Even the Dogs

four

They cut his body open in a clean white room and take him apart piece by piece.

They come crowding into the room, and turn on the lights, and open the heavy steel door he’s been lying behind. The photographer from the flat is here, and the younger policeman, and the woman who combed her fingers through Robert’s hair. The older man with the thick tangle of dark hair is here, wearing a black suit, and the way he stands over Robert makes it look like he’s still in charge. And we still haven’t got an identity, he’s saying, asking, looking at the woman from the flat and another man with a notebook already out. They shake their heads, and they say that nothing’s really come up, no one’s come forward, there’s nothing to say this is even a case. See what you can do for us today, Frank, says the man with the notebook, and they all smile and start to laugh, and the doctor asks two younger men to take Robert through. They wheel him out to another room, and transfer him to another trolley, and wheel him into a room with sinks and counters and bright white lights and trays of sharply shining tools. We follow them, hanging back a little, wanting and not wanting to see what will happen now, and as we move into the room we hear the rest of them behind us, scrubbing their hands and arms and dressing in layers of protective clothing, the medical staff in green gowns and plastic aprons, thick gloves, rubber boots, and clear plastic visors which cover their faces, the others wearing white hooded overalls just as they did at the flat, and visors over their faces, and white rubber boots.

Fucksake. It’s only Robert. What can he do to you now.

They come through and they stand around his body, still safely bagged and sealed, and they talk, telling each other what they know about the case, reading the policeman’s report, studying the notes.

They shift him on to a large steel table with a sink built in to one end, and taps, and hoses, and extraction fans which begin to whistle softly as they talk.

They weigh him and measure him and take pictures of his shrouded body. They switch on the overhead lights, searchlight-bright and stark and shocking. We press close in around them. We want to see. We want to touch. The policeman checks the number on the lock, breaks it open, and stands back. The photographer leans in and takes pictures, and he keeps taking pictures while they unzip the body bag and pull it open. They unwind the plastic sheet from around his body, checking it for any fallen debris, any scraps of him or his life, and they place everything they find into plastic containers with labels which note the date and time and reference number, labels which should but don’t say things like: a piece of tobacco which fell from the last cigarette Robert smoked; a strand of someone else’s hair, apparently a woman’s, which from its position at or around Robert’s arm must have been there since the source rested her head against his shoulder; the blood-darkened larvae from a bluebottle fly, hatched from an egg laid on Robert’s skin, which wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside him.

They take the plastic bags from his hands and his head, and as his face rises into the light we almost expect him to take a deep gasping breath, or to blink, or to say something like What the fuck’s happened this time? What the fuck have you gone and done? Which is how he always used to wake up, before. With a jolt. Like he’d heard something. Something like the closing of a door, or the ringing of a phone. His eyes snapping open and his voice going What the fuck is it now before he even quite knew he was awake. His voice thick and wet and slurred. Cranking himself up on his elbows and looking around the room to see who was there this time, waiting for someone to catch his eye and saying Will someone get me a fucking drink or what?

They take photographs. They cut slices from the ends of his cracked yellow fingernails and drop them into labelled plastic bags. They pluck hairs from the top of his head, from his eyebrows, from his nostrils, tearing them out by the root and dropping them into more labelled bags.

Should be more like this though but. We drape a freshly laundered sheet across a long wooden table and lay him out on that, dressed in his Sunday best. We put his head on a soft silk cushion. We weigh his eyelids down with pennies, and stuff his arse with cotton wool. We place flowers around him, and light candles, and put out chairs so that people can come and go all through the day and night to remember who he was and how he was and raise a drink and tell stories about his long eventful life. Like a what they call it a wake. Like saying remember this.

Remember the woman cutting hair at the day centre. Every couple of weeks she’d be there, with her combs and scissors and bottles of shampoo. Weren’t bothered about keeping it short or how it looked to be honest but just, being touched. Hands running through your hair. Someone taking the time. Someone holding up a mirror and asking if that was okay. Worth waiting for. Robert never went down there, never went anywhere, borrowed Steve’s clippers every few months and buzzcut it himself, made a right mess of it most times as it happens but no one ever said. Could do with someone trimming his hair nice now and not just tearing it out by the root.

And what about. All the cigarettes that have stained those fingernails. The layers of grease and dust and skin which have collected beneath them. Each moment of his life scraped up under there. The fabric of the armchair worn thin beneath his fidgeting hands. The labels of beer-bottles picked away from the cold wet glass. The way he would scratch at Yvonne’s back sometimes, when they were in bed together, each sharpened caress making her arch and shriek above him, and the way afterwards she would peer over her shoulder to see the marks he’d left on her, and laugh proudly, and call him a mean bastard, smiling as she said it, and roll off the bed to look for their cigarettes. The sight of her skinny arse as she walked away from the bed like that. Fucking, what was it. The two of them smoking together then, and later, once she’d left, the two of them smoking apart, in rooms a hundred miles away, their fingers yellowing and the memory of each other flaring to life each time they lit up, no matter what they did to avoid it, the drinking and whatever else. The way memories like that end up a part of you, and then pop out again with some movement or some bang on the bone. For example what. For example the number of times, years after she left, he would take his first drag on a cigarette and then find himself holding it out in mid-air, offering it to someone who wasn’t there. Who hadn’t been there for years. For example the way, in those first few months together, she’d only take a few drags before stubbing it out and wrestling him on to his back for another go. Fucking Yvonne. Where did she come from. Where the fuck did she go. And the blood beneath his fingernails that time, the only time. When he lashed out at her by mistake. He’d only wanted to warn her, but she’d moved at the last moment, and he’d caught her awkwardly, caught the skin just by her eye with his fingernails, felt the skin tearing he thought. And there was the blood on his nails, a tiny spot, a tiny fucking damn spot. It was only the one time, weren’t it. And it had been more or less a mistake. The pain in his head. Just a slap, fucking, not even a slap. Because if she hadn’t moved at the last minute. But the way she’d looked at him then, like something had closed off inside her. And her cheek, around where he’d caught her. Red. The ragged edges of the broken skin. The way she said You bastard, without smiling, without room for him to say anything back. Running the taps in the bathroom, and the smell of cigarette smoke curling out while he stood there and knocked on the door. Her muffled voice telling him he had to go and collect Laura from the school because she wasn’t going in this state.

