Page 113
The heavy feeli
ng of sedation was making it hard to think. Poe leaned back on the pillow and shut his eyes.
When he woke, his headache had improved slightly. He tried his eyes again and this time he could fully open them. He gave himself the once-over. His skin was either bandaged or exposed and raw. His nose was splinted. A cannula with a split feeder was attached to the back of his right hand. Poe looked at the IV stand. A bag of saline was half full. Another smaller bag, which he assumed was an antibiotic, was almost empty.
The ward lights were muted and it was dark outside. He was on his own in a two-bed room on a ward. The bed had high-sided rails to stop him falling out.
He wondered how long he’d been there.
He was desperately thirsty but the water jug was out of reach. Poe grabbed the patient alert box and pressed the button. The door opened and a uniformed nurse walked in. She smiled at him.
‘I’m Sister Ledingham. How are you feeling?’ She was ruddy-faced, and spoke with a rich Scottish burr.
‘What happened?’ he croaked. He didn’t recognise his own voice. It sounded like he was speaking through gravel.
‘You’re in the HDU at Westmorland Hospital, Mr Poe. You were burnt in a fire. Lucky to be alive.’
‘HDU?’
‘High Dependency Unit,’ she replied. ‘You’re not really in any danger but burns are easily infected and this is the best way to keep you sterile until the skin begins to heal.’
‘How long have I been here?’
‘Almost two days. There’s a queue of people waiting outside to see you, if you’re up for visitors?’
Poe sat up, fought the urge to vomit and nodded.
Instead of the queue Sister Ledingham had promised, one person walked through the door. It was Stephanie Flynn.
She was back to wearing her official two-piece trouser suit. She looked as tired as he felt.
‘How you feeling, Poe?’
‘What happened, Steph?’ His voice came out little more than a whisper. He gestured towards the water. Flynn filled the plastic beaker. She inserted a straw then held it close enough so he could get it in his mouth. No drink had ever tasted so good.
‘What do you remember?’ she said.
He remembered Reid telling him about his mother and he remembered the burning room. He had vague recollections of trying to drag Reid and Swift out of the burning building. He also remembered something about a mud monster but he decided to keep that to himself.
‘Not much,’ he admitted. He had fragments of memory but they were jumbled and unorganised. ‘The children . . .’
‘Alive and well and where you said they were. They’re with their mother now and are unaware anything untoward happened.’
‘And the man who took them?’
‘Wore a baseball cap and sunglasses.’
‘Shit.’
‘Yep. A police artist has sat with them but got nothing usable. The woman who took them to Center Parcs was a registered nanny. Reid had hired her but made it look like the request had come from their mother. The email said it was a treat for them, and a rest for Grandma, before she landed in the UK. They stayed at Reid’s flat until he found time to drop them off with her. She took them straight there. She’s innocent.’
It made sense. Reid had needed him to think the kids were in danger, but given his own experiences at the hands of monsters, he hadn’t wanted to harm them.
‘There was a box. A metal box on the front seat of the—’
‘Of the van you drove into a burning building?’
‘What happened to it?’
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113 (Reading here)
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121