Authors: Chris Ryan
The bee buzzed near the open window. Kyle, unaware of what was happening, continued to scribble. Susan opened her mouth to scream, but no noise came.
The intruder strode towards them, his gun raised, silently closing the five-metre gap between the door and the bed. As he drew alongside the bed, he seemed uncertain where to fire. His preference was clearly for Simon’s chest – a wider target – but the baby was in the way and so his weapon drifted up towards the father’s head.
Down to the chest.
Up to the head.
Had the gunman not hesitated before firing, Simon Black would have died instantly. But Susan, although very weak, had pushed herself up from her reclining position and hurled herself at him. She wasn’t strong enough to knock the gunman down, but she bashed into him just the same. ‘Provo cunt!’ Simon hissed, just as the round intended for the centre of his forehead clipped the edge of his left temple. Its trajectory altered, it smashed the water jug behind him. Simon fell backwards as a spray of blood and a small shard of bone flew from the side of his head, spattering the ‘Breast is Best’ poster with a flat, slapping sound. Still holding the child, he slouched against the bedside table, water streaming over his bloody head. The gunman took aim again, ready to finish the job.
Susan had once heard a story, an urban myth, of a mother whose child was stuck under a car and who managed, thanks to the adrenalin surging through her veins, to lift the car and rescue the child. She had never believed it. Now, though, she found herself filled with a similar strength. As the gunman prepared to take his second shot, she threw herself at him, screaming at last – an animal mixture of fury and fear. Her body slammed against the gunman’s, and they became a knot of limbs.
They were already tumbling to the ground when the second round was discharged.
It was quieter than the first, muffled not only by the suppressor but also by the soft, post-natal flesh of Susan’s belly.
There was a moment of silence. The gunman lay quite still under Susan’s body. The bee had fled from the open window. And then, after five seconds, there was a horrific retching sound as a torrent of foam and blood erupted from Susan’s mouth.
The gunman heaved Susan’s body away from his. The baby started wailing, a thin but persistent sound that was mostly drowned out by the sudden screaming of the five-year-old boy. As the gunman pushed himself to his feet, Susan rolled on to her back. She was clutching the wound to her stomach but it was useless: blood gushed over and between her hands, pooling stickily on the floor around her. She tried to say something, but simply spewed more blood as her lungs and other vital organs failed.
Then the door flew open. Two nurses stood frozen in the doorway. The gunman looked around at his handiwork. It was impossible to tell through the balaclava what he was thinking as, in another moment of hesitation, he stared first at the bleeding woman on the floor and then at her husband. Simon Black was still slumped by the bedside table. He still held his baby. But one side of his face was smeared with blood, his left foot was twitching and his eyes stared straight ahead without blinking.
The nurses screamed. There was a commotion in the corridor outside. The gunman – his green scrubs stained dark – ran to the open window and climbed through it, into the gardens outside.
By the time, forty-five seconds later, three security men burst into the room, he was gone.
In the minutes that followed, the chaos of the maternity ward increased tenfold. Doctors sprinted down the corridor to the room where the botched hit had taken place, barking instructions. Stretcher beds arrived. A nurse with trembling hands took the screaming baby from his wounded father. The midwife who had delivered him gave his five-year-old brother Kyle a hug so he wouldn’t have to watch his mother and father being lifted on to the stretcher beds and rushed into the operating theatre. And when they had gone, she buried his face in her ample chest so he wouldn’t have to see how closely the room now resembled an abattoir. She tried hard not to retch as she glanced at the poster above the bedside table, now gruesomely defaced with red spots.
In theatre number one, Susan Black lay under the bright overhead lights, an oxygen mask pressed to her face, her sheets saturated by an oozing continent of her blood. A container of fresh rhesus negative hung on a drip stand next to the bed, but it was clear to the seven-strong medical team trying to save her life that she was losing blood faster than they could transfuse it. A surgeon shouted through his canvas mask: ‘Haemodynamically unstable, we need a laparotomy.’ Moments later he was making a lower midline incision, the scalpel passing an inch to the right of the catastrophic entrance wound in the patient’s abdomen. As his scalpel cut through skin and a layer of subcutaneous fat, the rate of beeping from the ECG machine rapidly increased. To the shock of everybody in the room, the patient’s eyes pinged open. Her abdomen arched upward. Her body stiffened. The screen on the ECG machine flatlined.
