Читать книгу 22 Dead Little Bodies and Other Stories - Stuart MacBride - Страница 13

‘Logan, we don’t normally see you here during the day.’ Claire stuck her book down on the nurses’ station desk and smiled at him, making two dimples in her smooth round cheeks. ‘To what do we owe the honour?’

Logan pointed over his shoulder, back along the corridor. ‘Got a road-rage victim in A-and-E. Thought I’d pop past while they were stitching him up.’

Claire squeezed one eye shut. ‘It’s not a hairy young gentleman with personal hygiene issues, is it? Only Donald from security was just in here moaning about being bitten.’

Yeah, probably. ‘How’s Samantha today?’

‘Getting up to all sorts of hijinks.’ She stood and smoothed out the creases in her nurse’s scrubs. ‘You got time for a cup of tea?’

‘Wouldn’t say no.’

‘Oh, and this came for you this morning.’ Claire reached into a drawer and pulled out a grey envelope. ‘Think it’s from Sunny Glen.’

‘Thanks.’ He took it and wandered down the corridor to Samantha’s room.

The blinds were drawn, shutting out most of the light, but it was still warm enough to make him yawn.

He sank onto the edge of the bed, leaned in and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Cold and pale. ‘Hey, you.’

She didn’t answer, but then she never did.

Something about the gloom and her porcelain skin made the tattoos stand out even more than usual. Jagged and dark. Like something trying to crawl its way out of her body.

He brushed a strand of brown hair from her face. ‘Got a reply from Sunny Glen.’ Logan held up the envelope. ‘What do you think?’

No reply.

‘Yeah, me too.’ He ripped it open. ‘“Dear Mr McRae, thank you for the application for specialist residential care on behalf of your girlfriend Samantha Mackie. As you know, our Neurological Care Unit has a worldwide reputation for managing and treating those in long-term comas …” Blah, blah, blah.’ He turned the letter over. ‘Oh sodding hell. “Unfortunately we do not have any spaces available at the current time.” Could they not have said that in the first place?’ He crumpled the sheet of paper into a ball and lobbed it across the room at the bin. Missed. Slouched over and put it in properly. ‘Place is probably rubbish anyway. And it’s all the way up on the sodding coast, not exactly convenient, is it? Traipsing all the way up there. You’d have hated it.’

Still felt as if someone had used his soul as cat litter, though.

‘Doesn’t matter. We’ve got another three applications out there. Bound to be one who’ll take a hell-raiser like you.’

Nothing.

A knock on the door, and Claire stuck her head into the room. ‘I even managed to find a couple of biscuits for you. So …’ She frowned as Logan’s phone launched into its anonymous ringtone. ‘How many times do we have to talk about this?’

‘Only be a minute.’ He pulled it out and hit the button. ‘McRae.’

A man’s voice, sounding out of breath. ‘You the joker who brought in Gordon Taylor?’

Who the hell was Gordon Taylor? ‘Sorry?’

‘The homeless guy – got hit by a car. Someone gave him a kicking.’

Ah, right. That Gordon Taylor. ‘What about him?’

‘He’s bitten two security guards and punched a nurse.’

Wonderful. Another dollop added to the cat litter. ‘I’ll be right down.’ He put his phone away. Took the mug of tea from Claire and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Don’t let Samantha give you any trouble, OK? You know how feisty she gets.’

The elevator juddered to a halt, and Logan stepped out into the familiar, depressing, scuffed green corridors. No paintings on the walls here, no community art projects, or murals, or anything to break the bleak industrial gloom. He followed the coloured lines set into the floor.

Here and there, squares of duct tape held the peeling surface together. And everything smelled of disinfectant and over-boiled cauliflower.

A porter bustled past, pushing a small child in a big bed. Drips and tubes and wires snaking from the little body to various bags and bits of equipment.

Logan pulled out his phone and called Guthrie. ‘Any sign of Mrs Skinner yet?’

‘Sorry, Guv. I’ve checked all the neighbours again, but no one’s heard from her.’

‘OK.’ He stepped around the corner, and stopped outside the doors to Accident and Emergency. ‘Get onto Control and see if you can …’ A frown. ‘Have you been round the house? Peered in all the windows? Just in case.’

