by Simon Logan
So Stasko was involved in . . . whatever that had been.
She edges towards the room, listens at the door. From inside there is shuffling, then a ripping sound. Drawers being opened and closed.
Liz has no idea what she is witnessing but also no longer cares.
She waits for a few minutes to see if Stasko will emerge but her patience withers quickly. She checks that nobody is around and opens her bag. The gun glints within.
She opens the door.
Stasko spins around. The captor, cable-tied to a gurney beside him.
“Get out of my way,” he snaps. “Can’t you see I have a patient here? She needs to go to surgery immediately, do you understand?”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Liz tells him. “You have no idea who I am do you?”
Tears are welling up within her now, her hatred of him filling her with a dark, menacing energy. The thought of Bridget lying on the ground outside the club that the surgeon had dragged her to, her internal organs ground to a pulp, fills her mind.
“I have no interest in who you are,” Stasko says, jabbing the gurney at her.
Liz reaches in and takes out the gun. Her hand shakes uncontrollably as she raises it to point it at him. She clenches her teeth, focusing all of her hatred into her arm, then her hand, then her forefinger.
And once that happens, it’s like the trigger pulls itself.
54.
“Here, here,” Nikolai says.
Katja follows his voice to the back of the room, fumbling through the darkness. She collides with a laundry basket, pushes it to one side.
“Laundry chute,” he says. There’s the sound of metal grinding against metal as she heaves the hatch before him upwards.
Katja reaches past him. “It’s too small,” she says, slapping her hands against the sheers walls of the chute. “And there’s no way we could climb up it anyway.”
“What about down? It must lead down to a main laundry room – that’ll surely have a way out, a collection point.”
“It’s too small, Nik, up or down.”
“So what about a trolley? I’ll find some used scrubs, you could climb inside and I’ll wheel you out.”
“What do you think this is, a fucking cartoon? I’m not getting into one of those beside bloody clothes and shitty underwear. Anyway she’s just as likely to spot you as she is me. There’s no other option, we’re going to have to go back up.”
“And if she’s waiting there for us?”
“If she’d seen us come in here she would have bust in already.”
“Maybe not.”
“We don’t have any other choice, Nik!”
And without waiting for him she feels her way along the wall back to the ramp and starts to climb it. A moment later Nikolai follows. They stop at the door and she listens through it but there’s nothing to hear.
“Ready?” she whispers.
Nikolai shrugs and she shoves the door open before he can say or do anything else.
The corridor is empty, the strip-lighting above reflected like a meandering river on the recently polished floor.
Katja looks back the way they came and sees the toppled cart that the debt collector had crashed into, but no sign of the woman herself. Perhaps they have gotten away from her after all.
“Which way?”
“Not that way,” Katja says, nodding towards the fallen cart. “This way.”
She jogs farther up the corridor, ducks around a corner to a pair of lifts, Nikolai following.
“If we can get to where that chute leads there should be a way out.”
She hits both of the buttons, illuminating them, then takes a step back to watch the level indicators above each set of doors. One remains where it is but the other is already ticking through the numbers.
Five.
Four.
She isn’t sure if it was already moving before she pressed it, if someone else was on their way down.
Three.
Suddenly thinks that Nikolai’s idea to dress themselves in smocks might not have been that bad after all but knows it’s too late now.
Two.
The elevator dings and then the doors slide open to reveal not Lady D but a male nurse. He stands in the middle of the elevator, staring down at his feet, mumbling something to himself.
He looks up when the doors open and his eyes go wide.
Nobody says anything. Nobody moves.
“Are you getting out or what?” Katja asks.
The man opens his mouth to say something, glances at Nikolai, then grabs Katja and pulls her into the elevator. Whilst Nikolai’s brain is still processing what is going on the nurse jabs at the buttons inside the elevator and the doors slide shut.
And Katja is gone.
55.
Lady D twists away from the woman brandishing the gun just before it fires. The bullet flies over Lady D’s head, her already-damaged hearing suffering another blow from the sound of the shot.
Stasko is thrown backwards by the force of the gunshot, spinning him around and into the gurney to which Lady D is still tied. His head smacks off the rail and he slumps to the ground and out of her sight. The woman stands in the doorway, tears rolling down her cheeks, the weapon still in her shaking hands.
Lady D doesn’t take her eyes off the woman but with her left hand she quietly feels around the instrument trolley which has been knocked adjacent to her after Stasko had swung the gurney between himself and his attacker. Her fingers brush across something cold and wafer-thin—a blade.
The other woman takes a step forward, blinking away tears, knuckles whitened from her grip on the gun. Stasko’s breathing is wet and laboured.
“You took her from me,” she says, her upper lip curling like a dog about to bite. “You always took her from me.”
The woman’s attention fully on Stasko, Lady D moves the blade between her fingers, manoeuvring it until she can work it back and forth across the cable tie. She has to twist her wrist at an almost impossible angle, the tendons there burning, working blind, not wanting to risk the woman seeing what she is doing, until finally the cable-tie snaps and her arm comes free.
