by Manda Scott
There is pain in my arm. A sharp, shooting pain. Spreading upwards and outwards all through me to my head. Mother, my head hurts. I need to sleep. To escape from the light and the pain.
‘Kellen!’ A sharp, stinging pain on the side of my face. Better than the pain in my head. ‘For Christ’s sake, woman, will you wake up?’
‘No … can’t …’
‘You bloody can.’ Another rush of cold pain in my arm. ‘Jesus … Why did you have to use Immobilon? Where’s the bloody data sheet? How am I supposed to know the dose without the data sheet? Where’s the effing anaesthetist when you need him …? Kellen … Can you hear me? Have you seen Matt? … Oh God. No … Not there. If you’re going to be sick, do it in here … here … like that. Shit … this is why I never did medicine …’
The pain came in waves and consciousness with it. Steff Foster pumped dextrose-saline and neat naloxone into the catheter in my right arm and held a leaking cardboard box on my knees and, in between the coughing, retching bouts of nausea, she read me the riot act. A constant stream of muttered invective laced with unanswerable questions.
‘Why, Kellen? Why now? She’s getting better, for God’s sake. She’s not going to die. You don’t have to play the guilt-stricken lover. All you have to do is wait till she’s well enough to talk and then go and sort things out. It’s not that difficult.’
‘I didn’t …’
‘Right. Sure. If you say so. But that’s not the point, is it? You wanted to. Come on. You’re not going out on me now. Have some more Narcan …’
The nausea passed. We changed to another cardboard box. One that smelt less bad.
The world began to focus. Became straight more often than not. The drumbeat drew back into the distance.
A collapsed, clear sun lay on the floor at her feet leaking rainwater drops in a puddle all over the grey plastic tiles of the floor.
‘Not yellow.’
‘Yes. Very good. It’s not yellow. Half the contents of the Dangerous Drugs Cupboard are ‘not yellow’, Kellen. You’re bloody lucky I found the bottle or you’d be dead by now. Why Immobilon, of all the stupid, fucking things to use? You don’t get second chances with this stuff, Kellen. You could kill a horse with the amount you put in here. Stone dead. Bang. Gone. Faster than a gun. That’s overkill, you know? It’s not good for making a point to the rest of the world. If you want to make statements, next time use something peaceful like pentobarbitone where there’s a chance of bringing you back in the first five minutes. Or if you really want to go, put in something we can’t reverse, then we won’t even think about pulling you back. Jesus, even Nina had more sense than this …’
‘I didn’t … She didn’t …’
‘Kellen. I don’t care what you did. It’s none of my business. You could be having a ménage à trois with the cat for all I care. Just get your act together and talk to her and stop pissing about with the happy juice, right?’
‘No … I mean, I didn’t put up the rain … the drip. It wasn’t me.’
‘Of course it was you. Who else would it be?’
‘Matt. It was Matt. Ketamine … in the water, first … then this. Like Nina … Matt.’
There was silence. Blessed silence. I focused on eyes of puzzled ice. Blurred. Not understanding.
Waves of iced water flowed up my arm. The pain in my head was worse than anything I have ever known. To speak was to invite the Inquisition to visit the interior of my skull. I ground my teeth and fought to find words in the mess of my mind.
‘I couldn’t do this on my own, Steff. I’ve never heard of … the rain … I don’t know what it is.’
The eyes unblurred. Sharp, grey ice-in-fire. ‘Matt. He knows …?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Nina?’
‘Nina’s got endotoxaemia … He injected her this afternoon … through the line … neat stuff … No E. coli. That’s why I … took the anti-toxin.’
‘And the horses? Did he kill the horses too?’
‘I think so …’ Fragments of memory returned. ‘Innocent bystanders …’
She stood up, then. Turned to the wall. Lifted a phone. Punched in a number. Hard, vicious stabs at the key-pad. Hung up. The phone rang again before she had a chance to sit down again.
‘Matt? It’s Steff. Yes, I found Kellen. She’s in the pharmacy … On a drip … Can you? Thanks.’