‘Vasopressin!’ the surgeon shouted. ‘
Vasopressin!
’ Seconds later a nurse handed the surgeon a syringe full of a clear liquid, which he injected immediately in an attempt to revert the cardiac arrest.
There was no response.
He started to administer chest compressions, pumping rapidly and firmly down on the breastbone, just above the butchered abdomen. But after twenty compressions there was still no sign of electrical activity on the ECG. No pulse. Nothing.
The surgeon stepped back, his scrubs as bloody as the gunman’s had been. From somewhere in the distance, beyond the walls of the operating theatre, came the sound of police sirens. The surgeon looked at his watch. ‘Time of death, nine fifty-six a.m.,’ he said. Then, unable to hide his anger at his failure to keep the young woman alive, he ripped off his mask and threw it to the floor, before storming out of the theatre.
Outside in the corridor a man was waiting. He looked scruffy. He was a head taller than the surgeon, and had shoulder-length hair and a straggly beard that were as dark as his eyes and the look on his face. His cheekbones were pronounced, his nose slightly out of joint. ‘What’s happening in there?’ he demanded.
‘You’ll have to speak to the hospital administrators,’ the surgeon said, not even stopping to say it.
The man grabbed him by one arm. A firm, vice-like grip. The surgeon stopped, looked meaningfully at the hand restraining him, and then up at its owner.
‘Sorry,’ said the man. ‘I’m . . . the name’s Taff Davies. I’m a friend of the family. I need to know . . .’ His voice had the faintest trace of a Welsh accent. It dripped with anxiety.
The surgeon bowed his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘We did everything we could. It was a terrible wound. The worst I’ve seen.’ He looked up and down the hospital corridor. ‘And I’ve seen some bad ones.’
Three British Army soldiers appeared at one end of the corridor. They wore camouflage gear, and as they approached, the surgeon – who had made a study of such things – recognised the red shoulder flash of the Parachute Regiment. One of the Paras walked straight up to the man who had introduced himself as Taff Davies, who immediately held out a small military ID card. ‘I’m with the mob,’ he told the soldier quietly. ‘Don’t make a play of it, eh?’
The grim-faced soldier looked surprised. ‘The Regiment’s here?’
Taff shook his head. ‘They’re friends of mine. I came to visit the kid. They know what’s happened up at Palace Barracks?’
The Paras nodded grimly.
Taff loosened his grip on the surgeon, to whom this conversation meant nothing. ‘Where’s Simon?’ he asked.
‘The husband?’
He nodded.
‘Theatre number two. I wouldn’t get your hopes up.’ With a respectful nod, the surgeon continued down the corridor. Seconds later a noise made him look back over his shoulder. Taff Davies had picked up one of the plastic chairs lining the corridor and slammed it down on the floor, while the soldiers, clearly alarmed, stood at a safe distance of a few metres. Now he was clutching his hair, and looking around with a helpless, anguished expression. The surgeon had seen many people who had lost loved ones. He could tell instantly that Taff Davies was one of their number.
The corridor was spinning. Taff could barely stand. The doors to operating theatre number one swung open. A sombre collection of hospital staff emerged, wheeling a stretcher bed. A blue sheet covered the body on the bed. He heard one of the Paras swear under his breath. The sheet had a dark stain where it had come in contact with the corpse’s abdomen. In his time Taff had seen more dead bodies than he could easily count. He’d added to them. But not all dead bodies are the same. The sight of some leave you as cold as the corpse itself.
Taff watched the bed disappear. Then he moved his substantial frame past the soldiers, in the direction the surgeon had indicated. A minute later he was outside operating theatre number two. Two nurses were standing about five metres beyond the door, talking in hushed voices, but fell silent as Taff approached. Standing by the door itself was a uniformed member of the RUC.
‘News?’ Taff asked.
