The Hit

by Anna Smith

  Matt got out and he and Rosie rushed to the car as Jaana got into the driving seat.

  ‘Matt,’ Rosie said, ‘just push it enough for us to get past.’ They pressed their shoulder to it, and pushed with all their strength. The car slowly moved to the side, its wheels hanging over a ditch.

  ‘You have to get away from here. Quickly,’ Jaana said.

  ‘I have to get in touch with the embassy,’ Rosie said. ‘I’m scared to phone the police because they must be in on this.’

  She looked at Adrian on the ground trying to sit up, but blood was pumping from his stomach.

  ‘He is in bad way,’ Jaana said. ‘He needs a hospital.’

  ‘We can’t risk it.’

  Jaana went to her own car and brought out a black medical box with a red cross on it. She put it in the footwell of Rosie’s car, went to Ariana and looked at her wound.

  ‘Ariana, it looks like maybe just flesh wound. Don’t worry. But you need to get away. Can you go to my cousins? You know, in the countryside? Are you okay to tell them where it is, can you sit up?’

  Ariana groaned. ‘Yes.’

  Jaana looked at Adrian.

  ‘We must get him in the car.’

  Between them, and with Adrian gasping for breath and blood dripping, they got him to his knees and helped him into the front passenger seat of Rosie’s car.

  ‘Can you drive, Matt?’

  Rosie was not confident about her driving in the pitch black on these roads.

  ‘I’m going to have to,’ Matt said. ‘You’re all right, Adrian,’ he said as he got into the driving seat. ‘Don’t worry, big man. We’ll get you sorted.’

  Rosie climbed into the back seat and rolled down the window.

  ‘Thanks, Jaana. We probably owe you our lives for this.’

  The girl reached in and squeezed Ariana’s hand, then ran her finger over the forehead of the sleeping baby.

  ‘Hurry. It is only twenty minutes away. I will phone her. She was also a nurse, so she will be ready.’

  ‘What about Nicu?’ Ariana asked.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ariana. Is too late for him. I will phone the police in a few hours. We will tell them we found the body and the car here and no idea who it was. Gangsters are always having shoot-outs. They won’t think anything.’

  Matt drove out of the tight country road and on to the main road, Ariana leaning forward enough to instruct him to turn left and go straight for a few miles. Adrian was silent and Rosie leaned over from the back, holding her jacket to his stomach to try to stem the blood flow. There was fear in his eyes and she had seen that only once before. She prayed under her breath. His eyelids were heavy and he seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness, his hand on hers, blood coming through both of them. She saw Matt’s sidewards glance at the blood, then he caught her eye in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘He’ll be all right, Rosie. We’ll be there in no time.’

  Despite her despair and fear and hopelessness as she watched the blood and the colour drain from Adrian, she was impressed by Matt’s determination and the way he had stepped up to the situation. She knew he was a lot stronger and braver than some people gave him credit for.

  ‘Left here, Matt, and then go straight up the road,’ said Ariana. ‘Just keep following. It is potholes and dirt track. You will see a small house on the right side. Wooden. There is a well outside.’

  The road was pitch black. Adrian’s eyes were flickering, and Rosie leaned over, stroking his head. The baby was beginning to stir in her mother’s arms. Finally, after what seemed like forever, they could see a light in a window and the headlights fell on a well. They drove through the potholes, Adrian’s body jerking every time the car jolted over them. Then a woman and a man emerged from the house. Matt pulled in and they came towards them, speaking in Romanian as Ariana rolled down the window. The man was built like a tank, and he opened the door and leaned in towards Adrian, as Matt got out of the car and came around to help him. Between them, they got Adrian to his feet, and more or less dragged him to the front door. Rosie helped Ariana out, and she limped into the house. Madelina came in behind them, the baby waking up and smiling, her little innocent face lit up by the fire burning in the hearth. The big man almost lifted Adrian onto a wooden kitchen table as his wife opened medical boxes and began to work in the gloom of one light bulb strung on a wire across the single room that was their home.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Rosie stirred, feeling the icy chill, every bone in her body aching. She’d barely slept more than an hour at a time, sitting up in the uncomfortable wooden chair next to Adrian still lying on the kitchen table, with a grey blanket over him. A few times in the night she’d woken, her face numb with the cold, and in her exhausted stupor, thought she was actually sleeping outside. She opened one eye, and could hear the man of the house snapping twigs as he knelt by the fire, blowing into the blackness, coaxing the fire back to life. He was cursing under his breath, as the fire must have gone out overnight. She sat up a little and pulled her coat around her shoulders as she looked at Adrian. He was sound asleep, his chest rising and falling, his face the colour of death, the dark smudges under his eyes looking even blacker. He looked like a corpse, and Rosie turned away, feeling tears spring to her eyes. Last night, Jaana’s nurse friend had told them he might not make it through the night. If he did, there was a chance he would survive. But he had lost so much blood, and they had no idea of the damage that had been done internally by the second bullet. Rosie had watched as Adrian lay unconscious while they bathed and cleaned his wound, the nurse pointing out where the bullets had gone straight through and out the other side. He was lucky, she said. It didn’t look that way right now, Rosie thought. But he had made it through the night.

