by Shaun Baines
“You’re lying to me, Sister. I want the truth.” He bared his teeth. “What aren’t you telling me?”
She took another step backwards. “Members of the public aren’t allowed in the nurses’ area.”
“I’ll get it out of you one way or another, Sister.”
When she sighed, he felt her breath on his face. The Ward Sister dropped her gaze. “We have mislaid Eisha’s medical files. I’ve ordered all the nurses at my disposal to search for them, but it will take time. Until then, you are welcome to have a seat in the waiting room.”
“I don’t understand,” he said, looking about the ward. The place was tired, but clean. The patients were sick, but happy. As far as he could tell, the ward was well ordered and running efficiently.
“Like I said, we’re looking into it,” the Ward Sister said. “I have every confidence we’ll have your daughter’s information within the hour.”
“No, I mean, you don’t strike me as the kind of nurse who mislays files,” he said, but the Ward Sister remained quiet.
“It wasn’t you, was it? It was Hilltop.”
“Dr Hilltop is an accomplished physician. There is no way - “
Daniel held up his hand to silence her, trying to stop it turning into a fist. His father had been right. Well, up to a point. He’d known the doctor all his life. There was no way he was behind the attack on Eisha, but this was too much of a coincidence. Why would he hide her files?
“Why don’t you just get her records off the computer?” he asked.
“He’s password protected them. No-one can see them but him. We have a paper copy for the nurses and a computer record for Dr Hilltop. They are both inaccessible and without them, we can’t treat your daughter.”
“What do you mean?”
The Ward Sister moved the leaflets around the desk. “I’m sorry, Mr Dayton, but without her records, we don’t know what medicines she’s previously received. We could accidentally give her an overdose or give her something she’s allergic to.”
“How could you be so fucking stupid?” Daniel asked.
He paced back and forth, feeling claustrophobic. Lifting the hatch, he slammed it aside, waking the dozing children and causing one of them to cry. If only Eisha would wake so easily, he thought.
The Ward Sister bustled passed him and went to the young boy sobbing into his blankets. “There’s been a mistake, Mr Dayton, but upsetting these children won’t fix that.”
Taking a tissue, she dabbed the boy’s cheeks. Daniel stood at the end of his bed. The boy was thin with dark circles under his eyes. A book he had been reading lay on the floor. He picked it up and gave it to the Ward Sister.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Kidney failure,” she answered as she tucked him under his blankets.
He was quiet now and trying to sleep. Daniel glanced in Eisha’s direction and then down at the nurse.
“Get me those files, Sister,” he said.
The waiting area wasn’t a room. It was a corner of the ward with mismatched furniture and the hand drawn pictures of Disney characters he had noticed on his first arrival. The toys were piled in a wooden trunk decorated in flaking yellow paint. He took one out. It was an old Barbie dressed as a nurse. He threw it back in the trunk.
He shouldn’t be sitting around doing nothing. One phone call would get him Hilltop’s address and one taxi ride would take him to the doctor’s door. What happened after that would be up to Hilltop. If he was ill, it would depend on how ill and if he had simply fancied time off, his feet wouldn’t touch the ground until Daniel threw him at the foot of Eisha’s bed.
Dr Hilltop delivered his daughter into the world. Daniel wouldn’t allow him to be responsible for her death.
He had been a child himself when Eisha was born. He was sixteen and Tawnee, Eisha’s mother, was younger still. They had met at the Bigg Market, an area of Newcastle known for its raucous pubs and drunken fighting. The streets were filled with music and littered with broken glass.
Daniel had been collecting money owed to him by a doorman called Charlie Dumpster. The same doorman was attempting to bar an inebriated Tawnee from his premises. Her innocent face and big, blue eyes were in direct contrast to the litany of abuse she was hurling at Dumpster. Daniel intervened and their teenage romance began. It was passionate and short lived. On the day of Eisha’s birth, Tawnee and Daniel hadn’t spoken for five months.