The woman kneels down beside Stasko, out of Lady D’s sight. Lady D quickly cuts through the tie around her other wrist then does the same with those around her ankles. She peers over the edge of the bed. Stasko grips his chest, wet with blood. It trickles out from between his fingers and the corners of his mouth.
The woman’s finger twitches on the trigger but she’s gotten too close to her prey and before she can pull it Stasko snatches the gun from her. He momentarily struggles with the weapon, his hands wet with blood, turning it to point at the woman. She tries to grab it back from him but this time there is no delay, no hesitation. No words.
Just action.
He pulls the trigger and the woman falls backwards, crashing into the door.
Lady D jumps at the sound but stays where she is, biding her time, waiting for the right moment.
Stasko hauls himself to his feet, reaching out for support from the gurney, leaving a smeared trail of red along it. His breathing even more wet and laboured as he levels the gun at the woman’s head.
“I still don’t care who you are,” he says.
And that’s when Lady D lashes out.
She swings a leg around, her foot slamming into his shooting arm and the weapon flies through the air, closely followed by her high heel. Stasko cries out and she leaps from the bed, rushing towards the gun before he can recover it. She punches him in the back of the head as he scrambles towards the weapon, flooring him instantly. She picks up the gun in one hand, the heel in the other. Slots the gun into a belt that draws her waist in to unreasonable dimensions and wields the heel like a hammer.
Stasko gets up, the blood dripping from his gunshot wound joined by that dripping from his split lip. Lady D grabs his hair an
d jerks his head up so that he’s looking her in the eyes.
“I decide what I want to be,” she says. “Not you.”
And then she smashes the shoe into the side of his head, aiming for his temple but connecting somewhere just beyond it. He cries out and threatens to topple but she keeps a firm grip on his hair and delivers another blow; another; another.
She lets him drop to the ground but keeps hitting him, all the rage and tension which have built up over the course of the day finally finding an outlet, and she doesn’t stop until she is utterly exhausted and Stasko is no longer breathing. Her arm is locked up, her fingers clawed around the shoe. Stasko’s face is nothing but splattered pulp.
“There’s your fucking transformation,” she says, wiping blood from her face and chest.
She turns to the woman, slumped against the door, a neat dark hole drilled into the very centre of her chest. It doesn’t look good.
“Liz? It’s Liz, right?” Lady D asks, snapping the woman into focus.
Liz nods vaguely.
“I’ll go get you some help,” Lady D says but Liz reaches out to stop her.
“I did what I came to do,” she says.
Lady D notices the scorch marks on the woman’s t-shirt, the oily grime that smears her tattoos.
“You were at the Wheatsheaf? What about Soelberg? If I can find her I . . .”
Liz shakes her head, spilling more tears, and Lady D knows from the look in the woman’s eyes what it means.
“I’m sorry,” Lady D says. “If I’d have known things were going to . . .”
She fumbles with the sentiment until it deserts her completely.
Instead she takes Liz’s hand in her own, so covered in Stasko’s blood that it is as if she is wearing a glove. The woman squeezes on it and when she smiles at Lady D, the debt collector is certain that Liz is seeing something else. Someone else.
Then Liz’s eyes roll back into her skull and her hand slides away.
Lady D remains there for a few moments, reluctant to leave the woman, then gets up. She examines the shoe she had beaten Stasko with and it is as covered in the surgeon’s blood as her hand. No point in even attempting to wipe it down. When she slips it on it’s like putting her foot into someone’s body cavity.
At least it’s warm.
She steps out into the corridor, thankful that it remains deserted. Spots the cart she had collided with a little farther up and so quickly gathers her bearings. The attack on Stasko has relieved some of her tension and replaced it with a new vigour, a new determination to end this whole night once and for all.
All she wants is her money, plain and simple.
And nothing, nobody, will stop her from getting it.
56.
Nikolai stares at his reflection in the old metal of the elevator, the confused look on his face echoed back in a warped version of itself. Above him the elevator light slides from left to right as it climbs the floors again, taking Katja with it. He slaps at the buttons but the elevator ignores him and continues to climb.
And then he sees the distorted shape of a figure behind him. He spins around.
Looking like something out of the final scene of a Takashi Miike film, Lady D walks towards him. Blood splatters the dress she wears and one of her heels is crooked and similarly soaked in gore. Her wig is partially flattened on one side and unravelling at the back.
There’s a gun tucked into her belt but apparently she doesn’t feel the need to draw it.
“Where is she? Where’s the punk?”
“I . . . uh . . . we . . .”
“Where’s my money?” Lady D growls, taking another step closer.
Nikolai backs up against the elevator door. “I don’t . . . she split. I don’t know where . . .”
Lady D is now close enough that she blocks out the light and so becomes nothing more than a silhouette before Nikolai. She leans forwards, one arm planted on the wall beside him. Looks up at the floor numbers being lit one by one then back to Nikolai.
