Get Katja (8 page)

Nikolai’s squat is an old college dorm, severed from the rest of the neighbourhood in which it is nestled by an overpass that sweeps up and overhead like the light-flash of a blade. The road’s support structure straddles the building on either side, fencing it in. There’s a constant drip-drip of oily water from high above.

He leads Katja inside and along a wide corridor with a black and white tiled floor, the lacquer long since scrubbed away, ornate doors spaced at regular intervals. There are notice boards mounted on the walls in the gaps between the doors, a legacy from the building’s previous usage, now littered with notes from the various inhabitants to and from one another—insults, love letters, threats. There are graffiti and drawings sketched onto the wall in Biro, the paint beneath chipped away. And gig posters, just like the one Nikolai had discovered earlier and torn down.

The rest of the inhabitants linger in the background and through the gaps in the doorways, as if each senses the presence of someone new and wishes to keep their distance. They pass one room marked with double doors, and Katja glances through the little windows nestled into it. It’s blindingly bright inside, the outline of huge lamps only just visible, and she recognises the stench of homegrown instantly. A girl in her late teens, all plump lips and rock-steady attitude, strides past in bright pink canvas boots. She’s chewing gum and pops the bubble she has been working on as she passes them.

They keep walking.

Nikolai leads her down a short set of steps and into what was once an office. The furniture has been shoved to one side, snapped and broken where necessary, replaced with a couple of sofa beds, a small lamp, a CD player and a stack of CDs. A small chest of drawers and a couple of shelves. Katja notices a set of drumsticks in a plastic jug. Nikolai sees her looking at them but doesn’t say anything.

“You okay?” he asks instead.

“Yeah,” she says, shrugging. She surveys the room, picking up CDs and plucking books from a shelf just to have something to do.

“Your neck . . .”

She touches a finger to her throat and it comes away tacky. She pulls at the dressing and drops it into a bin full of empty energy drink cans.

“You sure it’s safe here?” she asks him.

“Yeah,” he says without particular conviction. He closes the door as if to reassure her.

“I just got sick of hiding, Nik,” Katja says, unprompted. She looks into a mirror, blurry with fingerprints. She tilts her head from side to side, running a hand across her shaven scalp and neck tattoo. “I guess I knew the posters would be a risk even after doing this to myself—but what the fuck else am I good for?”

She touches the new trach tube emerging from her throat and she reluctantly admits to herself that it does actually look quite good.

“Why do you think he took you? The surgeon.”

“Who knows,” she says. “There was some other guy in a raincoat too.”

“So what now?”

“Now I lay low until the gig.”

“You can’t still go ahead with it—who knows who else has recognised you?”

“I told you already, I’ve had enough of hiding, Nikolai. I need the money but more than that I need to play again. It’s the only time I feel worth a shit.”

“And it’s worth the risk?”

“You either take control or others do,” she says.

She opens the drawers of the chest unit one by one, plucking items of clothing from it then pulls off her skull t-shirt, unties her boots and wriggles out of her leggings. Nikolai finds sudden interest in the posters on the walls as she stands before him in her underwear.

“The fat guy, the one who jumped me in the first place, he knew who I was or at least he said he did. He knew about the island.”

“A friend of Szerynski or one of the other dealers?”

“Who knows. He stank of cop,” she says. She selects a pair of baggy cargo pants and pulls them on. They slouch on her hips even after she pulls the belt tight.

Next is a similarly oversized hooded top, black with a design which has flaked away. When she puts it on all shape is lost from her body. She laces her boots back up and lets the cargos drop down over them, almost entirely concealing them.

“Whoever he was, if he knows about my involvement in what went on then he probably knows about yours too.”

“What about the surgeon? He didn’t recognise me. And he didn’t seem to know who you were either.”

She nods, accepting this. “Who knows what that freak wanted or why? Point is it could have just been luck that Fatso found me. Someone could have tipped him off about the squat and he knew that if he waited long enough I’d turn up. If he knew about the gig then he probably would have just waited and come for me there instead.”

“That still doesn’t mean it’s safe to go through with it.”

“You got a razor?”

He points to a plastic cup. Inside is a worn toothbrush, a nail file, and disposable razor. She takes the razor and goes back to the mirror, starts shaving her scalp.

“Anyway, the tranny has my guitar and if I don’t do the gig then I can’t get it back. And while we’re there you can tell her that the debt is yours.”

“We?”

“You’re coming too”, she says, tapping the razor to get rid of crumbly shavings.

“I am?”

