Heart (22 page)

He felt himself being lifted from the cold metal floor of the van. Shiny blankets covered him. They felt warm… a sign of his depleted mental state. A hard plastic mask came down on his face. Cold air blasted into his mouth. Dex squirmed and tried to push it away. Big hands held him down, clamping around his snapped wrist, and the world as he knew it went black.

It was a while before he became aware of himself again. He caught flashes as the scenery changed. Blue lights, more daylight, and those strips of blinding fluorescent bulbs you got in corridors. Hands touched him and shook him. Peeled his eyes open and shouted in his face. He was poked and prodded, his body bent this way and that. The experience was painfully familiar, though different from Braden’s usual style. Dex’s arm hurt so much he threw up on himself, until it didn’t and he couldn’t feel it at all. He worried Braden had cut it off. The logic made sense. It was broken and useless, like him. What else would he do with it? What else would he do with
him
?

Shoot him. That’s what Braden did with horses. Why didn’t he shoot him?
Because Braden isn’t here.
But where was he? Perhaps he’d been sold. Braden sold his horses from time to time, and he’d threatened to sell Dex before.

Earn your keep, boyo. Or I’ll turn you over to a cunt far worse than me.

Dex. Dex. Dex.

Dex rolled over, curling his body inward to avoid the persistent voices calling his name, or maybe to hide from his own madness. Braden didn’t call him Dex…. Didn’t
know
about Dex, and resistance was futile. Wherever he was, Braden would come for him eventually. Shame, really, because Dex rather liked this weird place where his limbs felt detached and his mind not his own. His last stand? Maybe, but if Braden wanted him, he’d have to come get him.

Sometime later—hours, days, he didn’t much care—the incessant voices morphed into a rough hand on Dex’s uninjured arm. A gentle shake and a familiar cough. Curiosity eased into Dex’s veins, washing away the fear lodged deep in his belly. He opened his eyes. Rick’s ruddy face stared back at him.

“All right, lad?”

Dex swallowed. The hospital room had been a blur up until then, but suddenly, it was clear as day, his focus so sharp he saw every line and wrinkle in Rick’s face like it was in 3D. Yeah. Like that film Seb took him to see, the one with the liquid spacesuits.

“Dex, you with me?” Rick helped him sit upright and stared at him for a long moment. “You’ve had us all worried. Jesus, lad. Bernie’s been up the wall and tickling the bricks. You all right? Need anything?”

Need? Dex looked around and took in the rumpled bed. Strange clothes covered his body and a weird tube protruded from the back of his hand. His other arm was blue, strapped to his chest, and sheathed in a cast that glimmered with a strange, alienesque sheen.

“Fiberglass,” Rick supplied. “It was too bad for a plaster cast.”

Dex frowned, wondering if he’d been dropped into another world. His gaze fell on a full bottle of orange squash. His mouth watered. “Whose is that?”

“Yours.” Rick proffered a foil-wrapped parcel Dex hadn’t noticed. “They said you can eat today too. Seb made you some flapjacks. Want some?”

Seb’s here.
“Where is he? Where’s Seb?”

“I sent him to get you some clothes before he punched a copper. He’ll be back soon.”

Dex eyed the foil-wrapped package Rick had in his hands. It was messy and loose, like the parcels of fudge Seb used to sell in Padstow.
Seb’s shit at wrapping things up.

“Have some, son. He made it for you.”

Despite Seb’s poor attempt at wrapping, Dex couldn’t make his shaky hand work enough to open the parcel. Rick helped him, and then he held a plastic cup of orange squash to his lips. Dex drank greedily and spilled half of it down his front. Rick chuckled, though the sound was hollow, and passed him a small square of sticky flapjack.

Dex shoved it in his mouth, suddenly so hungry he could bite his own arm off—his good one, at least. He ate another, and another before Rick took them away.

“Easy now. Little and often, they said. Have some more in a bit.”

Dex hugged his knees to his chest with his good arm, breathless from the effort of stuffing his face. “I’m hungry.”

“Not surprised. Half-starved you were when them coppers found you. You can have some more in a bit, I promise. Just don’t want you upchucking it all over my boots.”

Dex chewed on his lip. That was the second time Rick had mentioned the police—the enemy, in Dex’s world. “Where did they find me?”

