He paused.
"Like I said," he continued. "You've done a great job. Congratulations. Now...if you'll excuse me..." he said, looking at his watch.
Nic was just about to say something, when Philip Grant, the VP of Sales and Marketing, hit the red "end call" button on the desk-console in the New York office.
The meeting was over.
Chapter Fifteen
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Maciek's Story
The Cuillins Mountain Range
Isle of Skye
Scotland
September 8th, Present Day
10.30 a.m.
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Maciek sat at the summit of Sgurr Alasdair in the Cuillins of Skye and surveyed the scene around him. It was breathtakingly beautiful. For a good long while, he simply sat there and looked at the world beneath him from his select place in heaven. Admiring it. Wondering at it. Drinking it all in and refreshing and cleansing himself in the purest way he knew how.
Maciek was an avid climber. An expert who had climbed many of the most famous peaks in Europe, including the Matterhorn and the North Face of the Eiger. For him, climbing was as natural as walking. As far back as he could remember, he had been looking at the mountains and planning routes to their summits. It had started with conquering the kitchen table, and then the stairs in his grandmother's house, and ended up with where he was today. On top of the world.
Undoubtedly he had inherited the love of the mountains from his father, as well as a natural ability that had earned him the nickname 'Monkey' at school. A nickname of which he was proud, and which he had kept and nurtured amongst his friends all the way up to the second year of university. During his younger years, Maciek had enjoyed many happy trips to the Tatra mountains with his father. Together they had explored every nook and cranny that the Tatras had to offer. And then his father had died, and he had never been back to the Tatras since.
At university, one of his colleagues in the climbing club...Pietr... had joked that his ability to climb must have been genetically encoded into his DNA. Maciek was a natural. A veritable climbing genius. A few weeks before he had been arrested for his part in the assisted suicide of his mother, Maciek had been busy planning his university's first trip to Everest, with himself as team leader. It was going to be the highlight of his life, but instead he ended up spending a year in prison, before being released early for good behaviour.
The local judge had gone easy on Maciek at his trial: he had known his mother, and the suffering she had endured, and he had found a way to give Maciek a sentence that punished him in the eyes of the law, but did not take Maciek away from society for too long.
Nevertheless, Maciek had been forced to leave university, and he had never made it back. After a final trip back to the house of his mother, where he had sat that day alone on the empty bed where he had taken her life, Maciek had started his new life: drifting from one place to another, trying to find the meaning of it all and searching for a way to reconcile to himself, what he had done that day so long ago in his mother's house.
He had been punished in jail, but the punishment in his mind never stopped.
He had never forgiven himself for what he had done, and he knew he never would.
Maciek had travelled through most of Europe, working in many of the most beautiful cities in the world. It was always the same though. As soon as he settled down, he would meet a beautiful young woman, fall in love. Start to plan for the future. And then one day, sometimes planned and sometimes on the spur of the moment, he would kill her.
And he would enjoy it. He loved it. He was addicted to it.
To Maciek it was the greatest high in the world. To take the life of a beautiful woman that he loved. To watch her eyes as that magical light faded and went out. To be there to witness her become an angel, and to feel her leave her body and fly away, high into the sky.
Maciek was an intelligent man. After he had killed his first two girlfriends he had spent months trying to understand why he enjoyed it so much, why he felt compelled to do it, why he was so fascinated in watching and sensing their last moment in this life.
He knew it was related to his killing of his mother. He knew that somehow he was probably trying to recapture that moment. He knew that it was fucked up. That it was wrong and not natural.
But then he had met Annette in Paris. He fell in love. They moved in together. He had planned her death for two months. Every single detail of it. He had tried to stop himself from doing it. To argue with himself and rationalise that this was not the right thing to do...
But he had loved her too much.
So, as planned so meticulously in advance, he had killed her in the early hours of a Tuesday morning.
And by Tuesday lunchtime he was sitting somewhere halfway up the Matterhorn, surveying the town of Zermatt from above, and watching the people so far below, scrambling around at the bottom of the mountain like little ants.
After that he had never questioned himself again. Killing those he loved had become part of his makeup. It was something he did, and he was good at it.
Like climbing.
The two loves of his life.
Maciek thought for a moment about the last few days. In retrospect, he was glad that he had killed a man, and had added that experience to his collection, but he knew now that he would never do that again. He had enjoyed it while it was happening, but the depression that had started immediately afterwards had pursued him all the way to the border of Scotland.
It was only as he had started to drive along the valleys with the hills beginning to reach up high on either side of the road that he had begun to feel better.
After the Matterhorn, it had become a little tradition of his, that after he had killed someone, he would head to the hills, where he could find a place amidst the heavens to think and ponder and savour what he had done, before planning the next stage of his life.
