In The Garden Of Stones (42 page)

Grace
turns to face Gibbs. “He what?”

“
We’re not geared up to treat such cases here, so more than
likely Colin will be transferred out to a more suitable
facility.”

“
Transferred? Where to?”

“
There are several long term care facilities for
neurological cases. The nearest one is in Newcastle, but there’s no
guarantee he’ll go there. It depends on where they have room. He
could end up in Sussex.”

“
Sussex? Oh God.”

“
I know. It’s a terrifying prospect for everyone involved.
That’s why we have to make sure there is no cause for them to send
him anywhere, and you and I both know that his best chance, his
only chance, of staying here with us is for you to go to where he
is, to where he’s hiding, and get him back. Drag him by the scruff
of the neck if need be.”

“
But I don’t know where–”

The
pressure on her shoulder increases as Gibbs gives it a little
squeeze. “Remember what it was like before you came, when we were
at a total loss and nothing we did for him worked? And then you
waltzed in here all bright and breezy and full of sass with your
ginger beer and buns? It was like he’d been sprinkled with pixie
dust. You broke through whatever barrier he’d put up against us.
But now it’s gone up again, probably higher and stronger than
before, so it’s no idle threat when I say time isn’t on our side.
If you can’t do anything, can’t get through to him, if he doesn’t
show any signs of coming round, there’s every chance that by this
time tomorrow Colin McLeod will be on his way to Newcastle, or
somewhere further afield with his DNR still in place and the very
high probability that neither of us will see him alive again. If
you want Colin to live…” Both his hands are now pressing firmly on
her shoulders. “Can-you-help-him?”

She
locks eyes with his and can see the earnest pleading in them. He’s
as frightened as she is. Two fat tears slide slowly down her face
and she nods. “I’ll give it my best shot.”

The
pressure eases. “Good girl.”

She sits
in the blue plastic visitor’s chair, Colin’s clammy hand held
firmly in hers, closes her eyes and tries to relax herself into the
meditative state that takes her to where Colin is.

It’s
like something out of a Grimm’s fairytale. Dark and menacing and
dreadful.

Daylight
is all but gone, clouds the colour of bruises glower down on her
adding to the gloom, thunder rumbles in the distance and the air
prickles with static electricity.

Grace
cannot make out the wall at all, the stone blocks are totally
hidden with a reinforcing jacket of thick black foliage out of
which poke savage barbed thorns as long as her pinkie finger. Colin
has done this, she knows. He’s created an impenetrable barrier
behind which to hide, keeping everything and everyone away. Even
her? Or especially her?

She’s
been here often enough to know she’s in the right place for the
gate, but she can’t even make out where it should be, at least not
from where she’s standing. She examines the blockade of vegetation
closer. It appears to be nothing more than an overgrowth of some
type of mutant acacia, and she knows these types of bushes grow on
a short trunk. If she’s right, there should be a space of about
eight inches between the earth and the first branch. Perhaps if she
were lying down?

She gets
down onto her belly, face close to the dirt.

There it
is. A gap … and the gate beyond.

Grateful
now for losing that bit of weight from her already fine frame, she
flattens herself to the ground and squirms and wriggles, scrabbles
and scrapes her way through the narrow space, heaves herself high
enough to reach the barley twist ring handle, turns and pushes it.
The gate swings open with an ear splitting squeal that sounds more
like demonic screaming than a rusty hinge in need of a squirt of
WD40.

Scratched, bleeding and filthy, she collapses onto the gravel
path, twisting and straining her neck to look for the thorn lodged
in the back of her shoulder. Fingers probe for the protruding end.
They find it, pinch it, and give it a test tug. Extraction will not
be so simple. It has gone through the fabric of her sweater and
deep into her skin. She grits her teeth, counts to three and pulls
hard. A burning stinging pain explodes in her shoulder.

God that
hurt
!

