The Make (25 page)

Chapter 55

Jackie and Emma decided to go with Gracie and Lorcan to the hospital.

‘We won’t come up to intensive care with you,’ said Jackie. ‘We’ll wait downstairs in the café. But we have to talk to you about Harry. You do understand?’

Gracie said she did.

‘And I hope your brother’s getting better, I really do,’ said Jackie.

Lorcan drove them to the hospital. Halfway there, Emma said: ‘I don’t want to worry anyone, but that man, the one who came upstairs to the flat, I think he’s following us . . .’

‘He’s a friend,’ said Lorcan.

Gracie shot him a sour look. But inside the hospital, when they parted company with Emma and her mother, she was glad of his company. The place was thronging with people – as always – and Gracie found the crush of bodies, the bright lights and the sheer heat inside the building daunting, given her state of mind. She was afraid of what they were going to find waiting for them up in intensive care. Was George going to come out of this whole and well, or as a brain-damaged stranger?

Suze was waiting in the small room outside the intensive care unit. There was a crying young couple there, too, and a stocky middle-aged man who was reading a paper but who glanced up at Lorcan as he came in. Lorcan nodded to him, he nodded back.

The muscle on George’s door
, thought Gracie, and felt even more overwhelmed as she thought of how George might emerge from this, and where Harry might be, and that someone was busy blitzing their way through the Doyle family like a howling shit-storm. Someone had tried to abduct her. Someone had tried to axe Suze’s front door with a chainsaw. Someone had attacked George. Did that same someone now have Harry in their clutches?
Someone
had sent those bags of hair. And what could they be doing to him? Maybe by now they had killed him, disposed of handsome, kind, laid-back Harry like a piece of rubbish? She wasn’t religious but now she found herself praying hard, praying to God or whoever might be listening to save Harry, to keep him safe.

‘You okay?’ asked Lorcan, grasping her arm as she lurched slightly at the door of the waiting room.

‘Fine,’ said Gracie, and went over to Suze.

Suze stood up and stared at Gracie. Gracie could see her own turbulent thoughts reflected in Suze’s eyes. The near-hysterical joy of Suze’s phone call was a dim memory. She, like Gracie, was frightened of what lay in wait for them all now. Gracie could see Suze’s fear; Suze’s hands were shaking and she was pale as milk.

‘I thought Vera’d come with you,’ said Gracie.

‘She dropped me off outside,’ said Suze. ‘Come on, we’d better get in there.’

Suze gave Gracie a trembling smile and reached out and grabbed her hand. Surprised and pleased, Gracie squeezed her mum’s hand reassuringly.

‘We’ll do it together, okay?’ said Gracie.

‘Yeah,’ said Suze, but although she still smiled, her eyes were full of fear.

They wouldn’t allow more than two people at a time, so Lorcan waited outside while Gracie and Suze went in.

They approached George’s bed. He was moving. Gracie felt her heart start to beat very fast. He was moving! But then they drew nearer. The nurse met them there.

‘It’s something they all have to go through,’ she said firmly. ‘We’re bringing him round very slowly, and I know it looks bad, but it isn’t. Trust me. He isn’t in any pain.’

Gracie and Suze drew closer to George’s bed as the nurse went hurrying off.

‘Oh fuck,’ moaned Suze, and Gracie put an arm around her mother’s shaking shoulders and hugged her tight.

‘It’s going to be all right,’ she said.

But oh God, she doubted that. Because George, big bruiser George, was still attached to a bank of monitors and beeping machines. His legs were moving rhythmically, straining at the tucked-in bedclothes. His arms were moving too. Every few minutes the nurse came dashing back to check that nothing had come loose. Gracie and Suze stood there staring in horror at George’s face. His eyes were still closed, but he was frowning hard and his face was twisted as if in anguish; his mouth was wide open. It looked as if George was screaming, but no sound was coming out.

‘Oh no, oh George, my poor little Georgie,’ said Suze, starting to cry.

