David Trevellyan 03 -More Harm Than Good (5 page)

       
The nurse - the same one
who’d admitted me that morning - stayed in my room for twenty minutes. Fifteen
for her to re-appraise my condition and take note of my dramatic decline.
And five for me to subtly pick her brains about the whereabouts of
any other new arrivals.
Because it seemed to me that anyone with a mind
to help themselves to other people’s property would want to get in early, while
the richest pickings were still available. Like they’d done to me. So if I
wanted to track them down, the new patients’ rooms would be a good place to
start. Which was fine, in theory. It only had one snag. The nurse told me that
no one else had been brought in for four days. And as the unit only
catered for trauma patients, it wasn’t possible
to predict when any more would arrive. Unless I went out and bashed someone over
the head, I thought, but that seemed a little extreme. I kept on pressing, but
the best lead she could give me was that there were only two empty rooms left.
They were both at the far end of the corridor below mine.

       
The rooms were easy to
find. They were opposite one another, and you could tell they were still not
being used because their doors were propped open and you could look inside. The
nurse had told me they always filled these ones last, because their location
made them the least convenient for the staff to reach. But that also made it
impossible for me to stake them out. There was no cover of any kind. Any
potential thieves would see me a mile off, so I decided to scour the rest of
the hospital for anything useful, then come back and check on developments.

       
One area I didn’t have a
clear picture of was the top floor of the admin wing. The MRI technician had
mumbled something about steering clear of it, so I decided to head there next.
I thought his warning referred to boredom when I peered through the first few
doors. An abandoned classroom, choked with dust. Two storerooms, with half
their shelves left empty.
A cupboard, full of filing boxes.
And then I found what he must have really meant. Tucked away in the far corner,
hidden behind an unmarked door, was a kind a macabre museum full of grotesque
anatomical specimens in ancient glass jars.

       
A breath of fresh air
seemed like a good idea in the circumstances, so I made my way to the nearest
exit and stepped outside into the garden. The ground was strewn with twigs and
branches. There must have been a storm recently.
A big one,
judging by the amount of debris.
I hadn’t known anything about it.
Maybe it had happened when I was over in
Luxembourg.
Or before that, in Tokyo.
But either way
it had passed me by. The thought made me strangely uncomfortable so I made for
one of the benches that lined the path around the
centre
of the lawn and perched on the edge, suddenly feeling sickened, and almost
light headed. If I was unaware of something simple, like the state of the
weather in my home city, what else was I in the dark about? What else was I
missing about the place? And what about the people? What was going on with
them? Was I perpetually bouncing from country to country, putting myself in
harm’s way on their behalf, just so they could rob each other blind? Steal from
me? Fill their veins with drugs? Or carry on like the family on that TV show?

I woke up in the dark. I was lying on my back.
On a
bed, but not under the covers.
Still wearing my
pyjamas
and slippers. My head was back to normal, and no other parts of me were showing
any signs of damage, so I sat up and waited for my night sight to adjust.
Objects and shadows gradually took shape around me, and after a couple of
minutes I
realised
I was back in my hospital room. I
tried to focus, and managed to coax a few vague pictures out of my recent
memory. I was fairly certain I could recall getting up from the bench in the
garden. Picking my way through the detritus. Coming in through the main entrance
to the north building. Hauling myself up two flights of stairs. Drifting down
the corridor, making doubly sure I selected the right door. And doing something
else. What was it? The curtains. For some reason I’d closed them before lying
down. I felt my way across to the window and tugged them apart again. They must
have been thicker than I’d
realised
because with the
street lights
on it turned out to still be fairly bright
outside. I turned and checked the clock on the wall above the bed. It was ten
past six in the evening. I’d only been asleep for around an hour. That wasn’t
too serious. And it wasn’t too late. There was time to nip downstairs, check
the vacant rooms, and still be back in time for dinner.
If
there was anything on the menu worth eating.

       
I could tell from the
second I stepped into the lower corridor that something was different. The
shadows at the far end had changed. One of the doors - the one on the left -
had been closed. No one else was around so I approached, silently. I heard a
voice from inside.
A woman’s.
Then another woman
answered it. I didn’t
recognise
either one.
A nurse, perhaps, or a doctor, speaking to a patient?
A
reasonable guess, I thought, but I had no way of knowing for sure. Not without
seeing them. And I couldn’t afford for them to spot me, so I slipped into the
empty room opposite, closed the door, and stooped down far enough to fit my eye
to the peephole.

       
Nothing happened for
eleven minutes, then the door I was watching swung open. A woman shuffled into
the corridor. She was a nurse, but not the one who’d helped me, earlier. She
took one step to her left and stopped, staring into the distance. Another
thirty seconds ticked away, then she moved back and a man appeared. He was in
his mid twenties, I’d guess.
Thirty at the outside.
It’s hard to be precise through a fish-eye lens. He was wearing a porter’s
uniform. The material was faded and the trousers looked too tight in several
places, but he didn’t seem concerned about it. The pair conferred for a minute,
then disappeared into the room.

       
They were out of sight
for less than a minute. The nurse re-appeared first. She positioned herself
near the hinges and reached back into the room to stop the door from closing.
Then I saw the porter again. And
realised
why the
nurse had waited for him. The person I’d heard her talking to was using a
wheelchair, and she wanted someone to help push it. But the patient’s condition
wasn’t relevant. The important thing was - she was a new arrival.

