by Jake Cross
This was the postgraduate medical education floor, with no wards, just rooms bearing signs like ‘Medical secretaries’ and ‘General management’ and ‘IT training’, none of them emanating noise, and no groups of fresh-faced doctor-wannabes with clipboards following around a grizzled old veteran. Desolate.
Toni pronounced it perfect, with a smile on her face, while Nate worried that their bodies could lie in the canteen undiscovered until someone came to cook sausages the next morning. With little nooks and crannies and offshoots, the main corridor had plenty of hiding places close to the canteen. They chose a recessed doorway some twenty metres away. The lift and the stairs were on the other side of the canteen, so there was no chance of their guests coming along from this side of the corridor. Ten minutes after they slipped into the recessed doorway, the strips lights in the ceiling went out. Some feature designed to save money. The corridor was now dimly lit only by security lights.
‘Perfect,’ Toni said again.
Nate wished he could share her glee. He fidgeted and she saw him, and she said, ‘The news said your brother was in the army, too. And he was older. Did you follow him?’
Nate nodded.
‘Forced by your parents, I bet. Did they look up to him for it?’
‘Pete never shut his face about how much fun the army was. He was big bro, so I looked up to him, and I chose to go and serve because I thought it would be great. He liked the brotherhood part of it. I just liked the never getting bored part.’
‘And then, after that, you both started a security company? Must be doing well for you to have that big house.’
‘Pete bought that house. He got mentioned in his partner’s will. The guy died of–’
‘Guy?’
‘Yeah, Pete likes men. He was called Liam. I never realised how rich he was. He left Pete enough to buy the house, so we… anyway, what’s with all the questions?’
‘No reason. Small talk. Nothing happening here. Sorry to upset you.’
He wasn’t upset, just emotional. Pete was back in his head. He had been trying to keep him out. The emotions such thoughts would stir would weaken him, even if the only one he felt was anger. Anger clouded the mind.
So he was thankful when, ninety seconds later, Toni’s claim that nothing was happening here proved to be wrong.
They heard the lift doors open. Footsteps on the tiles. The lights flicked on down that end as whoever had come into the corridor activated a sensor. Using the reflective glass surface of a picture frame on the opposite wall some way down, Nate watched for movement.
Here came a skinny guy wearing denim and carrying a rucksack that looked as if it had been used to test wood chippers. He entered the canteen. Nate looked at Toni.
‘No. Has to be two or more,’ she said. ‘They don’t know if you’re with me or not, and they can’t risk having their guy go one-on-one anyway.’
Eighteen minutes in: giggling female voices. Nate peeked out just as two nurses, arm in arm like lovers, turned into the canteen. They nearly hit rucksack guy as he exited with a handful of chocolate bars. Nate looked at Toni.
‘Possible, but I doubt it. Maybe a honey trap for you, but they expect me to be here and I don’t go for girls.’
Twenty-seven minutes in, the lights down on their end of the corridor flickered on, which made Nate jump because they hadn’t heard anyone approaching. Toni grabbed him in a hug as a young man in surgical greens, carrying a wad of papers, walked past.
‘Get a room,’ he said, a grin on his face. When he was past and gone, Toni pushed Nate roughly away as if he were a horny prom king overstepping the line.
Twenty-nine minutes: two yobbos in plastic jogging trousers and baseball caps sauntered past. They didn’t even see the couple lurking in a doorway.
Thirty-two minutes down saw the nurses leave the canteen. One grabbed the ass of the other as they waddled away in the direction they’d come.
Forty-six minutes and two paramedics came out of the lift, pushing an empty wheelchair. Nate watched their reflections. Both were big guys, one stockier than the other. Shaved heads, one for style, one because he was going bald. Into the canteen they went. She got Nate’s look again.
‘No. The fat one I dated once – met him when I came here for a busted foot. They’re legit paramedics.’
Sixty seconds later, she said, ‘Hiding here like this isn’t going to work. If they come and we don’t recognise them as the bad guys, and I’m not in that canteen, they’ll leave and we’ll never know it. You’ll have to go in and wait.’
Now his look was one of shock. ‘Why me?’
‘They’ll know your face, but they’re not expecting you, and that will throw them off enough for me to get the drop on them.’
‘And what if you can’t get the drop on them? What if they have guns, eh? Shall I go in naked and with my hands tied, just to make it easier for them?’
‘We can’t stay here, and we’re sitting ducks if we both go inside. One has to distract so the other can jump them. If you really fancy trying to take them out, I’ll go inside.’
She made to step out of the doorway but he grabbed her arm and she stepped back. He took a breath to compose himself, then walked to the canteen and quickly went inside before he could change his mind. A bad idea, but better than the alternative.
The two paramedics were still here, Toni’s ex, the balding one, sat at a table while dialling on his phone. The other guy was at the vending machine.
‘What do they call Cornish pasties in Cornwall?’ the guy at the vending machine said.
They looked at Nate. He nodded and went to a seat near the serving counter, his back to it so he could watch the door. He hoped the paramedics would leave soon, even though he didn’t like the idea of being here alone when their hunters arrived. He also hoped Toni was up to this. A killer attitude didn’t guarantee killer skills.