The trip to the Cuillins of Skye had been one that he had been planning for a long time, but he had always kept it in his back pocket, to be used up when celebrating some very special occasion. Such as his personal re-enactment of Saving Private Ryan.
The weather had been perfect for the past couple of days. He couldn't have planned it better.
He had left his B&B very early that morning, making good time, and by 8 a.m. he was already well on his way along the marked path past 'Loch an Fir Ballich', as it was called on the map. He paused at the head of the loch to have breakfast, while he admired the views of the islands of Rhum and Soay, and then continued up into Coire Lagan. He had first heard about this trip- climbing 'the round of Coire Lagan'- during his first year at university. The round trip and the climb along and up the peaks of this ridge, was reputed to be the most fabulous day out on Skye. So far it had not disappointed.
The route was to take him up the 'Great Stone Chute', by all accounts an impressive sounding but rather nasty and very steep scree slope, up to a small saddle/ crossing (or ' bealach' as the locals called it in Gaelic) between the two peaks Sgurr Alasdair and Sgurr Thearlaich. His plan was to climb them both in quick succession, before continuing onto the main goal of the day, Sgurr Dearg - the world famous 'Inaccessible Pinnacle', a huge fin of rock at the top of the mountain, only a few metres wide with vertical drops on all sides.
Maciek knew that most people would scale the last peak in the company of a professional guide or with friends, but Maciek was going to do it alone so that he could derive the maximum pleasure from his achievement.
He also had a lot to think about and he was looking forward to the solitude. His plan was simple: he would climb directly up the front of the fin and then abseil down the other side. No messing around. The direct approach was always the best!
So far, everything had gone to plan. Surprisingly, even though the weather was brilliant for climbing, he was the first man up the hill, and although he could now see a few ants beginning to crawl around the hill further down, he had not yet spok
en to another human being all day.
Maciek took out a sandwich from his pocket and began to eat. He had deliberately left his rucksack in the bealach below while he climbed first Sgurr Alasdair, then Sgurr Thearlaich, but wished now that he had brought it with him. He had left his camera in the rucksack, a stupid mistake which he regretted and made him angry with himself.
As he chewed on his sandwich, Maciek thought about the days ahead. He would not being be going back to his rented house. It was time to move on to somewhere new. He would minimize any possible suspicion by returning to his work as a security assistant in the A&E department in the hospital, which was over a hundred miles away from his house. For now he would find somewhere more local to stay on a temporary basis.
Later this week he would visit his 'friend' in Birmingham and organize a new passport and identity. Then he would move back to London for a while. There were so many other Poles there that he would be surrounded by fellow countrymen and blend in easily. There were also lots of hospitals in London...it would be easy to get a job.
In the meantime, Maciek would borrow the identity of his departed guest for a week or so, just until his new papers could be bought. He had kept the wallet, and thankfully his guest had been carrying two bank cards which meant that Maciek could simply swipe the cards and buy anything up to £10 at a checkout without providing any identification.
He had been lucky.
Maciek turned to look at the peak of Sgurr Thearlaich.
Then he looked at the picture of the 'Inaccessible Pinnacle' on the back of the map.
It looked simple. He smiled to himself. He was going to enjoy this.
Chapter Sixteen
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Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh Renal Unit
The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh
September 8th
Present Day
10.30 a.m.
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Dr Jamieson stood by the bedside of Peter Nicolson, the reporter from the News. The Nephrology Consultant surveyed the charts again, hoping that perhaps he had missed something and that the latest results would still give him some comfort and indicate that Peter's condition was improving. Perhaps he had missed something on his first examination of the charts.
Unfortunately, it was not the case. The trained eye of the consultant had not missed anything. Things were as bad as he feared.
Peter had been admitted again last night, and his condition had deteriorated rapidly. He had re-entered a coma a few hours after admission, and had not yet regained consciousness.
The dialysis machine was doing its best to help Peter's body stay alive, but it was just a machine, not a miracle worker. Peter's body was tired and was fighting a new infection. His body needed a good, long, solid rest.
A few hours ago they had begun a new course of treatment, designed to help fight the new infection.
The consultant was hopeful that they would soon see some signs of improvement, but he knew that long term this was not good enough. They might be able to stave off this new infection, clear his lungs, help his immune system temporarily and help him recover slightly. But from experience Dr Jamieson knew that things had become desperate. If this infection didn't kill him, the next might.
Peter needed a transplant. Urgently.
If Peter's body started to recover, to fight the infection, to stabilise again, they would have a window of opportunity when his body might be strong enough to survive a transplant operation.
The consultant turned to the other doctor beside the bedside. "Any luck so far?" he asked.
"No, sorry. We haven't been able to find any compatible kidneys yet. He's next on the list. Now it's just a matter of time. We just have to wait."
The consultant signed the charts, handed the clipboard back to the doctor and walked on to the next bedside and the next patient on his round at the renal unit.