Only the one time. Weren’t it.

There are things we didn’t know before, and we know them now. How but. These things coming to us slowly, surely, rising to the surface like bruises and scars.

Never seen him still like this before. Have you. Even when he was asleep he was all fidgeting and scratching and muttering on, rolling over, pulling at whatever jacket or blanket he’d hauled over himself when he crashed to the floor. And when he was awake he never sat still. Never left the flat but he couldn’t stop moving. Getting a drink, rolling a fag, going over to the window, going for a piss, scratching and talking and waving his arms around to make a point. Telling someone to clear their shit up, telling someone to get him some snap. Telling a story or just sitting there shaking and trembling like there was a current running through him, waiting for a drink. So maybe this is some kind of peace, this stillness he’s got himself now. Maybe you can call it that, at least.

Remember his fingernails though. Do you. Cracked, yellow, bitten-down. And now they’re clipped off and dropped into clear plastic pouches. Put them under a microscope and see what stories they tell. And Laura’s fingernails, that first time she came knocking on Robert’s door, remember Heather couldn’t stop looking at them, couldn’t believe them, long and clean and curved at the ends. Polished. The fingernails of a girl with a clean bathroom where there are handcreams and nail scissors and emery boards and a neat row of clear and coloured varnishes lined up on the shelves. Sort of made Heather think of when she was younger, like much younger, when she first went out on the road with the band, when she was still looking after herself. Laura had ripped her jeans and put on these big clumpy boots but her nails still gave her away. The look on Robert’s face when he woke up next morning and saw her there, and then the look on his face when she went straight off again. Sort of like he couldn’t tell if he’d dreamt it or what. Those perfect fingernails, those long white fingers, clean fingers, Heather had wanted to take the girl’s hand and hold it against her face. Had a feeling like that would be nice. Laura had that effect on people, then. It was unsettling. They weren’t used to it. Wanted to put one of those clean white fingers in her mouth. The taste of it.

The older man, the doctor or whoever he is, speaks to a younger man who writes his words down on a whiteboard on the wall, and a woman with clipped-back hair and black-rimmed glasses starts to cut into Robert’s clothes. Black fleece, the doctor says, greasy stains to cuffs and neck, cigarette burns or similar on chest area, large rip approximately, what, one hundred and seventy millimetres, running up from left waist. The photographer leans in to get pictures of all this, and someone else places a ruler next to the rip in Robert’s filthy clothes.

That’s all those times he fell asleep with a fag on the go, the drinks he spilt over himself. That’s the fight he had with Steve a couple of months back. When he pulled away from Steve and his fleece ripped up the side where Steve was holding it. Weren’t hardly a fight though, it was mostly just holding on, banging heads and swinging elbows and holding each other up. Didn’t come out of much and didn’t look like it was going that far until Steve took a bite on Robert’s ear. Remember that. Just leant round and took a bite, and once Robert had pulled away and made sure his ear was still there he kicked right off. Didn’t he. Remember. Weren’t much of a fight after that. A man the size of Robert, once he puts his mind to it he’s like a what is it a force to be reckoned with a force of nature. Pushing and punching Steve out through the front door and down the steps and shouting all this stuff like You fucking headcase you cunt you can fuck right off and all that. Kept putting his hand to his ear to make sure it was all there or something and spitting out blood where Steve had caught him in the mouth. Rolling up his hat and holding it against his ear. Someone found H and brought him out, and someone else got Steve’s coat and threw it over him where he lay, and Robert started looking up and down the street like he’d only just realised he was outside. Was the first time he’d been outside for a while, and it was the last time until those blokes with the stretcher and the black van carried him out.

