Verismo Bliss Chapter 10

10.

The taxi driver did him good, finding him a family run hotel in the centre of the city that was clean, friendly and reasonably cheap; he had even offered to find him some company for the evening – his sister was unemployed and now self-employed until she could find another job – but Harry had other plans.
Harry asked the hotel to order him a rental car. He took a shower and then called Carr. The phone was just about to go to message when Carr picked up.
‘Harry.’
‘Karl. You sound out of breath. Am I interrupting?’
There was the sound of movement. Harry imagined some dizzy bint lying next to Carr, her head so full of sweet platitudes that her panties had dropped.
‘I’m on the job, Harry.’
Harry heard giggling, feminine, and Carr shushing whoever it was.
‘I was just checking in,’ Harry said, swallowing his jealousy like bitter medicine. ‘Anything new?’
‘Actually I just had a message from Porkpie, says that the Barry Penny murder doesn’t fit in with the Ripper genre.’
Harry liked Porkpie, and knew he was bloody good at his job; they called him Porkpie not because of a predilection for that type of food, but because he always wore that type of hat, even in the slab lab where he cut bodies up for the police and got them to say how they had died. Porkpie often said he was just a ventriloquist, sticking his hand into a dead lump and making it speak. Porkpie had a sense of humour, like most forensic pathologists did, else they were suicides after a year.
‘Why does Porkpie say that?’
‘The knife wounds on the other victims were inflicted by a small handled knife, probably a flick knife, a small blade anyway, but the blade on Penny was heavy, more like a carving knife. Also, all the deceased, save Penny, had suffered blunt trauma, probably from fists and/or a device like a baseball bat, but the only wound on Penny was a clean decapitation. Of course we haven’t found the rest of him yet.’
‘Not conclusive.’
‘True. But you know Porkpie, he’s rarely wrong. Listen, I’ve gotta go, something’s just come up.’
Harry could guess what that was.
He wasn’t sure how Barry’s death being separate to the others affected his search for Gwendolyn. On the one hand it was good that the case of the Ripper wasn’t connected with Gwendolyn, but on the other it made Barry’s death even more suspiciously bound up with it.
At eleven o’clock he went down to reception and took possession of a Ford Libre in midnight blue. It smelt new inside and welcomed him like a newly cobbled pair of beloved boots.

The windows of the Raf-Med complex glowed like night lights on the top of the hill. A group of desultory kids passed around a bottle of Thunderbird underneath a street lamp. Out here, on the industrial estate, nobody bothered them as long as they didn’t get too close to the buildings. Harry parked the Libre in a side street behind the industrial estate and cut the engine; Elvis Presley, on the radio, never got to the end of lonely street.
Harry’s smart went buzz and he flipped the message button. Ramona Noche: Harry, was just thinking about you. When we going to meet up again? Harry put her from his mind, but it took a little longer for the physical arousal in his groin to calm down. When it had, he hurdled a small concrete barrier which was decorated with graffito of love and hate, and the obligatory indecipherable tag, and headed towards the car park at the rear of Raf-Med. If anything else the calibre of the cars in the parking bays would be enough to tell you that Raf-Med was a profitable business. There was no single car over two years old; all top of the range, all shining, gleaming chrome that you could have shaved in. And, of course, all the cars were hybrids of full on environmental beauties: one had to do ones bit for the world. This was offset by all the owners jetting off two or three times a year to their condos on some tropical hideaway where the locals waited on them for a dollar a day, but, hey, you gotta have some pleasure.
There it was again, Harry thought: the jealousy.
Now he was here in the car park he wasn’t quite sure what to do. He could see people moving past the windows of the building, or sitting at their desks. His vague plan had been to find ward 81 and talk to the pregnant woman. He had that feeling that Raf-Med was a stone that just needed lifting to find a whole load of grubby insects. Of course, it might have nothing to do with Gwen’s disappearance, and certainly nothing to do with the murders, but his interest had been piqued and sometimes, by kicking up a hornets nest it could cause people to panic. When people panicked they made mistakes.
Still, that didn’t solve how he was going to get past the security in reception. He was just considering a risky plan of trying to get in one of the ground floor windows when a mini-bus, emblazoned with the Raf-Med logo, pulled into the car park and out poured a collection of mostly middle-aged people who looked as though they were on a tourist trip, and filed towards the building.
Harry joined the back of the queue. The accents were American and they were discussing the flight and their tiredness which was overridden by their excitement. They were all couples. Shit. Couples. All paired up like some school trip, bar the woman at the front who was leading the group. Harry was going to stand out like a Gay Pride marcher at the Vatican.