A bead
of bright blood oozes from the throbbing puncture wound, forms
itself into a red droplet and runs down her back.

What if the thorn is poisonous? Are deadly plant toxins
already coursing through her, ready to stop her heart at any
second? No time to bother with that now. There’s plenty of time to
die
after
she’s found Colin.

Where to
start looking?

A moment
taking stock of her surroundings and it is clear it is not going to
be an easy task.

Gone is
the faded sepia tone and opacity created when the ECT disrupted
Colin’s thought patterns. In their place are now more of these
pseudo-acacia thorn bushes, lots of them, and they are very solid
indeed.

A closer
look reveals more. They are not growing randomly, like a wild
hedge, but straight up, like walls, with sharp corners and blind
ends, just like a … a maze?

She
shudders as a memory floods back, the overwhelming fear of being
lost, trapped, the terrible panic attack that overcame her, her
yelling and crying until someone came to lead her to safety. She
swore then, at nine years old, that she would never set foot in one
again.

Why then
would Colin have made such a thing and placed his little hut in the
centre? Because he knew, that’s why. In the same way as she had
learned things from his mind, about the explosion that nearly
killed him, experienced the horror of his PTSD, he had taken this
particular phobia from hers and was now using it against her, safe
in the knowledge that she would not be able to navigate the puzzle,
find him and haul him out.

He was
right on all counts. The fear factor was just too great. She
couldn’t do it.

She cups
her hands over her mouth and calls at the top of her voice. “Colin!
Colin McLeod!”

No
answer.

“
I know you’re in there, Colin, and I know you can hear me,
so you answer me right now!”

No
reply.

“
Please Colin! You know I can’t come in after you. I want
to, but I can’t.”

Pause.

“
You’re not safe in there, Colin. If you stay here, you’ll
die. Please. You have to come out.”

Overhead
the mass of purple clouds roil and churn, emitting a low rumble
that vibrates in the pit of her stomach, a menacing threatening
sound, like the growl of a dog, a big dog, with lots of
teeth.

“
I know that was you,” she shouts. “And you’ll have to do
better than that if you want to scare me away.” She pauses for a
reply, gets none. “I can’t help you if you stay in there. You have
to come out. Come to me. Please! I’ll wait for you, but you haven’t
got long.”

Almost
quarter of an hour passes in silence with Grace holding onto
Colin’s stone cold hand, eyes closed, furrows of concentration
standing out from her brow like rusty guttering.

All this
time Gibbs leans against the door, barring unwanted intrusion,
buying Grace the time she needs, not taking his eyes off her,
waiting for some small signal.

Suddenly
she takes a deep inhalation and lets her head fall back until she
is staring at the ceiling, and when she finally speaks, her voice
is small and fragile and shaky.

“
I can’t reach him, Simon. He’s made himself a barricade he
knows I can’t cross. There’s nothing I can do. He has to find his
own way back.”

“
Keep trying, Grace, and halfway won’t cut it this time. He
has to come all the way.”

“
I can’t get to him. If I could, I might be able to persuade
him, if he’ll listen to me, although chances are he’s shut up shop
completely and won’t listen to anybody. He can be a stubborn sod at
the best of times, but right now, he’s also scared out of his
wits.”

“
Do what you can.”

She rubs
at a sore spot on her shoulder, winces with pain, feels cold
dampness, and when she looks to her fingers, they are clarted with
blood.

What happens in one place affects the other. Bruises,
thunder, nettle rash …

She
does
have a tool at her disposal, she realises. One that is all
her own and guaranteed to work, and she has one chance to use
it.

Chapter 41

“
I’m going to try something,” Grace says. “So I’ll need
peace and quiet … and a steady supply of coffee.”

“
I’ll make sure you get it,” says Gibbs. “What are you going
to do?”

Grace
smiles knowingly. “Slowly and surely send him round the buggering
twist, and if he wants me to stop, he’s going to have to tell me
himself … in person. How long have we got?”

