by David Mark
Mr Farkas feels a sudden burning terror inside his chest. With Beatrix coming home, who is the girl who has tried to deceive him? Who is the pestilent figure who sweats and fits in his daughter’s bed? He fears consequences. He has made a mistake. In his delirium, his confusion, he knows he must have picked up the wrong child from school or the hospital or her mother’s grave. Yes, that is it. A mistake. An honest mistake. But even after so many years he is a foreigner in this country. A rich foreigner. A quiet, reclusive man. He has no friends. Nobody to speak for him. Would the authorities forgive such an act? He feels a creeping horror prickling inside his skin. He has a sudden memory of such a mistake occurring before. He remembers the feel of cold and clammy skin upon his own. The ugly thud as body met hard, unforgiving ground. He could not be forgiven again. And even if he were, would such actions not alert those who would take his child away from him? He has fought such battles before.
Her condition makes it unfeasible for her to be cared for at home, Mr Farkas. She needs constant medical attention. We have the best facilities and will take care of her. You cannot do it all yourself …
He rises. There is a voice in his head, talking of shattered metatarsals and a filleting knife. He realizes he is moving. The wall and the door are closer. Clearer. But the darkness is clawing at his vision and he feels as though he is half submerged in tar as he stumbles into the kitchen and hauls at the door in the floor. The smell hits him. Decay. Fever. An ugly fog of corrupting skin. He feels terror and rage and shame. This person, this almost-daughter, is dying in his daughter’s bed. He remembers Beatrix’s sister. Remembers her laid out like this, beneath a tight blanket and with nothing but spilled ink upon the whites of her eyes. She needs help. Needs to survive. He has done a terrible thing. A terrible, terrible thing …
As Mr Farkas closes his arms around the girl on the bed, the mask slips and for a moment, the burning skin of the real girl beneath the prosthetic touches his own fragile flesh. Their tears pool upon their connected skin.
‘I’m so sorry, my child. Hush. Hush. I will help you. I’m so sorry …’
He starts to drag the child from the bed. As one arm flops loose, he sees the quilled hypodermic protruding from the crook of her arm. Blood drips into the black shadows below.
He scoops her into arms that can barely take her weight and begins to stagger towards the door. He will take her to hospital. He will save her. He will do things right.
The note from Lottie catches his eye as he drags the child out of the kitchen hatch and down the hall. Among the island of unopened letters and spilled papers it is a square of perfect white. It has unfolded itself and in the near blackness he is barely able to make out the words.
Through the fear and the guilt and the horror at himself, something like hope flares in Mr Farkas. The pathologist has come to his door. She has sought him out. Beatrix must have given her his address. She must be on her way home. He has so little time. He must make things nice for her. Must make sure her bed is ready and her storybook is where it should be. There is no time to take the imposter child all the way to the hospital. No time for kindness.
Later, he has little memory of loading the girl into his car. Does not remember the drive down Wilkes Street or the bustle and neon of the busy street by Christchurch. The next time he is aware of himself he is opening the passenger door as he drives along the flyover off Mile End Road at 50mph and kicks the child’s body on to the soaking tarmac. He drives away without looking back. He never sees what he has done.
Never sees the girl in the nightdress staring sightlessly up at the tumbling, teeming sky.
To: DCI Trevor Granger
From: Dr Mal
Subject: Idiot’s Guide to Blood
Date: 04/03/2015
Hi Trev,
Not quite sure if this is what you’re after as you were kind of vague when you asked and I’d definitely had more than the daily recommended dose of shiraz! But I think it might help fill in some of the gaps. Is this what the Met pays you for? Seriously, sounds a sad one. Did I understand correctly? It was a young girl? Needle tracks in her arms and an open wound in her thigh? Sounds barbaric. Hope you catch these butchers. But you’re right, there is a real market out there for donor organs and plasma and I can’t say with hand on heart that it wasn’t some former bloody classmate who was responsible for botching the operation. Did you say you’d heard whispers of other cases? Hope you throw away the key, my friend.
