Nicola Griffith - The Blue Place

Hjørdis’s street appeared magically on my left and I turned, and there it was, events unfurling like a brightly coloured pennant: Julia in her blue cotton dress walking back up the street on the right-hand side, towards Hjørdis’s door—the car keys are still in her hand and she hums to herself; the doors of a dark green Toyota opening and two men stepping out, guns in hand—guns suddenly held close to their thighs and hidden as they hear the Volvo engine.

Unhurriedly, smiling slightly, I drive sedately down the street. Level with them, face to face, past them. They flick me a glance, dismiss me, relax. I flip on the cruise control, open the door, and roll out into the street. They don’t notice. They are watching Julia, one crossing the street behind her, one staying on this side. Time slows and stretches, and I glide like butter up behind the man raising his Glock. The grey polymer barrel doesn’t even gleam in the sun as he lines it up on the woman in the blue dress.

It is too easy. My elbow flashes out and docks perfectly with the soft spot at the base of his skull just as he squeezes the trigger, and he hits the pavement, dead, at the same time as his bullet hits the steps that lead up to Hjørdis’s front door. Then we’re all moving: the woman in the blue dress turning, mouth open, the man across the street to look at me, then back at the woman. His arm rises, a tiny tongue of light like a second, little sun jumps from the tip of the barrel, and I laugh as I sweep him off his feet, laugh as I land with my knees in his stomach, laugh as I take his fist in mine and turn it, laugh at the shock on his freckled face as I squeeze that tight warm hand and the freckles disappear in red ruin.

I stretch and smile. All done. I am still smiling as I walk over to the woman, who is lying on the pavement, one arm stretched up the steps. From the waist down, the blue dress is red. She begins to writhe and mewl. I kneel, touch the brown hair coming loose from the bandeau, then frown and start to get up when I realize I’m kneeling in something wet, but there’s something about the smell of the woman’s hair, something…

Cloudberries. Julia. This woman in the blue dress gushing her life out on the pavement and insane with shock is Julia .

I ripped off my tunic, wadded it, pressed it against her abdomen. It turned red immediately and she was moving so much I couldn’t keep the pressure on. I knelt on her shoulders. “Julia. Don’t die. You can’t die. Julia. Stay with me! Julia.”

Footsteps. Hjørdis, cradling her hunting rifle. “I called an ambulance. It was so fast! Oh, dear god, Aud.”

“Come here. Hold this down. Press hard.” She did. I started unwinding the bandages from my shoulders and arm.

“But you’ve been shot!”

I stripped off the bloody mess and wadded it. Blood trickled freely down my back and arm. “When I count to three, lift your hands and put them straight back. One, two, three. Press hard.”

Squeal of tires. Slam of car doors. Running feet.

“They’re dead,” I said to Sampo and the woman. “Drag that one”—McCall—“across the road. Put him over here by the other one.” Ginger. “Make it look as though they killed each other. There’s a gun in the Volvo with my fingerprints on.” The gun I didn’t use. The gun I should have used. “Get rid of it.”

“Aud, I can’t hold her.”

Julia was thrashing like a wild thing, as mindless and limber as a beast in her shock, throwing off Hjørdis, who was a big woman, long enough to twist over onto her stomach. No exit wound.

“Sit on her legs.” I wrapped my arms around her head. “You,” I called to the woman with Sampo, “come and pin her shoulders. Tante, I’ll take over the compress.”

“… a gaping wound, wider than the hands of anyone who would try to staunch the bleeding. A hole so big it could swallow the world .”

“ I have big hands .”

She writhed, like a run-over kitten with a broken back.

“Julia. The ambulance is coming. Just stay alive a few more minutes, then they can do it for you. Stay alive.”

Everything under my hands was red.

She stayed alive until the ambulance arrived. I had to help the EMTs keep her still so they could get shunts in both arms. When one suggested I ride in the second ambulance that was pulling up, spilling red light over Hjørdis’s street—red the exact colour of the bunad—I took him by the throat and shook him a little.

She stayed alive until we got to the hospital. She was still alive as they wheeled her into surgery.

“She’s strong,” I told the three nurses and one doctor in surgical greens who stood with me by the swinging doors. One of the nurses held a hypodermic. “Shouldn’t you be in there, helping her?”

“We’re here to help you.”

“Oh, no,” I said gently. “I’m fine,” and I plucked the needle from the nurse’s hand and squirted the drug onto the floor, but then something bit through my pants and three of them were nodding in satisfaction as the fourth stepped out from behind me and capped her own syringe.

“We need to take a look at you,” one of them said. I backed up against the wall.

“Julia.”

“There’s nothing you can do to help her now.”

The wall was cool and solid against my skin. It also seemed to be moving upwards. All I could see were four pairs of green-clad legs and white scrub shoes.

“Go get a gurney.”

One of the pairs of green trousers walked away down the corridor, then all I could see was the floor.

The room smelled of clean sheets and the lemons Hjørdis had left.

“The police are accepting the story that those two American men were fighting over a woman and you got hit in the cross-fire,” said Sampo.

“Not easily.”

“No. But what other explanation is there? Especially as your prints were on neither weapon and you are such a respectable citizen. The wound helps, of course.”

“Yes.”

We measured each other. If it wasn’t for my letter insurance, I would never have woken from that sedative.

“What’s your real name?”

“Harald.”

“Like the king.”

“Just like the king.”

We didn’t shake hands before he left.

A nurse came in with a tray full of needles and scissors and bandages. She worked quickly, with that lack of tenderness endemic to the profession. “You have another visitor waiting to see you. I told her you had already talked to too many people today.”

“Who is it?”

“I didn’t get her name. She’s American.”

“Tell her she can come in when you’ve finished.”

It was Annie. No longer laughing, eyes circled with jet lag and worry. She took a chair by the bed but did not seem to know what to say.

“When did you get here?”

“Two hours ago.”

“Are her brother and sister coming?”

I thought for a moment she didn’t understand me. “Oh. No. Drew…well, Drew can’t come. And Carmel is at the U.S. Research Station in McMurdo Sound. In the Antarctic. I haven’t been able to get through to her.” She sat there helplessly.

“You’ve talked to the doctors?”

“Yes. They tell me she’s critical but stable. A lot of internal damage. Her liver—” She stopped abruptly. “I was going to say it’s shot to pieces. A figure of speech. But it really is. It really is shot to pieces. They had to take out four inches of colon, too. And one of her kidneys. It was the bullet, they said. A special bullet that bounced around inside.”

“The only irreparable damage is to her liver.”

“She…she’s strong, isn’t she?”

“Very strong.”

“And a liver transplant would make her as good as new again, wouldn’t it?”