Ed drove his son to the hospital, a private, secretive building where the rich paid to hide their mistakes. Daniel got out of the car and waited for his father, but Ed remained in the car and Daniel understood without having to ask. Ed had handed over the mantle of fatherhood to Daniel. It was up to him to take it forward.
Tawnee’s parents were at the birthing suite and ignored him as he entered. Tawnee’s father was in his forties with a receding hairline and pronounced jowls. Her mother looked like an older version of Tawnee with a beehive hairdo and glossy red lipstick. Daniel couldn’t help but shudder. They stood either side of their daughter’s headboard like sentinels, urging her to push. The sooner it was out, the sooner it was over.
Tawnee acknowledged him with a string of curses he had become accustomed to. Her pink eyes bulged in pain. Her face was red and streaked with matted, sweaty hair. He stood with hands clasped in front of him and noticed a smell in the room he couldn’t place until he saw that Tawnee had shat herself.
The Midwife appeared, smiling and nodding her head as if everything was going according to plan. She was in her sixties, about five foot three with white, permed hair and a ruddy complexion. Her round stomach jiggled under her uniform as she worked. Gathering the soiled paper sheets from under Tawnee, she noticed him watching. The smile dropped from her face.
“I’ve heard all about you, young man. It’s all very acceptable for fathers to be present at the birth of their children these days, you’re not welcome at this one. Kindly remove yourself. I’m sure you’ll be more comfortable outside.”
They turned their backs on him, apart from Tawnee, who shot venom at him through her eyes.
“I want to be here for the birth of my child,” he said, surprised at how quiet he sounded.
“This is no place for the likes of you,” Tawnee’s father said.
It was four against one; odds he could manage in a street fight, but at his baby’s birth, they were overwhelming. God knows what Tawnee and her parents had told the Midwife, but he didn’t want things to escalate and sloped off to wait on a bench in the hallway.
Dr Hilltop passed Daniel several times as he inspected the mother’s well-being. He was a small man with a brown, shrivelled head sitting on scrawny shoulders. His white medical coat almost reached the floor and he seemed to glide along without making contact with it. He said nothing to Daniel, but Daniel caught him glancing in his direction more than once.
Tawnee’s screams filled the long hours of waiting. He tried to block them out, but each one sounded worse than the last. Dr Hilltop made a final appearance as Tawnee’s yells reached a crescendo. “Perhaps if you come inside, you’ll learn the consequences of sex without control,” he said.
The baby was out and bawling. Daniel stood slack jawed as the Midwife cut the umbilical cord and cleaned up the new arrival. The baby was weighed and swaddled and placed in the waiting mother’s arms.
“It’s a girl,” Dr Hilltop announced.
After the drama of childbirth, the baby fell swiftly asleep, happy to be warm and close to her mother. The doctor congratulated everyone without meeting their eyes and departed to update his records. The Midwife followed, shooting a withering glance in Daniel’s direction as she left.
After ten minutes, Tawnee was tired. The unnamed child was taken to the baby unit while she rested. Daniel and Tawnee’s parents left the room to be greeted by Ed Dayton and Noodles Reeceman in the hallway.
Tawnee and her parents had agreed to sign over custody of the child to Daniel. She had played her part and would regret it for the rest
of her life. The baby was Daniel’s and he promised to protect her forever, even if that meant they couldn’t be together.
Watching nurses scurrying around the ward looking for missing paperwork, seeing the angst on the Ward Sister’s face as she made repeated calls on the phone, he wondered if he had lived up to that promise. His daughter lay behind a closed door, unattended and untreatable. Would it have been better if he had asked his father, not to arrange for custody, but to drive him back to Five Oaks?
He retrieved the Barbie doll from the trunk and wrung it in his worried hands.
Lily walked into the ward and found him in the waiting area. As she approached, he accidentally snapped the doll in half and quickly hid it before she noticed.
“Have you been here long?” Lily asked with a smile. Her hair fell in curls, framing her face. She wore a faded leather jacket over a cashmere jumper and tight jeans. He drank in her appearance, feeling his heart lift for the first time in nine months.
Lily loved his daughter almost as much as he did. Maybe more. She was as close to a mother as Eisha would ever have.
