Get Katja (4 page)

Leaving the line of wasters standing in the rain, Bridget drives across town then turns the car into the small private parking lot at the front of Stasko’s clinic, stopping next to the surgeon’s racing-green sports car.

She gets out then opens the door for her passenger, motioning for him to get out. He does as instructed, looking up at the brief line of business shop-fronts to either side of the clinic. She knows he’ll be wondering why the clinic is open so late but says nothing as she leads him up to the front door.

Inside, the building is compact and head-ache white, each surface gleaming and sparkling. The main corridor is short and empty save for a framed painting, Roland Penrose’s
Octavia
, and a small shelf on which a high-heeled boot is placed. They follow the corridor into a reception and waiting area with elegantly designed Swedish furniture and a small collection of high-end fashion magazines scattered across a glass table. A young woman is seated in one of the high-backed, white metal chairs, her manicured hands clasped over a large leather-bound book. She looks up at Bridget as they pass and there is a moment of recognition there but Bridget leads the guinea pig past her and through another door.

Beyond the door the lights are out, save for the glow coming from one room at the end of another short corridor. Bridget leads the man to one of the smaller operating theatres and snaps the lights on. They buzz overhead for several moments, flicker and flash, then illuminate the room. Again everywhere is a pure white—one wall lined with shining cupboards and a chair of the sort a dentist might use in the middle of the room.

“Take a seat,” Bridget tells the man. He looks momentarily panicked until she points to the small stool next to the operating chair. “If you could fill this form in and give me a sample of your urine—there’s a small toilet in the corner there if you want to use it. I’ll be back in a minute to collect some blood.”

He nods, still assessing the room and possibly the situation he has allowed himself to be led into, and Bridget leaves, heading for the room at the end of the corridor. She knocks gently then opens the door.

Stasko is bent over the architect-style drawing table before her, furiously scribbling some measurements into a small notepad.

“Bridget,” he says without looking up.

“He’s in the other room,” Bridget says, remaining in the doorway.

Stasko turns, flipping up the magnifying glass which is clipped to his glasses. “Of course,” he says, smiling vaguely. “You got one?”

She nods. “He’s filling out an assessment form. Who’s the girl?”

“What girl?”

“The girl in the waiting room.”

He considers this. “Oh,” he says finally. “She’s still there? Of course she is.”

“Isn’t that what the . . .”

She indicates the sketches and measurements pinned to the drawing table.

“Yes. Yes. That’s correct.”

“Are you okay, Doctor? You seem a little distracted.”

He nods but it doesn’t seem to be in response to her question, instead the response to some internal dialogue she is not privy to.

“I have something else I need you to do for me, Bridget.”

“What do you mean?”

He rubs his jaw and stands and she can see a mad sparkle in his eyes. He holds up one of the pieces of paper magnetically pinned to the drawing board. It appears to a poster of some sort, badly photocopied and with hand-scrawled print on it instead of proper lettering. The bottom half has been torn away but the top half reveals a demented, screaming woman with spiked hair and something jutting from her neck.

“Did you make that?” she asks him, wondering if his grief was finally starting to spiral fully out of control.

He shakes his head, the nervous energy within him palpable as he hands the poster to her. “I want you to find her, Bridget. I want you to bring her to me.”

“Bring who to you?” Bridget asks.

“
Her
,” Stasko says, stabbing a finger at the poster.

“Doctor, I thought I’d already made it clear I don’t want to get involved in . . . that side of things.”

“You brought me the guinea pig.”

“And that’s as far as it goes. I’ve just brought him to you—what you do with him is between you and him.”

“Nurse Soelberg,” he says, leaning in closer. She knows the switch to the more formal method of addressing her is deliberate, that it is designed to reminds her of his authority over her. “We spend all day plumping people’s lips, paralysing them with toxins and sucking out pieces of them through a hose only to pump it back in somewhere else. People have domain over their own bodies so that they can choose to do whatever they like to them. There’s no difference between what goes on here during the day—and what goes on at night.”

“The difference is I only work during the day.”

“You work when I need you to work,” he says, his voice still calm but his teeth clenched. “All I’m asking is that you find this girl and bring her to me just like you brought me the guinea pig. Bring her to me and your involvement will end there, I assure you, Bridget.”

Back to her first name again.

“How am I meant to find her?”

She looks down at the poster. Whatever details there had been as to what the poster had been for must have been on the part that has been torn off.

