Angel of Death (7 page)

The receptionist hurried from behind the desk. A minute or so later she returned accompanied by a policeman. She came on the line again. ‘A girl fitting that description was admitted last night. She’s on ward sixteen.’

The girl was alive! To Angel’s surprise, hot tears of joy pushed up behind her eyes. She hadn’t cried those kinds of tears in more years than she could remember. ‘How is she?’

The receptionist glanced enquiringly at the policeman, placing her hand over the receiver. They exchanged a few words, then she said to Angel, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t give that information out over the phone. You’re welcome to visit her. Normal visiting hours finished at 8 p.m., but in special circumstances such as this we try to be as flexible as possible.’

Angel thanked the receptionist and hung up. The policeman jotted something down on his notepad – Angel’s mobile phone number, no doubt. That didn’t matter. No calls made on it could be traced back to her. It was one of Deano’s cloned phones, which he changed every few weeks. She knew she should turn around and head back to the bedsit. The receptionist’s invitation was obviously a trap. But still she hesitated to leave. She felt a strong desire – almost a compulsion – to see the girl. It wasn’t enough simply to know she was alive – people with brain damage that left them unable to talk, walk, or even move, were technically alive. No, she had to know exactly how she was doing. And then there was Castle’s money. She’d promised herself that she would get it to the girl, and it was a promise she intended to keep.

Angel skirted along the building until she came to another door. She headed through it, pulling up her sweatshirt’s hood. A sign listed the locations of the various clinics and wards. Ward sixteen was on the ground floor. An arrow pointed her in its direction. More arrows led her along a series of quiet, antiseptic-smelling corridors to a pair of double doors with windows at head height. She peered through the windows. Just inside the doors a nurse was sitting at the nurses’ station doing paperwork. Doorless rooms, each of them containing eight beds, branched off from one side of a corridor. A whiteboard on the wall outside each room listed bed numbers and the names of their occupants. There was no sign of any police.

Angel lingered by the doors, pretending to fiddle with her phone in case anyone came along. After a few minutes, a red light lit up on the wall opposite the desk. The nurse extinguished it, then made her way to a room near the far end of the corridor.

Her pulse beating hard in her throat, Angel entered the ward. The beds in the first room were occupied by women reading or sleeping. The girl wasn’t among them. She moved on to the next room. The girl was in the bed by the outer wall, staring blankly at the ceiling, her face a patchwork of bruises and bandages. A low moan escaped Angel’s lips as the thought came to her.
The bastard’s turned her into a vegetable.
The girl’s head turned towards the sound, and recognition flickered in her features.

Relief lifting the corners of her mouth, Angel started forward. Her step faltered as the girl darted her eyes warningly at a curtain surrounding the opposite bed. Dropping silently to her haunches, Angel saw a pair of regulation police boots behind the curtain. She straightened, her gaze returning to the girl. A flicker of some kind of understanding passed between them. It seemed to Angel that the girl was trying to thank her with her eyes. She could feel the warmth of the girl’s gaze creeping under her skin, touching parts of her that she’d long since thought dead, and blotting out, if only for a brief instant, the coldness in her heart.

Angel glanced at the whiteboard. The girl’s name was Nicola Clarke. With one final lingering glance at Nicola, she turned towards the exit. She paused to grab a pen off the nurse’s desk and wrote ‘Nicola Clarke’ on the envelope of money. She left the envelope on the desk and hurried from the hospital.

Sitting on the bus back to the bedsit, watching the dreary streets pass by, Angel thought to herself that even if she was caught and spent the rest of her life in prison, it would be worth it just for that one moment of warmth.

Deano was waiting for Angel. As she stepped through the door, his fist caught her full in the face, knocking her to the floor. ‘You stupid little bitch!’ he bellowed, a vein throbbing between his eyes. ‘What the fuck have you done, eh?’

The salty metallic taste of blood filled Angel’s mouth as she flung up a hand to ward off the next blow. ‘What you talking about?’

‘You know what the fuck I’m talking about.’ Deano pulled up his t-shirt to reveal the gun stuffed into the waistband of his tracksuit bottoms. ‘Where did this come from?’

