Get Katja (5 page)

Katja emerges back into consciousness like a bead of blood into new tattoo.

Each time the room around her comes into focus it quickly shivers and fades again, dragging her even deeper back into the haze which had previously consumed her. Her limbs feel heavy and a crashing headache throbs within her skull. She tries to move but can’t. She hears footsteps and an occasional electronic beep. She becomes aware of someone in the room beside her.

She does her best to focus her every thought on breaking free of the darkness and finally it peels away from her. Bright light rushes in, causing little spikes of pain to shoot through her eyeballs. Her throat feels raw, each swallow like knocking back a shot of broken glass, and when she tries to touch it she finds that her hands won’t move.

She looks down, blinking to clear the remainder of the drug-fog, and realizes that she is lying on a hospital gurney, her wrists and ankles held in place by black leather restraints.

“What . . . the hell . . . ?”

A figure appears next to her, almost entirely described in silhouette but she just barely makes out the surgical scrubs and mask.

“Am I . . . in hospital?”

“No,” the man says. “Why, are you ill?”

“I . . .”

Katja tries once more to sit up but the restraints hold tight. She blinks some more and the initial dazzle of the light fades away as her eyes adjust. She struggles to recall how she got here, remembers the gig. No—the sound check. Then after that?

Heels. Why is she thinking about high heels? And a fat man, reeking of an ugly body odour. A chemical burning at her nostrils. These pieces float around her, refusing to settle into any sensible order.

I know who you are, Katja. And I think we both know that there are certain people who would just love to get their hands on you.

X-rays and sketches are pinned to the wall above her, enlarged photos of what she instantly recognises to be her own neck.

The surgeon leans over her, his gloved hands working their way across her chest and throat.

“Healing well,” he says. “I do not understand why you would have wanted to cut the tube out in the first place. Such a shame. But this one is much improved anyway.”

He holds a small mirror up, presenting her with the image of a gleaming new tracheotomy tube protruding from the midst of the tattoo which she had gotten to cover up the remainder of her previous one.

“What the . . . fuck is . . . this?”

“Beautiful,” the surgeon says, too focused on her neck to properly hear the question. “A good start.”

“Start of what?”

He puts the mirror to one side, regarding her with puzzlement, as if he couldn’t contemplate why she would ask such a thing. “Your transformation.”

And he waves a hand across the collection of prints and x-rays pinned to the wall.

Katja examines them more carefully, realising that there are Polaroids of people in amongst the sketches, people with strange additions and modifications to their heads and bodies. They’re still bloody from whatever operations they have been through, still marked with dotted incision lines.

“You’re fuck . . . ing . . . kidding . . . meee,” she slurs.

“You have nothing to worry about,” he tells her. “What Anna and I had planned for . . . you are so much like her. So much like her in so many ways.”

He removes his gloves, runs a hand across Katja’s shaven scalp. She wriggles beneath him but her body is still refusing to fully co-operate.

“But this is enough for one night. You need to keep your strength up.”

He goes around the back of the gurney, out of her line of sight, then pushes her across the makeshift surgery towards a door at the rear.

“I am going to unstrap you now, Katja. I should warn you that if you try anything I have a dose of sedative here. I haven’t properly calculated the dosage based on your body weight so whilst it might not be lethal, I cannot guarantee it. I would hate to lose you so early on and I’m sure you will be keen to not lose yourself either, yes?”

He holds up a syringe to prove his point. She nods and so he undoes her straps one by the one, watching her the whole time.

“There,” he says when done. “Can you stand for me?”

He slides an arm underneath her back and assists her into a sitting position, then onto her feet. She grits her teeth, fighting for control of her own limbs, her legs threatening to give way beneath her. She scans the room whilst the surgeon punches a code into a keypad mounted on the wall, calculating any potential escape routes, but the staircase behind him appears to be the only way out and she has no idea what it leads to. The surgeon opens the door, the room beyond is no more than twelve feet by twelve feet and swathed in darkness. A bed lies up against the far corner, a chrome wash basin in one of the others. The surgeon helps her to the bed, lays her down.

“Get some rest,” he tells her, smiling. “I will be back soon and we can begin the next procedure.”

