The Tied Man

Now I knew.  As far as Finn was aware, I was no longer there and there was nothing left for him to do but surrender.   I took his cold hand in mine.  ‘Please keep moving, Finn.  Come on, let’s go.’

‘Need to sleep.’

‘No.  Not here.  Not with them.’  I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and hauled him upright.  He may have looked skeletal, but he was a dead weight.  Muffled laughter from the bathroom spurred me on.  ‘Let’s get you out of here, and you can sleep in my bed.  You’ll be safe there, I promise,’ which was the biggest lie I’d ever told,  but at least Finn’s eyes opened again.  He stared at me as though I had just landed from another planet as I grabbed a bathrobe from the dresser and draped it over his shoulders.  I had to pull his hands through the sleeves one at a time, but although it cost precious minutes I was determined to afford him some dignity in the short journey to my room.

*****

I was glad I’d stepped up my workouts, because it took a strength I hadn’t known I possessed to drag that man down the corridor and onto my bed.

Finn stank like something already dead; the cloying musk of stale sex, sweat, and tainted breath combined to cling to his exhausted frame.  His face was deathly pale, save for an angry amyl rash that was beginning to scab around his nose and mouth.

More than anything, I wanted him clean.  I would have immersed him in cool water to kill his fever and wash away the filth, but instead I had to settle for a crystal fruit bowl filled from my bathroom and a pile of towels.

In the pale glow of the oil lamp I began my task.  I bathed away every trace of shit and blood and semen from his face, his back, his thighs.  Only days ago we had shared this bed and risked everything, and now it was as if I were preparing his corpse for burial.  When I had finished, I heaved him over onto his side, settled into the chair next to the bed and waited.

The crisis came at four o’clock in the morning.  As I watched, what little colour he had left in his moon-pale face drained away, leaving him with a waxen death mask.  He gave a succession of choking grunts and, still unconscious, threw up across the pillow.  I thought back to how Ellis and Chester had left him; on his back with his head lolling over the edge of the bed, and knew this would have been the moment of his death.  Just another junkie choking on his own vomit.

Finn didn’t stir as I pulled the sodden bedding from under his head.  I used a damp flannel to wipe his mouth clear, replaced the pillow, and continued my vigil.  I was almost glad that I couldn’t leave him: I was capable of doing real harm to the two sick bastards who were now no doubt sleeping peacefully just yards away.

Instead I sat back and watched Finn as he slept, as if I could keep his chest rising and falling simply by watching it.

Chapter Twenty Five

Finn

The first surprise of the day was that I could open my eyes at all, given my plans to be dead at this point.  There was something particularly fitting about the fact that I had even managed to screw that up.

As consciousness began to thaw the numbness in my limbs, I discovered that I had the mother and father of all headaches; my temples throbbed in time to my heartbeat and as I forced my eyelids to open another millimetre I saw a changed world diffused with a sick, green light.

I had fuck all idea as to where I was – I’d have been struggling to say who I was right at that moment – but a haze of terror smothered me as a disjointed memory of men’s voices and hands shimmered at the back of my febrile skull.  The only thing in the entire world that I knew for certain was that I wasn’t safe and I attempted to push myself up from the bed.

As I sat up I puked.  I had a bizarre vision of Lilith standing there with some fancy glass bowl, which was ridiculous, because she was gone from my life, and then I had the thought that maybe I was dead after all and Coyle must have murdered her and she was dead as well.  The tricky bit was figuring out where we were because I couldn’t imagine anyone, God included, daring to send Lilith Bresson to hell.

Then I had to stop thinking in order to puke again.

‘Good morning,’ Lilith said.

‘You’re not meant to be here.’  My throat felt as though it had been sandblasted.

‘Apparently not.’  She placed a cool damp flannel over my forehead.  ‘Fucking hell, I can’t leave you alone for five minutes, can I, Strachan?’

I finally let myself acknowledge that this was real.  Lilith was here and I was in her bed, and I had believed Coyle and let myself be taken when there was still a need to fight.  Any joy I had felt at her presence was smothered in a wave of white-hot guilt.  ‘I’m sorry,’ I began, but another wave of hollow retching cut short my apology.