Death & Back

by Rob Aspinall

  As they arrived at Meeting Room Four, she wondered what it could all mean.

  The two men guarding the door didn't bode well. They resembled secret service agents, or Italian mafia. With sunglasses and complexions from a warmer climate.

  They stepped aside. Tony opened the door. Pavel straightened his suit and tie. He put a hand on the small of Amira's back and guided her into the room.

  Two men sat in cream leather swing chairs to the far right of a polished walnut table dominating the room. One wore a black suit and a matching roll neck sweater underneath. He was a stocky man with brown hair, slicked back and grey at the temples. His skin tanned and sun-spotted. A pair of large, brown-tinted glasses concealed his eyes from view. A well-fed midriff hung off his frame.

  The man rested an arm on a dark, folded raincoat draped on the chair to his left. He turned to look at Amira

  "Mr Grezda," Pavel said. “Forgive the intrusion.”

  "Is this the one?" the other man at the table asked. He was bald and appeared tall, even sitting down. And he wore a navy police uniform buttoned up and adorned with stripes on each arm.

  Pavel guided Amira towards the men. "This is her," he said. "As you can see, she's young and in perfect health."

  "You have her bloods?" the policeman asked.

  "She's clean as a . . . How do you say here?" Pavel asked.

  "A whistle," the police officer said.

  "Yes, that's it."

  Grezda looked at the officer. "Well, what do you think?" He spoke in an accent similar to Pavel's, only worn by time and the cigars he smelled of.

  “An excellent candidate," the policeman said. "How soon can we do this? My wife's condition—"

  "We can proceed right away," Grezda said, waving a calming hand.

  The policeman took out his phone and began to text. "I'll let Diane's carer know. I'll have a car pick them up." He looked up from his phone. "Thank you, Edgar."

  "You've been a good friend to us," Grezda said, before hesitating. "And I hate to ask at a time like this, but—"

  "Sure, what is it?" the officer said, distracted.

  As Grezda waved Pavel away, he turned to talk to the policeman. "We're experiencing some resistance from a man called Rowbottom. He might need a little persuasion . . .”

  Amira found herself shoved out into the corridor.

  "What's going on?" she asked Pavel. "What are you all talking about?"

  "Please be quiet, dear," Pavel said as they walked to another elevator. "I'm sick of your whining."

  Amira shook off his grip. She waited for Tony to choose a floor. They were going up a level. As the doors began to close, she darted out through the gap.

  She turned to see the doors close behind her. The elevator going up, with Pavel and Tony stuck inside. She kicked off her heels and bolted back along the corridor. She pushed her away through a pair of nurses and skidded into reception.

  The receptionist had seen Amira coming. She stepped out from behind her desk. "Hey, where are you—"

  Amira knocked her to the floor. She ran onwards and found the elevator that had brought her up from the car park. She pushed the button, but it was taking too long. She saw a door to a set of stairs to her right. She took off through the door, scrambling down the stairs, a steadying hand on the railing.

  Each floor was marked by a number. First came two, then one. The next would be the ground floor.

  But there was a man coming the other way, on his phone. "No sign of her. I'm taking the stairs.” He looked up and saw Amira. It was Anton, with his gelled black hair and an angular face. "Wait, I've got her!"

  Amira spun and ran back up the stairs, the energy draining from her legs. Anton yelled for her to stop.

  She didn't.

  Instead, she was counting the floors to the top, thinking there might be another way out. Thinking she could lose them on one of the higher floors. Then double back and exit the building.

  She ran up past the second floor, rounded the landing and ran for the third.

  There stood Pavel.

  And Tony, up above on the fourth.

  Anton catching up fast behind.

  Amira looked over the bannister. Saw a drop to the basement floor. There was space enough between flights of stairs. The railings supporting the bannister had horizontal struts halfway up. She stepped on a strut and leaned out over the bannister.

  All she had to do was let go. Her own weight and momentum would take her the rest of the way.

