by Iain Rowan
"Keep your mouth shut," he said in a low voice. "Keep your eyes on what you're doing, say nothing, and do what you're asked to do. Don't ask any questions. Just do what you're told. It'll be ok, and we both get something out of this. You get your stuff for free, and I get a favour owed by some serious, serious people." Then he knocked quietly on the door. It opened a fraction immediately, as if someone had been standing there all along, and I saw a shadow inside. Then the door opened all the way, and Daniel put a hot hand in the small of my back, and I walked in to whatever was there.
What was there was a large man standing by the door, looking me up and down with the cold eyes of a shark, and another man lying on a bed, lying very still, naked from the waist up, with a sheet wound around and around his arm. The sheet was stained dark in the middle. The room stank of whisky, and an empty bottle lay on the floor by the side of the bed.
"This it?" the big man said, and it took me a moment before I realised that he was talking about me.
"Yeah," Daniel said. "Don't worry, Corgan, she's cool." He leaned against the wall, hands in pockets.
"I won't worry, Daniel," the man he had called Corgan said. "We owe you one. Call us when you need the favour returning. But now piss off, there's a good boy."
Daniel looked at me, looked at the big man, then went to the door.
"It'll be all right sweetheart," he said. "Don't sweat it." Then he left, and the big man closed the door behind him and turned the key.
"You used to be a doctor," he said.
"Medical student."
An eyebrow went up. "For more than a few weeks, I hope."
"I was nearly qualified when—when I left my country."
"Good. I need you to do two things. I need you to sort him out—" he jerked his head towards the man on the bed—"and I need you to keep your mouth shut. Can you do both of those? Because if you can't, you go now."
"I can," I said. "And in return I will get my papers? All of the papers?"
He looked at me for a moment. "That's what you've been promised." Then he stooped down, slid a black case across the floor to me. "Everything you need should be in there. If anything isn't, tell me what it is you want and I'll get someone to bring it here within half an hour. He's been shot, right arm, handgun. Looks like it's gone right through, but he's lost a fair bit of blood."
I unwrapped the sheet from the man's arm. I could hear him breathing, a shallow, rapid whisky breath. He stirred and moaned, and occasionally when I did things he screamed but then Corgan leant forward and held his hand over the man's mouth, and they were not loud screams anyway, more like the sounds that someone makes when they are having a nightmare.
"He should be in a hospital," I said, when I had inspected the wound. He had a ragged hole torn in the flesh of his upper arm, another hole on the far side where the bullet had passed through. "The wound is not too bad, but there is much risk of infection."
"If he could be in a hospital, he would be in a hospital, and you wouldn't be here," Corgan said in a gentle voice. "So let's not have a pointless conversation, eh."
Everything that I needed was in the case, which looked as if it held the contents of half a surgery. It was all in a jumble but it was there.
"Are these sterile?" I asked.
Corgan shrugged. "Should be," he said. We've got a doctor—had a doctor—done stuff for us for years, all this is his. Old bastard's too fond of his own prescription pad, he couldn't even walk down the path tonight without falling over. He's finished with us. But he says the gear is good. We had to find a stand-in, fast, and when we phoned around, Danny boy came up with you."
I worked hard in the dim light of the room, making sure that the wound was clean and that there was no foreign matter left in, because no matter how well I stopped the bleeding and stitched up the wounds, it would be for nothing if the wound became infected. I do not know how long it took me, kneeling beside the sagging bed with Corgan standing silent at my shoulder, but I know that I did a good job, and in the end I was satisfied with my work, and I was done. I stepped back from the bed, and realised that every muscle in my neck and shoulders hurt, as if I had been beaten. I took a deep breath, and tried to let the tension seep away from me.
"That is everything that I can do," I said. "The wound is clean and he should not bleed any more. Get me some paper."
Corgan looked around the room, pulled an old envelope from the bin. I wrote down on it what was needed, the antibiotics, the iodine pads, the dressings.
"He will need these. The dressing will need to be changed—"
Corgan held up a big hand, and I stopped talking.
"This'll all be here for the morning," he said. "For when you come back."
"I—"
"Job's not finished, is it? You know that. Come back every day, do whatever needs doing, and when he doesn't need it any more, then the job's over and you get paid. Only then."
"In the day time," I said. "In late afternoon. Evenings and nights, I work. Mornings, I sleep. It must be late afternoon."
The big man laughed. "There'll be a car for you. Two o'clock. You'll have slept enough by then." He looked at me, a long look which made me feel as if I had just been weighed, assessed, categorised. "I don't need to tell you not to talk about this to anyone, do I? I can see it in your eyes. You know how it works."
"Yes," I said. "I know people like you. I know you well."
"Good-bye, doctor."
"Student," I said, and Corgan laughed and unlocked the door. "Wait by the street," he said. "There'll be a car round in five minutes, run you home."
I walked down the stairs and out of the door and kept walking, down the quiet street, out into a tangle of roads that I did not know. But I did not care, I just kept walking until I came to somewhere that I recognised, and then I kept on walking until the sky began to lighten and I was back at the boarding house. I stood in the shower for a long time, even though it was only lukewarm.
