by Robert White
The diesel motor rattled away like a good one and I noticed that the kind people that had traded it in had left me a full tank.
I was fairly confident that the van wouldn’t be reported stolen until the morning so I settled back and drove back to the Travelodge, drying off on the way.
Once back in my room I set up the kit I would need. I loaded two syringes with morphine and placed them in a plastic box in my inside pocket. I rooted through the rest of the medical kit until I came across an old bottle of my ex-wife’s sleeping tablets, there were just four left. I crushed them, added a little warm water to the bottle and dissolved the mixture. Then I selected the SIG SLP and a spare magazine which tucked into my belt in the small of my back. I dived into Rick’s old Bergen and took a thousand pounds in cash from the bundle for sweetener money. The rest of the kit took me ten minutes to load into the camper. I paid my bill like a good boy and set off to the hospital, my mind flying in anticipation.
Rick had given me the clue I needed to get him out. All hospital morgues and pathology labs tend to be secreted out of sight of the general public around the back of buildings. If Rick ‘died’ then that would be my escape route.
The rain was insistent. It battered the camper as I lumbered through light early morning traffic toward the hospital gates. The cabin was warm and cosy enough but I felt a chill as I pondered my task. I had to get Rick away from the ward before Stern’s men found him and finished the job.
It was two-twenty a.m.
Despite the hour, the hospital car parks were busy and there was plenty of activity. This was a plus to me as I didn’t stand out like a spare prick at a wedding.
I drove to the rear of the building until I saw the tell-tale signs of death. I looked for a chimney that would form part of a furnace. All large hospitals had an incinerator that disposed of various body parts and contaminated materials. All the bits and pieces the doctors cut out of us. They burned everything from gall bladders to amputated limbs, ingrown toenails to unborn children. It all had to go somewhere, it was just that people didn’t want to see it.
The incinerator was always close to the pathology department. In turn the mortuary was always close to pathology. I saw the chimney, and just to the left of it, two large plastic swing doors. It had to be the place.
I parked the camper as near as I dared to the mortuary entrance and pushed the heavy doors. They made a swishing sound as they closed behind me. Muttering to myself, I strolled casually into the mortuary area. I always found that if you looked like you knew what you were doing, most times no one bothered you.
The place seemed deserted, and bright strip lights illuminated my way as I walked by two viewing rooms. They were small chapels of rest used by the police to lay out bodies so relatives could identify family or friends in a more humane place than a path lab table. Both were empty, there was no bad news for the families of Leeds that night.
The place was silent. I was, once again, around the dead. The memories of the funeral gave me a little nudge, but I didn’t allow myself to be swayed from my task.
Another set of swing doors took me to a refrigerated area where dozens of large drawers held corpses. Each drawer displayed a name plate just like a filing cabinet in any office. The place gave me the creeps. I had seen plenty of death and gore in my time, I’d never been frightened of dying, but I still hated hospitals.
Then I found what I was looking for. There was a small staff room. It had probably been a storage cupboard that the staff had commandeered.
It held a few lockers. A portable television stood on a makeshift stand. There was brew-making kit and a couple of old chairs that looked suspiciously like commodes. Within seconds I had my disguise, a full porter’s outfit kindly left hanging inside an open locker. It was slightly big but beggars couldn’t be choosers, eh?
Then I sat and made a brew.
You may think that it was a bit risky but I felt confident that any visitor would be a lone one and I was far enough down in the bowels of the hospital not to disturb anyone if I had to disable a nosy porter.
The brew was important as it was the home of my sleeping tablet mixture. I made two black teas, milk and sugar on the side, slipped in the mixture and set off toward the HDU with a whistle and a tray of deep sleep.
I took the elevator to the third floor but walked to the intensive care unit which was next to HDU. I poked my head around the door and saw three nurses. One took a quick glance at me and smiled. I returned the gesture and gave her a quick friendly wave, turned on my heels and walked to Rick’s ward.
I virtually marched into HDU with the tray of drinks at shoulder height. I walked past Rick’s bed and he seemed fine.
I counted two nurses. The first was in her late forties, maybe older, and was very overweight. The second was younger and attractive.
Call me cynical, but not being the handsome guy at the party, if the job involved sweet talk, I always went for the fat one.
“Hiya!” I chirped, but half whispered. “I’d made tea for the girls in ICU and there are two left. So I thought of you lot here with the cabbages.”
I gave the fatty my best Scottish twinkle and added, ”Milk and sugar?”
In perfect unison both women said, “No sugar for me,” and then giggled slightly. My God, it was all going too bloody easy. I poured milk into both teas and handed them to the nurses.
I concentrated on my older prey again. “Drink up, it won’t be that warm now.”
Both sipped their tea. The young one wrinkled her forehead and said casually, “I’ve not seen you before.”
“Nah, I’ve only been here two weeks. I’ve never made it away from the path lab yet.”
“Oh,” said the pair, again in perfect time.
“In fact, I’m off there now, girls. I’ll collect the cups later, okay?”
“Great,” was the chorus and the pair started to worry me. They must have been some kind of relation, maybe mother and daughter. They probably lived and worked together, spent so much time together that they became inseparable like those identical twins you see on the telly, the ones that speak in unison all the time.