‘Yup. Even got her next-door to let me through so I could climb the garden fence and have a squint in the back. She’s not lying dead on the floor anywhere.’

At least that was something.

‘Get Control to dig up the grandparents. They might know where she is.’

‘Will do.’ A pause. ‘Guv, did I ever tell you about what happened last time Snow White—’

‘Yes. And no more porn in the patrol car.’

Logan hung up, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.

It wasn’t difficult to find Gordon Taylor, not with all the shouting and swearing going on. He was in a cubicle at the far end – crash, bang, wallop. A nurse squatted outside the curtains, head thrown back, a wad of tissues clamped against her nose stained bright red.

‘Hold still, you little sod …’

‘Ow!’

‘Can someone hold his head so he won’t bite?’

‘Ow! Ow, ow, ow … Bloody hell …’

Logan slipped through the curtains and stared at the human octopus wrestling with itself on the hospital bed. Arms, legs, hands, feet, all struggling to keep the figure on the bottom from getting up.

One of the nurses yanked her arm into the air. ‘OW! He bit me!’

‘Don’t let go of his head!’

Logan reached into his pocket, pulled out the little canister of CS gas, and walked over to the bed. ‘Let go of him.’

A doctor turned and glared. ‘Are you off your head?’

Click, the safety cover flipped off the top of the gas canister. ‘Then you probably want to cover your nose and mouth.’

Gordon Taylor’s filthy, blood-caked face rose from between the medics’ arms, teeth snapping.

Logan jammed the CS gas canister right between his eyes. Raised his voice over the crashing and banging, the grunting and swearing. ‘You’ve been gassed before, right, Gordon? Want to try it again?’

A blink. Then he froze.

‘Good boy. Now you let these nice people examine you, or I’m going to gas you back to the Thatcher era, OK?’

Gordon Taylor went limp.

The doctor bowed his head for a moment. ‘Oh thank God …’ Then straightened up. ‘Right, we need blood tests and a sedative. Then get these filthy rags off him.’

The nurses bustled about with needles and scissors, faces contorted with disgust every time a new layer of clothes came off revealing a new odour.

Logan kept the CS gas where Taylor could see it. ‘You’re an idiot, you know that, don’t you? Staggering about, blootered, abusing passers-by, falling into the road. Lucky you didn’t kill yourself.’

Taylor didn’t move. Kept his eyes fixed on the gas canister.

One of the nurses gagged, holding out a filthy shirt with her fingertips.

Gordon Taylor’s arms were knots of ropey muscles, stretched taut across too-big bones. No fat on them. But the left one had a Gordon Highlanders tattoo, the ink barely visible beneath the filth. His torso was a mess of bruises – some fresh and red, some middle-aged purple-and-blue, some dying yellow-and-green.

He jerked his chin up. ‘She broke my bottle.’ The slur had gone from his voice, but his breath was enough to make Logan back off a couple of steps.

‘You’re a drunken sodding menace to yourself and others, Gordon. What the hell were you thinking, staggering out into the road? What if a car swerves, trying to avoid your drunken backside, hits someone else and kills them? That what you want?’

‘A whole bottle of Bells that was!’ No wonder his breath was minging – his teeth looked like stubbed-out cigarettes.

‘I’ve arrested the woman who assaulted you. She’ll—’

‘Tell her! Tell her I’ll not press charges if she buys me a new bottle …’ Gordon Taylor’s eyes widened. ‘No, two bottles. Aye, and litre bottles, not tiny wee ones.’

Nothing like getting your priorities straight.

‘That’s not how it works, Gordon. She has to—’ Logan’s phone burst into song in his pocket. ‘Sodding hell.’

The doctor narrowed his eyes. ‘You’re not supposed to have your phone switched on in here.’

‘Police business.’ He pulled it out and hit the button, killing the noise. ‘For God’s sake, what now?’

There was a moment of silence, then a deep voice rumbled out of the speakers. ‘I think you mean, “Good afternoon”, don’t you, Acting Detective Inspector McRae?’

Oh no. Not this. Not now.

Logan closed his eyes. ‘Superintendent Young. Sorry. I’m kind of in the middle of—’

‘I think you and I need to have a chat about a complaint that’s landed on my desk. Why don’t we say, my office? Any time in the next fifteen minutes is good.’

Wonderful.