Tim Heath Thriller Boxset

by Tim Heath

  “So, Alison, are things starting to calm down at all on the general ward?”

  “You know, I thought it would have done by now. Most of those who haven't died are in such a bad way that they cannot leave. So they are taking up lots of beds. People can't die soon enough for the bed space we need.” She caught herself, realising how that sounded. “I didn't quite mean it like that.”

  Lorna was smiling.

  “I get what you are saying. So, there's been no let-up?”

  “None at all. It's as if it is all happening again and again, fresh each day. People are only now starting to show signs of the radiation poisoning weeks after the incident. Many are new cases too, and some are the rescue crews who are trying to contain the situation and those who are clearing the crash sites. Some are those who ignored the calls to evacuate, too old or too stubborn to leave home. Many of these new cases are passing away really quickly. There seems little, if anything, we can do.”

  Lorna could hear the desperation in her voice now, that sense of loss, of despair, the fact that the years of training and decades of combined experience counted for very little when faced with such an aggressive poison. Her primary role and that of all the staff in the hospital still working, was to ease the pain of death.

  “What are the levels like?” Lorna said, asking about the staffing levels since the incident. They had been stretched, to say the least, when she was in the general wards just moments after the event.

  “I've not bothered to count. We are something like twenty-five per cent from the normal levels, working one hundred per cent longer shifts with hardly any rest periods.” In the past, they had worked up to ten hour days, or nights, with a rota of four days on and four days off. Lorna could only imagine the pressure they were all under now. She knew it firsthand because though she was just working with the one patient, she had to be permanently on duty. At the beginning that had meant sleep for a maximum of about three hours at a time. That grew to about five hours as he progressed through the program. Now at about six, she felt a lot better. John was in a safe pattern, was coping well emotionally, and seemed to be fully invested in all that he needed to do. She now wondered how much longer she had with the patient. Soon, inevitably, she would be back on the wards as well. In some way, that thought brought slight relief, if only for a moment. She knew that for that to happen, she'd have to have sent John on his way to his death. A death he thought was his calling. In fact, it was just for their survival. She pushed that thought from her mind, for the moment.

  “I can't begin to believe how tired you must be, Alison.”

  Alison turned to her, tears in her eyes. It was not just tiredness there, but grief––sadness. Pure emotion.

  “I've lost the ability to sleep. When I get the time, I just see the faces of those who are dying. My mind's crammed with thoughts. The staff room, as you know, has people coming and going all the time. They don't mean to be noisy; it's just I've become such a light sleeper.”

  Lorna understood that completely. Her first few days after the incident had been the same. Faced with such chaos, she didn't know how to fall asleep at the end of it all. She'd finally taken some pills to help with the matter.

  “Look, I'll let you into a little secret, Alison if you promise not to tell. I've been using some strong sleeping pills, and there is a spare room, kept quiet, where I get to sleep. I think you need to try it too. It's away from people, away from all the noise. I've felt guilty having it all to myself, knowing what the staff room is like at the best of times. Why don't you use it tonight, to get some proper sleep? No one would disturb you, and I'll make sure of it.”

  “Thanks,” she said, still not sure what to say about it. She didn't know what would make the difference and wasn't too keen on taking pills to help her sleep. “Let's get some more fresh air, and we'll see.”

  They continued walking, the sun now on the horizon, evening drawing in fast.

  “So tell me, how is our star patient doing?” Alison said, turning to Lorna, as if saying over to you, I've said enough for now.

  “John has started his physiotherapy. Getting him walking again is the main challenge now. He's currently in with the doc, his third session regarding his memory loss.”

  “Still had nothing from the past?”

  “No, nothing. It seems uncertain whether anything will come back. Certainly, now that things are not falling into place, it seems most likely, between you, me and the doc, that nothing will change. There is some more they can do, so until they've done it all, I guess we won't know.”

  “How are the legs?”

  “That's been hard, but a little more promising. At least we can see John's legs, and we know where they are!” She was smiling at her attempt at a joke. “It was hard, the first session anyway. Always is.”

  Alison knew that only too well.

  “But the damage is certainly not permanent,” Lorna continued. “There is a lot to work with, and John did manage to stand up under his weight the last session, which was a huge encouragement for us all.”

  Alison nodded. She would have loved to have still been involved in it all but was not envious of Lorna. It hadn't been her doing; they'd both just been puppets in the system. She was happy with the success Lorna was having with the patient. She felt collective pride.

  “Look, I think we had better start heading back,” Alison said, indicating the growing darkness. “I would like to take you up on that offer for some sleep. I think I am losing the will to live.”

  Lorna looked over at her once senior colleague and saw the smile on her face returning.