Reckon that was the last time Steve was there anyway, unless. Unless what. Some things we don’t know yet. Steve and H stumbling off down the street without looking back, Steve pulling his coat on and rubbing at his knuckles where he’d caught Robert in the mouth. Robert backing away into the flat going What the fuck was all that about and looking for another drink. Pushing his hat back over his head. The two of them picking away at each other all day but it still seemed to come out of nowhere. Robert saying something about Steve never being a real soldier and Steve standing over him going Say that again, and Robert standing up and the two of them going at it. The closeness of them, in that moment, breathing into each other, the sharp smack of knuckle on bone and their faces pressing and scratching together, the smell of drink and cold sweat and the first taste of blood in the mouth, the unfocused stare in the eyes. The dense metallic ring of each punch as it fell. Steve’s teeth biting on his ear, and the crunch of pain that followed. Steve saying, even while Robert was knocking him out of the door, Don’t you ever say that about me again, that was nothing mate, you say that again and you see what happens, I was a soldier you bastard, I served my country you bastard. Lying curled up at the bottom of the steps going I served my country, and Ben hurling his coat down over him and laughing and telling him to shut up. Booting him one in the ribs just for fun. Robert touching his ear and turning away into the flat. Don’t mean nothing now. But if he knew. If Robert knew, if he’d taken the trouble to ask, if he’d given Steve the chance to tell him all the things he’d seen and done when he was away with the army, then he wouldn’t have said that, he wouldn’t have dared, it wouldn’t ever have occurred to him to say something like that. Steve’s done his time and that’s the God’s honest truth. In Belfast, peering out through the letterbox windows of the Land Rover, rocks and bottles raining down, his gun heavy in his lap and the taste of bile in his mouth, ready to rattle out through those back doors and take up positions, waving shields and sticks and shouting Get back, get back, you bastards, get back. Petrol bombs splashing and flaming around their feet, stones and lumps of iron falling from the sky. Gunfire. From nowhere, from bloody everywhere, gunfire. Scanning the rooftops, the windows, the alley-entrances. More gunfire, and a man down beside him, Craigie, his leg ripped open and blood gushing out on to the road. I mean just literally gushing. The shouts of Man down, and idiot whooping in the crowd, and our guns raised in their faces Now will you bloody get back or what, bloody get back. And down in Armagh, wading across sodden meadows and scrambling through ditches, rainwater gushing into drains and culverts like the blood from Craigie’s leg on that road and in the back of the Land Rover and some poor bastard had to swab that out when it was all done. Never told me I’d be doing that. My country lied to me. If Robert had known any of that, if he’d ever listened, if anyone ever listened, he wouldn’t have made something of it like that, he wouldn’t have said what he did. If he knew. Would he.

The woman with the black-rimmed glasses takes a large pair of blunt-nosed scissors and cuts the fleece open up the middle, turning and cutting along each sleeve and peeling the layers apart. She stands back for the photographer to get another shot, and the doctor asks the younger man at the whiteboard to make another note about staining to a long-sleeved undergarment, and again the scissors cut a line up the middle and along each sleeve, and again the layers are peeled back with a soft wet unsticking sound. They cut through a shirt, a couple of t-shirts, and a vest, and it takes us a moment to realise that the blackened surface beneath all these layers, shining wetly under the lights, is his broad and swollen chest. They cut away his trousers, and the material falls off him like sodden rags. They cut away his socks, and the soiled remains of his pants, and he lies before us, between us, naked, beaten. We move closer. We reach out our hands.

They lift him by the shoulders and slide a thick rubber block beneath his back, pushing his chest up and his head back and stretching out his arms, and the woman with the black-rimmed glasses uncoils a length of hose from one end of the table and begins to wash him down, the water streaming gently across his bloated body, down into the gullies which run along either side of the table and into a sink and drain at the far end. The water runs slowly, softly. We wonder whether it’s warm. She rinses him all over, using soap pads to work away the dirt and blood which remains. She begins with his fingers, wiping down to the cleft between each one and across his palms and the backs of his hands, encircling his wrist and lifting each arm as she draws the pads along his forearm and elbow and up to his shoulder. She lowers each arm gently, softly, as if being careful not to wake him. With a clean pad she burrows, delicately, into the thick matted hair of his armpits.

She cleans his chest and stomach, his hips, his thighs and shins and feet, running the pads across his body in broad sweeping gestures. She takes swabs from his mouth and nose and ears, his anus, the tip of his penis. She wipes his neck, his face, his lips, the lids of his eyes. She cleans around his groin, lifting the swollen weight of his penis and his balls while she works around each fold of skin, and then the others help to tilt him up on to his side so she can clean his back and buttocks and the underneath of his thighs.

Nearest he’s come to a bath in years.

Robert and Laura in the bath together. Years ago, before anything fell apart. Laura laughing at the strange black hair sprouting all over him and daring to touch it. I’ve only got hair on my head, she says, looking down at herself, and you’ve got it all over that’s funny. Her small smooth body so strange, her head brimming over with questions and talk, and after they’d gone he tried to remember when she’d stopped talking to him like that, when she’d looked away and not sat in his lap and acted as though he was someone to be afraid around. He’d done nothing to be afraid of. Had he. It was only the way Yvonne behaved, the things she told her. The sight of her shrinking away from him, the shocking way a child can do that, making herself small and out of reach and making his hands hang uselessly by his side.

And remember that second time Laura came home to her dad’s. How she was shocked all over again by how much he’d changed. Remember that. Fatter, redder, more bruised and falling-down. She should see him now. She should but where is she. Would she look at him now, would she shrink away. His skin broken and rotting, his flesh a mottled mess of red and black and purple and cream. His nakedness stripped of meaning. His wounds and scars noted down by people who don’t even know his name.

Feet: advanced state of decay, presumably predating death. Bruising to both shins, knees, upper thighs, hips. Faded scar on right thigh. The younger man writes all this down, and the photographer takes more pictures, and the others crowd around and look.

Blackening of skin to the back of torso, buttocks, and backs of legs, consistent with the subject having remained in a prone position, face-upwards, for a period of days following death. Bruising around ribs. Bruising to left side of face. No scratches or bruises to hands or forearms.

The crowd of them shuffling around his body, peering and pointing as they write these things down. We move closer. We want to touch, we want to touch him. Mike hangs back a little and tells us, by the way, like it don’t mean nothing, that he’s not sure but he maybe might have been the last one there before Robert died. Don’t matter no more anyhow la but it’s just worth mentioning. He tells us he didn’t do nothing or nothing he was just there. He tells us he’s only just thought of it like.

Robert was still in the kitchen when he left so it can’t have been nothing to do with him but it don’t matter no more anyhow. Mike tells us now.

