He lowered himself down, armpits level with the sill, battered right arm aching, the scars in his left palm throbbing, the ones across his stomach stretched and taut. Where the hell was the bloody pipe?
Samantha had managed it, and she was a good six inches shorter than he was!
Her voice blared through the fire’s din. ‘Left, you idiot!’
Clunk. His shoe touched something. OK – good, fine – he could do this.
No he couldn’t. ‘WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO?’
‘There’s a wee ledge, about six inches below your left foot.’
Jesus, fuck, Jesus, fuck, Jesus, fuck …
He could feel it. Little more than an inch wide. A minimalist decorative feature on the backside of a tenement building. Now all he had to do was let go with his left hand, and grab the pipe. Just like Samantha had. No problem. Easy.
‘Don’t just bloody hang there!’
OK, deep breath. Three storeys wasn’t that high. Not really. Just about forty, maybe fifty feet. Shite.
He shoogled over as far as he could and reached out with his left hand. Arm flailing about in the air. And then he grabbed the pipe.
Oh thank God.
Now all he had to do was let go with his other hand. Five, four, three—
A crash sounded in the room, the smoke swirling above him.
Logan let go of the ledge and snatched at the downpipe, holding on tight, face ground into the rough granite surface of the wall.
Not dead.
Something went BOOM and the kitchen window exploded outwards, showering him with shards of glass. A gout of flame billowed out into the night.
He looked down. Samantha was about four feet below him, edging her way down, using the brackets that fixed the pipe to the wall as hand and footholds. It was all OK. They’d made it. Just a bit of a clamber and they’d be safe.
Logan’s vision clouded. He blinked, feeling warm tears seeping down his cheeks.
Don’t let go.
He inched down a little, feeling for the next bracket.
Everything was OK.
He looked down. Just in time to see Samantha looking up at him. She smiled, her filthy face streaked with clear trails. At least he wasn’t the only one.
‘You all right?’
Samantha’s smile became a grin. ‘Told you.’ She eased down another foot. ‘This dinner you owe me, it better be a—’
Creak. The pipe juddered. Her eyes went wide. ‘Oh …’
A clang, a little tearing noise, just audible through the flames.
The section of downpipe she was holding on to lurched to the right, the bracket fell, disappearing into the darkness. She scrabbled for the length of pipe still attached to the wall, but her fingers grabbed empty air.
37
‘Logan …?’
It happened in slow motion: her fingers scrabbled at nothing as the section of pipe she was climbing burst free of its rusting support brackets. Then she was falling, arms pin-wheeling, legs running on an invisible treadmill. Mouth open in a perfect ‘O’, the whites of her eyes shining from her soot-streaked face.
Bits of broken pipe tumbled end over end around her. The tail of the fitted sheet fluttering from her arm like a pennant.
Then back to full speed again.
She slammed into the flat roof, three storeys below, and went straight through it. A cloud of orange-grey dust burst into the air, hung there, then drifted up the granite wall, pulled by the temperature gradient.
‘SAMANTHA!’ Logan tried to flatten himself to the building, feet dug into the last bracket before the pipe came to an abrupt end. ‘SAMANTHA!’
The fire engine’s siren was getting closer, its wail joined by the familiar weeeeeeow of a patrol car’s siren.
‘SAMANTHA!’
Sick spatters into a pink plastic bowl. Jenny hunches her back and retches again, adding to the mess. Happy Meals don’t look so happy after they’ve been eaten.
The room’s all gloomy just a nightlight plugged into the wall socket so the monsters can keep an eye on them.
She spits, closes her eyes, and rests her thumping head on the rim of the bowl. Her tummy feels as if it’s been punched. Much worse than when she had to lose weight for the television people.
No one wants to see a Fat Little Girl on their TV screens, darling …
She reaches for the bottle of water lying on the floor beside her, pulls the little nipply top up with trembling fingers, and takes a gulp. It tastes sweeter than strawberries.
Mummy’s lying on the mattress, flat on her back.
Jenny knows she’s not asleep. She can tell because of her breathing. Mummy’s lying there, staring at the roof and wishing Daddy was here.