As the doors slid open and the security guards parted, Harry pushed through at the back of the crowd, softly saying, ‘Excuse me,’ until he was mixed in the middle.
‘If you will just collect your visitor passes at reception,’ the guide said, gesturing with his arm towards the reception desk like a weathergirl pushing in a warm front from the Atlantic. The Americans smiled and got in line rather than queued.
Harry crouched to untie his shoelace and then tie it again. The guide had her back to him, she was chatting to a couple whose accents placed them from L.A. The security guards were facing outwards towards the car park.
Harry ducked into the toilets which were to the right and behind the reception desk. He needed a distraction. Then it came to him. What use was technology if it couldn’t cause a little mayhem? He pulled out his smart and flipped through the apps which he had filed under the heading emergency. There was an icon with a hazard fire symbol. He pressed it and a gauge, set at 50%, appeared. Harry held the smart up. Nothing happened. He increased the gauge to 75% and then his ears crumpled as an ear splitting fire alarm went off. It was a wailing siren – though why they called it a siren he had no idea – no sailor would be attracted to that sound. He slid out of the gents - the Americans were being ushered outside by the helpful Raf-Med employees. Harry grabbed a visitor pass from the pile on the reception desk and ducked back into the toilets.
Two minutes later the siren stopped and he could hear the grumbling masses walking through the lobby and into the building. He put the visitor pass around his neck and stepped out, joining the throng and presenting the pass to the door lock which turned green and let him pass. He was in. Often it was so much easier than you could anticipate.
The Raf-Med employees went back to work around him, grumbling about pointless exercises; after all if there was a real fire everybody would stampede over every other fucking person, not walk out casually as they do in a drill.
Harry nodded at a couple of people and shrugged his shoulders in what he thought must have looked like an imitation of a Gallic comme ci, comme ça. He heard the voices of the Americans behind him and decided to move away. He strolled down a corridor with confidence, his visitor tag swaying across his chest. Harry wondered why the Americans were in couples. What was it, a business trip where everybody brought the partner? But they didn’t look like high powered pharmaceutical giants. They looked like rich, smartly dressed, neo-conservatives, golf and tennis playing, anti-drug, pro-health club, anti-apathy, pro-life, East Coast, West Coast, Mid-West, personal financial advisors. Or something.
Harry ducked round a corner and was pleased to find himself at an interactive map. He plugged in his smart and downloaded the info. He typed in ward 81 and was rewarded with a bright red trail from where he stood to the destination; approximate journey time on foot, 6 minutes, using a lift, 4 minutes.
Harry remembered why he didn’t like lifts as he stood in one heading for the third floor. For a start it put one in close proximity to other people who you didn’t know. Either they were on their own, staring ahead, in crackling silence, or they were in company and were engaged in conversations that you had to look as though you weren’t interested in, but, really, what else was there to do but listen? He wasn’t going to turn around and check his appearance in the mirror, was he? And what the bloody hell was all that about? Why did they have mirrors in a lift? Why not go all the way and put in a toilet and a shower cubicle? But Harry lucked out even worse in this journey. As far as Harry was concerned the worst possible lift companion was a single woman who happened to be gorgeous. Nothing made Harry feel more nervous and more like he was desperately trying not to look like a rapist than being in a confined space with a beautiful woman. He fingered his visitor pass, hoping it was sending a message that yes, he really did belong in the building, and he was completely harmless.
The woman got out at the second floor. As soon as the doors slid closed, Harry started breathing again and lent back against the mirror. He turned and looked at himself. He looked shiftily away. It was an unfamiliar face, completely at odds with the way he saw himself. But mirrors couldn’t give the full story. It was one of the tragedies of life –among many – that you could never see yourself as others saw you. Harry was a little dismayed by the amount of grey hair, and the lines around his eyes. He was beginning to look his age.
He stepped out at the third floor and two nurses edged past him into the elevator. They smelt of bleach and stale fruit.
He stood at a T-junction. There were blue signs hanging from the ceiling pointing out various destinations, just in case you didn’t trust your smart. Harry took the corridor straight ahead. It was quiet up here, and the lights were dimmed, his DM’s echoed on the linoleum floor.
Somewhere in the distance he could hear crying or wailing, like the noise cats made when they mated. At the entrance to ward 81 he had to pass though the sanitising room; hot blasts of air covered his skin and clothes with an anti-bacterial army of nanotechnology that would rid him of 89% of germs – at least for an hour or two.