The man with the notebook who looks like a policeman or a detective or something says, So what’s going on with these bruises, Frank? and the doctor says I think I’ll let my very capable junior here answer that. The younger man by the whiteboard looks up and says They’re probably all falls and bumps, aren’t they? The doctor smiles, and nods, and the detective puts his notebook away. From the pictures of the scene, we’re probably going to find that he was an alcoholic, the younger man continues, and alcoholics tend to fall over a lot and bruise very easily. And there’s nothing here which looks like a defensive injury. The doctor, Frank, nods again, gesturing to the younger man and saying This is my junior in whom I am most pleased. They all laugh, and the detective leaves the room. Give me a shout if you find a bullet hole, he says, as he goes.

All of us sitting around with the candles and music and flowers and that, and when it all goes quiet someone says Eh but the undertakers have done a lovely job haven’t they but? He looks smashing and that. He looks better than he has done for years, someone else says, and we laugh, and we think about more of the times we spent with him.

Think about how after the fight that time there was Steve and H stamping off down the street, going That stupid bastard who does he bloody well think he is. Went down to the corner shop by the rec and stocked up on Storm, spent the rest of the week’s giro in one go and lugged it all down to the corner of Barford Street, down to Sammy’s patch, sat on the benches with Sammy down there for the rest of the day. Told him what Robert had said, what had happened, about that bloody little sod Ben running out and joining in, the little sod, what does he even know about anything. Sammy weren’t even listening anyway. Never does. Just sat there drinking a bottle of vodka with no label he’d got from who knows where. Some Polish bollocks, he said, or Russian or one of them. Wouldn’t let Steve have none anyway. Was there most of the rest of the day and he didn’t say much, just Aye pal when Steve kept talking about what Robert had said, how he wouldn’t have said it if he knew where Steve had been and what he’d done, if he really knew what Steve had seen. Saying I’ll tell you what Sammy this is probably as good a time as any to get over to India and track down my brother. I told you about him being over there before didn’t I, I’ve just got to get my passport sorted and get a few things together, it’s been long enough. I’ll get down to Cambridge and get those postcards and things. He won’t be hard to find. I’ll just have to get the money together and get the passport sorted. Seems like a good opportunity. Most Sammy said all day was I’ll tell you what Steve son my eyes are fucking killing me I can hardly see a fucking thing.

Other marks to body: no obvious signs of self-harm, no tattoos, no obvious evidence of injection sites. Visual appearance of body consistent with having remained in situ after death for a period of approximately seven days.

And what if they’d paid this much attention to us all. What if that therapist or whoever had laid Mike out on the table and said Tell me about this bruise here, and this scar, and this blister, and this, what’s this, is this a cigarette burn? Are any of these the result of self-harm, Mike? It depends if you discount self-harm in the wider sense, like as in heroin addiction itself, as in like the associated reckless disregard for one’s own wellbeing. Because leaving that aside there is still cutting with blades and burning with cigarettes and there has been some of that yes. On account of the implants like. Having occasional reason to believe they’ve been misused as in recording certain facts and divulging them to certain agencies. You know what I mean. Burning can sometimes do the job but then sometimes he’s had to go in with a blade and like carve the offending item right out. Didn’t always get to it though pal. Sometimes it just goes deeper. The doctor or therapist going So these acts of self-harm aren’t necessarily on a suicidal continuum. Mike looking at him. The bloke going Have you ever thought about suicide, Mike? I have my friend. I have. Usually when the voices get too bad and there don’t seem like any other way of shutting them up. But also it would show people. That’s what he thinks sometimes. It would teach them a lesson, there would have to be like an inquiry or something and it would show them how bad it was when they didn’t believe him or didn’t listen or didn’t understand. It would show his family or like his friends from school if they even remembered. Or maybe it wouldn’t show no one nothing like maybe they wouldn’t even be riled.

Thought about doing it by deliberately going over, like most of the users he knows have thought about that, thinking about it half the time they shoot up. Thought about jumping, hanging, drowning, burning, walking into the wrong pub and getting himself stabbed. One thing he always came back to though was walking out in front of a bus. Kid at school done that and it had always stuck with him. Seemed like if you got it right it would be easy and quick and no one would ever know you’d done it on purpose, like if any of that God stuff turned out to be true like his parents said then you could maybe get away with it not looking too much like a mortal sin and all that.

He has thought about it. He has.

But all Robert’s bruises don’t count for much. Everyone’s got them, after all. All of us. Bruises and the rest of it: cuts and grazes and sprains and breaks, abscesses and open infected sores. From digging, from falling, from walking into a fist or a bottle or a boot. Like Ben especially, short time we’ve known him he’s more or less always had a black eye or something like it, his smart little mouth always earning him trouble but he never seems to mind. Always a big grin on when he takes the punch, laughing like Is that all you’ve got. Which usually gets him one more. Like Laura, second time she came back to her dad’s we knew she was ready to stay around by the bruises she had. Up and down both arms and her fingernails weren’t long or clean or polished no more. Never talked much about where she’d been but it didn’t look like she’d gone back home to her mum’s.

Said she’d gone off with some friends instead of going home. Spent the summer at some festivals, like climbing over fences and sleeping in other people’s tents and selling pills to pay for food, and at the end of the summer she still didn’t want to go home so she ended up living on a site for the winter. This was what she told Heather. What Heather tells us now, her voice hanging above us like smoke and lingering in the cold white room. She’d done the same round of festivals the next year, and ended up on another site for the winter, and basically got in to gear while she was staying there. It had been all right for a while but then it had all gone a bit dark so she’d sold her van and left the site. Come back up to her dad’s to get herself sorted. Heather asked her if she meant sort of sorted clean or sorted sorted, and Laura said what did she think otherwise what would she be doing there?

