it’s been an organic thing; their friendship deepening, growing closer, attraction turning to desire turning to love. Not that the desire’s lessened in any way. If anything, the desire is growing too. The more they do, the more he wants to do. He owes Carl a blowjob at the very least. He’s not quite as agile yet as his partner, but he’s got ideas. They have - had - plans for Saturday, a part of him hoping they can keep them even if all they do is spend the night on the sofa watching movies.
And isn’t that fucking strange, that he’s starting to want to spend time with Carl away from work, away from others, just the two of them, the opportunity to be close. Sex optional.
‘He’s not an arrogant prick all the time.’ James sees a side of his partner very few others ever do, he knows this; it’s not that Carl’s any different with him, and he’s not really tried to analyse it before, but he suspects it’s because he feels safe, that he can let his well-honed defences down. He remembers vividly the night Carl cooked spaghetti bolognaise for him; opening the door, fresh out of the shower, jeans low on his hips, feet bare. Relaxed. Sexy as fuck.
Rose is gazing at him, curious and amused.
‘Shut up.’
That just makes her laugh.
*
‘Good evening, Sleeping Beauty.’
James sits up, reaching for Carl’s hand without thinking when he finally opens his eyes.
‘What time is it?’
‘Gone eleven. At night.’
‘Jesus….’
‘The doctor said you need to sort out your sleeping patterns. He’s prescribing tablets.’
‘I’m not taking any fucking tablets.’
‘You know if you’re worried about losing a dog you don’t own, or eating everything in the fridge, you could always handcuff yourself to the bed. Like a werewolf.’
Weary blue eyes gaze at him. ‘Am I okay?’
‘You’re absolutely fine. Couple more stitches, nothing more serious than if you’d cut yourself shaving.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘Okay. Slightly more serious. But I promise you’re okay. They’d probably have kicked you out by now if you hadn’t slept through lunchtime and teatime. Which around here is the equivalent of sleeping through an anti-war protest and a particularly vibrant Pride parade.’ Carl shifts, probably trying to get blood back into parts of his body that are still sleeping. ‘Are you hungry? I know the nurses on nightshift, I’m sure I could sweet-talk them-.’
‘No.’ He winces in pain when he tries to turn onto his side, forced to stay lying on his back. He turns his head to look at James. ‘Why are you still here?’
‘I know what it’s like to wake alone in hospital. I wanted to be here.’
‘I’ve woken alone in this hospital as often as you have. Go home. Spending the night in that chair will do your back in.’
‘Stop worrying about me. Take the drugs. I’ll be right here. I won’t let you raid the nurse’s station, or steal a guide dog, or whatever it is you’re worried is going to happen.’
The last nurse to check on him left two small white pills next to the water jug. James helps him sit up just enough to swallow them. It takes a few minutes for them to kick in, but when they do, Carl squeezes his hand and closes his eyes. ‘Sorry. About this morning.’
‘I should fucking think so. You scared the shit out of me. But you saved Molly from… whatever that pervert had in mind. So, on this occasion, you’re forgiven.’
‘Molly?’
‘The girl.’
‘Is she okay?’
‘She’s a social media superstar. She’s fine. I think she’s going to be a paramedic eventually, or a doctor. She was amazing. More help to you than I was.’ They need to talk seriously about backup, but not tonight. He moves to sit on the edge of the chair, hand halfway to Carl’s head before he realises, hesitates, then touches anyway, brushing the short hairs above his right ear, trying not to think too hard about it.
‘Soft sod.’
James brushes the top of his ear with his thumb, the same sort of gentle touch he uses on the kids when they’re sick, or on Donna on the rare occasion she has a migraine. ‘Go the fuck back to sleep.’
As much as he’d rather they weren’t in the hospital at all, it’s nice not to be the one in the bed. He waits for Carl’s breathing to even out, for his grip to go lax, before letting go and sitting back. His phone vibrates in his jeans, and he fishes it out, expecting a text from Donna, or even Rose.
It’s an email from Jimmy Perez.
Hi Jim,
Progress update on Joesph McDowell. Still no photograph, doesn’t look like he’s ever applied for a passport or driving licence. Not as uncommon as you’d think in the isles. Search team moved to the cabins and have so far found three crime scenes, suspect there’ll be more. Graves is being held in custody in Glasgow, he’s been talking himself into a life sentence. It’s not easy listening. I go home and hug Duncan every night. I hope you can hug Carl, once in a while.
Take care, I’ll keep you posted.
Jimmy