by Andrew Grant
“Can we at least start with your name?” he said.
I decided to stay. Partly to give him the chance to atone for the posters. But mainly because old habits die hard. I wanted to see why he was so worried about the police.
“David Trevellyan,” I said, after a moment, and went on to explain the problem with the missing Grensons. He listened carefully, without interrupting, and looked increasingly confident as I went along.
“OK,” he said, when I’d finished. “No worries. I have people who can take care of this for you, quite easily. Mags, could you get Stan on the phone for me, please?”
“Um, Mr Leckie is out of the office today,” she said. “A very urgent family situation unexpectedly cropped up, again, I understand.”
“This is the Head of Security we’re talking about?” I said.
The man gave nothing away.
“Because I heard all about his urgent situation,” I said. “It was him I originally went to see.”
“Well, it’s nothing to worry about,” the man said. “Mags, can you get Lydia for me, instead?”
The woman nodded and made her way back out to her own desk, once again keeping a wide berth as she skirted around me.
“Lydia’s our Deputy Security Chief,” he said. “She’s very thorough. This kind of thing is more in her remit, anyway. Probably better that she handles it, in reality.”
“I’m putting her through,” the woman said from the outer office, and after another split second the man’s phone began to ring.
“Ready?” he said, pressing a button. “I’m putting her on loudspeaker.”
“Lydia McCormick,” a younger woman’s voice said, sounding tinny and disembodied through the low-quality equipment.
“Lydia, this is Mark Jackson,” the man said. “I’m here with one of our patients, a Mr David Trevellyan.”
I didn’t correct him.
“David’s staying in one of the observation rooms on B wing, and he has some concerns over the security of personal possessions in that area,” he said.
“What kind of concerns?” she said. “Can he be more specific?”
“Theft,” I said.
“Then there’s no need to worry,” she said. “There have been no thefts reported from any of our primary patient accommodation units in over eighteen months. None at all since I’ve been here, in fact.”
“Well, there’s been one now,” I said.
“When?” she said, above the distant rattling of a computer keyboard. “I can’t see any record of anything.”
“There won’t be a record yet,” the man said. “That’s why David’s here. His boots were stolen from his room this morning, apparently. While he was in the MRI suite. So we do at least have a clear window of time to focus on. He’s understandably upset about this - and I’m disturbed about it too - so I’d like you to look into it, Lydia. As a matter of urgency.”
“Of course,” she said. “I’ll jump on it straight away. Can you just tell me what happened to the S103, though? I’ll need someone to track it down, and get it on the system as quickly as possible.”
“What’s an S103?” I said.
“It’s our basic Security Incident reporting form,” she said. “You have completed one?”
“No, I haven’t,” I said.
“Do you have a copy over there, at least?” she said.
“No.” I said. “I’ve never set eyes on one.”
“Well, that’s not a problem,” she said. “Just ask Mags to print one out for you - she can pull one off the intranet - then ask her to whizz it over to me once you’ve filled it out, and I’ll get the wheels in motion.”
“What information do you need for this form?” I said.
“Oh, not much,” she said. “It’s not hard. Just the basics. What happened. Where. When. Brief descriptions will be fine.”
“I’ve already told you more than that,” I said. “I’ve detailed exactly what happened. And given you a precise description of the boots.”
“I know,” she said. “But that was an oral report. We need it on paper.”
“What other questions are on the form?” I said.
“Oh, none really,” she said. “There’s not much to it.”
“So if you already have the information, and the form doesn’t give you anything new, why do you need it?” I said.
“Because we need the form itself,” she said. “That’s what kicks the process into gear. We can’t move without one.”
“Why not?” I said. “Why can’t you start now?”
“Because we don’t have the form,” she said.
“But the form doesn’t tell you anything you don’t already know,” I said. “It’s pointless.”
“It isn’t pointless,” she said. “It’s the start of the process. There’s no case without one. Nothing for us to work with.”
“OK,” I said. “How about this. You make a start now, before the trail goes completely cold, and I’ll get the paperwork across to you as soon as I can.”
“No,” she said. “I need the form first. That’s how the system works. We can’t do anything without one. We can’t be fully accountable, otherwise.”
“Mark?” I said, looking directly at the man on the other side of the desk. “This is crazy. Help me out, here.”
The man put both hands over his face and then pulled them sideways for a moment, spreading his skin and stretching his eyes into narrow slits.
“Sorry,” he said, letting go of his cheeks again. “If my Deputy Head of Security says we need a Form S103 before we begin, then we need a Form S103 before we begin.”
“Thank you, Mark,” she said. “It isn’t hard to fill in, Mr Trevellyan. And believe me, nothing can be done without one.”
“Is that right?” I said, standing up to leave.
“Where are you going?” the man said.
“Back to my room,” I said. “I feel like I might need a second assessment for my head wound, after all. I’m going to get that taken care of, then see about what you’ve been telling me.”