The two of them in the front bedroom together, Laura’s old room although she could hardly recognise it now, the two of them shooting up and sending someone out to score and shooting up again, and then Heather getting her started on the crack. She still had a wedge of money from selling the van, and the two of them soon binged their way through it. Heather showing her how to inject into her legs. Looking at her arms, stroking the blackening bruises and saying You’ve messed these up proper sweetheart you better leave them alone now. Pulling Laura’s trousers down and kneeling on the floor beside her to find a good new vein, whispering sweetly while Laura brought it up and dug in the pin. Saying There you go love, that should do you nicely. Handing her a tissue to press on the spot where the needle had gone in before helping her pull up her trousers as she lay back down on the bed. Always made a point of leaning the door shut because she said she didn’t think Robert should see but really she didn’t want anyone to see. But we see now. The two of them lying on the bed together, touching each other’s hair, nodding out for minutes and hours and then opening their eyes to talk. Laura saying How long you been doing this then, and Heather saying Too fucking long love but what does it matter. Laura saying Do you think my dad knows I’m using and Heather saying He might be pissed love but he’s not stupid of course he knows. I think he’s just happy to have you about the place. Which made Laura smile. Any parent would be, Heather said. Which made Laura smile even more. Resting the side of her face on her pressed-together hands, saying If my mum could see me now she’d go mental, she’d go totally get-out-of-my-house, that’s why I came back here, I reckoned like my dad at least couldn’t say much about it the state he’s in. Looking at Heather’s tattoo, the blue-green ink blurred by the ageing skin, pressing her fingers over it and saying Can you see me now? The two of them laughing. Heather saying The trouble that’s got me into I reckon I should sue whoever done it. Like sort of loss of earnings. The two of them laughing, and all of us laughing now in this room at the thought of it, the sound of us still not quite making sense as we stand here around Robert’s naked bloated body.

Remember the way Heather always laughed, a bit louder and a bit longer than everyone else, like it took her a while to get the joke and she had to make up for it.

Laura sliding on to the floor to get the works, already wriggling her trousers down and saying Heather do you want some more I want some more. Ben knocking on the door, moving it aside, looking down at Laura with her trousers around her knees and saying All right ladies I got your shopping. That grin on his face, spread right across his cheeks, his lips rolling round his teeth, trying not to look so pleased with himself, with his dark hair curling over his face and his hands reaching into his pockets to pull out the goods like a magic trick. Like some kind of showman, weren’t he. How old was he then. Sixteen. Only just out of care, officially. Got himself out a long time before but he was still getting used to not looking over his shoulder all the time, to not worrying about getting caught and taken back. Was starting to miss it already in fact. The two of them reaching out and him teasing them for a moment, waving the gear above them, enjoying the passing thrill of power before dropping it into their outstretched hands. That was early on. When he would do missions for nothing, for fun and thanks and a bag or two he could keep to sell on himself. Was a lot of things he’d do for a word of thanks, then. The way it would light up his face.

Ben always had a lot to say but he never told us much. Always talking about going down to Brighton to find his sister. Said the last he’d heard she was staying down there, and if things didn’t work out he could always go and track her down. Lost touch with her after she left care, she was supposed to come and visit but she didn’t always make it. Didn’t even get on with her that well, never had much to do with her after they got taken into care. But she’s still his sister and that, she’d still help him out, probably. If he could get down to Brighton. If he could find her. She knows how it weren’t his fault. She knows that’s old news now. He couldn’t have done nothing to stop him, to stop it happening. He didn’t even know about it really, not enough to be sure. She took it out on Ben at the time but that’s old news now, she wouldn’t keep taking it out on him no more. If he could get down to Brighton. If he could find her. What would he have done anyway. He was only little. At the time when it happened. Anyway. Don’t matter no more. Sweeping the hair out of his eyes. Bouncing up and down on his toes and looking all over, like he was getting ready to run. Always seemed like he was ready to run. Didn’t he. Remember that. Don’t you. Jesus.

The doctor moves over to the whiteboard and talks to his junior, asking if he’s happy with their observations so far, if he has any further comments, and then he speaks to the woman with the black-rimmed glasses and says Okay, Jenny, I think it’s time we had a proper look at our gentleman, could you do us the honour of opening him up? We see, through a window in one wall which looks on to a small office, the detective talking on his phone, drinking coffee from a polystyrene cup and watching as Jenny takes a long scalpel from a steel tray of tools and slices into Robert’s chest. There’s a soft slow hissing sound as his chest and stomach deflate. The polished blade parts a long u-shaped line through his flesh, from one ear to his chest and then back to the other ear, the blood running in streams down each side of his body. She keeps cutting, and the blood keeps coming, thick and dark and draining away along the gullies in the sides of the table. She lifts the scalpel and makes another long cut, from the centre of the chest right down to the pubic bone, and then she peels back the flaps of tissue and skin, tugging them away from Robert’s ribcage and laying them out flat on either side of his chest like the opened pages of a book. She peels away the third flap, at the top, draping it over Robert’s face, and uses an electric saw to cut through each of his ribs. The noise of the saw fills the room, grinding and violent, and we step back for a moment. We turn away. This is difficult to watch, even now. How easily a body is reduced to this. Knotted sinew and fat and bone. Severed arteries and veins, the blood pouring out. The saw whines a little as it bites into each rib, the technician rocking on her toes as the blade breaks through the soft marrow and out the other side. She cuts through twelve ribs along his left side, stooping low over the table, and then circles round to cut through twelve more on the right. The saw whirrs to a noisy halt. The extraction fans in the table whistle softly as they suck the bone dust out of the air.

