They’d be here.
It was over.
She was getting out of this shitty hellhole.
...
Davis’s eyes flickered open and a little smile tweaked the corner of his mouth. Then he thumbed a button on the side of his phone, making a pre-recorded voice swell out of the speaker, getting louder and louder.
‘At the third stroke, the time, sponsored by Triple-Five Mobile, will be nine forty-eight and forty seconds.’
Beep. Beep. Beep.
‘At the third stroke, the time, sponsored by Triple-Five Mobile, will be nine forty-eight and fifty—’
Davis smashed his phone down against the barn floor, snarling as he hammered it into the concrete:
Once. Twice. Three times. Four.
Until the screen shattered and bits of glass flew off to make ripples in the lake of blood. Followed by a half-dozen chunks of broken electronics.
Disturbed by the sudden violence, bluebottles leapt into the foetid air, performing a slow-motion waltz to the sounds of heavy metal.
Breathing in harsh, shallow gasps, Davis tossed what was left of his phone into the blood. Then his arm fell limp. ‘No one’s...coming...to save you....We die here.’ An almost-laugh trembled free: ‘“I turn my body...from the sun.”’
Natasha glared at the bastard. ‘WHAT THEFUCKIS WRONG WITH YOU?’
His voice faltered, getting fainter and fainter. ‘“Forhate’ssake...I spit my last breath...at...”’ There was a hiss of leaking breath, then his head drooped forwards, mouth hanging open. Eyes too.
It took a couple of moments for the bluebottles to pluck up courage, but eventually one fat little bastard landed on Davis’s tongue. Then another on his left pupil. And another. And another as the feeding began.
Leaving Natasha to die alone.
78
Aberdeen Royal Infirmary’s Orthopaedic Trauma Unit should’ve been a place of peace and healing, a tranquil space to recover in after serious bone-shattering injury or the kind of violent surgery that still involved saws. Where conversations were held in hushed whispers as life-saving machinery wentpingandhissssss. Instead, a torrent of yelling and howling and shouting and screaming and swearing overflowed into the corridor outside.
Logan shoved through the door, into chaos.
Half a dozen officers in the full uniform, complete with stabproof vests and high-vis, formed a wall outside one of the small, four-bed rooms that lined the ward’s outer edges. Shuffling about. Looking as if they were all amped-up todosomething...but didn’t quite know what.
An equal number of nurses bustled from room to room, doing their best to keep their patients calm and reassured. Which can’t have been easy, given all the bellowing going on.
Another three were over by the nurses’ station. One sitting on an office chair, with his head thrown back and the front of his scrubs awash with scarlet from a shattered nose, while his colleagues tried to staunch the bleeding.
Logan skidded to a halt on the polished hospital floor. ‘What the hell’s going on?’
A no-nonsense nurse in the white-trimmed dark-blue top ofa ward sister, stormed over, grey perm quivering as she jabbed a finger into Logan’s chest. ‘Are you in charge here? Because this isnotacceptable!’
She ducked as acrrrrrrrrrsssssshhhhhhhhhhhof shattering glass turned the four-bed room’s window into a mess of spider webs.
Inside, a large,hairyyoung man shook a ward chair at the broken glazing – like a lion tamer, holding the assembled officers at bay. Assuming they allowed half-shaved gorillas in blue jeans and denim jackets to join the circus as staff rather than exhibits.
What was it PC Kent called that look, a Torry Tuxedo?
...
Bloody hell, itwasas well: the guy who’d been lurking outside the burnt-out hotel with a bunch of flowers and a mylar balloon. Darryl Something-Or-Other, whose dad was ‘a man of strong opinions’.