So, the basic science here is to do with blood groups and ABO compatibility – or, more importantly, incompatibility. We all have various antigens, little proteins, on the surface of our red blood cells (RBCs). There are two main types of antigens in this context: A and B. You can have one, both, or none. That means your blood type can be A, B, AB or O (the ones with no antigens).
In addition, you can be rhesus positive or negative. This matters because it determines who you can get blood from without getting a reaction. A quick immune lesson – if the body gets exposed to anything ‘antigen’ that is not part of the body already then it will treat it as an intruder and try to kill its ass. That, of course, is what antibodies do. They are the henchmen.
AB pos person
If you are AB pos then you are golden – you have all the antigens already so you can receive any kind of blood of anyone. (At least for the major blood groups – there is always room around the fringes for this stuff to get more complicated.) These people are known as UNIVERSAL RECIPIENTS.
O neg person
If you are O neg then you are completely screwed if you are given any blood other than O neg – your body will immediately start fighting off the ‘bad’ blood cells.
However, because they have no antigens then their blood doesn’t offend anyone. They are the UNIVERSAL DONORS. Blood banks have plenty of stocks of O neg blood. It takes a bit of time to get someone’s blood type and when someone is hosing out the claret then there is not a moment to be wasted – you’ll be given O neg blood as an immediate response until they get a proper blood typing.
Reactions and transfusion problems
Allergy
You can have an allergic/anaphylactic reaction. These tend to happen quickly (though not always) and include things like feelings of impending doom, shortness of breath/ wheeze and swelling of face/tongue. Never actually seen this – rare!
Haemolysis
More commonly, you can get a haemolytic complication. Haemolysis basically means the breakdown of RBCs. The body clocks the unwanted antigens on the surface of the RBCs – these are attacked and the whole RBC gets destroyed in the process. This tends to be slower but is bad news – you want those RBCs or you are in trouble. Usually patients given blood transfusions are monitored carefully for reactions – pulse (would go up), blood pressure (down) and temperature (people having reactions can spike a fever). Patients would be clammy, pale, sweaty and nauseated/vomiting maybe, feeling fairly ropy.
Fluid overload
Sometimes people are given transfusions because they are anaemic – not actually because they have low blood volume (from bleeding for instance). That means they can get overloaded. Young healthy people can usually cope with this – their kidneys just work harder and pee it all out. Older folk or those with rubbish kidneys sometimes don’t – and fluid starts building in lungs etc. They get short of breath and can die from that – pulmonary oedema.
Anyways, if you do end up looking into it more officially do please give me a shout and I’d be glad to help. The goose feathers thing sounds really weird. Did you know they used them as syringes back in the old days?
Love to the family and let’s meet up to hole a few birdies some time soon.
Dr George Malcom.
MOLLY
Three days have passed since Meda Stauskas was pushed from a moving car on to the hard, damp road. She was found by a taxi driver who slammed his car to a desperate halt just millimetres from her unmoving form. He believed to his very bones that he had somehow struck her with his c
ar. He was on his knees and weeping when the paramedics and the police arrived. He’d wrapped her in his coat and was cradling her in his lap, sitting there in the inside lane of the dual carriageway with his black cab blocking the road. It took two police officers to prise his grip from the sad, pale shape in the nightgown. He was arrested and breathalysed and kept saying he was sorry. It was only when his solicitor arrived at the station that the cabbie learned he was in no way responsible for the injuries to the girl. He was, if anything, a hero, though he was about to be charged for being slightly over the drink-drive limit and for being in possession of a vehicle that had a broken brake light.
Meda is in a critical condition at the Royal Hospital on Whitechapel Road. Her body has been shutting down. She is suffering an intense allergic reaction and shows signs of having been systematically drained of blood and then transfused with an unidentified plasma. There is writing on her stomach: flashes of black ink among the ugly red welts. She is delirious most of the time. She has a high temperature and the doctors fear that her organs are shutting down. She is sweating and shaking and the consultant responsible for her care has warned her family that he can make no promises that she will survive.