No obvious damage to ribcage, sternum or clavicle bones, the doctor says. No evidence of violence to the torso, nor of any attempted resuscitation.

Second time Laura came home she asked her dad if she could stay for a while. Remember that. He thought all his birthdays had come at once, thought he was going to keel over with it there and then. Thought things were going to be all right after that. He could see she’d got herself in a bit of trouble, bit of a mess, but it was something they had in common now, something they could get sorted out together, the two of them like a team, like father and daughter getting things right together, making up for lost time. Like fuck.

The pain in his head, sometimes. Blocking out everything Yvonne was saying to him, making him want her to go away, to be quiet, to just fucking shut up and go away that pain in his head like nothing else. But she didn’t believe him, or she thought it was his drinking, or she thought he was being a wimp. Drinking was just about the only thing that made it go away. Like someone hammering a nail into the side of his head. Jesus what was it. If he kept moving he couldn’t feel it. If he drank enough, and kept moving, and she shut up fucking shut up a minute it went away. But it always came back, and, sometimes. Made him act wrong sometimes.

The pain in his head when he first heard Yvonne warning him what she was going to do. The feel of the sound of it. Like a what, like a storm, like a storm behind glass. Shrieking into his face to make sure he could hear, beating on him. Her tight little fists shaking in the air. I’ll go back to my mum’s, I will. Are you listening to me. I don’t want to but I can’t stay here like this. And everything he’d heard her saying to her mum on the phone. No he hasn’t been looking for a job yet but he, I thought he just needed a bit of time to get over it, it was such a shock the way they all got locked out like that with no warning, they all took it hard and it’s not like they’ve had much help, I mean most of them just went straight on the sick. But he’s had long enough now, it’s been long enough, he could at least give me a hand about the place. Standing by the kitchen sink with another drink while she hid in the bedroom and said all this and she thought he couldn’t hear. He’s leaving everything down to me and I’ve had enough, there’s bills stacking up, Mum, I’ve been swinging a few extra shifts but I still don’t see how we’re going to cover it all. I don’t know, Mum. I don’t know what I’m going to do. And Laura waking up to hear her mum shouting again, shouting I’ll go back, Robert, I will, I’ll take her with me and all, you bloody watch me, I don’t want to but I will. Are you listening? Are you bloody well listening or what? And then the thumping, like before, coming through the wall, her mum’s little fists against her dad’s chest, pounding through him and the thin wall and knocking against Laura where she was sat up with her back against the headboard of her bed. Until it stopped, like it always did, and they were both crying, and she could hear the shuffling three-legged footsteps of the two of them helping each other to bed, and she fell asleep, and years later she was lying with her head in Heather’s lap telling the story all over again. Not feeling nothing about it this time.

These things all coming together now. Coming up to the surface.

And remember Robert told Steve about it too. Said it had been more or less the only clue that something was up, that something was going wrong. Said he’d known she didn’t like him drinking so much, and he’d known they’d been doing plenty of arguing, but he’d thought it was normal. But that’s just it Rob mate, Steve told him, the two of them sitting in their armchairs in the empty room and working their way through the day’s drinks, nothing’s normal for them is it, nothing’s good enough. They’re always after things being different, being better. You’re better off without mate, he said, and they knocked their cans together in agreement, looking out across the playing fields and the sun going down behind the trees by the river. That’s what Steve told him. Didn’t he. That’s where he went wrong, he broke the golden rule, let himself get in too far. You start leaning on someone, when they do the off you’ll fall over. Stands to reason. Never lean on no one. Never trust no bastard. Golden rule, that’s what he told him. Remember that. That’s where he went wrong with what’s her name, as it happens, the woman from the shop. Marianna, Marianne, Marie. Whatever her name was. Let down his guard, got to the point where he’d do all sorts of bollocks for her, like he was trying to impress her, like he thought she was bothered. Then when he came back from that roadtrip to bloody Bosnia she didn’t want to know. Said things had changed. Said Steve had changed, said he was too moody and it was too hard being around him any more. Too right he’d changed, what else did she expect. He’d seen a few things when he was over there. Things that had, even someone who’d been on all the postings he’d been on, they’d taken him aback a bit, more or less. He wasn’t looking for sympathy, he’d never asked for that. Just a little bit of patience. A bit of understanding. She made out like he’d got too quiet and moody but she only had to give him a chance to think. Just sometimes. Jesus. He was still up for a laugh and a joke but he needed to clear his head and she didn’t really get it. Giving it all Maybe you should talk to someone about it, like that would help. There was that time, the two of them stood on the bridge over the canal, it was right when he was getting his tenancy sorted out and he’d said something about she could stay over sometimes and as soon as he’d said it he knew he was stuffed. She wouldn’t even look at him. Hands deep in her pockets like she had a weapon hidden away in there. Giving it all Oh but the thing is really, Steve, things are a bit different now, things have got a bit weird. I wasn’t really up for anything serious. Looking down at the muddy brown water like she was hoping he’d jump in or something. And after that the staff wouldn’t let him work in the shop any more, or even go in there at all. They said it wasn’t appropriate, which was a joke because he wasn’t the one with the problem. He wasn’t the one who’d said things had got a bit weird. He wouldn’t have bloody minded only he never even got to bang her whatever her name was Maria or Marie or whatever. Would have liked to. She had nice hands and that.

