56
‘You again? Look, OK, I’ve got what you want, but it’s going to cost you,’ said Gary when Redmond called in unannounced at the Blue Parrot one night.
Gary took Redmond up to the office, away from all the punters and the dancing girls and the noise of the DJ’s decks thrumming out ‘Sledgehammer’ by Peter Gabriel; Gary loved that song.
All right, he hadn’t expected an actual visit from Redmond, and he certainly hadn’t expected that he’d bring along a big shaggy dark-haired sidekick with a look in his eyes that said he’d kill his own granny for a fiver, but he had this sorted, he was the one in charge.
‘This is Mitchell,’ said Redmond. ‘He helps me out.’
Gary gave Mitchell a nod. Mitchell didn’t nod back.
‘Now listen,’ said Redmond, still talking reasonably, sweetly. ‘The time has come for you to stop dicking me about and tell me. What information do you have?’
Gary sat back in his chair behind his desk and pursed his lips. No way was he going to let Delaney rush this. He had the whip hand.
‘It’s very expensive information,’ he said.
‘How expensive?’
Gary thought of the ten grand, and hiked it a bit. Delaney would want to haggle, anyway.
‘Fifteen,’ he said.
‘Fifteen thousand?’ Redmond raised his eyebrows. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘I’m very serious indeed,’ Gary said, and the track downstairs changed to ‘West End Girls’.
Redmond was shaking his head. He stood up and came around Gary’s desk. Gary didn’t like people doing that, he felt like a king on a throne behind that desk, he didn’t want oiks shoving around behind it.
‘Hey-’ he started, but he didn’t have time to finish.
Redmond grabbed the front of Gary’s bespoke tailored shirt and hauled him to his feet and hissed into his face: ‘You great long streak of piss! You think you’ve got the measure of me, do you?’
‘I-’ started Gary again, wondering where these delicate negotiations had gone wrong. This wasn’t in his plan, not at all.
‘Five grand,’ said Redmond, and to Gary’s horror he whipped out a knife and held it against his throat. ‘That’s what you’ll get, and that’s generous. If I don’t decide to cut you to ribbons instead.’
‘Hey, that’s-’ gulped Gary.
‘Five,’ said Redmond. ‘Right here. Four days’ time. And you tell me the rest of it.’
He let go of Gary’s shirtfront and moved back around the desk. Mitchell opened the door, and they left the room.
Gary sagged in his chair, shaken, aware that his palms were clammy.
Jesus!
That guy was a maniac.
Gary stared at the closed door, and touched a trembling hand to his throat. He’d thought he could handle Redmond Delaney, but looking into that crazy cunt’s eyes? Now he wasn’t so sure.
57
There was a mad jumble of impressions running through Annie’s head. Muddy yellow gravel and then wetness on her face, the rain, the fucking endless rain. Crawling again. Then collapsing into the wet grit beneath her, her fingers clawing into the gravel, her whole body clenching against the agony in her middle.
Something broken in there, for sure.
And then nothing. Blackness. Which was OK, which was pretty damned good really. But did it last? No. Soon she was back again, and this time there were voices, men’s voices, the sway of motion, she was back in a car and then a rush of air and she was on the ground again. Consciousness faded out, then in. Now there were people talking again, above her. Hands lifted her and she fell, and someone snapped: ‘Careful!’
She clawed at the ground and it was smooth, it was tarmac this time, not yellow grit, and she felt sticky hanks of wet hair hanging in her eyes when she opened them. She was lifted again. A crazy cacophony of sounds and cars zipping past, feet away; hands touching her, voices, more voices, and she was struggling to break free, to get away before they started on her again, but she was too weak to move.
‘Don’t,’ she whispered.
Then she was out of it again, she was gone.
‘… and no real internal injuries, she’s been…’
Voices. One female, one male.
Annie kept her eyes closed. She felt groggy, without strength.
‘Five milligrams,’ said someone close to her head.
Then she was gone again, blackness sweeping up and over her like a cloak.
Some time later, she was back. An hour may have passed, or a second. Or a year. She didn’t know. She half-opened her eyes and there was a bed, she was in a bed; there were five other beds nearby, all occupied, and there was a reception desk at the end of the row of beds, nurses in uniform, chatting, laughing, as if everything was normal.
Hospital, I’m in hospital.
She drew in a shuddering breath. It hurt like fuck. Her hands went to her midriff. She felt wide adhesive stuck there, stretching over her ribs and right round to the centre of her back. Into her mind came Eyebrows and Baldy, kicking her while she lay helpless on the ground.
Bastards.
‘You’re back with us then,’ said someone.
Annie turned her head a little and was instantly aware of pain in her neck, an aching muscle-deep pain that spiralled down to her arms, to her legs. She gulped, tried to find her voice. She felt drugged, enfolded in layers of cotton wool. They’d given her something, of course they had; without it, she reckoned the pain would be much, much worse. She looked at the young blonde nurse at the end of the bed.
‘Only one fractured rib – you were lucky,’ said the nurse. ‘I’m Gemma. You were in a pretty bad way when they brought you in on Saturday. How are you feeling now?’
‘Shitty,’ said Annie, not feeling very lucky at all.
Gemma smiled. ‘We’ve sedated you to help with the pain. But there’s nothing major – just the rib, and that’ll pretty much mend on its own, it’s not too bad a break. You’ll find you’ll be able to shower in a few days with the strapping on, and in a couple of weeks that can come off. Take some ibuprofen for any discomfort. Six weeks’ time, you’ll be right as rain. Could have been a lot worse,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Could have punctured a lung. What happened? The old man’s team lose the match then?’
Annie gulped again. ‘Something like that,’ she said. Six weeks?
‘The police want to speak to you,’ said Gemma. ‘When you’re ready. They always do with assaults. You might want to do that. Press charges. Make him think better of it next time.’
Press charges, thought Annie. How quaint.
‘Who brought me here?’ she asked.
‘Some men dropped you off in the car park. What were they, your brothers or something? They didn’t want to hang around, anyway. They grabbed one of the ambulance crews and left you with them. Me? I hope your folks have gone back and given the old man the pasting of his life.’
It hurt to lay on her back, she felt she couldn’t get her breath. Painfully, with the nurse’s help, Annie manoeuvred herself on to her side. Then she closed her eyes, and let the darkness take her again.
When she awoke, the windows across the ward showed that night had come. People were talking, and a woman in a dark green tabard was wheeling a tea-trolley up near the nurses’ station. Annie rang the bell and after a moment a nurse came – not Gemma; this one was a brunette.
‘I need to go to the loo,’ said Annie, and started to swing her legs off the bed. Instantly she felt her head swim, felt the grey fog descend. Her whole midriff was a hard ball of agony.
‘Whoa, easy!’ The brunette dashed forward and caught her before she collapsed to the floor. She eased her back on to the bed. ‘Too soon for that,’ she scolded mildly. ‘Tomorrow, maybe. We’ll see. I’ll fetch the bedpan.’