Stuart MacBride - Shatter the Bones

‘Course she’s not — she’s got a fever, you idiot.’

Hot. Far too hot. Jenny forces her eyes open. Cold. And Hot. And the light stabs her head like a sharpened pencil. The room starts to twirl. Dirty ceiling, scribbled-on walls, a bare light bulb that swims across a dirty sky…

So thirsty.

‘Well? What the hell are we supposed to do?’

The monsters are in the corner, all crinkly and white. Like ghosts made of paper.

‘So, do we call a doctor, or what?’

Her lips crack and burn. ‘Mummy…’

‘Don’t be a dick, Tom.’

‘Who’re you calling a dick, Sylvester ?’

‘Mummy…?’ Her head thumps and whumps.

‘It’s OK, darling, Mummy’s here. Shhh…’

A cool hand strokes Jenny’s forehead. ‘Thirsty.’

‘Use your heads.’ This monster isn’t like the other ones. He has pointy horns and a red swishy tail. And when he steps on the floorboards little circles of fire sprout into life. ‘How the fuck are we supposed to explain this to a doctor? “Oh, you know those two off the telly who’ve been kidnapped? Well, guess what we found…”’

‘Where’s bloody Colin when you need him?’

Mummy raises her voice. ‘She needs water.’

The monsters stop arguing. ‘Yeah, right. Sylvester, get her a bottle or something…’

‘He’s not answering his phone. Why isn’t he answering his bloody phone? I said he was fucking unreliable, didn’t I, David? Didn’t I say he was a big fat fucking liability?’

‘Here, it’s pretty cold. You maybe shouldn’t let her drink it all at once, or she’ll puke.’

Mummy’s face ripples into view. Her eyes are pink, so is her nose. She sniffs, wipes a drip away with the back of her hand. ‘Here, sweetie, try and take little sips…’

The hard plastic shape presses against Jenny’s lips and she gulps. Cold, wet, soothing — spreading out inside her. A frozen octopus reaching all the way from her elbows to her knees.

‘We got to do something, what if she dies?’

‘She’s not going to fucking die.’ DAVID leaves a trail of fiery feet across the floor. ‘Here: the useless tosser’s left his medical bag. She just needs more antibiotics or something.’

The water goes away. Jenny reaches for it, but her hands wobble and flap. Two balloons filled with sausages…

‘Shhh… It’ll be OK, sweetie, it’ll be OK. Mummy promises.’

‘Found some Fluc… Fluc-lox-acillin,’ sounding it out, ‘that’s right, isn’t it?’

‘How much do we give her?’

‘I dunno. Can you overdose on antibiotics?’

‘God’s sake, Tom.’ DAVID sighs, his shoulders hunching. ‘You’ve got an iPhone, Google it.’

‘Right… OK. Yeah. Here we go — got it. Flucloxacillin… How much does she weigh?’

‘The fuck does that matter?’

‘Dose depends on how much she weights: thirty milligrams per kilo. She’s about, what — nineteen, twenty kilos?’ He fiddles with a needle and a little glass bottle, then squirts a little arc into the air, just like on the television. ‘Right … who’s going to do it?’

SYLVESTER backs away. ‘Nah, that’s Colin’s job.’

‘Yeah, but Colin’s no’ here, is he?’

‘Give me the bloody thing.’ DAVID holds out hand. ‘Does it go into a vein or muscle?’

‘Erm…’ He looks at the shiny flat thing again. ‘Either.’ Mummy’s voice wobbles. ‘Please don’t hurt her…’

‘You want another fucking lesson?’

She flinches back. ‘Didn’t think so. Hold the kid’s arm still.’

Jenny watches the shiny needle. It glints and sparkles in the sunshine. Out on the beach. A picnic with egg sandwiches, sausage rolls and Daddy. He lifts her up onto his shoulders and charges into the sea, laughing. Mummy waves from the sand.

The scratchy bee stings.

The bear crinkled its top lip. ‘What? Do I look like your fuckin’ mother?’ Its face was half fur, half scar tissue, the skin twisted into a permanent sneer.

Logan sneaked a look at the fridge. ‘I don’t know where it is.’

A smile. Not a nice smile, an I’m-going-to-bite-your-fucking-face-off smile… ‘You better hope that’s-’

The bear’s tummy started singing. ‘Shite…’

‘Jenny’s toe has to go back in the fridge.’ Logan blinked. Darkness. Blink. The pale green glow of the alarm-clock-radio turned the bedroom monochrome. The room had a funky, spice-garlic-and-bleach post-coital smell, socks and pants thrown about the place like a Roman orgy.

‘Urgh…’ Did the Romans wear pants under their togas?

His mobile was ringing.

‘Bloody…’ It took two goes to grab the thing.

Samantha grumbled and shifted in her sleep, mouth open just enough to expose the tip of her tongue and her top teeth. A snort. Smack, smack. Mumble.

Logan stabbed the button. ‘ What ?’

Yawn. He ground his right fist into his eye socket.

Silence.

Typical — that’s what he got for handing out his CID business card to every smack-head junkie tosspot in the north-east of Scotland.

‘I’m not running a sex line for mimes here. You either say something, or I’m hanging up in: five, four, three, two-’

‘Fuckin’ gave you the chance…’

Logan held the phone out and squinted at the little screen. ‘UNKNOWN NUMBER’.

‘Who is this?’

‘Consequences… You know? Everything has fuckin’ conse quences.’

‘Yeah, very funny. Now who the hell is…’ He frowned. ‘Shuggie Webster. It’s you , isn’t it? Next time I-’

The line went dead.

‘Please…’ Trisha Brown slumps back against the radiator. ‘Please…’

Just that little movement sends sharp flashes of pain racing up her left leg, like some fucker’s twisting screws into the broken bone.

Don’t look at it.

But it’s like a car crash, you know? Gotta look. Gotta see the blood and that.

Oh Jesus… The bit between her knee and her ankle is one huge fuck-off bruise, a lump, big as a scotch egg, sticking out the side. She wants to reach out and touch it, or pick at the scabbed bite marks on her ghost-white thighs. But she can’t, not with both hands cuffed above her head. Naked and shackled, on display like meat in a butcher’s shop.

She looks away.

It’s a basement, or a garage, something like that. Boiler for the central heating, big chest freezer. Washing machine. Shelves with tins and shit on them. No windows, just that fucking buzzing strip-light that he never turns off.

Her whole body aches and stings and burns . Cold and hot at the same time. Something deep inside her, torn and bleeding. Dirty.

She blinks back a tear. All that time down Shore Lane, making a bit of cash to keep herself in gear — and her little boy in them wee frozen pizzas he likes so much — and she never felt dirty before. Not like this.

How’s Ricky supposed to manage now? Stuck with his bloody smack-head grandmother. Trisha thumps her head back against the radiator. The cool metal sounds like a muffled bell or something. She does it again. Harder. Grits her teeth. Slamming her head into the thing — at least if she knocks herself out it won’t hurt any more.

It doesn’t work.

‘Maybe I should go off on the sick?’ DS Doreen Taylor stared into her coffee, spreading out the red-and-silver foil wrapper from her Tunnock’s Teacake on the canteen table, smoothing it to a shine with the back of her finger.

‘Ah…’ Bob nodded. ‘Women’s problems, eh?’

She didn’t look up. ‘ No . I just don’t know if I can take another day with that sanctimonious git-bag Superintendent Green.’ She sat up straight. ‘There, I said it.’