Poisoned Ground: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

well as the fact she’d come to see him, told Lee it was serious. When Vi went on a sex trip to Morocco she just buggered off.
    Lee smoked. ‘So what’s the deal?’
    ‘I go into the London in two weeks’ time,’ Vi said.
    ‘The London?’
    ‘Hospital,’ she said. ‘You know, Whitechapel …’
    ‘I know where it is, but …’
    Vi put a hand up to her neck. ‘It’s gotta go,’ she said.
    ‘What, your—’
    ‘Gordon’s time has come,’ she said.
    ‘Oh, fuck.’ He leant forward in his chair, both wanting and not wanting to take her hand. Vi had a goitre, or enlarged thyroid gland, which she called ‘Gordon’, round her throat which had been there for years. And although in her case the goitre wasn’t an indication of a malfunctioning thyroid, Lee knew that it sometimes bothered her by interfering with her breathing. But it had been doing that for years. What, suddenly, had changed?
    Vi laughed. ‘Oh, Christ,’ she said, ‘you look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Gone all pale and interesting, love.’
    ‘Yeah, but Gordon …’
    ‘Gordon’s been a pain in the arse for years, as you know,’ Vi said. ‘And when I went to see the endocrinologist a couple of months ago he said that Gordon had got bigger and needed to go.’
    ‘So you’re going to have it removed?’
    ‘Yeah.’ And then she gave him one of those tight little smiles she only ever dished out when she was absolutely terrified.
    ‘I see.’
    The only thing Lee Arnold had ever known to frighten Vi Collins was her own body. Police medicals were a nightmare for herand any visit to a hospital meant that she had to take beta-blockers in large doses. He’d never known her to have an operation.
    ‘The boys’ll look after the cat,’ she said. Vi had two sons who worshipped the ground she walked on and so Lee had no doubt that they’d do a lot more than just feed her moggie. ‘Should be back at work a fortnight after the op.’
    ‘A fortnight?’ Lee said. ‘Don’t they have to cut your throat when they take out your thyroid gland?’
    ‘Course they do, doughnut!’ she said. ‘But once it starts to heal, provided I don’t get MRSA, or that thing where your skin goes black and …’ She lurched forward and howled. ‘Fucking hell, I’m frightened!’
    Although he’d known her for decades, Lee didn’t know whether to give Vi a hug or not. Sometimes she hated that ‘sentimental stuff’ and sometimes she took it as some sort of sexual invitation. In the end he just spoke. ‘You’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘It’s a good hospital.’
    She looked up, her eyes red. ‘That don’t make no difference these days! What if I get something like that flesh-rotting thing? I can’t expect my boys to look after me if the hospital chucks me out with my legs rotting off!’
    ‘They won’t.’ He walked over to her, squatted down by her chair and this time put an arm around her shoulder.
    ‘When my brother Tommy went into the old Poplar Hospital to have his appendix out, my mum said he’d never come out again except feet first and she was right.’
    Part of Vi’s problem with hospitals stemmed from her mother. A deeply superstitious Irish gypsy, Vi’s mum had helped to form her children’s opinions via reference to folk beliefs and the more lurid manifestations of Catholicism. Her Jewish father had been mainly absent during Vi’s childhood.
    ‘Vi,’ Lee said, ‘your mum’s long dead and so are the nineteen sixties.’
    ‘East End was still wrecked by the war back in the old days.’
    ‘Yeah and you knew people who’d had polio and TB – even I remember a few,’ Lee said. Ten years Vi’s junior, Lee could nevertheless remember most of the things she talked about when she referred to the ‘old days’. They had lasted for a very long time in the East End of London, especially in Newham, where in places the ‘old days’ still persisted. He kissed her on the cheek. ‘I’ll come and visit you. You’ll be