There were offices to his left and right, with computer screens running through Raf-Med approved screensavers. Ahead of him the corridor opened up into a large room, ward 81. He counted ten beds on either side of the ward. Most were in darkness, but a couple had night lights on. Eight of the beds were occupied by women and, judging by the bumps under the covers, all were pregnant.
‘Can I help you?’
The voice was firm, but also guarded. Harry guessed the women didn’t get many visitors. He switched on his smile and turned to greet the questioner. It was a male nurse, slim, with acne scars only just healing, his youth oozed through every pore like the blackheads he had popped. Harry put his hands behind his back and looked about him with a professional air. ‘I believe that Government Health law insists that an all female ward is never supervised by a lone male. Can you explain?’ The young nurse flushed brighter than the night lights.
‘Sophie…I mean, Nurse Simpson, was called away on an emergency. I wasn’t…I mean, it’s the first time I’ve ever been left alone. They’ll be sending somebody up to take Nurse Simpson’s place ASAP.’
He said ASAP as one word and it irritated Harry. He clocked the name tag on the weak chest and took out his smart, typed in Nurse Frank Little and wrote bollocks fucker next to it. ‘Just making a note. Now, isn’t there something else you should have done?’
Nurse Frank Little started fiddling with his lank hair and looked behind Harry, as though willing somebody to save him. ‘I’m not sure what you mean?’
‘A stranger walks onto the ward and you don’t challenge him?’
Little looked around him, wondering if the intruder was hiding under one of the beds. Harry typed arse ostentatiously in the smart. ‘Me, me! You haven’t asked who I am or what I’m doing here.’
Little straightened up and tried to speak firmly. ‘May I see your pass please?’
Harry smiled. ‘That’s better. This is just a spot check. Nothing to worry about and, if you help me out a little here, I’ll scrub the fact you’re here on your own from my report, and I will be out of your hair before you know it.’ Harry turned and looked down the room. ‘How many women have you got here at the moment?’
‘There are nine, but one has just gone into labour; that’s why Sophie, Nurse Simpson had to go.’
Harry nodded. ‘Ok, Nurse Little, you just go about your business and let me carry out my checks.’
Nurse Little shot off to the offices like a coward reprieved from the firing squad.
Harry walked slowly down the aisle. He wondered how long he had before somebody other than Nurse Junior appeared and really wanted to see his ID. Most of the women lay in darkness, blankets around them, their bellies like mountains, eyes closed; some murmured in their sleep. A few had their lights on illuminating gossip magazines, their faces bright, eyes looking up at him, wondering if his appearance heralded something. But he didn’t look like a doctor and they returned to pore over the important news of which celebrity had had beauty treatment and which hadn’t. They rubbed their bellies like Buddha for good luck.
Each side of him pregnant women lay ready to burst new life into the world. And Harry walked down the middle of them, one of the one in a hundred men who was actually still fertile, and yet he chose to waste the seed that could bring forth life.
Then he saw her. The woman from the corridor. She was sitting up in bed, reading a trashy pulp novel that had a half naked man on the cover, beneath the title Savage Dusk. The author hadn’t even bothered putting his name to it. She looked over the book at him and frowned.
‘You found your way back to the ward then?’ he asked, sitting down in the chair next to the bed.
‘Oh yeah, I saw you this morning when I went for a wander. They don’t like you wandering about, especially in the daytime, but sometimes you need a good wander, that’s what I think, especially when this little bugger is on the move. I think me walking seems to calm him down.’
Harry smiled. ‘You know it’s a boy?’
‘Sure, they have to know what sex it will be. It’s all part of the scheme. You gotta know the sex so as to match them up. But dunno why I’m telling you all this; you must know. ‘Ere,’ she said, leaning in to him and lowering her voice even more, ‘is it true they take them to America? They won’t tell us, see; they say it’s best if we don’t know.’
Harry said it wasn’t always America but quite often was.
The woman nodded. ‘I guess it doesn’t really matter. But it might be nice to think of a bit of me sunning himself in L.A., whilst I’m shivering me nips off in some tenement. Know what I mean?’
Harry said he knew what she meant.
‘You seem alright, you do. Not like some of them, some of them really look down on me as though I was taking the 30 pieces of silver or something. It’s my first one and I’m a bit nervous really. Does it hurt much?’ She laughed and touched his arm. ‘Not that you’d know, obviously, you being all man, and all. But you must have an idea. Are there…complications, often?’
Harry told her Raf-Med had the best people and they were prepared for any problems that might arise, but that most pregnancies went off without a hitch.
