Slaughter's hound

23

Tohill locked the door, mumbling something I couldn’t hear to the cop parked outside. I gave it half an hour to let everyone settle down, then availed of the phone on the bedside locker, one of the very few perks that go with being unofficially jailed in a private hospital room under a false name while the Guardians of the Peace wait to see if black ops will work the oracle.

Directory Enquiries put me through to the hospital’s reception desk, where I asked the receptionist to connect me with Pamela Devine. There followed a couple of minutes of clicks, brrrs and false starts, and then she picked up.

‘Hello?’

‘Hey. It’s Harry.’

A sigh not notable for its quality of unrequited longing, then: ‘Did you get to see him?’

‘Not exactly. But I just wanted to say thanks.’

‘My arse. What do you want?’

‘It’s my eye.’

‘Don’t worry about it. The trauma to the-’

‘Not that one. My good eye. It’s dazzled.’

‘Dazzled?’

‘By your radiance. I’m thinking martinis on the terrace at dusk.’

The old familiar dirty chuckle. ‘Let’s just get through to dawn first. We’ll see how we go after that.’

‘It’s a date. Meanwhile, I need an X-ray. I’m getting shooting pains in my eye.’

‘Which one?’

‘My Jap’s eye. Which one d’you think?’

‘Then that’s perfectly normal. Buzz the nurse, ask for some pain relief. No, wait — did you take the Dilaudids?’

‘One of them.’

‘Okay. Then you’ll just have to sweat it out.’

‘No kidding, Pam. It’s pretty intense. And I don’t want to go blind and have to sue you for negligence.’

‘If you’re blind, how’ll you find me?’

‘I’ll be like Homer, seeing all. C’mon, do the right thing here. Who’s one X-ray going to hurt at this time of night?’

‘It’d need to be an emergency. You’re seriously in pain?’

‘Is there any other way?’

I heard the tappity-tap of fingernails on plastic. ‘Okay, hold tight. I’ll see what I can do. I’m making no promises, though.’

‘You’re a star. Oh, and Pam? The cop in the corridor, he’ll try to keep you out.’

‘Good. He looks like he could use the exercise.’

Never tell a woman what she can’t do on her own turf.

She was wrong. The new cop they’d stationed outside was tall and trim. He was also keen on the idea of not looking a complete plum. So he did it all by the book, getting on the phone to inform his superior that I needed an X-ray and waiting until it was all confirmed in triplicate before he allowed Pam push me out into the corridor in a wheelchair, sticking so close all the way to the radiography department that I could count the hairs in his nose.

There was a patient already in situ, sitting in the row of bright yellow bucket seats, a thin bald man with big ears and tiny ragged clouds for eyebrows, dressed in a tatty brown bathrobe over maroon-blue striped pyjamas. He was barefoot and looking for company, so Pam pushed on by him, through the next set of double-doors. She parked me beside the bed and helped me up on board, got me as comfortable as anyone is likely to get on a second-hand anvil. Then she draped the protective covering over my groin, glanced across at the cop.

‘You’re welcome to stay if you want,’ she said.

The cop eyed the covering. ‘It wouldn’t be, ah, dangerous or anything?’

‘Not particularly,’ she said over her shoulder as she scuttled for the sanctuary of the glassed-in booth in the far corner. ‘But it’s up to you.’

He weighed it up and came down on the side of his potential progeny, retreating through the double-doors as the radiographer came through from a door to the right of the booth. A sharp-faced blonde, hair scraped back in a bun, a dun-coloured folder under her arm. She didn’t so much as glance in my direction as she clip-clipped to the booth, put some X-rays up on the light box. Nor did she meet my eyes as she swung the X-ray into place over my head, got it positioned just so. Her own were glazed, and I wondered how long she’d been on shift.

She went back to the booth. Her voice came amplified, metallic, as she reminded me not to move. I waited for the hum, then took a quick peek at the double-doors. The cop was crowding the rectangular window, keeping tabs. A loud click-tung sounded from beneath the table.

‘Please, Mr Rigby.’ Her voice frayed with irritation. ‘It is vital you don’t move.’

I held up a hand. ‘I need to use the toilet. Sorry.’

‘Just hold still. This won’t take a-’

‘Okay. But I need to go now. When I get nervous …’

‘There’s really nothing to worry about, Mr Rig-’

I sat up, lifting off the covering that was protecting me from whatever it was I really didn’t need to worry about. Slid down off the table, pointing towards the door beside the booth. ‘Is there a bathroom through there?’

‘Yes, but that’s a restricted area. There are facilities available to — Mr Rigby.’

But by then I was already through the door, closing it behind me, sliding the snib across. Tall filing cabinets either side of the corridor, darkened cubicles, one at the end with a light showing. The sharp blonde’s, I presumed. Beyond that were a set of emergency exit doors.

An alarm went off about two seconds after I kicked them out, by which time I was halfway across a deserted delivery area and aiming for an alleyway in the far corner. Picking up the pace now, from crabby shuffle to crippled jog. The alleyway was softly lit with an orange light and opened up into the harsh sodium glare of the hospital car park. Here, and for once, the universe chipped in on my side. The car park was huge and terraced and neatly landscaped, its levels dug out of a gentle slope, and I let gravity do the work as I zigzagged from one tidy clump of bush to another, lungs burning, the cotton-puff heart long since split in two and thumping in both ears.

At the bottom of the car park I put a rock through a Sierra’s window, jump-started the engine at the second attempt, took off for Connaughton Road. Pulled a right at the lights, drove north towards the plum bruise of Benbulben in the false dawn.

I was in bad shape. Weak and dizzy, wheezing hard, brain fizzing like bath salts in Perrier. And driving can be tricky when you’re only using one blurry eye and the other is hosting what felt like a rerun of Guernica.

Still, it could have been worse. I might have been in a coma with a tangerine-sized lump bleeding into my brain pan.

How long before the Sierra was posted stolen and the cops made the jump that it’d been me who boosted it? A couple of hours, at least, but probably more.

Plenty of time to soak the grieving Saoirse Hamilton for a quick ten grand.