The Sirens - 02 (13 page)

I was doing nearly eighty when I saw the sign for the hospital and I went over the speed bumps in the hospital drive still doing nearly fifty...the car's suspension held up to it, but the old lady cursed long and loud in the back. I guessed she had known a few sailors in her time...or maybe she'd met Jim Morton.

I hit the A and E car park at thirty and came to a halt in a bay ten yards from the brightly-lit entrance.

"Help us. We've got a badly hurt man here!" I shouted as I opened the car door.

I'd seen the movies and television shows. I was expecting ER doctors and nurses to dash out to our aid, gurneys rattling, perfect teeth gleaming in the headlights. But there was no movement, either in the car park or in the well-lit hall behind the entrance doors.

"Help! Injured man here!" I shouted again as we manhandled Doug through the doors and into reception.

Two rows of waiting patients turned and stared blankly in our direction. Behind a heavily fortified reception area a matronly woman with a blue rinse perm looked me up and down.

"You'll live," she said to me. "Take a seat. There'll be a doctor free in a couple of hours." She dismissed me with a wave of her hand and went back to filling in forms in tiny, neat, capital letters.

"I'll just leave this one with you then," I said, and on cue Doug woke long enough to raise his arm and bring it down close to the ten-inch square hole in the reinforced glass that shielded her. Blood spurted in through the opening, a small red fountain that covered her, her desk and all the paperwork in front of her.

She shrieked.

"I'll have security onto you," she said to Doug, but he was gone again, past caring.

"You'd better hurry then, hen," Mrs. Malcolm said. "For I don't think he's hanging around for long."

Doug slumped against the screen, smearing more blood down the glass as he started to fall forward. His eyes rolled up in their sockets and I only just managed to get a hand under his jaw before he smacked it on the desk.

Finally, the receptionist hit the panic button, and I was gratified to see that Scottish doctors moved just as fast as the American ones on television. What they lacked in expensive dentistry that made up for in speed. One minute we had Doug in our arms, the next he was in a gurney rattling away from us down the corridor and an ancient janitor wheeled a bucket over and started cleaning up the blood.

I made to follow the rapidly departing gurney, but the old lady grabbed my arm and pulled me over to a seat.

"I've been in this situation before. They'll let us know how it's going when they've got time," she said. "He's going to be fine. The doctors will look after him."

I hadn't realized it, but tears were running down my cheeks. She gave me a handkerchief and, without thinking, I blew my nose, sending blinding pain up through my skull and several ounces of blood and phlegm onto, into, and through the thin material of the hankie.

I looked at it stupidly, and made to hand it back to her.

"I don't want it, son," she said, and started to laugh. I looked at her, looked at the mess in my hand, and started to laugh myself. The blue rinse perm behind the glass rapped in the window to shush us. But one look at her, and the flecks of Doug's blood across her desk that she hadn't quite managed to clear up, sent my laughter up a notch, into something that might have approached hysteria if the old lady hadn't grabbed my hand, hard.

"He's going to need you," she said. I wasn't sure if she meant Doug, or her son John. I'm not sure if she knew either, but it was enough to calm me down...for a while, at least, although I had a feeling that hysteria wasn't going to be far away until I knew that Doug was going to be all right.

Since we'd met, we'd shared large chunks of our lives; it was in Doug's flat that I smoked dope for the first and last time; it was Doug who stopped me going mad when Liz killed herself. I was his best man when he got married, and I'd been there to get him royally plastered on the night his divorce came through. And of course, we'd helped each other in getting through the Amulet case...and almost killed ourselves in the process. But even above all that, he was my friend...the only real one I had, and I was terrified that I might lose him...that I might be the cause of his death.

The old lady patted my arm maternally.

"Go and clean yourself up," she said. "Before the harpy over there tells you off for bleeding on the clean floor."

I took off my jacket and handed it to her, making sure she felt the weight of the pistol in the pocket. She nodded, and sat down, the jacket in her lap, her hands hidden in the folds.