The next day, at two, a man I had not seen before was outside my house, leaning against a car, one arm stretched lazily out over the roof, fingers drumming. He wore sunglasses like mirrors, so that I could not see his eyes, even though the day was cloudy.
"You must be the doctor," he said.
I did not say anything, just got into the car. And so it went on. Sometimes the same man, sometimes a different man. They all wore suits too tight for their shoulders, and had the same eyes as the men from home. I went to the flat, changed dressings, checked the wound, did what I was told to do. The first day, the man who had been shot was conscious. There were other men there, not Corgan, but ones like him. They were talking to my patient in low voices and stopped when I came over to the bed.
"So you're the one that patched me up," the man on the bed said, smoking a cigarette and blowing the smoke up to the ceiling. He spoke English, but it was difficult to understand his accent. "Thank you, pet. Hurts like hell, mind."
"It will do," I said. "That's why I asked them to get these tablets for you to take. They will make the pain less."
"Can I mix them with alcohol?"
"No."
"Oops." All the men laughed.
"I want you to stay here for a few days, lie down, take it easy. You lost blood, and you will be weak."
"Aye. Not as much as the bastard who did this will lose, mind." Again they all laughed, but their eyes watched me while they did. I ignored them, held a dressing down, wrapped tape around it. I did not hear, I did not see, I did not understand. Life lived as furniture.
On the second day, Corgan was there, leaning against the wall, his presence filling the room. He did not say much, asked a couple of questions about what I was doing, how long things would take, how soon I would know if the wound was infected, what I would do if it was, when they could move him. Then he said nothing else, just watched, and I felt as if a spotlight was shining on to me and I was clumsy and my fingers fumbled everything.
On the third day, Corgan walked in when I was just finishing the dres
sing. He nodded at me, then looked at the man on the bed.
"It's done," he said, and the man on the bed looked thoughtful for a moment, and then nodded.
"Cheers," he said. "Not too quick, I hope."
Corgan looked at me. Not furniture any more. "Later," he said.
I worked, I slept, I was driven to the flat, I tried hard not to think much about what I was doing or the people that I was doing it for. On one occasion, Corgan told me to sit in a chair against the wall, and I did so, scared of what was about to happen. Another man came into the room, and he told me to relax and smile, I would be so much prettier if I smiled, and he took some photographs with a Polaroid camera and then he left.
When I told my patient that I would not need to come back. He grinned, blew smoke out of his nose, and shook my hand. "You're a diamond, love. Just what we needed. Whenever I touch the bullet hole, I'll think of you." He grinned again, and I thought to myself: I am a whore.
I asked how I could get in touch with Corgan for my payment and he just laughed and said, "You don't, love. Just relax and wait. Chill."
So I waited, but still I worked for Peter and still I ate the leftover food, and saved up my money. Then Daniel came into the burger bar, ordered a chicken burger and chips, and gave me a grin and a note with an address scribbled on it.
"Tomorrow morning, at eleven. Told you it would get sorted. Takes time, is all, sweetheart." He left, and he did not pay for the food that he had taken.
I borrowed an A-Z from Paul who did our deliveries, and wrote down how to get to the place on the note. The next morning I left in plenty of time, and walked there. The air had turned cold and bit at my face, and the pavements were slippery with wet leaves. The place was a hotel, but not expensive, it was like where I lived. In the entrance hall a hatchway opened on to a small room, where a crumpled man sat reading a newspaper. The room smelt of cigarette ash and the dusty heat from the three glowing bars of a portable electric fire. The man hardly looked at me.
"Room 14."
I walked down the hallway, saw a peeling sign that pointed through a doorway and said "rooms 11-19". I went through the doorway, and up a flight of stairs. The door to room 14 was not locked. I walked in, and Corgan was there, looking into a big mirror that hung crooked over the boarded up fireplace.
"Morning," he said. "So you've come to collect." It was not a question.
I stood in the room and waited until he had finished looking at his own reflection, or playing whatever game he was playing. He stared at me in the mirror. I looked back at him.
"Right," he said in the end, and he turned and reached his hand into his jacket pocket. "Birth certificate. Driving licence. National Insurance card. Passport. All the best. The very best. These aren't forgeries, any idiot like your little friend Danny can get a forgery. No, these are the real thing."
"Thank you," I said.
"Do you know how you get the real thing, Anna?"
"No," I said. I did not want to have a conversation with him, did not want to listen to his voice, but he had the documents and I did not.
"You buy people. Expensive business, buying people. Costs."
"Yes," I said. "Thank you."
"You ever been bought, Anna?"
"No."
He smiled, but not at me, and then he placed the documents on the table in the middle of the room one by one, as if he were performing a card trick.
"Birth certificate. Driving licence. National Insurance card. Passport," he said again. "In return for the good work you did for us. And as payment in advance for the good work that you will do for us."
"No," I said. "No. We had a deal. I did what you wanted, I fixed the man up, the deal was I get my documents, nothing about no other work, nothing, just the deal."
"And who told you that?"
"Daniel, he told me. He said do this one thing, and you get your papers, that's all. No more. No 'deal'."