I’m dead. This time, I really am dead. She could just have let me go on the rainwater tide. It would have been so much easier.
‘Why …?’
She smiled. Not the kind of smile I’d want to meet often. Pushed me back into the space under the fridge. Put the half-empty drip bag back up on the stand and laid the drip line across my palm.
‘He’s on his way up. Play dead, huh?’
Some things are easier than others. This is so close to the truth, it is effortless.
‘Why … ?’ I sound like a jammed record. But I have no strength for anything else.
‘Can you move?’
‘No.’ Not for anything or anyone.
‘Right. So I can’t leave you. He has to come to us.’
‘Why …?’
‘I called the hospital. To let Nina know about the foal. They said Dr Dalziel was coming here with Sandy. I’d like your foal to still be alive when they get here.’
‘But …’
‘Not now, huh? We can talk about it later.’
If there is a later.
Footsteps sounded in the corridor. Running. Steff stepped back into the labyrinth of the shelves. Put a finger to her lips. Smiled again. A slow, leonine smile. The nose-stud winked erratic morse-code as she leant on one shelf, breathing unsteadily.
The footsteps reached the door. Came through it without pause. He stood in front of me. He’s tall, Matt Hendon. Not as tall as Steff and not as broad in the shoulder as Eric but he’s bigger than I am in both dimensions. And fit. Very fit. I don’t notice these things until I have to.
‘Kellen … you’re … you look dreadful. Where’s Steff?’
‘Gone …’
‘Has she? Good. She’ll be back soon. Do you know where you are?’
‘Pharmacy.’ I knew that before. It didn’t matter then. It matters now. ‘Where we found Nina …’
‘Exactly.’ The bottle came from a cupboard, high up on the wall. A small, anonymous steel box. One amongst the many. You wouldn’t see it if you didn’t look. ‘I didn’t choose it, though, Kellen. For her or for you. The dream wasn’t mine.’
The syringe came from his pocket. And the needle. A 20 ml syringe. He filled it. Held it out in front of him, as if even that close, it might be dangerous. ‘You should have left her with me, Kellen.’ He said it gently, in the same, cat-warm voice as before. I didn’t hear the venom behind it, then. ‘She would have come back, you know, if you’d left her alone. After Branding Iron, after the fire, she would have come home.’
‘Give it up, Matt. She’d have gone to her mother before she ever went back to you.’
Steff. Behind him. Stepping out from her space between the shelves. Steff, who is taller than he is and who moves with the grace of a tiger. But it was what she said that hit him, more than her being there. It showed on his face, the sudden, cracking anger as he spun round and then backed away, slowly, the full syringe held up like a knife, his thumb on the plunger, ready to push.
‘No.’ A single word, spoken as if the intensity of it made it so.
Steff stood in front of him, just out of range, both hands spread wide, swaying rhythmically, the mongoose before the swaying cobra. He swayed with her, the snake, coiled to strike.
‘I don’t think so, Matthew.’ She crooned it, smiling. ‘Nina didn’t leave you because there was too much work, whatever she said. She left you because she didn’t like being owned. There’s no way she would have come back to you. Ever.’
‘No.’ He said it thickly this time, as if he couldn’t think past the word. ‘She would have come. She had nowhere else to go.’
/> ‘Oh, but she did, didn’t she? She had us. She’s always had us. And there are more of us than there are of you, Dr Hendon. Even now.’ She held out her hand, a teasing invitation. ‘Give me the needle, Matthew. You can’t fake both of us.’
‘I don’t have to fake anything. No one’s going to find you here before morning. I’ll be out of the country by then.’
‘No, you won’t …’ I spoke with care. Because words were still difficult. ‘Eric’s on his way. He knows about Nina. He’ll find us … you.’
‘Sorry, Kellen.’ He smiled. A smile not unlike Steff’s. Cold-cooled poison. ‘The posse’s been and gone. I met them in the car park on the way up here. Told them you’d gone back to the farm and taken young Stephanie with you. They seemed in something of a hurry to follow.’ The smile grew broader. Warmer. A winning smile. Scoring points to even the balance. ‘You thought it was her, didn’t you?’