My back screamed in pain with every step, but somehow I made it to the Gents. I half expected to see blood when I peed, but the flow was clear. But the pain shooting through my muscles more than compensated for any grateful feeling I might have.

When I turned to the mirror I almost screamed again as a mask of blood looked back at me. I touched my nose gingerly, wincing as my touch met a soft mass of bruised tissue. Luckily there didn't seen to be anything broken...not that there was much left to break in there anyway...a childhood spent playing rugby had seen to that.

The water ran pink for a long time as I washed my blood off my face, and Doug's blood off my hands. Although, like Lady Macbeth, I didn't think my hands would ever be totally clean after this night.

I was trying to get the worst of the blood off my shirt when the old janitor came in, whistling "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life". He looked straight at me, or rather, his right eye did...his left, obviously glass, stared off somewhere near my shoulder.

"So how's the other guy?" he said, seeing the state of my nose.

"I walked into a lamppost," I said, and he laughed, tapping the side of his nose.

"I'm betting there's a woman involved," he said. "Women, eh? Can't live with them, can't just kill them."

He started washing the floor, talking all the time in the world. After a while I gave up on trying to clean the shirt. Anybody who looked at me was going to be looking at the ruined mess of my face...I didn't think anybody was going to comment on some blood on my collar.

The old janitor started waltzing with his broom and broke into an impromptu dance routine as he whistled "Dancing Cheek to Cheek".

"Only thing women are good for," he said. "Sex and dancing. And if I had the choice, I'd stick to the dancing."

He cackled again.

"I told you. It was a lamppost," I said half-heartedly.

He tapped his glass eye and winked with his good one.

"A lamppost? You were lucky," he said, just as I left the room. "It could have been a piece of masonry."

I don't believe in coincidences. I was about to go back in and ask him what he meant when a voice called my name down the corridor. My heart sank as the bulky frame of the policeman McCall came towards me.

"Adams. I want a word with you," he shouted.

Suddenly I was glad I'd left the pistol with the old lady...otherwise I might have been tempted to shoot him and get his head stuffed and mounted above the fireplace.

"We've had a report that you were involved in a shooting," he growled. "And also in the abduction of one Jessie Mason..."

"You leave that boy alone!" a voice shouted, and the old lady came down the corridor, her face set for battle.

"Mrs. Mason, I presume," he started, but that was as far as he got.

"That's Ms. Malcolm to you," she said. "And you should be grateful that Mr. Adams knows how to protect auld women from drug addicts and pimps. His poor pal is in emergency...doing your job for you... and all you can do is shout and bully. You should be ashamed of yourself."

McCall was about to speak again, but she wasn't finished.

"I can give you the whole story," she said, grabbing his arm and leading him off away from me. "I'll not take long. I remember the time..."

McCall went with her like a condemned man. For the first time I almost felt sympathy for him. It was only after he moved that I realized his partner had been standing behind him.

"We found blood," she said, her eyes fixed on the stain on my collar.

"Aye. Doug's and mine. You met Doug before...in my office. He's in here somewhere...the doctors are working on him. He got between a bad man with a knife and the auld woman."

"The woman in the flats said you marched Mrs. Mason...sorry, Ms. Malcolm...out of the flats at gunpoint," she said.

I managed a laugh that didn't sound too theatrical.

"I can't imagine anybody marching Jessie anywhere. And as you see," I said. "She's alive, well, and even as we speak telling a different story to your man."

She looked down the corridor to where the big man was taking notes as the little lady harangued him.

"Oh, he's not my man," she said, and put a hand on my arm. "He's not my type." She gave my arm a squeeze, let go, and went to join her partner. I'd never had a police officer flirt with me before. I didn't know whether to be flattered or appalled.

I left old lady Malcolm to it and went back to reception.

"Any news on Doug Ellis?" I asked the receptionist. She looked at me as if she wished she had a weapon.

"Just sit down, sir," she said. "A doctor will see you shortly"

"Okay...and don't call me shortly," I replied, but there wasn't even a flicker of humanity, never mind a smile.