       
All I had to do now was
wait for the thief to show his face. That wouldn’t be too hard. Waiting is one
thing I’ve had a lot of practice at. It’s easier than chasing. And that night,
I was in luck. Because it took less than four minutes for my trap to spring
shut.

       
I saw a man enter the
room across the corridor. He was also dressed as a porter. Only his uniform was
subtly different from the guy’s who’d been pushing the wheelchair. The material
was in better condition. It looked brand new, in fact. It had no hospital
logos. And it fitted him way too well.

       
I guessed from the mess
he’d made in my room that the thief would only be inside for a couple of
minutes, so I didn’t waste any time. And it wasn’t like I needed to catch him
in the act. All I wanted was to get my boots back. I was planning to have the same
conversation with him regardless of what he was doing when I walked through the
door. So the fact that I found him sitting in a visitor’s chair, fiddling with
the combination on a black leather briefcase was of no concern to me at all.

       
The fact that he pulled
a Sig Sauer pistol from his overall pocket a second later was a different story
altogether. A P226. It looked clean.
Factory fresh, even.
A nice weapon.
I remember thinking it was a little
extravagant for a low level burglar even as I kicked it out of his hand. It
flew across the room and crashed against something metal - maybe the radiator -
but I kept my eyes locked on the man. I was worried he’d pull out a knife or a
backup piece. But that didn’t seem to cross his mind. There was no hesitation. He
just dropped the briefcase and came at me with his fists, relentlessly
combining flurries of sharp jabs and hooks.

       
I carried on moving and
blocking, trying to frustrate him and wear him down, until he finally pulled
away about eighteen inches. He dropped his head and let his shoulders slacken,
but I also saw him shift his balance. It was a feint. I guessed he was looking
to change tack and catch me with a kick so I stepped aside, then as he came
forward I moved straight back in and swept his standing leg. He crashed down
onto his back and immediately rolled to his left. But he wasn’t just trying to
get away. He was trying to retrieve the Sig. He landed with his fingertips two
inches from the grip and started to wriggle frantically forward so, short of options,
I snatched up the chair he’d been sitting on and smashed it down across the
back of his head.

       
The guy was left
completely still. He was touching the gun with his right hand, and his upper
body was surrounded with splintered fragments of the chair’s wooden frame. Only
its seat remained intact, and that had come to rest upside down near the foot
of the bed. Someone had drawn a frowning face on the underneath in white chalk.
I knew how they felt.
Because my chances of asking any
questions had been pretty much destroyed, too, along with the furniture.
There was no hope of the guy waking up before anyone raised the alarm, with the
amount of noise that had been made. Lydia McCormick would try to bury me with
her forms. And the police would have a field day, as soon as they heard about
the firearm. My only hope was to find something that I could follow up on my
own, like a name or address or phone number, then make myself scarce. I could
see the guy’s wallet peeping out from one of his pockets. I figured that would
be a good place to start, so I reached down and worked it free. And at exactly
the same moment, I heard the door crash open, behind me.

       
I’d expected to see a
hospital security guard standing there, or possibly a medic. But I was wrong.
It was the woman in the wheelchair. She was on her own this time, with no sign
of a real porter to push her.

       
“Evening,” I said. “Is
this your room? Sorry about the mess. Things got a little out of hand.”

       
“A little?” she said,
looking at the guy’s prostrate body.

       
“It’s not as bad as it
looks. We’ll soon get everything cleaned up.”

       
“I don’t think we’ll
soon do anything. What are you doing here?”

       
“Well, I just was
passing by and saw this chap trying to steal your briefcase. So I stopped him.”

       
“Really?” the woman said
as she wheeled herself forward, coming fully into the room. “I don’t believe
you. So let’s try this, instead. I want you face down, on the ground. Fingers
laced behind your head. Legs spread. And I want you there right now.”

       
“I beg your pardon?” I
said.

       
“You heard.”

       
“You’re right. I did
hear. Only I was expecting something more along the lines of a ‘thank you’ for
stopping your stuff from being taken.”

       
“He wasn’t trying to take
anything. And you’re the one holding somebody else’s wallet in your hand. So,
get on the ground. Face down. Now.”

       
“OK. Maybe I should try
a different question. Such as, why would I want to do a thing like that?”

       
“You took the wallet
from the man on the floor?”

       
“I did. I was looking
for some ID.”

       
“Then go ahead. Look
inside.”

       
I was curious, so I
looked. I found six credit cards. Two ten pound notes.
An
Oyster card, for the London Underground.
And an
official identity card.

       
“See that?” she said. “Read
the name.”

       
“Timothy Jones,” I said.

       
“No.
The
name at the top.
His employer.”

       
“The Security Service.”

       
“Correct. He’s an MI5
Intelligence Officer.”

       
I didn’t respond.

       
“Have you seen one of
those cards before?” she said.

       
I didn’t answer.

       
“I have one just like
it,” she said. “Do you want to see that, too?”

       
“Not especially,” I
said.

       
“Are you surprised?”

       
“A little.”

       
“Do you like surprises?”