"Daniel did, did he?" Corgan smiled at me, and I felt very scared. "You're a doctor, Anna. Or as good as. Imagine this. You're working in a hospital. You're a consultant, top of the tree, bow tie, play golf, flash car, the works. Now imagine you bump into someone in overalls, pushing a trolley around the corridors. That's Daniel. You wouldn't let him do a heart bypass for you. I don't let him make deals for me."
"He did with me."
"Then take it up with him."
I reached out to take the documents from the table. Corgan slid forward and his big hand came down on mine. It was very warm, and it made my hand feel very small, like a delicate bird. He did not press down hard, but I could feel his strength.
"Here's how it is. We give you these. You start your new life, do what you like, but you stay in this city. You get a mobile, and you carry it everywhere. If we need you, we call you, you come and do what's necessary. It won't be often, but when we need you, you will be there. "
"No," I said, but he carried on as if I had not spoken, and I was not sure that I had.
"If you run, these will be useless, because we will drop immigration, the police, everyone, an anonymous little line telling them that the person using this identity is an illegal immigrant. If they get to you before we do, they'll deport you. If they get to you before we do. Do you know what I'm saying, Anna?"
I looked up at him, and I saw the faces of the men who had killed my brother like they were kicking a football around a room. I did not say anything.
"Good," Corgan said, and he walked towards the door. "We'll be in touch. Don't worry," he said, and he nodded at the documents on the table. "You're one of us now."
He left, and I stood in the room for a while. Then I picked up my new life from the table and put it into my bag and left the room, taking care not to look in the mirror.
TWO NIGHTS' WORK
As soon as the short man opened his bag, I knew what was going on. He'd blown in from the autumn night ten minutes or so earlier, oversized raincoat belted tight around him, collar turned up around his neck, a large carrier bag in his hand. He'd shivered, ordered a pint and a brandy, and then sat at the bar, his carrier bag propped up against the side of his stool. He blew on his hands, then worked his way through his drinks. There were four or five of us at the bar, all lost in our own little worlds of alcoholic contemplation. The big clock behind the bar ticked steadily on. Then the short man finished his pint, tossed the last of his brandy down, and ordered another pint.
The landlord moved at the glacial pace with which he'd done everything since I had walked in. It was one of those typical back street pubs that seemed to depend on the income from a small group of sad-eyed regulars, a pub where happy hours never happened and busy was when there were four people waiting for drinks at once. I'd been in more than a few like this in my career, and I always wondered how they stayed in business.
"Same again?" the landlord asked, in a voice that suggested that it would be easiest for all concerned if this was the case, and besides, there might not be anything else.
"Please. Just getting warmed up. Vicious out there it is, vicious. Twenty Bensons as well please. No, second thoughts, make it forty will you? I'm off on the train tonight, all the way up to Scotland, god knows how long it will take, the trains are terrible. And another brandy while you're at it, mate, make it a large one. Might as well stock up. Have you seen the prices that they charge on the trains? Criminal. Couple of packets of crisps, n'all. Ta. And a drink for yourself, too."
"Much obliged." The landlord puttered about behind the bar, muttering to himself so that he did not forget anything that had been ordered. He pulled the pint, then the brandy, stooped painfully down to pull the crisps from a box underneath the bar. "Prawn cocktail do you? All we got, prawn cocktail."
"Yeah, fine, whatever. Just to line the stomach, bit of carbohydrates."
The landlord dropped the crisps onto the top of the bar, then wandered over to a glass shelf that was stocked with neat piles of boxes of cigarettes. "Bensons, did you say?"
"Bensons, yeah. Not prawn coc
ktail." The short man laughed, and the landlord even cracked a smile.
"There. Pint of best, large brandy, forty Bensons and two packets of crisps. That's eighteen pounds and um, forty-seven pence."
"Blimey, more than my mortgage cost a month back when I first bought a house." The short man pulled his wallet out, opened it and looked inside, grimaced. He dropped his wallet on to the bar, searched in each pocket of his coat one after the other, then his trousers. All of us at the bar watched the pantomime out of the corner of our eyes.
The landlord stood waiting. "Problem is there?"
"I'm sorry about this. I spent all my cash on the bloody train ticket, only change I have is what I gave you for the last round. Rip off, the prices on trains these days, they must think we're mugs. Don't bloody believe this. Worst thing is, I'm back tomorrow evening, going to be rolling in it, picking up money for a job I did up in Glasgow, you see, that's why I'm going off there. Getting paid in cash, know what I mean, taxman doesn't have to know anything about it, everyone's happy."
"I don't know you'll be back here tomorrow," the landlord said, in a tired voice that suggested that he had had this conversation many times before.
"Course you don't," the man said, "and you don't know me from Adam, can't expect you to trust me." He looked at the drinks and the cigarettes, licked his lips.
"You not even got enough for any of it?" I didn't know if the landlord was being friendly and concerned or just trying to make a sale, no matter how small.
"Not a penny, mate. Not a penny. Unless...nah."
"What?"
"Nah, forget it, like I said, you don't know me, can't expect..."
"Expect what?"
"Well," the man said, and reached down for his carrier bag.