The Stone Gallows (24 page)

‘It is.'

‘I'm Susan Mc Pherson? From the other night?'

I remembered. Teenage runaway. I'd told her off and then left her my card. ‘How can I help you, Susan?'

‘Can you come and meet me?'

‘I'm not sure. . .'

‘Please. I really need your help.'

‘This isn't exactly a good time.'

‘You were right. I'm just a kid.' There was desperation in her voice.

‘Please. I really need some help.'

Mentally I sighed. ‘Alright. Tomorrow.'

‘Tonight. Now.'

‘Susan, I can't just drop everything.'

‘Please.'

Her voice sounded desperate. ‘Alright. Where are you?'

‘The Western.'

‘The Western what?'

‘The Western Infirmary. The hospital.'

‘Susan, what's going on?'

She was crying now. ‘Just come.'

I tried to get some more information out of her, but the last sound I heard before the line disconnected was sobbing.

8.9.

Glasgow's Western Infirmary occupied a ten acre site in the heart of the city, surrounded on every side by major roads, the University, and the internationally famous Kelvinhall art gallery. To keep pace as the city had grown, the hospital had been forced to expand by slotting new wings and units into the available space between the established buildings. The result was a confusion of architectural styles; post-modern concrete and glass clashing with classic Victorian sandstone.

And, just for a bonus, a complete lack of available parking.

There was a visitors' car park, which I spent a joyful ten minutes circling in the vain hope that somebody would be leaving just as I happened to be passing. It proved to be a futile exercise. On my fifth orbit I worked out that there would be at least another thirty available spaces if the people who drove SUVs could learn how to park. The clincher was a brand new Land Rover Discovery that was abandoned across four disabled spaces; with no disabled sticker, I could only assume that the owner was either mentally challenged or a colossal dickhead, or possibly even a consultant. Maybe even a combination of all three.

I eventually gave up and headed into the surrounding streets, where in their infinite wisdom, Glasgow City Council had seen fit to levy some truly extortionate parking fees: fifty pence for ten minutes, no waiting, no loading, no happiness. It didn't seem to be a deterrent; cars were lined up nose to tail, street after street after street. After another ten minutes of cruising, which was taking me further and further away from the hospital, I thought
screw it
and headed back, eventually finding a space in an alleyway between office blocks, less than a hundred yards away from the main hospital entrance. I left the car directly in front of the emergency exit for a well-known firm of Sheriff Officers. I had visions of them rattling the door handle in vain, trapped inside while their office blazed around them. Perhaps it wasn't impossible to redeem myself in the eyes of the press after all.

Susan hadn't given me any details of her admission, so I followed the signs that led to the main entrance. The receptionist was a harassed woman in her mid-fifties, hiding behind a glass screen and a permanent scowl. I took my place in the queue, behind an elderly man who told me that he was visiting an friend who didn't have long to go. He seemed quite chipper about it, perhaps relieved it wasn't him.

After five minutes of slowly shuffling forward, it was my turn. The receptionist glared at me. ‘Yes?'

I gave her Susan's full name and she tapped at the computer keyboard in front of her. ‘Ward Twelve.' She looked at her watch pointedly. ‘And you've got less than three minutes.'

‘That's an awfully specific diagnosis.'

She looked down her nose at me, and her tone could have sliced a hole in her little glass screen. ‘I mean until the end of visiting hours.'

Ward Twelve turned out to be at the opposite end of the hospital.

I walked quickly, against the flow of people on their way home. Even though I followed the signs, I got lost in the labyrinth of corridors and dead ends. By the time I found what I was looking for, visiting time was over. On the plus side, I had managed to locate the mortuary. You never know when things like that are going to come in handy.

The sign on the door said that Ward Twelve was something called Acute Medicine. I wondered what they meant by acute. Wasn't it just a tiny step down from Intensive Care? I was assuming that if Susan was able to make telephone calls, then she was at least mobile, but then I remembered that some hospitals had trolleys that could be wheeled to a patient's bedside and then plugged into the wall. Or maybe she had been breaking the rules and using her mobile. For all I knew she could be completely helpless, getting bed-bathed and tube-fed. I took a deep breath and pushed my way through the double doors.

