Read Online When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kate Atkinson
Tags: Fiction, General, Thrillers, Mystery & Detective, Missing Persons, Physicians (General practice)
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form ofjoinery,' he joked when he first met her but he was at th e top of his field and could probably have been making a fortune in private practice but instead he spent his time sticking NHS patients back together with pins. ('That's where a boyhood playing with a Meccano set gets you.')
Louise had never liked doctors, nobody who'd been at university with medical students would ever trust a doctor. (Was Joanna Hunter the exception to the rule?) And how did they choose doctors? They took middle-class kids who were good at science subjects and then spent six years teaching them more science and then they let them loose on people. People weren't science, people were a mess. 'Well, it's one way of looking at it,' Patrick laughed.
They had met over an accident, of course, how else did the police meet people? Two years ago, Louise had been on the M8, driving to Glasgow for a meeting with Strathclyde Police, when she saw the crash happen on the opposite carriageway.
She was first on the scene, arriving before the emergency services, but there was nothing she could do. A sixteen-wheeler had smashed into the back of a little three-door saloon, two baby seats crammed in the back, the mother driving, her teenage sister in the passenger seat . T he car had been stationary in a queue at temporary traffic lights at some roadworks. The driver hadn't seen the signs for the roadworks, hadn't seen the queue of traffic, and only caught the briefest glimpse of the little three-door saloon before he rammed into it at sixty miles an hour. The truck driver was texting. A classic. Louise arrested him at the scene. She would have liked to kill him at the scene. Or preferably run him over slowly with his own truck. She was beginning to notice that she was more bloodthirsty than she used to be (and that was saying something).
The car and everyone in it was completely crushed. Because she was the smallest, slimmest person at the scene, Louise ('Can you try, boss?') had squeezed a hand through what had once been a window, trying to search for pulses, trying to count bodies, find some ID . T hey hadn't even known there were babies in the back until Louise's ~ngers had brushed against a tiny limp hand. Grown men wept, mcludmg the traffic cop who was the family liaison officer, and good old L' -har -'1 d' vlllegar -put an arm round him an d OUlse d b 01 e III . said, 'Well, Jesus, we're only human: and volunteered to be the one to tell the next of kin, which was, without doubt, the worst job in the world. She seemed to be more faint-hearted than she used to be. Bloodthirsty yet faint-hearted.
A week later she had attended the funeral. All four of them at once. It had been unbearable but it had to be borne because that's what people did, they went on. One foot after another, slogging it out day by day. If her own child died, Louise wouldn't keep on going, she would take herself out, something nice and neat, nothing messy for the emergency services to deal with afterwards.
Archie wanted driving lessons for his seventeenth birthday and Patrick said, 'Good idea, Archie. If you pass your test we'll get you a decent second-hand car.' Louise, meanwhile, was trying to think of ways of preventing Archie from ever sitting in the driving seat of a vehicle. She wondered if it was possible to gain access to the DVLA computer and put some kind of stop on his provisional licence. She was a chief inspector, it shouldn't be beyond her, being police was just the obverse of being criminal, after all.
The driver of the car in front had been badly injured as well and it had been Patrick who had spent hours in the operating theatre putting the man's leg back together. The truck driver, who didn't even have a bruise, was sentenced to three years in jail and was probably out by now. Louise would have removed his organs without anaesthetic and given them to more worthy people. Or so she told Patrick afterwards over a nasty cup of coffee in the hospital staff canteen.
Louise had never liked doctors, nobody who'd been at university with medical students would ever trust a doctor. (Was Joanna Hunter the exception to the rule?) And how did they choose doctors? They took middle-class kids who were good at science subjects and then spent six years teaching them more science and then they let them loose on people. People weren't science, people were a mess. 'Well, it's one way of looking at it,' Patrick laughed.
They had met over an accident, of course, how else did the police meet people? Two years ago, Louise had been on the M8, driving to Glasgow for a meeting with Strathclyde Police, when she saw the crash happen on the opposite carriageway.
She was first on the scene, arriving before the emergency services, but there was nothing she could do. A sixteen-wheeler had smashed into the back of a little three-door saloon, two baby seats crammed in the back, the mother driving, her teenage sister in the passenger seat . T he car had been stationary in a queue at temporary traffic lights at some roadworks. The driver hadn't seen the signs for the roadworks, hadn't seen the queue of traffic, and only caught the briefest glimpse of the little three-door saloon before he rammed into it at sixty miles an hour. The truck driver was texting. A classic. Louise arrested him at the scene. She would have liked to kill him at the scene. Or preferably run him over slowly with his own truck. She was beginning to notice that she was more bloodthirsty than she used to be (and that was saying something).
The car and everyone in it was completely crushed. Because she was the smallest, slimmest person at the scene, Louise ('Can you try, boss?') had squeezed a hand through what had once been a window, trying to search for pulses, trying to count bodies, find some ID . T hey hadn't even known there were babies in the back until Louise's ~ngers had brushed against a tiny limp hand. Grown men wept, mcludmg the traffic cop who was the family liaison officer, and good old L' -har -'1 d' vlllegar -put an arm round him an d OUlse d b 01 e III . said, 'Well, Jesus, we're only human: and volunteered to be the one to tell the next of kin, which was, without doubt, the worst job in the world. She seemed to be more faint-hearted than she used to be. Bloodthirsty yet faint-hearted.
A week later she had attended the funeral. All four of them at once. It had been unbearable but it had to be borne because that's what people did, they went on. One foot after another, slogging it out day by day. If her own child died, Louise wouldn't keep on going, she would take herself out, something nice and neat, nothing messy for the emergency services to deal with afterwards.
Archie wanted driving lessons for his seventeenth birthday and Patrick said, 'Good idea, Archie. If you pass your test we'll get you a decent second-hand car.' Louise, meanwhile, was trying to think of ways of preventing Archie from ever sitting in the driving seat of a vehicle. She wondered if it was possible to gain access to the DVLA computer and put some kind of stop on his provisional licence. She was a chief inspector, it shouldn't be beyond her, being police was just the obverse of being criminal, after all.
The driver of the car in front had been badly injured as well and it had been Patrick who had spent hours in the operating theatre putting the man's leg back together. The truck driver, who didn't even have a bruise, was sentenced to three years in jail and was probably out by now. Louise would have removed his organs without anaesthetic and given them to more worthy people. Or so she told Patrick afterwards over a nasty cup of coffee in the hospital staff canteen.
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