  “Sure, be my guest. Take as long as you need. I slept for a while during the day, and I'll snatch what sleep I can tonight. John is going to need to chat about things anyway.”

  “Thanks, Lorna, you're a real friend.”

  As they walked back towards the hospital, Lorna thought through those last words. She didn't have many friends besides Alison now. It was as if the disaster had forged stronger links, this shared experience making them closer, while her other friends seemed less connected now. Communication had a big part to play in that, as she hadn't been able to speak to many people since it all started. None of them knew, as far as she was aware, about her James. She didn't even know if any of her friends had died. In the early days, when she was in the general ward, she had wondered whether the next person carried in would be someone she knew. But there were too many, and that thought soon got swamped. But now, with her James gone, and John aside, Alison was the one friend she could talk to, and with whom she could be herself. With John, it was another matter entirely, as if it was another world. She was living in his alternative reality as much as he was. That became clearer the longer they went on.

  Getting back to the hospital, now that it was very dark outside, they passed through security and went their separate ways, Lorna back to John, Alison for some much-needed sleep. Maybe she thought, I can finally get some hours of quiet that will make me feel at least half human once again. Little did she know that she would not, in fact, wake up.

  Security at the hospital had been tight all night and, to a large extent, they didn't know what was happening. Two teams had been guarding John's room throughout the night.

  Lorna had been with John when the incident had happened, and though she'd heard a lot of activity, going out twice to check what was going on, they were shielded from it all. Lorna had even managed to go off to find somewhere to sleep, and only in the morning had been told what had happened.

  The grief was like an ice dagger to the heart. Cold and biting, Lorna was physically moved by the news that Alison was dead, killed in her sleep by unknown attackers. The report was horrific at the best of times, and now even more so. Had she been the intended target? Lorna was thinking about this, as she was on her way to a briefing meeting with a new group of specialists.

  “What's happened to the others?” Lorna asked straight away; too many things were changing all at once.

  “The
y too were affected last night,” came the reply.

  It was the tone of voice from this new stranger that told Lorna exactly how they had been affected.

  “Oh God,” she said, her hand coming up to her mouth, her body starting to shake. Someone placed a stiff arm on her shoulder which seemed to bring some comfort.

  “Look, Lorna, we don't have much time,” they started. Why don't we have much time? was what raced through Lorna's head, but she kept that thought to herself, for the time being.

  “Last night was a shock to us all. We all lost someone we cared about. But we are certain the target was not Alison. They were here for John, and that is what worries us most.”

  “What?” Lorna said, a lack of understanding clear in her voice now. “I don't get it. Why were they after John?”

  “Look, we don't know. We've worked hard at keeping it quiet, keeping this whole operation a secret, but someone found out. And more than that, someone wanted John dead.”

  “Wanted? So the threat to John is gone now, it's over?” Lorna said, picking up on what they'd just said.

  “We cannot yet assume that to be the case. John is still alive.”

  “You mean, they are going to come back?” There was genuine horror on Lorna's face. She didn't think her situation could have got any worse, bad as it was, and yet it just had. Things were now getting out of control, and people were getting killed because of it. Alison had been killed. Lorna still couldn't get her head around the thought. She was convinced that she would bump into her colleague somewhere around the hospital, that at lunchtime, she would find her and they would go out and talk again. It was only hours since Lorna had seen her and Alison had been fully alive and well. Lorna couldn't deal with the fact that she'd lost another close friend.

  “Look, Lorna,” came the tender reply, “you need to let us concentrate on the security side. That is not going to happen again. We need you to concentrate on your role, the vital work and progress you are seeing with your patient. Last night has shown us that there is only so much time. The longer we leave it, the more risks there are.”

  “But who were they? Who are these people that would want to kill John? It doesn't make sense,” Lorna said, thinking out loud.

  “That, my dear, is the million dollar question. And believe me, before the day is out, we hope that we will have those answers ourselves. For your safety though, we want to post a security team around you at all times, just to be careful.”

  “I thought I wasn't the target?” she said, not sounding too impressed with what they were suggesting.

  “You aren't; it's just us being extra prudent. Anyone involved in this operation is a target. Take the team that was working with you, for example. They happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now they are all history.”

  What they didn't tell her was that they were not the ones who had stopped the intruders. That in fact, they had no idea what had happened and had it not been for the smoke alarms, the attackers might have got away altogether. It had been a wake-up call of the highest order. Five people had been killed because of it: one nurse and the four-person team monitoring John. Vitally, more through luck than judgement, John himself had not been affected in any way and was carrying on as before. Today would bring another round of therapy, and further work with his memory loss.

  Lorna left the brief meeting feeling numb. The loss of Alison only highlighted how little she had accepted the loss of James. It was ironic, at least to Lorna at the moment, that there she was, surrounded by death on a daily basis, and yet so ill-prepared to deal with it herself. Lorna had sat with too many grieving relatives throughout her career, telling them to do things that she was unable to do herself.