The police officer shook his head.
Breathing deeply, Taff removed his wallet. His army ID was not on display, but hidden inside. He flashed the ID, which bore his name, photograph, army number and blood group, at the police officer. ‘Family friend,’ he explained.
The officer nodded.
‘Anyone asks, the nurses or anything, just tell them that.’
They stood in silence outside the operating theatre. Time passed.
At 13.24 another exhausted-looking surgeon emerged from the operating theatre. He gave the RUC man a respectful nod, then cast Taff an enquiring look. ‘Next of kin?’
‘Good as,’ Taff said.
‘He’s critical but stable. The gunshot affected part of his temporal lobe. We’ve managed to stop the internal bleeding, but there’s substantial damage to the brain. He’ll survive, but . . .’ The surgeon’s voice tailed off.
‘But what?’ Taff said.
‘The temporal lobe regulates memory, emotions, language, learning . . . We can expect full amnesia, maybe profound mental deficiency going forward. Sometimes I think it would be kinder to let patients like this . . .’ The surgeon stopped himself. ‘Maybe the amnesia’s for the best,’ he continued. ‘I hear the wife didn’t make it?’
Taff nodded.
‘Bastard Provos,’ said the surgeon with a sudden burst of anger. ‘I sometimes think they should spend a few hours on the wards, see exactly what they’re doing to people.’ He passed a tired hand over his eyes. ‘I apologise,’ he said.
‘Don’t apologise to me,’ Taff replied, his voice flat and dead. ‘The only good Provo is a dead one as far as I’m concerned. When can I see him?’
‘Not yet, I’m afraid. They’ll be moving him to intensive care at some point in the next hour or so. Speak to the ward sister. I’m sorry for your loss.’
The surgeon moved away, massaging the back of his neck as he went.
‘Kyle.
Kyle?
It’s me. It’s your uncle Taff.’
He wasn’t really
Kyle’s uncle, of course, but he was as close as made no difference. Kyle was in a brightly coloured children’s room with snakes and ladders painted on the floor and puzzle boxes with Sellotaped corners on the shelves against one side. On the floor in front of him lay a selection of Action Man characters. In the corner of the room a uniformed female police officer and a social worker in a grey A-line skirt observed them silently.
‘How you doing, kiddo?’ Taff asked. But it was obvious that Kyle was doing shit. The kid’s eyes were bloodshot and there were scratches down his face where he’d dug into them with his nails. Ordinarily the boy would be excited to see Taff, who always gave him fifty pence for some sweets. But not now. He picked up an Action Man and slowly started smashing it against the floor. Taff put one hand on his wrist to stop him ruining the toy, but Kyle snatched it away and went on banging it on the floor. Harder and harder. Quicker and quicker. One arm split away from its body. Its head cracked. The social worker hurried forwards and gave Taff a look that suggested now would be a good time to leave. He stood up and made for the exit. When he looked back, the social worker had her arm around Kyle, but he was still destroying the toy.
The room to which they’d moved Simon was now guarded by two RUC officers, both armed and wearing body armour. The original officer was accompanying Taff. ‘This is the guy I was telling you about, fellas.’
They gave Taff a respectful nod and let him in. Taff closed the door gently behind him and turned to look at Simon. ‘Jesus,’ he breathed. ‘You look like shit.’
And he did. His bed was surrounded by medical equipment. A plastic tube emerged from his nose and cannulas sprouted from both hands. But it wasn’t the beeping of the equipment, or the drip stands, or the sinister bandaging around his head that made Simon appear so desperate. It was the look on his face. His eyes were open, but whether they saw anything was impossible to tell. His mouth was open too, and his tongue lolled to one side, a patch of white spittle just visible along one edge. Although he was conscious, he gave no indication that he was aware of Taff’s presence.
Taff leaned over the bed and looked straight into his friend’s eyes. There was nothing. No hint of recognition. The machines around the bed displayed his vital signs. Even so, Taff checked for a pulse. It was faint, but it was there. He looked down at his friend’s wrist. The letters of the regimental motto looked darker than usual against his pale skin.