Shatter the Bones

idiot with the ‘JESUS!’ sign singing some sort of hymn in a broken falsetto. The streets were still wet from the last downpour, shining in the evening light.

He sidestepped a teenager with a cigarette dangling out the corner of her mouth, a mobile phone clamped to her ear, and a wee kid strapped into a buggy.

‘Yeah… Yeah, I know, but he’s a total wanker, so what can you do?’ Click-clacking on too-high heels.

Logan glanced back through the Athenaeum’s windows, and there was DI Steel, back at the bar, with her arm around the buxom party girl.

Christ’s sake…

You know what: he wasn’t her mother. If she wanted to screw everything up, she was on her own.

‘You’re a big baby, there’s nothing to see.’ Samantha settled back on the couch.

‘You sure?’ Logan peered at his right arm… ‘There, that’s a bruise.’

‘That’s dirt.’ She clapped her hands, once. ‘Come on then, let’s see the other one.’

He slipped the shirt all the way off and turned around. The little square of wadding was frayed, the surgical sticky tape peeling and dirty around the edges. ‘Should it not stay-’

‘Can’t believe you’re still wearing that.’ She bounced off the couch, grabbed the wadding and tore it off.

A sudden sting of ripped out hair. ‘Ow!’

‘There.’ She nodded. ‘Looks good — told you the Reverend was an artist. You happy with it?’

‘Steel says they’re investigating the IB, in case any of you lot kidnapped Alison and Jenny?’

‘It suits you. Very minimalist.’

‘Can’t see it myself. Criminal masterminds? Half your team couldn’t tie their shoelaces without adult supervision.’

‘Let it breathe a bit: the redness will go down quicker. And for your information, we could run rings round you CID carpet-shaggers.’

He sat on the arm of the sofa. ‘Did you know Alison McGregor was a horror when she was young?’

‘Well … duh. Everyone knows. Then she met Doddy, and he swept her off her feet and she got pregnant, and vowed to put her life back on track for her husband and her little girl. Tres romantic.’

‘Found a big pile of love letters when we searched her house on Friday.’ Logan picked at a tuft of thread, sticking up from one of the sofa’s seams. ‘Does it bother you?’

‘What?’

‘That I’ve … well, I’ve never written you any?’

‘Oh dear Jesus, no. I read the bloody things when Bruce brought them back to the lab last week.’

‘You read them?’

‘Who do you think put them back in the bottom drawer? Someone had to check her mail for threats, or secret lovers.’ She clasped her hands to her chest. ‘“Oh how the embers of my heart burn with the heat of a million suns!” Pffff… “Million suns.” I’d have more respect for the man if he’d said he burned with the heat of a summer’s day in Banchory. Or a bag of chips.’ Samantha tilted her head on one side, and stared at him. ‘If you ever write something like that at me, I’m going to kick you in the nuts and leave. Understand?’

‘Yeah, well, I wasn’t planning-’

‘Anyway,’ she pointed at his arm, ‘that means a hell of a lot more to me than some cheesy moon-in-June bollocks.’

She unfastened the thick leather belt from her jeans, popped the top button, unzipped the zip, then pulled her T-shirt up. ‘So…’ There was a little patch of wadding, not much bigger than a beer mat, stuck to her stomach, just beside her bellybutton. She peeled the sticky tape off. ‘What do you think?’

It was the number twenty-three, reversed out of a circle made up of squiggles. The ink was black, the skin slightly swollen, angry red fading to pasty-Scottish-white. It sat not far from the topmost spines of the tribal spider thing that reached all the way down to her knee; equidistant from a teddy bear with an axe in its chest, and a sort of bramble-twined rose.

‘Twenty-three?’

‘Yup. Call it a reply to the love note on your arm. See,’ she pointed at the squiggles, ‘now I’ve got twenty- three little scars. Just like you.’

Logan put a hand against his own stomach. Squinched up one side of his face. ‘Thanks … I think.’

She pulled her T-shirt back down again. ‘You don’t like it.’

‘No, it’s not that… I…’ He frowned. ‘I just … can’t decide if it’s a really sweet gesture, or a little creepy.’

Samantha grinned. ‘Can’t a girl be both?’

‘Dunno, she’s no’ looking that good.’

‘Course she’s not — she’s got a fever, you idiot.’

Hot. Far too hot. Jenny forces her eyes open. Cold. And Hot. And the light stabs her head like a sharpened pencil. The room starts to twirl. Dirty ceiling, scribbled-on walls, a bare light bulb that swims across a dirty sky…

So thirsty.

‘Well? What the hell are we supposed to do?’

The monsters are in the corner, all crinkly and white. Like ghosts made of paper.

‘So, do we call a doctor, or what?’

Her lips crack and burn. ‘Mummy…’

‘Don’t be a dick, Tom.’

‘Who’re you calling a dick, Sylvester?’

‘Mummy…?’ Her head thumps and whumps.

‘It’s OK, darling, Mummy’s here. Shhh…’

A cool hand strokes Jenny’s forehead. ‘Thirsty.’

‘Use your heads.’ This monster isn’t like the other ones. He has pointy horns and a red swishy tail. And when he steps on the floorboards little circles of fire sprout into life. ‘How the fuck are we supposed to explain this to a doctor? “Oh, you know those two off the telly who’ve been kidnapped? Well, guess what we found…”’

‘Where’s bloody Colin when you need him?’

Mummy raises her voice. ‘She needs water.’

The monsters stop arguing. ‘Yeah, right. Sylvester, get her a bottle or something…’

‘He’s not answering his phone. Why isn’t he answering his bloody phone? I said he was fucking unreliable, didn’t I, David? Didn’t I say he was a big fat fucking liability?’

‘Here, it’s pretty cold. You maybe shouldn’t let her drink it all at once, or she’ll puke.’

Mummy’s face ripples into view. Her eyes are pink, so is her nose. She sniffs, wipes a drip away with the back of her hand. ‘Here, sweetie, try and take little sips…’

The hard plastic shape presses against Jenny’s lips and she gulps. Cold, wet, soothing — spreading out inside her. A frozen octopus reaching all the way from her elbows to her knees.

‘We got to do something, what if she dies?’

‘She’s not going to fucking die.’ DAVID leaves a trail of fiery feet across the floor. ‘Here: the useless tosser’s left his medical bag. She just needs more antibiotics or something.’

The water goes away. Jenny reaches for it, but her hands wobble and flap. Two balloons filled with sausages…

‘Shhh… It’ll be OK, sweetie, it’ll be OK. Mummy promises.’

‘Found some Fluc… Fluc-lox-acillin,’ sounding it out, ‘that’s right, isn’t it?’

‘How much do we give her?’

‘I dunno. Can you overdose on antibiotics?’

‘God’s sake, Tom.’ DAVID sighs, his shoulders hunching. ‘You’ve got an iPhone, Google it.’

‘Right… OK. Yeah. Here we go — got it. Flucloxacillin… How much does she weigh?’

‘The fuck does that matter?’

‘Dose depends on how much she weights: thirty milligrams per kilo. She’s about, what — nineteen, twenty kilos?’ He fiddles with a needle and a little glass bottle, then squirts a little arc into the air, just like on the television. ‘Right … who’s going to do it?’