Chapter 2.01
‘Gnaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh . . .!’ Roberta jerked out of the empty swaying darkness and into a weird stuffy wee room that smelled of disinfectant and carbolic soap.
Unable to sit up, because an invisible bear was sitting on her chest, pinning her to . . . a bed?
Why was she in bed?
This wasn’t her bed.
Eyes darting about.
Stuffed animals stared at her from the windowsill and bedside cabinet.
Most were brand new, but some looked as if they’d crawled out of a skip – balding, with buckled limbs and tentacles.
Loads of supermarket flowers in makeshift vases.
A trio of mylar balloons in various stages of droop: ‘GET WELL SOON!’, ‘THINKING OF YOU!’, and ‘SEXY MUFFIN TIME!’ A wall of lurid cards, and even a dangle of streamers.
Hospital.
She was in hospital.
There should’ve been a heap of equipment, pinging and buzzing and bleeping away, but all she had were a drip stand and a heart monitor – the wires disappearing into her open-arsed gown.
The blinds were open, letting in the grey.
A blocky, black-and-white wing of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary dominated half the view, the other half looking out over Westburn park.
But instead of an uninterrupted vista of Powis, the Links, and off to the North Sea, the whole thing faded away at Mounthooly Roundabout, because it was absolutely pishing down.
Rain crackling against her hospital window.
There was someone else in here: could hear them moving about in the toilet. Then a flush sounded.
‘Susan?’ Roberta’s voice was almost inaudible. Not because of post-explosion tinnitus this time, but because the words barely made it out of her dusty throat and Sahara mouth. A parchment-paper whisper of gravel and sand.
Some clunking and rattling.
Then a weird squeak-squeak-squeak . . .
And the toilet door opened.
‘Susan?’
But it wasn’t Susan who emerged from the bog, it was Logan McRae, notorious wastrel and layabout, who should’ve been at sodding work this morning. Because then maybe he’d have got blown-up instead of her.
He was hamming it up – milking the broken leg for all it was worth, in a hospital wheelchair that needed a damn good drenching with WD40. It even had one of those bolt-on bits to keep his left leg elevated while sitting – a grubby grey cast from the knee down, clarted in signatures and graffiti.
No idea how he’d managed to grow his hair so quickly. Normally, it was scalped almost to the bone, now it was almost an inch long. Bloody hippy.
Did nothing to hide his sticky-out ears though, or the daft smile on his face when he saw her. ‘The Kraken awakes!’
Roberta’s eyes widened.
Holy crap on a Cornish pasty . . .
Logan wasn’t the only visitor.
Three figures in long white doctors’ coats stood at the foot of her bed. One in blue scrubs, one in green, and one in pink. All with stethoscopes and clipboards.
‘What the ffff . . .?’
Dr Blue was perfectly normal, except for the fact that he’d swapped everything above his shoulders for the fully-feathered head of a barn owl.
Big dark eyes staring at her. Dr Green had a magpie’s sharp head and beady stare.
While Dr Pink sported the black leathery head and long curved beak of an ibis.
‘Why—’
Dr Green cocked her head to one side and let out a high, corvid, rattling cackle.
‘Eeek . . .’ Roberta shrank back into her pillows as Logan wheeled himself around the three doctors, squeaking his way to the side of her bed.
‘You’re in hospital, remember? You were awake a couple of hours ago and we explained what happened?’
OK, Logan seemed far more accepting of horrible human-bird hybrids than she was.
He put on the wheelchair’s brake. ‘I sent Susan home, because lovely and devoted though she is – she was getting a bit stinky.’ Patting Roberta’s leg through the blankets. ‘How you feeling now?’
Roberta stared back at the three bird-headed monstrosities. ‘Fine?’
‘Just make sure you behave yourself this time. They tried to take you off the sedatives, Monday morning, and apparently you were a nightmare – which I can well believe – making off-colour remarks and trying to chat up the nurses.’
Dr Green checked her notes. ‘I say we operate. No one really needs a whole liver after all, and it is nearly dinner time.’
Logan grimaced. ‘Even the male ones.’
‘I see . . .’ Roberta flattened herself against the mattress. But her medical team just inched closer.
Dr Pink turned her reaper’s-scythe beak to Dr Green. ‘You surgeons are all the same: always diagnosing with your stomachs. Let the poor woman be.’
‘You were like a randy octopus.’ Logan patted her leg again. ‘Thought that whack on the skull had really rattled something loose.’
Dr Blue’s voice was deep and woody, like a bass recorder. ‘Perhaps it wooould be kinder just to put her dowwwn?’
‘No!’ Roberta pulled the itchy blanket up around her chin. Eyes flicking from the Birdheads to Logan. Who frowned at her as if she needed a padded room and a buckle-up cardigan.
She raised a wobbly hand, waving it at them. ‘Can you not . . .?’
