Mayday: A Kaiju Thriller

Chapter Ten

I got nothing but frosty silence out of Priya as I drove her to the hospital. That gave me time to sort through the investigation in my head. I had a lot of little pieces, lots of maybes and conjecture, but nothing substantial. This MPF splinter group had to be linked in somewhere, but how? Had they orchestrated Yllia’s death themselves? Or were they just reacting now that she was dead? We needed to find out how long the three thugs had been here and if there were any others. I didn’t know much about sleeper cells. Maybe Cunningham could put it together. Assuming he wasn’t working with them. If he was, Su-jin would find out.

The question then was what interest the MPF had in Priya and Yllia. And what did Volkov know that he wasn’t sharing?

I turned the problem this way and that in my head, but it didn’t make any sense. I needed something real. A witness, a fingerprint, anything. Someone had to have seen something. The Mayday pits weren’t well guarded, but someone must’ve noticed something odd. I’d have to growl at them myself to get an answer.

I pulled into a car park outside Maytown Hospital. It was a squat building, clean and white and glistening from the rain. I opened my door and started to step out.

“Don’t you have an umbrella?” Priya said, the first words she’d spoken since we left the office.

“Afraid of a little rain?” I asked. I got out. After a moment, she did as well. We dodged puddles as we jogged to the hospital entrance. An unused ambulance was parked in a bay near the entrance. The hospital doors slid open for us and we went inside.

“I’m not talking to my family with you in the room,” she said as I led her to the emergency department.

“Don’t sweat it, sweetheart. I’ll be in the waiting room. There’ll be security outside the door.”

I flashed my ID at the triage desk and asked for the Dasaris by the fake name Healy had set up for them. I got the directions and the boys from Security—well, one was a girl—met us at the door to their room.

I jerked my thumb at Priya. “She’s with me.” I turned to her and tapped my watch. “Thirty minutes, remember.”

Priya nodded curtly and entered the room. I caught a glimpse of Mrs Dasari propped up in her bed, purple blotches across her face. Her eyes were glassy. The door closed in my face.

My hand moved halfway to my own bruises before I caught myself. Forget it. I had half an hour to kill. First stop, the store in the lobby. This afternoon had taught me something about the importance of living. I couldn’t believe I’d ever let my ex-wife convince me to give up smoking. I tossed my e-cigarette in the rubbish on the way and bought a lighter and a pack of Winfields. The girl behind the counter gave me the eye as she handed them over. I guess buying cigarettes in a hospital wasn’t very classy. But to hell with her.

I left the store and went back to the lobby. My stomach was still churning, but I decided I should take the chance to get some food in me since I hadn’t finished my lunch at the Chinese restaurant. I returned to the hospital’s entrance. There was a cafe, but I couldn’t face the queue so I found a vending machine instead. Nothing looked particularly appetising. I finally settled on a chocolate bar and fed my coins into the machine. The spiral holding the chocolate bar in place turned and stopped, threatening to steal my money without giving me anything in return. I put my boot into it to change its mind. The chocolate bar dropped down in surrender. I grabbed it and returned to the waiting room.

I wasn’t a big fan of hospitals—it was the smell, mainly. That and the ugly people. If you want to see some truly hideous specimens of humanity, head to a hospital. But I was going to be here for a while, so I decided I might as well get comfortable. I sat down in the corner, forced down a couple of squares of chocolate, and closed my eyes.