“It’s your debt that’s gotten me into this mess in the first place isn’t it? You come down there and tell that psycho cross-dresser that this all has nothing to do with me. Don’t worry, once it’s all sorted we’ll go our separate ways and I’ll be out of your life again.”

“Oh.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” he says. “I was just going to say . . . I could probably sort you out with a space here. If you needed it. Or wanted it.”

She looks at the two beds.

“Oh, I didn’t mean . . . I just meant in the building.”

She shakes her head. “I’ll figure something out myself. All that matters just now is getting through the next few hours. They might have figured out where I’m staying but at least they won’t know where you are.”

“Right,” he says. “You mean the fat guy.”

“And the surgeon.”

“And the surgeon,” he repeats. Then something obviously occurs to him. “Well . . .”

Katja puts the razor down. Turns. “They couldn’t possibly know where you stay, right? We made sure nobody followed us.”

Nikolai wriggles. Katja fixes him with a stare, takes a pace towards him. He takes a pace back.

“Nik.”

“The form,” he says. “The release form. The nurse that picked me up made me fill it out and it asked for my . . .”

“
You gave them your fucking address? This address?
”

“Well, the form asked for it.”

“Jesus
fucking
Christ,” Katja says, already making her way out of the room.

Nikolai chases after her. “I’m sure it’ll be fine, they probably won’t even . . .”

“Won’t even what?” she says, turning abruptly. “They won’t bother to come
looking
?
Nikolai, you’re as big a fuck-up as ever, you know that? We’ve got to get out of here
now
.”

She climbs the short set of steps leading into the main corridor, leaving him behind.

Then stops suddenly.

A few metres in front of her, looking as shocked as Katja herself, is a woman in her early thirties.

Pink hair and purple latex gloves.

Spending so much time in amongst the guinea pig community, Bridget has figured out how to let herself blend in with them and so despite still being dressed in her work uniform and heels she manages to enter the squat without raising suspicion. It’s all about the attitude.

Once inside it’s a trickier prospect, no real idea of where to go and not wanting to start asking at random in case any alarms are triggered, so she walks up the main corridor as if she knows exactly where she is going. One hand clutching her jacket pocket, feeling the outline of the syringe she has brought with her. Her heels clatter off the floor, accompanying the incessant
tap-tap
of the water drops falling onto the building’s roof. She’s holding her panic in check, trying not to think about where Liz might be or what whoever took her might be doing with her.

Her only thoughts are of the punk.

And here she is, emerging from a staircase up ahead.

Despite wearing what appears to be the clothing of a sixteen-stone man the recognition is instantaneous, the image of her from the poster now burned into Bridget’s mind. Katja was unconscious when Bridget stole her from the fat man and only minimally conscious as she led her through Flesh Heel but this doesn’t matter. The punk knows.

Standing there, facing each other. Frozen.

Bridget’s only way of getting Liz back safely.

Katja turns and runs up the corridor, Bridget already giving chase, pulling the syringe from her pocket. The baggy trousers appear to impede the punk’s progress, constantly snagging beneath her boots and threatening to trip her up and so despite her heels Bridget soon catches up with her, launching herself when within reach. The two come crashing to the ground. Bridget tugs the plastic cap from the tip of the syringe and spits it out, then raises it ready to plunge into the soft flesh at the back of Katja’s neck but at the last moment she spots someone standing behind her.

Then something smashes into the side of her head and throws her sideways.

A loud and intense ringing echoes through one ear and for several seconds she can’t focus. She clasps the side of her head but there’s no blood. The syringe lies a few feet away, intact. Through the ringing she hears footsteps and looks up in time to see Katja running off in the opposite direction, back towards the front door, accompanied by a skinny man who glances over his shoulder, only briefly, but still long enough for her to recognise him as the guinea pig.

Nikolai. The one who had led her to Katja in the first place. Who has led her to Katja for a second time.

Bridget tries to get up but her head feels as if it has become enveloped in a thick mist. Unconsciousness threatens. She slides to the floor and remains there. When she finally gets up again there’s no sign of the two, only a big guy with long blonde hair and a scraggy blonde beard looking down at her with vague interest, sucking the remains of a huge cup of cola through a straw. The drink rasps as it empties. He shakes it to check there is nothing left then puts it on a ledge and wanders off, his interest in her lost.

Bridget gets to her feet, having to lean on the wall for support. She retrieves the syringe then looks down the empty corridor.

There’s no time to go chasing after them.

Her only chance may now be gone. The punk is gone. And Liz?

