Shatter the Bones

Chapter 53

Eleven o’clock and the hospital sounds were muted. Just that constant humming throb, as if the place was one huge machine designed to chew people up and leave nothing but pale shells behind.

Logan stood beside Helen Brown’s bed, hands behind his back, watching a woman barely older than he was crying quietly because her grandson was going into care and her daughter was going to lose both legs.

‘The doctors say she’s comfortable, and-’

‘Get out. Just…’ Helen Brown ground her fists into her eye sockets. ‘Just leave me alone…’

‘Daren McInnes will die in prison, I promise he’ll-’

‘YOU SHOULD’VE FOUND HER SOONER! YOU SHOULD’VE FUCKING CARED!’ Her voice echoed around the small ward.

‘All right, Helen, calm down. He’s leaving.’ The big nurse squeaked to a halt on the terrazzo floor, face large and pink. She scowled at Logan. ‘Aren’t you?’

The unformed constable shook Logan’s hand. With the pointy nose and go-faster cheekbones, he looked like a shaved whippet. ‘I know it’s all fucked up and that, sir, but I wanted to tell you: you did a great job.’

Then why did he feel like shit? ‘Mr Webster in?’

‘Shuggie? Aye, he’s not going nowhere till they sort out his hand. Hate to think how much these skin grafts are costing, like he ever paid taxes in his life.’ Constable Whippet shifted his feet. ‘Here, sir, if you’re stopping for a bit, any chance I can nip off for a piss?’

‘Sure.’ Logan stepped into the room and closed the door.

Shuggie was sitting in the chair beside his bed. The bruising hadn’t gone down much, if anything it looked worse — the blues and purples evolving into sickening greens and yellows. His right hand was encased in some sort of cage, probably keeping pressure off the raw meat and bare bones inside.

Logan cleared his throat. ‘How are you feeling?’

Shuggie looked up, then squealed, shrinking back into his chair. ‘I didn’t say anything! I didn’t, I swear to God…’ He held the cage against his chest.

So that was the kind of person Logan was now: the kind people were terrified of.

‘I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry. For everything.’ Shuggie kept his eyes on the cage around his hand. ‘I promise I won’t say anything…’

‘Yes, well…’ The nurse curled her top lip, exposing off-white teeth. ‘Don’t worry — she’ll pull through. Bastards like her always do. It’s the good ones who die young.’

On the other side of the glass, Beatrice Eastbrook lay in a private room, hooked up to a bank of monitors. Her head was wrapped in bandages, the few patches of visible skin bruised and scabbed.

The nurse cleared her throat. ‘We’ve… Well, someone has to tell Jenny that her mummy’s gone.’ Silence. A cough. ‘You know.’

Logan nodded.

‘Hi.’ He stood at the foot of the hospital bed.

She was tiny, dwarfed by the scratchy sheets and the big metal frame, lying on top of the covers. They’d changed the dressings on her feet — swapping filthy, blood-soaked bandages for fresh white.

Jenny stared at him, her mouth a hard little line.

‘Yes… Anyway…’ Logan reached into the plastic bag the IB had given him, and pulled out a blue teddy bear. ‘We found this in… well, I thought you’d like him back. For company.’ He held the bear out, but she didn’t move. ‘Right. I’ll just put him here.’

He sat it at the bottom of the bed, where she could see it. Something familiar from home. She’d like that. ‘Are you OK?’

She stopped staring at him and stared at the bear instead.

‘There’s a little girl who got knocked down by a car; the doctors had to cut off her leg, and the people who kidnapped you stole it. They sent her big toe to the police, pretending it was yours.’

Logan scratched the fur between the bear’s ears. ‘There’s going to be a ceremony later and the Lord Provost’s going to give it back to her. I think her mum and dad want to bury it… Anyway, the little girl would like to meet you, if you’re free later? Would you like that?’

Silence.

He swallowed. Let out a long breath. Then pulled up a plastic chair. ‘Jenny, the doctors want me to tell you about your mummy…’

‘So, the Chief Constable made an official complaint, and now Green’s buried under a mountain of paperwork, trying to explain why he charged into a hostage situation and let someone shoot someone else with the gun he wasn’t supposed to have.’

No reply.

Logan stared at the ceiling. ‘The caravan still smells like a mouldy tramp, by the way. You should see the size of the spiders — bastards are demanding squatters’ rights…’

He squeezed Samantha’s hand. The skin was cold.

The machine hissed and pinged, breathing for her. Another bleeped, displaying her heartbeat. Everything stank of disinfectant, boiled cauliflower, and despair. Even Wee Hamish Mowat’s huge bunch of flowers couldn’t cover that up.

‘They found out who torched the flat.’ He cleared his throat. ‘When they ran Craig Peterson’s DNA through the system, it matched the stuff on the outside of the flat door. It… That’s why there was no fibres or fingerprints. I picked on him because I thought he needed taking down a notch, and he…’ A deep breath. ‘He must’ve through I was on to them. So he tried to get us out of the way. It was my fault: all of it. All of this…’

Logan bent forward until his forehead rested on the scratchy blanket.

‘I don’t want to be a police officer any more. I don’t fucking deserve to be one any more.’

The machines bleeped and hissed. The building throbbed. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s OK. Shhhh…’ A hand stroked the back of his neck. ‘It’s OK.’

He looked up and Samantha smiled down at him from her nest of pillows.

‘God, Logan, you make such a fuss about stuff.’

‘I thought you were-’

‘I’m fine. Didn’t think you were going to get rid of me that easily, did you?’ She pulled the wires from her wrist and chest. ‘Come on, let’s blow this corrugated craphole before they decide to stick me in another sodding coma.’ Samantha swung her legs out of bed and hopped down onto the linoleum…

Logan blinked, jerked upright in his seat. Wiped a hand across his mouth, clearing away the drool.

Samantha just lay there, hooked to the machines with tubes and wires, not moving, not saying anything.

Because in real life there were no happy endings — in real life there was just pain and shattered bones.