  She gazed around the small, sparsely furnished room. It was still dark outside, and Matt was asleep propped up against his camera bag, a blanket over him. Madelina and her baby lay covered with blankets and hot water bottles on a mattress behind a wooden frame, where she was, hopefully, warmer. How could anyone live like this? Rosie didn’t even know the names of any of the people in the house, and she couldn’t even remember in the chaos of last night if they had been introduced. Yet here they were, these total strangers, who had taken them in when all was lost. The act of kindness made her chest ache with emotion. Rosie felt miserable, exhausted. Back home in Glasgow people had so much, everything they needed, yet here, not too far from the bars and the trendy cafés in what was the new Romania, families still lived as they did a hundred years ago, existing off the land or whatever meagre jobs they could find. No wonder they wanted to leave this place in search of a better life. She looked up when she heard the wife coming in, her feet shuffling on the stone floor as she went to the cooker and switched on the one ring they had. She filled a cooking pot with water and looked across at Rosie, a thin, tired smile on her face. She glanced at Adrian for a moment, then gave Rosie an encouraging nod. Where did they go from here? Rosie wondered. She was exhausted, she barely had the energy to work out what would happen next. Her phone was low on battery. She had to do something. She needed to get out of here, but she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Adrian like this. The silence was filled with the sound of the baby’s wakening cries, and in a few seconds, everyone was awake, and Adrian’s eyes were beginning to flicker. Rosie stood up and reached for his hand, relieved that it wasn’t stone cold.

  ‘Adrian,’ she whispered. ‘Can you hear me?’ She brushed her fingers across his forehead. ‘It’s Rosie.’

  Relief flooded through her when he squeezed her hand, and she swallowed hard. She leaned closer to his face, feeling her cold cheek on his. He opened his eyes a little.

  ‘Rosie.’

  Her chest ached with emotion.

  ‘Adrian! Thank God, you’ve made it through the night. Are you in pain?’

  He moved a little and grimaced, nodding.

  ‘Don’t move. Just rest.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘You saved us. Everyone. I’m s
o sorry you’re hurt.’

  His lips moved but she couldn’t hear him. She leaned closer.

  ‘The baby?’ he murmured.

  ‘She’s okay. With the mother here. These people are looking after us. The woman is a nurse and she looked after you last night. But she said you need a hospital.’

  Adrian shook his head. ‘No hospital.’ His voice was barely audible. Then he opened his eyes wider, and held Rosie’s wrist. ‘Rosie. Phone my friend. Risto. In Sarajevo. Tell him he must come. He will bring me home.’

  Rosie didn’t know what to say. Sarajevo was a three-hour flight away, and Adrian was in no shape to be going on a plane. The only other way to get back was by car – too long – or by train – almost two days. He wasn’t fit to travel right now.

  ‘Adrian, you cannot go anywhere until you are more stable.’

  He nodded. ‘Please call him, Rosie.’

  Rosie knew she had to talk to McGuire. They had to get him out of here, whatever the cost to the newspaper. She checked her phone again – it was only five thirty back in Glasgow. But she had to make the call now before her battery died.

  ‘Okay. Just rest. I will phone your friend. I will get you home. Don’t worry.’