Molly and Hilda only learned of her whereabouts this morning when Lottie burst in to the Bonnet and told them she had seen Karol leaving the hospital with a pale and weeping woman she took to be Meda’s mother. He had seen Lottie and given her a virtually imperceptible nod.
Yes, it said. The girl is alive …
Lottie had gone straight to the children’s ward and spoken to a colleague and been appraised of the story doing the rounds on the ward. Meda had been abducted by a maniac. She had been drugged and drained of blood. She had been brutalized and starved then dumped on a busy road. Her family were doing all they could to keep the police at arm’s length but a unit at Whitechapel station were trying to get a court order demanding the family oblige them in their investigations. They have consented to an intimate examination which mercifully shows no signs of rape.
Molly and Hilda had listened to Lottie’s revelations in a maelstrom of emotions. Hilda had been in tears the moment Lottie said her friend was alive. She soon drifted into horror and rage and then despair as she learned that Meda’s chances of recovery were no better than 50/50. Molly had held herself very still as Lottie spoke. She had spent two days awaiting a call or a text or any of the means of communication that she and Karol had promised to employ upon their parting. For two days, she had heard nothing. And now she was discovering why.
It is a little after 8 p.m. and Molly is hurrying down Turner Street. She looks so unlike herself that she has passed by three regular customers from the Bonnet without causing any of them to look up. She is dressed in blue jeans and battered trainers, a mustard-coloured jumper and a black leather coat. Her hair is pulled back in a short ponytail and her face is not made up. There is a rash of spots upon her jawline and the whites of her eyes have lost their gleam. She has bitten the red polish from her nails.
A mizzling rain is blowing in from the east on a biting wind. The pedestrians are hunching into scarves and pulled-up collars and the drivers who slide by, nose-to-tail, cannot seem to find the right setting to keep the rain and the steam off their windscreens and windows.
Molly chews her lip as she hurries towards the great turquoise-blue mass of the hospital. She passes nurses and cleaners in groups of twos and threes. Watches as a delivery van nudges a parked BMW while performing a tight three-point turn in front of the parking barrier. Hears a voice, sweet and lyrical, muttering some West African language into a mobile phone and looks up to see a pleasant, round-faced woman, who blesses her and apologizes for getting in her way. Molly steps to her right and again stumbles into the large lady, who smiles and apologizes afresh.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Molly, flustered. ‘I’ll go this way, you go that …’
Molly rubs a hand through her hair and shivers in her coat as she manages to get past. Turns back to give a nod and sees him. Sees Karol. He is sitting beneath an ugly beige awning outside the pub on the corner of the road. He is leaning back in a metal chair, smoking a cigarette. He is the only smoker braving the conditions. He has wedged himself up against an industrial bin. Anybody approaching him must do so from the front.
Molly is halfway across the road before she realizes she has started walking towards him. She does not know what she wants to happen. There is a pain in her chest and her skin feels sore. As she changes direction, the wind and rain assault the other side of her face and she winces as if she is being slapped.
Karol narrows his eyes. His stubble has become a beard and he looks pale and tired. He stiffens in his seat at Molly’s approach and she realizes, aghast, that he does not recognise her. She lets her temper show in her expression and puts both her hands down on the wet metal table and leans forward to glare into his eyes.
‘Nice to see you too, dick face. Were you going to tell me? No phone call? No text? I’d have settled for a bloody WhatsApp message and I can barely use that. How dare you? And don’t go thinking I’m some jealous little woman who thinks every shag is going to turn into a great romance! This isn’t about what happened on the grass. You know what Meda means to Hilda and you know what we’ve been going through and what I’ve been trying to do and I have to find out she’s alive because Lottie happens to spy you with Meda’s mum …’
Karol raises his hands, patting gently at the air. He closes his eyes and the tip of his cigarette glows bright red as he inhales.