I sat and tried to read two-day-old newspapers, but the image of the grinning, drooling beast kept forcing itself to the front of my mind. I had to put the paper down when my hands started shaking too much. I needed a cigarette, but they were in my jacket. Jessie was still holding that, and I didn't want any attention drawn to it at the moment.

I sat, as quiet and still as I could manage, and I watched the night people pass through the casualty department.

It was well after one in the morning. The clubs were throwing drunk youngsters onto the street, and the drunk youngsters were throwing themselves onto each other. Over the next hour there was a constant stream of scalp wounds, busted heads, vomiting drunks, cursing drunks and bleeding drunks. Add to that friends of the wounded, enemies of the wounded and policemen bringing in both groups, and you're left with a recipe for disaster. I gained a grudging respect for the blue-rinsed receptionist...she dealt with a level of abuse that would have had me in a fit of rage...and she did it every night.

Two young coppers wrestled an abusive young girl to the ground while her mates stood around, questioning the policeman's manhood. There was more bare flesh on show than you'd see on a beach, and their belly button piercings gleamed in the glare of the overheads. The police lifted the girl, an arm each, and she promptly threw up. They were obviously expecting it...they steeped briskly to one-side and let her vomit on the floor. A minute later the old janitor was back with his bucket. He winked at me with his good eye.

"A couple of wee birdies tell me your pal's going to be okay," he said. "So relax...they'll be out to tell you soon."

He went back to wiping up the remains of the girl's night out...mainly vodka and orange juice from the look and smell. Suddenly I needed some air. I headed for the front door, but Ms. Malcolm met me half way. She handed me my jacket.

"I got rid of the Police," she said. "And I talked to the doctor...your pal is going to be all right. His arm's going to be a mess, and they'll be keeping him in for a day or two...but he's going to be all right."

And she surprised me again by giving me another hug.

"I knew there was a woman involved," the old janitor said, and cackled. "But I thought it would be a spring chicken, not a tough auld hen."

Jessie threw him a look that shut him up, and he went back to his mopping.

"Doug's really okay?" I asked.

"We can see him in an hour or so," she said. "He's under sedation."

"I wish I was," I said.

"Aye. There's something to be said for oblivion," she replied. "But I need you alert. It's time I told you what happened in Skye in sixty-eight. I hope you're got plenty of cigarettes left."

She led me through a warren of corridors, but she seemed to know where she was going.

"Ma man was in here for months last year," she said. "And I used to sneak out for a smoke when it got too much for me. I got to know where to go to cadge a puff."

We came to a set of fire doors. There was a large sign that said, 'Caution, these doors are alarmed. Not to be used except in an emergency'. She pushed through without a pause and led me into a small interior courtyard. At one time someone had obviously tried to make a garden area for patients, but now it looked to be turned over totally to the pursuit of the nicotine hit. There were four benches around a small pond. There might be fish in there, but if there were, they were living on the cigarette ends that were getting pushed around the surface by a sluggish fountain that burped and belched like an asthmatic cow. The ground all around was strewn with butts, spent matches and empty cartons.

On the far side of the pond from us sat just about the sickest man I've ever seen. He was in his pajamas and dressing gown, his stick thin body swamped by the clothing, his ribs standing proud from his chest in the two inches of flesh showing at his neck. His cheeks and eyes sunk far back into his skull, and his hair hung lankly over a liver-spotted scalp. In his right hand he held a lit cigarette, and in his left he clung tightly to a pole and the attached intravenous drip. He waved at us feebly, then went back to trying to work up enough energy to suck on the cigarette. I kept a close eye on him...he looked like he might keel over into the pond at any moment.

We sat down on the seat across the pond from him.

"It's all my fault," she said as I handed her the first of many cigarettes.

6

Jessie Malcolm's Story

The 'Summer of Love' was late in getting to Glasgow...so late that it was the summer after the rest of the world. I was a bit old to be a hippie, but I was in a dead end job in a bank, I couldnae get a man for love nor money, and when, one Friday, I met some folk in a pub who offered a kind of freedom, I took it. Two days later I'd thrown in the job and was travelling around Scotland in a VW Beetle painted with day-go pink flowers.