Daddy would make everything better.
Jenny rubs a hand across her mouth and wipes the slimy mess on her jammies. Rinses her mouth out with water and spits it into the bowl. Puts the lid on to keep in the smell. Then closes her eyes, grits her teeth, and pulls herself upright using the bed as a climbing frame. Wobbles on her burning feet. Bites her top lip and squeezes back the tears.
Brave Little Girls don’t cry.
But she wants to. She wants to so much it hurts more than her missing toes.
Jenny climbs up onto the mattress and cuddles in next to Mummy, one arm wrapped around Mummy’s tummy, her head resting in the soft crook of her arm.
A cool hand strokes her forehead. ‘Hey you. Feeling better?’
Brave Little Girls don’t cry. ‘Uh-huh. The andy-bionics make my tummy angry.’
Mummy leans in and kisses her on the top of her head. ‘I know, sweetie, I know. But they make you better.’
Jenny blinks back the tears. ‘Are we going to be dead?’
‘Shhh … Only two more days and the bad men will let us go home. You, me, and Teddy Gordon.’
Jenny raises her head and scowls at the bottom of the bed, where those nasty dead-fish-greedy-crow eyes glint in the dark. Teddy Gordon doesn’t want to go home. Teddy Gordon is right where he wanted to be from the start. Where he can watch them suffer.
‘Samantha? Samantha, can you hear me? I need you to squeeze my hand, OK?’
The ambulance tore through the streets, lights blazing, siren screaming, a patrol car leading the way. Logan sat on the little fold-down seat, one hand wrapped around the seatbelt, the other holding the oxygen mask in place. The vehicle rocked as they swung around the outskirts of Mounthooly Roundabout onto Hutcheon Street.
‘Come on Samantha, squeeze my hand.’
The bag, attached to the drip, attached to Samantha’s wrist, swung back and forth. Heart monitor pinging. Paramedics bent over her, as if they were praying.
Maybe … Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea.
‘Female, late twenties, impact trauma and smoke inhalation.’ The doctor hurried along beside the trolley, reading from a clipboard as they charged through Accident and Emergency.
Unhappy people stared at them from the waiting area as they rushed past, Logan limping, trying to keep up. Breath tight in his chest. Like something heavy was sitting on it.
The doctor flipped the page. ‘I don’t like the look of her BP.’
Bang, and they were through a set of double doors – into a scuffed corridor painted in cracked spearmint green. The smell of boiling cabbage and bleach, strong enough to overpower the stench of burning that clung to Logan’s clothes and skin.
Samantha’s face was horribly pale and filthy at the same time.
‘Sir?’
A hand on his arm.
Logan kept going.
‘Sir, you need to come with me, OK?’
He tried to jerk his arm free, but the grip was firm – fingers digging into his bruised skin. ‘I have to—’
‘I know, but she’s in good hands. You need to let them do their jobs.’
He sat on an examination table, a knackered-looking doctor with a name Logan couldn’t remember tapping his
chest and back. ‘Well, you’ve probably inhaled enough smoke to do you for the next five years, but other than that …’
‘How is she?’
A sigh. A shrug. A stifled yawn. ‘It’s going to be a while. You should go home. Try to get some rest.’
Go home – how the hell was he supposed to do that?
Logan glanced up from the creaky plastic seat as a nurse hurried by. The soles of her trainers made little screams with every step, breaking the humming stillness of the hospital. ‘Is there anyone—’
‘Sorry, I really don’t know.’ She didn’t even slow down.
‘But—’
‘Sorry.’ And she was gone.
Logan blinked. Shook himself. The corridor was empty, just the purr of the air conditioning and the distant sound of someone coughing.
It was the middle of the night, but you couldn’t tell from the lighting. It was the same twenty-four hours a day, that horrible institutional twilight that went with the sickly-green walls and the cracked terrazzo floor. A gloomy fluorescent-lit world that never let you go. You were born here, you got ill here, you died here.
Bears. Rubble. Suicide. Fire—
‘Dude, you still here?’