  He squeezed her hand and for the first time in all the years she’d known him, he looked dependent on her. It was a stiff reminder of how much was at stake here. She couldn’t lose him, no matter what. She realised for the first time how much she loved him.

  Rosie zipped up her jacket and went outside into the half-light, feeling a blast of the windchill from across the fields. She pulled out her mobile and punched in McGuire’s number. He’d still be at home. But he answered after two rings.

  ‘Gilmour. This can only be bad news. I’m just out of my bed.’

  Rosie took a breath, surprised at how emotional she felt.

  ‘Mick.’ She cleared her throat to buy herself some time. ‘It is bad news. All sorts of shit has happened here. It’s . . . it’s bad . . .’

  ‘Are you hurt, Rosie? Are you in a hospital?’

  ‘No. But listen. I don’t have much phone battery left. So I need to make this quick. Adrian’s been shot – twice. It’s pretty awful.’

  ‘Fucking hell. What happened?’

  ‘It’s too long a story to tell you right now, but he got shot saving all of us.’

  ‘What do you mean, all of us?’

  She remembered that she hadn’t even had time last night to tell him about the developments with the baby.

  ‘You know how we went to the embassy?’

  ‘Yes. I was waiting to hear about it all night.’

  ‘It went great. Everyone on our side. All that stuff. But then as we left, we discovered the cops were in on it.’

  ‘Fucking Christ! What do you mean, in on it?’

  ‘They handed over the husband who sold the baby to the bloody gangsters.’

  ‘Aw, for Christ’s sake! Dirty, thieving, corrupt bastards! So what happened?’

  She explained to him that Adrian went after them and what had happened at the orphanage, and how they had to get out fast.

  ‘You what? You kidnapped a fucking baby from the orphanage?’

  ‘It wasn’t kidnapping, Mick. The boss of the orphanage handed the baby to her rightful mother. He’s on our side.’

  ‘But are you on the run with a stolen baby? Is that what you’re telling me? And Adrian’s been shot. I mean, how badly is he shot? Is he going to die?’

  ‘Last night we thought he wouldn’t make it. There’s a nurse at the house where we all are, and she helped him. But Adrian’s lost a lot of blood and she thinks he may have internal injuries.’ She paused. ‘Mick, we need to get Adrian back home to Sarajevo. I’ve to tell his friend Risto over there to come for him, but we need to arrange something to get him home safely. We can’t just leave him here. And we can’t stay here. I can’t stay here.’

  Silence.

  ‘No. You definitely can’t stay there. In fact, you need to be back here. Today, if possible.’

  ‘Okay. But I need to get to the embassy again, and get a safe passage out of here. But they don’t even know about Adrian. I really need you to get him out of here. Can you do that?’

  Silence.

  ‘Leave it with me. Get out of wherever you are. Get your phone juiced up and work out where you should go. I’ll get Adrian out.’

  Rosie felt choked. ‘Thanks, Mick.’

  ‘You’re something else, Gilmour. But listen: I want you out of Romania today. Anywhere. Just get on a plane. Talk to Marion. Get it arranged. We’ll get Adrian sorted.’

  Rosie should have felt relieved, even though she knew McGuire wouldn’t be anything less than sympathetic. Just hearing his voice in the middle of all this chaos and crap made her feel like breaking down. She took a deep breath as she saw a couple of stray dogs running around in the dim light. The door opened and Matt came out, scratching his head. He stopped when he looked at her, then came across, put his arms around her. She let him hug her tight.

  ‘Shit, Matt. I’m so scared.’

  ‘Were you talking to McGuire?’

  ‘Yeah. He was great. Wants us out of here today. Anywhere, he says. And he’ll get Adrian out.’ Rosie swallowed. ‘I don’t want to leave him here like this, Matt. I mean . . . Look at the state of him.’

  Matt ruffled her hair, still holding her shoulders.

  ‘I know, Rosie. He’s not in good shape, he can’t travel today. But people might be looking for us, for him. Christ! What a mess! We need to get out of here.’

  ‘I’m going to talk to the embassy. They need to get the Romanian interior minister again. They have to get this sorted, give us assurances. But they can’t be involved with Adrian. He won’t want that. I know him. He’ll want to be left to his own devices.’

