Free Dead Man's Gift 03 - Today by Simon Kernick Page A

standing in this shitty little hospital room.
    He gave his mother another kiss on the forehead, told her he’d be back later, and went out into the corridor and some marginally fresher air.

21
    Scope walked swiftly down the hospital corridor, wondering how long he could keep this up for. He was still waiting for T Rex to come back to him with information about who Frank Bale could be visiting in a hospital this size, with five floors and five hundred beds. And all the time he knew that he might be too late. But he couldn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop until he found Max, and that meant finding Bale.
    He approached an orderly pushing an old man in a bed towards him, and repeated what was fast becoming his standard spiel. ‘I’m looking for one of your patients, Mrs Bale, and I’m not sure what ward’s she’s staying on.’
    The orderly looked at Scope blankly, then looked beyond his shoulder and frowned.
    Scope turned round and saw two uniformed security guards approaching. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said the closest one, a guy in his thirties with messy hair and too much weight round his middle. ‘Can you tell me who you’re here to see?’
    ‘A Mrs Bale,’ he answered as they stopped on either side of him. ‘I’m not sure what ward she’s on.’ He could tell immediately from their body language that they perceived him to be a potential problem. The second guard was younger and bigger, and the tension coming off him was obvious.
    ‘And are you a relative or a friend?’ asked the messy-haired one.
    ‘A friend.’
    ‘And what’s her first name?’
    Scope could hear the phone ringing in his pocket. ‘Excuse me for a moment, I need to answer this.’
    It was Orla, and she sounded breathless. ‘I’ve just seen Bale. He’s heading for the emergency exit on the second floor, just beyond the Maternity Ward.’
    ‘I’ll meet you down there,’ he said, conscious of the two guards watching him like hawks. ‘Keep him in sight but don’t do anything.’ He replaced the phone. ‘Thanks, I’m leaving now,’ he told the guards.
    ‘Yes, you are,’ said Messy Hair, putting a hand on Scope’s right arm, while his colleague did the same with his left. ‘We’ll escort you out.’
    The movement was so fast and sudden that it caught both guards completely by surprise. Ripping his left arm free, Scope struck Messy Hair in the jaw with a left jab, then swung round with his right and punched the second guard in the side of the head, knocking him off balance. Before the second guard could right himself, Scope launched a three-punch combination to his face and stomach, sending him crashing against the wall, pretty much out for the count. Several people, including the orderly, had stopped to watch but no one tried to intervene as Scope took off down the corridor, hoping Orla didn’t try anything stupid before he got there.
    The mobile phone that Frank had bought specifically for this operation was ringing. The ringtone was ‘The Funeral March’, which was Frank’s little joke, but it didn’t feel very funny now. Only two people knew that number, and one of them – Phil Vermont – was dead. Which meant this was his fellow kidnapper, Celia.
    He was currently in a busy hospital corridor so he had no desire to have a conversation with her, but she was too volatile to ignore so he stopped for a moment to get his breath and, as he pulled out the phone, took a quick look behind him to check no one was too close.
    Which was when he saw her twenty yards away, clearly following him, a phone to her ear. Vermont’s floozie, Orla, the one he’d used to entrap Tim Horton and who was meant to have been dead for the past twelve hours.
    Frank Bale was a pro. It was why he’d lasted as long as he had both as a police officer and as a hardened criminal. So he didn’t react at all when he saw her. Instead, he casually put the phone to his ear, turned back round and continued walking. ‘I’ll call you in five minutes,’ he told