“
No telling, but not long, so not too slowly, eh? I warn you
now, when Mr McLoughlin gets here–”

“
God himself won’t be able to keep him out. Understood.”
Grace points to the mask covering Colin’s face. “Does he really
need this?”

Gibbs
checks Colin’s chart, glances at the monitor. “No. His blood oxygen
level is fine.”

“
And that beeping? Can it be muted? It’s starting to get on
my nerves.”

“
Sure.” Gibbs removes the oxygen mask and turns off the
beeping. “I’ll go and find you that coffee.” He takes two steps to
the door, then turns back. “I have every faith in you Grace Dove,”
he says. “Whatever dark art it is you practise, do what you can for
him. He deserves the chance. He’s a good man, a brave man. The
world needs more like him.”

Not just the world,
thinks Grace.
I need him.

When the
door falls closed, Grace gazes down at Colin’s pale inert form, at
the dull circles of discolouration at his temple where the ECT
electrodes were in contact with his skin.

She
kisses his brow. “Right then, let’s get started, but first–” She
takes a cellular blanket from the linen pile, opens it out, and
climbs onto the bed, taking Colin’s cold thin arm and draping it
around her neck. “Let’s get comfy, eh?”

She
arranges the blanket around them both and rests her head on his
bony chest, through which she can clearly hear his heart beating in
time to the graph dancing on the monitor screen. Strong and
regular.

“
That’s better isn’t it? Nice and cosy. Just right for a
little chat.”

Silence.
Time to get started.

“
I know what they did to you was horrible,” she says. “I had
it done a few years ago. Five times in all. It really hurt and it
left me confused and unsteady for days afterwards. You’ll feel a
bit wobbly as well, but it will pass. Your memory might be shot to
buggery too. It will come back eventually, at least for the most
part and not necessarily in the right order. You might lose some
fragments completely. I know I did. I didn’t recognise myself in a
mirror for nearly a week and I couldn’t remember some things from
my childhood, or that I didn’t like Camembert. I found that out
when I tasted it. Gah! To be honest, I don’t think it did me any
good in the long run. They say it doesn’t work for everyone. I
can’t imagine what they thought it might do for you. Shock you wide
awake and ready to party I suppose. You showed them though, didn’t
you? Lying here like a corpse after an autopsy instead of dancing a
highland fling.”

She
pulls the blanket closer. “I know you are probably feeling pretty
rough right now, scared out of your mind, and I don’t blame you,
but it’s over with. Done and dusted. They can’t… won’t risk doing
it again. You’re safe, from that at least, and if you know what’s
good for you, you should hotfoot it right back to me
now.”

She
pauses, giving him the chance to say something. Not surprisingly,
he doesn’t, although, and it may be just her imagination, she
thinks she detects a subtle change in his pulse. A little faster
maybe? Dare she risk pushing a bit harder?

“
There’s something you need to know,” she says. “I tried to
tell you last week, but you knocked me for six by telling me about
this instead. I don’t want to frighten you, but I have to tell you
that there is an order in place, it’s called a DNR – do not
resuscitate. Basically, it means that if anything happens to you,
they won’t do anything to save you. That’s not the worst of it
though. If you stay like this, sleeping on the job, there’s every
chance they are going to cart you off to Newcastle or Sussex, and
when you get there they are not going to give you any treatment
there either. They are going to put you into a room by yourself,
make you comfortable and let Nature take her course. Do you
understand what that means? It means they are going to let you die,
Colin. We will never see each other again. I don’t know about you,
but after everything we’ve gone through, what we’ve talked about,
what we’ve planned for the future, it’s going to be such a waste if
that happens… and in Newcastle of all places? Ever been? I have.
Trust me, it’s is a horrible place. Couldn’t understand a single
word they said, and if you think Aberdeen is gloomy on a wet
November afternoon, you ain’t seen nothing.”