Even though it was a different unit in a different hospital, the memories came flooding back. The smell – antiseptic cabbage – triggered nostalgic recollections of inedible meals and lukewarm cups of tea. It also kicked off other, less pleasant memories. I don't remember being unconscious, but I could vividly recall the terrified, disconnected feeling I had when I woke up. It lasted for days. My leg was in a plaster cast, and every time I dozed off into natural sleep (which was regular and frequent: I was on enough drugs to tranquillise an entire stable of horses) I would forget everything I had been told. I spent the first two weeks of my recovery thinking that I was paralysed from the waist down. A nurse took pity on me and wrote a list of things that she thought I might like to remember, sticking it to the wall with Blu-Tack so that it would be the first thing I saw when I woke up:

1. My name was Cameron Stone.

2. I was in a car accident.

3. I was not paralysed. I had a broken hip. The rehab would be painful, but I would walk again.

4. I had a beautiful little boy called Mark who loved his Daddy very much.

Eventually, my memory returned (mostly), but I was grateful for this simple act of kindness, especially as it was becoming increasingly obvious to the rest of the nation that I was an extremely bad person.

The month in bed didn't do me much harm; as I was very fit before-hand, my muscles didn't atrophy or degrade to any significant extent.

As soon as it was possible, I was out of bed and exercising. Desperate to be discharged, I worked hard at the physiotherapy, ignoring the pain, skipping ahead with the exercises. I got myself fit in record time.

Physically fit, that is. Mentally, I wasn't doing so well. I was still trying to come to terms with the accident, with the media attention, and most of all with the fact that Audrey had used it as an excuse to pack her bags and leave.

I snapped back to the present. Ward Twelve seemed to consist of two corridors running parallel to each other, connected by two horizontal bars, almost like a square version of a capital letter ‘A'.

Separate rooms – singles, doubles, four-bedded mini-wards – lined the outside of the corridors. I found the nurses' station directly in the middle of the lower bar.

Unfortunately I didn't find a nurse.

‘Hello? Anybody there?'

‘Mr Stone? Is that you?'

‘Susy?' I couldn't tell where the voice was coming from. ‘Where are you?'

‘Room eighteen.'

She was waiting for me as I rounded the corner, leaning against the doorframe in a hospital nightie and a pink dressing gown that had seen better days. But then, so had she. I came to a sudden stop. ‘Jesus Christ, Susan, what happened?'

‘I got beaten up.'

That was the understatement of the year. Her face was a mess of bruises, dark blue and black, yellowing underneath the eyes. A large white dressing covered her forehead, and her nose appeared to be strapped in place with surgical tape. I felt a sudden stab of anger – not at her, but at whoever was responsible. She may have chosen a high-risk occupation, but she was just a kid. ‘Who did this to you, Susy?'

‘Can we maybe talk in my room?'

‘Sure.' I followed her in. She sat down on the bed, arranging the pillows behind her and crossing her legs like the teenager she was. I made myself as comfortable as possible in a plastic-covered armchair.

‘Susan, I'm so sorry. Whoever did this to you is an animal.'

‘It was Kenny.'

She said it as if she expected me to know who that was. I did a quick mental search, sorting through the index cards in my brain, cross referencing them until I made the connection. ‘Kenny the bouncer?'

‘That's the one.'

‘Why?'

She shrugged. ‘All that stuff you said about me just being a kid. . .

I know you think that I wasn't listening, but I was. After you left the bar, I just sat there. You know, thinking things over. He came looking for me. I told him I was thinking about going home.'

‘And he beat you up?'

She shook her head. ‘Not then. He seemed O.K. about it at first.

Not exactly thrilled – Kenny's a paying customer as well as an employee – but he didn't seem bothered.'

‘But later?'