Angel realised there was no point lying. Whatever else Deano was, he wasn’t stupid. He knew as well as she did where the gun came from. He just wanted the satisfaction of hearing it from her mouth. Well, she wasn’t going to give it to him. Let the bastard do his worst. She gave Deano a look that said she could take whatever he could dish out. In reply, he flashed a scowling grin at her. Her defiance was like a bone to a hungry dog. Some men acted out their frustrations through sex, some through violence. Deano fell into the latter category. He liked nothing better than an excuse to beat up on someone physically weaker than him. Angel knew this, just as she knew he would go easier on her if she told him what he wanted to hear. Twenty-four hours earlier she probably would have caved in and confessed what had happened. But things had changed since then. She’d changed. She knew now what she was capable of. Deano was a thug, but he wasn’t a killer. It wasn’t her who should be scared, it was him.

‘Tell me I’m wrong, Grace,’ said Deano, swatting aside her hands. ‘Tell me you know fuck all about that dead guy.’

Fire flared in Angel’s eyes. ‘I told you not to fucking call me that.’

Deano replied with a punch that snapped Angel’s head backwards. ‘Don’t you realise what you’ve done? If the coppers find this thing here, we’ll both go down for murder. Accessories after the fact, that’s what they call it.’ He wrapped the fingers of one hand around Angel’s throat. His other hand hovered threateningly over her. ‘I want to know which of those bitches gave you the gun.’

A murmur of satisfaction passed through Angel as she realised that Deano thought she was hiding the gun for some other girl. It probably hadn’t even crossed his mind that she’d killed Castle. In his eyes, she was just another scared little lost girl who he could bend to his will. Well maybe she was lost in more ways than he even knew, but she wasn’t afraid. Not now. Not any more. A thin line of blood trickled from her mouth as her lips curled into a grin. ‘I’m leaving you, Deano.’

His heroin-ravaged features twitched as though the words had hit him physically. He’d thought he had her so far under his thumb that she would never dare try to get away from him. ‘You don’t leave me. You’re my girl.’ He spoke quietly, with a tremor in his voice.

Angel knew what that tremor meant. It meant she was going to pay in bruises and blood for wounding Deano’s pride. But she didn’t care. Her head was dizzy from being hit, but also from the elation of knowing Deano no longer had any power over her. ‘Where’s my money?’ Her voice was hoarse with pain, but steady.

‘Your money?’ Deano let out a small, choking laugh, looking at Angel as though he couldn’t believe his ears. ‘Your fucking money?’

Deano’s fist twitched, and Angel knew what was coming. ‘Don’t.’ There was a razor-sharp edge to her voice. Her eyes burnt a warning fire.

Deano hesitated, uncertainty flickering on his face. He blinked hard, as if it had suddenly occurred to him that maybe Angel wasn’t hiding the gun for someone else. Then he shook himself free of whatever he was thinking. ‘Or what?’ he shouted as his fist thundered into her face. ‘Or fucking what?’

Over and over again, Deano hit Angel, concentrating most of his punches on her body – after all, her face was worth a lot of money to him. At first, each blow was like an explosion, blinding Angel with searing pain. But after a while a merciful numbness stole over her. She felt as if she was falling, dropping further and further away to some dark place where Deano couldn’t reach her. She didn’t even realise he’d stopped beating her, until she heard his voice in her ear. ‘You’re my girl. My bitch,’ he rasped breathlessly. ‘Say it. Say you’re my bitch.’

‘No.’ A bloody bubble inflated from Angel’s lips as she spoke. Her body might be weak and battered, but inside she felt strong.

Deano’s voice came again, with a cockiness that stirred a spark of anxiety in Angel’s chest. ‘You’re forgetting that I know your name. All it would take is a phone call, and Grace Kirby would be in all sorts of trouble.’

The words were more painful to Angel than all of Deano’s blows combined. They reached inside her and tore a convulsive groan from her throat. They filled her with such hatred for Deano that in that instant, if she’d had the strength, she would have snatched the gun from him and put a bullet in his head.

‘Now say you’re my bitch.’ Deano’s voice was almost gleeful.

As if dredging the words from the bottom of a well, Angel said, ‘I’m your bitch.’

Deano patted her cheek. ‘Good girl. Now you just lie there and think about how you’ve made me feel. I know I act the tough guy, but I’ve got feelings too. And it hurts me right in here,’ he thumped his chest, ‘when you say you want to leave me.’

Angel closed her eyes. She didn’t want to think, but her inner voice sneered,
Leave him, hah! What made you think you could leave him? And even if you did, what difference would it make? You’d still be you. You’d still be a cheap fucking whore. That’s all you’re good for.

