Page 32 of Girl, Remembered

‘Ask any magician in the world how to solve a problem, and they’ll always say keep it low tech.’ Ella reached into her pocket and removed her secret weapon. She held up a pen. Ripley stared at it with a look of disinterest.

‘A pen. Can he even write?’

‘Only one way to find out.’

They got out. The building in front of them didn’t look like a hospital so much as a hospital’s idea of a prison, or a prison’s idea of a hospital. The place was six floors of brick with windows too narrow for a body to fit through. The fence around the perimeter was topped with razor wire, which, unlike the razor wire around prisons, looked like it had never been tampered with.

As they headed for the door, Ella thought about what had happened last night. She’d been on the floor of a basement with a needle’s worth of ketamine in her blood and seven feet of steroided muscle coming at her out of the dark. Now, she was walking into a hospital to sit across a table from the same man, except this time he’d be strapped to a bed frame instead of standing over her.

‘You’re asking a lot here, Dark.’

‘You think?’

‘Yeah. You almost killed this guy –’ Ripley checked her watch – ‘twelve hours ago. And now you’re asking him for help.’

It was true no matter which way she sliced it. She had to hope that Simon Varro was as willing to accept defeat as Gabriel Winters was.

Ripley knocked twice on the reinforced glass. A guard checked their creds through the pane before he buzzed them through, and after that came the second door, and the second guard, and a female officer with a clipboard who patted Ella down without asking and did the same to Ripley, who let her get through it before saying anything.

‘Head on through. Take a seat in there.’

Ella and Ripley did. On the other side of the door, the prison feature of the building became apparent. It wasn’t too dissimilar to every prison Ella had been in, with its rows of steel doors and a total of four armed guards spaced between them. They’d barely sat for a minute before a man in blue scrubs hurried toward them.

‘Hello. FBI? I’m Doctor Mueller. Sorry for the wait.’

‘Agents Dark and Ripley,’ Ella said. ‘We haven’t been here long.’

‘Good. You said you were in a rush. The patient is ready, whenever you are.’

‘Lead the way. How are his injuries?’ Ripley asked.

‘Stable,’ said Mueller as he led them down the hallway. ‘Damage to the lungs, perforated bowel. He lost a lot of blood. I’ve never seen so many punctures on a single human being before.’

Ella wasn’t sure whether to be proud or ashamed. The latter overtook the former, but her excuse to herself was that it wasn’t her who’d brought an iron maiden to the fight, nor had she thrown Varro into it. He’d collided with it by accident.

‘Can he communicate?’ asked Ripley.

‘Yes, but he isn’t doing much of it. One hand is cuffed to the bed. The other is free. He’s had a pad and marker since this morning. I figured it’d calm him down, having something to do with his hands. For a man that size, calm is good.’

‘Has he written anything?’

‘Not for us. He watched me the whole time I changed his dressing and didn’t so much as pick the pen up. He’s waiting for someone. My guess is he’s waiting for you.’

‘Then it’s his lucky day, right Dark?’

‘Right.’ Ella put a hand on her Glock. ‘Are we allowed firearms inside?’

‘Not usually, but we’ll make an exception for you. Mr Varro is so big he barely fits in the bed. Are you ready?’

‘Yes. Let’s go.’

Mueller summoned one of the officers over, unlocked the door and held it open for them. The guard went in first, followed by the rest.

It was a strange quirk of human perception that it was difficult to gauge someone’s height while they were lying down, but it wasn’t difficult to notice Simon Varro’s vast size. His feet were past the end of the mattress. His shoulders spanned the width of the bed. The handcuff around his wrist was as loose as it could be while still being attached. Here, with the absence of last night’s adrenaline, Ella could finally process just how many steroids this man had pumped into his body. He was shirtless with the blanket covering his bottom half. His chest looked like he’d been pecked at by a hundred vultures. Each wound was packed and taped, and the one directly below his collarbone was still weeping pink through the gauze. A tube ran out from under his ribs into a canister on the floor.

‘Hello, Simon,’ Ella said. He was hooked up to two machines, both beating at irregular intervals. His left hand lay on top of the blanket next to a yellow legal pad and a thick black marker.

Varro nodded upon her arrival, then gestured to the chair beside him. She obliged, aware of the risk that Varro could probably reach out and snap her neck with one hand, providing he had the energy. Mueller and the guard positioned themselves by the door while Ripley stood at the foot of the bed, despite the two giant feet aimed at her stomach.