The woman smiled and patted her belly. ‘Oh, he’s kicking again. Feel here, quick.’
She pushed the blanket down and put Harry’s hand on her belly. Through her thin hospital gown he could feel her skin pulled tight like a drum, and then he felt movement, something hard pushing against his hand. She held his hand there - her hand was warm and slightly damp, whilst the skin beneath his hand was taut and cool.
‘Nine months I’ve been carrying this little bugger and in a few hours he’ll be gone. Funny, really, I didn’t think I would, but I guess I’ll miss him. And I’d like to see him. I know it’s wrong and it won’t happen, but just a quick glimpse. Nah, the councillor is right, it’s best not to see him. Just think of it as doing a service really, both for the fertility research and in helping out a couple who can’t have kids. Yeah, it’s charity I’m doing really; except I’m getting a heap load of dosh for it, ha ha!’ She put her hand to her mouth in an attempt to stifle the laugh and looked around her to make sure she hadn’t woken anybody up.
Harry moved his hand away from her stomach. Behind him he could hear voices, one he recognised as Nurse Acne Scars and the other was an unknown female. Her voice sounded like it was chastising him. Harry stood up. ‘Good luck,’ he said, winking. He didn’t turn around, even when he heard the clip clop of shoes coming towards him and a voice saying, ‘Excuse me.’
As he exited the ward he started to run and ducked into the first room he came to. When he entered the room there had been a hubbub of discreet chatter, but at his entrance the people there stopped talking and all stared at him with expectation. He recognised them. It was the Americans. Harry felt like the man who reads the list of the missing after a plane crash, but naked. Then the door he had come through opened again and a man in a dark suit walked in. He had a clipboard that he was looking at. He read out the names Mr Martin Harris and Ms Joanne Jennings. Mr Martin Harris and Ms Joanne Jennings smiled at each other and gripped each others hands and walked towards the man. The man looked up and smiled at them with a smile that looked a week old. Then he looked at Harry and the smile faded out.
The man in the suit pushed a button on his lapel. Harry had no illusions what the button did - it was a personal alarm that would pinpoint the danger to security. Harry dashed out the door. The man in the suit didn’t try to stop him; he was more concerned with looking after his American customers. In the corridor he turned left. There was no time to view the map on his smart and work out the best way out. It was just going to be a dash and pray for luck. He heard boots running. He turned a corner and burst through a fire door. The moment he did alarms went off all over the building. Oh, the Raf-Med employees and the Leeds Fire Brigade were going to love him. He took the concrete stairs two at a time, balancing himself with his hand on the railings. His heart was beating fast. Harry had always considered himself adequately physically fit, the job did demand it at times, but the way his knees were screaming and the way his sort harsh gasps of air were scorching his throat and chest, he was faced yet again with the spectre of age. If he was a cop they’d have given him a desk job by now. As he bounded to the ground floor he tripped and went sprawling through the door that opened into the car park. For one brief moment, as he looked up at the clear night sky, he thought he’d made it. But then he was grabbed roughly under his arms and dragged to his feet. His arms were pinned behind him and he felt the cold steel over his wrists and heard the click of the cuffs. He sighed and looked up into the face of Adam Cannon who was shaking his head disapprovingly at him.
Harry was about to say something smart, at least he thought it was smart, when Adam, with no warning, hit him full in the jaw, knocking his head back and the last thing Harry remembered was how there seemed way more stars than usual in the night sky.

‘Wake up, Harry.’
Harry didn’t want to wake up. He liked it in the darkness. If he kept his eyes closed the throbbing in his jaw didn’t seem that bad.
‘Harry, I know you’re awake. Open your eyes.’
Harry was slapped across the face and his jaw, already throbbing, throbbed some more. He opened his eyes and moved his jaw from side to side: it didn’t feel broken but it hurt to buggery.
He was in a small room that looked like some sort of storage room for boxes full of rubber gloves vied for shelf space with jars of liquid with warning signs plastered all over them. But Harry wasn’t really in the mood for an inventory. He was sitting in a swivel chair, ergonomic of course, with his hands still handcuffed behind him. Adam Cannon stood opposite him, his muscles straining under a white shirt, his jacket hung on a hook behind the door. He was rolling up his sleeves. There were two other men in the room, just your standard goons who clearly spent most of their time doing nothing but waiting and watching for trouble. Now they had found it and they were enjoying the entertainment.
‘Harry Reed,’ Cannon said, ‘can you tell me why Martin Falsham hired you.’
‘I’m beginning to wonder that myself,’ Harry replied.