“Some farm in the west country. Not sure where. They’re not telling us much.”

“Who isn’t?”

“The coppers—”

The curtain around the bed drew back. A woman doctor with long braids smiled at him. “Good to see you back on your feet, Mr. Sweeney.”

Dex hadn’t heard his family name for so long it took a moment to realize she was talking to him. Then he just about fell off the bed. How did the gorjer doctor know his name?
No one
knew his name. Braden had said he didn’t need one, and he’d been without it so long he barely knew it himself.

The doctor came closer and set a big brown envelope on the bedside cabinet. “How are you feeling? You were quite dehydrated when you arrived, but we’ve given you fluids for that.” The doctor took in the spilled squash and flapjack crumbs. “I see you’ve managed to eat something. That’s good.”

The doctor looked at him expectantly, but Dex didn’t know what to say. Only knew what he felt. “Can I leave?”

“Not quite yet. Another doctor needs to check your wrist, and we have some other tests to do.” The doctor glanced over his head at Rick, who looked like he wished the ground would swallow him up. “Would you mind stepping outside a moment?”

“Tests?” Dex reached out for Rick as he stood to go. He didn’t want Rick, he wanted Seb, but he couldn’t be alone. What if Braden came back? He wouldn’t be far away. He was
never
far away. “What kind of tests?”

The doctor put her pen down, lining it up next to her big fat envelope with unnecessary care. “The police are concerned you may have been sexually assaulted. We’d like to do an internal examination to check for injuries. Are you okay with that?”

Internal….
Dex ripped his hand from Rick’s arm like he’d been burned, and Rick disappeared, the curtain flapping in his wake like a ghost. Panic rose in Dex’s chest. Rick had known what the doctor meant before she spelled it out. Rick
knew
… knew he was a whore, and if Rick knew, then Seb… fuck. Was that why he wasn’t here?

“No.”

The doctor raised an eyebrow. “No, what?”

“I don’t want you to look at me.”

“Mr. Sweeney—”

“
No.
They didn’t fuck me.”

And it was true. This time, at least. Dex was battered and bruised, but Braden hadn’t fucked him. No one had fucked him since Seb.

Seb, Seb, Seb. Where was he?

The doctor said no more. A nurse joined her, and together, they poked and prodded him, but thankfully, their attention remained on the outside of his body. Dex did his best to ignore them until the nurse pulled the tube from the back of his hand. Blood seeped out of the hole. The nurse covered it with a plaster, but his stomach clenched and he wanted to hurl the precious food he’d stuffed into his belly.

The nurse smiled and passed him some more squash with her spare hand. “Have a drink. It’ll pass.”

Dex drank, grateful for the distraction. Sensation had filtered back into his casted wrist, and the throbbing ache was beginning to radiate up his arm and into his whole body. He felt tired too, like he could sleep for a week and still be exhausted.

His head dropped lower and lower until determined footsteps caught his attention. He snapped upright, alert. Two suited men appeared around the curtain, and Dex shrank back, scooting up the bed until his back was against the small wooden cabinet. The men were coppers. They had to be. Only coppers looked at him the way they were now.

The doctor rounded the bed and effectively put herself between Dex and the men. “Can this wait? He hasn’t seen his partner yet.”

The taller of the two men shook his head. “We need his statement. Mr. Wright gave us his clothes. We’ll step outside while he gets changed.”

The doctor protested, the nurse too, but the men paid them no heed. A bundle of clothes was exchanged, and the nurse approached Dex with what she probably thought was a reassuring smile. “They just want to ask you some questions. Don’t worry. You’re safe here. No one’s going to hurt you.”

“T
ELL
US
again. How long have you been in England?”

Really? Again?
Dex traced his fingertip down the strange cast on his arm. It felt light and thin, like plastic, but if he knocked it with his knuckle, it sounded like steel. “A long time.”

“How long?”

“Dunno.”

“And you spent all that time with Braden McCulloch?”

Dex hummed, turning his attention to the dented can of Tizer the detectives had tried to bribe him with. The conversation was going round on a loop, but it wasn’t without merit. So far, he’d learned he’d been in the Bristol hospital for nearly a week.

Bristol. Where the hell is that?

“You said your father sent you to work for Mr. McCulloch when you were very young. Declan, you do realize you were sold… trafficked as a slave, don’t you?”