A guy in green scrubs came in thirty seconds later, felt into a pocket on his chest, and huffed when he found it empty. Angry, he turned and left. Must have forgotten to bring money.
The paramedic at the vending machine was still trying to make up his mind about what to buy. Nate watched his face in the reflection on the glass front.
The other guy, the one Toni had dated, got up and put his phone away and walked past Nate, approaching the door. He stopped there, right in the doorway, looking at a menu on the wall beside the door. Nate hoped they’d both leave. Cornish Pasty moved away from the vending machine and past Nate, towards the serving counter. He was staring at a large menu on the wall behind the counter. Nate watched him in the vending machine’s reflection.
His eyes jerked when he heard a thud. Toni’s ex had shut the door. Nate’s eyes immediately flicked back to the vending machine, and upon its glass front registered movement behind him. From Cornish Pasty. At the same time, the nerves fled from him. Here the human organism normally entered the flight or fight response, but immediate danger worked differently with Nate. Some error in the circuitry firing his sympathetic nervous system, he figured. The flight part never came into it. As if a switch had been thrown, he cranked instantly into fight mode.
He stood up quickly, hands on the chair, thrusting it backwards, helping with his knees as his legs straightened. The chair slid into the Toni’s ex’s knees, throwing him off balance. Nate turned and swung an arm. The guy was right behind him, within range of smacking Nate, and he could have beaten him to the punch – literally. But he wasted time slapping the chair aside. To Nate, the chair was a piece of ancient history. His own punch got the guy squarely in the throat.
He staggered back, and Nate turned to face Pasty, already aware of the running footsteps.
Pasty had a pistol, a strange looking one, half wood and half metal with two barrels, seemingly, one under the other. He fired as he ran, and Nate was sure he actually saw a yellow bullet streaming towards him a moment before he felt a sting in his shoulder. The impact wasn’t as hard as he expected, and he didn’t fall. A skim?
/> Then he started to stagger. Pasty ignored him for the moment and rushed to his pal. Nate felt wobbly and sat on the floor to avoid falling onto his face. By now Pasty was struggling to hold on to Toni’s ex, who seemed to want to cave Nate’s head in. Finally he got the guy calmed down somewhat and pushed him away. Toni’s ex went to the vending machine to vent his anger by kicking it, since Nate’s head was now off-limits.
Pasty squatted before Nate, still aiming that gun. ‘Where’s the girl?’
Nate opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. Pasty pulled a mobile and made a call. Nate heard him say: ‘Bring the van. We got him. Down in five minutes.’
He felt the world going woozy around him, as if glimpsed through water. But he made out Toni’s ex coming closer, pushing the wheelchair before him. He parked it by Nate.
His vision was blurring. The paramedic reached out and plucked something from Nate’s shoulder. A dart. The shot hadn’t missed at all. He’d been nailed with a tranquilliser dart. Drugged again.
Déjà vu, Nate thought, then the blackness came back.
Part II
He dreamed of being drowned, and woke into a nightmare far worse.
The drowning part was real, though. No breath came. His mouth was wet and he coughed. A great glob of phlegm fell over his chin, and suddenly he could breathe. That explained the dream.
His blurry eyes could see walls close by. A van. He was in the back of a van. Something bad had happened, and people with training in causing suffering had captured him, and that was a nightmare, wasn’t it?
The walls of the van solidified into shelves of equipment and life-saving machinery. So not just some van at all. An ambulance. And then he remembered it all.
He was on a stretcher with a raised backrest, and night was flooding in through the open back doors. He could see a dirt road, trees on its right side, a chain-link fence on its left. Nobody out there digging his grave this time. Small mercies.
He wasn’t naked or tied up, either. He sat upright. Some strength back. And the nerves. When he was thrust into the deep shit of danger, when it was slammed right in his face, fright took a back seat. But now there seemed to be no immediate danger, and the anxiety was up front and driving.
So, on legs that shook – maybe because of the fear, or maybe because of the drug – he got off the stretcher and walked to the doors. Not wobbly, at least. Everything worked, and there was some strength, and a feeling that he had plenty more in reserve.
The dirt road sloped down and curved to the right out of sight. Some way ahead he could see and now hear traffic, bright white headlights and red tail lights. A motorway.
He jumped down and tried to run for the trees, but the moment he landed, his legs gave way and he fell to the ground. Then he saw one of the two paramedics by the fence, looking at him. Toni’s ex.
Only he wasn’t looking at Nate. He was sat with his back against a large chain-link gate, and his head was bowed towards his chest. And he was tied to the gate with what looked like bandages.
And a black liquid coated his chest and legs and the ground either side of his hips.
Nate stood up. He slowly approached the guy. Now he knew the black liquid was actually red. Blood. Lots of it. He stepped to the side and a gruesome gash in the guy’s throat, hidden by his chin, revealed itself. Dead. Had whoever killed Damar killed him also? Same method. Loose ends?
A noise from the ambulance, behind him. He spun, wobbled, and raised an arm as if expecting a blow. But no blow came.