‘You heard what the nurse said,’ said Gracie, although she felt sick and distressed just looking at George. ‘He’s not in pain. It looks bad, but it’s not.’

‘He’s screaming! He’s screaming but he can’t make a sound because of that thing in his throat. Oh my poor George,’ sobbed Suze.

‘Come on Mum. He’s coming round. It’s something he has to go through, you heard her. But he’s coming round, and that’s got to be good.’

‘Is it?’ Now Suze was shouting, glaring at Gracie with pain-filled eyes. ‘Is it? What if he’s mental, Gracie? What if there’s too much damage, and he’s not George any more?’

‘You’ll have to keep it down please,’ said the nurse, coming over looking irritated. ‘We can’t have the patients upset.’

‘How long will he be like this?’ Gracie asked the nurse as Suze started to sob uncontrollably.

‘It takes as long as it takes,’ said the nurse. ‘Sit her down outside, all right?’

Gracie was pleased to. It hurt her horribly to see George like that. Suze was right. It
did
look as if he was screaming, and it was awful to think of him trapped within his own body, unable to make a sound. How could the nurse really know what was going on inside George’s brain? Was he in pain? Was he frightened? Who the hell knew?

Oh Jesus, I’ve got to stop thinking about it.

She took Suze out into the waiting room.

Lorcan was gone, but the muscle was still there in the corner and Sandy was sitting there too. She saw Gracie and Suze come out and stood up expectantly.

‘How is he?’ she asked.

‘Coming round, but it’s not pretty,’ said Gracie, guiding Suze into a chair.

‘I’ll go in,’ said Sandy. ‘That boy was just here.’

‘Which boy?’ asked Gracie, feeling shattered. She found herself wishing that Lorcan hadn’t pissed off somewhere – he was probably in the ground-floor café exerting that famous Irish charm on Jackie and Emma Sullivan.

‘The blond boy who tried to pass himself off as George’s brother,’ said Sandy.

The muscle looked up.

‘That right?’ Gracie asked him.

He nodded.

‘Who
is
that man?’ asked Sandy, staring at the muscle with suspicion.

Gracie ignored the question. ‘How long ago was he here? A couple of minutes?’

‘He was literally
just
here. Seconds ago. He saw me here – he must have recognized me from before – and then this man stood up and asked who he was waiting to see, and he just left.’

Seconds ago.

‘Get Mum a coffee, will you? Look after her,’ said Gracie to the muscle and, pulling Sandy after her, she went out into the corridor. People wheeling trolleys, people pushing invalids in wheelchairs. No blond boy.

‘When you spot him, tell me, okay?’ she said quickly to Sandy.

Dragging Sandy along behind her, Gracie hurried off towards the lifts. There was a bank of them, each big enough to take a hospital bed; all three doors on one side stood open, and there was no blond boy in any of them waiting for the lift to descend.

Gracie hurried over to the opposite side. One had the doors closed and was going down. The other two had people bustling around it, visitors, nurses, patients . . . no blond boy.

‘Come on,’ said Gracie, and hared off to the stairs, pushing through the swing doors at a run, Sandy puffing along behind her.

They went down to the next floor, pushed out through the doors, looked at the lift – it was still going down. Gracie dragged Sandy back into the stairwell and started down again. At the next level they came out and looked hopefully at the lift again. The doors opened. There were four people inside: an elderly couple, a porter pushing a bed with a stick-thin woman in it. No blond boy.

‘
Shit!
’ snapped Gracie.

Where had he gone?

‘Maybe he took the stairs,’ said Sandy with a shrug.

‘No, we’d have heard him.’ Everything echoed like crazy in the stairwells. Theirs had been the only footfalls; Gracie was certain of that.

Still clutching Sandy’s hand, she dived back into the stairwell and hurtled up the two flights to the intensive care level once again. Looked up and down the corridors. No blond boy. Then she spotted what she was after and dived through the door marked with a tiny stick-figure man.

