3- Ambulance

Third chapter. Sorry for the loooong wait.

3.

An ambulance vehicle and two police cruisers were the source of the maddening cacophony awakening everyone on the council estate. The ambulance arrived first; police trailing like obedient remoras. Their din began at the city centre and wound its way toward the council estate, which was planned and built on the outskirts of Manchester. 

It took them little to spot the female body, face-down and still, like the shadow of a fallen angel. They parked around the tree and left their vehicles running, idle. 

Morning was beginning to blink.

Tenants rustled from their beds, entangled in sheets, eyes nonetheless under the hypnotic thrall of sleep. Some souls, already up and about, peered through their windows. They took in the datum of the three vehicles. Ambulance, a beaming yellow van, midsection chequered by a lighter yellow and green. The two police cars of similar design, bearing checkers of blue and yellow. 

Eyes darted from the boisterous vehicles to the body on the ground, sweater tinted crimson, blood pooling, expanding in circumference, coagulating over the rough brittle of the pavement, drying and flaking near the perimeter. 

A wave of light seeped through the branches. It illuminated the intersections, the spaces between the leaves and twisted extensions, shined through the woodwork of nature, like the flicker of a lightbulb. 

Harold made his way to the ground just as an officer emerged from the nearest of the cruisers. Despite the sun, a sharp chill remained in the intermittent gusts of winds that appeared, unwanted phantoms. 

The officer motioned him back with his palms. 

“Excuse me,” Harold said, “I want to see the girl. Let me through.” Howard’s hands shook as he spoke and his voice wavered like the transmission of an aged radio.

 

The officer wore a black tunic and trousers, a badge pinned to his uniform and a cavalry reminiscent helmet atop his head. His chin wobbled with every step, as did the layered wattle of his neck. Beady eyes inspected Harold. 

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to return to your dwelling.” The officer held onto his belly with his left hand.

“I want to see what happened. Let me through.” Harold insisted. 

He tried to manage a step forward but the officer stood in his way. 

“Listen, sir, I don’t want to have to repeat myself.”

“I live on this estate, I have all the right to be able to see.” Harold’s voice commanding, as to intimidate the officer into allowing him access. 

“Well then ‘see' from your window!” The officer nodded towards the second cruiser, “Or I will have to call my partner over to restrain you.”

Harold rested his hand on the man’s shoulder. “I’m not trying to delay or be a disturbance, I just want to get a look at the girl.”

“Which floor do you live on?”

Harold pointed up, “Three stories high, looking straight down onto the tree.”

“And what did you see?”

“Not much.”

“All right, sir, you can look from behind the tree, but that’s as far as I'll let you get.”

Harold propped his frame against the trunk of the great oak and contemplated a droplet of blood clinging to a single hair. It became too much. He turned from the scene and stared ahead at the road. The buzz of a neon sign from the corner grocery shop.

A pedestrian walking to work, or anywhere.

You good for nothing b***h. 

I couldn’t do anything.

A single ant found its route onto his arm. It timidly felt its way down to his hand, head lowered, mandibles prodding dead skin cells. Harold lowered it to the grass around the tree, as if a platform, and observed the ant gently step off, onto a crisp blade. 

Behind him, the noise of the ambulance continued, but his thoughts and focus were on the boy who had accompanied the girl and quite possibly stabbed her. His face was an oblong shape now, devoid of features, and as much as Harold attempted to remember, the more it became a floating mask, out of grasp and fading in the ethereal light. 

The two men from the ambulance checked the pulse of the girl, hands fit into nylon gloves. They proclaimed her dead. A third cruiser halted next to the other two. 

People from the Estate had now crawled out of their spaces, onto balconies. They looked down. A good number of them fancied a scandal and remained, in pajamas or soiled clothes. Others, terrified by the remnant of a female returned to the somber appeal of their living situation. A couple lit their cigarettes and smoked in the breath of morning.

Harold did not smoke, although he had at a younger age, a conjecture beyond return, hazy to look back upon. He had never become addicted though, taking a puff now and then when dilemmas flourished or stress erupted between him and his wife. He’d fancy a smoke on chilly nights, sitting on the steps of his flat in London, gazing past the building tops, into the flowing scape of the sky and departing clouds, sputtering engines.

The scent of nicotine wafted from above. He grimaced and brushed aside the pervasive odour.

   

               

Author's Note

Finally. Please. Criticize.

Reviews

[Robert Guttersohn]

Writing is once again great. You really make me think you were standing over a dead girl while writing this chapter (I hope that isn't true). You are able to create the scene for us without being too descriptive. It allows the readers to fill in the blanks with their own imaginations.
But readers can only be teased for so long. I think by this chapter you need to give us something about why harold has such a different emotional response than the other apartment inhabitants that readers know there is a link between Harold and the murder and want to know what the link is. But you have to give us something.
Also, blood, especially on pavement, does not flake.

[Matthew Ian Herrawood W]

its a bit short in my opion with nothing significant that happens excet perhaps harolds regret that he couldnt do anything to save te girl. there was one word that you used i have never seen or heard it before. some people belive you need to use fancy words and know alot of diffrent words to be a writer but i dissagree. in my opinion knowing alot of words helps but you have to use words that your target audiance will understand having one they will need to look up in a dictornary now and then is ok but be carful how often you use such a word. overall its a good chapter though not terribly exciting. but most books have that. nice work

[Thomas Fitzgerald]

The tense description almost values the pertenant plot point. You always amze me with you sense of brutal reality within the wriitng, and yes, I know you are telling a real story, but dont' froget that even reality needs a little fantasy every now and again.