Whatever the reason, it was a strange encounter.
Just as got to the exit I turned again and in my best Lorraine Kelly gossip tone I whispered.
“Which one is the gangster, by the way?”
The older woman rose from her desk and I thought I detected a slight stumble.
“Number four here.”
I could tell she was quite excited that she had someone else to share her gossip with. She walked over to Rick’s station. I turned and joined her.
“Big fellow, isn’t he,” I quipped, hastily taking in as much as I could about Rick’s medical state. He was being fed intravenously and he had a catheter, but the rest was monitoring gear.
“He is, but he’s no trouble.” The nurse guffawed and elbowed me in the ribs to make her point.
I laughed with her and noticed she was definitely unsteady. I checked over my shoulder just in time to see the younger nurse drop her tea cup and fall unconscious in her seat.
The big nurse took on a puzzled expression before dropping to her knees. I helped her to her desk and she went out completely, farting loudly in the process.
I walked back to Rick.
“Alright, mate. Can you hear me?”
Rick opened one eye.
“Good to see you, Des, get me the fuck out of here.”
I took out my little plastic box.
“I’m going to have to hit you with some morph before I move you, mate. At least you won’t feel anything till we get mobile.”
Rick moved his body slightly.
“Just do it, let’s get going.”
I wasted no time. I found a vein and pumped enough of the drug into him to knock out an elephant. I stripped back his bedclothes and removed his catheter. Then, I took out his drip and lifted his forearm to stem any bleeding. It was all going well until I removed the monitoring gear. In my hast
e I’d forgotten that the heart monitor had an alarm system and I hadn’t disabled it.
The second I removed the first sensor from Rick’s chest it went off. The alarm was deafening.
I would have a resus team on top of me in no time. I heaved Rick’s dead weight into the wheelchair at the side of his bed. He groaned slightly as I propped his feet onto the supports. Then I legged it quick time to the lift. Buzzers were going off all over the bloody place and I could hear the hurried footsteps of emergency staff getting nearer and nearer.
I changed my mind about the lift and went for the stairs. I only needed to get one floor away from the melee, and then a porter pushing a sleeping man in a wheelchair might not seem too bad.
Well, it was the best I could do.
I pushed Rick along the corridor until I saw the green and white sign for the stairwell. I knew the next act was going to be hard. I was going to have to haul fifteen stone of dead weight down two flights of stairs in double quick time. I opted for backwards and pushed the swing door open with my backside, looked over my shoulder and negotiated the first steps. I took all of Rick’s weight onto my chest. By the time I’d bounced down the first flight one at a time I was panting like a greyhound and sweating like a racehorse.
As I made the bottom of the second flight my legs burned with the effort and my heart pumped hard. I wiped my brow before casually pushing Rick out onto the ground floor.
As we negotiated the X-ray department, I confiscated a blanket from a nearby trolley and covered Rick’s legs with it. Then I whistled my way to the lift which would take us to the mortuary and our escape route.
By the time the hospital security guys had dealt with the two unconscious HDU staff and even noticed Rick’s empty bed, I was at the back door of the Ford camper van.
With all of my strength, I lifted Rick from the chair and laid him on a single bunk inside the camper. I covered him.
“You okay, mate?”
He groaned. The morphine had done its job.
I jumped down from the back of the van, keys in my hand and plan in my head, straight into the arms of Lauren North.
Rick Fuller's Story:
Despite the painkillers, I could feel the bumps in the road. It was a really strange experience. I had suffered burns to just over eighteen per cent of my body. Hospitals categorise burn injuries by degrees. Mine were first degree, the same category as severe sunburn. Some fucking dick-head with an Oxbridge PhD had decided that. I bet he’d never had boiling water poured over twenty per cent of his body mass. I was lucky though. I’d been wearing boots. Had I been barefoot, my burn injuries would have been far worse.
As for my gunshot wound, to be fair, the surgeon had done a great job. He’d sorted the dental side of it out on the table. What was left of my wisdom tooth was removed at the same time he repaired my cheek. He’d also left a painkilling pad at the site of the operation. Something I’d been glad of the last day or so.
So why, as we drove along, could I feel the road and not my injuries?
Who knows?
The roof of the camper was starting to glisten with condensation. Des and the nurse were sitting up front and I could just hear the radio.
How the hell did Des find me so quickly?
Why the hell was the sister there? I had lots of questions.
My last definite memory was Stephan pulling the trigger. I had some vague pictures of people around me, later on, maybe in an ambulance? Whether they were the good souls who found me on the road or hospital staff, I couldn’t say.
Being on the road in a camper van was similar to an ambulance and I actually felt okay. I know that sounds pretty weird coming from a fucked up bloke who was being driven to Scotland in a stolen second hand Transit. But I did.
The morphine sorted my pain and I was with the only person in the world I trusted.
No worries.
I slept without hurting.
I awoke to near silence. The van was parked and empty. All I could hear was my own breathing and distant motorway traffic. I presumed we were in a motorway service station and Des had gone for a brew or whatever.