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ complained Sandy on finding herself in the Gents toilet.

The toilets were empty, but one of the cubicle doors was shut.

Gracie put a finger to her lips. They stood silent, just inside the door. The toilet flushed. Then a strikingly good-looking blond teenager came out and crossed to the sinks and washed his hands. He glanced up at himself in the mirror, and then he saw the two women standing there watching him. He stiffened in alarm, splashing water down the front of his jeans.

‘What the . . .?’ he said faintly.

‘That’s him,’ said Sandy.

‘Who the hell are you?’ he asked.

‘I’m Gracie, George’s sister,’ said Gracie. ‘And this is Sandy, his fiancée.’

The boy’s mouth dropped open. ‘His
what?
’

‘Now can I ask who you are? You’ve been passing yourself off as George’s brother, but you’re not.’

The boy was shaking his head. He started towards them. ‘I’m
out
of here,’ he said, and tried to push past them.

Gracie grabbed his arm, trying to keep him there. He yanked hard, nearly dragging her with him out through the door.

‘No, stop,’ shouted Gracie. ‘Who are you? Come on. What would it hurt to tell me?’

Suddenly there was a blade in the boy’s hand. Gracie stepped back, her chest fizzing with sudden alarm. Sandy let out a small shriek. The boy’s eyes were wild with fear. He waved the knife in their faces.

Fuck
, thought Gracie, freezing.
Didn’t see that coming.

‘Okay,’ she gasped out. ‘Okay.’

The boy stepped past them to the door. Then the door pushed inward and Lorcan stood there. He looked at the blade in the boy’s hand, at Gracie and Sandy. He lunged forward and grabbed the boy’s wrist and squeezed, hard. The boy let out a scream of pain, and the knife fell to the floor. Lorcan pushed in further, sending the boy stumbling back against the row of sinks.

‘What’s going on here?’ demanded Lorcan, looking like he was about to take the boy’s head off. He shook him, hard. Alfie’s head collided with rock-hard porcelain and he let out a yell.

‘You little fucker, what do you think you’re doing?’ spat out Lorcan in a rage.

‘Don’t!’ shouted Gracie; she could see that Lorcan was about to give the boy a pounding. ‘Lorcan, don’t. He’s terrified.’

‘He fucking-well
will
be in a minute . . .’ Then Lorcan stopped. He held the boy in front of the long slab of mirror and stared at him. ‘Hold on a second. Don’t I know you? Aren’t you . . . Alfie? George’s pal?’

Chapter 56

Christmas Eve

‘What do you
mean
, engaged?’ Alfie was asking Sandy, looking at her like she was an escapee from a lunatic asylum. ‘George ain’t engaged, not to
anyone.
’

They were sitting in the hospital canteen, all of them. Lorcan, Gracie, Suze, Jackie and Emma, Alfie and Sandy Cole. The heavy was still upstairs, outside intensive care.

‘Maybe you don’t know him very well,’ said Sandy, staring sniffily at this impossibly beautiful boy.

‘No, I
do
. I think
you’re
the one mistaken here.’

‘What are you to George anyway?’ demanded Sandy.

‘
Look
,’ said Gracie pointedly. ‘Can we all calm down?’ She looked at Alfie. ‘Do you know anything about George’s injury? How it happened?
When
it happened?’

Alfie shook his head dolefully. ‘No. I don’t. I wish I did.’

‘George got you the job at Lorcan’s place, is that right?’ asked Gracie, glancing towards Lorcan for confirmation.

Alfie nodded. He stirred his coffee and sighed.

‘You’re a friend of George’s,’ said Gracie.

‘I was staying with him. Him and Harry.’

‘So where
is
Harry?’ said Jackie quickly, leaning forward. ‘Do you know?’

Alfie shrugged and reddened. ‘No. I know he was going to move out. But he just went out and didn’t come back.’