“Sounds like a plan,” the man said. “Let me know if there’s anything more I can do. Lydia - anything to add before Mr Trevellyan leaves us?”
“No, nothing else from me,” she said, then there was a click, and her voice was replaced by a harsh, grating dial tone.
“Well David, I’d like to thank you for coming in,” the man said, pressing a button on his phone and shutting off the irritating noise. “I appreciate the chance to clear this matter up. I’m sure you’ll be satisfied with the outcome - Lydia really is good at what she does - and I’m glad she was able to clarify the process for you. Good luck with the rest of your treatment. And please, check back with me at any time.”
I turned my back and walked away, thinking that Mark Jackson had actually been right. The conversation with Lydia really had clarified things for me. But probably not in the way he’d expected. Because from the moment she’d mentioned the S103, I’d been absolutely certain about one fact.
No one in that place was going to give me any meaningful help. So, if I ever wanted to see those boots again, I was going to have to get them back by myself.
Chapter Four
It took a full quarter of an hour for me to retrace my steps through the hospital’s maze of colour-coded corridors, but when I reached my room I found that someone had at least come by and cleared up the mess while I’d been gone. I hit the button to call for a nurse, and with nothing else to do while I waited, lay on the bed and flicked through a dozen channels of daytime television. I rejected the soap operas straight away. And the quizzes. There were no news or current affairs programmes to be found. A cooking competition seemed vaguely promising for a while, but I finally settled on a talk show where a seventy-year-old man was being taken to task for sleeping with his thirty something sister-in-law. The host was adamant this was wrong, but the guy himself was standing his ground. He insisted he was entirely justified. He’d already got his third wife’s teenage
daughter pregnant, after all. And with the girl temporarily off-limits, how else were his prodigious needs to be met? The audience was still grappling with that one when his wife made her entrance. Things were shaping up nicely, but before I could see whether she would make good on her threat to kill him with her bare hands, there was a knock on my door. It was time to be a patient again.
The nurse - the same one who’d admitted me that morning - stayed in my room for twenty minutes. Fifteen for her to re-appraise my condition and take note of my dramatic decline. And five for me to subtly pick her brains about the whereabouts of any other new arrivals. Because it seemed to me that anyone with a mind to help themselves to other people’s property would want to get in early, while the richest pickings were still available. Like they’d done to me. So if I wanted to track them down, the new patients’ rooms would be a good place to start. Which was fine, in theory. It only had one snag. The nurse told me that no one else had been brought in for four days. And as the unit only catered for trauma patients, it wasn’t possible to predict when any more would arrive. Unless I went out and bashed someone over the head, I thought, but that seemed a little extreme. I kept on pressing, but the best lead she could give me was that there were only two empty rooms left. They were both at the far end of the corridor below mine.
The rooms were easy to find. They were opposite one another, and you could tell they were still not being used because their doors were propped open and you could look inside. The nurse had told me they always filled these ones last, because their location made them the least convenient for the staff to reach. But that also made it impossible for me to stake them out. There was no cover of any kind. Any potential thieves would see me a mile off, so I decided to scour the rest of the hospital for anything useful, then come back and check on developments.
One area I didn’t have a clear picture of was the top floor of the admin wing. The MRI technician had mumbled something about steering clear of it, so I decided to head there next. I thought his warning referred to boredom when I peered through the first few doors. An abandoned classroom, choked with dust. Two storerooms, with half their shelves left empty. A cupboard, full of filing boxes. And then I found what he must have really meant. Tucked away in the far corner, hidden behind an unmarked door, was a kind a macabre museum full of grotesque anatomical specimens in ancient glass jars.
A breath of fresh air seemed like a good idea in the circumstances, so I made my way to the nearest exit and stepped outside into the garden. The ground was strewn with twigs and branches. There must have been a storm recently. A big one, judging by the amount of debris. I hadn’t known anything about it. Maybe it had happened when I was over in Luxembourg. Or before that, in Tokyo. But either way it had passed me by. The thought made me strangely uncomfortable so I made for one of the benches that lined the path around the centre of the lawn and perched on the edge, suddenly feeling sickened, and almost light headed. If I was unaware of something simple, like the state of the weather in my home city, what else was I in the dark about? What else was I missing about the place? And what about the people? What was going on with them? Was I perpetually bouncing from country to country, putting myself in harm’s way on their behalf, just so they could rob each other blind? Steal from me? Fill their veins with drugs? Or carry on like the family on that TV show?