He was talking to me. But the points were all sharpened for her.
I said nothing. But it hit home, just the same.
‘Kellen …? You didn’t seriously think I would …?’
He struck then, as a snake strikes. The needle flashed, quicksilver under the bright ceiling lights. A curving arc, downwards. Straight for the mass of her body.
Which wasn’t there.
She swayed, side-stepped, kicked, all in one smooth movement. The side of her foot connected somewhere high on his body, punching him sideways. In all of the motion, there was only one noise; the solid thud of a Nike trainer on flesh. And then a tumbling, gathering cascade of sound as he stumbled against one shelf and the one beside it, knocking bottles and boxes and plastic tubs to the floor in a flailing mess of glass and tablets and intra-mammary tubes.
But he didn’t fall. Not all the way. And the floor was as lethal for her as it was for him. Like stepping on marbles, rolled in oil. A pungent chemical stench choked the air.
Matt pulled himself upright and they circled, warily, half an eye on the floor, half an eye on each other. No eyes at all for me. She didn’t need one. He did. They circled past. I kicked out, as she had done. Not as hard and not as accurately, but enough to push him off balance. He spun out. The needle flashed, still aiming for her. She chopped down, hard, with the edge of her hand. Bone connected on bone. And then bone cracked on metal as he hurled forward on to the steel drugs cabinet, flung by the floor as much as her hand.
The world disintegrated. Shelves, flesh and drugs spun randomly to the floor. Silence strayed in the spaces between until everything stopped.
‘Shit.’ It was Steff. A sick, half-dazed expletive in the quiet.
Matt Hendon sprawled like an unstrung puppet, against the wall. The syringe jutted upwards from his thigh, the plunger halfway down the barrel.
She’s uncommonly fast in a crisis, that woman. She had the needle out of his leg and was already grabbing his ankles before I was halfway out of the hole by the filing cabinet. She was stepping back, ready to jerk him clear of the wreckage, just as I stepped upright.
‘No!’
I clamped a hand on hers, just in time.
‘Kellen! That’s Immobilon. He needs—’
‘Don’t move him. Look at his neck.’
‘Oh, fuck.’
And the rest.
You only need to see a cervical fracture once to know it again for the rest of your life. Steff Foster must have seen them often enough in the wards. Animals are not that different to people, she just needed to see past the lethal column of the syringe.
Very, very slowly, she let go of his ankles. Leant forward and laid two fingers to the inside of his wrist. I did the same on the other side, felt the pulse. Not as strong as it could be, but a good, steady rhythm. Alive, if not necessarily well.
The syringe lay beside him on the floor. Half-empty. ‘Has he got enough of the happy juice on board to kill him?’
‘Easily. But it’s gone intra-muscular. If we can get the naloxone into a vein, we can bring him round.’
‘With a fractured C-spine?’
‘That’s his problem.’
She stood up. Stepped over me. Pulled a bottle from the steel cabinet and started filling another syringe. Smooth. Efficient. Sure of her choices. ‘Can you find a vein without moving his neck?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Try.’
I didn’t move. Waited until she had finished loading her gear and was kneeling down where I could see her, where I knew she could see me.
‘Why, Steff?’
‘I have a career, Kellen. A murder charge doesn’t look too good on the résumé.’
‘It was self-defence. On top of two attempted murders. You’re water-tight.’
‘It isn’t self-defence if we sit here and do nothing.’
‘Maybe.’ But there are ways and ways of doing things and not all of them would bring him back. We both know that.
She looked away, a thin, tight line drawn down between her eyes. Matt Hendon’s pulse fluttered under my fingers.
We are not so very different, she and I.
And for both of us, I think, in the world of all possible nightmares; to live, to breathe, to think, to feel and not to be able to move, is by far the worst.
One of us needed to say it.
‘He might prefer it if we let him go, Steff.’
‘I know.’ Her eyes came back to mine. Clear, untroubled ice-in-fire. ‘I didn’t say we were doing him any favours.’