We did the usual hippie bit...a lot of sex, drugs and bongo drums round campfires. We actively sought out 'mystic' sites so that we could commune with the pagan gods. We danced round stone circles in Orkney, Shetland, Lewis and Argyll. And on one night, near the end of the summer, we ended up at Dunvegan Castle on Skye.

The castle is famous for the Fairy Flag, supposedly given to the Macleod clan chief by the King of the Wee Folk. Patrick, the owner of the Beetle and therefore the head of our wee bit of the strolling players, wanted to see fairies. I could have told him that he only had to look in the mirror...he wasn't the most masculine of men, if you catch my drift?

So there we were, thirty of us, our merry band of camper vans, VW Beetles, wigwams and bonfires, boys with long hair and beads, lassies with neither make-up nor bras. As you can imagine, the local folk didnae know what to make of us. Apart from the young boys that is. They knew what they wanted, all right...and over the summer I'd got plenty of experience giving it to them.

The very first night there was a party going that they probably still talk about on the island. Joints were rolled, mushrooms were gathered, and daisy chains were woven. Hendrix and Joplin wailed across the Skye night air. The local boys brought the booze, and by midnight a rolling orgy was underway.

A boy had caught my eye. He was a lot younger than me, but there was something about him, something lost in his eyes, that drew me to him. And he seemed attracted to me, but I could tell the piles of heaving bodies were embarrassing him. He seemed so lost that I took him away from the hubbub and led him to my tent, which was down in a grassy depression near the shore. And there we did exactly what you might expect, even given the fact that he was obviously still nervous.

We were just getting to the business end of things when I heard singing outside the tent. At first I thought that one of my travelling companions was in full stride, but then my 'partner' went into a daze. It was obvious he wasn't quite with me, but I wasn't about to let him off that easily. He was trying to climb off me, but, using my strength, I rolled over on top of him and pinned him down.

The singing rose to a frenzy, and, as he bucked under me, so did I. His eyes focused, and we were together once more as the singing came to a sudden halt. We were lying, clasped in each other's arms, feeling pleased with ourselves, when the screaming started.

By the time we got some clothes on and tripped across the dark patch of shore to where all the screaming was coming from there was a small crowd gathered around in a circle on the beach. Our erstwhile leader, Patrick, was lying across two flat stones, blood pouring from multiple wounds around his crotch. It didn't take me long to notice that my partner and I were the only sober people there.

"Hey, you..." I said to him...we hadn't got as far as names. "Get me a blanket from the tent...quick."

While the lad was away I inspected Patrick. He wasn't badly hurt, but he was bleeding like a stuck pig. By the time the blanket arrived the bleeding had slowed, but he was nowhere near coherent.

"The Fairy Queen took me to husband," he shouted, sitting bolt upright. "Let the festivities begin."

Then he burst into tears.

I used my blouse to bind the worst of the wounds, and wrapped him in the blanket.

"Can you drive?" I asked my recent conquest.

"Aye," he said, almost absently. He was looking at Patrick with a mixture of sorrow and horror.

"There's a doctor in Portree," he said finally. "We'd better take him there."

Even as we bundled Patrick into the beetle the crowd was drifting off, and over near the campfire the bongo drums started up again as the party kicked back into life.

"And you'd better get a jumper or something," my new partner said, smiling. "You can't go through the town like that."

I was bare-chested. In fact, I had thought little of it, but now I could feel myself blushing. I made a hasty trip to the tent and, as well as putting on a high-necked shirt, I bundled my small store of belongings into a shoulder bag and left, saying a last goodbye to the tent. My hippie experiment was officially over.

During the ten-mile drive to Portree I discovered that my partner's name was Tommy Mason, that he was a fisherman, and that he was terrified.

"It should have been me," he kept saying. "It should have been me."

I didn't have time to quiz him. Patrick was shivering all over his body although it was a warm night. He kept screaming gibberish about the Fairy Queen and the sowing of the seed. By the time Tommy pulled the Beetle up outside the doctor's house he was lost in a fever dream, screaming and gesticulating at an unseen attacker.