I woke up in the dark. I was lying on my back. On a bed, but not under the covers. Still wearing my pyjamas and slippers. My head was back to normal, and no other parts of me were showing any signs of damage, so I sat up and waited for my night sight to adjust. Objects and shadows gradually took shape around me, and after a couple of minutes I realised I was back in my hospital room. I tried to focus, and managed to coax a few vague pictures out of my recent memory. I was fairly certain I could recall getting up from the bench in the garden. Picking my way through the detritus. Coming in through the main entrance to the north building. Hauling myself up two flights of stairs. Drifting down the corridor, making doubly sure I selected the right door. And doing something else. What was it? The curtains. For some reason I’d closed them before lying down. I felt my way across to the window and tugged them apart again. They must have been thicker than I’d realised because with the street lights on it turned out to still be fairly bright outside. I turned and checked the clock on the wall above the bed. It was ten past six in the evening. I’d only been asleep for around an hour. That wasn’t too serious. And it wasn’t too late. There was time to nip downstairs, check the vacant rooms, and still be back in time for dinner. If there was anything on the menu worth eating.
I could tell from the second I stepped into the lower corridor that something was different. The shadows at the far end had changed. One of the doors - the one on the left - had been closed. No one else was around so I approached, silently. I heard a voice from inside. A woman’s. Then another woman answered it. I didn’t recognise either one. A nurse, perhaps, or a doctor, speaking to a patient? A reasonable guess, I thought, but I had no way of knowing for sure. Not without seeing them. And I couldn’t afford for them to spot me, so I slipped into the empty room opposite, closed the door, and stooped down far enough to fit my eye to the peephole.
Nothing happened for eleven minutes, then the door I was watching swung open. A woman shuffled into the corridor. She was a nurse, but not the one who’d helped me, earlier. She took one step to her left and stopped, staring into the distance. Another thirty seconds ticked away, then she moved back and a man appeared. He was in his mid twenties, I’d guess. Thirty at the outside. It’s hard to be precise through a fish-eye lens. He was wearing a porter’s uniform. The material was faded and the trousers looked too tight in several places, but he didn’t seem concerned about it. The pair conferred for a minute, then disappeared into the room.
They were out of sight for less than a minute. The nurse re-appeared first. She positioned herself near the hinges and reached back into the room to stop the door from closing. Then I saw the porter again. And realised why the nurse had waited for him. The person I’d heard her talking to was using a wheelchair, and she wanted someone to help push it. But the patient’s condition wasn’t relevant. The important thing was - she was a new arrival.
All I had to do now was wait for the thief to show his face. That wouldn’t be too hard. Waiting is one thing I’ve had a lot of practice at. It’s easier than chasing. And that night, I was in luck. Because it took less than four minutes for my trap to spring shut.
I saw a man enter the room across the corridor. He was also dressed as a porter. Only his uniform was subtly different from the guy’s who’d been pushing the wheelchair. The material was in better condition. It looked brand new, in fact. It had no hospital logos. And it fitted him way too well.
I guessed from the mess he’d made in my room that the thief would only be inside for a couple of minutes, so I didn’t waste any time. And it wasn’t like I needed to catch him in the act. All I wanted was to get my boots back. I was planning to have the same conversation with him regardless of what he was doing when I walked through the door. So the fact that I found him sitting in a visitor’s chair, fiddling with the combination on a black leather briefcase was of no concern to me at all.
The fact that he pulled a Sig Sauer pistol from his overall pocket a second later was a different story altogether. A P226. It looked clean. Factory fresh, even. A nice weapon. I remember thinking it was a little extravagant for a low level burglar even as I kicked it out of his hand. It flew across the room and crashed against something metal - maybe the radiator - but I kept my eyes locked on the man. I was worried he’d pull out a knife or a backup piece. But that didn’t seem to cross his mind. There was no hesitation. He just dropped the briefcase and came at me with his fists, relentlessly combining flurries of sharp jabs and hooks.
I carried on moving and blocking, trying to frustrate him and wear him down, until he finally pulled away about eighteen inches. He dropped his head and let his shoulders slacken, but I also saw h
im shift his balance. It was a feint. I guessed he was looking to change tack and catch me with a kick so I stepped aside, then as he came forward I moved straight back in and swept his standing leg. He crashed down onto his back and immediately rolled to his left. But he wasn’t just trying to get away. He was trying to retrieve the Sig. He landed with his fingertips two inches from the grip and started to wriggle frantically forward so, short of options, I snatched up the chair he’d been sitting on and smashed it down across the back of his head.
The guy was left completely still. He was touching the gun with his right hand, and his upper body was surrounded with splintered fragments of the chair’s wooden frame. Only its seat remained intact, and that had come to rest upside down near the foot of the bed. Someone had drawn a frowning face on the underneath in white chalk. I knew how they felt. Because my chances of asking any questions had been pretty much destroyed, too, along with the furniture. There was no hope of the guy waking up before anyone raised the alarm, with the amount of noise that had been made. Lydia McCormick would try to bury me with her forms. And the police would have a field day, as soon as they heard about the firearm. My only hope was to find something that I could follow up on my own, like a name or address or phone number, then make myself scarce. I could see the guy’s wallet peeping out from one of his pockets. I figured that would be a good place to start, so I reached down and worked it free. And at exactly the same moment, I heard the door crash open, behind me.