BOX SET of THREE TOP 10 MEDICAL THRILLERS

by Ian C. P. Irvine

  Nevertheless, when the details of the incident revealed that it involved old Mr Wallace, his heart sank. He knew Mr Wallace quite well. He was a good man. Without knowing more, his gut reaction told him if there was a disturbance involving Mr Wallace, he would most likely be the victim, and he could hazard a guess that the incident would in some way be related to the growing surge of 'gang' activity that had re-surfaced over the past few years.

  Being one of the two motorcycle riders in the team, he was normally able to respond faster than the others, and was quite often the first on the scene of any incident. For a Tuesday evening, the roads were very quiet and he was able to make good time across the city. Driving around the back of Arthur's Seat, the large hill in the centre of Edinburgh, he was approaching Craigmillar from Duddingston and just passing Holyrood High School when he started to see a flickering orange glow rising above the trees and bushes that shielded the hidden bend.

  Fire.

  Instantly alert, he switched on his bright flashing lights and siren, and he slowed his bike down as he came around the first part of the hairpin bend skirting the edge of the Loch going towards Craigmillar. It was a notorious traffic accident spot, and Cammy had often been called here to attend an incident and control the response and clean up.

  As soon as he turned the bend, Cammy's evening changed. A major accident was in front of him, and Cammy knew that he would be here for hours. Immediately he reached for his phone and called in, requesting back-up and another ambulance, and setting into motion all the usual procedures for a bad road traffic accident. Also remembering Mr Wallace, he requested an alternative response unit to attend the Craigmillar Estate.

  In front of him, a blue Golf had spun across the road, hit the curb and catapulted over onto its side. The side that faced upwards was severely crushed, as if the result of a side impact from another vehicle. The doors were closed, and there was no sign of any life in or around the car.

  On the other side of the road, about thirty metres further along the curve, a car was burning against the fence, the flames having already destroyed the car and burnt it out. Cammy knew that if there was anyone in that car, it would be too late. His first priority would be to look into the car nearest and on its side.

  Conscious of the danger of further collisions from other vehicles he quickly ran back around the curve and dropped some flares, warning any oncoming traffic. Mentally he noted that any cars coming in the other direction would be warned by the flames, so the next thing would be to check out the condition of the driver in the car nearest to him.

  Running to the front of the car, he flashed his torch through the front window and immediately saw a man hanging seemingly lifeless in his seat. The side of the car had been crushed inwards, and Cammy could see that some of the metal had ruptured inwards and was impaled into the side of the driver.

  Blood was everywhere.

  It did not look good.

  .

  --------------------

  .

  Ten minutes later another police response unit arrived outside the front of Mr Wallace's house on the Craigmillar Estate. The ambulance was already there, and as the first officer started to make his way through the crowd gathered outside, the paramedics appeared in the doorway with a stretcher. Bloodied, bruised and unconscious, Mr Wallace was carried outside, put in the ambulance and whisked off to the hospital. Thankfully it was only five minutes away over the hill past the impressive thousand year old ruin of Craigmillar castle.

  Further down the road, away from the crowd and with their hoods covering their heads, Tam and Wee Eck stood watching.

  They had done good.

  Big Rab would be proud of them.

  They couldn't wait to tell him all about it, as soon as he got back.

  From wherever he was now.

  Chapter Six

  .

  .

  Present Day

  Maciek's Story

  England

  September 6th

  .

  .

  When Maciek had first watched the killing scene in Saving Private Ryan... “there is after all only one scene truly worthy of mentioning in the film...all the rest are so instantly forgettable”...his breath had been taken away.

  The scene had elicited in Maciek feelings of awe and wonder, and had fascinated him from then till now.

  He had seen the film in a cinema with a girlfriend in a village close to Gdansk, and afterwards he had talked about the scene so much that the girl had got quite concerned that he was 'fixating on violence'.

  She simply didn't understand.

  They had had an argument, she had stormed out of his flat. He had followed her.

  When he returned home later that evening, he had showered, carefully wrapped his knife, and had immediately gone online to order a copy of the film.

  .

  For the next three days he had found it hard to concentrate at work. He had tried to replay the scene in his mind a million times, trying to recapture the moment where the German soldier had pinned the American to the floor, and then battled with the man underneath him to gain control of the knife they held between them.

  The scene had tremendous power. There was no music. No expensive props. No speeches.

  Just two men fighting for life.

  The German, -perhaps because he was stronger, or maybe simply because his American opponent was tired, had less energy, or perhaps had even less to live for-, had slowly managed to gain control of the knife.

  Almost face to face, the German had slowly directed the blade of the knife down towards the heart of the American.

  The knife had inched forward. Their breathing had increased. The American had looked into the eyes of the German, had tried talking to him, had begged for life...his life.

