David Trevellyan 03 -More Harm Than Good (3 page)

       
The biker Marine
shrugged.

       
“Or was this one just to
get the noose tighter around your necks?” I said. “So you’d give them, what?
The Ambassador’s home address?
Floor plans of the Embassy?
Details of VIP visits?”

       
“Forget it,” the biker
said. “We’d never give them stuff like that.”

       
“Spare me,” I said. “And
something else. He didn’t do this to you. You did it to yourselves, by acting
like morons. Killing him serves no tactical purpose. Not like the people
outside. So if you expect any kind of leniency from the Navy, you’ll help me
get this guy safely out of here. Are we clear?”

       
“Sir,” both Marines said
after long a pause, but their body language made it clear they weren’t happy.

       
“Time to move,” I said.
“Get him on his feet.”

       
“On your feet,
arsehole
,” the biker Marine said to Truly.

       
Truly didn’t move.

       
“Feel free to encourage
him,” I said.

       
The Marine stepped
forward and jammed the toe of his motorcycle boot into
Truly’s
left kidney. He squealed and pitched forward, saving himself just before his face
hit the concrete. The Marine grabbed him by the collar, hauled him upright, and
sent him stumbling towards the exit. I stepped back to avoid his flailing arms,
and then something caught my eye. Movement.
Above me.
From the hole in the roof.

       
“Gun,” the other Marine
shouted, spotting the same thing.

       
I threw myself forward,
crashing my shoulder into Truly and sending him flying. We hit the ground
together. I landed on top of him and the impact dislodged a lungful of his foul
cigarette-breath, pumping it straight into my face. A bullet hit the ground
near my feet, right where
Truly
had been standing. I
grabbed him and rolled, not wanting either of us to offer a static target. I
heard three more shots. They were coming from my left. I looked round and saw the
biker Marine holding
Truly’s
Colt two-handed, aiming
at the hole in the roof.

       
“Don’t think I got him,”
he said. “He might be running. Shall I go and see?”

       
“No, stay where you are
and give us cover,” I said, pulling out the
Ruger
I’d
taken from the guys in the car and throwing it to the other Marine, who was
closer to the exit. “You, outside, quickly. Find him.”

       
The echo of his
footsteps died away and for a moment the warehouse was silent, except for the
slight whimpering sound
Truly
made as I lifted my
weight off his chest.

       
“Come on,” I said to the
biker. “Let’s get this idiot out of harm’s way.”

       
Truly’s
legs only managed a weak wriggle when he tried to move so I leaned down to lift
him.

       
“Careful,” the Marine
said as I pulled Truly to his feet. “He’s hit. His face is covered with blood.”

       
I couldn’t think how. I
counted the shots I’d heard, and replayed what had just happened in my mind.
Then I became away of a familiar throb at the back of my head. And a warm
stickiness spreading
down
my neck. I looked down at
the ground and surveyed the stubs of metal left by the shelf legs. It wasn’t
obvious at first, because of the lack of light. But if you looked closely, you
could just see the tip of the nearest one was darker than its
neighbours
.

       
“Don’t worry,” I said.
“It’s not his.”

Chapter Three

I’ve ended up needing treatment many times, over the years. It’s an occupational
hazard. But I’d never been hurt saving a drug dealer, before.

       
I’ve found myself in all
kinds of different medical institutions.
Huge teaching
hospitals.
Tiny, charitable clinics.
Sick bays on ships.
Even a veterinarian's
office on one unfortunate occasion.
But never anywhere
as picture-perfect as St Joseph’s.
It was made up of four matching
buildings. They dated from the early eighteenth century, according to a round
blue sign I saw on my way to the MRI suite, and were arranged symmetrically around
a rectangular garden.
Three of the wings
contained the patients’ wards and private rooms, plus operating theatres and
suites for all the specialist treatments the hospital offered. The other housed
the kitchens, offices, meeting rooms, and stores.

       
I’m
usually desperate to leave hospital before the doctors want me to. I even had
to break out of one, once. But I’d never wanted to be cooped up for longer. Not
until that morning, after a bored technician had taken two hours to fill his
machine with little electronic slices of my brain.
Because
someone had taken that time and used some of it to slip into my room.
Poke around in my locker. Spill my water. Search inside my pillowcases.
Scrabble around under my bed.
Rifle through my clothes.
Toss my keys and empty wallet onto the floor. And skulk out again, unnoticed.

       
But whoever this person
was, and wherever they went, they didn’t leave empty handed. They took
something with them.
Something that didn’t belong to them.

       
A pair
of boots.

       
Grenson
brogues.
In black.
They were nice to look at. The
leather was supple, so they were comfortable to wear. Even for days at a time.
And the toecaps were solid - almost as good as steel - which is essential in my
line of work.

