Proxy, page 9
“According to you,” Ray hissed into his bracelet, “there was more than enough evidence to lock him up until the end of fucking time!”
“Well,” Tip said with an embarrassed chuckle, “turns out the old bill wanted to cut a deal with Stokes. My friend wouldn’t go into the details, but he gave me enough to read between the lines.”
Ray listened to the sound of the other man’s breathing and fought down the urge to vomit. “What kind of deal?”
“Seems like the police have bigger fish to fry, and Stokes is their route to them.”
Ray leaned back and closed his eyes. “You mean they turned him into an informer.”
“So I gather,” said Tip, sounding regretful. “It means Stokes stays free—no charges or nothing.”
“And in the meantime, Stokes can do what he likes. Is that it?”
“Pretty much,” said Tip. “I mean, obviously if he went out and murdered someone in broad daylight, they’d have to do something about it. Assuming he didn’t just get someone else to commit a murder on his behalf, should he have reason. But my feeling is you’re going to have to lie low for a while.”
Great, thought Ray. Just absolutely, totally, fucking great.
“How much of a while?”
“Couple of months.” Tip paused for several long seconds. “Or six.”
Ray groaned inwardly and climbed out of bed, going over to the window and pressing his forehead against the glass, half afraid he might see Stokes glaring back up at him. “For God’s sake, Tip! I have rent to pay.”
“Yeah…about that. Might be an idea not to stay where you are, if you follow me. Take yourself on holiday. Maybe get your medical visa up to date and go abroad for a while.”
Like he could afford such luxuries, even if he wanted to. “You fucking owe me, Tip,” said Ray, his voice trembling with fury. “I put my neck on the line for you.”
“I wish I could help, but I’d be risking both our necks, not just yours. Take care of yourself, all right?”
“Tip?”
It took Ray a moment to realize the old bastard had ended the call. He stared down at the street below. Nobody was watching for him, but he had a feeling it was only a matter of time.
It took an effort of will not to punch the glass until it shattered. Things had already been tight, or he wouldn’t have been proxying for Tip in the first place.
Water from the tap in the kitchen tasted sour and flat on his tongue. On went the kettle, and Ray reached for the jar of instant coffee that sat perpetually next to it. His hand froze mid-reach, and a groan escaped his lips.
There was a solution to his dilemma, but not one he liked.
Before he could change his mind, Ray sank into a chair next to his kitchen table and spoke a command into his bracelet. Barely a second passed before someone picked up on the other end of the line.
“Hello?”
“Miss Cotter? It’s Ray Thomas.” Ray closed his eyes and waited a beat before continuing. “I’m sorry to call you so early, but I’ve reconsidered your offer.”
Two and a half hours later, and with a confirmed transaction that placed enough money in his account to cover his rent for the next six months, Ray sat in a hired car across the road from the Peartree Medical Institute watching people come and go from its main entrance.
Somewhere inside that building was Stacy Cotter, and all he had to do was talk to her on behalf of her mother and find out if she genuinely wanted to be there.
According to the research he’d carried out en route, Amy Cotter had been correct in saying that the Institute belonged to a subsidiary of Telop Industries. And that made it the property of Stacy Cotter’s father and Amy’s ex-husband, Raphael Markov.
The clinic had apparently begun life in the last century as an upmarket housing development, before being repurposed as a private hospital for London’s wealthy elite. The complex sprawled across several adjacent buildings linked by covered walkways.
In the hour he’d been sitting there watching the front entrance of the Institute, Ray had noted the presence of half a dozen private security guards patrolling the surrounding streets. Either that, or a number of large, broad-shouldered men who clearly spent a lot of time in the gym and all liked to wear black bomber jackets and jeans had randomly decided to stand around the private hospital and its neighbouring gardens with tight, watchful expressions for no other reason than it was a sunny morning.
One of them, loitering at the corner of the building nearest to Ray, glanced towards his hire car, perhaps noticing it had been sitting there for a while.
Afraid of arousing suspicions, Ray told the car to drive three blocks, then pull over. Once it had parked, a few minutes later, he got out and walked back the way he had come, entering a café directly opposite the Institute’s main entrance.
The café proved to be surprisingly busy. Ray bought a coffee from a woman with a peculiarly tight-lipped and nervous expression. He sat near the window and pretended to read the news on the cheap tablet bolted to the table-top.
It didn’t Ray long to sense that something felt off. Despite being full, and despite the tight clusters of customers gathered around its tables, no-one in the café had uttered a single word to each other since he’d stepped inside.
Instead, they were all quietly staring past Ray and at the Institute’s front entrance with what struck him as singular collective focus.
A prickle of unease edged its way down Ray’s spine. Among the café’s clientele he noted several pensioners, a greater number of people in their twenties, and a smattering of ages and types all across the social spectrum.
Ray’s sense of discomfort only grew when he noticed that every single one of them had the exact same order on the table before them: an untouched egg and mayonnaise sandwich and a glass of water.
No wonder the café proprietor looked so freaked out. Perhaps, thought Ray, it was some kind of performance. Or perhaps they were members of some odd religious group who’d taken a collective vow of silence.
