As she emerged onto the third-floor corridor, she heard a loud bang. It had come from one of the rooms up on her left. The noise almost made her jump out of her skin, and if there hadn’t been a secure lid on the coffee, it would have gone everywhere. It sounded like some silly sod had just let a firework off, but surely no one would daft enough to do that inside a hospital? Then again, she had seen plenty of people do far crazier things during her career.
Lips pursed in disapproval, Mel set off briskly in search of the culprit, determined to have them ejected for their irresponsible tomfoolery. The two uniform police officers she had passed on her way down to the café a few minutes ago were nowhere to be seen. Bloody typical! She thought, feeling more than a little miffed. The bloody cops had repeatedly gotten under her feet during the past week. Now – when they might actually have proved useful for once – the buggers had vanished into thin air.
When she reached Winston’s room, she glanced through the door’s glass panel and was surprised to see several medical staff in the room with him. There was a doctor she didn’t recognise, a slim nurse and a bald-headed porter, both of whom were standing with their backs to her. Winston was out of his bed, standing amongst them and looking as surly as ever. There was a hospital issue wheelchair beside him, which suggested that the medical team were in the process of getting him ready for his discharge. Already angry about the firework, this only served to wind her up even more. As ward sister, they should have run this by her first as a courtesy. Then, as it occurred to her that they might have tried to do exactly that while she was off buying refreshments, she felt a twinge of guilt for having jumped to conclusions so hastily.
Pushing open the door, Mel poked her head inside to find out what their plan of action was and how long it would be before the bed became free again. She decided to ask them about the firecracker while she was at it. “I don’t suppose you just heard a loud…”
The words died in her mouth as she spotted what looked like a gun in Winston’s outstretched hand. Every head in the room whipped in her direction, and she saw shock and hostility in their eyes.
“What’s going on?” she asked suspiciously.
“Get her,” Winston snarled at the porter, who was standing with his mouth open, looking as guilty as a pubescent schoolboy who’d just been caught knocking one out.
Fortunately for Mel, it was only after Winston gave him a forceful shove in the back that the sluggish porter started to move towards her.
As she backed away, Mel caught a glimpse of the two officers who had been outside the room a little while ago. To her horror, they were both face down on the floor and their hands had been restrained behind their backs. As she stared down at them in shock, she felt, rather than saw, the porter extending his arm in her direction, his hand opening and closing in a grotesque parody of the claws on one of those stupid amusement arcade games.
Mel swatted his hand away and hurriedly took another step backwards. “Don’t touch me,” she warned him, her eyes darting back and forth between him and the gun in her patient’s hand. At the same time, a voice in the back of her head screamed at her to turn and run while there was still a slim chance of getting away.
It was only as she retreated into the corridor on her third backward step that she became aware of the officer on the bed, and her eyes were immediately drawn to the big splash of red that occupied the spot where his head ought to be.
Mel felt her heart jump into her mouth.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. dropping her coffee cup, which exploded on impact, sending a spray of hot liquid flying into the air.
Finally, survival mode kicked in, and Mel turned and sprinted along the corridor. The porter’s heavy footsteps echoed off the walls behind her, but she had no way of knowing if he was a long way behind or right on her heels, and the uncertainty made the situation seem all the more terrifying. In the end, she risked a fleeting glimpse over her shoulder and saw the blurred shape of her pursuer about ten paces back.
An all-consuming shroud of fear engulfed her and, to combat this, she tried to focus purely on her running technique. All that mattered was getting her breathing right and forcing her arms and legs to pump rhythmically, the way they did at the athletics track when she was practicing for the relay race.
Breathe, pump those arms, breathe…Just keep going, a terrified voice in her head screamed, and whatever you do, don’t look back.
◆◆◆
The shell-shocked driver had been unceremoniously dragged out of the Scorpio and secured against the side of the car. Handcuffs were being applied in the rear stack position just as the first local unit arrived, its roof-mounted blue lights strobing brightly.
Already halfway through a search of the car’s interior, George stood up holding a bag of white powder and a lady’s compact mirror that had been found respectively in the front passenger footwell and on the dashboard.
“Boss, take a look at this,” he said, waving the transparent, self-sealing bag in the air like a trophy. “Cocaine, I’d say. About an ounce of it.”
