Death & Back

by Rob Aspinall

  That leaves me at least two minutes while they walk along the ward to the nearest toilet. An hour in, the latest chap decides he can't hold it any longer. He shuffles past the bed, casts an eye over me. I'm in my clothes, but my hand is still cuffed. I pretend I'm snoozing in front of the TV, but from the slit of one eye, I watch him waddle off. Yeah, that's the walk of a man who needs to drop off a couple of kids. And he's got his paper in hand, too.

  I open my eyes and sit up in bed. I've got the paperclips from the file bent into shape and ready in my hand. While no one's looking, I use them to pick the lock on the cuff. A piece of piss when you've done it a thousand times.

  I'm out in seconds. I slip off the bed and into my boots. I grab my jacket, the file and Detective Clarke's card. I hobble along the ward and out into a mile of corridor.

  I've gotta get to the end before that copper returns from the toilet. I reckon I've got five minutes tops to make it out of the building before he returns.

  All he'll find is an empty bed and a set of cuffs dangling off the rail, but I can't get complacent. I slip my bomber jacket on as I walk. Pain shooting in all directions as I force my arms in the sleeves. I fold Clarke's file over lengthways and stuff it in my inside jacket pocket. I zip up and keep moving. At one point I'm in a race with a pensioner working a zimmer frame. That's how slow I am. But I round the corner. One step closer to freedom.

  Shit.

  Another long stretch of white walls and grey lino. There are lifts at the end, but I hear shouts echoing down the corridor, coming from behind me.

  The copper's voice bounces off the walls. "Anyone seen a big guy? Six-five. Cuts and bruises."

  I speed up as best I can. The lifts another twenty feet away. I hear police-issue boots running after me.

  Think, Charlie, think.

  24

  I see an opportunity to my right. A private room. I try the door and it opens. No one inside. Just an empty hospital bed and a gurney parked up alongside it. A dead body on top under a white sheet. The bed is made and there are daffodils in a nearby bin. I close the door behind me and flatten against the wall. Through a narrow pane of glass in the door I see the copper run past, yapping into his radio. He's heading for the lifts. They'll have this place locked down in no time.

  I look at the person-shaped bump under the sheet. Can't be too long before a porter comes and collects the poor sod. I lurch over to the gurney and whip off the sheet. It's an old man with a naval tattoo on his forearm. I throw the sheet aside and haul him off the gurney by the armpits, his skin ice-cold to the touch.

  His feet make a slapping sound as they hit the floor. I pull him backwards around the far side of the bed. I set him down on the floor, hidden from sight from anyone entering the room.

  Yeah, yeah, I know it's wrong. But needs must. And anyway, he was in the Navy. He'd of understood, right?

  I return to the gurney, grab the sheet and park my arse on the edge. I swing my legs up and pull the sheet over my lower half. I lie flat and drape the top of the sheet over my head.

  I lie still, waiting for the porter. I could be here for hours, but I'm not ready to run or fight yet. This is my only chance.

  As I'm lying there, I hear feet running to and fro along the corridor. Coppers searching the floor.

  "I'll check in here," one of 'em says.

  I hear the door handle click open. I hold my breath. My heart pounding in my chest. It seems an age, but I hear him leave. He closes the door and tells some other pig the room's all clear.

  "Must be on another floor," his copper mate says.

  The police toddle off and all goes quiet again. I breathe a sigh of relief, rippling the cotton sheet over my face. After a few minutes, I feel a warm body lying tight up next to me. The smell of aloe vera. Did I fall asleep? No. My eyes are wide open.

  Cassie jabs a finger in my chest. "Can't believe you just did that."

  "What?" I whisper back.

  "Dragged that man over there and left him on the floor. He's only just died."

  "He won't mind. He's making himself useful."

  "It's messed up."

  "Yeah, well it's a messed-up world. You'll come to find that out when you—"

  "Shush, Dad, someone's coming."

  "What do you mean, shush? You sh—Cassie?"