Logan shivered. Shifted in his plastic prison. ‘Sorry …’
‘Dude, you should, you know, sleep or something.’ He didn’t look a day over twenty: long hair, piercings in his nose, ears, eyebrow, and lip, a grey overall with a name-badge. He pulled one white earbud out and leant on the handle of the big, scissor-shaped-mop-brush-thing he’d been pushing across the floor. ‘I know it’s a hospital and all, but there’s no way it’s healthy just hanging out here.’
Logan didn’t bother hiding the yawn. ‘What time is it?’
‘Half-five. Seriously: go home, get some sleep.’
Yeah, right. ‘I can’t.’
‘They give you sleeping pills?’
Logan sat back. ‘What? No …’
‘Cutbacks are a bitch.’ He glanced up and down the corridor, then lowered his voice. ‘Dude, if you’re worried about nightmares and that, I’ve got the perfect thing for you.’ He dug into an inside pocket of his overalls, and came out with a little foil blister-pack of pills. Held them out. ‘I’ve got a mate who’s a medical student, fixes me up now and then. Two of these and you’ll be out like a light.’
‘I can’t take—’
‘Nah, seriously, no charge. Call it a karmic down-payment. Doesn’t hurt to help a fellow human being now and then, know what I’m saying?’
‘Laz?’
The world rocked forward and backwards a couple of times.
‘Laz? You in there?’
Frown. Logan screwed up his face, then mashed his fists into his eye sockets. ‘How is she?’
‘You look like a bowl of shite soup. With crap croutons.’ Steel creaked her way into the seat next to him, making it groan. Her hair stuck out in random directions on one side, flat as a pancake on the other. Wearing a turtleneck jumper and a pair of jeans. She reached over and squeezed his shoulder. ‘You OK?’
‘Samantha …’
A sigh. ‘Aye, I know. Look, you’re no’ doing her any good hanging about here like a bad smell …’ Steel sniffed. ‘And that’s no’ a euphemism, you really sodding honk.’
‘Staying here.’
‘No, you’re no’.’ She stood. ‘Come on, Susan’s making up the spare bed.’
‘I’m not—’
‘Don’t make me drag your blackened arse out of here. Be undignified. Home. Shower. A decent sleep. I’ll give you a bell soon as we hear anything. OK?’
Logan looked up the corridor, towards the intensive care unit. ‘I didn’t …’ What didn’t he? Mean for it to happen? Keep Samantha safe? Want to panic? Behave like a man?
‘Aye, I know. I know.’ Steel gave his shoulder another squeeze. ‘Come on. We’ll crack open that bottle of Isle of Jura I got for my birthday. Give it a wee seeing-to. Finnie can manage the morning briefing without me.’
He hauled himself out of the plastic chair, it seemed to take forever. ‘Can you give me a lift?’
‘’Course. I’m driving home anyway, so—’
‘No. Somewhere else.’
Steel licked her lips, glanced up and down the corridor, swallowed. ‘You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?’
38
‘You’re off your sodding head. This is stupid!’
Twenty past six and the sun was well on its way up a pale-blue sky. The trees were filled with birds, singing and chirping and crawing, as if everything was hunky-fucking-dory. As if this was just a day the same as any other.
‘Come on, still no’ too late to change your mind. Back to mine, couple of drams and …’
‘I’m fine.’ Didn’t feel fine. Felt like someone had hollowed out his body, leaving a brittle shell behind. Logan clambered out of Steel’s little sports car. ‘Give me a call if you hear anything.’ He closed the door, then stood there watching as she shook her head, put the MX-5 in gear, and drove off into the early morning.
As soon as she was gone, he let his face sag. Samantha’s static caravan was part of a little park on the bank of the River Don, opposite the sewage treatment works. That wasn’t the smell that pervaded everything though, it was the fatty, slightly sickening odour that came from the Grampian Country Chickens factory.
He lurched over to the door. Two gnomes, one on either side – one with horns and a forky tail, the other with halo and wings. Logan picked the devil up, flipped it over, and shook. A metallic rattling sound. He tipped the key into his palm.
Sometimes people were more predictable than they thought.
