Стюарт Макбрайд - All That’s Dead

Scott Meyrick’s hospital room wasn’t as cluttered as King’s — no cortege of nurses fussing around, no bank of machinery to bleep and ping and flash warning lights. He was on his own, sitting up in his bed, with an IV in his arm. Eyes screwed shut, tears spilling down his cheeks, shoulders heaving as he sobbed.

A large gauze pad sat in the middle of his face, held there by a cordon of surgical tape. Red and yellow dots stained the pad’s centre, where his nose should have been.

Poor sod.

Logan settled on the edge of the bed. ‘How are you?’

Meyrick turned his face away, one hand coming up to hide the padding. His voice was strange — hollow, flat and thin. Jagged with crying. ‘They... turned... me into... a monster ... I’m a monster!’

Logan put a hand on his leg through the covers. ‘The reconstructive surgeons are very good here. Some of the best in the country.’

‘I was going... to be on... Strictly .’

‘Did they say anything to you, Scott? When they grabbed you, or when you were in the... in the freezer? Anything at all?’

He dropped his hand and stared at Logan. ‘Look at me.’

‘Doesn’t matter how small a thing it was, anything you can tell us might help us catch her.’

‘LOOK AT ME!’ He grabbed at the gauze pad and ripped it down, exposing two narrow slits. Raw and bloody. All that was left of his nose. Mhari had carved it away, right down to the bone. ‘Look at me...’

Logan picked the gauze pad up from the scratchy NHS sheets and placed it over those two bloody slits again, smoothing the sticking strips down. Doing his best to sound as if he knew what he was talking about: ‘It’ll be OK. I know this all seems horrific and overwhelming, and that’s because it is. It will get better, though. You have to give it time.’

‘I was... I was... going to be... someone!’

Oh God.

He wrapped his arms around Scott Meyrick and held him as he sobbed.

What was it about the paintings lining the hospital corridors? You’d think, after all this time, they’d have lost their ability to dredge up the past, but every time he saw them it was the same. The boredom of limping up and down for months. The vague nausea that accompanied every gelatinous overcooked glob of beige cauliflower cheese. The tugging, nagging pain of stitches. And yet another vow never to get stabbed again.

He turned the corner into the Monitoring Ward — the paintings swapped for corkboards covered in memos, notices, and the odd thank you card.

A uniformed PC sat on a plastic chair, parked outside one of the private rooms. Small and dark-haired, the sleeves of her Police Scotland T-shirt stretched tight by huge biceps. She looked up from her celebrity gossip magazine as Logan approached, and smiled. ‘Guv, I heard you were back. How’s the stomach?’

‘Slightly less stabby.’ He pointed at the observation window behind her. ‘What about our friend, Professor Wilson?’

She grimaced. ‘DS Steel’s in with him now.’ Then lowered her magazine. ‘If I’d known I was going to be stuck here all shift I’d have brought a book.’

‘Has he said anything?’

‘Oh he’s said lots of things, mostly about how incompetent Police Scotland are and how he’s going to sue us for not rescuing him earlier.’

Of course he was. Because no one said thank you any more, did they? No, it was all lawsuits this and formal complaints that.

Logan looked in through the window — all the lights were on in the room, showing Steel, sitting in one of the visitors’ chairs with her feet up on the bed. Professor Wilson was slumped against the pillows, the stumps of his wrists covered in fresh bandages. Two IV lines hooked up to one arm.

Odd.

‘I thought there would be more... shouting.’

The constable nodded. ‘Oh, there was to start with, but she’s calmed him down somehow.’

‘Probably doubled the morphine going into his drip.’ The smile faded on Logan’s face. ‘You don’t think she’d do that, would she?’

‘With Steel, who can tell?’

He knocked on the glass and the Wrinkly Horror looked up. Nodded at him.

Two minutes later, the door opened and Steel slouched out, cracking a huge yawn. Then a shudder. And a sigh. ‘Pffff...’

Logan stepped in front of her. ‘Have you fiddled with Professor Wilson’s morphine?’

‘Course no’.’ Scuffing past. ‘But you’ll be happy to know he’s no’ threatening to sue us any more.’

Really?

She wandered off down the corridor.

He turned and looked through the window again. Professor Wilson sat there, with his stumps in his lap, face pinched, shoulders trembling as he cried. OK...

Logan hurried after her. ‘How did you manage that?’

‘You really don’t want to know. How’s Kingy?’

‘Not good.’

Another yawn. ‘Told you this whole thing was an utter disaster.’

The car park opposite the hospital’s main entrance was lit up like a very ugly Christmas present that had been wrapped by an undertaker.

According to Logan’s watch it wasn’t even twenty to four yet, but faint blue was already creeping into the dark violet sky. Marking the coming dawn.

A wee auld mannie sat hunched in his wheelchair, beneath the portico lights, sooking away on a roll-up, holding the smoke down as if it was more vital to his health than the oxygen tank he was hooked up to.

Steel stepped out into the night air, pulled out her e-cigarette and vaped up a cumulonimbus of watermelon steam. ‘You can’t blame yourself, you know that, don’t you?’

Logan leaned against one of the bollards. ‘Yes. But I still do.’

A sigh. ‘Yeah, me too.’ She had a good industrial-strength sniff. ‘Who do you think this “Wallace” is?’

‘Been wondering that myself.’ As if they didn’t have enough imponderables on this sodding case. ‘I’ll get Nightshift to go through the HOLMES data, see if anyone called Wallace has cropped up anywhere.’

‘Mind you, there wasn’t an actual “Judas”, was there? Maybe...’ She stopped, turned, and stared at the little old man. ‘What the hell you think you’re looking at, Grandad?’

The grey wrinkly chin came up. ‘Havin’ a fag.’

‘Aye, well sod off and do it somewhere else, this is police business.’

He scowled at her. ‘That’s no’—’

‘Go on, hop it. Before I do you for loitering with intent.’

He stubbed his cigarette out and grumbled away on his wheelchair. Muttering about fascists and living in a police state.

Logan raised an eyebrow. ‘Was that really necessary?’

‘He’s on an oxygen tank. Silly sod shouldn’t be smoking anyway.’ Steel took an extra hard drag on her e-cigarette as if to emphasise the point. Then blew it all out at Logan. ‘As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted, maybe “Wallace” represents an idea instead?’

Maybe.

‘Like “Three Monkeys”?’

‘Aye: ears, eyes, tongue; “Devil Makes Work” is hands; “Spite” is nose; “Judas” is thirty pieces of silver. Well, thirty galvanised seventy-five-mill clout nails, but it’s the thought that counts.’

‘So what the hell is “Wallace”?’

She frowned out at the pre-dawn light for a bit, puffing away at her personal storm cloud. Then shook her head. ‘Buggered if I know.’ Another huge yawn shuddered through her. ‘Lovely Roberta needs her bed. And maybe a nightcap.’ She jiggled one leg. ‘And I wouldn’t mind a wee, either.’

So much for that.

Logan patted her on the shoulder. ‘Go home, I’ll see you in the morning.’

‘What about you? You look like something Mr Rumpole sicked up.’

Felt like it too.