Now the gun comes out.
“Do I look like I’m in the mood to be fucked with?”
“Not really.”
Lady D plants her other arm on the other side of Nikolai, pinning him in place.
“So where is she?”
“Someone took her,” Nikolai says, pointing up at the numbers above. “The doors opened and someone just . . . took her.”
Nose to nose now. The debt collector’s spicy perfume is mixed with the scent of burnt metal and antiseptic.
“What did I just say?” she warns him.
“I’m telling you, someone grabbed her. A nurse—or someone dressed like one.”
“They were already in there waiting for her?”
Nikolai nods. “But he looked . . . surprised.”
“He knew who she was?”
“I don’t know . . . I suppose so. He appeared to recognise her. I think so anyway.”
Lady D lets out a long, deep sigh and straightens up, stands back from him.
“Is there anyone who isn’t after this little bitch?”
Nikolai doesn’t know whether she’s expecting an answer or not. She’s looking up at the illuminated floor numbers again. The elevators illuminated numbers have settled on the floor above them.
She hits the button to call the elevators back but they remain where they are.
“Fine,” she says. “We’ll take the stairs.”
“We?” Nikolai asks just before she grabs his arm.
“We,” she confirms, and pushes him ahead of her, the gun nudging his back. “And whoever it is that took her—they’re going to give her back.”
57.
Katja feels the swelling on her face before she has even fully come to, focused around three sharp spikes of pain where the guitar strings had punctured her flesh.
She tries to move but can’t. Of course.
The room she is in is dimly lit but retains a medicinal tang which makes it clear she is still in the hospital. This is confirmed when she looks around as much as her restraints will allow. The main overhead lights are off, just the little wall-mounted ones are on, their glow soft and orangey. The privacy curtain is half-drawn around her bed.
She hears footsteps and the man who grabbed her and smacked her over the head with her own guitar appears beside her. He still wears a nurses uniform but the first few buttons are undone, revealing varied necklaces of wooden beads beneath. He watches her anxiously, rubbing the beads, avoiding eye contact.
“What do you want?” she asks him.
He rubs the beads harder, looks past her, through the curtain.
“What he wants doesn’t matter,” a voice says from the other side of the plastic sheet. “What I want, however, does.”
And despite the distortion which layers it—she knows that voice.
The nurse takes the curtain in one hand and walks around her, pulling it with him as he goes. It reveals another bed parallel to Katja’s own, next to a large broad window which runs along one wall, blinds half-shuttered across it. The bed is empty but someone is sitting next to it, strapped into a contraption that is part wheelchair, part portable life-support unit. His legs and arms are strapped into place,a belt across his chest, IV lines warping around him like refracted light, the neck brace which tips his chin upwards exposing a line of thick scar tissue.
And when she realizes who it is, she wonders if perhaps the blow to the head was heftier than she had first thought because it can’t be, it just can’t be.
But it is.
It is.
58.
A middle-aged man appears at the top of the stairs and his jaw drops when he sees the two coming towards him. Nikolai stops moving, the barrel of the gun pressing deep into the soft muscle of his back and he grunts in pain.
Lady D looks past him at the man, whose mouth opens a little farther in response to the sight
of the blood-soaked debt collector.
“What?” she says, challenging him.
The man makes an abrupt U-turn and is gone, the sound of his hurried steps squeaking off the vinyl flooring and into the distance. Lady D gives Nikolai another shove to get him going again until they reach the second floor.
There’s a set of locked double-doors and a sign on the wall beside them details the strict visiting conditions of the High Dependency Unit along with instructions to press the buzzer for attention. A small security camera is embedded in the wall just above the door entry system.
Lady D swears under her breath.
Hits the buzzer.
A few moments pass then there’s a crackle of static and a voice says “Sorry, visiting hours are over.”
Lady D positions herself before the camera in such a way as to ensure they won’t get a clear view of her. “It’s security,” she says.
“Security? What’s wrong?”
“We believe an unauthorised person may have gotten into your ward. They were being pursued by my colleagues and they came up to this floor. Please open the door.”
“Nobody’s come in here, only—”
“Miss, please, this is urgent. The lives of your patients may be in danger.”
A pause. “Hold on,” she says.
“Fuck this up and I’ll kill you, understand?” Lady D tells Nikolai as she stands back and readies herself.
He nods then the door opens, just a little at first. A nurse peers through cautiously.
Lady D immediately shoves the door open, sending the woman flying backwards but she quickly gathers herself and then she’s running back to the nurse’s station a few metres away. The debt collector gives chase as best she can in her fractured heels.
The nurse throws herself at the desk, knocking aside the cheap erotica novel she had been reading, and reaches for a phone just a few inches away but Lady D snatches the woman’s arm and pulls her away, throws her to the ground.
“No you don’t,” Lady D says, then strikes the woman across the head with her gun. She hits the ground then just lies there, utterly still.
