Infinite Kill

2. Agnes Holgersson

2

Agnes Holgersson

The doctor pushed me in a wheelchair down one squeaky-clean white corridor after another, the top of my scar peeping out above a long, fluffy white dressing gown. I wore a medical bracelet around my left wrist. Agnes Holgersson. Fourteen. Cardiology. Recovering. And under the dressing gown, a long-sleeve pink button top, light blue jeans and black trainer pumps. I had a vague recollection of being forced into each item of clothing by the doctor while I slipped in and out of consciousness. Other vague memories included him knocking out another doctor, heaving him into a laundry bin in his Donald Duck boxers and throwing a sheet over the top.

As the doctor wheeled me into an elevator, I felt ropier than an adventure playground, my head lolling forward over my white hospital-issue slippers, but I had enough juice in me to play my part in the op. We rode the elevator down a floor and followed the green, Swedish signs to the hospital pharmacy. The doctor wore a pair of thick-rimmed black glasses with the lenses pushed out, along with a stethoscope round his neck, a light-pink shirt and a black tie. The pharmacy sat at the end of the corridor through automatic glass doors. The doctor wheeled me up to a long counter in front of six rows of high shelving, packed with pills and potions. A hypochondriac’s wet dream. Everything shiny and white. So this is what it felt to go private.

The doctor took a few pieces of blue prescription paper out of his white coat pocket and flattened them out on the counter. He cleared his throat, not because he needed to. A pharmacist popped out of the back to serve us. A lofty man with floppy, silver-blonde hair and a crumpled face. I understood every word of Swedish he spoke.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“Hello,” the doctor said, pushing the pieces of paper across the counter. “I need some immunosuppressants for my patient here.”

“What’s her name?” he asked.

“Agnes Holgersson,” I said, not having to pretend very hard to look seriously ill.

The pharmacist – Sven Ahlberg, according to his name tag – typed my name into a computer. “Agnes, here we go.” He grabbed the prescription papers and studied the scrawl. “Sorry, but I’ll need sign-off from the unit manager.”

“Really?” the doctor asked. “She’s in urgent need. Can’t you look the other way this once?”

Sven shrugged in sympathy. “New policy, I’m afraid.”

“Ah, right,” the doctor said, looking left, right, behind. Fast as lightning, he slammed Sven’s head into the counter. Sven bounced off and disappeared over the other side. The doctor vaulted up and over the counter.

“Poor guy,” I said, shivering despite the obvious warmth of the hospital. “You could have gone for a sleeper hold or something.”

“You want these drugs or not?” Philippe asked, snatching the prescription papers off the counter.

“How do you even know what meds I need?” I asked.

“I read your file when I was assigned to your case.”

“You mean, when you were assigned to kill me?”

“Something like that,” he said.

Philippe rifled through the shelves while I sat guard, my throat drier than a sandpit and my body aching all over. He moved from one shelf to another, comparing each box to the names on the list and dropping them in the kind of green plastic basket you got at supermarkets. I didn’t remember much about the bus ride to Sweden. Only waking up to the worst Circle of Concern ever. All those cool, sophisticated, beautiful Euro people and me, a British train-wreck abroad. I woke up briefly on the aisle floor, a girl fanning me with a straw fedora, my head on a rolled-up tie-dye tee donated by a walking male tattoo. Now we were here. And Philippe was helping me. Why? He was a JPAC assassin. They didn’t exactly do warm and fuzzy.

Philippe was part way through completing my drugs order when a female pharmacist strode through the automatic doors. She was middle-aged and shapely. Blue eyes, brown hair and a face that said don’t f**k with me. She stopped in her tracks. I glanced over the counter. Philippe was temporarily out of sight.

“Are you being served?” the pharmacist asked.

“Yes, thanks.”

She walked past me to a side door that led through to the other side of the counter. If she went through that door, she’d see Sven out cold on the floor. She swiped a pass against a reader. The door clicked open.

“Wait,” I said, raising my voice. “You can’t go back there.”

The pharmacist held the door halfway open. “Why not?”

“Because,” I said, searching for a good reason in the midst of the mind fog. “Because there are cockroaches. Giant, huge cockroaches swarming all over the floor. Sven went to report it.”

The pharmacist backed away from the door. I thought the idea of loads of creepy-crawlies would frighten her off. I know it would me. But she seemed curious.