He turned his head towards the doctors for a moment, then frowned at her some more. ‘Can I not what?’
‘Erm . . .’ Roberta forced a smile. ‘Not see . . . I need . . . a drink? Thirsty. . . . Drink.’
‘Oh, God. Yes. Sorry.’ He half-filled a small plastic tumbler from the jug on her bedside table and held it out. ‘You gave us quite a scare.’
Bloody tumbler was too slippery to hold properly, but Logan helped her take a sip. Then another one. And it just rolled down her throat, lukewarm, barely touching the parched surface of her insides.
Roberta coughed, spluttered, groaned. Kept her eyes on the horror-show medical team. ‘What happened?’
‘You got blown-up. Tufty too. And most of Silvermoss Business Centre. They say it was probably a faulty acetylene tank in the valve-management place next door. Welding spark hits the wrong place and . . .’ he mimed a slow-motion explosion, ‘. . . boom. Next thing you know: every gas tank in the place goes up, and scruffy detective inspectors end up in hospital. Where you have spent the last two-and-a-bit weeks under the watchful eye of NHS Grampian in general, and Dr Barbara “Big Babs” Turner in particular.’ A smile.
‘Even though you made some extremely raunchy comments about her arse, Monday morning.’
Two-and-a-bit weeks?
She tried another sip of water, holding it on her hedgehog tongue until it softened the spines a little. Swallowed. Tried to move. Failed. ‘Getting blown-up sucks arse.’
‘Yeah,’ nodding, ‘it’s not as much fun as people think . . .’ Sigh. Shrug. Point. ‘Plus you look like crap with your head all bandaged, and face clarted with plasters and those little sticky microporous-tape stitches.’
‘Stitches?’ She reached up with quivery fingers, feeling the mass of things glued to her cheeks and chin and forehead. And the vast turban of bandages.
‘At least the bruising’s gone down. You were like a human aubergine.’ He fiddled about, below the level of the bed. ‘And then there’s this:’ pulling out a copy of the Aberdeen Examiner. ‘From the day after the explosion.’ Tossing the paper onto her blankets.
Took a bit of doing, with the cannula jabbed through the back of one hand, but she got it unfolded.
No idea what the headline was, because they’d printed it in some sort of special wobbly ink that wouldn’t sit still, but the photo splashed across the front page was clear enough: Graeme Anderson, emerging from a cloud of glowing dust, like some sort of messiah, carrying a limp body in his arms. All bloodied and dripping and dangly. And holy shite, it was her.
She was the body.
Logan tapped the front page. ‘That photo’s been on the front of every newspaper up and down the country. And the telly. There wasn’t a single news programme that didn’t lead with it for days.’
The article text wormed and writhed, refusing to settle down into proper words. She blinked. Shook her head. Blinked again. But nothing made it or the headline decipherable.
Dr Pink clacked her beak. ‘We should open her head up too. Might be something broken in there.’
Dr Green stalked closer . . . ‘Something tasty.’
Roberta flinched back. ‘There’s nothing tasty for you!’
‘What?’
Dr Blue hugged his clipboard. ‘I still think the kiiiiindest thing to doooo is put her to sleeeeeep. So she doesn’t suffer.’
‘Hello?’ Logan gave Roberta’s hand a squeeze. ‘Are you OK?’
She dragged her eyes from the Birdheads. ‘Yes?’ Then held out the paper. ‘You read it to me. Haven’t got my glasses.’
‘Sure you’re OK? Want me to call the nurse?’
Doctors Blue, Green, and Pink stared.
‘I just . . . haven’t got my glasses.’
He watched her for a couple of breaths, frowning.
‘Fair enough.’ Then picked up the paper and read.
‘“Anderson saves stricken cop in bomb horror!” Blah, blah, “explosion at business park”, blah, blah, blah, “fifteen million pounds’ worth of damage” – which is way more than it probably should be.
Bet you someone’s fiddling their insurance claim for every penny they can get.
Blah, blah, blah. Here we go: “Even though he’d been directly in the path of the blast, reformed ‘hardman’, self-made millionaire, and head of the newly founded ‘UK New Horizons’ party waded into danger to rescue Acting Detective Inspector Roberta Steel,” brackets, “fifty-seven, who had—”’
‘Fifty-seven?’ Roberta shoved herself upright. ‘Cheeky bastards!’
The Birdheads swooped in, crowding around her bed, so close that their beaks pressed into her cheeks. Breath hot and buzzing against her skin.
She scrunched her eyes tight as the room spun faster and faster – a warm yellow glow blooming inside her skull, lifting her teeth out of their sockets, making her sinuses throb-throb-throb with each surge of blood.
Then Roberta crashed back into her pillows. Blinking at the retreating ceiling as it darkened and whirled.
Logan grabbed the call button . . .