‘Please,’ he says, softly. ‘Sit. Take a drink. Drink mine, if you wish. It’s not as good as the ale at the Jolly Bonnet but it is passable. I believe they serve desserts here too. Would you like cake?’
Molly’s face drops open into a wide O of indignation. She feels certain he is making fun of her.
‘No I don’t want fucking cake! I came here to find out if she’s OK! I came here to get some answers. I’ve earned that, don’t you think?’
Karol stubs out his cigarette in a puddle on the table top. He sucks his teeth and looks at her without expression. ‘Why you deserve that?’ he asks, candidly. ‘What you do to deserve answers?’
Molly looks murderous. Were she to look at a snapshot of her face in this moment she would think herself ready to do murder.
‘This has been eating us up!’ she splutters. ‘Hilda hasn’t been sleeping! What I saw … What you told me …’
‘You’ve had a bad week,’ shrugs Karol. ‘So what? You think Meda’s family have had a fun time? They know her. Love her. Feed and clothe her. You are the mother of a girl that Meda sees once a week. You are nobody’s priority right now.’
The words sting like the cold air. Molly realizes she has been pushing her knuckles into her cheekbones as Karol talked. She stops herself and chews on her lip instead.
‘That’s not fair,’ she says, quietly.
‘I didn’t ask you to come here and start shouting in my face. I didn’t know your silly friend with the big tits and blue hair would see me. I didn’t know you would walk down this street. You think maybe I wanted to have some answers before we spoke? You think maybe I have other things to do for the family?’
There is a blare of loud music from the open window of a white van that is cruising past on the wet road. Molly winces, suddenly aware of the headache that is clustering at her temples and sinuses. She feels some of the temper drain from her. Suddenly she just feels sad and cold and empty.
‘Is she OK?’ Molly asks, and she lowers herself into the chair opposite Karol. It is soaked with rain and she shivers as the water seeps through her jeans. She doesn’t care about the discomfort. She feels as though she has earned it, somehow.
‘OK?’ asks Karol. He pulls another cigarette from his jacket. He fails to light it with his cheap lighter. Curses in his native tongue as the wheel on the orange device fails to turn.
‘Meda,’ says Molly, and she reaches out to take the lighter from him. It sparks as she rolls her thumb over t
he wheel and as he leans forward to take the flame she looks into his dark eyes and wonders what she actually wants from this man. ‘Lottie says she is very poorly. Said things had been done to her …’
‘Bad things,’ says Karol, and he wrinkles his nose as if something tastes bad. ‘Steppen will have answers soon.’
‘Her uncle,’ says Molly, to show she has remembered. ‘How is he? Her family? What do they know?’
Karol says nothing. He picks up his half-empty pint glass and puts it back on the table without taking a sip. He seems less vital than the man Molly thinks she knows. He seems to have been wrung out by the events of recent days. He seems to have had the juice squeezed from him.
Molly sits forward and tries to get her face into his eye line. ‘Karol, I’m sorry for shouting. I’m upset. I’ve no right to take it out on you. This is a horrible thing. I’ve been through horrible things and this has maybe brought it back. I don’t know. I just want to know she’s OK and then I can go and tell Hilda that all of this is over and that the bad person isn’t somebody to worry about.’
Karol rolls his head from side to side and there is a crack as the bones in his neck give under the pressure of the movement.
‘Sounds sore,’ says Molly.
‘Not much sleep,’ says Karol. ‘Think I slept upside down.’
Molly gives a tiny smile and something seems to thaw between them. She feels absurdly relieved, then reminds herself of what she has witnessed and what this man is capable of. She feels unsure how to behave. Doesn’t know quite who or what she is.
‘Please, Karol,’ she says, and hates herself for the pleading. ‘I’m not a reporter. I’m not police. I’m not after anything other than some answers. Is it all done? Have you … sorted it out?’