Halfhead - Страница 46

‘We all done here, James? Entertaining as this is, Dougie an’ me gottae go dae some actual work, but.’

Will gritted his teeth, forcing out the words, ‘Thank you for your cooperation.’ Then he turned on his heel and stomped back into the hospital, doing his best to ignore the derisive laughter that erupted behind his back.

She watches him leave: face all crumpled, shoulders all slouchy. Poor thing. What he needs is a woman’s touch. She gets a warm feeling inside at that. A woman’s touch, with a very sharp blade.

It was easy to change lines, to become one of the incoming domestic slaves, rather than the outgoing.

When the line snakes away from the Roadhugger and in through the hospital doors she goes with it. They all line up like good little soldiers, then a bored-looking orderly assigns them their tasks.

She tries to look completely bereft of intelligence as the bored man tells her to go and mop the floors in the mortuary. As she slouches off towards the lifts she sees the orderly get to the end of the line and examine his clipboard.

‘We got one too many…’ He frowns, then shrugs. ‘Ah well, waste not want not.’

Dr Westfield catches sight of the big glass and bronze clock hanging over the reception desk. It’s not even five o’clock yet. She still has six hours to go.

Six hours and a head full of bees and broken glass.

Peitai…

She will find herself a nice private room and have a shower. A long, hot shower to cleanse away all the dirt and filth and menial labour of the last six years.

Then she’ll be nice and clean for Dr Stephen Bexley. He’ll give her back her face and her life, and she’ll take his. Then she’ll pay that nice man from the Network a home visit.

He almost had her tonight-almost ended everything before it had really begun.

One good turn deserves another.

Will sat on the edge of the treatment bench and tried not to wince as Doc Morrison poked and prodded his bruised ribs.

‘You know,’ she said, standing back, watching him sitting there in his pants and socks, ‘you’re becoming a bit of a fixture round here. How about you stay out of trouble for a month or two? Let absence make the heart grow fonder.’

‘I’d like to,’ Will smiled, ‘but you’re just too much woman for me to resist.’

‘Very funny. Get your clothes on.’ She slapped a couple more blockers into his hand and invited him, politely, to get the hell out of her office.

Jo was waiting for him outside, a patch of bright pink sitting on her forehead where the graze used to be.

‘That looks nice,’ he said as they walked towards the lifts.

‘So much for natural flesh tones.’ There was still a touch of frost in her voice. She punched the button for the rooftop landing pad and they stood side by side, waiting for the lift to show. ‘How’s your ribs?’

Will shrugged. ‘Doc says they’re healing. What about you?’

‘Slight concussion and a patchwork head.’

He smiled and wrapped an arm round her waist. ‘All in all a lovely day then?’

‘Yeah. Great. Remind me to go out with you next time I’m feeling suicidal.’

‘Oh. Sorry.’ He let go of her and tried not to sound hurt.

They stood in silence.

Will bit his lip and took a deep breath. He wanted to apolo gize, tell her she was important to him, that he didn’t mean to push her away…But looking at her standing there, her face all clenched tight, he couldn’t find the words.

He looked away.

He’d screwed it up again.

22

Doctor Stephen Bexley stands in the middle of the operating theatre. He’s on his own-good boy. She watches him though the observation window as he twitches and fidgets. Her new head sits on the operating slab beside him, beautiful and radiant in its bath of nutrients.

She should be happy, but all she feels is sick and twisted. The episodes are getting worse: flashes of pain, bright lights, and the old man. The past won’t leave her alone.

She pulls out her datapad and picks her way quietly down the stairs and into the operating theatre. Stephen doesn’t hear her enter, he’s too busy biting his fingernails. He shrieks when the cold, artificial voice says: ‘ARE YOU PREPARED?‘

‘I…I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.’ He looks around the room as if seeing the large banks of machinery for the first time. ‘I’ve disabled the cameras and set up an artificial anaesthetist and…’ He runs out of words and just stands there, slack and silent. The dark circles under his eyes have grown and his salt and pepper hair is uncombed.

He doesn’t look fit to operate on a cat.

Her hands dance over the datapad’s keyboard as she gives him some words of encouragement. ‘STEPHEN, YOU ARE THE FINEST CLONEPLANT SURGEON IN THE COUNTRY. YOU WILL DO A WONDERFUL JOB AND MAKE ME BEAUTIFUL AGAIN. NO ONE ELSE CAN DO THIS AS WELL AS YOU.‘

He doesn’t look as if he believes her.

