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Almost as soon as he turned out of the hospital car-park, Doyle realised he was not on good form. Should have predicted it really.
Barry Martin. Bloody Barry Martin. Got the drop on them, just like he said he would. And Doyle had hesitated. He’d hung there in the shameful limbo land of shall I shan’t I, because he was an old softie, apparently, while Bodie – Bodie – had a flaming hunting knife embedded in his chest.
Doyle jammed at the gear stick. What he been thinking? Barry Martin over Bodie? Over Bodie?
It made him want to puke. Although that might have been his thoroughly contused stomach and ribcage.
“Uff,” he said, swallowing down some bile.
So, no, he was not on good form. Not at all.
He knew the best route from the Royal Free back into town perfectly well, and yet a woeful lack of attention had them headed straight into Friday rush-hour on the Finchley Road. As if he didn’t have the sense he was born with. Naturally it was jammed going north towards the motorway, and it was even worse going south to Swiss Cottage and Baker Street. Classic schoolboy error.
His hands curled around the steering-wheel in irritation. He hated having to drive Bodie’s car. Especially when he hurt this bad.
"Those grapes didn't half make me thirsty," Bodie himself observed at that point. He sounded annoyingly upbeat, despite the relentless ooze of the wound. The comment was timed for delivery as they passed The Navigator, where Friday-evening drinkers were already standing out on the pavement in their non-shredded shirtsleeves, pints in hand, watching the traffic.
Doyle was silent.
"Yeah, you're right, it's murder parking round here, let's go to that nice boozer on the hill," Bodie then suggested.
Doyle flicked his gaze to the wing-mirror and changed lanes. He found it hard to credit that Bodie would actually want to go for a drink with him, and was waiting for the moment he’d get laid into good and proper. Well deserved, too, even if Cowley had backed him up.
Bodie shuffled his injured shoulder gently. It seemed a bit of a mess. The nurses had been brilliant, but Bodie had been up and down like a particularly hyper-active jack-in-the-box while they’d been trying to sort him out. No wonder it was unravelling.
“All right?” he asked Doyle. “Looks like he kicked you halfway up the Estuary.”
“Bloody Barry Martin.”
“Yeah, well. Bloody dead Barry Martin.”
“Christ,” Doyle said.
Still nothing. No recrimination. No self-righteous whingeing.
After that moment of disbelieving fury back at the docks – "Take him, Doyle!” – Bodie had reverted to normal. As if nothing untoward had happened that day.
Bled contentedly in the ambulance. Shambled cheerfully around A&E until that blonde Sister in the cap could have clipped him round the ear. Munched his way through the grapes Doyle popped out to buy for Mr. Cowley.
Not a single angry word to Doyle. Not a question. No “What the hell were you waiting for, you complete divvy?” The scouse accent generally flecked Bodie's speech whenever negative emotions (or booze) ran high, and Doyle hadn’t heard a peep of it.
To be honest, it all pissed Doyle right off. He couldn’t imagine being that cool if it had been the other way around. As if, of course, it ever would have been.
“Drink? Or not?” Bodie said.
“Nah, taking you home to yours. You can’t go anywhere in that shirt, and you’re not having one of mine. Besides, I’m not in the mood.”
Not for shirt lending. Not for drinking. Not for a concessionary brush of lips, the scrub of jaw on jaw. Not for much, really, except brooding. Which was something Doyle preferred to do alone – at least to begin with.
“You’re probably right.” There was silence for a while, Bodie fiddling with his flapping, blood-spattered shirt cuff. He tutted. “Vintage Versace, this.”
“Yeah?”
God, Doyle fell for it, like he nearly always did if he wasn’t on form.
“No, Man at C&A.”
Now it was Doyle’s turn to tut.
When he swung the car into the space right in front of Bodie’s block they hadn’t spoken a word to each other for ten whole minutes.
It was cool in the flat and even though it had been a sunny, late summer day, Doyle went to crank up the boiler. He might have been determinedly brooding, but he hadn’t missed the odd shiver coming from the passenger seat.
“Tea?” he said.
“Could do with a stiff one to be honest.”
I’ll bet you could rambled through Doyle’s brain but he didn’t say it. Bodie didn’t even sound as if he was angling for the innuendo. He sounded as if he actually intended to fill a large tumbler with booze and tip it down his throat.
“Bodie, go and change that shirt.”
Wide eyes. “Yes, mother.”
Doyle sighed, brittle and sore.
“And sort out that dressing, else you’ll be needing another one!” was lobbed at Bodie’s retreating back. Guilty, he rubbed at his face.