  ‘I heard him say to call his mate. Have you done it?’

  ‘No. But I will once I talk to the embassy. Mick will organise a way to get them out.’

  ‘He needs a doctor. Proper medical attention and maybe a look inside to see the damage. He looks terrible.’

  ‘I know. I never thought I’d see him like this – not able to get up and take charge of things.’ She shook her head. ‘Christ, Matt. If it wasn’t for him we could all be dead.’

  ‘I know, pal. I know.’

  He put his arm around her shoulder and they stood watching the morning light spread across the fields, their breath steaming in the cold.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Helen lay in her single bed, the pink duvet cover pulled up around her. She’d left a little bit of the curtain open the way she’d always done so the room wouldn’t be completely dark. The darkness brought too many haunting memories. In the light from the lamp-post outside the flats she could see fine rain and watched it, listening to the sounds of passing cars, then the quietness, then people arguing in the street, a bottle being smashed in anger on the ground. Another car pulled up, and doors were slammed as fighting started. She didn’t bother to get up and look out of the window. These were the sounds she’d grown up with; every night another Gorbals drama unfolding. As a child, she used to kneel up at the window and watch the violence as people attacked each other with knives, bats and cleavers. Then it would quieten down again, the blue lights of the police cars flashing in her window, and the sound of people being dragged kicking and screaming into their vans. Sometimes, if her mother hadn’t been out, she would go to sleep early and soundly, not waiting in dread for the noises and lowered voices of the men her mother had brought home with her. They were the best nights, when she could lie and dream, imagine she was somewhere else in the old movies, living in some ranch somewhere, or some town-house in New York, with the big lifts and the gates around them and people in top hats and uniforms on the door. When she became rich enough, with her own money, or, more accurately, Alan’s money, they’d go on holiday to exotic places just like that, and often Helen would lie in the bedroom, enjoying the luxury, the sense of being in the movie she’d
always dreamed of. But tonight she couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t her conscience, she was done with all that shit, though she did feel a pang of guilt that Frankie Mallon’s kid was left without a father. If she could find the girl she would make sure she gave her some money for the kid. It was the least she could do. The thought of Frankie’s baby brought back a flood of long-buried memories. Now, lying here, she remembered. It had rankled with Helen all her life, the fact that her mother made her have an abortion when she was sixteen. She’d got pregnant by one of the boys in the block, or so she thought. She didn’t actually care who the father was, but she was ready to have a baby, and hadn’t even thought beyond that; there was a baby growing inside her, and that’s why she didn’t tell her mother straight away. She knew what would happen. And it did. When her mother caught her vomiting three mornings in a row, she marched her down to the doctor with a urine sample to confirm her suspicions. Then she took her back up to the house and told her she would arrange it. Helen was hysterical. She wanted the baby, she’d screamed to her mother. You have no idea what to do with a baby, her mother screamed back. I’ll learn, Helen had pleaded. But no, it was done, and she was taken to a clinic in a backstreet in the West End of Glasgow. And when she came out she was a different girl. If it was a decision she’d made herself and she hadn’t wanted the baby, she might still have changed her mind that day, but she wanted this baby, just an instinct. She’d told herself over the years it was for the best that she didn’t have it, that it was one of the first times in her life that her mother was actually acting in her best interests. But she never, ever forgave her. And so the hatred began to build. Helen went back on the game, not under the watchful eye of her mother and the pimp, as she had been earlier, but this time with an escort agency. She decided there and then that she would fuck her way out of this shithole. And she did.

  Now she closed her eyes to blot it out as she tossed and turned in the bed, then sat up. She thought of what her mother had told her earlier about the junkie girl who’d had Frankie Mallon’s baby. It niggled her that the girl would probably have nothing now. She wished she could make that better but knew that she couldn’t. She rubbed her eyes as she switched on the bedside lamp. She had heard her mother on the phone half of the evening, then the kettle boiling, and the sound of bottles. Who had she been talking to at this time of night? Eventually she got up, pulled on a sweater and went through to the living room, where her mother was sitting almost in the dark, with only one tiny lamp on and the glow of the fire. She was drinking a glass of red wine.