‘REMEMBER THE JENKINS’S CHILD? YOU MADE HIS LIFE WHOLE AGAIN. YOU ARE A GENIUS.‘

Something like pride sparks in Stephen’s eyes and he nods, then straightens up. Stands a little taller. He must be desperate if this kind of banal flattery makes him feel better about his miserable little life. Or the short portion that’s left of it.

‘Yes, well,’ his voice has become a lot firmer, almost masterful, ‘if you could hop up on the operating table we’ll get you plugged in.’ His hands shake as he prepares the IV drips. Then he takes a deep breath and slides the needles into her skin like the expert he is. She barely even feels it.

Numbness creeps out from the centre of her chest. She can smell her own fear. The last time she lay back on an operating slab they took everything away from her. Everything. She fights to keep the panic in check, but it’s acid, eating at her belly. She can see Stephen busying himself with the prepar ations, but it’s the other surgeon she hears: the one that stole her life.

We begin by splitting the lower jaw.

Her breathing becomes erratic, rapid, and somewhere behind her a machine starts to bleep-upping the sedative.

From the corner of her eye she can see Stephen wheeling the surgeon’s wand into position. There’s a test block mounted beside the wand, a chunk of polished granite, nicked and scarred from previous operations. She wants to scream, to make it all stop, but the drugs hold her solid.

Stephen pulls the operating hood over his face. ‘We’ll begin by marking the edge of the peel area,’ he says, talking to an audience of junior surgeons, students and nurses that isn’t even there.

Doctor Westfield can barely feel the tug of the marker on her skin as he runs it around her neck. She’s slipping away into chemical darkness, still terrified by the surgeon from six years ago, his long thin fingers and the pain they bring. Her mind caught in a loop of panic and horror. She doesn’t even hear the low buzz of the wand or feel her old face being whipped away into a thin, red mist. But an image flashes before her-his name, written on her medical records.

She knows who the old man is.

The apartment was as cold as it was empty, but that suited Will’s mood just fine. He sat in the dark, Alba Blue belting out through the speakers, an open plastic of whisky on the coffee table, and the keyboard in his lap. The only light in the room came from the screen in front of him, the notes he’d ‘liberated’ from the hospital’s computers casting a ghostly white glow.

He hadn’t managed to speak more than a dozen words to Jo as the Dragonfly took them away from the hospital. Instead he’d just stood there like an idiot, trying to get something to come out of his mouth. Trying to say something that would make her understand that he didn’t mean to be distant. That he liked her a lot. That he wasn’t really an arsehole.

‘Remind me to go out with you next time I’m feeling suicidal.’

Great. Just what he’d wanted to hear: Fucking perfect.

Forget about it. It didn’t matter. So Jo didn’t want him any more. Big deal. He was happy here anyway. On his own. In the dark. Going slowly mad.

No wonder he was seeing things.

Chasing halfheads through Glasgow Royal Infirmary like a lunatic.

Still, at least he’d managed to salvage something from today’s fiasco-the files he’d downloaded from the hospital servers.

He poured another measure into his glass.

Ken and his boss had been busy half a dozen years ago.

Mr Tokumu Kikan, Ken’s employer, had been a registered surgeon at Glasgow Royal Infirmary for almost six months. From the look of things he’d managed to perform nearly every halfheading the hospital did at that time. His list of ‘clients’ read like a Who’s Who of Glasgow’s criminal over-belly. Serial killers, kidnappers, rapists, politicians: you name it he’d…Will froze, his heart pounding, as he read the name ‘Doctor Fiona Westfield’.

Maybe he had something to thank Ken and his boss for after all: they’d mutilated that evil bitch.

According to the records, Kikan only performed the pro cedure on a handful of others after her. As if no one else was really worth the bother.

Ken Peitai started working for the hospital not long after Doctor Westfield’s crimes became public knowledge. He’d been employed to work on the PsychTech database, tidying things up before the project was unceremoniously dumped.

Will checked the dates against the bonus payment he’d found. They matched. When Peitai finished working on the PsychTech database, Kikan made sure he got a massive golden handshake.

Why would a surgeon care about a glorified datamonkey?