Free Angel of Death by Ben Cheetham

number. The phone rang in her ear. One, two, three rings. Oh God, please pick up , she thought. Four, five, six rings.
    She bit back a sob as a weary-sounding woman’s voice came down the line. ‘Hello?’
    Angel made no reply, but she pressed the phone closer to her ear.
    ‘Hello, who is this?’ continued the woman. ‘Hello?’
    A moment of silence passed. Then the woman’s voice came again, full of a trembling, tentative excitement that might have been fear or hope. ‘Grace, is that you?’
    Tears pushed at Angel’s eyes. Her lips trembled with the effort of holding them at bay.
    ‘It is you isn’t it, Grace? Please don’t hang up. You don’t have to say anything, I know it’s you. I know you’re alive and that one day you’ll come back to me. A mother knows these things.’
    Angel couldn’t hold back her tears any longer. As they burst forth, she hung up and curled into a foetal ball. An image of her mum as she’d looked the last time they’d seen each other filled her mind: worn, angular features, dark, permed hair, eyes like a sad old cat, prematurely lined smoker’s mouth. The image was fainter than it had once been, like a time-faded photo, but it still evoked a confusion of emotions in her. Uppermost amongst these was a heart-squeezing love, but there was also a toxic undercurrent of anger, resentment and even hate. A mother knows these things. The words rang in her mind, and her inner voice retorted bitterly, A mother knows what she wants to know, and is ignorant of what she wants to be ignorant of.

6
    When Jim arrived at the Northern General’s main entrance, Scott Greenwood was waiting for him. DI Greenwood’s rugged, steely eyed face marked him out as exactly what he was: a hard-working, no-bullshit cop. The sight of him always reminded Jim of himself – or rather, it reminded him of the way he’d been a few years ago, before his life turned to shit. The force was full of people like Scott Greenwood. Lately, Jim had found himself avoiding them. There was nothing he used to love more than a pub busy with cops drinking away the stresses of the day. Nowadays he preferred to drink alone, with only a picture of his ex-wife for company. He kept imagining Margaret turning up at the house, begging him to take her back. He wouldn’t give her an answer straight away, not after everything she’d put him through. He’d make her sweat a little before saying yes. Then he’d kiss her, and she’d promise never to leave him again, and everything would go back to the way it was before. Jim shook his head. Pathetic.
    ‘What’s the prognosis?’ he asked.
    ‘It’s not good,’ said Scott, turning to go into the building. ‘The girl’s still in surgery. She’s got several shotgun pellets embedded in her brain. The surgeon reckons she has about a two per cent chance of surviving the operation to remove them, and even if she does she may well be brain-damaged.’
    Jim shook his head again. ‘Fifteen years old. What a fucking waste,’ he sighed. ‘How about her brother?’
    ‘He’s stable. He came out of surgery half an hour ago, but he hasn’t come round from the anaesthetic yet.’
    They caught a lift up to the Critical Care Department, where a constable was standing guard outside one of the rooms. Jim peered through an observation window. Mark Baxley was lying in bed, hooked up to oxygen, a heart-scanner and an IV bag. His right shoulder was heavily bandaged. His waxy grey face was stitched and swollen where it had been lacerated by splinters of wood and glass.
    ‘How long before he wakes up?’ Jim asked the duty nurse.
    ‘Normally you’d expect a young, healthy patient to start showing signs of responsiveness an hour or so after general surgery,’ she replied. ‘But that doesn’t mean he’ll be fit to talk to you.’
    Jim turned to his colleagues. ‘You head over to the crime scene, Scott. I’ll stay here.’ As Scott turned to leave, Jim said to the constable standing guard, ‘Go