“So who is it then?” she asks him, still wary of the syringe he holds. “One of Szerynski’s lot? It can’t be Kohl—that one couldn’t organise a fuck in a brothel.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” he says. “Please, get some rest.”

He closes the door and the sound of his footsteps quickly fades.

Katja forces herself upright, one arm on the wall beside her. Her eyes now fight to re-adjust, the stark illumination of the surgery swapped once more for darkness.

She staggers across the room and tries the door handle but it holds fast. She bangs on the door, snarling threats into it, all the while feeling as if she is about to collapse. She feels her way around the room blindly, checking for taped-up windows or ventilation shafts, anything. She finds a light switch and hits it, a strip-light buzzing into weak life above her.

And then someone says, “Katja?”

She freezes, finger still on the switch, recognising the voice instantly.

After having had his blood drawn Nikolai is led out of the clinic by the nurse with the pink hair.

She locks up and he gets back into her car. She drives him a short distance to a club district and into a building with the words
Flesh Heel
emblazoned across the front doors in reflective paint. A queue of people in fetishwear line up behind a rope guarded by doormen so beefed up it appears as if their shoulders have enveloped their necks. They step to one side when they see the nurse and open the doors for her. Nikolai is quickly guided through the smoke- and neon-filled room, past people gyrating and wrapped around one another, past the bar lit from beneath in a cold blue light, and into a rear passageway.

“Where are we going?” he asks her.

She doesn’t answer, leads him down a set of steps and into a makeshift surgery.

A girl lies out on an operating table and Nikolai recognises her as the one from clinic. Her head is turned to one side and she is staring right at him but her eyes are glassy, vacant. A man dressed in surgical smocks, including a facial mask and cap, looks up from the instrument tray he is arranging. He nods at the woman and she takes Nikolai’s arm, guides him to a door at the back of the room and enters a secure code, and then they go inside.

She flicks a light switch on, revealing a small, sparse room with a basic wire-framed bed on either side and a chrome washbasin in between.

“Get some rest,” she tells him.

The sound of a drill revving up echoes through from the surgery beyond.

“I thought this was just going to be some tests,” he says as he is sat down on the bed. “I mean . . .”

The whirring increases in intensity and volume from outside, matching the speed of Nikolai’s hands rubbing up and down his legs.

“Don’t worry about that,” she tells him. “It’s unrelated.”

“Oh. Good.”

“I’m going to turn the light off so you can get some rest, okay?”

Before he can say anything the room is plunged into darkness as the door closes, muffling the noises coming from the surgery beyond.

“Shit,” he mutters.

Without knowing what else to do he settles down on the bed, remaining in the darkness for what seems like hours until the door opens once more and a woman is brought in by the surgeon. Nikolai can only make out the vaguest impressions of them but even in the low light he thinks he recognises her.

The surgeon closes the door and she launches herself at it, slamming her fists against it and screaming obscenities then scrabbling around the room, her hands just barely brushing him at one point, until she finds the light switch. She hits it and now he is certain.

“Katja,” he says.

And perhaps being locked in the room with the surgeon might not be the worst possibility after all.

“
Nikolai?
” she says, turning around. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

“I didn’t think I . . . what are you doing here?”

“You first.”

“Another medical study. I think.”

She looks at him for a few moments, taking in the fresh plasters rimmed with dried blood on the back of his hands and inner arm.

“You’re here for the trial too?”

“Tell me, Nikolai,” she says with menace, ignoring his question. “Does the name Lady Delicious ring any bells?”

“Lady who?”

“Ah, I see,” she says, arms crossed as she walks towards him. He backs farther into the corner. “So you don’t remember taking out a loan in the name of the band?”

“A
loan
?”

“Yes, a fucking
loan
!” she screams. “A fucking
loan
which that demented bitch and her gang of tranny psychos are now expecting
me
to settle! I hope it was money well spent, Nikolai, I hope you got utterly off your face on it.”

Nikolai says nothing.

“I
trusted
you, Nik. I stood up for you! I told the rest of the band you were clean and then what do you go and do? You turn up to rehearsals whacked out of your little mind.”