She slid the needle up the inside of his forearm towards the blue shadow at his elbow. ‘Raise the vein for me, can you?’
Epilogue
There are three magpies spread out around the Hawthorn field this morning.
The first one’s sitting beside us on the hedge, close enough for me to reach out and touch it. The next one is high up in one of the hawthorns at the top of the hill, dropping curses on the horses below. The last one hopped all the way along the roof ridge behind us as we brought the mare and foal to the field. It’s there now, clinging to the tiles at the gable-end as if it doesn’t know how to let go.
Three. Not the easiest of numbers.
‘Kellen?’
Nina is here, leaning on the gate beside me. She half turns, running one hand up through hair the colour of chestnuts, straight from the shell. You have to look quite hard now to see the line of the old henna, close to the ends.
‘Problem?’ She asks it quietly. So that it doesn’t matter if I have no answer.
‘I was counting the magpies.’
She turns full circle, finds them all.
Three. For a girl.
‘Megan?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you still mind?’
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘No, I don’t mind.’ I really don’t. And that surprises me more than all the rest put together.
We lean together on the gate, watching the morning.
The sun lifts higher over the ben, burning the last of the dew from the grass. The breeze lifts with it, carrying the smell of seeding grasses down from the hill. In the far distance, Kate leads an early ride of English tourists on the long route past the loch. Somewhere, up beyond the village, Gordon Galbraith and his lads load pigs on to a lorry.
The birds change places in the field, finding new vantage points as the horses move. The mare ambles down the hill towards us; a battered bay, long past her days as an athlete, with splints on both fore limbs and a spavin behind that you could see from across the field and a set of feet about which even Duncan had trouble finding something good to say. But she has plenty of milk, which was all Sandy looked at when he paid for her and she took kindly to the foal after the first day of temper and frayed nerves which is just as well, if you think about what she cost.
The foal trots down the hill behind her; a bright, shining chestnut with long, gangling legs and the new moon rising clear between his eyes.
The dog squirms under the gate to greet him. He props, makes wild eyes and spins on his quarters. She waits for him to settle. A
week ago, he wouldn’t have let her near. By next week, they will herd each other into the far corners of the field. She has more time to play with him, now that the youngsters have gone.
She had five pups in the end. Three dogs and two bitches. The biggest of the bitches came first; an odd pale colour with marbled streaks of copper and tan through the white and you could believe that, when she opened them, her two eyes would turn out different colours. She went to Stewart MacDonald, for a promise.
After that, the dogs all came in a jumble: one black with a single white paw like his sire and the other two tan and white collie-marked after their great grand-dam. The white-pawed black went to Duncan. Steff and Sandy Logan each had their pick of the tan and whites. Sandy’s would be here now, if he hadn’t gone off down to Ayr to see a man about a mare and taken the pup with him for the ride. Steff’s lives with her in the cottage and has, strangely, not been eaten by the cat. I am grateful for that, more than most things. Living with Nina is more peaceful than either of us imagined but living with Killer could well be the prologue to a very messy divorce.
The last of the bitches came two hours after the others. She’s solid tan, all but a white flash on her left foreleg and a narrow lightning strike that zig-zags across her muzzle. She fed badly the first few days and we took turns holding her on the teat every two hours overnight until she was strong enough to fight the mewling mass of her siblings in her own right.
She was Nina’s without question, from the moment she first came out. We called her Megan after Duncan’s old bitch who started the line and I spent a string of summer evenings teaching her not to eat ducks and how to stay on the right side of the cats so that she would fit in with the rest of the family. It wasn’t until they were seven weeks old and almost ready to go that Nina first suggested that the pups might not be staying at the farm.
To say that nobody thought much of the idea would be a huge understatement. MacDonald thought she was mad and said so, but then he was still sore that, after three months of police time, nobody had gone ahead and pressed charges. Sandy and Steff and Duncan threw in their ha’pence-worth when they were asked and then had the good sense to stay quiet. No one else had an opinion that counted.