Her face flushed when she looked into his eyes. His love life was a legion of mistakes and he didn’t want to make another by taking his brother’s wife.
“Would you like to go for a coffee?” he said.
Chapter Fifteen
Phoney Tony picked the last of the scab from his knuckle. It was infected. “Here, look at this.”
He waved his dirty hand at Rickman and Sticks. Rickman was forty-two and had spent most of his criminal career cleaning up after Tony. He was thin with the kind of streaky tan that came from a bottle. Sticks was slightly younger and twice as fat. He had a tattoo of his baby boy over his heart and burning skulls on his elbows.
“You know who that’s off?” Tony said, squeezing pus from his hand. “Remember when I beat that gypsy kid for welching on his dues? I hit my knuckle on his teeth. Bet the little bastard gave me something.”
Rickman and Sticks looked at one another and shuffled their feet. Neither seemed interested in their bosses’ sores. Unknown to Tony, they’d held long discussions on the subject. If Tony was septic, it was because he didn’t wash until he got caught out in the rain. He was five foot three, overweight with a stomach that lay like melted wax over his knees. Phoney Tony was a millionaire several times over, but he hid it well.
Disappointed with his men’s lack of interest, Tony went back to counting mailbags full of cash or whatever passed for payment at the time. He was a collector for the Daytons, a role requiring an accountant’s lack of imagination and an honest heart. Tony had neither of these attributes, but if a penny went missing, he had to answer to Scott and instilled dedication in anyone.
Reaching in for another roll of notes, his fingertips brushed against something unusual. He pulled out a watch, hefting its weight in his hand before holding it high so Rickman and Sticks could witness his find.
“Breitling. Cosmonaute,” he said.
Rickman whistled. “Lovely, ain’t it? Belongs to Achy Dave. Couldn’t afford repayments on his new Range Rover.”
What came out of the bags came out of Newcastle. Loans, drugs, girls, extortion, blackmail, back room bookies and armed blags. The rest came from rental properties, a nod toward legality that allowed the Daytons to claim back tax from HMRC. The money flowed as freely as the Tyne and was just as dirty. It worked like a beautiful machine and Phoney Tony loved it.
His crew made collections every week and used several safe-houses around Newcastle to make the count. They never used the same site twice in a row. Each house was wired with a panic button that alerted Scott through his mobile phone. Any trouble and the Iceman would cometh, usually with a baseball bat.
This week, Tony and his crew were at Nail Fantastic in Walker, a salon run by a Chinese family, who had long since retired to bed. They left the back office open for Tony to do as he liked, together with a plate of dumplings and fried rice. The room was on the second floor, windowless and narrow. It was reached by a metal staircase outside, on which was posted a wide and heavily armed man called Paulo. The door to the room was reinforced with steel and deadlocks impossible to open from the outside.
The room was safe, but Tony hated it. The only thing that said office was the desk he sat at while he counted. Everything else said storeroom. Wooden shelves lined the walls, stacked with varnish removers, paints and lacquers. The air was toxic. He’d have a headache tomorrow and wouldn’t be able to taste his food for days.
Tony finished the count, squeezing his tired eyes with his thumb and forefinger. He entered the amount into his iPhone and pressed a button. The money would be delivered to a second safe house where it was re-counted by Scott himself. His final job was to smash the phone and buy a new one later in the week.
“Has the car arrived?” he asked.
Rickman stopped admiring a recent manicure he’d received gratis from the Chinese couple and jolted to attention. “I’ll go outside and check.”
“Don’t go outside and look, you fucking foetus,” Tony said. “How many times do I have to tell you? Give him a shout. What if some fucker’s outside waiting to jump us?”
“No-one’s ever outside, ’cept Paulo.”
“Saddam Hussein could be waiting outside with an AK-47 for all you know. What do we always say?”
Sticks chimed in with his boss. “Don’t open the door without the say-so.”
Rickman muttered something he didn’t want Tony to hear and took out his phone. When the line was answered, he whispered hurriedly into the handset. Sticks checked his sidearm and waited for his colleague.