The two had emerged from a staircase to one side so she heads towards it, sliding herself along the wall and down the steps until her balance recovers. There are only a couple of doors in the short passageway which the steps lead to and only one of those is open. She presses two fingers to it, pushing it open while still keeping her distance from whatever may lie within, the syringe raised in one gloved hand.

A few seconds pass, no sounds, no movement and nobody jumping out at her.

She opens the door the rest of the way and goes inside.

The room is small and cluttered, two sofa beds on either side of her and miscellanea scattered around them. And next to a chest of drawers, some clothing. The clothing the punk had been wearing earlier that night—black leggings and a skull t-shirt. Bridget picks them up and lays them on one of the beds. She looks around to find some clue as to where the two might have gone but knowing that she has probably already been granted all the lucky coincidences she is due, at least for the time being.

There’s nothing of use to her.

The panic is rising again and she checks her watch to see how long she has left.

Why does everyone want the punk so badly?

She hears a noise outside and backs up behind the door. Someone coming down the steps, walking past the room. She peers through the tiny gap between the door and the hinges.

It can’t be.

Katja . . . has come back?

Bridget remains still, even holding her breath, not wanting to make a single sound.

Has she assumed that Bridget will have chased after them and so doubled-back, thinking that the safest place to hide again might be the most obvious place? Or is she just so cocky as to not realize the stupidity of taking such a risk?

Bridget edges her way around the door, half-expecting Katja to jump out at her but nothing happens. One of the other doors, previously closed, is now open an inch. Bridget slips off her heels and walks towards it, the syringe still primed in one hand, her footfalls now silent. She can hear someone inside, a clicking noise.

She shoves open the door and charges inside, spotting someone at the corner of the room, a stack of CDs in their hands. They look up at her, the CD’s falling from their hands and crashing to the floor.

“What the fu . . . ?”

Not Katja. Not even female. The same height and build, yes. But not her.

For a time the two don’t move, Bridget standing there with the syringe in hand and the squatter still mentally processing exactly what the fuck is going on.

“I was only going to borrow them. . . .” he says, holding his hands up in submission.

Of course she wouldn’t come back, at least not so soon. Of course she wouldn’t.

And now what?
Bridget thinks.

The man’s hair is short and wiry, sticking out at odd angles, and yet the impression of him looking like Katja isn’t going away. His features are small and defined, quite feminine.

“Look, I’m just going to split, okay. . . .”

And he’s coming towards her, hands still held up in submission. Bridget lets him. Her hand tightens on the syringe.

He moves past her, avoiding any eye contact, probably used to the array of freaks and psychos who inhabited places such as this, just wanting to keep his head down and get out of there.

Bridget grabs him, pulls him in towards her. He cries out but she muffles it with one hand whilst the other plunges the needle into his neck and even as she does it she’s still not entirely sure why. He’s too shocked to struggle at first and by the time realisation sets in the drug is already coursing through his system, shutting it down piece by piece like streetlights during a blackout.

He slumps in her arms and Bridget has to catch him, the needle still sticking out of his neck. She slips her hands under him and drags him out and into what she assumes is Nikolai’s room, lets him flop onto one of the beds. She closes the door. Her breath comes sharp and fast as she looks down at him. She runs a hand across her face, wiping away sweat from her upper lip.

Then she takes off his clothes, the ratty trousers and dark grey top, stretched and split around the collar. She dresses him in Katja’s clothes, having to fight a little to get the leggings over his slightly broader thighs. She plucks the syringe from his neck and his head flops to one side. Traces a hand across his hair.

She looks around and spots the razor on top of the dresser, grabs it, then starts shaving the man’s head. The razor is near-blunt and tugs at his scalp and for a while he looks like an alopecia sufferer but with a little effort and a bit of lubrication in the form of spit she manages to finish it off. Far from perfect but it’s the best she can do.

She takes a step back, tilting her head to one side. Squinting.

Yes, he looks vaguely like Katja, and yes, he has the same slender, angular build—but he’s clearly not her.

“Shit,” Bridget says aloud. Checks her watch again.

She holds her hands up, normally as steady as Stasko’s but now quivering and jumping.

And then it occurs to her.

Each day she assists the surgeon in adjusting people or transforming them completely. The answer is obvious.

She looks around then spots an ornament, tipped over next to the bed. It’s a small sculpture of what is possibly a bear but there are fragments missing, broken off, leaving rough edges behind. She picks it up and it’s heavy.

Looks back at the squatter, laying on the bed as if merely passed out from a night of excess.

“I’m sorry,” Bridget says then smashes the ornament into his face.