The Damage (David Blake 2)

by Howard Linskey

  ‘You finished?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then can I please ask you, respectfully, to fuck off and leave me alone?’

  He looked at me like I wasn’t worth the effort of keeping up the nice-guy façade, then he climbed to his feet and went.

  I waited there all night, and he was still in surgery when I left. I made them promise to call me the moment the surgeon emerged. Only then would I agree to leave.

  I got in my car and went to meet Sharp at the Angel of the North. I’d sent him a cryptic text from my pay-as-you-go mobile and it was as good a venue as any to arrange to bump into him. There was a biting wind that morning so no one else was waiting beneath its rusting wings.

  ‘What do you know?’ I asked, as soon as he reached me.

  ‘There’s a witness,’ Sharp said, ‘young lass, a student at the Uni. She saw the guy who shot your brother on the way out of the bar. They’re trying to get a photo-fit, but it’s tricky. He wore sunglasses and a hat so I’m not sure how much use she’ll be.’

  ‘Can we get to her?’

  ‘Course not, she’s under twenty-four-hour protection. She’s witnessed a shooting and clocked the hit man. They won’t let her out of their sight.’

  ‘Then you have to get me the CCTV footage for the place. I’m assuming it had cameras.’

  Sharp snorted, ‘Yeah, course it did, but I can’t get it for you.’

  ‘You’re going to have to.’

  ‘How do you expect me to do that? Detectives are poring over it right now. I can’t just walk in and borrow it.’

  ‘I’m not asking, Sharp,’ I told him, ‘it’s an order. I give them from time to time, so you’d better start remembering whose payroll you’re on.’

  ‘Of course I remember – but I have to draw a line sometime or they’ll give me ten years. They’ll put me in the cell next to your man Toddy.’

  I leaned forward and grabbed Sharp by the lapel of his coat, pulling him towards me. I didn’t hit him because I couldn’t trust myself to stop, ‘just get me the film!’ I shouted the words into his face, then I pushed him back hard and he fell to the ground with a shocked look on his face.

  I didn’t hang around to watch him pick himself up. I strode back to my car, climbed in and drove away. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I’d been up all night waiting for Danny to open his eyes and I was beside myself with worry for my older brother. Hunter, a man I had known since I was a kid, was lying on a mortuary slab and I was certain someone in our crew was selling us all down the river. How else could anyone know about the town house, Hunter’s home address or Danny’s protection money collection? I was so fucking tired I just wanted to curl up somewhere and forget the world, but somehow I had to keep my mind straight and work this one out because right now I couldn’t trust anyone else to do it for me.

  I suddenly realised I was driving at more than a hundred miles an hour, speeding past the other cars on the main road like they were standing still, and I hadn’t even noticed. I forced myself to brake. I realised I was in a panic because I had no idea how to fix things, but I knew I had to stay alive, and there was one thing I was clinging to that would keep me going. I wanted revenge. I wanted to get hold of the man who had done this to my brother and I was going to make him pay.

  30

  .......................

  The waiting room outside an intensive care unit is the most hopeless place. The patients on the other side of those big, grey double-doors with their porthole windows are nearly all in a permanent state of medicated sleep, which means they can give nothing back to the people visiting them. I’d see the visitors traipsing out looking lost, ruined and guilty all at once. Every time the doors opened I’d peer in, hoping for a glimpse of Danny, but he was out of sight. I wanted to march straight in there, but I knew the detective on the door would never let me do that.

  I waited an age until the consultant finally appeared. He was a tall, authoritative man with an evidently unbending faith in his abilities. He was determined to leave me with the impression that whether Danny lived or died might be down to my brother’s strength or the fates, but never the unquestioned skills of his surgeon.

  ‘It was a very difficult operation. Daniel is lucky to be alive,’ lucky wasn’t the word I would have chosen, ‘the position of the bullets made the procedure a particularly delicate one.’ He went on to outline some of those complications in detail, but I didn’t really take it all in until he ended a sentence with the words, ‘and there is spinal damage.’

  ‘We are far from certain that your brother is going to survive,’ he told me, with an honesty I craved, but at the same time hated him for, ‘however Daniel is a strong, fit man, which gives him a chance,’ how much of a chance he wasn’t prepared to reveal. ‘You must be aware though that, if he does make it, the damage to his spinal column is so extensive that it is unlikely he will ever walk again.’

  It’s strange the tricks your brain pulls on you to keep you going. I heard the words, and instantly understood what they meant, but somehow I managed to rabbit on to the consultant as if it was all going to be alright. I wanted to thank him and his team for all of the work they had done to save my brother’s life, I told him, and he reminded me there was no guarantee of that outcome. Nonetheless, I assured him, I was eternally gratefully to them all and would never forget their efforts. I took hold of his hand to shake it while I was talking to him and forgot to let go. I just carried on pumping it like a lunatic, until he looked down at his hand in mine.

  ‘I’d like to see my brother now,’ I said.

  He told me I could go in, but he had to clear it with the man on the door. The man on the door was the plain-clothes detective, positioned there in case the assassin should attempt to pay a visit and finish my brother off as he lay in his bed, and I had to prove that I was who I claimed to be before he finally admitted me.

