Inheritance Tracks by Catherine Aird

Author:Catherine Aird [Catherine Aird]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780749024314
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2019-07-09T16:00:00+00:00

Sister Samantha Peters regarded the two dishevelled and injured men in front of her in the Accident and Emergency Department of Berebury Hospital later that evening and then looked at her watch. It was nearly midnight. ‘It’s too late in the day for you two to have been playing rugby,’ she concluded. ‘Besides, it’s dark now.’

‘We weren’t,’ muttered Martin Pickford. He sounded as if he had a broken nose.

‘Have the pair of you taken up boxing instead, then?’ the nurse asked drily. ‘Or Sumo wrestling, perhaps?’ she suggested.

‘Sort of,’ mumbled Jim Stopford. He too had a missing tooth now. He pointed at his adversary. ‘He was playing a much nastier game than rugby, I can tell you, Sister.’

‘I noticed that you two came in the same ambulance. Does it,’ she enquired icily, ‘by any chance mean that your injuries are connected?’

‘Got it in one, Sister,’ lisped Jim Stopford, who was having difficulty in speaking between rapidly swelling lips.

‘Connected in a way, Samantha,’ admitted Martin Pickford. ‘He hit me first.’

She turned on him. ‘I’ve told you before now that when you’re here you call me Sister.’

‘Yes, Sister.’ He hung his head penitently. ‘Sorry, Sister.’

‘And there was I,’ she marvelled, ‘thinking that Thursday was a quiet evening and that I’d take Friday as my night off this week instead because that’s usually very busy.’

‘His fault, not mine,’ muttered Jim Stopford. ‘He started it.’

Martin Pickford flushed. ‘I didn’t say it was your fault. I said I was blaming you.’

‘I like that,’ spluttered Jim Stopford. ‘Splitting hairs.’

‘Even so, Sister, he didn’t need to go for me like he did.’

‘I did need to,’ growled Stopford. ‘You rotten, deceitful bastard, you. Of all the dirty, low-down tricks to play on a fellow player …’

‘How did you know it was me, anyway?’ the other man responded.

‘Because nobody else had any interest at all in keeping me away from the selection board for the county team, that’s why, you cunning toad,’ he hissed.

‘It worked, though, didn’t it?’ smirked Pickford. ‘I’m in the team and you aren’t. The selection committee put you down as a “No Show”.’

‘I’ll tell them what you did and get you banned from the game, if it’s the last thing I do.’

‘Too late, mate. They’ve offered me a trial place in Saturday’s match against that crack side that calls themselves the “Calleshire Wanderers”. I’ll be playing for our side this week.’

‘Not if I’ve got anything to do with it, you won’t,’ snarled Jim Stopford indistinctly. No lightweight, he started to move aggressively towards the other man, his right fist clenched.

‘That will do,’ pronounced Sister Samantha Peters, in a tone of voice honed by centuries of a nursing tradition founded by Florence Nightingale in the Crimea. It carried an authority that could have given points to a company sergeant major. ‘Or I will call security and they – whether you like it or not – will call the police, who will undoubtedly charge you with assault. Both of you,’ she added, taking in the injuries to each of them.

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