The technician reaches across Robert, grasping the top of his ribcage and lifting it away from his body. It comes off in one piece, like the breastplate from a suit of armour, and she lays it down on another stainless-steel table. We move in close around his body again, our hands resting on the table, and peer in at the strange swollen gleam of his insides, the flabby organs crammed wetly in upon each other. The doctor scrapes away more layers of creamy yellow fat, slices through a series of arteries and veins, and then lifts the organs out as a single block, easing them on to a plastic tray which they carry over to a cutting board on the counter running along the wall. Behind them, in the scooped-out hollow of Robert’s body, we see the rib-bones fanning out across his back, the knuckles of his spine, the coiled mass of his intestines and bowels already slipping and spreading out to fill the space.

Should be something more like. We prop photos up amongst the candles, snapshots from younger days, better days, so that people can look and tell lies about how he hasn’t aged all that badly, considering. A photo from his army days, in full dress uniform, so that his former colleagues can pick it up and put it down and catch each other’s eyes and not need to say a word. A photo Laura once found in the bottom of her mum’s wardrobe, of a young-looking man with a soft round face and a broad flat chest, his shirt hanging open and a young girl grinning wildly on his shoulders. She used to go and look at it when her mum was out of the house. The young girl on the shoulders was her, she supposed.

All those years thinking about him, and once she was back there she found it hard to think of him as her dad at all. He didn’t even look much like that photo, by the time she got to him. The Robert she met — fat with drink and sorrow, unwashed, with a crushed face and a sunken posture, each hand punched into an arthritic curl — was the man her mother had warned her about, the man she’d always been told they’d left. The man Robert had only really become once they’d closed that door behind them and he’d started drinking seriously. Once he’d given up expecting them to ever come home. She’d imagined hugging him when she came back. Sitting on his lap, resting her head on his shoulder. Making up for everything they’d lost. Which had sort of happened, once, soon after the second time she came back, putting her arms around him and clinging on desperately until the smell of his long-worn clothes had pushed her away. After that, she’d only ever touched him when she wanted money. Crouching beside him and resting a hand on his knee, or standing behind him with her hands on his shoulders, leaning over and talking softly into his ear. She felt bad asking, but she felt like he owed her. All those years he hadn’t been around. That one time though, she thought about it sometimes. When she wasn’t thinking about other things. The way it felt. Nothing like she’d been expecting. The solid, numbed stillness of him. Like hugging a tree. His arms by his side, lifting out into the air for a moment, uncertainly. Like he’d forgotten what he was supposed to do, and by the time he’d remembered she’d already gone, again.

They stand around the cutting board, the doctor and the technician and the assistants and the photographer. The rest of us pressing in around them. The doctor separates out the liver, lifting it in one hand and resting it in the shining bowl of an electronic set of scales. Two thousand seven hundred and forty-three grammes, he says, and one of them just about whistles, and the junior doctor writes it down on the whiteboard. The liver is a yellowish orange colour, like a sponge, speckled and grainy, and thick gobbets of fat spread out across the knife as the doctor slices into it. What can you tell me about this? he asks his junior. Cirrhosis, the younger man says. Advanced cirrhosis. Thank you, the doctor says, smiling. The technician takes one of the liver slices and puts it into a clear plastic container, soaking it with formaldehyde and carefully labelling the lid. The doctor separates out the heart, an awkward-looking lump of flesh with severed pipes and tubes fingering out in all directions, weighs it, and puts it back on the board. He cuts into it, exposing the chambers, the valves, the arteries, using his scalpel to indicate particular features while he dictates his notes.

Heart: enlarged, flabby, otherwise of normal external appearance, firm, reddish brown, no lesions apparent. Left and right ventricles normal, cardiac chambers normal although some clotted blood apparent, endocardium normal. Sections through the coronary arteries show significant narrowing, of approximately seventy to eighty per cent, indicating severe coronary artery disease.

If it comes down to it la I will cut out your heart.

Remember Danny and Laura and Heather and Ben all cooking up together one time. Down under one of the arches by the canal because Mike was up at the flat and he hadn’t put any money in for the gear. Was it that or just we didn’t want him around. Danny doing all the prep and the rest of them watching like coppers so the shares would be even. Got a couple of two and one deals between them all, so he mixed up the dark and the light in the spoon and got it cooking, drew the whole lot up into one barrel to measure it and then squirted it back out into the spoon, shared it out into everyone’s pins, and then everyone backed off to get digging. Heather laughing at Ben because he said he still didn’t like needles and that was a fucking joke that made them laugh every time. Danny and Laura going at the same time, bang on the same time, the crack kicking in first and the two of them watching each other when it did, some kind of fucking beautiful going off there between them for what is it seconds a minute two minutes like you you euphoric between them like a whoosh like a bullet through a tunnel bursting out into the sunshine firelight with this what this great big God almighty yes yes yes before sinking settling down into the cotton-wool embrace of the dark the brown taking the edge off taking the edge all the way right fucking off. Heather still laughing away at Ben, going I reckon you’re in the wrong fucking line of work here Benny boy, all four of them laughing and lying back on to the rubble and ash under the arch, listening to the white-noise roar of the water pouring over the top of the lock, the clatter of the trains running over them, Danny turning to look in Laura’s eyes again but she was all gone away. Rubbing his fingers over and over his face, feeling well, feeling welcome in his body again. Feeling like, fuck, the things a body can do, these fingers, these bones, this muscle and skin, the bones of his face, the jaw and the cheeks and the eye sockets, the cells dividing and forming and healing and beginning again, all the things we do to these bodies and they keep beginning again, the cuts and bruises and festering wounds, this crash helmet of a skull keeping this suffering brain safe. For what. For this. For this feeling well again. For all the things a body can be. For when all this is over and done with and life can begin again.

