Dead if You Don’t

41

Saturday 12 August

20.30–21.30

At this time of year, on a balmy Saturday evening, many people in the city of Brighton and Hove were on their big night out. Filling the restaurants and bars, some getting ready to start clubbing. Tonight many would be commiserating over their home team’s 2–0 defeat by Manchester City, but at the same time they would be celebrating their team’s first ever Premier League game. The police would be out in force, too. Every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night, all year round, Operation Marble did its best to prevent downtown Brighton from becoming a booze- and drug-fuelled war zone. There would be fights, spitting, swearing and arrests. Scantily clad chavs, Hens in daft outfits and vomiting Stags in stupid hats.

Far removed from all this were the patients in the wards inside the large building that was currently masked by hoardings, cranes and bulldozers. The Royal Sussex County Hospital, some distance away from the action, was going through a much-needed renovation, with temporary entrances everywhere and makeshift signs.

The helmeted medical student on the Kawasaki motorcycle, whose name was Gentian Llupa, cruised slowly past, along Eastern Road, and then up the side of the vast, sprawling site, taking mental notes of opportunities, checking for CCTV cameras. He didn’t need to take that risk. It was almost fully dark, but why rush? And hey, the guy he had come to see wasn’t going anywhere tonight.

If his plan worked out, the man wasn’t going anywhere ever again.

Other than to the mortuary.