Ray tried not to let the weirdness of the whole situation get to him and stuck it out for another half hour, keeping his attention focused on the Peartree Institute across the road. Apart from the obvious security guards, the only other people he saw coming or going were a couple of nurses presumably on their lunch break. There was little sign of anyone who might either be a patient, or coming to visit one.
All of which was very odd.
It had occurred to Ray to wonder whether Amy Cotter might have been demonstrating excessive levels of paranoia by claiming her ex-husband had for unknown reasons imprisoned their daughter, but perhaps, given what he could see, he had misjudged her. The security might only be there to keep people from bothering Stacy—which was entirely possible, given her prior notoriety—or they might equally be there to keep her in.
Despite an initial flurry of reports and frantic speculation about her near-fatal dive from the top of a building, the press already seemed largely to have forgotten about Stacy Cotter. Or at least, the security didn’t appear to be fighting off hordes of invading paparazzi.
A quick glance back over his shoulder revealed that the café’s clientele still sat in uncanny silence. Nor had he seen sight or sound of the café’s owner in what felt like quite a while. If she’d done a runner, he didn’t blame her in the slightest.
As it was, things were getting just a little too creepy even for Ray. Those few other passers-by who had stepped through the door of the café had taken one look at the silent, staring crowd within and ducked straight back out.
Tired of waiting for something to happen while being stuck in a room full of people who exhibited all the self-awareness of a cabbage, Ray exited the café, and shivered despite the midday heat. Some mysteries, he decided, might best be left unsolved.
In the meantime, he needed to stop waiting and take action.
Ray walked across the road, past a parked ambulance and straight towards the Institute’s front entrance. One of the guards moved to intercept him, sunlight gleaming from his shaven head.
“I’m sorry, sir.” The hired goon put out a hand. “The Peartree’s closed for the day.”
“Closed?” Ray acted as if he hadn’t heard him right. He caught a whiff of aftershave—eau de thug, perhaps. “My son is in there,” Ray blustered, stabbing one finger towards the entrance of the Peartree like an enraged father used to getting his way. “Are you taking the piss?”
As he spoke, Ray glanced past the man’s shoulder and inside the front entrance to where he could see an unmanned reception desk within a tiled foyer. A nurse, hands pushed deep into her pockets, hurried past him and up the steps. The look she gave the guard blocking Ray’s path gave him a pretty good idea what she thought of all the security. Further inside, a second goon ran a hand-scanner over some kind of electronic tag she had clipped to her uniform.
“All the patients have been temporarily moved to another hospital,” the goon explained, sounding like he was reading from a script that tested the limits of his intellect. “An infection spread through the air ventilation. If you call the Institute help desk, they’ll explain everything.”
Best to leave it at that, Ray decided. Playing an outraged relative was one thing, but getting into a fight with a serial steroid abuser would not help him get any genuinely useful information.
With a parting scowl, Ray went back across the road, continuing past the café and around a corner. He stopped and took another peek back at the Institute’s entrance. A youngish-looking doctor came hurrying down the steps, pausing only to have his tag scanned by a security guard.
Without one of those security passes, Ray knew, there was no way he was getting inside the Institute short of shimmying up a pipe and breaking in. And somebody would definitely notice if he did that.
He watched as the doctor crossed the street and out of his direct line of sight. Ray leaned around the corner and saw the doctor enter the same café where he’d spent part of his morning.
Ray hurried after him, re-entering the café. The doctor had stopped just inside the door. Ray couldn’t see his face, but he could guess at his expression.
The doctor turned around, either having noticed no one was actually manning the counter or too freaked out by the silent, glassy-eyed crowd within to want to remain there a moment later. Ray started forward immediately, colliding with him.
“Christ!” the doctor spluttered, putting his hands up. “What’s the hurry?”
“Sorry, mate,” Ray said as apologetically as he could, putting his hands on the doctor’s chest as if to steady him. He nodded around the café. “What’s going on here?” he asked in a loud whisper. “Do you know?”
“No idea,” said the doctor with evident irritation. His expression shifted to unease when he again scanned the crowd around them. “Excuse me, will you?” he said, brushing past Ray. “And watch where you’re going,” he added. “You nearly sent me flying.”
“Sorry about that,” Ray called after him. Then he reached into a pocket and folded his fingers around the plastic ID tag he’d pulled from the doctor’s shirt.
Ray left the café again and returned to his hire car. He got in and unzipped a duffel bag tucked under one seat, pulling out a set of hospital scrubs.
Ray changed quickly before anyone noticed him undressing inside the car. Those few people who did hurry past appeared too caught up in their own thoughts to notice.
Once he had the scrubs on, Ray shoved his own clothes back inside the duffel bag, then ordered the car to drive to a service entrance in another part of the Peartree complex he’d scouted out earlier.
He found another goon standing guard there. Ray got out with his stolen ID pinned to his chest and headed for the door.
The trick to getting inside places you weren’t supposed to be, he’d long since learned, was to act like you belonged. Get that right, and you were as good as invisible.
The guard, who had the glassy-eyed stare of the terminally bored, hardly looked at him as he ran a hand-scanner over Ray’s tag.