  "No!" Pavel yelled, his cries echoing throughout the stairwell. A hand outstretched towards her.

  Amira closed her eyes and prayed rapidly under her breath. She got ready to let go.

  59

  I drive around, looking for the Merc.

  There's no sign. It can't have gone that far. Must have got off the street somehow. I double back along the road I lost it down. I pull up outside a tall, stone building. A fancy-looking place with a sign outside that says Chesterton Private Clinic. There's a metal shutter to the right of the building. It opens. A dark-blue Bentley Continental emerges onto the street.

  I take a chance, playing a hunch. I steer the cab down the ramp and cut underneath the shutter before it closes. I find myself in an underground car park full of gleaming supercars. I make a left turn and cruise along a row. There, at the end of the row, I see the Merc. At least, I think it's the one. I drive past and turn right and right again onto the next row. I park up and turn off the engine. I get out and jog between cars, staying low. The smooth car park floor is cool on my bare feet. I slide between a Lambo and a Range Rover, both smelling of fresh wax.

  I approach the Mercedes.

  It's empty.

  I look across the car park and see a lift at the far end. I run over to it and push the button. It comes down from an upper level.

  It opens up.

  There's a man inside with black gelled hair. He's on the phone. He drops it when he sees me. Swings a fist. I connect first, knocking him flat on his back.

  I push the button for the ground floor and find the guy's wallet. His driver's licence says Anton Glick. I bet any money that he's the driver.

  The lift hits the ground floor and the doors open to a marble foyer with a security guard behind a desk. I jab the button fast to close the doors. They slide shut before the guard can look up from his paper. I press for the first. The doors open. I step out into a tall, wide corridor. More bloody marble. There's money in this place, alright.

  I wander round but don't find anything other than offices. The clinic must be further up. I get back in the lift and choose the fourth floor out of six. Before long, I'm stepping out into a white corridor. No more marble. This is more like a hospital. The look, the smell, the vibe.

  I set off along the corridor. Walking slow. Staying tight to the wall, in case I need to duck into a room and hide.

  A surgeon barges through a set of swinging doors in blue scrubs. I peer inside one of the windows. See a man on an operating table.

  He's African. Skinny. Out for the count under a green surgical sheet. Another doctor in scrubs places a kidney in a stainless steel dish.

  I find another room. A ward. Three beds with women hooked up to drips, as if recovering from surgeries of their own.

  I move on, but hear two people talking. Nurses coming round the corner.

  Can't let anyone see me like this. They'll raise the alarm.

  So I push into a room. It's dark, but the lights flicker on automatically. I back up and bump up against something hard and metal. The edge of a gurney. A blue-skinned big toe sticking out from under a light-blue sheet. I turn and see three gurneys in a row. Each with a body underneath. I pull the top ends of the sheets away.

  I take a step back.

  Shit.

  They're just kids.

  Two teenage girls and a young boy.

  They look like migrants to me. Dark-skinned and underfed.

  I've seen some stuff in my time, but this . . . You can blow a shotgun hole
in a goon's face. Chop a couple of fingers off a dealer. But you don't cut out people’s organs—kidneys, lungs, the little boy's eyes.

  Can't think what I'd do if this was my Cassie . . . And suddenly, it all connects. The bodies in the mortuary. The illegal clinics Clarke was talking about. Bodies buried in the foundations under new building projects. The building site development owned by VX Holdings, Prince's company.

  And Eddie Prince working for a slice of the pie for Pavel and his mates.

  People smuggling. Slave labour. Prostitution. And now organ harvesting. All this time I thought I was moving further up the chain. When all I’ve really been doing is dropping deeper into hell.

  And they've brought Amira here.

  60

  She could have screamed.