  And like that's she's gone again. I wonder if there's a new drug for these hallucinations. Something that doesn't make me want to throw up and kill myself like the ones I stopped taking. Much as it's great to see my only child, it's not the same as the real thing.

  I hold my breath again. The door opens and a pair of feet enter the room. I see a shadow loom over the sheet. The gurney starts moving and turning, until we're out in the corridor.

  The porter has a foreign accent. Italian? He talks to himself. "God, this one's heavy."

  I let a soft breath out of the corner of my mouth. Shallow enough so it doesn't ripple the sheet. The gurney wheels squeak all the way along the corridor.

  "Hey, stop," a booming voice says.

  The porter puts on the brakes. "Can I help you officer?" he says.

  The copper is close. I can tell by the smell of bacon. I hold my breath again and make a fist with my right hand. Hopefully I can still swing my arm.

  "You seen a big ugly guy in black?"

  Ugly? The cheeky—

  "No," the porter says. "Why?"

  "He's a fugitive. If you see him, he's dangerous. So don't approach him. Call security."

  "Um, okay," the porter says. "Good luck."

  The gurney moves. Not long before we stop again. I hear a lift door ping open. The porter wheels me in. Spins me round one-eighty. The lift door closes.

  "Going down," a robotic female voice says. The lift stops and starts a couple of times, but no one seems to be getting in.

  "I'll catch the next one," I hear a woman say.

  Can't blame 'em. No one wants to stand next to a dead body in a confined space.

  The robot woman counts us down to the basement level.

  I think it's safe to say we're headed to the hospital morgue. I should be okay from here, so I throw off the sheet and sit bolt upright.

  The porter jumps out of his skin. Screams in terror. Makes a cross with his finger. He's a wiry little goateed man in spinach-green scrubs. Actually, he might be Greek. I dunno. He grips a silver cross around his neck for dear life.

  "Come on," I say. "You never seen a talking dead bloke?"

  It seems to dawn on him that I'm the fugitive. That I'm dangerous. The lift opens. I haul him to his feet by the arm.

  "Where's the nearest exit?" I ask.

  The porter directs me to a set of stairs. "Two floors up there's a door out back. But you'll need—"

  "One of these?" I say, swiping his ID card off his hip. "Cheers pal."

  I climb the stairs. Far more painful than walking straight. But I find a discreet white door at the top of the second flight. I swipe out onto a quiet road that runs along the rear of the main building. As I toss the ID card in a bin, a little yellow bus stops close by. I climb on-board with a few others and take a seat halfway along on the right.

  The doors close and the bus takes off. As we trundle away from the hospital, the cavalry speeds past us the opposite way. A train of three police cars. Lights and sirens going berserk.

  "What do you think all that's about?" an old Caribbean man asks me, over his shoulder.

  I shrug, Detective Clarke's file on my lap. "Beats me."

  25

  Like most things, the bathtub in my bedsit is too small for my body. If I lie down, my legs stick out of the water. If I sit up, only my legs fit in. It's old too, with a permanent black ring around the middle that no amount of scrubbing is getting off.

  I start with a cold bath. I run the tap the coldest it'll go, fill her up and dump in two bags of ice cubes I bought from the local supermarket.

  I remove my clothes. Everything aching. I look at the ice floating on the surface of the water. Psyche myself
up, hook a leg over and plant a foot in the water.

  Christ, it's freezing. What the hell am I doing?

  Nothing I haven't done before.

  I climb in and squat over the surface. Have to do it fast. If you lower in slow, the ice water plays merry hell with your balls.

  I count to three and dunk myself in, lying low so it's up to my neck. My knees stick a mile out of the tub. I gasp at the cold. Shiver for a few minutes until I get used to it.

  It numbs the pain in my body. I take a deep breath and slide lower, submerging fully. I watch tiny little icebergs floating above my head. I count to thirty and pop back out of the water.

  I stay in the bath for ten minutes before clambering out. I wrap myself in a towel. The inflammation in my body easing off already. My mind three times more awake.

  I let the ice water drain and run a hot bath in its place. I climb in again and repeat the process, letting head and body soak in the steaming water.

