Chapter 26: Hate hospitals

I do not like being stuck in the hospital wing.

It smells of the Three Ds, for one. Detergent, Disinfectant and Dettol. You may have guessed, but I do not like any of these particularly.

For another, the nurse is a grumpy old hag (GOH). No one knows her age for sure but we’re guessing fifty to sixty, and she’s got more wrinkles than a bloke who’s spent three days in a pool.

Next, I visit the hospital wing very often so I’m sick and tired of seeing it, just like GOH is sick and tired of seeing me. “Not you again,” she groans when I enter. “What is it this time? Broken arm? Leg? Neck?” She sounds very hopeful on the last word. I try not to notice. “Nose,” I say. Disappointed, she sets about fashioning a splint for me.

So I’m sitting in bed while my nose heals and Illy comes in and asks me how I’m feeling. She’s clutching her arm and I wonder why. Last night, the murderer was clutching her arm at the same spot…and then Mr Adrian ‘I-know-it-all-and-no-one-can-top-me’ Denvers waltzes in and whisks Illy away for some stupid talk. I hope they’re not going out. Illy would have to have tremendously bad taste or be mad, just like the murderer last night.

“Stop comparing Illy with the murderer,” I tell myself. “She’s not the murderer.”

“I wish she’d murder you,” GOH whispers angrily. I did not hear that.

An hour later, I am sitting in front of the sketch artist. “Describe her for me please,” he says in a boring, monotonous voice. This guy should’ve been a hypnotist. Or the cure for insomnia. Or the world’s cheapest anesthetist. I stifle a yawn.

Half an hour Adrian Denvers drops by. “I think Medvedev is the murderer,” he says. I slop the coffee I’m drinking down my front, and the other bit starts to swim around their favourite keyboard in England.

Not again.