Andy Martin had arranged with the general manager, with whom he had frequent professional contact, that the wounded prisoner from the Castle should be housed in a private room in the maternity wing. The reason given was that the Simpson was the last place where any prying journalist would be likely to look.
However, Martin's overriding consideration had been that not even Mr Black or his associates – should they feel the need to tie off a loose end – would have the idea of searching there, either.
None of the hospital staff knew of the wounded man's presence, other than members of the theatre team who had operated on him, or were now overseeing his recovery, and these people had been sworn to secrecy. The surgeon was an RAMC major, with a career dedicated to repairing gunshot wounds. He and his chief nurse had been flown up specially from England.
Near the door of the private room, two men sat on opposite "des of the corridor, casually dressed in jeans and bulky jackets.
They were reading magazines, and did not look particularly interested in each other, or in what was going on around them, but wnen Arrow turned into the corridor he saw to his satisfaction that each man glanced quickly up before – at his brief nod delving back into his magazine.
Arrow rapped the door three times, the agreed signal, and entered. Another two SAS soldiers, also in plain clothes, were on guard inside. One watched the window, the other the door.
Hello, lads. All secure?'
Yes, sir,' said the man facing the door, in a thick Cornish accent. 'Quiet as a church, it's been.' 1 'How's our pal?'
'He's doing all right, the doc said.'
They turned to look at the bed. Its frame had been arranged to support the prisoner at an angle, presumably to guard against congestion. He wore no gown, and heavy bandages were wrapped round his chest, and extended down from his shoulder, covering the wounds where Skinner's two shots had torn through his right lung. The man seemed to be dozing, and Arrow noted the rough edge to his breathing. A tube ran into his nose, and another led out from beneath the sheets, into an opaque, flexible container which was hung below the level of the mattress. A long needle was taped down in place on the man's left forearm. It was connected by a third tube to a jar of glucose solution hanging high on a stand beside the bed.: 'Has he had much to say for himself yet?' asked Arrow, -'Nah,' said the Cornishman. 'We tried talking to him, but he told us to fuck off.' '
Arrow smiled pleasantly towards the bed. 'Maybe he'll talk to me.
Let's see, shall we? You lads take a tea break. You can take them two outside, as well. I'll lock myself in. This must be a fookin' boring detail. Take 'alf-an-hour, at least. I'D look after him.'
The two soldiers left the room without protest.
Arrow said nothing for a while. He stood quietly at the side of the bed, looking down at the nameless prisoner. Mid-thirties, he guessed. As he studied the torso more closely, where it showed above the sheets, he noted several marks and disfigurements, including a ragged scar on the left shoulder, crudely treated at some time, from the size of the stitch marks. He guessed that it might be the relic of another bout of gun-play. Both upper arms were garishly tattooed. There was a lavishly endowed naked lady on the right, with the word 'Mother' scrolled below, and on the left a snake entwined around a dagger, with four characters alongside.
Well-travelled feller, ain't you?' Arrow said suddenly.
Mercenary, I'd guess. That could be a problem. I hate fookin' mercenaries. Showing up in other people's countries and killing 'em, for no reasons other than they like it and 'cos they get paid.
Hate 'em, I do. Still I shouldn't hold that against you. You're a wounded man, after all. So come on, my friend. Tell me: who are you?'
The pattern of the man's breathing changed. The closed eyes opened lazily. The laboured voice croaked. 'Go fuck your mother.'
Arrow laughed, out loud. 'She's dead, pal. And anyway, I'd rather fook yours.'
He sat on the edge of the bed. Idly, he touched the tube which led to the needle in the man's forearm. He was still smiling.
'OK, that's the pleasantries over. Now let's have a nice little chat. I'll go first. All you have to do is to listen – for now at least.
"I belong – as my friends who've been looking after you belong – to what you might call a closed organisation. No one's allowed to see us, and when we leave a place, it's as if we'd never fookin' been there at all. Only it's different. That place, I mean. It's been changed in some way or another. Sometimes a building or two won't quite be where it was before. Other times, there's some fooker doesn't live there anymore, or anywhere else for that matter. Sometimes both. For a closed organisation, we're quite famous really. You'll have heard of us, I'm sure.'
He stopped and looked at the bed. Slowly the man nodded.
'In that case you'll know this, too. When we go into action, we go all the fookin' way.'
He paused again.
'People never quite believe us. So let me tell you a little story that'll help. Few years back, there were some trouble in a jail up here in Jockland. Some lads held a warder hostage, and the prison governor, he gets fed up. Decides to teach 'em a lesson, and so he gets authority to send for us. So half a dozen of our lot goes up there in a truck, with plans of the jail – Peterhead, it were called – that they studies on the way.
'It's after dark when the truck arrives. The plan is for us to go into action straight away. So the truck gets backed right up to the hall where the trouble is, and the first of our lads jumps out, hood on, fookin' submachine-gun in his hands. And there's the governor, and he sees our lad. tooled up like. And he all but its himself. "How far are you chaps going to go?" he asks.
And you know what our lad says? That's right, he says, "All the fooking' way, mate!" And he were right. They would have. Just gone in and wasted all the bad lads. 'Cos no one had told m different. Course they didn't that time, in t' end. The governor made 'em leave their guns behind. Gave them pick-axe handles instead. They didn't half cream the shit out of those bad lads, though.'
Arrow stood up again.
'So that's my little story. And the moral is, pal, I'm not here to piss about. You're going to tell me everything you know that I want to hear, or I'm going to go all the fookin' way wi' you.
You'd better be ready to die, 'cos if you don't talk to me, you'll be dead within an hour.'
He looked at the glucose bottle on the stand, just about at his eye level, then continued.
'You see, mate, after your stunt last night didn't work, the guy who paid you did a really stupid thing. He decides he's not going to give up, so he snatches the daughter of a friend of mine – and I really hate it when my friends get upset – and he says he'll kill her unless we give him the swag and a plane out of the country. And that's really dropped you in it, mate. 'Cos you're the only bugger we've got that's alive to tell us anything about this looker – what's his name. Black? – and where he might be hiding our lass.
So this is the deal, mate.'
As he spoke his hands began to fiddle with the connection of the tube to the bottle.
'There's a way of killin' someone that works every time. As effective as a firework up the arse, it is, but a lot less messy.
Untraceable, in fact. All you do is take a tube, like this, of stuff that's goin' into someone's bloodstream, and you pinch it tight, like this, to stop the flow. Then you disconnect it – like this, see.'
The prisoner watched, bug-eyed, as he spoke.