‘Why was he going to move out?’ Now it was Suze’s turn to speak. She looked raddled, wrung out in the harsh fluorescent lighting in the café. Seeing George like that had shaken her badly. ‘George and Harry have always got on. They’ve never argued.’

‘They didn’t
argue
,’ said Alfie, looking awkward.‘I think . . . well, Harry just wanted to move on, that was all.’

‘But no forwarding address?’ queried Lorcan. ‘That don’t make sense, if the split was amicable.’

‘Look, I don’t know why Harry left or where he went. And after this happened to George, I felt spooked in the flat on my own. So I moved out too. I had wages, so I checked into a B & B.’

‘And came visiting George claiming to be his brother,’ said Gracie.

‘I had to do that. They wouldn’t have let me see him otherwise, and I
had
to see him. He’s been so good to me. Him and Harry. I had some trouble . . .’

‘What sort of trouble?’ asked Lorcan.

Alfie shrugged. ‘I left home last year. Came to London. Met a guy called Lefty and he said he could get me a job. Turns out he was working for Deano Drax.’

‘Deano
Drax
?’ said Lorcan.

Gracie looked at him sharply. ‘You know him?’

Lorcan nodded. ‘I know
of
him. He runs a fetish club in Soho. Likes young boys, so the rumour goes. Nasty bastard.’

Gracie looked across at Alfie. ‘What, you mean this “Deano” wanted to—’

Alfie twisted his lips in a grimace. ‘Lefty drugged me up for him. Christ, you’d have to be doped to go with a twisted minger like that. But I managed to get away. Then Lefty cornered me . . . and George was just passing by. George saved me. Gave me a roof over my head. Him and Harry were just great to me.’Alfie was looking at Sandy again. ‘I can’t understand you saying what you did, though. George, engaged? No. That’s not possible.’

‘It
is
possible,’ said Sandy hotly. ‘He’s engaged to me. Look.’ She flourished the ring at him.

Alfie sat back, folded his arms. ‘Crap,’ he said.

‘Now look—’

‘Shall we not fight among ourselves?’ suggested Lorcan. ‘The main thing is, George is on the mend.’

‘We don’t know that yet,’ said Suze dejectedly. ‘God, he just looks so ill. It looks like he’s screaming his head off and can’t make a sound. And how do we know what he’s going to be like when he
does
come round? He could be paralysed. He could be brain damaged.’

‘We have to try and be positive,’ said Gracie, squeezing Sandy’s hand because she looked so distraught at what Suze was saying. Then she looked at Lorcan. ‘Do you think the “scorched-earth” policy would be Deano Drax’s sort of thing?’

‘The
what?
’ asked Suze and Jackie at the same time.

‘Like Saddam Hussein did after the Iraq war,’ said Gracie. ‘Burning things. Destroying things. Trashing
everything
left behind.’

Lorcan was staring at the table, looking thoughtful. He looked up at Gracie. ‘That twisted git’s capable of anything, from what I hear,’ he said.

‘Setting the fire? Doing Mum’s door with a chainsaw? Slashing my car tyres? Sending us Harry’s hair?’

‘
What?
’ demanded Emma, going deathly white.

‘We each got a packet of Harry’s hair,’ said Suze with a shudder.

‘Then Harry didn’t
leave
,’ said Jackie forcefully. ‘Someone must have snatched him. Oh my God.’ She put her hands to her mouth, horrified. ‘We must tell the police.’

‘The notes with the hair said no police,’ said Gracie quickly. ‘We can’t risk it. We might be putting Harry in terrible danger if we did that.’

Jackie sank back in her seat, her face a mask of terror and confusion.

‘And nobody knows even now where Harry is,’ said Emma, close to tears. Jackie hugged her. Gracie felt so sorry for them. It was obvious that they both cared hugely for Harry.

Gracie looked at Lorcan. ‘Everything’s pointing towards Deano Drax,’ she said to him. ‘Wouldn’t you say? Drax must have bashed George’s head in when he found out – somehow – that Alfie was with him. That bastard.’