“You’re a bright girl,” he tells her. “As soon as I have finished with my patient I’ll participate in the search but for now I must delegate to my most trusted employee. I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

He removes the woollen sweater vest he wears and plucks his doctor’s whites from a hook on the wall.

“What about the guinea pig?” she asks.

“Have you finished his assessment yet?”

Shakes her head. “I still have to run bloods and urine.”

“Good, then get it done now before you leave and have him sent to me afterwards. Walk with me.”

He holds the door open for her, making it clear that she has no choice but to accompany him.

They stop by the door to the surgery and Stasko puts a hand on her shoulder. “I trust you will achieve,” he says, then strides down to the waiting area.

A few moments later he emerges with the woman from the waiting room and now Bridget gets a clearer view of her she realizes how young she is—probably no more than eighteen. Her lips are painted purple and sparkle with a pair of lip rings and there is a hesitancy to her movements as she is led out the front door of the clinic by Stasko. She looks over her shoulder, exchanging the briefest of glances with Bridget, before the door closes.

Bridget enters the surgery to find the guinea pig still seated where she had left him, the form she gave him now filled with his personal details. She scans it quickly.

“It’s all I could manage,” he says, holding up the plastic sample bottle filled with a small amount of a dark orange liquid. “Sorry, I must be kind of . . . dehydrated.”

“It’s fine,” she says, then checks the name he has noted down. “Nikolai.”

She takes the bottle from him and inserts it into a little pocket attached to the assessment form.

“I wouldn’t have thought that was your type of music,” he says.

“I’m sorry?”

Then she realizes he is looking at the poster Stasko had given her, still clasped in one hand. “Your gig poster.”

She shrugs. “Is it your type?” she asks absently as she completes some of the details on his form.

“Used to be,” Nikolai says. Then he adds, “I know her.”

“Know who?” Bridget asks, not really paying attention, just wanting to get it all over and done with and back to Liz.

“The girl in the poster. Katja.”

Bridget stops writing and looks up. “Know her how?” she asks suspiciously.

“I . . . I used to be in a band with her. We stayed in the same squat. But then . . .”

“You stay in the same squat?”

“Used to,” Nikolai corrects her.

“But you know where she lives?”

Nikolai suddenly becomes defensive, perhaps sensing the urgency in her voice. “Well, I mean, I could be wrong, it sort of looks like her but then . . .”

“It’s okay, I’m a fan,” Bridget reassures him. “I mean, I’ve heard that she’s worth seeing, that the band is worth seeing. Is this a gig poster, is that what it is? I found it but it was all torn.”

“I don’t know,” Nikolai says, nervous twitches starting to affect him. “It could be, I don’t know anything about it.”

“Come on, Nikolai, I just want the chance to meet her. I . . . I want to form my own band, you know? This job only just pays the bills. If I could just talk to her, get some tips. I could maybe swing an increase in your fee?”

He stops rubbing his legs but doesn’t look up. Several seconds of silence pass, then:

“Yeah I know where she lives,” he says.

Bridget has been in the car long enough for her breath to start fogging the windscreen when she spots someone walking towards the building she’s been watching. Small and wearing a hooded top, arms wrapped around themselves, it’s difficult to tell age or whether the figure is male or female but it’s the only person she has seen in a long while.

She sits bolt upright as headlights flash across her rear view mirror, quickly followed by the screech of tires. She looks out the window in time to see an old station wagon ramp up onto the curb outside the building and a man pull himself free of the vehicle. He stumbles out of it and chases after the hooded figure, jumping on his target and sending them both crashing to the ground. Bridget continues to watch the two struggle, resisting the urge to start the engine and get out of there, but if the guinea pig were to tell Stasko about the information he had given her then the surgeon would be expecting something as a result.

The man, fat and swathed in a dirty raincoat, presses himself down onto the hooded figure, clutching something to his prey’s face.

“Come on, Bridget,
do
something,” she says to herself, taking out the hypodermic syringe she had prepared earlier. She opens the car door, the screams coming from across the road now clearly female. The man lifts the woman’s prone form onto his shoulders and carries her back to his car.

“Wait. Just wait,” Bridget mutters. Her hands, now in a fresh pair of purple latex gloves, are shaking. “I don’t even know if it’s her.”

The man opens the rear door of his car and shoves the body inside, dusts off his hands. Places a handkerchief back in his pocket.