Dex shrugged.
If you say so. And it’s Dex, not Declan.

“We’ve been looking for you since last year, actually. Way before your boyfriend reported you missing.”

“What?”

The detective’s lips turned up, like he’d scored a point. “Mr. McCulloch’s trafficking ring has been on our radar a long time. The team tracking his movements identified you as a potential victim sometime last autumn, but then you vanished. It was only by chance an officer in London cross-referenced Mr. Wright’s report with our database. Most wouldn’t bother.”

Mr. Wright
.

Seb.

Seb had reported him missing. The notion made Dex’s head spin. He wrapped his arm tighter round his knees, breathing in the scent of his clean clothes. Somehow, they smelled of Seb’s bed… of him, and the scent grounded him, if only for a moment.

“Do you recognize this man, Declan?”

Dex glanced at the photo the older, sterner detective held out. The man had an Irish face, but he recognized little else. “No.”

“Are you sure? Because you went missing from the Traveller camp in Hatfield not long after he was found dead in the woods.”

Dex blinked. His blood ran cold. “What?”

“Tommy Smith. A dog walker found him in the woods with a bullet in his brain. We suspected Mr. McCulloch and raided the site a few days later. We shut it down, but McCulloch was long gone, and so were you. Can you tell us where you went? How did you end up in London with Mr. Wright? You know you were working illegally in the restaurant, don’t you? Rick Wilson’s been warned for that before. I’d hate to see him shut down.”

“I didn’t work there. I just helped out.”

“Fair enough. That’s not our concern just yet. Right now, we need to know who killed Tommy Smith. Can you tell us?”

Bastard.
The question was simple enough, and the thinly veiled threat perfectly clear.
Tell us what we want or we’ll fuck up the only real life you’ve ever had.

Dex swallowed hard. His heart beat wildly in his chest. It was against Traveller lore to talk to the police. The vow of silence was sacred. The thought of breaking it filled him with an unease so deep his teeth itched, and yet he was considering it. Mikey was apparently dead, and Braden locked up. No one else would care enough to track him down, and perhaps if he gave the gorjers what they wanted, they’d let him be on his way.

He thought of Cora too. Tommy Smith meant nothing to him, but the elderly horse had been innocent, and her face still haunted his dreams.

“Excuse me, gentleman.”

The new voice startled Dex. He looked up and met the gaze of a third detective—a clean-shaven man with scruffy brown hair. Scruffy brown hair he’d seen somewhere before.

“Keep your head down and your mouth shut, got it? They’ll fuck you up if you fight them, and have you that way instead.”

Dex clamped his hand over his mouth and shrank back on the bed. The policemen exchanged a few words, and the first two detectives left, leaving him alone with the gorjer john who’d brought him a bottle of scotch on that industrial estate in Hatfield.

Nausea rolled again as Dex tried to recall his name. John, Jim… no… George, that was it. He’d given him a pat on the back and a bottle of whiskey.
And then he left you for the others. Some fucking copper.

George peered around the curtain, watching his colleagues depart. Then he slid nonchalantly into the bedside chair and grinned like he didn’t have a care in the world. “Didn’t expect to find you alive, mate. How the fuck did you manage that?”

Dex stared at him. “You’re a copper.”

“Yep. Been working undercover on your manor since the beginning of last year. Was counting on you to turn snitch. Fucked me right over when you legged it.”

He’s a copper.
Dex said the words over and over in his head, but he couldn’t match them with the smoky, dirty card game Braden had sold him to. The police were the enemy, of that he was certain, but they didn’t do shit like George had done to him. Did they?

“Listen, I can’t stay long. I just wanted you to know that whatever happens now, you’re safe, okay? They’re going to try and get you to turn snitch on McCulloch, but you don’t need to. Braden’s finished, he’s done. They don’t need you. They’re just being greedy.”

“Do they know you made me blow you?”

George leaned forward, his posture easy and confident. “No, but I had a remit to do whatever was needed to blend in. Think about it. If it wasn’t me that night, it would’ve been someone else.”

Dex’s skin tingled… like ants were crawling all over his body. This was wrong, so fucking wrong, and he’d had enough. He wanted… needed Seb, and he needed to get the fuck out of this insane asylum. “I don’t understand.”