The doctor wasn't best pleased to see us, but one sight of Patrick and he became the medical professional. Patrick was whisked away to a back room while Tommy and I stood in the doorway, unsure what to do next.

To my surprise he took my hand, and gripped it tight, as if afraid to let go. He led me into what was obviously the doctor's living room.

"It should have been me," he said again. Then, as if in awe, "You saved me from it."

I asked him what he meant, but he went quiet on me. But he didn't let go of my hand, not even when the doctor returned.

"He'll be all right," the doctor said. "The cuts look worse than they are, and he went to sleep on his own. Just as well, really, for I wouldn't have been able to give him anything...not with the rubbish that's in his system already. What was it...mushrooms?"

"I don't know," Tommy said. "I only had beer."

The doctor looked in both our eyes for long seconds, then nodded.

"Maybe," he said. "But I'll have to report this to the police. It looks like an assault to me...and a brutal one, at that. Or is there something you want to tell me, Tommy Mason?"

Tommy shook his head. The 'lost boy' look was back in his eyes. Even then I think I realized that my job for the foreseeable future would be to keep that look at bay.

The doctor picked up the telephone...and at the same time, across the night, the strange ethereal singing started again. Tommy's grip tightened until the pain was almost unbearable, then all sense went out of his eyes and he went limp. He started to walk out of the door.

I pulled him back towards me and held him tight, but he was too strong for me, and started to pull me across the floor, dragging my weight behind him.

"Help me," I said to the doctor. "Before it happens again."

"Best to just let him go, lassie," the doctor said, shaking his head. "It should have been him earlier, instead of that poor wee boy in my treatment room. This is what Tommy was born for. She's come for him, and only he will satisfy her."

I wasn't really listening. Tommy was getting closer to the door, and the singing was rising to a frenzy. Using all my strength I managed to pull him slightly off balance towards me, and once more I clasped him in a tight hug.

The singing grew to a cacophonous wailing, and Tommy's struggles became frantic. Just at the point where he finally managed to struggle out of my grip there was a crash behind me.

Something came into the room. At first I thought it was someone playing a joke...it looked initially like a man in a rubber suit, and the effect was completed when it spoke.

"My Queen. I am coming," it said.

And that is when I realized it was Patrick...but a changed, ruined, version of the man. Where he once had a beard he now had a forest of spines. And his skin looked like nothing more than dried up, cracked leather. Clear puss oozed from splits that grew longer with every move, and as he walked past me, starting to run, I saw small nubs grow on his back, nubs that grew and spread so that by the time he reached the door he sported a serviceable pair of leathery wings.

"I'm coming," he called again, and jumped into the air.

At first it was as if he might defy gravity, and he hung, three feet up, as the wings spread, casting a dark shadow over the garden to the front of the house. Then he gave an agonizing squeal, and fell.

What came back down was no longer Patrick. In fact, it was no longer much of anything. It hit the ground with a wet thump.The legs buckled under it and melted...there's no better word for it. The torso seemed to fall in on itself, and the head followed, all in a heartbeat. Within a second there was only a heaving puddle of brown tissue that writhed, just once, then was still.

It was suddenly quiet, and then Tommy went limp once more and fell into my arms.

The doctor spoke first, and he seemed to be addressing Tommy.

"She'll be back," he said.

Tommy pulled himself together.

"Aye. But I'll not be here."

The lad turned to me.

"Take me with you," he said.

"I don't know about that," I said. "But I'm going back to Glasgow. You're welcome to join me for the ride...I've had enough. I'm off."

"You can't go," the doctor said. "It's your fate."

"Fuck fate," Tommy said. "Tell Gus it can be beat."

He took my hand, and led me to the Beetle. I tried not to look at what lay just outside the door, but it seemed to draw the eye. It looked like the hide of a recently skinned animal, steaming lightly in the night air.

"Remember to tell Gus what I said," Tommy said to the doctor as he got into the Beetle. "Tell Gus that fate can be beaten."

And off we went, driving like the devil was chasing us, barely pausing for breath, all the way back to Glasgow.

* * *