  This one's for relaxation. It loosens up the joints and muscles.

  The hot and cold is good for the immune system, too. Gets your blood pumping and speeds up healing. I lie in the bath with Ducky, my yellow rubber duck, bobbing on the surface. I've had Ducky since I was two. He goes everywhere I go. And I don't bathe without him.

  Sometimes I talk to Ducky. I run things past him. Problems. Decisions. Peeves.

  As I'm bouncing a few thoughts off him, I hear a tinkling sound. I smell the end of a cigarette burning. I look up to my left.

  It's Mandy. Sat on my toilet, smoking one of her twenty a day.

  "Ten," she says. "I cut down."

  Mandy takes another drag. The bathroom is so small, she's almost on top of me, in the clothes she wore at the hospital. Her jeans and knickers around her ankles.

  "You still talking to that thing?" she says, looking at Ducky. She tuts and takes another drag. Looks at a glossy photo in her spare hand. Straight from the file Detective Clarke left me.

  "What are you doing with that?" I ask.

  "More importantly, what are you gonna do next?" she says.

  "Get out of London, that's what."

  Mandy raises her eyebrows. Lets out a cloud of smoke.

  "So they beat me half to death. You can't take it personally Mand. Not in this business."

  "So you're still in the business."

  "I didn't say that."

  "So much for making a positive difference." She air quotes me as she says it. I hate it when people do that. "Didn't last long, did it?" she says.

  Mandy looks at the photograph. I angle my head to see. A long lens snap of that compound the detectives were on about.

  "Alright," I say. "So Clarke may have left me the paper clips on purpose. He may have even clued me in on the shift changes of the guards. But that doesn't mean I'm off the hook. My best bet is to skip town. Start again."

  The steam rises off the water. The tap at the end of the bath drips. I look at Mandy. At Ducky. Mandy smokes and gazes at the photo. Ducky stares at me with his big black eyes. Until I can't take it any longer.

  I sit up fast in the bath. "Alright, alright. I'll do something. Just stop going on about it, the pair of you." I climb out of the bath. “Thanks a lot, Ducky.”

  Mandy covers her eyes and screws up her mouth. "Oh, warn me next time, Charlie."

  I step onto the floor. Water dripping on the dirty lino. "Nothing you haven't seen before. Now pass me a towel."

  Mandy doesn't answer. She's gone. The photo too. I grab a bright blue towel off the railing and wrap it around my bruised body. I dry myself off, muscles loosening up by the minute. I brush my teeth and pull on some fresh clothes. I look in the bathroom mirror.

  Like I said, I'm not angry about Randall stiffing me over. Hell, it'd be a bit rich if I was. I've handed enough beatings out of my own. But the more I think about what they're doing to those refugees . . . They're ordinary people getting buggered from every angle. It grinds my bloody gears.

  I look at Ducky. "You're right. I should call her."

  I pad into the living room and pick my new pay-as-you-go handset off the sofa. I dial the number of the burner I handed to Amira.

  The call picks up on the other end to a scuffle. I hear shouts, screams, words in a foreign language. The line goes quiet.

  "Who is this?" I ask.

  No answer. Just breathing.

  "Who the fuck are you?" I ask again.

  The line clicks and goes dead. Ducky's right. Someone needs to do something.

  26

  The guard's weapon of choice was a camera. A small, silver camera he pulled from inside a jacket pocket. He struggled to work it in chunky, dirty fingers. After some discussion with the other two men, he appeared to get to grips with the camera. He motioned to the line of refugees to stand up straight and clicked one rapid shot after another.

  The flash left spots in Amira's eyes. The three men walked up and down the line, debating an issue in their own language. The lead guard then strode off along the corridor. He disappeared through a large set of doors signed Gym Hall.

  Ten, tense minutes later, he returned with stapled sheets of print paper. Amira caught a glimpse: a headshot of each refugee and number alongside each photograph.

  They appeared to be consulting the sheets and comparing them to the people in line. The guard pointed at different faces, while the drivers pulled them out of line. They positioned them either to the left or the right.