When he’s circling around to the front of the car Bridget finally jumps out, keeping her head low as she crosses to him.

He hears the sound of her footfall but only at the last moment. By that time the needle is already sunk deep into the flabby tissue at the back of his neck and the effect is almost instantaneous. His body first goes rigid, hands coming up to his neck but not quite making it before everything goes limp and he crashes to the ground like a felled walrus. Bridget watches over him until she is certain that he is out cold then reaches into his coat pocket and takes out his wallet. She pulls out some old, stained business cards. A fucking detective.

“Shit,” she says, suddenly panicking that there will be others, wondering if she has just interrupted some sort of police operation but when nothing happens she hurriedly opens the rear of the car.

The woman’s hood has been pulled off and Bridget takes the gig poster from her pocket and unfolds it, matching the two despite the murky light and the fact that the woman’s head was clean-shaven rather than littered with spikes. Bridget leans in closer, checks the woman is still breathing then examining the extensive tattoo which covers her neck, running a gloved finger across it. She feels something embedded in the skin beneath the design and instantly knows that it is the reason that Stasko is after her.

She reaches in and, with some difficulty, manages to haul the body up onto her shoulder. She staggers across the road and cracks open the rear door to her own vehicle, shoves the woman inside. Slams the door shut, starts the engine.

The car tires squeal as they try to find purchase and as she drives off she glances in the rear view mirror at the still-prone figure of the fat man, wondering what the hell kind of trouble Katja is already involved in.

Flesh Heel is busy with the usual clientele when Bridget enters. Loud darkwave music blasts from speakers positioned around the club, deftly controlled by a man in an expensive-looking metal and latex outfit lurking behind a set of decks in one corner. Neon tube lights of varying colour adorn the walls along with metallic whips and casts of various body parts, curtains of chain-mail, and paintings of latex-clad women. More latex-clad women sit in the booths beneath them as if they have just stepped out of the portraits, nursing vibrant cocktails and pitchers of dark purple liquid.

Bridget adjusts her grip on Katja, the other woman’s arm hooked around her shoulder and gripped by the wrist. A few look up as they pass but merely give Bridget a knowing look, perhaps having been in a similar situation themselves or hoping to achieve it by the end of the night. She manages to haul Katja through the club and to a door at the back of the bar area.

She punches a code into the security keypad mounted on the door frame. There’s an electronic click as the lock is released. She struggles to get the door open while maintaining her grip on Katja, only just managing to get through without letting the unconscious woman tumble to the floor. The door seals shut behind them on weighted hinges and instantly the atmosphere changes.

Silence swapped for the pounding industrial throb of the music.

A cool, almost clinical air, swapped for the sweaty heat of the club.

She descends a mercifully short set of steps into the basement and calls out Stasko’s name.

The room which extends beyond the stairs is kitted out with exactly the same gleaming white fittings as the clinic, lit by an enormous surgical lamp which looms over a gurney like a predator. The girl from the clinic lies on the table, limbs slightly parted, her hair wrapped in disposable plastic. A green sheet is spread across her and there’s a bloody gauze taped over her mouth out of which a small piece of tubing emerges. Another breath-restriction fetishist, Bridget realizes. Her breathing is steady and calm, a couple of machines to one side monitoring her sedation.

Stasko is in the far corner, bent over a sink and scrubbing blood and iodine from his hands. He knocks the tap with one elbow when he becomes aware of Bridget’s presence. His face lights up when he realizes she is not alone and he rushes to them.

“You found her already?
How?
”

Bridget hands Katja’s limp form over to him, deciding not to mention the information Nikolai had given her. She might as well get the credit if she can get away with it.

“Does it matter?”

Stasko holds Katja around the waist as if he is clutching his lover after a fainting episode. He gently runs his hand across her face and scalp then over her neck. He feels what Bridget had earlier felt, the little protrusion from the middle of her neck, almost lost amidst the tattoo. He uses his pinkie to prod it and lets out a sigh.

“So we’re done?” Bridget asks, already stepping back towards the stairs.

Stasko barely acknowledges her, nodding absently but still studying Katja intently.

“Get her cleaned up and into the recovery suite,” he says, vaguely indicating the girl on the operating table.

“Are you sure she’s ready to . . .”

“Now, Nurse Soelberg,” Stasko insists.

“Yes doctor.”