Stuart MacBride - Halfhead

Only the rattle of the air conditioning and the hum of the doctor’s terminal broke the silence.

Jo stood with her back against the wall, arms crossed, face working its way round a frown. ‘Will,’ she said at last, ‘when we were in your house this morning I noticed all these pictures of a woman…’

So that was it.

Not exactly a conversation he’d been looking forward to.

‘It’s…’ He cleared his throat. ‘Her name’s Janet. We were married.’ He closed his eyes; this was even harder than he’d thought. ‘She…she died six years ago.’

‘You still miss her.’

‘I…’ He couldn’t look her in the eye. Sigh. ‘Yes, I still miss her.’ Six years. Six whole fucking years and he still couldn’t let go.

‘I see.’

Silence settled back over the room like a shroud.

Fucking useless blubbery BASTARD!

Liam is spread out on the concrete floor with hardly a mark on him, dead. He barely lasted ten minutes.

Useless fuck.

She stops pacing up and down the storeroom to kick him in the face. Hard.

He bounces: flopping like a great, flaccid rag doll. It didn’t say on his chart that he had a heart condition.

She kicks him again, smearing his nose over his waxy features.

If they don’t put things like that on the chart, how is she supposed to operate?

This time she stamps on his face with her heel, again and again and again-useless-bastarding-fuck-until the whole front of his skull caves in.

There are still seven hours on the clock and she’s got nothing to keep her busy but getting rid of fat Liam’s disgusting corpse. This is so unfair . All she wanted was a little distraction to while away the time, was that so much to ask? Was it?

Something to make the fucking bees shut up.

Stamp, stamp, stamp.

She stops when she realizes that all she’s doing is making a bigger mess for herself to clean up. Liam’s head looks like an old cushion, and all the stuffing is leaking out over the storeroom floor. She steps away from the body and breathes deeply, in and out through her nose, not the little vent glued into her throat.

Calm.

This is all just temporary. Just make-work. Killing time till the operation, nothing more.

Calm down. Deep breaths. Deep breaths and calm, cool thoughts.

Useless bastard .

Grabbing a drip stand from a nearby rack she beats at his chest until one of the wheels breaks off and the sharp edge punctures his flesh.

Seven hours to go. Just seven hours. She can make it, she can. All she needs to do is clear her mind.

The drip stand rattles and clanks as she drops it to the floor.

Calm, cool thoughts. Calm, cool thoughts.

She snaps yet another shot of medicine into her neck and sinks down against a stack of internal thermometers.

Calm, cool thoughts.

She’ll need to wrap the body in something, then she’ll have to clean the floor. Get rid of the evidence. Something deep inside her likes that. Mopping and scrubbing will be therapeutic, calming. Then she can throw the body back into the disposal buggy and wheel it down to the incinerator.

Calm, cool thoughts.

But inside she burns . She wanted a release-deserved one-and Liam didn’t hold up his end of the bargain. She needs to let off steam. She needs it. Even with three shots of medicine in her she can’t sit still.

Bees and broken glass.

Dr Westfield looks from the battered corpse of worthless Liam to the clock on the wall. It’s just after four: nearly seven and a half hours to go. She can’t last that long. She just can’t.

A shudder runs down her spine. The Man In The Dark-Blue Suit has to come back to the hospital at half past four: she read about the appointment in his medical records. She has half an hour to clean stupid Liam away before the man responsible for all this shit arrives in the building.

She was going to save William Hunter for later, for when she’s all fixed up and can taste his fear and his blood, but she needs something now. And William Hunter will do nicely. Escort him back down to her storeroom-operating theatre and give him the worst seven hours of his life.

The Network has its own private floor of Glasgow Royal Infirmary. Different from the rest of the building, its walls are thicker, its floors are reinforced, its ceiling covered with shielding. Troopers stand guard at the main bank of elevators; anyone without a pass is escorted off the thirteenth floor at the point of a Whomper. But she walks right past them as if they weren’t even there.

She wanders slowly around the private reception area, picking up the wastepaper baskets and emptying them into her buggy. Fat, useless Liam is just another layer of ash in the hospital furnace, the storeroom is nice and clean, and she still has ten minutes before The Man In The Dark-Blue Suit arrives for his appointment. Ten minutes to find out where he’ll be going. Ten minutes to get into position. Ten minutes to decide what she’s going to do to him.

So many beautiful options…

Her medicine makes little stars twinkle at the edge of her vision, the world fizzing on chemical ripples. The base of her neck is sore from repeated injections. She’s had far more than the recommended daily dose.

The buggy creaks as she pushes it through the double doors, following the orange line. The place is quiet, but then four twenty on a Sunday afternoon is hardly peak time. She passes wards, scanners, and operating theatres. The consultation rooms are at the end of a short corridor.

There’s a waiting area in the middle of the room-comfy chairs, pot plants, a coffee machine-and treatment rooms down either side. Each one with a display screen next to it, listing the doctor’s name and upcoming appointments.

There’s no one around to see her checking the screens for William Hunter’s name. She finds it down at the end of the row.

Seven minutes. His appointment is in seven minutes.

Perfect. All she has to do is wait in the little room. She’s not worried about the doctor already being there-doctors die just as easily as everyone else. And when William Hunter turns up she’ll wait till he’s not looking, then use the injector in her pocket to pump him full of sedatives. Heave him into the buggy, just like useless Liam. Only when she gets him down to the storeroom he’ll last a lot, lot longer.

Mmm…

Her hand freezes on the doorknob; there are voices inside the consulting room. She frowns at the display, checking. No one should be in there-it’s reserved for The Man In The Dark-Blue Suit. How dare they! How dare they get in the way! And then the voices say something that makes her flinch.

‘Peitai…’

The word makes her skin burst out in pins and needles.

A cold room, keys beneath her fingers and tubes in her arms.

She lurches back from the door, heart thumping in her chest.

Peitai.

Pictures of her children, flickering lights, questions, elec tricity, pain. She staggers into the buggy and it sends one of the pretty pot plants crashing to the ground.

Peitai…

‘What was that?’ Jo jerked upright.

‘I said that Ken Peitai-’

‘Shush!’ she crossed to the door and put her ear against it. ‘There’s someone out there!’

Will nodded. ‘Yeah, it’s a hospital . There are thousands of people out there.’ It was a stupid thing to say, but it was out before he could stop himself. Ever since she’d asked about the photos in his living room there had been a layer of glass between them. Something that couldn’t be seen, but kept them apart. He was acting like a tit and he knew it.

Jo scowled at him. ‘You know what I mean. We’re hacking into the hospital records, you think your doctor’s going to be happy about that?’