  Most of the group stood to the left, mostly men. The group to the right consisted of three women. The younger women. Amira was the last one remaining. The lead guard pushed her to the right. She joined a young black woman who appeared Somali or Eritrean. Another she'd spoken to, from Syria and the third, from Afghanistan, Malik had told her.

  The guard led the larger group towards the Gym Hall.

  The two drivers harried and hassled Amira's group back out to the people carrier she'd arrived in. As they walked, Amira felt the phone Charlie had given her vibrate. It played a jaunty tune. She dug it out of her pocket fast—fumbled with the buttons to answer the call. Before she could shout for help, one of the drivers wrestled it out of her hands. She cried out, hoping the person on the other end would hear. The driver shoved her away and listened in silence. After a brief pause, he cut off the call.

  Could it have been Charlie? Surely not. She'd seen him beaten to death . . . The British police, then?

  It mattered little now. She was ordered inside the people carrier with the other women. Both drivers took their seats up front. The burner phone deposited in the glove box.

  As they passed through the barrack gates, Amira clung to the faint hope that the men had decided to let them go.

  It disintegrated entirely when a long journey ended at a dock. It ran alongside a vast stretch of water, the London Eye, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament in the far distance.

  The dock was busy with freight ships, warehouses and stacked, seawater-stained shipping containers. The driver stopped alongside a long white cargo ship with a bright blue hull.

  He turned and watched Amira and the girls. The man in the passenger seat opened the slide door and took the African woman by the arm. He slid the door shut and led her a few feet across the dock to a narrow set of white steps. He pushed her up the steps with his gun dug into her back.

  They disappeared through a doorway on deck. The man returned alone and repeated the process until Amira was the only one left. He reappeared and grabbed her by the arm. He dragged her out onto the dock. Amira spotted a pair of workers in high visibility orange, talking further up the road. She yelled for help with all the voice she had.

  The workers turned, looked for a moment, then resumed their conversation.

  The driver forced a hand over Amira's mouth. He marched her up the stairs, his grip too strong for her to wriggle free. Within seconds, she was inside—the steel door to the ship closed and the driver gone.

  Another man took over, dressed like a dock worker—a big navy coat and woolly h
at, black boots and trousers.

  He manhandled Amira down a metal staircase. Along a claustrophobic corridor that smelled of engine oil. Down another set of stairs and another corridor, indistinct from the last.

  They kept walking until they came to a large cargo hold lit a dull red. A long, high room made of solid steel. There were two long rows of cubicles. They ran either side of the hold—single beds partitioned by blue hospital curtains.

  The stench got to Amira first: sweat, sex and sickness. Then the sight of girls lying on unmade beds, drips in their arms. Their skin pale and movements woozy.

  Amira noticed a nearby curtain half-drawn. The mudded grips of a man's boots hanging over the end of a bed, his trousers around his ankles. The bed squeaking as his feet moved back and forth.

  The guard pushed Amira into the room, his accent local. "Come on darlin', let's find you a bed."

  He marched Amira down the aisle to a cubicle on the left. The curtain was open. He forced her to sit on the end of the bed. He stood over her, unbuckling his belt. "I'll give you a try out first."

  "Here," Amira said, "let me."

  The guard seemed surprised. "That's the spirit," he said, letting her take over.

  Amira pushed his trousers down around his shins.

  "Like a bit of meat, do yer?" he said. "Yeah, I bet you do over there, don't yer?"

  Amira looked up and smiled at the guard. She put a hand on the tail of his coat. The guard ran his tongue under his bottom lip. "Go on darlin', say ah."

  Amira rose fast off the bed, driving a knee into the guard's testicles. He reeled away in pain, ankles caught in the legs of his trousers. Falling backwards, he hit his head on the solid steel edge of the bed behind. Blood seeped out from the back of the man's skull. Amira ran her hands over his torso and found a handgun next to his ribs. She ran out of the cargo hold and along corridors, searching breathless for an exit.

  Right turns. Left turns. She couldn't remember which way they'd come.