  The tip of the knife touched the clothing on the American's chest, and the American had realised that the moment of his death was approaching.

  The German managed to increase the pressure on the hilt of the knife, and slowly, but quite simply, the knife began to push forward into the clothing, through and into the flesh of the American beneath.

  The tension in the air, the exchange of emotions between the two warriors fighting for their lives, the testosterone, the sound of their breathing...there was just something in the scene that made it compulsive watching. Incredible. Fascinating.

  Life at its most elemental.

  The German, the American, and Maciek watched together in silence as the hilt of the blade disappeared from view, and you knew, just knew that it had penetrated the heart, that it was already inside the body of the American. That this was the moment of death. The moment at which a life was about to be lost. To be taken. To be released. To be set free...or extinguished.

  Maciek had watched the eyes of the American, and studied the face of the German.

  The reality of the scene was beyond question. It was stunning. This is how it was like.

  Maciek knew that a life could take nine months to prepare, but just seconds to end. That the sparkle in the eye of a person that made someone appear alive and full of excitement and passion, could dull and disappear within moments. That whereas life was so, so complicated, the giving of death was so, incredibly simple.

  .

  The scene had evoked emotions both familiar and foreign in Maciek. Some of the emotions had excited him and he knew their attraction intimately. To him they were like a drug. But others had disturbed him.

  Until then he had never killed a man before...in fact, he had never even thought of killing a man. There had been no reason to.

  But after watching the scene over and over again, now probably more than seventy times, he was obsessed with wanting to recreate the scene in all its detail.

  To replay it. To capture for himself the passion and the emotions, and the simplicity of it all.

  .

  It was always the same. Whenever Maciek thought about the scene, it went round and round in his head whilst he fought to find the
words to describe the experience. Yet he knew that the only way for him to understand it, to feel it, to truly comprehend it, was to re-enact it.

  And in the room next door, everything was ready.

  Within the next hour, all of the waiting and dreaming would come to an end, and tonight, Maciek would finally understand and be able to describe his own, personal experience.

  .

  Chapter Seven

  .

  .

  Maciek's Story

  England

  Present Day

  September 6th

  .

  .

  The house in which Maciek was living was in a row of old terraced houses awaiting demolition. The last house in the row with most of the windows boarded up, no one ever ventured close to his front door unless they had to.

  The place was ideal for Maciek and his lifestyle. A few months ago, another Pole had sublet it to him, who asked no questions and was only too glad to receive a regular monthly cash payment into his bank-account without checking Maciek's stolen identity papers or asking for any references. The house was probably going to be demolished in a few months time, and the tenant he was renting from had already gone back to Poland. He was unlikely to return.

  The nearest neighbour to Maciek was four houses away, the closest three being boarded up and empty.

  Although the outside of the house Maciek lived in appeared derelict, Maciek had turned the inside into something quite habitable. He had painted all the rooms with cheap paint, added some curtains, removed the rotting carpets and cleaned up the floor boards. In fact, if Maciek had been allowed to do a similar job to all the other houses in the row, perhaps the council would have second thoughts about pulling the houses down.

  All in all, once Maciek had climbed over the rubbish in the front garden and successfully made it safely into the house, things were actually very civilised and quite pleasant inside...as long as you didn't look out of the window.

  .

  The house backed directly onto a set of woods, which would come in handy later, and was also one of the deciding factors that influenced his choice of residence.

  With two reception rooms downstairs, and a kitchen-diner that faced onto a small walled garden at the back, there was quite a lot of living space for one person to spread himself out in.

  Upstairs there were two bedrooms and a bathroom. The bedroom at the front of the house was where Maciek slept. It was clean, bright and spotless, although try as he might he couldn't get rid of the smell of damp that permeated slowly through the party wall from the house next door. There was nothing he would be able to do about that, and Maciek had slowly become used to the smell.

  At the back of the house was the 'guest' room. Until now, Maciek had not invited any guests back to his house, and technically speaking, the 'guest' that was now lying spread-eagled and tied to iron stakes drilled into the old floorboards, had not been invited either. Maciek had waited for him one evening in an alleyway that his 'guest' used regularly on his way home from the local pub. After jumping on him from behind and injecting him with his usual and preferred concoction of drugs, that were guaranteed from experience to knock out a large woman or man unconscious in a matter of seconds, Maciek had bundled him into his car, and together they had driven back home to Maciek's country mansion. Parking the car around the side of the house, shaded from view from all the other empty houses, no one had seen Maciek drag his guest out of the car, through the back door, up the stairs and into the bedroom where he was destined to die.

  Unlike the other rooms in the house, Maciek had made no attempt to beautify the guest quarters. However, he had spent some considerable effort tailoring the room to his requirements, nailing new, thicker wooden planks across the windows, and replacing the doorframe and door with something more fit for his intended purpose: he had reversed the door, and added two security locks on the outside, so that any guest would find it difficult to leave without properly thanking him first.