Adam slapped him across the face. ‘He hired you to find his daughter. You came recommended and yet still his daughter is missing.’
‘Could you possibly stop hitting me,’ Harry said, spitting blood on the floor. ‘I’m better at conversations that way.’
Adam put his face close to Harry’s. ‘What are you doing here, Harry? What are you looking for? Has one of our competitors been in touch with you? Hired you to snoop around?’
Harry smiled, but it hurt too much, so he stopped. ‘Are you big corporations always so paranoid? I never take on conflicting jobs, it wouldn’t be ethical. Sometimes I follow my nose, this time it led me here.’
One of the goons flicked out a knife and tapped it against Harry’s nose. ‘Maybe we should cut it off, then it wouldn’t get you in so much trouble.’
Harry recalled a scene from Polanski’s Chinatown – it had been one of his favourite films, but he wasn’t so sure he’d be able to watch it again if anything bad happened in the next 30 seconds.
‘What were you doing here, Harry? What were you looking for?’ Adam repeated.
‘I told you,’ Harry said, trying to lean back, away from the blade, ‘I was just checking some things out. I wanted to know about Alison Graham. Why was Gwendolyn’s new roomy at Bristol Uni. an employee of Raf-Med? Maybe this Alison was mixed up in Gwen’s disappearance. Maybe it was kidnapping. You see, Adam, this is what happens when my clients don’t give me all the information about a case, it makes me suspicious when I do find out the information.’
Adam put a hand on the goons shoulder and gently shied him away.
‘Ok, Harry, I can buy that. But that doesn’t explain why you came back to visit a pregnant woman.’
‘What can I tell you? I’m not the sort who cuts and runs if he gets a woman in the club.’
Adam slapped him again. Harry wondered when the hand was going to become a fist rather than a flat hand.
‘A man tied up in a room with three men who treat violence as part of the work ethic really shouldn’t be making smart remarks.’
Harry kept his mouth shut.
Adam looked at him with his head cocked to one side. ‘What you just said? Does that mean your sperm is straight?’
Harry shrugged.
‘Allah. Fuck. It’s a crazy world, isn’t it, Harry? When nobodies like you can procreate and…well, let’s just say I despair for the human race. Have you got any children, Harry?’
Harry made like Marcel Marceau.
‘It’s not pertinent. What did you talk to the woman about?’
‘Oh, she thought I was part of Raf-Med, doing my rounds. She was asking questions about where her baby was going to go and if she could see him before he was handed over.’
Adam pulled out a rubber glove from a dispenser and tugged at one of the fingers. ‘Impersonating a Raf-Med employee and infiltrating an all female ward. Maybe I should just hand you over to the police. But Mr Falsham still wants you to find his daughter. I respect Mr Falsham and carry out his orders, even if they sometimes confuse me; he does tend to know what he’s doing. Who knows, maybe he doesn’t really want to find his daughter which is why he hired you.’
Harry knew he should just keep quiet, but couldn’t stop himself. ‘And what of this baby scam?’
Adam snorted. ‘Scam? Harry, really, you know as well as I do, maybe more since the law is your business, that selling a new born baby is not illegal. Sure, there are many safeguards that have to be applied, and a license to hold, but I’m sure it won’t surprise you to hear that Raf-Med is punctilious in it’s following of the rules. The woman who asked you if she could see her baby should know that it is against the code. The moment a baby in the womb is sold it no longer belongs to the mother and is taken away to its legal parents on birth. If a birth mother has bonded with a child (as proven by law), the child cannot be sold and legal rights return to the birth mother.
‘So, you have wasted your time in Leeds. If you had asked me about Alison Graham I would have told you and you’ve uncovered the legal baby commodity arm of the many faceted Raf-Med organisation, which you could have found out about if you’d looked on our website, or read all the literature Mr Falsham gave you.’
The door opened at this point and a woman who looked like she could throw a Soviet shot-putter as far as a Soviet shot-putter could throw the shot-put, stepped in and dropped a suitcase by Harry’s chair and departed without a word. It was Harry’s suitcase. He recognised it by the forlorn look it had - it didn’t do much travelling.
‘I guess I’m not staying another night.’
Adam shook his head. ‘You will return to London. When you come round, Mr Falsham would like you to find his daughter, not investigate his business.’
‘Come round?’
Adam picked up a syringe and stabbed it into a small bottle of clear liquid.
‘No need for you to catch the train, we’ll drive you. But to ensure you’re quiet, a little relaxant.’
Harry tensed all over as Adam, smiling, stepped towards him with the hypodermic.