Death Can't Take a Joke by Anya Lipska

Author:Anya Lipska
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007524419
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Three

At a little after 7.30 the following morning, Kershaw was back in her East London comfort zone, attending a call at Whipps Cross Hospital accident and emergency department with a newbie uniform called Justin.

An ambulance had been called to a sixteen-year-old boy with gang-related stab wounds in Hoe Street in the early hours. He was out of danger, but when members of the rival gang started turning up in A&E, one of the nurses had called the nick. The uniform skipper wanted a detective down there, to see if the boy would lay a complaint, and as everyone in Divisional CID – Ben’s department – was busy, Kershaw copped the job.

As soon as the police car pulled up outside A&E, blue lights and sirens blazing, the teenage gangsters melted away. The knifing victim was a soft-eyed boy called Jackson, who’d acquired a fearsome rack of stitches, like red barbed wire, from nipple to navel, but after ten minutes of one-sided and unproductive bedside chat, Kershaw gave up on him.

‘Well, he was falling over himself to cooperate with the forces of law and order,’ she said, slamming the passenger door.

‘Yeah,’ Justin started the engine. ‘I know that kebab shop where he got stabbed – it’s bang under a street lamp – but he can’t even tell us if his attacker was black or white?’

‘Yeah, funny that.’

‘Isn’t it just?’

Hearing the bitterness in his voice, Kershaw shot him a sideways look. It was one thing for her to play the battle-hardened cop after five years in the Job, but cynicism in a rookie like Justin was a bit … depressing. At his age, she’d still been all starry-eyed about making a difference. Truth be told, there was a part of her that probably always would be. She was wondering whether to launch into a little speech about keeping the faith, when the radio fizzed into life.

‘Control Room to Echo One, please attend a Sierra Delta 13 in the woods on the north-east side of Hollow Ponds.’

‘An SD13?’ asked Justin after Kershaw acknowledged the call.

‘Do try and keep up, Justin,’ she said. ‘It’s control room code for an unexpected death.’

‘Awesome!’ His acne-flecked cheeks flushed with excitement. ‘Can we put the blues and twos on again?’

‘Go on then,’ she said, secretly pleased to see his world-weary cop routine give way to boyish enthusiasm.

It was easy to see why they’d been given the job. Hollow Ponds was less than two minutes drive from the hospital campus, just the other side of the main east-west route between the Green Man roundabout and the top of Lea Bridge Road. A couple of acres of scruffy woodland bounded on every side by busy roads, it was technically part of Epping Forest, but any first-time visitor who turned up expecting sylvan glades was in for a disappointment.

After pulling into the roadside car park, Justin and Kershaw crunched across the gravel to the log cabin café that overlooked the biggest of the man-made ponds the spot was named after. Framed in the cabin’s serving hatch, a big balding man was making tea from an urn.

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