  Her body wouldn't move. Her hand wouldn't let go of the bannister. Her foot wouldn't push off the strut. And before she could step down off the railing, Anton was there to wrap his arms around her waist. He pulled her back from the bannister and carried her fighting and kicking up to the third floor. Without a word, Pavel grabbed a handful of Amira's hair and dragged her up the stairs to the fourth. He pushed her into the arms of Tony, who manhandled her onto the fifth, as if she was something to be passed around. Tony shoved her through the stairwell door and back into the clinic.

  This floor was different. No more meeting rooms. No more marble. All white and clean. At least on the surface.

  Amira soon found herself in a private room. A hard-faced blonde nurse with tattoos walked in with a porter pushing a bed on wheels.

  "Help me get her clothes off," the nurse said.

  Amira resisted the attentions of Tony, but the nurse was already undoing the zip on the back of her dress. Amira fought harder, but nurse, porter and Tony had her down on the bed between them—her underwear removed. The nurse tied a white smock loose around her back.

  Tony and the porter forced her legs onto the bed. They pinned her down flat and motionless on top of the sheets.

  As the nurse inserted a drip into the back of her hand, Pavel talked into his phone. He was angry, pacing to and fro. "What do you mean, Cristina's gone? How?"

  Amira wanted to tear the drip from the back of her hand. But it was taped tight to her skin. And Tony was too strong. She felt the cold flow of water creeping up her forearm.

  "No," Pavel said, still on the call. "Go through the usual channels. Have the women sent back . . . To where? To Hungary, Romania, I don't care, just get rid of them . . . In fact, get them to Romania. Dimi will know what to do with them."

  As Amira listened to Pavel's conversation, the nurse forced a mask over her head, the porter holding her still at the temples. She felt a current of air coming in through the mask, invading her nose and mouth. She was pretty sure it wasn't oxygen. She attempted to breath slow and shallow.

  "No, no, no," Pavel continued. "We've got a man who can make the barracks go away." Pavel paused on the phone. "No, I can't. I'm at the clinic . . . Sick wife. Wants to shortcut the waiting list."

  With the nurse and Tony holding Amira down, the porter got behind the bed. Together, they wheeled her out into the corridor.

  Pavel walked close behind. "Fine, just let me know when it's done. The old man's here and he'll want answers."

  It was a short trip along the corridor. The porter pushed the end of the bed through a set of swinging double doors. They opened into a circular theatre with an operating table in the centre. Amira glanced at the array of gleaming tools next to the table. A variety of scalpels and what appeared to be a small, circular bone saw.

  She would have hyperventilated, had the gas from the mask not been flooding her mind and body.

  She attempted to lift her arms. To remove the mask. They were heavy as lead, the anaesthetic taking effect.

  The porter wheeled the bed to the right of the operating table and parked it against a wall.

  "The surgical team are prepping," the nurse said to Tony. "They'll be here soon."

  The nurse and porter left the operating room, leaving Pavel and Tony alone with Amira.

  Pavel tucked his phone away in his jacket. "Give us five minutes alone," he said to Tony.

  Tony nodded. "I'll be outside."

  Pavel strolled over to the bed, leaned over Amira and smiled. "Can you see now, I was trying to help you? You should have helped me. I would have liked things to have gone differently. But everyone must have a use."

  For once, Amira agreed with Pavel. She wished she'd played along at the hotel. She wished she'd taken her own life, rather than have Pavel and his people profit from it.

  Pavel ran his fingers through the hair over her forehead. "There's nothing to be concerned about, dear. The doctor's going to cut out your heart and give it to someone else, that's all."

  Amira found her eyesight splitting and blurring. She saw two of Pavel.

  She didn't feel his lips pressing against her forehead, or her neck. Or the hand pushing her gown up her legs. His hand creeping up the inside of her right thigh. "Can't resist me now, can you?" Pavel said, climbing onto the bed. He slipped his belt out from its loops. "Don't worry. You won't feel a thing."

  Amira began a silent prayer. For mercy. Revenge. Divine intervention.

  Not expecting, but hoping.

  But in the depths of her despair, she saw the doors to the operating room fly open. A white cloud of smoke appearing in the room.