The other paramedic, the guy who liked Cornish pasties, was by the back wheel, sitting against it, head bowed. Blood on his head, but not that much. And none on his clothing. Alive, given the small moaning sounds and small movements he made.
But then, a realisation: he had no idea if this guy’s mouth had touched either young Turkish women or baked half-circles of pastry. Because this guy had black hair. Someone new, albeit dressed as a paramedic also.
So, a third player.
But where was Pasty guy?
Another noise, this time from the trees. The other paramedic, returning. He must have put down his pair of comrades for some reason. Nate stiffened, knowing he was too wobbly to run. Strength in his body, but no cohesion between brain and muscles. He knew he was in no state to properly defend himself if an attack came.
But the person who stepped out of the trees wasn’t a pasty-lover.
Toni.
His brain spun.
Almost without thinking, he stepped towards her and clutched her throat in a fist. She didn’t even defend herself.
‘What fucking trick is this? You set me up. You betrayed me.’
She even grinned. ‘Let me go so I can speak,’ she croaked.
He didn’t.
She reached up and did that thing to his wrist again, same as she had in the van. Pain journeyed up his arm and he let go of her throat.
‘You’re not naked and not tied up. And you’re not dead, but the guys who kidnapped you are. So how betrayed do you really feel, Nate?’ Said with mirth, almost sarcasm.
He felt wobbly again, but knew this time it was shock, not whatever drug they’d administered. ‘So where’s the other guy?’ he said. ‘And who’s that?’ He pointed at the new player. ‘What the hell happened?’
She pulled a gun from her jacket. It was the gun he’d been shot with, that double-barrelled machine. She flicked a bolt and a portion opened up. She pulled out a bullet from the back, which wasn’t a bullet at all. It had a needle point and an opaque glass tube filled with a dark liquid, and a yellow back end. The yellow flash he’d seen. Now he remembered: he’d been shot with a tranquilliser gun. She reinserted the strange bullet and worked the bolt mechanism again.
‘They wanted you alive so they could kill you.’
Not a sentence that helped steady his vibrating mind.
‘Where are we?’
‘Dulwich,’ she said, ‘just off the A2199. A road for construction traffic. They’re building a Toby Carvery. Maybe we should go for pie and chips sometime.’ She pointed over the fence and he looked. A dark building taking shape, but just a skeleton so far, pie and chips a long way in the future. Heavy machinery parked around. A building site. Remote. Shut for the night. Eerie. He suddenly longed to be on a golden beach, surrounded by friends and drinks and drowning in comfort. If he could visit just one more beach one more time in his life, he’d die a happy man.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ he said.
‘Oh, Nate, how could you not realise that the guys who came for us would need to transport us out of that hospital? They need me buried to tie up loose ends, and they need you buried so that their little plan to frame you for your brother’s murder works. So, there was going to be no shootout in a hospital canteen, was there?’
Maybe that thought had occurred. He couldn’t remember, and right now, still drugged, it still didn’t make much sense.
‘It was why I chose the canteen, way up on the top floor. I knew if these guys were any good, they’d take no risks, and that would mean a disguise to fit the environment, and a legit reason to be taking an unconscious woman out of there. That meant men dressed as doctors or whatever. And then those two bozos turned up with a wheelchair. But here’s the thing. Their disguise was good, and it fit right in, didn’t it? Paramedics wheeling someone around a hospital, no big deal. But would it fit if the bozos wheeled me out of there and into a Ford Focus in the car park? Of course not. So they went the whole monty and got themselves an ambulance. An ambulance fits right in. But parking it right outside the hospital is risky. It could be called upon by hospital staff. So they needed a way to get that ambulance into position only after they had me safe and sound. Can you figure out how?’
He couldn’t.
She indicated the new player. Nate was puzzled still. She pinched his cheek. ‘A third man, Nate, a driver. Think.’
He tried to slap her hand away from his cheek, but she moved it and he hit nothing.
‘This
guy waited for a call and then brought the ambulance into position. By that time I was outside and waiting. I took him out and then waited for the other two to turn up and load you inside, and then I took them out, too. I know you’re pissed at me for letting them take you, but we needed all three of them together, so you tell me your better idea of getting everyone, me and you included, into that ambulance without a fuss?’
He didn’t have one, and didn’t care to think of one. He was thinking only about the fact that there had been three guys, and he could see only two.
He reached up and felt his cheek where she had pinched him. It felt sticky. His fingers came away smeared in wet dirt.
‘We didn’t need all three. One guy could have given us the information we need.’
‘Ever heard the fable of the six blind men and an elephant?’
Strangely, he was having trouble remembering portions of the last few hours, but he could recall that old fable where six blind men encounter an elephant and all come away with very different impressions. And he understood her point.
‘We could have asked questions in the canteen, and forced the two to call the driver, and gotten all three that way.’
‘Might have turned crazy. Bullets flying in a hospital. Nobody wanted that.’
‘We could have headed outside and looked for an ambulance lurking around.’
‘He could have waited half a mile away. Think of the number of streets in a half-mile radius of the hospital. Think of him driving away when his men report that the canteen was empty. And how would we have gotten them all together? This was the only way.’
‘Bullshit. You wanted all three of them together, here, where it’s nice and quiet.’
