A Lovely Way to Burn

Thirteen

Joanie had once told Stevie that she believed in alien abductions. She looked like the subject of an alien experiment now, webbed in a network of tubes so dense and complex they might be outgrowths of her body. Joanie’s golden-brown glow had sunk to a sallow beige. Her eyes were closed and caved deep in their sockets, like the absent eyes of a death mask. Stevie whispered her name, ‘Joanie,’ and a voice behind her said, ‘It’s no good, she can’t hear you.’

Joanie’s husband Derek had lost the wide-boy swagger that had sometimes made him seem a more likely candidate for prison than the police force. He stepped into the room and stood at the end of the bed with his head bowed, as if he was about to say a prayer.

Stevie asked, ‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘Out on the streets they’re calling it the sweats.’ Derek turned to face her. He had taken off his uniform jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt, but kept his stab vest on. He looked as if he was broiling beneath its weight. ‘In here they don’t know what to call it. I suppose they’ll come up with a bunch of letters and numbers that won’t mean much to the rest of us. The sweats seems as good a name as any to me.’

Stevie had spent a fair bit of time in Derek’s company when he and Joanie had been together. They had gone out for drinks, shared meals, once even spent a weekend together in a rented cottage in Dorset, but Stevie had never really been alone with her friend’s husband. She hadn’t seen him at all since he had told Joanie that he couldn’t help it if he loved someone else.

Stevie had heard the story so often it had almost become part of her own stock of memories: Joanie turning to greet her husband as he stepped into the bedroom, her recent purchases laid out on the counterpane; the cold beer she had uncapped for him untouched on the bedside table; Derek muttering accusations and excuses, not daring to meet Joanie’s eye as he bundled his clothes into the sports bag he used for football practice; his voice breaking as he said goodbye; the look he gave Joanie before he walked out of their bedroom and then out of the house for the last time; the bottle of beer still sweating cold on the table.

‘Why are you here, Derek?’

‘I’m still her husband. Joanie always hated doctors. She’d be terrified if she knew she was in hospital.’

Less than a week ago Joanie had been her usual sweet-vain-self, dragging Derek into their on-air sales pitch, pretending she did it to humiliate him, though she and Stevie both knew it was her own form of SOS, an appeal for him to come home.

‘Doesn’t Francesca mind?’

Derek ran a handkerchief over his number-one buzz cut.

‘I don’t suppose she knows I’m here. Her mum stays out in Norfolk; she took off and drove up there. We were meant to be going on holiday, first week with her mum, second week on a barge, but all leave’s cancelled and . . .’

He let the sentence trail away, but his eyes were on Joanie’s slight figure draped in tubes on the bed.

Stevie asked, ‘Will she be okay?’

Derek’s shrug was miserable.

‘Joanie’s one of the lucky ones. She caught it early and got hooked up to all this.’ Derek gestured towards the paraphernalia weaving its way in and around Joanie’s bed. ‘There’s people as look to be in the same state, lying on trolleys in A&E.’ He looked at Stevie, his round face blotched with pink, a flush of broken veins high on his cheekbones. She could imagine him as a child, a boy who had come off worst in a playground fight and was trying hard not to cry. He said, ‘Joanie’s not the dying-young type. She doesn’t even like to leave a party early.’

Stevie looked at the slender shape beneath the sheets and wished her friend hadn’t lost so much weight. She reached out a hand to touch Joanie’s face, but Derek caught it in his own. ‘Best not.’ He was wearing a pair of leather gloves at odds with the warm weather.

Stevie slipped free of his grip.

‘What do the doctors say?’

‘Fuck all. I thought Afghanistan was the worst I’d see, snipers hiding Christ knows where, picking men off one by one.’ He gave Stevie a small smile, an apology for swearing in front of her. ‘But at least we knew what we were fighting. This thing?’ Derek shook his head. ‘It really is bloody invisible.’

More than once Joanie had arrived at work, weary from waking to her husband’s screams, complaining that if only Derek would talk about his war he might stop fighting it in his sleep. Mention of it now felt like an appeal for sympathy, as disconcerting as the regular beeps coming from the machines Joanie was wired up to. It made Stevie want to hurt him. She said, ‘So, will you join Francesca in Nottingham?’

‘Norfolk,’ Derek corrected. ‘Go AWOL? Not my style.’ He glanced at Joanie and gave a battle-weary smile that was sweet with regret. ‘Not usually. But if I were you I’d think about taking a bit of a holiday until all this blows over.’

‘I’ve got things I need to do here.’

‘It’s your funeral.’ Derek let out a quick bark of laughter, loud in the small room. ‘My last review said I was lacking in diplomatic skills. I guess they were right.’

Stevie had only ever tolerated her friend’s husband. He was too brash, too black-and-white in his judgements for her to warm to him, but the sight of Joanie, laid out on the bed, made her wish that he would reassure her, in the same definite voice that was inclined to hold forth on the benefits of CCTV and the need for women to stay sober if they wanted to avoid being raped, that everything would be okay. She resisted an urge to touch his arm.

There was a commotion of activity in the corridor outside. They both looked in its direction, but neither of them made a move. Derek said, ‘I’d better get going before someone notices I’m not where I should be.’

It was Stevie’s cue to leave him alone with his wife. She shouldered her bag.

‘Can’t you get compassionate leave?’

‘I told you. All leave’s cancelled. We’re men down and the sweats has meant we’re in demand.’

Stevie thought of Simon’s poor body, lying in a freezer in a morgue somewhere. She had seen such things on television, could imagine how it would be.

‘What’s happening to ongoing investigations?’

Derek snorted.

‘We’re fire-fighting. There’s precious little real police work happening.’

‘What about sudden deaths?’ She faltered and then said the word that had been lurking in the back of her mind since she had read Simon’s letter. ‘Murders? Surely they can’t be set aside?’

Derek narrowed his eyes. Stevie thought he was going to ask if she had a particular case in mind, but then he sighed and said, ‘The thing about murder is that it’s already happened.’

‘Murder is murder, whenever it occurs.’

‘I agree with you, but it’s a question of scale. Real life isn’t like the movies. Most murderers aren’t serial killers; they kill once, usually by accident, sometimes by design, generally because they were drunk, or stupid.’ He glanced again at the bed where Joanie lay, her breathing shallow. ‘What’s one death compared to thousands? A tragedy for their loved ones, sure, but it’s like I told you, we’re in a war. Different rules apply. We may not be able to halt the sweats from spreading, but we can do our best to keep order.’ A new insistence entered his voice and he reverted to the Derek she recognised, a firm man, sure of himself and the grubbiness of the world. ‘Do yourself a favour and get home well before dark. You know how London is, a bloody pressure cooker. The Met and the fire service are under-capacity, and it’s thirty degrees in the shade. Before you know it, the Islamic brotherhood and the EDL will be getting ready to noise each other up, not to mention all the other nutcases who like to come out when the sun shines. Tonight could be one of those nights when it all kicks off.’