I was well delighted at my exit from the hospital. Des had played a blinder. How the hell he’d conned the nurse into the plan I could only guess. I had to hand it to him, he was good.
I heard another car approach the parked van. Headlights illuminated the interior of the camper. They lingered. They stayed too long. I heard a car door open, then the voices.
I started to feel uneasy. I couldn’t walk, and I couldn’t cry out. Then I heard Des and the key in the lock. The interior light came on, and finally, he and Lauren peered at me from the sofa opposite.
“How ya feeling, pal?” whispered Des.
“Are ye hungry, mate?”
I did my best to speak out of the side of my mouth that worked.
“No, ta, but I could go some water.”
“No problem,” said Des. “I’ve even got you a straw.”
He rooted in a carrier bag, found a bottle of Evian and a box of straws and held it for me. The water tasted good. I’d been fed intravenously the past few days and my throat was dry as a bone.
“Cheers,” I said.
Des knelt by me. He poked a thumb in nursie’s general direction.
“We’ve been and hired another motor. I used one of your snide driving licences just to be on the safe side. Funny thing, though, your credit card didn’t work. We had to use hers.”
I didn’t take in the information. I should have. It would have saved time in the end, but I was too drugged to notice.
I think I managed an “okay”, and fell into a deep sleep again.
By the time I awoke, it was daylight, we were travelling on a country road and I could just see the green of the hedges fly by and some bright blue sky. I twisted my head to look for Des but couldn’t see him. The nurse drove. She noticed my movement in the rear view mirror, and shouted over the engine noise. “How are you feeling?”
It was a very jolly hospital voice. The swelling to my face was going down but I still found speech hard. The morph had all gone and I was perhaps a little blunt.
“Where the fuck is Des?”
Lauren alarmingly swerved the camper and suddenly we ground to a halt. She leapt from the driver’s seat and sat heavily opposite me. The sofa across made a second single bed, if anyone could ever bear to sleep on something all yellow tartan and fake pine.
Lauren wasn’t pleased with me. I could tell.
She sat in silence for a moment as if considering what to say. She was a classically beautiful woman. She was Bathsheba. Raven-haired with no hint of make-up.
She appeared not to notice her own splendour but it was there, like something she’d carried inside her, something that was allowed to be noticed by others but never completely supposed. She looked past me at first, as if focusing on a distant object. Her voice was quiet but precise. She left a gap between each word.
“Where, the, fuck, is, Des?”
That one line seemed to give her confidence. She grew in stature as she repeated the same line.
“Where, the, fuck, is, Des?”
Any hint of nerves faded with each staccato delivery. This was a woman who had fought many a verbal battle. Somewhere behind those eyes was a past with too much pain, eyes that had fought a war and were not afraid to fight another.
She dropped her head in her cupped hands, her face inches from mine. She focused on me, sharp as a rapier, voice level.
“I’ll tell you where Des is. He’s taken the hire car to his old house by the Loch. Know it? Stern’s guys already have that address so we can’t go there.”
Her green eyes widened and she had the slightest hint of derision in her tone. Her words hit me like a brick.
“I believe that one was down to you, Rick?”
If she’d been a man I’d have knocked her out.
“Des has organised a safe place to stay. We’re about ten miles from it now. He’ll meet us there after he’
s collected some gear from home. He can’t go there again. Well, not until this is all over.”
My blood boiled at her insolence. I raised myself from my bed for the first time. I felt my usually strong arms quiver under the strain. My head swam. I took a deep breath and managed a full sentence.
“And you know what all this is about then, eh? Sister?”
“Lauren,” she tapped her chest with an unpolished nail. “That’s my name, and yes, Rick, I think I know where we are all at.” She stopped short, and for a second I thought I saw a flaw in the performance, a trace of fear maybe?
I couldn’t hold myself in position any longer and I fell back on my pillows panting and in pain.
“Sure you do.”
She looked concerned but stood, and walked back to the driver’s seat. Once she’d started the engine and strapped herself in she turned, and delivered her prognosis in her slightly Surrey tone.
“Without my care, the possibility of you getting back to full health again is pretty shitty. If you think you’ve got me sussed and know why I’m here helping you, you’re very wrong.”
She turned the wheel of the camper and we started to move.
“Cos I haven’t a fucking clue myself.”
Lauren North's Story:
It didn’t bother me that Rick was a mean bastard. I suppose anyone would be, if they’d been in his shoes of late. But he wasn’t going to take it out on me. I was used to men who were mean bastards.
My ex-husband was a successful doctor, a specialist. He was respected throughout his profession. To the outside world he was a good, honest man. No one, my mother, Jane, no single human, knew he beat me. Even his longest and closest friends never knew of his violent outbursts.
And I don’t just mean a one-off slap in the middle of a drunken row. I mean a systematic yet frantic punishment should things not go his way. This was always followed by weeks of him being the perfect fucking human being.
Now, if you saw Des and Rick it wouldn’t take you long to realise that they were two extremely scary guys. Yet I knew, just knew that I was totally safe in their company despite everything that was going on. No matter what was to come. I was in safe hands with them.