Stolen Souls

69

THERE WAS NO doubt in the mind of Edwin Paynter that he would escape. From the moment the first officers stumbled down the cellar stairs, their guns drawn, to his lying down on a gurney in a hospital corridor, he knew they could not hold him for a single second longer than he chose to be held.

It was simply a matter of biding his time, not resisting, being calm and compliant. Sooner or later, the two policemen who guarded him would slip up, and Edwin Paynter would be gone before they knew his name.

They had no choice but to bring him to the hospital. The girl had opened his scalp with the chair, but Paynter knew that scalp wounds bled heavily, meaning there was no way to be sure if the injury was more serious without a proper examination.

He held a wad of gauze to his temple with his free hand, pressing it hard against the cut to staunch the flow. A pair of cuffs fixed his other hand to the trolley. If he wanted to, he could simply throw his legs off the edge of the bed and walk away, dragging the gurney behind him.

But he did not want to. His exit would be better thought out than that.

The hospital’s Accident and Emergency ward was understaffed and overpopulated. It never failed to astound Edwin Paynter that most people marked the Lord’s day by refusing to work and drinking too much. It was no wonder, then, that so many of Belfast’s drunks wound up in an emergency ward with not enough doctors or nurses to treat them.

So Edwin Paynter found himself bound to a gurney in a corridor, listening to the moans and cries of the city’s lowest while the handful of medical staff on duty ran themselves ragged trying to look after the sorry lot of them.

He had always found hospitals strange and frightful places to be, especially the A&E departments. The sounds and the smells. The things occurring behind drawn curtains, the swishes and footsteps that were none of your business. The gatherings of families waiting to be bereaved. The emptyfaced geriatrics staring at you from the other side of the ward.

This place was no different. Drunks called out, challenging their demons as they sobered. Young children screamed as their parents fretted. Others checked their watches and cursed their taxes, furious at waiting so long to have their small hurts addressed. All of it meaningless bustle and noise.

Most of it he could only guess at, limited as he was to this narrow bed. Let them suffer, he thought.

A nurse appeared at the foot of the gurney, an orderly close behind her.

“Mr. Paynter?” she said.

“My name’s Crawford,” he said. “Billy Crawford.”

She looked at the policemen, confused.

The nearest of them shrugged. “They told me he’s Edwin Paynter. I don’t care what you call him, so long as I can get home soon.”

The nurse turned her wavering smile back to Paynter. “Mr., er …”

“Crawford,” Paynter said.

“Mr. Crawford, there’s no bays available yet, but we’ll get you into one as soon as we can. We’re going to move you off the corridor, though. There’s space in the orthopedic room. All right?”

He did not answer.

The ceiling moved above him as he laid his head back on the thin paper-covered pillow. Wheels and feet squeaked on the vinyl-tiled floor until he rolled through a doorway into a room with beds and curtains, a light box on the wall, rows of drawers, and boxes of bandages.

“You’ll be all right here for now,” the nurse said as the orderly pushed the gurney into an empty space. “How’s that bleeding coming along?”

She lifted Paynter’s hand away and examined the side of his head. “You’ll live,” she said. “Right, you sit tight here. It won’t be much longer.”

The nurse whisked out of the room, the orderly trudging behind her, leaving the two policemen standing over the gurney.

One of them sat on the edge of the nearest bed while the other paced, moving in and out of Paynter’s vision. He noted that their guns looked very like the one he had taken from the foreigner, and the one the policeman Lennon had aimed at him earlier in the night.

The policeman who sat on the bed checked his watch and raised his eyebrows. “Merry fucking Christmas,” he said.