‘Yeah. I decided to go home, went through to get my jacket. He pulled me into one of the empty rooms, put some tape on my mouth, and then beat the living crap out of me. You've seen the size of him. I didn't have a chance.'

‘Why?'

She shrugged. ‘Dunno. He said that if I left, he'd hunt me down and kill me.'

I shook my head in wonder. ‘For Chrissake. He can't make you stay.

You want to leave, then leave.'

‘I can't.'

‘Of course you can.'

She shook her head. ‘I really can't. It's not just me, you see. It's Rose. I can't leave her. I can't do it.'

I began to get an extremely nasty feeling. ‘Who's Rose?'

‘Rose is another girl who works at the massage parlour. I look after her. She's. . . she's got problems. Like, big problems.'

‘What do you mean, problems?'

‘It's like, she's not very smart. She needs a lot of help. She's two years older than me, but she's like a toddler. She's like that movie with Tom Cruise?'

I shook my head, mystified.

‘It's like Tom's got this brother that he needs to look after, and the brother can't do much for himself, he's like artistic or something.'

It clicked.
Rainman
. ‘Autistic.'

‘What?'

‘The word you're looking for. It's
autistic
.'

‘Yeah, well, Rose works in the parlour as well. They don't put her out front, though. It's only customers that Kenny trusts that get to spend time with her.'

‘Why? What does Rose do that you don't?'

Her lip curled. ‘Everything. Anything.'

‘What do you mean, anything?'

‘I mean anything. You wouldn't believe some of the sick things that people want to do. I told you about the guy that I let pee on me? I would never have allowed that, but I was stupid. He told me to lie down on the floor and close my eyes and open my mouth and I did.

By the time I figured out what was going on it was too late. How dumb can you get? I don't mind getting fucked for cash, but there's guys out there who want girls to do stuff that's really horrible and nasty. I mean sick. I mean disgusting. It's the kind of stuff that nobody in her right mind would ever agree to.' She looked me dead in the eye.

‘I mean, you wouldn't believe it.'

Unfortunately, I would. In my time as a cop, I'd seen some pretty unpleasant things, including a man who celebrated his daughter's seventh birthday by raping and donkey-punching her into a coma, and a fourteen year old boy who died from internal bleeding after allowing his technical teacher to insert a screwdriver into his anus. I have nothing against most forms of sexual activity, but I was sadly familiar with the weird sickness that infects a small minority of us. I like to think I'm a pretty open-minded guy, but for me, the key word is consensual. It has to be mutually gratifying for all parties.

Kids can't give consent.

Neither could Susy's friend, from the sound of it.

Susy continued. ‘Thing is, Rose doesn't really know what's going on. She's like a child. She doesn't do it for the money. She does it because she thinks that she has to, that unless she does whatever Kenny wants her to then there won't be any food or anywhere to sleep.'

‘Where does she stay?'

‘We all stay in a bed-sit flat in Victoria Road. There's six of us. The other four are a bit older than me and Rose. They don't like us much because we're so young. I look after Rose most of the time, take her to work with me, make sure that she eats something and washes and stuff. She's a good kid, but it's hard.'

‘I don't mean to sound harsh, but why is this your problem?'

‘Because Kenny knows that I look after Rose. He said that if I left then he would kill her as well. I don't want that on my conscience.'

‘Doesn't Rose have any family?'

‘I don't think so. I heard that she grew up in orphanages and stuff, that her parents abandoned her when she was a baby. That might be one of the reasons she's so fucked up. She didn't have a stable childhood.'

‘Even so, there must be somebody. A social worker, something like that?'

Susy shook her head impatiently. ‘She's got nobody. Nobody knows her last name, and she won't tell us. For all I know, she might not even know that she has one. And even if she does, nobody wants her.'

I tried to process what Susy was saying. It was hard to believe that in this day and age there could be somebody like the girl she was describing. The news is always full of stories of abuse and neglect, but the truth is that these are the exceptional cases. Nobody is truly alone in this world, unless they want to be, or unless they can't reach out for whatever reason.