LITMIR.BIZ

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me, but are you lookin’ for Ewan McCulloch?’ she called down to him, and Boonzie nodded and said he was. ‘I’m Ewan’s uncle,’ he explained.

      She said, ‘The police were here before.’ She pronounced it the Scottish way, ‘polis’.

      Boonzie frowned. ‘The police?’ What was this about? Hadn’t he said to Ewan not to call them until he got here?

      What the woman said next shocked him. ‘Aye. Ewan’s been hurt. He’s been taken to the hospital in Fort William.’

      ‘Hurt? What happened?’

      The neighbour shook her head. ‘Dunno, but it sounds bad. Happened this mornin’. You should get over there quick.’

      Boonzie was reeling, but outwardly showed no flicker. He retrieved the business card from his pocket and asked, ‘Mind if I use your phone?’

      An hour later, Boonzie jumped out of Duncan Laurie’s taxicab for the second time that day, ran up the steps of Fort William’s Belford Hospital, slammed through the entrance into the reception area and hurried to the front desk. ‘Ewan McCulloch was brought in here today. Where is he?’

      ‘Are you a relative?’

      ‘I’m his uncle, Archibald McCulloch.’ Boonzie normally disliked giving his real name, but at this moment Ewan’s wellbeing was all that mattered to him. ‘Was he in an accident? Is he badly hurt?’

      ‘Take a seat over there please, Mr McCulloch. Someone will come and speak to you in a minute.’

      Wild horses couldn’t have made Boonzie sit down for an instant. He paced furiously for seven and a half minutes before a weary and overworked-looking doctor wearing blue surgeon’s scrubs finally appeared from a doorway down the corridor. The medical receptionist hurried over from the desk, conferred quietly for a moment with her and pointed in Boonzie’s direction.

      Boonzie saw the doctor’s eyes snap onto him. He clocked the expression on her face. He knew instantly that what she had to tell him wasn’t good news.

      The doctor came over. She had fair hair tied in a tight bun, and a staff name badge that identified her as Dr Fraser, head surgeon. Before she could speak, Boonzie collared her with ‘So, tell me. Is my nephew dead?’

      ‘He’s alive.’ But the way she said it was full of concern. Boonzie stood and listened with gritted teeth and balled fists as Dr Fraser told him what had happened to Ewan.

      ‘He’s suffered an epidural haematoma, fractured cheekbones, a broken jaw, broken collarbones, a compound fracture to the right arm and another to the left leg, plus a severely dislocated shoulder and massive bruising. But he’s lucky to be in as good shape as he is. I thought we were going to lose him.’

      In some ways the story sounded like a terrible echo of what Boonzie already knew about the fate of Ross Campbell. The doctor related how a local resident, who happened to be driving along the lochside road that morning to visit a friend, had stumbled upon the car wreck and the inert body lying by the roadside in the pouring rain and called 999. A former nurse, she’d checked the victim’s pulse, recognised the seriousness of his injuries and known to do all the right things. If not for her intervention and the good fortune of finding him in time, Ewan might well not have survived.

      Just as with Ross, everybody’s first assumption had been that the victim had suffered an accident. The doctor explained: ‘That was how it initially seemed when he was brought in. It wasn’t until I examined his injuries more closely that I realised … of course I notified the police right away. They’re looking into the matter even as we speak.’

      ‘Realised what?’ Boonzie asked. The muscles in his throat were clamped so tight that he could barely speak.

      ‘I’m sorry to say there’s more to this,’ Dr Fraser replied. ‘Your nephew appears to have been the victim of a deliberate, possibly premeditated and very violent assault. Judging by the extent and pattern of his injuries, I’d say there were at least two attackers. Maybe more, I don’t know. What I do know is that the injuries look as though they were inflicted with one or more solid impact weapons. Something with a round profile, like a baseball bat.’ She shook her head. ‘Frankly, I’ve never seen anything quite so vicious before. Things like this just don’t happen in this region. Basically they beat the poor man to a pulp and left him for dead.’

      Boonzie digested that information with the fear and rage inside him starting to turn to ice-cold water in his veins. He was silent for a few seconds. Then asked tersely, ‘Will he survive?’

      ‘I don’t have the facilities for complex neurosurgery, so I had to trepan the skull. That’s when—’

      ‘I ken what trepanation is,’ Boonzie said. Many years earlier, in a bloody little jungle war that officially never happened and was now largely forgotten by all but the men who’d fought and watched their comrades die in it, he’d seen an SAS medic desperately trying to save the life of a badly concussed soldier in the field by drilling a hole in his head to relieve pressure on the brain. The soldier had lived, but he’d never been the same again.

      Dr Fraser glanced at her watch. ‘He came out of surgery just over an hour ago and is in intensive care right now. So far he seems to be doing fine, under the circumstances, but we’ll have a better idea of his prognosis once he regains consciousness. Obviously it’s the brain injury I’m most concerned about. The coma might last hours, or it might last days, weeks, or longer.’

      ‘Or for ever.’

      ‘There is that possibility, which we need to be prepared for.’

      ‘What are his chances, fifty-fifty?’

      ‘I wouldn’t like to speculate, Mr McCulloch. Things could go in any number of ways and it’s far too soon to tell.’

      ‘I appreciate your honesty, Doctor,’ Boonzie growled.

      ‘In such cases the relatives are always notified. But it seems it’s not been possible to locate a next of kin.’

      ‘I’m his only family. Can I see him? Even for a moment?’

      She hesitated. ‘You might find it upsetting to see him in his condition.’

      If the good doctor only knew the slaughterhouse horrors that Boonzie had witnessed in his lifetime. ‘I can handle it,’ he replied.

      ‘Just for a moment, then. Come this way.’

       Chapter 7

      A couple of hours earlier, while Ewan McCulloch was still on the operating table, a phone conversation had taken place. It was a very private and secret call, but if anyone on the outside had been listening they’d quickly have worked out which of the callers was the subordinate, and which of them was clearly in charge.

      ‘What part of this do you not understand? Your instructions were to beat the truth out of him and then kill him. It’s not rocket science.’

      ‘We tried to get it out of him. He didn’t seem to know anything.’

      ‘So not only did you come back empty-handed, you also left him alive. Are you stupid?’

      ‘It wasn’t our fault. I told you, a car turned up before we could finish him off. We had to leg it before we were spotted.’

      ‘Yes, yes. I get the picture. Four tough guys, scared of some bloody old biddy on her own. What a bunch of pathetic cowards.’

      ‘What were we supposed to do, beat the shit out of her as well, in broad daylight? And what if someone else had turned up too?’

      ‘The road past Loch Ardaich isn’t exactly the M25. You could easily have handled it.’

      ‘Well, we were unlucky, that’s all. Credit where credit’s due,

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