And just like that, he was in, and hoofing his way up the first flight of stairs he saw. His scrubs weren’t quite right—the ones the clinic used were an entirely different shade of blue—but the guard either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
The steps led up to a first-floor corridor. Ray quickly made his way along it, seeing nothing but deserted wards. Once he was sure Stacy wasn’t anywhere on that floor, he continued on up to the next floor, finding more of the same.
He was already starting to feel worn out by the time he reached the top floor, but he still kept going. Once he was sure this particular building was entirely empty, he hurried along an elevated walkway to the next building and resumed his search there.
Working hospital or not, it was soon clear that the Peartree Institute was now entirely devoid of patients. And, judging by how few doctors, nurses or cleaning staff he saw, maintained by a skeleton staff.
Yet as far as he had been able to ascertain, the Peartree was a busy working hospital, with dozens, if not hundreds, of patients.
How much effort and money had it taken to empty the entire place so quickly? And why so much effort, to isolate a daughter Raphael Markov had, as his ex-wife made clear, long ago disowned?
At one point Ray grabbed a clipboard from an unmanned nurse’s station and carried it under an arm for extra camouflage. Then he turned a corner on the third floor of the second building and saw two more goons standing on opposite sides of a door as if they were the guardians to some dead king’s tomb.
This had to be where they were keeping Stacy, Ray decided, briskly walking straight past the guards and up to the door, reaching out to push it open.
They swung open, revealing a private hospital room with a single bed. Ray caught a glimpse of a frail-looking figure in the bed with long, brown hair splayed untidily across the pillows. One of her arms was wrapped in thick bandaging.
One of the goons took a hold of Ray’s upper arm before he could take another step.
“Badge,” said the goon, and Ray pinched his blues so that the guard could run his hand-scanner over the stolen ID a second time.
Ray’s heart beat loud and hard inside his chest. How long did he have before the doctor whose ID he’d stolen either returned to the Peartree or noticed it was gone?
Not long at all, he suspected.
The goon stared at the screen of his hand-scanner and frowned. Any second now, thought Ray, they were going to drag him down to a basement and beat the living shit out of him.
Instead, the goon put his scanner away and nodded to Ray.
Ray let out a slow breath and entered the room. ID or not, he didn’t fail to notice that the guards had left the door open, presumably so they could keep an eye on him.
Which was going to make talking to Stacy just about impossible. Unless he could find some way to distract them, he’d gone to all this effort for precisely nothing.
Looking around, and working hard to look like he knew what he was doing, Ray stepped towards a wall-mounted screen displaying medical information of some kind.
He peered at the girl from out of the corner of his eyes. Stacy looked older than he recalled, and somewhat thinner. She had changed her hair, which was longer and less stylised than it had once been. There were bruises on her neck and arms, presumably sustained during her fall.
Her eyes opened just then, and she gazed, slack-mouthed, up at the ceiling, her pupils round and huge. She showed no awareness he was there, even though he was standing right next to her bed.
Drugged to the eyeballs, Ray concluded with a sinking feeling. Fat chance he’d get anything comprehensible out of her, let alone something that might satisfy her mother.
Still, he had to try.
Stepping up next to the bed, Ray placed a hand on top of a wheeled machine that had been placed there and wondered what the hell to do next.
He took another quick glance at a wall monitor. From out of the corner of one eye, he saw with relief that the two goons had finally turned away. One was conferring quietly with someone via his bracelet while his colleague listened in with a concerned expression.
That’s it, thought Ray. I’ve been rumbled.
He tensed for a fight.
Instead, they continued to pay him no attention. He couldn’t make out most of what the guard speaking into his bracelet was saying, although he did catch something about a mob.
A mob?
The first guard lowered his arm and said something to his colleague, then hurried away as if on some vital errand. The sole remaining guard stared after his colleague with a look of perplexed worry.
Ray didn’t waste his chance. He leaned in close to the half-comatose girl and shook her shoulder.
“Stacy?” he whispered.
Stacy blinked, her eyes opening a little wider. Another moment passed before she appeared to focus on him.
“My name’s Ray,” he continued in a loud whisper. “Your mum sent me.”
Stacy mumbled something incomprehensible.
Ray stiffened, hearing footsteps come up behind him. He turned to find the remaining goon scowling at him.
“You’re not supposed to be talking to her,” he snapped. “Them’s the rules. We made that clear, right?”
Ray tried to look distracted and annoyed, like a busy doctor who had better things to do. “I forgot.”
The goon’s expression darkened further. “I want to see your ID again.”
Just then, Ray heard a burst of frantic shouting coming from the street outside. The goon stepped past Ray, pushing aside the window blinds and peering down.
Just then, the remaining guard’s data bracelet emitted a tinny jingle. He stepped back from the window and tapped at his bracelet, studying some message that had appeared on its screen.
The sound of shouting and scuffling escalated, as if a large crowd had gathered outside.
“Excuse me,” asked Ray, gesturing to the window. “What’s going on out there?”
The goon ignored Ray, instead heading back out through the door at a brisk trot. Ray followed after him in time to see him running towards a bank of elevators.
