Gideon Flynn watched from the shadows.
The machine dominated the room completely, as brooding as an armoured tank sitting in a garden shed.
Beyond its cylindrical surface, at the distant end of the tube, Simone Varley was being ushered into a chair – a simple, plastic garden chair, as if she was at a barbeque. It seemed unbecoming for a woman of her age and status, but there was a special reason for not offering her anything more substantial to sit on. Any hint of metal on the chair - even a tiny amount in the castors - would cause chaos. Because, basically, the machine would eat it.
Now, though, it was about to devour a whole man.
Head first.
The MRI specialist positioned Trent Varley, Simone’s husband, on the machine’s sliding flat-bed. He smiled efficiently at the woman. After all, he must have done this procedure a thousand times. Probably as straightforward a process as running his Audi through a car wash, thought Gideon.
Of course, all the other times the doctor had done this would have been in an open hospital environment, while this was in a private facility. The set-up was flawless, however, and no doctor in the world would have had a bad word to say about it. Nor would they be complaining, of course, about the bonus in their pay packet.
HOST really was an extraordinary organisation to work for.
The MRI consultant spoke in his calming, airline pilot, “everything’s fine here” voice. ‘Now, Mrs Varley, at this point we normally tell our patients that they’re going to have to keep very still for up to an hour,’ he said. ‘But I gather that won’t be necessary in your husband’s case?’
Simone Varley shook her head, her neck flushing as she swallowed back tears.
‘That’s precisely why we’re here, Doctor Barnes,’ she said. ‘Nobody has been able to explain this paralysis that’s taken over his body. The nausea. The muscle spasms. We’re really hoping …’
She stopped, overwhelmed, clutching a handkerchief to her face to hide her grief.
Doctor Barnes held up a hand. ‘Don’t upset yourself, Mrs Varley. Your husband’s in the best possible place, with the finest brains and expertise right on hand.’ Behind the glass in an enclosed office from which the Magnetic Resonance Imaging scanner would be operated, a row of familiar faces nodded to Simone. ‘We’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise you.’
‘And you’ll be here the whole time?’
‘Right there, just the other side of that panel.’ Doctor Barnes smiled confidently. ‘Trust me. This is very routine. Now it will be extremely noisy, so we’ll put plugs into Mr Varley’s ears - assuming that he can still hear anything.’
Simone Varley gulped furiously, stemming the flow of tears. ‘I don’t think he can,’ she whispered. ‘He hasn’t responded to any sound for days. Oh, do make him better, Doctor Barnes. He’s my rock. My lodestone.’ She gulped back a terrible sob.
From his secret hiding position, Gideon Flynn could have sworn he saw a tiny flicker of movement across Mr Varley’s eyelids, but his wife was gazing imploringly into the doctor’s placid face and didn’t notice.
‘It’s all right,’ said Doctor Barnes, looking a little alarmed at Mrs Varley’s increasingly emotional outbursts. ‘Let’s get it over with, shall we?’
Ripping two sterile ear plugs from their packaging, the doctor stuffed one into each of the patient’s ears and then proceeded to tweak Trent’s gown, checking he was in a comfortable position on his back, with no danger of anything getting caught in the machine’s innards.
Satisfied, he tore a second set of ear plugs from the paper strip. ‘The noise is incredibly loud even if you’re sitting outside the machine, so you’re going to need these.’
‘Thank you. You’re very considerate.’
‘Not at all … oh!’ As he handed over the small packet of ear plugs, the doctor stopped short. ‘We mustn’t leave that in here,’ he said. ‘The magnetic force of the MRI is immense. It can pull oxygen tanks right out of their housing and into the scanner, so it would make very short work of that little piece of jewellery.’
He pointed to the offending article.
It was a ring – not Mrs Varley’s wedding ring, which she’d obviously remembered to remove, but a larger signet ring on the middle finger of her right hand. The stone in its centre glowed like a sunset - some kind of ruby – while the band itself was chunky, dark and heavy, like something a Viking might wear. It looked oddly out of place on Mrs Varley’s slender finger, especially as she appeared to be wearing very fine latex gloves beneath them, as if she possibly had some issues with her skin.
She started out of her chair, spreading her hands wide as she twisted at the band on her finger. Once more, Gideon thought he saw Trent Varley’s eyelids squeeze tight.
‘Goodness,’ the woman exclaimed. ‘How could I have forgotten? I … I’m so sorry. Do I need to leave the room?’
The doctor smiled. ‘Not at all. I’ll just take it outside for you now.’
‘Thank you.’
‘All set?’
‘Yes.’
Doctor Barnes slipped the ring off Mrs Varley’s shaking finger and into the pocket of his white coat. She returned his pleasant smile, her eyes drifting across the faces behind the glass partition.
Finally, thought Gideon.
‘Okay. We’re ready for lift-off,’ said the doctor with over-the-top chirpiness. ‘We’ve checked all Mr Varley’s clothing, so he’s good to go. And you’re quite sure there’s nothing internal that’s made of metal? No clips from heart surgery or brain aneurysms?’
This time he was sure. From his dark hiding place in the furthest corner of the room, Gideon caught a flash of white as Trent Varley’s eyes edged apart the tiniest fraction.
‘No.’ Mrs Varley shook her head. ‘Nothing.’
‘I think that’s a bit of a lie, Simone Varley,’ muttered Gideon under his breath.
In fact, he didn’t just think it. He knew it. There was definitely metal in Trent’s body.
And his wife knew it too.
As Doctor Barnes exited the room to install himself among the Varleys’ associates in the glass cubicle, the woman scratched at her finger where the ring had been sitting. Then, under her breath, she whispered something.
The sound was overshadowed by the deafening noise of the machine thundering into life, so Gideon couldn’t work out what she’d said. Instead he heard the doctor speaking to Trent Varley who lay trapped in the belly of the MRI machine. Like Jonah inside the whale, thought Gideon with the tiniest burst of satisfaction. What was that song he’d sung at school? ‘Go down, Jonah, deep in the ocean. Go down, Jonah, far from the shore.’
Dr Barnes was fiddling with something in the other room. ‘Okay, Mr Varley, not sure if you can hear me, but we’re going to take a number of images. Each cycle will take about six minutes. Nothing to worry about. It will all be over before you know it.’
With a clunk and a screech, the scanner started its routine in earnest, beeping with the regularity of an oversized heart monitor, blasting sound even to the corners of the room where Gideon crouched, hidden from sight. Derrrm dem derrrm dem dem. What was that? Dub step, he realised. The rhythm was as infectious and tuneless as the drum and bass music of the nineties and noughties.
He almost felt like dancing, until he realised he could hear another sound.
Laughter.
Only for a moment, and more like an escaped breath than a full giggle, but it was definitely laughter.
And the only person it could have come from was Trent Varley’s own wife.
He’d expected to feel very differently about Trent Varley, but suddenly, he felt a huge pang of sympathy. The woman was a monster, just as he’d thought.
What was it she’d said? He was her rock, her lodestone. Well, he knew exactly the kind of rock Simone Varley liked, and poor Trent wasn’t it.
But at long, long last, Gideon Flynn finally knew what he was searching for, and that he had to make his move now.
With a violent shudder, he sank back into the shadows and waited for his moment to escape. The last time had been an accident. This time was … too awful to think about. But think about it he must, because the plan had to go into action. Now.