Emily turned and marched out of the pub, back straight, chin up.
As the door slammed shut, the old man reappeared, his tray loaded down with two of everything, and a single glass of Methven Bay chardonnay. Emily’s drink.
When he’d shambled off again, Brian reached forward and picked a large Jack Daniels from the collection. Took a sip.
‘That went well,’ he said into the silence. ‘I particularly liked the bit where you pulled rank on her. Good move. Smooooooth.’
‘Oh bugger off.’ Will sank back in his seat. ‘Didn’t see either of you two leaping in to help.’
‘You know,’ said George, helping himself to another brandy and blue, ‘looking on the bright side: anyone listening in is going to think they’re safe.’
Will shrugged. ‘Suppose you’re right.’
But it didn’t make him feel any better.
She snuggles deeper into her little nest of toilet paper, feeding tube in her arm, warm, comfortable, and content. Two kiddiewinks and a pregnant wife. Dr Stephen Bexley, you virile stud you.
Pregnant, pregnant, pregnant…She loves pregnant women-they add such a sparkle to proceedings. Especially when itcomes to the vivisection.
She makes a sound that could be mistaken for a sigh. On Sunday she’ll lie back on an operating table and have her face restored. Her very own face…Of course, the sensible thing to do is take someone else’s face. But she doesn’t want to be sensible. She wants to look in the mirror and recognize the person looking back. She wants to be whole again. Then, when she’s all healed and beautiful, she’ll have to leave the country.
A shame. This city has been good to her-let her hunt its inhabitants for years-but if she remains in Glasgow someone’s going to recognize her. At first they’ll see nothing more than a striking resemblance to the notorious Dr Fiona Westfield, but then they’ll begin to talk. And eventually someone will listen.
They’ll start asking difficult questions. Then someone takes a fingerprint, or a DNA sample and they’ll know she’s not dead. Then they’ll strap her to another operating table…only this time she won’t come back.
She shakes her head and tries to think happy thoughts. But Stephen Bexley and his screaming wife no longer light her candle. All she can see is a long dark tunnel with an operating slab at the end. The sound of bees and broken glass.
Deep breaths.
It’s just paranoia. Nothing to worry about. Don’t let it take control.
Deep breaths.
Kill something.
That’ll make her feel better. Kill something slowly and bathe in the screams.
No.
Deep breaths.
Kill something.
Not yet.
Please.
Focus!
She snaps another ampoule of medicine into her neck and waits for the chemicals’ soothing touch.
Focus.
She can’t risk staying here. Soon as her new face has healed, she’ll leave. Bye-bye Glasgow. Bye-bye Scotland. Well…First she’ll see how her children are getting on and then she’ll leave.
Yes. Somewhere far, far away.
But not before she pays an old friend a visit.
His face doesn’t have the long, winding scar she’d given him anymore, which is a shame. It suited him: raw and painful. He was limping as he ran for the people carrier, bruised and battered, probably fresh from surgery…
Perfect. If he’s had medical treatment he’ll be in the hospital records-she can just waltz up to any terminal and find out what was wrong with him and where he lives.
She stretches in her toilet-paper boudoir like a cat in the sun.
It’s been a long time since she has visited friends.
The birthday girl sobs and moans as he drags her off the bed and over to the chair. The older woman-the one he found in a bar a week ago-lies on the table next to the window. She was a lawyer, but now she’s all peaceful and still. Content and happy. Ready to become one with the angels.
He hauls the new girl into the chair. She struggles, but a punch in the face quietens her long enough to shackle her arms and legs. After all, it wouldn’t do to have the birthday girl falling off and hurting herself. Not when she’s so close to finding salvation.
Then, when she’s all nice and secure, he turns to the older woman, stroking her cold white cheek. It’s got that lovely, waxy pallor of the soul departed. Lucky lady.
He pulls an old, battered, but well-loved Palm Thrummer out of his pocket, twists it open, and powers it up. Then opens the living room window, high above the streets. The rain hisses and roars outside, tearing from the sky in its rush to know the ground. Silly rain. The sky is where it should be. The sky is its home.
The Thrummer buzzes in his fingers as he strips the woman’s face away, leaving nothing but a bare, empty skull behind. The skin and fat and fibre of her sinful life is whipped into a dark purple mist that drifts out the open window into the night, pulled away by the rain. The body will take a while to dissolve, but it’s worth the effort to give her salvation.
He purses his lips, whistling the DinoPizza jingle while he works.
In her seat the birthday girl watches, screaming behind her gag: knowing that she’s going to be next.
17
Will dragged himself out of bed and groaned his way to the bathroom in the dark. There was a fuzzy shape in the mirror above the sink. A rough, hungover outline that wouldn’t stay in focus.
‘Lights.’
The whole apartment exploded with brightness, driving red-hot knitting needles into his eyes and out through the back of his head.
‘Aaaaaaarrrrrrrrrgh! Down! Down!’
They dimmed to something less head-splitting and Will stood there, blinking and swearing till he could see again. God…he looked as bad as he felt. His face was grey-green on one side and purple-green on the other.
He grabbed the edges of the sink and retched. But nothing came, and gradually the swell of nausea passed. How much did he drink last night? The last thing he could remember was singing rude songs with Brian in the curry house. After that it all became a bit of a blur.
There was an open packet of blockers in the medicine cabinet, courtesy of his hospital visit yesterday. He fumbled one out and popped it into his neck, then let his head thunk against the cool mirror, waiting for the chemicals to work their magic.
By the time he walked into the lounge all traces of pounding headache and churning stomach were gone.
Will told the room’s controller to open the curtains: they slid back, revealing yet another wet, dark morning. The lounge reeked of stale beer, garlic and greasy meat. Seven or eight empty plastics of Greenmantle were lined up on the coffee table beside a half-eaten, ill-advised kebab.
Abandoned dataclips made an abstract mosaic on the carpet between the couch and the controller. They were all Janet’s: her favourite cookery books, films, the birthday message she’d recorded one year as a surprise, wearing nothing but his old suit jacket. Carefully, he placed them back on the shelves. It’d been a while since he’d been drunk enough to go looking for her.
He said, ‘Music,’ and the controller bleeped softly-the opening bars of Alba Blue sparkling into the air. Janet’s favourite opera, the one they’d played at her funeral. He left it running and went to make breakfast.
An hour later he closed the door on a tidy apartment; he’d even thrown his new clothes through the cleanbox. Seemed a shame not to give them a second outing.
Director Smith-Hamilton had told him to take a couple of days off, but hadn’t said he couldn’t spend it doing a little ‘unauthorized data access’. Whoever Ken Peitai worked for they had to keep records of some kind. The only problem was finding them. The easiest way would be to hack into the files from Ken’s underground laboratory, but there was no way of getting in there without arousing a lot of suspicion.