Time for him to go.
Bodie seemed fine. Yes he’d probably have a double shot of scotch on top of the painkillers and whatnot, but then he’d sleep. And he needed sleep. Probably needed Doyle to change his dressing for him, too, but sod that. Bodie was an old pro at personal field dressings under fire, what did he need Doyle for?
When Bodie eventually wandered back in after a good deal of uncoordinated crashing about, he was in what Doyle supposed he’d call ‘loungewear.’ Navy and burgundy. Quite natty really. And definitely not Man at C&A.
But his face was doughy pale, shadows under the eyes.
Guilt nipped at Doyle again. Must have been hell getting that lot on.
Bodie seemed surprised Doyle was still there.
“Drink?”
“No!” Doyle said sharply. And then softer, “No, you’re all right.”
He watched Bodie square his shoulders with a wince, pick a way over to his drinks trolley, spin the lid off a bottle of Remy, and slop a goodly measure into one of his prized, crystal snifters. Bodie held it up to Doyle in silent toast – to what, for crying out loud? – and then hesitated.
“You know what?" he said, a little pain line appearing between his brows. “I don’t think I will.”
It was probably that more than anything. The sudden arrival of resigned scouse. The reversion to sense. More than the false bonhomie, the clumsy thrashing around in the bathroom, the horrible greenish complexion.
“Here,” Doyle said, broodiness sloshing out of him in a big, worried, wave. “I’m not sure about you.”
He crossed the room in two strides, plucked the snifter from Bodie’s unprotesting hand, laid it aside. Then, eyeballing him steadily, he pressed the backs of his fingers against Bodie’s cheek. Held them there, transferred his palm to Bodie’s forehead.
“Well, Doctor Kildare?” Bodie queried, eyes suspiciously glazed.
“Sit down, I’m getting a thermometer.”
When he brought it back from the bathroom cabinet, shaking it down with an angry, wristy, motion, Bodie blinked up at him from the sofa.
“I’m pretty sure that you, sunshine, are running a temp,” Doyle said.
“My arse.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Doyle shook it one last time. “Open your gob, and for God’s sake don’t bite the bloomin' thing in half.”
A high temperature all right. Too high. And Doyle didn’t like it one bit.
“It’ll be fine,” Bodie said, reacting to Doyle’s expression. He had an owlish look about him, was sunk uncomfortably into the sofa cushions. “Hospital gave me antibiotics. I’ll take some aspirin. It’ll all be fine.”
“I was going to go home for some shut-eye," said Doyle. "You’re right, that bastard kicked me halfway up the Estuary and I feel like shit.”
“But you’re not going to go home?”
“Too right I’m not!”
“Thought you were cross with me.”
“Me cross with you? Christ, Bodie. There was me naffing around like a jessie when he'd done more than just try to wing you. You know Barry. He’d have been trying to get that bloody blade through your heart!”
“Made a flaming mess of it then, didn’t he.”
“Bodie...”
“Listen, Raymond. I’ve got a lovely bit of sackcloth you can wear if you want. Can probably come up with some ashes, too, if I put my mind to it.”
“You were down,” Doyle said through clenched teeth. “I should have taken him out.”
“So you’re a big girl’s blouse,” Bodie grumbled. “That’s nothing new. But quite honestly, right now... oh, fuck it, Doyle. Think this thing’s bleeding again.”
Doyle jettisoned Barry Martin and the docks from his head.
He hauled Bodie sternly off the sofa.
They executed an ungainly waltz to a soundtrack of expletives through the living room, along the hall, and into Bodie’s bedroom.
Stripped of the navy top, Bodie sat, faint and still, in all his considerable glory, as Doyle added extra gauze to the wound, taped it down all over again, and told him in no uncertain terms to stop waving his effing arm about or they’d never stop it.
Doyle supposed, given Bodie’s fever, and the stubborn bleeding, that they’d probably be setting off back to the hospital again sooner rather than later. But he figured perhaps some sleep in his own bed first might help the silly arse in the meantime, and that in any case overnights in A&E were murder.
Once he was lying down, Bodie, after grousing to himself for a bit, plucked at Doyle’s sleeve.
“Oi,” he said, voice weak as water. “You stopped beating yourself up yet, Jessie?”
“Suppose so,” Doyle said, fussing with the quilt. “If my penance is to look after a whingeing, difficult sod like you, then what the hell. Guess I’ll just have to lump it.”
There might have been some left-over contrition in the brush of lips that followed, but for absolute certain there was nothing concessionary about it.
Nothing at all.
-ENDS-