‘Looks that way,’ said Lorcan.

‘So what do we do now?’ asked Gracie, her voice betraying her desperation. She thought of Harry, in the clutches of an evil man like that. Thought of the bags of Harry’s hair. And shuddered with dread for him.

Lorcan was looking very angry. ‘That bastard needs his arse kicking,’ he said.

Emma was looking at him with stricken eyes. ‘What do you think’s happened to Harry?’

Lorcan shook his head. ‘I wish I could answer that.’

‘Will you try to find him?’

Lorcan looked at her. Read the desperation and the love in her eyes. ‘Yeah. Of course I will.’

‘Hold on . . .’ said Gracie, alarmed.

‘Then . . . if you see him,
when
you see him, tell him I didn’t mean it.’ Her voice caught on a choked sob. ‘Tell him I’m sorry. Tell him Em sends her love.’

Alfie stood up. ‘Getting another drink,’ he mumbled, and went off to join the queue.

‘Look, we mustn’t do anything stupid,’ said Gracie, looking at Lorcan. She knew how impetuous he could be.

‘What, we got to sit around while that
gobshite
runs rings around us?’ he challenged her.

‘No, but—’

‘No,’ snapped Lorcan. ‘Fuck
that
for a plan. If Drax had that fire started—’

‘What fire?’ butted in Suze.

‘There was a fire at Gracie’s casino,’ he told her. ‘She could have been killed.’

‘Yeah, but I
wasn’t
,’ said Gracie firmly, not wanting Lorcan to go off on one and put himself at risk. ‘Jesus, will you calm down? I wasn’t even there. Drax knew I wasn’t. He had someone watching me, he
knew
I lived elsewhere.’

Lorcan looked unconvinced. ‘So he set light to your property instead,’ he said angrily. ‘Look, we know he hurt George. He nearly killed him. We’re near as dammit sure he’s got Harry somewhere. He’s attacked you. He’s tried to attack Suze. That bastard wants
stopping.
’

Sandy was looking round with disparaging eyes. ‘Where’s that cheeky little sod gone?’ she asked of no one in particular.

Gracie tore her eyes away from Lorcan. ‘What?’

‘You don’t think he knows more than he’s saying?’ said Suze.

‘Who, Alfie? Like what?’ queried Gracie. Lorcan’s hot words had unsettled and distracted her. She had to drag her attention back to Suze.

‘Like . . . oh, I don’t know. I just think he’s hiding something, that’s all. I could be totally wrong.’ Suze was staring at the queue now. ‘He’s not in the queue,’ she said. ‘Where
is
he . . .?’

Now they were all looking at the queue of customers at the kiosk. Alfie wasn’t among them.

Lorcan stood up. ‘Shit. I’ll go look for him.’

Gracie watched him go anxiously. Within five minutes, he was back.

‘He’s not in the loos or anywhere,’ said Lorcan. ‘Looks like he’s taken off.’

‘Huh! Didn’t like the company, I suppose,’ said Sandy acidly.

Alfie couldn’t stand another moment in the hospital. His mind was in a whirl. He’d been knocked sideways by the sight of George reviving; hopeful and horrified and just wishing the George he loved would come back to him again. But what
would
come back? A shell? His stomach was churning with the worry of it all. And that girl, Sandy what’sher-face, saying she and George were engaged – what sort of shit was that? Had George been lying to him, was George in fact
cheating
on him with that dumb bitch?

No, he had to get out of there. Had to take his mind off it all or start screaming and be unable to stop. He caught the tube and then walked through the dark icy streets, all strung with Christmas lights and full of last-minute shoppers, to the casino. He went to the back entrance, where all the staff clocked in every day, hoping for a sight of one of his many workmates to chat to, and it was then, right then, that he was grabbed from behind. Something noxious was slapped over his nose and mouth. There was a strong chemical scent and a feeling of falling, tumbling end over end into darkness. And then – nothing.