Brothers in Blood (17 page)

Sandra did not reply.

Laurence, his sleep interrupted by Russell’s phone call, sat up in bed smoking and thinking. His bedroom was illuminated solely by a tiny bedside lamp and as though in a trance he watched the tendrils of smoke spiral away beyond the spill of light up into the darkness above. He felt that he was caught in a mental maze. Each time he tried to think his way out of the dilemma, he ended up in the same spot. The same conclusion, the same resolution. It would not go away. It would not go away because it was the only practical and sensible thing to do. He knew that he was trying to avoid the obvious for the obvious meant more planning, more effort, more danger and enhanced the possibility of exposure and capture.

He swore gently under his breath. It was a gesture of defeat.

‘Oh, ma wee boy, it looks like you’ll have tae grasp the nettle,’ he murmured in a comic Scottish accent and allowed himself a faint smile at his enforced whimsy. Fate, it seemed, was now leading him by the hand, taking him off any planned route and down a doubtful side road. He had no choice in the matter. He just couldn’t resist it.

With a sigh of resignation, he stubbed out the cigarette, clicked off the bedside lamp and slid beneath the covers and lay on his back, fully aware that sleep would not visit him that night.

Alex was also having a sleepless night. His mind was a riot of thoughts, but at the heart of his cerebral turmoil was one idea which, like Laurence’s, would not be shifted. It was logical, inevitable. It was, he believed, necessary. He would have to kill Ronnie Fraser. The bastard had to die before he regained consciousness and blabbed. Of course, he may well have regained consciousness already. If so the three of them were going to hell in a handcart.

Whatever, he had to find out and act accordingly. It was, he reasoned, his fault that his friends were in this mess and so it was up to him, and him alone, to try and get them out of it. If he failed, he would be the only one to suffer.

What a pillock he had been to get involved with Matt Wilkinson in the first place. He had allowed his dick to rule his brain and his common sense. And then he was a pathetic twat running to his mates with his sob story, wanting them to punish the naughty man for hurting him. If he’d kept his bloody mouth shut and suffered in silence they wouldn’t be in this precarious position now. So, quite rightly, he had to resolve it.

First thing in the morning, he’d be up to the hospital…

He prayed he wouldn’t be too late.

It was just after seven o’clock in the morning when the telephone rang in Russell’s house.

‘Not your sick friend again,’ observed Sandra with too much irony for Russell’s comfort.

He shrugged. ‘I’m not telepathic.’ It came out nastily and not as light-hearted banter as he’d intended.

Sandra frowned.

‘I’ll take it in my office.’ Russell left the kitchen in a hurry, desperate to silence incessant ringing.

He shut the door of the little room and lifted the receiver and recited the appropriate mantra. ‘Hello, this is Russell Blake. Can I help you?’ That told Laurence that indeed it was Russell answering the telephone and that he was free to speak openly.

Good morning, squire,’ said Laurence.

‘Bloody hell, man, I thought you said you’d ring me at seven thirty. It’s only just after seven. I wasn’t ready for you. Now the bloody wife is getting suspicious.’ It came out in torrent of anger, the voice a harsh whisper, the face strained with mixture of frustration and annoyance.

‘Sorry, my friend, but I have to leave shortly to catch a train. A train up to Huddersfield.’

‘What?’’

‘Huddersfield. I’m coming up to complete this job. I’m going to silence our surviving friend. On my own, I hasten to add.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘Oh, Russell, you know what I’m talking about. You know as well as I do the only way to knock this matter on the head is to silence this Ronnie character for good.’

‘Well, yes.’

‘Good. Glad we’re agreed on that. And I’m the fellow to do it. With all due respect, I reckon you two guys might cock it up. Alex is too emotionally involved and therefore unstable. As for you… well, my old mate, you can’t suddenly set off to Huddersfield without explanation to the wife, the headmaster and those snotty, spotty morons you teach just to pull the plug on some toe rag in the Huddersfield Infirmary. The last thing you want to do is draw attention to yourself. Act out of character. The situation is so delicate, any suspicious move on your part or Alex’s might make things a whole lot worse. So let Uncle Laurence sort it out. A white coat, a false moustache, glasses and one on my nice wigs and I’ll be in and out of that intensive ward before you can say Christiaan Barnard. A quick click of the switch of the magic contraption that’s keeping the bugger alive or whatever else is appropriate to stop him breathing and all our troubles will be over.’