       
I’d bought the boots in
London, the last time I was here for more than two nights in a row. That was
three years ago, now. Since then I’d worn them on four continents.
In fourteen countries.
During twelve jobs.
And there’s plenty of life left in them, yet. Enough that I’d figured to keep
them another couple of years, at least.
Till they got too
scruffy.
Or I found something I liked better. But either way, I was
going to make the decision when to change them. It wasn’t going to be forced on
me by some small-time sneak thief. Not at home, in England.

       
I want to be very clear
about those boots. They weren’t
government issue
.
There were no secret gadgets hidden in their heels. They weren’t needed as
evidence in any high stakes trial. They were simply my boots.
Chosen by me.
Paid for by me. And now stolen by someone I’d
been injured while protecting. Which meant those boots represented something
more than footwear. They represented betrayal. And that’s something I’m never
going to take lying down.

       
There was a practical
aspect to the theft, as well. Consider the circumstances. What was I supposed
to do without boots? Wander into town in a pair of disposable slippers?
Hospital footwear was good enough to get me to the admin wing, though. And,
appropriately enough, the first office I came to belonged to the Head of
Security. But there was a snag. His secretary spilled the beans within twenty
seconds of me approaching her desk. It turned out the guy liked playing golf
more than he liked doing his job.
Specially
when the
weather was good. It was unheard of for him to show his face in the office when
the sun was out, she said. That doesn’t happen all that often in England,
particularly in late autumn. But it was everyone’s bad luck that for the second
day running, the sky was blue. So, having verified that his room really was
empty, I moved on to the next door in the corridor. It led to the Chief
Executive’s secretary’s desk.

       
Only she was missing,
too.

       
I’d imagine Chief
Executives aren’t generally too concerned about pilfered footwear, unless it’s
their own belongings that have gone missing, but the whole boot situation
– robbed by one of the people I’d been hurt looking out for – was
making my blood boil. So, I didn’t waste any time. I went straight for the
inner sanctum.

       
For a moment I thought
this office was empty, too, but then I saw the top of a
bald
head
peeping out from above a huge computer monitor that sat on a desk
at the far end of the room. The head was strangely pointed, and as I moved
closer I could see that its owner was surprisingly young.
Probably
no older than his late thirties.
He was tapping away at a wireless
keyboard, and made no effort to look away from his screen even when I would
have been near enough to reach out and wipe away the tiny beads of sweat that
covered his shiny scalp.

       
“You’re in the wrong
place,” he said after another fifteen seconds, still without even glancing at
me.

       
I turned back, took hold
of a wooden chair that was tucked under an oval meeting table by the right hand
wall, brought it over to the desk, and sat down.

       
“What are you doing?” he
said. He was looking at me now, and struggling to contain a slight tick in the
corner of his left eye. “Don’t waste time making yourself comfortable. You’re
not supposed to be here.”

       
“Why not?” I said.

       
“Because I’m not a
doctor.”

       
“You think I’m looking
for a medic?”

       
“Well, let’s see. You’re
wearing Health Service
pyjamas
, which means you’re a
patient. And you’re in a hospital. What else could you want?”

       
I took a moment to look
around at the walls of his office. They were lined with motivational posters.
Seventeen of them.
All neatly framed.
And
all utterly nauseating.

       
“You’re the Chief
Executive of this place?” I said.

       
“Well, let’s see,” he
said. “This is the Chief Executive’s office. And my name’s on the door. So, the
answer must be yes.”

       
“Then tell me something.
To become the boss of a whole hospital, do you go through some kind of
training?”

       
He nodded, very
slightly.

       
“And when you were doing
this training, did you pick up anything about making assumptions?” I said.

       
He didn’t respond.

       
“It’s a straight-forward
question,” I said. “Did your tutors recommend assumption-making? Or not?”

       
“OK,” he said, after a
long pause. “Point taken. You have another reason to be here. Let me guess. You
want to complain about something. Another dissatisfied patient who thinks he
knows best. What is it this time?
The food not tasty enough?
Pyjamas
not comfortable?”

       
Before I could reply I
heard a noise, behind me. It was the door opening. Someone came through. They
were wearing heels. I looked round and saw a woman approaching. In her early
fifties, I’d say, with a long blue skirt, cream blouse, and auburn
hair cut
into a neat, symmetrical bob. She held my eye as
she moved, and couldn’t help drifting wide of my chair as she passed me, as if
she was afraid I’d pass on some revolting disease.

       
“Found it,” she said,
handing the manila file she’d been carrying to
the
man
behind the desk. I could see a logo on the front - the words Human Resources
formed into a circle around the hospital crest - but not anyone’s name.