  A figure materialised in the cloud. Skin like ash and eyes like fire.

  When she was young, Amira’s father had told her stories of jinn, spirit creatures made of smoke. If you were bad, he’d said, the evil jinn would appear out of thin air and snatch your soul.

  Pavel paused with his hands on his buckle. He glanced over his shoulder. The creature strode out of the smoke. Barefoot and dressed in rags.

  The jinn had come to claim a soul.

  61

  I catch sight of myself in a tinted window. A sopping wet cindered mess. Beaten up and worn out with nerve endings still screaming from the interrogation.

  It's a weird feeling. Like I'm burning and freezing at the same time. I've managed to move through the fourth floor of the clinic unseen. The corridor leads to a dead end ahead, but there's a left turn. I stay tight to the wall. Peer around it. See the same big fella I saw getting into the Mercedes. The one in the bulky black suit with the jet-black hair in a ponytail. He stands in front of a pair of blue doors with porthole windows. It says Theatre 3 above the doors. A pair of surgeons in full scrubs and masks hurry towards the room. He waves them away. Tells them to give it five minutes.

  They shake their heads. Throw out their arms and complain. The guy doesn't blink. They shuffle off back from where they came. I edge out slow, along the corridor. He hasn't seen me yet, so I steal a small red fire extinguisher off the wall. I hold it behind my back and pull the pin from the handle.

  Now he sees me. Wrinkles his brow. Waves me away.

  "You," he says. "Turn around."

  I keep walking.

  "Turn around," he says, stepping away from the doors.

  I keep walking. I'm close now.

  He gets anxious. Shows me the butt of his pistol. "Look buddy, it's fucking-off time, yeah?"

  I whip the extinguisher out from behind my back. I pull the trigger and blast the guy in the face. I smash him in the skull with the end. A metallic bong later, he's on the floor. White vapour everywhere. I step over the man's foam-covered body. Hear another man's voice inside the operating room. I'd know that voice anywhere. It's Pavel. And I hear him say Amira’s name.

  I drop the extinguisher and barge through the doors.

  62

  I burst in through the doors. A white cloud from the extinguisher follows me in. It wisps away as I get my bearings.

  The room is big and round. An operating table with a tray of tools on a stand next to it. There's a bright cluster of lights over the table. Everything is spotless and the room smells of detergent.

  I see a hospital bed to my r
ight. Amira lying on top, with Pavel kneeling over her, about to take his pants off. He freezes in surprise.

  I stride up to the bed.

  One hand on his belt, the other on his left ankle, I drag him off her and throw him across the room.

  He bounces and rolls.

  Amira lies motionless on the bed in a surgical gown. I hurry over and pull the gown down over her legs. I look at the drip. Just water. She looks drowsy though. Must be the mask. I take it off her face, which, like her hair, is done up fancy. She's conscious, but not very. I slide the drip out from the back of her hand.

  I slap her gently on the cheek. "You alright?"

  She murmurs something I can't make out.

  So I turn my attention to Pavel. Shaking off the tumble, he rises and draws a pistol. I'm on him fast. I smack it from his hand and throw him against the operating table. I crack my knuckles into fists.

  He straightens his hair out. Removes his jacket and holster. Rests them on the edge of the table.

  "Oh," I say, laughing, "fancy your chances, do you?"

  Pavel steps out into some clear space in the room. He does some weird martial arts posturing. His legs wide and bent at the knees.

  The guy's obviously got a death w—Christ, that hurt.

  He catches me with a punch to the jaw. Didn't even see it. I swing a left. He dances around it and suckers me in the right kidney.

  I take another fist to the ribs. Three in a row in fact. Rapid-fire blasts I can't stop. I'm down to one knee. Pavel waits. I get up. I swing again. He seizes my arm, twists it and elbows me in the spine. I throw a right. He's under it. Out of range. A step ahead.

  As I turn, he side-kicks me. I stagger backwards against the operating table.