“What? Here? How strange,” she said, walking around the front of the counter. Before she could peer over, I wheeled forward and kicked her in her left calf.

She spun around and gripped her leg. “Ow. What the—”

“Sorry,” I said, offering no explanation.

I looked past the pharmacist to where Philippe was silently placing the last of the immunosuppressants into the basket and stepping towards the side door. The pharmacist shook her head at me. She couldn’t very well shout at a sick cardiology patient, could she? Not in a private, big-bucks hospital. She turned her attention back to the counter. I kicked her again. This time in the ankle, just above the back of her white plimsoll.

“Agh! What are you doing?” she said, turning to me again.

Philippe ghosted out from between the shelves and over to the door. I kicked the pharmacist in the shin.

“Sorry, I can’t help it,” I said as she hopped back out of range.

I wheeled forward and walloped her one more time as Philippe eased open the side door.

“Stop it, you maniac!” the pharmacist shouted, hopping away.

I spun the wheels on the chair and kicked her again, making her block with her hands.

“It’s a condition,” I said, chasing her out through the automatic doors. “Kickashinitus.”

Philippe appeared and plonked the basket in my lap. The pharmacist saw us over her shoulder as he wheeled me out of the pharmacy.

“Security! Security!” she shouted, hobbling along the corridor. As she hung a right, we hung a left and bolted along the ground-floor corridors, Philippe snatching a blanket off an empty gurney and dumping it on top of the basket. We broke out into the main entrance to the hospital – a wide-open circular space with high ceilings and a large reception desk. We scooted past a vending machine containing rows of bottled mineral water.

“I need water to swallow the pills,” I said, feeling hot and cold and dizzy again, just like on the bus.

Philippe slid to a sudden stop, jerking the wheelchair back and nearly tipping me out. I looked up at him. He wasn’t happy. He shook his head, but dug a hand in one of the pockets of his stolen trousers. He came out with a couple of euro coins and strode over to the vending machine, leaving me sitting un-pretty in the middle of reception. Philippe slotted the coins in the machine and hit a couple of buttons. The robotic arm of the vending machine reached up to pull down the bottle of water.

It seemed to take an age. Meanwhile, here came the cavalry. A pair of security guards carrying batons. They were heading for Philippe, who was bending over retrieving the bottle from the machine.

As the security guards ran across reception, I used the last of the strength in my arms to wheel myself directly into their path. They had no time to body swerve and bundled straight into me, sending me sprawling onto the floor and them crashing over the chair, one piled on top of the other. It was more for their own protection than Philippe’s.

Speaking of the devil, he ran back over and put the guards’ lights out with a couple of swift kicks while they were down. He dragged my dead weight up off the floor and plonked me in the chair, quickly gathering up the spilled boxes of drugs and dumping them back in my lap. He wheeled me out of the front door, the receptionist frantically dialling for more security.

Philippe ditched the white coat, stethoscope and glasses in a bin outside and pushed me across a carpark. The rain had stopped, but the water stood fresh on the tarmac, spraying up off the wheels, Philippe’s feet splish-sploshing through shallow puddles. I glanced over my shoulder. More security emerged out of the door. Four men this time, with the local PD no doubt hot-footing it our way. We cut between cars as if looking for a certain one. A Merc? An Audi? Something sleek and fast and comfortable? No, a beige Volvo estate from a previous century. Philippe parked me up alongside it and put both hands flat against the passenger side window. He pushed it a third of the way down, then reached an arm inside and, with two fingers, popped up the lock on the door. We were in. Me in the passenger seat with a basket of drugs; Philippe hot-wiring the granddad mobile. He was about to spark the wires together when I spotted security jogging past.

“Wait,” I said. “Get down.”

The pair of us stooped low in our seats as the guards weaved their way through the cars, looking side to side. Over the dash, I saw them move on across the carpark.

“Okay, go.”

Philippe sparked the wires and the car shook itself into life. He rammed the long, thin gearstick into reverse and backed us out of the space at speed. We shot out of the carpark, wriggling in the wet, with only the driver’s side windscreen wiper whining away as the worn rubber dragged itself up and down the glass. I twisted open the bottle of water and waded through the mishmash of meds.

It had been close. Any longer without the drugs and I might not have made it. With the pills working their way into my bloodstream, I pulled the blanket over me and reclined my seat. No energy left other than to sleep.