Стюарт Макбрайд - Now We Are Dead

They’d taped a wad of gauze across the gash in her face and the dressing stood out bright white against the bruises. Her eyes, hooded and heavy, the pupils dilated like shiny black buttons.

Roberta cleared her throat. Swallowed. Tried again: ‘Are you sure , Beatrice?’

It took a while for her to respond and when she did the words were thick and slurred. ‘Was dark... So dark... Knife.’

‘How about his voice, did he threaten you? Did he say anything?’

A slow-motion blink. ‘Tired... Sleep...’

‘Did he have an accent? Anything?’

The word, ‘There!’ hissed out from somewhere over by the door, followed by, ‘There she is.’

Roberta glanced up from Beatrice’s bandaged wrist. A fat nurse in pale blue scrubs stood in the doorway, nearly filling it, fists on her hips. Nose in the air. She dwarfed her companion — a weedy uniformed PC with greasy hair Brylcreemed into a hard side parting as if he’d just fallen out of the 1950s.

The wee sod jabbed a finger at Roberta, then at his feet. He adopted the same hissing rasp. ‘You: get over here! What do you think you’re doing?’

She took out one of her Police Scotland business cards and put it in Beatrice’s hand. Closed the cold fingers around it. ‘If you remember anything, anything at all. You call me, OK?’

The weedy PC bustled up. ‘You can’t be in here! This woman’s been attacked!’

His lardy sidekick was right behind him. ‘It’s not even visiting hours! You should be ashamed of yourself.’

Roberta gave Beatrice’s hand another gentle squeeze. ‘It gets better. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but it does. There comes a time when you won’t flinch if someone touches you. When your heart doesn’t feel like you’re going to die if you hear footsteps coming up behind you. When the darkness doesn’t make you want to scream.’ She stood, leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Trust me. I know.’

The nurse folded her arms, chin up. ‘I demand you leave this ward at once!’

Roberta stuck two fingers up, blew a very wet raspberry, then sauntered from the room, pausing to grab the PC by the ear on the way, taking him with her.

He squealed like a wee piggy. ‘Ow, ow, ow!’

A disdaining sniff as his sidekick turned to watch them leave. ‘Horrible woman. How anyone could—’

The ward doors clunked shut behind them, cutting her off.

Roberta dragged the weedy PC across the corridor to the vending machines, keeping a plier-like grip on his lug. ‘You know who I am?’

His face contorted for a moment or two, then it must have dawned, because his eyes bugged. ‘DCI... I mean Detective Sergeant Steel. You— Ow!’

She gave his ear another twist for luck.

‘Ow!’

‘Let’s try that again. Do — you — know — who — I — am?’

His face creased, little hands twitching at his sides. Then finally he got it. ‘No?’

There we go.

‘Good boy. Keep it that way.’ She released his ear and patted him on the cheek. ‘Now buy me a KitKat.’

Tufty stood in front of the pool car, scuffling from foot to foot. Face all creased and fidgety.

Roberta polished off the last of her pilfered KitKat. ‘You look like a dog with worms. Been calling you for ages !’

‘Nice people switch their phones off in Hospitals, you wormy wee spud.’ She crumpled up the KitKat wrapper and lobbed it in through the open passenger window. ‘Come on then: out with it.’

‘Mrs Galloway’s next-door neighbour: she says there’s two big thugs round there right now hammering away on the old dear’s door, yelling at her to open up!’

Roberta stared at him. ‘So get some sodding backup sorted!’

‘We’re closest. Going to be at least fifteen minutes till anyone else is free.’

Thugs.

Mrs Galloway. A grin spread across Roberta’s face, hard and sharp. ‘Get down with your bad self!’

Tufty backed away, chin pulled in. ‘Sarge? Why are you smiling?’

Because the dirty wee sods that beat up an old lady and microwaved her dog were about to come down with a serious dose of police brutality. ‘In the car, now!’

The lift juddered to a halt on the twelfth floor. Soon as the doors creaked open, shouting boomed in from the corridor outside.

‘Open up, you old bitch!’

‘Don’t be stupid, Agnes, you’re only making it worse on yourself!’

Roberta cranked her smile up a notch and charged out of the lift, Tufty right beside her.

Two massive bruisers, dressed all in black, battered on Mrs Galloway’s door. Boxers’ noses and rugby players’ ears. They could’ve been twins, except one was boiled-egg bald while the other had a stringy blond mullet and sunglasses. Both with Seventies’ porn star moustaches.

The bald one thumped on the door again. ‘I’m not kidding around here!’

His mate kicked it. ‘Open the bloody door!’

Roberta dug into her jacket and removed the extendable baton lurking there. Clacked it out to full length. ‘HOY, CHUCKLE BROTHERS!’

Tufty did the same with his baton, a wee canister of pepper spray in his other hand. ‘POLICE! NOBODY MOVE!’

Chuckle Brother Number One turned and peered at them over the top of his sunglasses. ‘Here to back us up, are you?’

She thwacked her baton off the corridor wall, adding to the scuffs and dents. ‘Oh, I’m going to enjoy this.’

Number Two held up his hands. ‘Nah, you got the wrong end, like.’

‘You battered an old lady. You wrecked her flat. YOU KILLED HER DOG!’

They both backed away at that, chins pulled in where their necks should’ve been.

Number Two frowned at Number One. ‘Dog?’

A shake of the head sent lanky blond wisps floating at the back of Number One’s head. ‘Nah, we’re totally not that.’ He pulled out a sheet of paper. ‘Bailiffs. Got a court order to seize goods worth two thousand pound, don’t we?’

‘We never killed no dog!’ Number Two’s face contracted around his broken nose. ‘What kinda people you think we are?’

Roberta stared at them. ‘You’re bailiffs ?’

‘I got two cocker spaniels!’

The bailiffs stood in the middle of the living room, heads bowed, feet shuffling, hands clasped in front of them — a pair of schoolboys waiting for a thrashing from the headmaster. Only bigger. And more muscly. With the occasional tattoo poking out from the necks of their black T-shirts.

Mrs Galloway sat in her wonky armchair, somehow even thinner and older and frailer than she’d been this morning, a fibreglass cast on her arm. Trying no’ to make eye contact with anyone. Especially the massive pair of thugs who’d been battering on her door two minutes ago.

Roberta poked Bailiff Number One. ‘Go on then.’

He cleared his throat. Looked at his mate. Then back at the poor battered auld wifie sitting there like a broken sparrow. ‘Erm... Mrs Galloway? Rick and me got this warrant and...’ He swivelled his head from side to side, taking in the shabby wee room. ‘And I’m really sorry to hear about your wee dog.’

Bailiff Number Two, AKA: Rick, nodded. ‘That’s a shitty thing to do. See if I ever get my hands on the bastard what did that, I’ll—’

‘Anyway, we can see you got nothing worth two grand. So I’m gonna go back to the office and see what we can do about a payment plan, or something, right? Spread the costs?’

Rick tightened his fists. ‘A wee dog...’

The pair of them were waiting for the lift as Steel and Tufty stepped out of Mrs Galloway’s flat.

Tufty closed the door, pulling on the handle till the Yale lock clicked into place. ‘Think she’ll be OK?’