If a matching donor was found, Dr Jamieson would conduct the transplant surgery himself. Deep down, he really wanted this case to have a positive outcome. He liked Peter.
He knew though, that the chances of finding a matching donor in the next few days were not high. Statistically, the odds were not in favour of poor old Peter.
Sometimes life was like a lottery.
As in all these cases though, the sad thing was that for Peter to win the lottery, someone else would first have to lose. And die.
END OF PART ONE
Part Two
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Chapter Seventeen
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Four months later
Present Day
February The Following Year.
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Big Wee Rab lay back in his bed and stared at the ceiling of his cell. He would be getting out tomorrow. He had served eight months of his sixteen month sentence. Rab laughed to himself. He was being let out early for 'good behaviour'. He laughed again. Until now Rab had never, ever, been well behaved. In fact, the concept of ‘good behaviour’ had, until this point, been alien to him. Even funnier was that, out of all the people or institutions he had encountered during his pathetic little life, it was the now the highest authority in the land...the Queen of England, who was saying "Good boy Rab. You can go home now. You've been very well behaved!"
"Shut the fuck up, Rab!" the man from the bunk underneath shouted up. "I'm fucking trying to sleep, ya bastard!"
Rab contemplated jumping down and nutting him on the head...giving him a 'Glasgow kiss'...but he decided against it. For eight months he had seriously tried his best not to get into trouble. He was a reformed character. Really.
Or at least, that was what he wanted to become.
His stretch in prison had been a wake-up call. In more ways than one.
Firstly, he had realised just how close he had come to death. He had been very lucky. So bloody lucky, Rab couldn't accept that it was just chance.
If it had not been for the policeman who had climbed the fence and dived into the cold waters of the loch to pull out his body, he would have drowned. Thank God Jamsie had seen him being blown over the fence and alerted the policeman.
Secondly, somehow Rab had been floating face up, another piece of luck.
Thirdly, the explosion had only left him with minor burns on his back. His wrist had been broken while trying to climb out of the burning wreck, but it had already healed, and the plaster cast was long gone.
And lastly, and most fucking lucky of all, was the fact that he had got away with attempted murder, and only been sentenced for a first offence of joyriding a stolen car while under the influence of drugs. How he had managed that, he just didn't know. It had to have been a combination of things: an incompetent police investigation...no one seemed to have twigged that there was petrol in the back seat that went up with the car; somehow they had believed his story that the whole thing had been an accident, caused by the car in front not driving properly and crashing into the fence and bouncing off it...Rab had tried to avoid a crash by cutting the corner, but had been hit by the car in front bouncing backwards towards him. "It had all happened so fast...and I wasn't really thinking straight," he had confessed. "I was high at the time...I'm sorry."
At first Rab had been sorry: 'sorry that he had not succeeded in killing the bastard reporter frae the News’. But over the past few months, it had slowly dawned on him how fucking lucky he was that he had not killed the bastard. If he had, that would have been the end of Big Wee Rab. In more ways than one.
It was his first time in a proper court...he had just turned eighteen last year...and his previous offences till now had been ‘considered minor’. Ironically he had never been caught doing any of the bad things he had actually done, only the trivial stuff. In court, he had got some right namby-fucking-pamby judge who believed in Rab's 'potential'- what fucking potential?-and he practically let him off. He had been expecting several years of hard time, and he ended up with a prison cell with a TV, and a canteen
and a library and a fully equipped gym. And basketball and football four times a week.
In one way, it was the best social club he had ever been to.
On the other hand, Rab had met some real big hard nuts inside. Rab had thought that he was 'hard', but he realised now that he had never known the definition of the word. These people were real scum.
The only way that Rab had avoided some of the bad things that happen to most new boys in the prison, was because he was so tall and strong. He had spent most of his time working out in the gym, and now he was even stronger than when he had come in.
Smarter too.
Rab was a lot smarter.
He knew that he had one of two choices.
Go back to the estate and possibly die there or make a clean break.
In other words, he had to fuck off somewhere else and never go back to his old life, because if he did, he knew that he would get dragged back into the mire with the rest of them. And if he did, he would have no option but to become the best of the worst. He would have to end up using all the new things he had learned in prison from the other scum he had met here, and using it to the best effect he knew how in a new, harder life. He had made lots of connections in prison. Lots of new ‘friends’.
Rab was fighting a battle with himself. Inside his big wee brain. He knew that if he went back to the estate, he now knew how to turn the CME Team into the biggest, fucking, scariest Team/Crew/ Gang...call it whatever you want...in the whole of Lothian and the Borders. And he knew how to make money from it. Tons of money. Drugs were the key. Lots and lots of drugs. Thankfully he now had the contacts to succeed.
BOX SET of THREE TOP 10 MEDICAL THRILLERS Page 7