58

The Traveller’s vision turned crimson for a moment before the nurse pressed a damp cotton pad against his eye. A searing hot ball of pain burned for a few seconds and eased to a small point of fire beneath the pad.

‘Looks like a little bit of wood,’ the nurse said. He heard a metallic clank as she placed the tweezers in a tray. ‘It might have scratched the cornea too, and the eyelid’s quite badly infected. When the bleeding stops we’ll flush it out and get a little bit of antibiotic ointment on it.’

He couldn’t see them, but he could feel the presence of the two uniformed cops guarding him. Big fuckers, faces like stone. The kind of arseholes who wanted to be cops just so they could push people around.

Handcuffs bound his right wrist to the trolley. A narrow bed with a thin mattress. The noise of the A&E ward’s busywork whisked and rattled outside the bay. His left hand lay on a pillow. The wrist throbbed, but not with the deep, hard pain you get with a break. Sprained, more likely, and that cop Lennon hadn’t helped it any. It pulsed in time with the sickly ache that sat lodged behind his eyes. They’d X-rayed his head and his wrist, and then put four stitches in his temple. That bastard cop had hit him just below the spot they’d pulled the chunk of Kevlar from all those years ago, opening the scar, and it had bled like hell. Now they waited for a doctor to have a look at the images.

The nurse had changed the dressing on his shoulder. When she asked how it happened, he said he’d fallen on a knitting needle. The nurse had blinked and looked away. She was a pretty thing, all right. Easier on the eye than the two cops, anyway.

She took the cotton away from his eye and dabbed around it with a clean piece. His vision cleared. The plastic curtain swished back and the doctor entered carrying a red folder.

Lennon stood beyond the bay, staring. The Traveller raised his head and grinned at him. Lennon shifted his weight, bristled.

‘Lie back,’ the doctor said.

‘Fuck off,’ the Traveller said. He pushed up on his left elbow, ignoring the screaming in his wrist. ‘You and me. We’ll settle it between the two of us.’

Lennon walked away.

‘That Marie one’s not bad looking,’ the Traveller called. ‘I’ll let you watch me fuck her before we finish things.’

The nurse scowled.

The cop’s footsteps receded, and the Traveller shouted after them, ‘How’s that, eh? You hear me?’

‘Lie back,’ the doctor said. ‘Please.’

‘Go fuck yourself,’ the Traveller said.

One of the cops pushed past the doctor and put a hand on the Traveller’s chest. He shoved hard and the Traveller’s back slammed against the thin mattress, knocking the wind out of him. The Traveller breathed deep then spat in the cop’s face.

The cop made a fist, raised it.

‘Come on,’ the Traveller said. ‘I dare you, you cunt.’

The cop shook his head and slowly lowered his fist. ‘Either you stay down, or I’ll make you stay down,’ he said. ‘And I won’t be gentle about it.’

The Traveller laughed. He smiled and relaxed as the doctor took his hand, tuned out what he was saying. He ignored the pain as the quack manoeuvred the joint, pushing it this way and that. The Traveller didn’t make a sound, just stared at the ceiling.