Stuart MacBride - Halfhead

Nairn moved forward and the image on the screen grew. There were two figures, one wrapped round the other. Will couldn’t see the hidden entrance, but Nairn obviously could-he dug his knife into a join in the wall and twisted.

Sudden motion. Swearing. A jumble of limbs. Someone making a run for it. Shouting. The hard crackle of a Field Zapper at full charge. More shouting, the words all running together, then, ‘Jillian? Can you hear me, Jillian?’

Jillian Kilgour, eighteen years old, was curled in a ball on the floor of the hidden alcove.

Someone knelt down next to her and felt for a pulse. The trooper hauled her upright, cradling the young woman in his arms as he checked for wounds: making sure there was nothing life threatening. There was something wrong with the back of Jillian’s head. Will leaned forward in his chair to get a better look, but the picture was too fuzzy. He could see the trooper’s hand come away from the bulge at the base of Jillian’s skull:

‘What the fuck?’ The voice was low and shocked. The trooper stared at the back of the young woman’s head: ‘Oh Jesus Christ…’

And then Jillian’s body was on the floor again, dropped so the person holding her could be sick. The eighteen-year-old just lay there, shivering quietly until someone covered her up.

The other troopers gathered round…and then the signal died, leaving Will with nothing but angry, grey static. He didn’t need to read the duty doctor’s report on Colin Mitchell to guess what happened next. He was given a kicking. Not enough to kill him, or do any serious damage. Just enough to really hurt. The report would say he’d fallen badly when they zapped him. That he’d caught his head on the door handle. That he’d broken a rib on the occasional table. That someone had accidentally stood on his hand hard enough to dislocate all of his fingers.

Will turned down the sound on the film window, waiting for the picture to come back while he called up the hospital report on Jillian Kilgour.

‘What you doing?’ Jo’s voice made him jump. He looked around and she was standing just behind the couch, looking rumpled and sleepy. She hadn’t bothered to dress.

‘Reading your notes on the Kilgour case.’ He pointed at the screen, there was no point in lying.

‘It was horrible.’ She picked the other tumbler off the tabletop. The motion was casual, but it was enough to get Will’s heart, and other parts, throbbing.

‘Want to talk about it?’

Jo shook her head. ‘No.’ She pulled the top off the whisky and filled the glass half-way up.

‘OK.’ He switched off the screen and pushed the keyboard away. He didn’t power down the machine or close the connection, though.

She wandered over to the patio doors and stood there, sipping her drink and staring out into the rain. Will watched transfixed. She was so unselfconscious. There was no way he could have paraded about in the nip like that. Not with the blinds open.

‘He fell down a bit when we arrested him.’

Will nodded, but didn’t say anything.

‘Nairn was all for taking him out on the roof and seeing if the fucker could fly.’ She wrapped an arm round herself, her skin golden caramel in the reflected city light. ‘Had my vote.’

He picked himself up out of the settee and joined her in front of the glass, slipping a hand round her waist. Jo leaned against him, her skin hot to the touch.

‘Jillian Kilgour was dead before we got her back to the Dragonfly. Duty doctor said she was lucky: if she’d lived she’d’ve spent the rest of her life in a tank. Neurological trauma.’ Jo sniffed and Will could see her teeth clamping down on her bottom lip again.

She dragged in a couple of deep breaths and wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. ‘Mitchell thrummed a hole in the back of her head, just about here.’ She tapped Will’s skull at the very back, just above the line of his left ear. ‘Doctor said the hole went straight through to the prefrontal lobe. All the way through.’ She let her hand drop back to her side. ‘He used a hot-glue-gun: fixed a condom to the back of that poor girl’s head.’

Will had a nasty feeling he knew what was coming next.

‘He was fucking her. In the head.’ The tears were flowing freely now. ‘He was sticking his dick in the back of that girl’s head and fucking her. It…It…He…’

Will folded her in his arms and sank to the floor with her, rocking her back and forth until she cried herself dry.

Dawn broke, but it made little difference to the day outside. The dense clouds and pounding rain wouldn’t let the daylight through. Everything was grey and miserable.

Will sat on his own at the dining-room table, wrapped up in his dressing gown, huddling around a hot mug of tea. He yawned. Rubbed at his gritty eyes. Sighed. It had been a long, difficult night. Jo had tossed and turned in her sleep, when she could sleep at all, and he hadn’t been much better: the nightmares were back in stomach-churning Technicolor.

Will’s enforced compassionate leave was officially over tomorrow. He’d been looking forward to going back to work, but now that Jo was here, he found didn’t really want to. There was more to life than paperwork and crime statistics.

At least they’d have the day together. A lazy Sunday breakfast, maybe a walk in the rain-anywhere other than Kelvingrove Park-late lunch, go do something fun. OK, so they’d have to detour past the hospital for his follow-up appointment with Doc Morrison, but other than that he had nothing on…Which was another good idea: spend the day in bed.

He gave Jo another hour before making a pot of tea and carrying it through to the bedroom. She was already awake and half dressed. As he walked in she jumped and clutched her shirt to her chest, hiding her bra.

‘Will, sir, I think I-’

He didn’t let her finish.

‘Before you say anything,’ he said, settling the teapot down on the bedside table, ‘I want you to know that I don’t consider last night to be a mistake. I’ve liked you since the first day we met.’ He paused and shrugged. ‘Well…except for that bit with the dismembered body in the toilet of course.’

She kept her mouth shut, so he soldiered on.

‘It’s Sunday and I’d like you to spend the day with me. We could go out to Comlab Six, save the world from Martian invaders, or rampaging dinosaurs, maybe go somewhere fancy for dinner. Whatever you like.’

She looked at him, then down at the carpet. ‘I’ve…em…got a lot of paperwork to catch up on.’

‘I see.’ He picked the tea up and carried it back into the living room, leaving her to finish dressing in peace.

When Jo emerged from the bedroom five minutes later she looked ready to leave. ‘Did you mean what you said back there?’ she asked.

Will nodded.

‘I really do have a lot of paperwork to get through,’ she said, slinging her bag over her shoulder, ‘but if you like we could meet up after lunch and go save the world?’

Will got himself another cup of tea and sank down on the couch. Smiled. She wanted to see him again. OK, so it wasn’t quite the day of indulgence and nakedness he’d been hoping for, but it was a better than nothing.

Much better.

So why did he still feel guilty?

His love life had been sparse since Janet died. Three and a half years of celibacy, followed by a one-night stand with an executive from Dis-Com-Lein over on a junket from the small South African country her company owned. Her cloned, faintly oriental features had been a feature of his life for almost four whole hours. She’d phoned him a couple of times, but he never called her back. The memory of Janet was still too raw. The next two had suffered the same fate. He’d start out well enough, but in the end he just couldn’t let them in.