The numbness was fading, leaving in its wake a trail of hot, throbbing pain. Her eyes snapped open at a soft sizzling sound. A familiar vinegary smell filled her nostrils, unleashing a sudden overwhelming craving. She glanced at the heroin bubbling on Deano’s spoon, then looked into his face with pathetic, pleading eyes. ‘Have you got one for me?’ she asked as he drew the solution into a hypodermic. He darted a frowning glance at her as she continued, ‘Come on, Deano, please. I…’ Her voice faltered as one final fragment of her shattered self-respect reared its head. But the heroin itch was too intense, too all-consuming to be denied. ‘I’ll do anything you want. Anything!’

Deano’s mouth spread into a smug smirk. ‘I know you will, baby, but you’ve got to learn. You’ve been a bad girl, and bad girls must be punished.’

Setting the gun aside, Deano slid his tracksuit bottoms down and felt for the artery in his groin. He hit himself up, then lay back on the bed, mouth hanging open, eyelids drooping half shut. Like a lover being teased to the point of madness, Angel was racked by shudders of desperate yearning. She tried to sit up, but her body seemed glued to the floor. She closed her eyes. The flowers of swollen flesh and the itch of craving vied with each other as to which hurt most, wringing low moans from her dust-dry throat. Slowly, ever so slowly, she took out her mobile phone and keyed in a number. The phone rang in her ear. One, two, three rings.
Oh God, please pick up
, she thought. Four, five, six rings.

She bit back a sob as a weary-sounding woman’s voice came down the line. ‘Hello?’

Angel made no reply, but she pressed the phone closer to her ear.

‘Hello, who is this?’ continued the woman. ‘Hello?’

A moment of silence passed. Then the woman’s voice came again, full of a trembling, tentative excitement that might have been fear or hope. ‘Grace, is that you?’

Tears pushed at Angel’s eyes. Her lips trembled with the effort of holding them at bay.

‘It is you isn’t it, Grace? Please don’t hang up. You don’t have to say anything, I know it’s you. I know you’re alive and that one day you’ll come back to me. A mother knows these things.’

Angel couldn’t hold back her tears any longer. As they burst forth, she hung up and curled into a foetal ball. An image of her mum as she’d looked the last time they’d seen each other filled her mind: worn, angular features, dark, permed hair, eyes like a sad old cat, prematurely lined smoker’s mouth. The image was fainter than it had once been, like a time-faded photo, but it still evoked a confusion of emotions in her. Uppermost amongst these was a heart-squeezing love, but there was also a toxic undercurrent of anger, resentment and even hate.
A mother knows these things.
The words rang in her mind, and her inner voice retorted bitterly,
A mother knows what she wants to know, and is ignorant of what she wants to be ignorant of.

6

When Jim arrived at the Northern General’s main entrance, Scott Greenwood was waiting for him. DI Greenwood’s rugged, steely eyed face marked him out as exactly what he was: a hard-working, no-bullshit cop. The sight of him always reminded Jim of himself – or rather, it reminded him of the way he’d been a few years ago, before his life turned to shit. The force was full of people like Scott Greenwood. Lately, Jim had found himself avoiding them. There was nothing he used to love more than a pub busy with cops drinking away the stresses of the day. Nowadays he preferred to drink alone, with only a picture of his ex-wife for company. He kept imagining Margaret turning up at the house, begging him to take her back. He wouldn’t give her an answer straight away, not after everything she’d put him through. He’d make her sweat a little before saying yes. Then he’d kiss her, and she’d promise never to leave him again, and everything would go back to the way it was before. Jim shook his head. Pathetic.

‘What’s the prognosis?’ he asked.

‘It’s not good,’ said Scott, turning to go into the building. ‘The girl’s still in surgery. She’s got several shotgun pellets embedded in her brain. The surgeon reckons she has about a two per cent chance of surviving the operation to remove them, and even if she does she may well be brain-damaged.’

Jim shook his head again. ‘Fifteen years old. What a fucking waste,’ he sighed. ‘How about her brother?’

‘He’s stable. He came out of surgery half an hour ago, but he hasn’t come round from the anaesthetic yet.’

They caught a lift up to the Critical Care Department, where a constable was standing guard outside one of the rooms. Jim peered through an observation window. Mark Baxley was lying in bed, hooked up to oxygen, a heart-scanner and an IV bag. His right shoulder was heavily bandaged. His waxy grey face was stitched and swollen where it had been lacerated by splinters of wood and glass.