  Lorna knew she would have to work hard at keeping all of this from John. The slightest gap in her armour and he would be asking questions she couldn't possibly answer. No, she determined to herself as she walked the corridors back towards his room, she wasn't going to do that. Not now, not after all this time. She'd have to bury those thoughts. Hide them from herself, deny them the time to breathe or develop.

  Walking back into John's room, her patient lost in another novel, and Lorna carried on as if nothing had changed. Keeping herself busy, doing the things that needed to be done––anything to avoid reality.

  At the secure military base somewhere in London, the seven wounded agents of the African secret service were being held, ahead of intense interrogation that would start in due course.

  Kept apart from one another, none of them knew which of the others had survived and what, if anything, they were saying to the British.

  The documentation had been thoroughly analysed. It was extremely rare for such materials to be carried around by a foreign hit squad on hostile soil. The MI5 and military personnel holding the prisoners knew this only too well. And yet the paperwork seemed to check out, even if they were not, in fact, official original versions of the passports. They were forged, that was clear to see, though they'd been done well, and each document did indeed seem to belong to one of the people arrested.

  Best guess at the moment was that an unknown ninth member of the team had done this to them, for reasons as yet unknown, turning in his own unit. No contact had been made, no messages passed on to them. The longer it continued, the stranger the silence became. What had been the intention and why leave it so late?

  At Thames House, the home of MI5, teams were working through surveillance footage from around the hospital, leading up to the time of the attack, as well as immediately after it. Every angle studied, and clues looked at for what understanding that would give as to what took place.

  By mid-afternoon, each of the seven prisoners had been taken for questioning. Each prisoner was alarmed, in turn, to be confronted with their name and rank. How had the British found that out so quickly? Each had stood their ground. Besides knowing their name and nationality, nothing more was gained. Officially, they were entirely cut off. As expected, neither Nigeria or South Africa admitted to any knowledge of them. They appeared on no watch list or spy list. Nothing on either the MI5 or CIA system showed anything, and the Americans were brought on board once the British were running into dead ends with their searches. The only person either intelligence agency had anything on had been the chief who'd been found with a bullet in his head at the hospital. The only one they could have leaned hard on, and the highest ranking officer, had been the one killed at the scene. Had that been planned, or was it just an accident? The CIA had quite a bit on the chief, and he was a well known and highly experienced African military general. He'd trained with teams in Nigeria as well as his native South Africa. Having first been posted to Europe about a decade before, it was widely understood that he was now overseeing the field agents for the secret service. He was not a risk, and therefore only a few notes were made in his file. Most teams based in Europe were there to watch threats that would come back to Africa, militant groups who would send squads to the African populations around Europe, especially to London and Paris. Organisations who would recruit, train and send would-be terrorists back to Africa.

  Sitting around trays of empty cups, the evening drawing in after a long day at Thames House, the MI5 officers were still keen to talk.

  “So, the two big questions that remain are these: firstly, what was this rogue team of agents, presumably working for some African country, doing here, with interest in killing John Westlake? And secondly, who stopped them, and why?”

  There was a consensual nod around the table, yet no one dared to be the first to try to answer the question. They hoped they would soon know, but were not ready for what that answer might mean.

  It had been one week since the incident at the hospital, and though still fresh in Lorna's mind, for the most part, life had got back to normal at the increasingly understaffed hospital. Alison's absence was more noticeable each day, more so for Lorna than for anyone. It was as if the soul had gone out of the job now. There was no one for her to talk to, and the last seven day
s had been different. Not hard, as such, because it had always been that, but tough to process, as she had no one to talk with really. So much of her frustrations she was having to choke down, burying them in a place she hoped they could stay indefinitely.

  For John's part, he was unaware of anything having happened, and he'd been making some real progress, at least with his walking. Having taken his first few steps the other day, he was now able to cross his small room unaided.

  His memory recovery programme was another story altogether. Having tried everything they could, it was agreed that for the time being, they would stop. There had been no change. The exercises had failed to make any difference, which was not uncommon, but still was quite a rare occurrence. All that was left were the trigger points, but these were not obvious, and also not possible for John. He'd have to accept the fact that he would not get any of his long-term memory back. Instead, he got to create his memories again by what he chose to do in life from that moment forward. It was apparently a distant second best but would have to do for now. John still held hope; he might one day discover who he had once been, but the odds were growing longer against him by the day. At least he had his improving mobility to lighten the mood. Even Lorna was finding it a welcome distraction.

  “So how does it feel like to be a walking man again?” she said when they were just the two of them once again, the physiotherapist having left after the latest afternoon session.