And it’s as if the last couple of months haven’t happened, their current argument seamlessly entwining with the one they had had the last time they were together.

“Well, I’ve got news for you,” she continues. “The band is doing just fucking fine without you. Joey stepped in.”

“Oh,” he says. Then, “I saw your poster. The gig.”

And he takes the folded up scrap of paper from his back pocket, unravels it and shows it to her.

“Yeah, well it ain’t going to happen if I’m locked up here much longer,” she says quietly. She looks around the room, examining it in more detail now that it is lit.

She climbs up on the other bed, running her hands along the wall as if hoping to find a secret lever or door.

“Katja,” he says eventually. “I’m sorry.”

He’s lost track of the number of times he’s apologised to her after what happened but each time the sentiment has less and less meaning—though what else can he do?

And then he realizes exactly what he can do.

DeBoer rolls the syringe back and forth between his palms, the remaining trickle of liquid glinting in the moonlight coming in through the station wagon’s windshield. He rubs at the back of his neck to work away the lingering numbness, winces when he touches the little lump where the needle was shoved into him.

He was still woozy from the injection when he threw his weight around inside the squat, threatening whomever he found, demanding that they tell him where Katja was, but it had gotten him nowhere. So here he is now, back in the crappy old-man car, parked outside a welding plant, a shift just ending and the workers, their overalls filthy and their hair matted with sweat, emerging onto the street.

DeBoer licks his fingers, straightens his moustache, then gets out.

His legs are more stable now, willing to go along with the request to stride towards the workers. His raincoat billows around him and the men spot him when he is still several metres away but he is honing in on one in particular. His target sees him coming and there’s a moment where it looks like the man is going to run before thinking better of it and coming to a halt. The other workers keep moving, isolating him.

“Well, well, look at you, McAuley,” DeBoer says.

The man is almost entirely constructed of bones and skin with no underlying tissue, everything sharp angles and stretched white. He’s stripped his overalls to the waist and they lie folded back there and tied in a knot like flayed skin. The shock of white hair on his head is smeared with grease.

“What’s this, you’ve finally gone all respectable on me?”

McAuley shrugs. “I have a kid now.”

DeBoer snorts. “Dragged from the shallow end of the gene pool just like Daddy I’m guessing. And don’t tell me you spawned it with that whore you were with last time I saw you?”

Anger flares in McAuley but he holds it back. “I’m just trying to do what’s right by them, Detective. Getting things straightened out. What do you want?”

“Don’t get uppity with me you piece of shit,” DeBoer snaps, stepping up to McAuley and shoving the man’s head into the brick wall behind him. “I can drag you down to the interrogation room if you prefer? Huh? You want me to haul you down there?”

McAuley shakes his head, rubbing the back of it and avoiding eye contact.

“Good.” DeBoer reaches into his coat and pulls out one of the posters of Katja which he had torn from a wall, holds it up.

“You know her?”

“No.”

“I want to find her, you hear me?”

“B-but it says right there she’ll be at the Wheatsheaf tonight.”

“I fucking know that!” DeBoer snaps. “But I don’t want to have to wait that long! Spread the word through this shitting city, I want everyone to know I’m looking for her. I’m about to put a cat amongst the chickens, you hear me? Go tell all your little rat-bastard friends.”

“Detective, I’m not hanging with that lot any more, I already told you. I’m going straight.”

DeBoer laughs. “Where have I heard that one before?”

“I’ve got a job, I’m taking care of my family.”

“
I don’t give a fuck about your fucking family, McAuley!
” DeBoer shouts and slams the man’s head back against the wall again. “You think you’re going straight then just fucking
unstraighten
yourself, you hear me? Get back into the gutters you came from and find out where this girl is or so help me god I’ll make sure you have no
reason
to go straight.
Do you understand me?
”

“Detective, I—”

Another shove of the head and this time McAuley staggers and almost falls over, only just steadying himself against the wall. DeBoer can see the anger in the man’s eyes, the frustration and sadness, and it makes the detective grin broadly.

“People like you
don’t go straight
, McAuley,” DeBoer says, brushing at his coat. Then over his shoulder as he walks back to the car, “I’ll be expecting to hear from you shortly.”