  My older brother looked helpless. He was wired up to a machine that monitored his heart rate, and another that was helping him to breathe. His face was partly covered by the tube of the ventilator and there was a drip hanging out of one arm. He wore a loose-fitting, dark-green hospital gown that covered the incisions the surgeons had made during an eleven hour operation to remove the three bullets from his body. The only sound was a quiet beep coming from the monitor, and the low, repetitive whooshing sound of the ventilator as it did his breathing for him, keeping my brother alive, one shallow breath after another.

  And now here I was, looking down at Danny, lying there with tubes and wires in him, and telling myself over and over that this was all my fault, when it hit me; the combination of muggy, warm air, the sickly-sweet smell of disinfectant and the sight of my brother’s wrecked body before me. I felt the room sway and I had to reach out a hand to grab the metal frame of his bed to stop myself from falling. I sat down quickly on the hard plastic chair by his bedside and put my hand to my sweating forehead. I had to make an effort just to rise from my seat and walk out of there, feeling the nausea rising all the way along the corridor. Finally, I pushed open the last swing door, took the remaining yards across the waiting room at almost a run, and went out through the heavy glass door at the entrance. The cold air hit me and I gulped it into my lungs. I managed to walk a few more yards to a wooden bench and slumped down on it, putting my hands up to my eyes again so no one could see my face.

  I went to a pub I’d never been to before. It was almost empty and I ordered a pint and a whisky. I had no plan except a vague notion I was going to sit there and drink until I fell off the bar stool and they called a cab for me, or the Police. Then I looked up and saw my ashen face in the mirror behind the optics on the bar. I realised that sitting here on my own, thinking about my brother and the fact that he was paralysed because of me, drinking myself sick in the process, was only going to make me feel worse. I needed company, but nobody from my crew would do.

  It was raining hard when I pulled up outside the apartment block. I was drenched by the ti
me I reached the communal front door. A woman of about thirty was just going in and she turned and held the door, then gave me a questioning look because she clearly didn’t recognise me. I just muttered ‘thanks’ and followed her inside, without waiting for her to enquire who I was.

  I didn’t wait for the lift. I took the stairs two at a time until I reached the third floor, then headed for flat thirty two. I was only a little out of breath, but my heart was racing like I’d just run a marathon. All I could see right now was Danny wired up to his ventilator with tubes coming out of him. I was trying so hard to banish that sight from my mind because, if I didn’t, I knew I’d start remembering all over again how it was my fault he was there. I just couldn’t deal with that right now, which is why I was standing on the landing of a strange apartment block, pressing the doorbell for a second time.

  ‘Just a minute,’ came an impatient voice from the other side of the door, and there was the light sound of padding feet on the floor behind it then the door opened.

  She was standing there with a white bathrobe tied loosely around her, pressing a towel up against the side of her head, dabbing at her sopping wet hair. She must have just stepped from the shower. It made her look pure and clean somehow. She barely seemed to take me in at first, but then Simone sighed and said, ‘At least I don’t have to ask how you knew my address,’ and for a moment I thought I was in for one of her lectures. Then she looked at me more closely and frowned, asking, ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

  Whatever she saw in my face was enough for her to admit me. She stepped back and held open the door while I walked in.

  She followed me through a tiny hallway and I walked on into the lounge of a neat little flat. I turned back to face her and saw the concern in her eyes. ‘Sit down,’ she said and I chose the only armchair. She leaned against the arm of her sofa and, as she did so, the bathrobe slipped a little, revealing the flesh of a long bare leg up to her thigh. She quickly pulled the robe tighter, which only drew more attention to the fact that she was naked beneath it.

  ‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’ she asked.

  Somehow I dug deep inside me and found the words to explain that my only brother had been shot, three times, and it didn’t look good for him. He wasn’t expected to survive and, even if he did…But I couldn’t finish that bit. Partly because I did not know what kind of life Danny would have if he didn’t die in that hospital tonight – but mainly because I didn’t want to even contemplate it.

  Simone listened patiently, hearing me out, and unless she was the greatest actress on the planet she seemed genuinely shocked and concerned for me. When I finished she said, ‘Oh my God, that’s awful,’ and, because she probably didn’t know what else to say or do, she added, ‘let me get you a drink.’

  She walked out of the lounge and I followed her as she went back out into the hall, then into the kitchen. It was another small room with a fridge at the far end. She opened the door and took out a bottle of Absolut, then turned around so she was facing me. She hadn’t heard me follow her in there and my presence seemed to make her start. Maybe she felt trapped with me framing the door like that, or vulnerable, wearing nothing but that soft, white robe. She turned away and opened a cupboard, then took out two glass tumblers for the vodka.

  I felt a bit claustrophobic in this tiny kitchen. Somewhere there would be one, or maybe two, bedrooms and a bathroom that was probably the size of our shower in Hua Hin. I’d noticed there were a couple of prints on the wall, modern art, nothing memorable, but no family photos or holiday snaps in frames. She reached for the vodka and I heard the metallic click as the lid of a brand new spirit bottle was forced open, followed by a thick, oily glugging sound as she poured a generous measure into the glass. Everything seemed heightened somehow; the noises in the kitchen, my senses. I was on edge.