Russell couldn’t help but smile and not for the first time he felt a hot wave of love for Laurence crash over him. ‘You’re like bloody Superman coming to the rescue.’

‘That’s me, that’s what I’m here for. I’ll just nip into the nearest phone, change my underpants and zoom off to Yorkshire. It’s in all our interests. We’re brothers after all.’

‘Sure. But you take care, Laurence.’

‘I always do,
mon ami
,’ he answered in the comic French accent he used to adopt when they were at college and for a brief moment Russell was transported back to Alf’s pub, the dusty light filtering in through the tall windows, the grumpy old men in the corner staring into space and his eighteen-year-old self was sitting holding a pint and laughing at something Laurence had just said. The memory brought an ache to his heart. It welled with sadness. He had been so happy then, so content. If only he could go back. But life isn’t like that.

‘One thing I’d like you to do,’ Laurence was saying. ‘Let Alex know what I’m up to. Put his mind at ease and tell him to carry on as normal. I worry about him sometimes. He comes very close to flipping his lid these days. Since the little incident with Wilkinson, he’s not the same steady fellow he used to be with a reliable firm hand on the tiller.’

‘Sure, I’ll ring him now.’

‘Good man. Don’t contact me again until the appointed time. You’ll read the results of my actions in the paper or on the telly. Ciao.’

The line went dead.

Russell stood for sometime just holding the receiver, staring into space, the ache was still there. With a sigh he replaced it and dialled Alex’s number.

There was no reply.

TWENTY-FOUR

He had not expected to find a policeman sitting in the corridor outside Ronnie Fraser’s room by the Intensive Care Ward at the Huddersfield Infirmary. On guard no doubt to prevent any unauthorised person entering the room and on hand to take down any information that Ronnie might provide should he regain consciousness. Of course Alex should have known if he had been thinking clearly, but his thoughts had been mangled ever since he’d learned that the Fraser creep was still in the land of the living.

Alex had arrived at the hospital just before five in the morning. Unable to sleep or to wait until daylight, he had made his way there at this early hour reckoning that the place would be quiet and that he would find it relatively easy to gain access to Fraser. He was existing in a strange dream world where his actions were somehow not a part of him. Perhaps at any moment he would wake up and find that it was some kind of night-time hallucination.

And then, perhaps not.

He parked a few streets away and jogged to his destination. The sky was still grey with only the faintest promise of dawn as he pushed through the swing doors and entered the hospital. The building was eerily quiet, like a ghost hospital with an empty foyer and deserted corridors. Illness, it seemed, had been put on hold until the dawn chorus. He felt vulnerable, the solitary stranger wandering along the empty corridors. It would have been so much easier if he could have blended in with a throng of patients, nurses and visitors, but he did not have the luxury of time to wait until the place became busy. What he had to do, he had to do as soon as possible.

He did encounter the odd nurse who wandered by him in a preoccupied manner, but no one questioned his presence or took any interest in him at all. He had dressed smartly but wore a flat cap which he’d pulled as far down as he could without looking ridiculous in order to shade his face.

Following the copious signs on the walls, he had found his way via the lift up to the third floor where the Intensive Care Ward was situated. The enquiry desk was dark. No one was on duty. That was a real bonus. He scurried past but then he hit the buffers in the shape of a bulky policeman. Although, far from looking alert, the constable, slumped in a chair outside Fraser’s room engrossed in a paperback novel, was a real problem. Casually, Alex strolled past the copper who did not raise his eyes from the printed page as he did so.

To Alex it was clear that the presence of PC Plod meant that Fraser was still clinging on to the wreckage of his life and had not yet spilt any beans. That was good but the burly rozzer was not. Decisions had to be made and made fast. Alex glanced around him. Apart from the policeman the corridor was deserted. He knew what he had to do and it had to be done quickly while the coast was clear. He caught sight of a stone bottle on a trolley by the wall. It was a medieval device to pee into used by bedridden patients. Alex could see that it was suitably heavy and would work well as a weapon.

