If Snow Hadn't Fallen (A Lacey Flint Short Story) Read Online Free PDF Page B

victory, though, was short-lived and his body had been pulled out of the river by the Marine Policing Unit some days later. I fared a little better, managing to cling to some lines and be fished out like floating jetsom. For weeks afterwards I looked like the loser of a prize-title fight, and, specifically, my nose had been broken just above the bridge. As it had happened in the line of duty, the Met was paying to get it put right.
    Mr Induri sat me down, shone bright lights, poked something long and sharp up both nostrils and took photographs from so many angles I wondered if he’d missed his vocation as a portrait photographer. Finally he projected one of the shots on to a white board behind his desk and picked up a felt-tip pen.
    ‘I like to take a conservative approach,’ he said, redrawing the outline of my nose in a thin black line. ‘When I work on a nose, I want the end result to be the patient looking better, not different. In your case, we’re largely trying to sort out some damage and get back to where we were before. Is that fair?’
    I agreed that it was, and then he asked me if I was involved in the investigation into the Aamir Chowdhury murder. I nodded warily.
    ‘I knew Aamir,’ he said, adding a few curves to the end of the nose. ‘He was doing a rotation with me here when it happened. Have you made any arrests yet?’
    This was the first time I’d come across someone who had actually known Chowdhury. I’d been aware that he worked at St Thomas’s, but it’s a big hospital.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It was a terrible thing to happen. And the investigation is still ongoing, I’m afraid.’
    As Mr Induri stepped back to consider his line-drawings from a different angle, something made me ask, ‘Did you know him well?’
    ‘Rhinoplasty is a mixture of science and art,’ he answered, drawing more lines around the nose on the white board, as though the subject of Chowdhury had never come up. ‘The nose has to work. Fitness is very important to you, I see that from your file. You need to be able to breathe easily and well.’
    I agreed again. Since my nose had been broken, it had been difficult to keep up my usual regime of exercise. The oxygen just wasn’t getting through the way it used to.
    ‘Aamir kept himself to himself,’ said Mr Induri. ‘Young men from devout Islamic backgrounds often do. No one seems to have known him too well. But he was intelligent and hard-working. Always very polite. And respectful – towards the patients as well as his colleagues. It was a dreadful thing.’
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Especially for his family.’
    Mr Induri placed his hands on his hips, looking from my face to the one on the white board. ‘Unimaginable,’ he agreed, before bending forward at the waist, removing his glasses and peering at me. ‘This is not just about science. A surgeon needs a good eye,’ he said. ‘You need to know what looks good. I like to think I know what looks good.’
    ‘I hope so,’ I said, as he turned from me once more. ‘I think I saw his sister last night. At the park where it happened.’
    Mr Induri nodded. ‘Yes, I think he mentioned sisters,’ he said. ‘And brothers, too. I got the impression of a large family. Now, we can smooth out these bumps and ridges fairly easily. The scarring will be around the nostrils and not noticeable after the first few weeks.’
    I didn’t want to think about scars. ‘Did you ever meet any of his family?’
    ‘No. I think I saw a lady waiting for him outside one day – she could have been a sister … We’ll have to take some tissue from your scalp and maybe even some cartilage from your ear, so there’ll be secondary healing sites, but nothing to cause us too much concern. What I would really be tempted to do, in your case, is make it a bit longer. Can you see? ’
    I looked again at the picture on the wall. Mr Induri had extended the length of my nose by roughly a quarter of a centimetre, giving something to my