  I watched as she poured Absolut into the second glass. I wanted to pick her up, throw her down on the floor and take her right there until we’d both had enough of each other. Instead I walked slowly towards her, making sure she could hear my footsteps so I didn’t scare her again. When I drew near she turned her head back towards me and there was uncertainty in her eyes. She avoided my gaze by turning back to the drinks. She screwed the lid of the vodka back on the bottle and said, ‘I don’t know what I’ve got to mix it with,’ her voice wavering like she was nervous.

  When she turned around again I was standing right in front of her. I put my hand out towards her, and she let out a little gasp, but I was only picking up one of the glasses from the work-top. She watched me drink, then turned her back on me again and picked up her own glass.

  I reached my hand out again and this time I took hold of her wet hair and held it gently in my hand. Her body stiffened but she didn’t say anything and I reached higher, placing my free hand under the hair I was holding so it rested on the back of her neck and I felt the cool, damp, olive coloured skin there and began to knead it gently. She pulled her head up at my touch and I began to slowly massage the skin at the side and base of her neck. I could hear her breath being drawn in deeper each time and she let her head flop to one side and rolled it with the movement of my hand.

  I let go of her hair then and reached around her; I took the lapels of the robe in each hand and slowly began to open it until the soft material slid from her shoulders. She pressed her body against the work-top to keep the robe from coming off entirely and I began to massage her bare shoulders with both hands. She was breathing deeply now and I was alternating between her shoulders, back and neck, then bent forward to kiss the skin on the back of her neck.

  She crossed her arms so the robe slipped no further and said, ‘you shouldn’t,’ but her voice was low and she didn’t move away from me. I continued to rub the skin on her back, then bent low to kiss her again. I took the collar of her robe in both hands and opened it wider, exposing her breasts. I put one arm over her shoulder and reached for her, rubbing her back with one hand and gently touching her breast with the other. As I did this, she pressed herself back against me and we stayed like this for a while.

  If she still thought we shouldn’t be doing this she was through saying it. I put my arm around her then, took hold of the belt and slowly pulled it until it came loose and the robe opened at the front. She bent her head back towards me. I kissed her on the mouth and she kissed me back, deeply, urgently.

  She broke from the kiss and turned to face me then, letting the robe slide free and it fell to the floor behind her. Then she wrapped her arms around my neck and we kissed again. I had one hand pressed against the small of her back and I moved the other one slowly down her body until it was pressed against the smooth flesh high up on the back of her thigh. I let it trail up and down the top of her leg, softly stroking the skin with the palm of my hand. While we kissed, my hand got slowly higher each time before I let it fall again. Then I moved it round to her stomach and guided it gently down until finally, when I was sure she wanted me too, I slid it between her legs. She gasped and broke free from the kiss, closed her eyes and put her head back. I held her there, supporting her with my other hand. She wrapped her arms around me again and clung to me hard while I touched her. When she was finally through, she took my hand and led me to the bedroom.

  31

  .......................

  ‘I’d forgotten it could be like that,’ she told me.

  ‘So had I,’ and it was true. We were lying on the bed together; her robe and my clothes discarded on the floor somewhere. We were holding each other, still in the moment. I kissed her and she kissed me back, then she bit my top lip and laughed at the surprised look on my face. She looked very young then, shorn of the world-weary cynicism she always wore in public.

  ‘Do you want another drink?’ Simone asked, and I shook my head. She kissed me again and said, ‘I’ll be right back,’ like she wanted to add, ‘don’t go anywhere,’ then she got out of bed and went to the bathroom. When she was gone I realised I hadn’t even thought about the rights, t
he wrongs or the wisdom of what I was doing. Climbing into bed with Simone like this was bound to complicate my life even further but it seemed insignificant compared to everything else that was going on around me.

  Simone walked back into the room and lay down next to me. She was still naked and I was glad she hadn’t tried to cover herself. There was just one thing. Now I’d finally had her, I wanted to leave. It wasn’t her fault. It was the way I usually felt about women in fact, except for the early days with Laura, and with Sarah on the rare occasions when we did have sex these days. I was always like that when I was a younger man, back when I was single and every girl I saw was a possibility. I’d meet one, become intrigued by her and wonder what she looked like naked. I’d spend time wondering how she’d be in bed, trying to guess what her face was like when she came, or the noises she made in private, then when we’d finally end up in bed together, once the mystery was gone, I was never too bothered about a repeat performance.

  Simone turned over and propped herself up on her elbow. She smiled at me, then asked, ‘what are you thinking about?’

  ‘I was thinking how amazing that was,’ I told her and her smile broadened. I got the impression Simone had put sex, male approval and self-esteem together in the same basket a long time ago and now they were inextricably bound, ‘and what a pity it is that I’ve got to go soon.’ Her smile disappeared then, ‘my brother,’ I explained, and her face softened. She nodded like she understood he was my biggest priority right now and I realised I had sunk just that little bit lower, because I was using my brother’s wrecked life as an excuse so I didn’t have to spend all night in a girl’s bed.