He unlocked the front door and stepped inside. Locked himself in. The skylight in the hall was a mass of green algae and clumps of moss, filtering out most of the oblivious sunshine, leaving the place shrouded in gloom. The door to the living room was open, light seeping in through the closed curtains. He could smell her. Her scent was imprinted on the place, in the carpet and furniture. He could smell it even through the acrid stench of smoke that stuck to his clothes, hair and skin.
When was the last time they’d spent a night here? Or even a couple of hours? At least five months. Probably more.
He reached out and flicked on the hall light. It blinked and buzzed, then bloomed into cold fluorescent life. So at least the power was still on.
Logan shuffled through into the small kitchen and peeled off his stinking clothes, emptied the pockets of his jeans, then stuffed everything into the washer-dryer. Found some washing powder under the sink. Set the thing going to wash and tumble dry, then sank back against the fridge and cried.
Where the hell was … Logan frowned into the gloom. The bedroom had shrunk, and the duvet smelled of mildew. He blinked. Not home. Samantha’s caravan. His mobile phone was ringing.
It took two goes to grab it off the stack of books acting as a bedside cabinet. ‘McRae.’
‘Hello, is this …’ Some rustling. ‘Er, Detective Sergeant Logan McRae? This is Dr Lewis, I’m calling about—’
Logan sat bolt upright. ‘Is she OK?’
Please let her be OK, please let her be OK.
‘Well, she’s had a very nasty fall. Samantha’s condition is what we like to call serious, but stable. It was touch and go for a while, but she seems to be responding to treatment.’
He threw off the duvet and lurched to his feet. ‘I’ll be right up.’
There was a pause. ‘Actually, that might not be such a good idea. We’ve had to put her in a medically-induced coma—’
‘Coma …’
‘Just until the swelling in her brain comes down.’
Logan let his head rest against the cool wall of the caravan. ‘I see.’
There was more – the list of broken bones, the internal injuries, the surgery.
‘Basically, the next twenty-four hours are going to be critical, but she’s getting the best care possibl
e.’
Logan closed his eyes. ‘Thank you, Doctor.’ He hung up, then sank back onto the bed. Lay there staring at the ceiling.
Shuggie Williams and his fucking “consequences”. Samantha slamming though the flat roof three floors below. Flames screaming through the smoke above his head. That moment when she looked up and said, ‘Logan …?’ The smell of everything they had, burning. Samantha, lying in the ambulance, pale and broken. Shuggie Fucking Williams …
Logan thumped back into the musty pillow, eyes screwed shut. Then pounded his fists into his forehead. Stupid. Fucking. Useless. Moron.
Then lay there, breathing heavily.
He checked his phone again. Eleven o’clock. No way he could get back to sleep now. His head was stuffed with burning cotton wool. Everything stank of mould and smoke.
A huge spider scuttled at the sides of the bath, slipping down to the bottom, then trying to escape again. Logan turned on the shower. Watched it scrabble away from the water. Why shouldn’t the little bugger drown? Everything died. Maybe it was Mr Spider’s turn.
Sigh.
He pulled a couple of sheets of toilet paper from the roll, scooped the thing out of the bath and chucked it out into the hall.
By the time he got back to the bedroom there were three messages waiting for him on his phone. One from his mother, one from his brother, and one from Rennie. He listened to them all, then deleted the lot.
Logan dragged his clothes out of the washing machine and hauled them on. Still slightly damp. Everything he now owned was sitting on the dusty worktop: a handful of change, a packet of chewing gum that stank of smoke, his wallet, and his phone.
Shuggie Webster wanted consequences, did he? Well he was going to bloody well get them.
He stared at his mobile for a moment. Then picked it up and made a call.
‘You sure you’re OK?’ Rennie’s voice sounded as if he was trying to comfort the dying. ‘I mean, you know, is there anything I can do?’
Logan squinted out into the bright morning. ‘Yeah, you can get another GSM trace authorized.’ He read out the number Shuggie Webster had called from yesterday. ‘Let me know soon as you get anything.’ Keeping his voice flat, calm, and dead.
‘Er … Actually, Sarge, Finnie’s kinda laying down the law on that one.’
Logan McRae Crime Series Books 7 and 8 Page 27
