~ Soulfarm ~

by

David Toft

Doyle wrinkled his nose against the smell of disinfectant. He didn’t like hospitals. He liked them more than he liked the commissioner’s office though. He almost smiled. They could stop him talking about it, but they couldn’t stop him thinking about it. He couldn’t stop himself thinking about it.

Brogan, the Connolly woman, and the BMW had just disappeared into thin air.

The commissioner had listened to his report in silence. Then he had threatened him with just about everything short of castration if he were to breathe a word of it to anyone. He hadn’t doubted him though. He hadn’t even raised an eyebrow, almost as if he’d been expecting the impossible.

Six missing walkers, four missing searchers, forty-two French tourists, their bus and their driver, Pat Byrne, St Michael’s Church, and now his boss, Mrs. Connolly, and her BMW. The area had been quarantined, the village evacuated. Chemical spillage was the official line. Doyle shook his head. He wondered if anyone actually believed that. He doubted there were enough chemicals in the whole country to contaminate such a large area.

The double doors at the far end of the corridor whooshed open. The ward sister marched toward him. She raised a hand in greeting and flashed what could almost have been mistaken for a smile. Then she turned sharply right and disappeared into one of the rooms along the corridor.

Doyle sighed; he couldn’t see the number on the door, but it could well be the room he was heading for, the one that housed their RTA victim. If it was, he’d walk straight past. The most common words in the woman’s vocabulary were, he knew, “Just five minutes,” and she always meant them.

Someone screamed. Doyle’s pace quickened. He was only feet from the door when the nurse reappeared. She ran toward him with one hand clasped over her mouth, as if stifling a second scream.

Grabbing him by the wrist, she reversed her momentum and pulled him toward the door.

There was only one bed in the room. Doyle recognised the matted hair and beard of the man he had come to interview. Then, as he stepped further into the room, he registered the jagged red gash across the man’s throat and the blood that had soaked into the pillows and sheets. He didn’t check for a pulse; the man’s neck was severed almost through.

“Don’t touch anything.” He stood back from the bed and pressed the transmit button of his lapel radio. He was out of his depth and he knew it.