  He had replaced a few of the floorboards and joists, -thus ensuring that the iron stakes would be fixed and remain firmly in place-, and he had put down some rubber matting onto which he would let his guest rest. Not that he was concerned with comfort, at all, but rather so that once he was willing to let his guest leave, he could simply roll up the body in the matting, and leave no blood stains behind.

  Maciek stepped up to the mirror, and glanced for the first time at the American uniform that he had purchased on Ebay a few weeks before and was now wearing for the first time. He smiled at himself, adjusting the metal helmet, and smoothing down the rough sides of his jacket. Perhaps he should have ironed it or something, but would that not have ruined it? It was a genuine GI uniform from the Second World War...it had cost him a fortune, and he didn't want to damage it...yet.

  The trouser legs were a little short. Shit. Maciek bent down, trying to stretch them further down his ankle. Nope. That was it. They were too short.

  But then he remembered that soldiers probably tucked the trousers into their socks and boots, and once he had done that they looked fine. Even more authentic.

  Authenticity was important. At least, as much as was practical. Apart from one big detail, Maciek wanted passionately to try and recreate the scene from Saving Private Ryan in as much detail as possible. The fact that the death scene was going to take place in the dilapidated bedroom of a condemned house even added to it all, reminding him a little of the original setting of the bombed-out ruin that was used in the film.

  The big detail that he had altered was one that he was proud of, and one which would help bring some justice to the world, even after all these years.

  In Saving Private Ryan, the American GI had been killed by the German with a German knife, but Maciek hated Germans, and there was no way in hell that he was going to dress up as one of those fuckers. Instead, he was going to reverse it all, by role playing a US soldier who got justice by killing a German. Even better that the German was going to die with a German knife!

  In his own private way, it would represent his small part in getting some revenge back on the ‘Schwabe’ who had invaded his country.

  His heart started to beat faster. He began to feel the anticipation. The time was drawing near. Very near.

  Picking up the knife from the side table, he slid it into the sheaf tied around his leg. He stood up tall, took a deep breath, and cocked his head back slightly, allowing the blood and oxygen rush to have its maximum effect.

  His left eye-lid began to quiver with excitement.

  It was time.

  Chapter Eight

  .

  .

  Maciek's Story

  England

  Present Day

  September 6th

  .

  .

  Maciek took a deep breath and opened the door to the back room, preparing himself for the stench of stale urine that he knew would immediately hit him as he stepped inside.

  His guest had been pegged to the floor for almost a day now, and it seemed that almost every time Maciek went into the room, he relieved himself onto the rubber matting one more time. It amazed Maciek that the man still had anything left in him.

  His guest stared up at him, straining to lift his head off the floor, but unable to do so because of the restraint that Maciek had applied across his forehead. He could see the terror in the man's eyes, that same look of fear that appeared in everyone's eyes as adrenaline began to pour through a person's veins and the inevitability of approaching death became apparent.

  The man tried to speak, a muffled stream of incoherent sounds which failed to make it past the gag stuffed in his mouth. He tried to move his body, but was only able to lift his stomach a few centimetres off the floor, before collapsing backwards onto the floor matting.

  Maciek bent down and began to mop up the urine on the mat with a fresh towel. He then washed the rubber matting over with fresh water and dried it again, before squirting the room with air freshner: Maciek hated the sme
ll of stale urine.

  Deciding that he would have to wait a few moments for the air to clear and start to smell a little fresher, he stepped back outside the room, and threw the towel into the sink in the bathroom, immediately starting to wash it out. As he did so, he began to think again about what was just about to happen.

  In a few minutes time, he was going to take the life of another man. A dream that he had nurtured for years was soon to come true.

  For a second, as he so often did before a moment like this, he pondered once again the irony of the act he was about to perform.

  Earlier in his life, before the death of his mother, he had begun to study medicine, driven by a desire to help people, to save lives and to experience the thrill of helping someone live, who would surely otherwise have died.

  But somehow, somewhere, the association between 'life' and ‘saving’ it, had become confused with the fascination of 'removing' it, the desire to ‘save’ life being replaced with a desire to take life or ‘terminate’ it, and for helping special selected people to die, who would surely otherwise have lived.

  In many ways it was the same thing.

  .

  Originally, perhaps, there was a direct connection between the two. After all, the first time he had killed, he had done so purely out of love. He had not wanted to do it, had argued with himself and his mother that death was not the answer, and that if it was, it was wrong to ask him to deliver it. At the time, he had only completed one year at the university studying medicine, and his understanding of the human body was not enough. But his mother had insisted that to take a life, such knowledge was not needed. That all it took was an act of kindness, and the courage to go through with it.