Rickman snapped his phone shut. “Phil says we’re good to go. He can see Paulo on the stairs. Everything’s fine.”
“Why did you call Phil and not Paulo?” Tony asked, pressing the last greasy dumpling into his mouth.
“I never call Paulo. He’s from Brazil or something. I can’t understand what he says.”
“Jesus Christ, Rickman. Let’s just get out of here. I want my breakfast, you tool.” Tony looked to the door and stood slowly. He gave Sticks the nod and the locks of the door were undone with two loud clunks.
Paulo leaned against the wall, his eyes closed in contemplation. Sticks nudged his shoulder to wake him and saw Paulo’s shirt soaked with blood. His throat was cut, not sideways, but lengthways so the skin flapped like bloody curtains in the wind.
“What’s going on?” Tony asked.
Sticks searched for Phil in the darkness. He was stood by the car with a shotgun pressed against his groin. He looked apologetic. The man next to him unleashed both barrels and Phil was blasted in half.
As Sticks turned to warn his boss, his head exploded, a high velocity bullet showering Rickman in shards of skull and brain matter. Tony ran to the panic button, pressing it repeatedly. Rickman stumbled back into the room, wiping bloody tissue from his eyes. Blindly, he reached for the gun holstered by his thigh. A bullet tore through his elbow. He screamed as his forearm waved loosely, blood jetting from the wound. A second bullet blew away his jaw and a third ended his misery, burying itself deep within his chest.
His lifeless body dropped at Tony’s feet when a voice came from outside. “No-one else has to die. We just want the money.”
Tony took a gun from the drawer of his desk. It was a .38 Super from Astra. Each of his safety houses had one, loaded and filed clean of their serial numbers. It trembled in his hand as he pointed it at the door. “Do you know who you’re robbing?”
“We know everything about you, Tony. I want you to go to the shelf on your right.”
He glanced at the tins of nail varnish on his right hand side.
“That’s it. That’s the one. On it you’ll find a micro camera that’s been recording your activities for the past five months. I’m looking at you now. I know you’ve pressed a panic button and I know you’re pointing a gun at the door.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Fairbanks and I’m either goin
g to be your boss or your executioner. I’ll give you the option. Put the gun down and come work for me.”
Tony’s double chin quivered. He’d heard the rumours. Everyone had. Tony was loyal to the Daytons, but that was before Fairbanks had killed four of his men. Judging by the steadiness in Fairbanks’ voice, he had done it with ease. That eerie tranquillity scared him more than being shot.
“How do I know you’ll not kill me the minute you step inside?” he shouted through the door.
“It’s not good business, Tony. You’re the Dayton’s bag man. You know where the money comes from. I kill you and I wouldn’t know who owed me what. I can’t make a living without you.”
The logic was sound. It appealed to the mathematician in him, who was just as scared shitless as the rest of Tony. He placed the gun on the table and smiled into the hidden camera. The rumours about Fairbanks were linked to talk of the Dayton’s demise. Although he had dismissed it, Tony had spent time planning a way out. Luckily for him, Fairbanks had recognised his importance. He controlled the revenue streams, making Tony indispensable.
Just before a bullet tore through his chest, Phoney Tony wondered if he should have held on to his gun just in case. His hands pressed around the ragged wound, desperately trying to stem the flow of frothy blood that bubbled down his clothing. He fell with a thud. The last thing he saw was a young man with a hunting rifle waving him goodbye.
***
Fairbanks shouldered his rifle, smoke curling from its barrel. Dougherty was by his side. They watched silently as their crew grabbed the money and ran for the waiting car.
“How long before the Daytons get here do you think?” Dougherty asked.
Picking up the Breitling watch, Fairbanks checked the time. “It won’t be long. We better be quick.”
Snatching the watch from him, Dougherty admired it on his wrist. Fairbanks touched his earring. He had all the jewellery he needed, he thought. He could always take the watch back later if he wanted to. Walking to the shelf, he retrieved the micro camera. It had been purchased in cash from a man who knew better than to remember the names of his customers, but Fairbanks hadn’t got this far without being thorough.