Snatching it up, he approached the policeman from the side. Just as the copper sensed a movement near him, Alex brought the stone bottle crashing down on the side of his head. There was a sharp crack and, with a muffled groan, the constable slid smoothly from his chair onto the polished floor.

Quickly, Alex knelt down and felt his pulse. He was still alive. Alex was relieved. He hadn’t intended to kill the man – just knock him out. Opening the door to Ronnie Fraser’s room, he dragged the unconscious policeman inside. He didn’t want a passing nurse to spot the fellow lying on the floor with blood seeping from a wound in his head and raise the alarm. It was not an easy task: he was quite a weight and took some shifting. And then his size twelve boots caught on the corner of the door frame. Alex cursed silently and reached forward to pull them free. He was sweating now and his clothes were beginning to stick to his body. Eventually Alex got the lumpen copper into the room and dumped him by the wall. Catching his breath, he turned his attention to the man in the bed. Ronnie Fraser was lying on his back with only his head and arms visible above the sheets. Various tubes and wires were attached to him and what Alex assumed was a heart monitor bleeped eerily in the corner like a sonar in one of those films set on a submarine. The patient appeared to be breathing regularly.

Like a man possessed, Alex pulled as many of the tubes and wires from Fraser’s body as he could. He unplugged the various devices placed near the bed, including the heart monitor, yanking the plugs from their sockets with great force. At first there seemed no obvious change in the patient. His chest continued to rise and fall in a regular fashion but then slowly the face began to contort and the mouth to open and close like a manic ventriloquist’s doll. Spittle foamed at the lips and a strange, hoarse gasping sound emerged from the snapping aperture. Alex watched mesmerised as Fraser’s body began to writhe slowly beneath the covers as though possessed by some alien force not his own. For a brief moment the eyes flickered open and glared at Alex. They seemed to bore into his brain. Alex stumbled backwards with a gasp of terror; and then as swiftly as they had opened, Ronnie Fraser’s eyes closed again.

Snatching one of the pillows from beneath his head, Alex thrust it down on Fraser’s face and pressed hard. There was a little resistance: the hands fluttered slightly and the body shook but this lasted for only a few seconds until the damaged creature lay still, the life squeezed out of him. Alex continued to hold the pillow firmly in place for almost a minute.

There must be no mistake this time.

Eventually he pulled the pillow away and looked down at the gaunt, contorted face of Ronnie Fraser whose eyes were now open once again and staring back at him with the fixed gaze of a dead man. For some moments Alex was held mesmerised by this sight but then suddenly he heard a slight noise behind him. On turning around sharply he saw a nurse entering the room. When she caught sight of Alex and the body of the inert policeman lying on the floor by the wall, she let out a scream and dropped the metal tray she was carrying. It fell to the floor with a resounding crash, the noise seeming to fill the room like a cacophony of clanging cymbals.

Alex leapt forward and grabbed the distressed nurse before she could reach the door. As he gripped her by the shoulders and shook her, her screams died away and she fought against him, desperately trying to pull herself free of her assailant’s grasp. With a savage thrust Alex hurled her to the ground. As she hit the floor, she banged her head on the side of a cabinet and lay still.

Alex rushed from the room, slamming the door behind him and raced down the corridor, his heart pounding. As he rounded the corner, he collided with a white coated porter who was pushing an empty wheel chair.

‘Sorry mate,’ he grunted and ran on. Behind him he could here the porter’s cries of protest.

Alex knew that it was too dangerous to use the lift and so he made for the stairs. He raced down them, missing his footing on one occasion and tumbling to the bottom of the flight. Undaunted, he jumped to his feet and carried on. Panic, for the moment, dulled the pain of the fall. By the time he reached the ground floor, there were signs that the hospital was gradually coming to life. There were nurses, porters, doctors, cleaners and other assorted souls meandering gently in the foyer. As casually as he could, Alex made his way to the exit. He was within a few feet of the doorway when someone tapped him on the shoulder. He froze.

‘Just a minute,’ said a voice and he felt a hand on his arm.