Silence stretched, long and heavy. Music from the pub thumped through the plaster. Deep, vibrating laughter leaking under the door.
“Someone talked,” Indie said finally.
“Someone close,” I agreed.
He nodded once. Slow. Decisive. “We go back to the Masons.”
I felt the weight of that settle in my gut. Old debts never stayed buried.
“I’ll handle it,” I said.
“I know you will.”
Indie clapped a hand on my shoulder. Brief, solid. Then he straightened, already putting the mask back on.
“Tonight,” he said, “we drink to Red.”
I nodded. Tomorrow, we’d start counting the cost.
*****
Sophie left the hospital almost the same time as the last few nights. Back shift. 2.00pm till close. Tonight, she was late. Not enough for anyone else to clock it, but enough for me.
The doors slid open, and she stepped out, pulling her coat tight. The night threatening, and the cold catching her off guard. Her steps weren’t as hurried as normal. She was distracted. Her shoulders slumped, and her bag hung low, dragging against her hip. She stopped under the security light for a moment, head tipped back, eyes closed.
I didn’t move, only watched.
She hadn’t looked my way once since the night I’d been stitched, even though I’d pulled up every night, tucking my Triumph into the shadows so I could sit and watch. She wouldn’t recognise me if I stood under the light and said her name. I’d seen it in her eyes that night, nothing there but a patient, a problem, a job done.
I’d known her almost the second I saw her. Knew her hands. Knew the space she kept between herself and the world, and the way she didn’t waste words. Yet she hadn’t known me at all.
I stayed across the road, half-hidden by a parked van, watching without letting myself be seen. This wasn’t about being close, it was about knowing. Making sure she walked away clean. That she got to wherever she was going without anyone stepping into her space. And it was about reliving memories from long, long ago.
Her hair still hinted at the curly mass of light-brown. Her figure was fuller now. She’d grown into her frame from the eighteen-year-old I’d known then. Her face wasn’t as smooth. Tiny creases at the corners of her eyes showed she smiled without me. She’d smelled the same that night. Even though her perfume was different. More expensive, but it still carried that undercurrent of scent that I remembered.
Someone moved behind her, and instinctively I stiffened, watching them pass without giving her another look. I relaxed again, almost. The world had teeth. I knew that better than most. And she was alone in the dark, crossing the car park. I wouldn’t pull away again until she was safely in her car. And I promised myself again tonight I wouldn’t follow her. Wouldn’t trail behind to find out where she lived.
She moved off, shoes scuffing the pavement, shoulders hunched against the night. The light swallowed her up quickly. Too quickly.
I didn’t follow. Didn’t call out. Didn’t give myself the chance to hear my own name in her voice and know it meant nothing. I stayed where I was until the doors slid shut again,until the hospital went back to being just a building full of noise and hurt and strangers.
Tomorrow, I told myself. Just to know she was still here.
Chapter Five
He came in just after midnight when the department hit that strange second wind. The one where the worst of the drunken rush blurred into the genuinely injured. Football fans still filtered into A&E in pieces. Drunk. Injured. Head injuries. Broken faces. But the flow was slowing.
A trolley wheeled in briskly, the paramedic already talking before it had stopped.
“Male, mid-thirties. Assault. Found in an alley off Westgate. GCS fifteen. Facial injuries, possible rib fractures. Says he fell.”
The man stared at the ceiling, jaw clenched, one eye already swollen shut. Blood dried at the corner of his mouth, the split lip crusted dark. His knuckles were raw too. Not broken like the football lads. Scraped. Torn. The blood on them fresher than that on his face.
He was older. Too old to be fighting like this. And this fight wasn’t alcohol. No sickly-sweet hum to his breath. He wore old scars like badges of honour. No tattoos covering them up. Skin puckered from where it had been broken and badly put back together. I glanced from his face to his hands, then back again.
“Can you tell me what happened?” I asked, keeping my voice neutral as I leaned in.
He swallowed. “Told them. I fell.”