Would like to have seen her naked one time. Just once. Probably she was all fucked up, all bones and bruises and broken veins, but still even so. Would have liked to see what her body could do, what her body could be. Long and white and pale and turning towards. Opening towards.

And what about Ben. Jesus. That time in Laura’s old bedroom when Heather had some rocks to offer him. No one really knew about it at the time except we knew something had gone off. We know about it now though but. Pulling him into the room and closing the door. Sitting down on the bed, near enough falling down on the bed, saying Come here Benny boy do you want a smoke do you want a go on the pipe? Reaching in her pocket and taking out a bag. Ben smiling that smile again and going Heather mate does the Pope shit in the woods or what? Heather filling a pipe for him and offering it up, and Ben’s brain going pop pop pop as he sucked away on it. Heather waiting, watching, Ben chatting on about the trouble he’d been having at the hostel, something to do with another resident lying to the staff about him tooting in his room and when the staff came to search it they planted some rocks under the mattress because they had it in for him anyway they wanted an excuse to get him out of there he’d been lippy one time too many and they like you to know who’s in charge who’s the boss who’s the fucking what what the number one. Heather watching his eyes flicker to the pipe and the lighter and the bag hidden tightly in her fist. Ben stuttering and stopping and saying Heather I’m not being cheeky or nothing but can I have some more? The hunger it gives you, the need. Nothing you could ever need as much as another go on the pipe. The first time the best time and you’re always chasing after that. Do anything to get back to that. Never get there but you always get close and you always keep reaching. Don’t you. Heather looking up at him, her eyes unfocused, saying Come here then. Lowering her voice and saying Come here. Putting her hands out and pulling him towards her by the waistband of his jeans. Ben pulling away, and Heather pulling him back, saying Come here Ben, come here, pulling him to the edge of the bed and keeping him there with her legs squashed around his. Looking at him looking at the pipe. Looking at him as she undoes his trousers and keeps him from pulling away. Saying Come on Ben, come on. What are you scared of? You’ve known me long enough, haven’t you? Come on, come on. It’s not going to do any harm. Ben looking away, to the battered wall behind the bed, to the corner of the room, saying Heather I don’t really want to. I don’t want. Heather still murmuring, reassuring, one hand behind him now and the other hand working on him through his pants. Saying Do me a favour love. If you want another go on the pipe. There’s plenty more where the last lot came from. Saying What’s the matter Ben, don’t you like me or something? And Ben, his whole body stiffened and still, saying Heather it’s not that of course I like you it’s just it’s not like that I don’t want to. Cold resignation in his voice. Taking the pipe as she hands it up to him. Taking long blistering draws on the smoke while she pulls down his pants and does what she wants to do, squeezing his balls, tugging at his unwilling erection, working her calloused fingers into the crack of his arse while a smell like pear drops bubbles into the room and his brain goes pop pop pop and he pictures the light sparkling round through his bloodstream, surging, charging, roaring, picking him up up up and over the room looking down and further right out of the room and the first time he met Heather outside the train station where he was tapping people up and she told him You don’t want to do that here sweetheart you’ll get picked up in no time, couple of coppers on the way over even while she was talking and she took his arm and led him straight off down the road. Weight of her hand on his elbow. Her wide round hips squashing into his. Funny-looking woman but he didn’t mind going off with her, seemed like she knew a thing or two. Leading him like a blind man which is what he was more or less when it came to living out on the street. Was a lot better now but he never saw this one coming. Should have done but he didn’t, the pipe burning dry and the popping in his brain fading away and the anxious gnawing appetite sliding back in. Looking down at the back of her head while she sucks away at him, her greasy half-red hair with the black roots turning grey, the smell of the burning crack drifting off and the smell of her replacing it, the smell of drink and old sweat and bad teeth and he tries to pull her head away by the hair but she don’t stop. Saying Fucking stop it stop it Heather will you stop it please. Things she warned him about but she never warned him about this. Heather wiping her mouth and smiling and saying Oh come on Benny boy, what’s wrong, you don’t want any more goes on the pipe? Looking at him looking at the bag of rocks in her fist. Saying Come on now Ben. No one’s going to know. I won’t tell anyone. Come on. Give me some more and I’ll give you what you need. Her hands all over in between his legs now, pulling at him, pinching and scratching him and pulling him closer. Ben turning his face towards the ceiling and screwing up his eyes. Saying Heather fucking hell fucksake. Saying it under his breath as if daring himself to say it, fucking hell Heather I don’t want to. You stupid fucking bitch. Heather’s eyes widening with anticipation when he says this, wrestling with her own trousers, the belt and the buttons and the tangle of shirts and shawls hanging around them, kicking the trousers to her ankles and falling back on to the bed. Pulling Ben down on to her and tugging him in and saying Say that again. Say bitch again. Ben with his eyes screwed shut but still the smell of her all over and the soft rolling slap of her body beneath him and the grunt and moan of her gaping crack-headed need swallowing him up. Thought he could trust her even though one thing she warned him was never trust no one and it turns out she was right about that. Should have learnt it years ago but. Way back when all those people he thought were helping him out were just grassing him up and getting him sent back to the home. In the day centre. At the church. That woman at the train station when he tried to jump the barriers. That bloke he asked for money outside the theatre who put him up for the night. All of them going Yeah yeah I’ll help you out, son, and then running off to phone up and get him shipped off back to the home. Too late for them now though. They couldn’t do that no more, he was too old for care, too old to get taken back, he was on his own now and he liked it that way, it was better that way. Old enough to look after himself and he had been for a long time. Heather going Hold me down then now, like a bastard, you’re a bastard, go on, hold my wrists. Ben opening his eyes for a second and saying Fucksake Heather you mad fucking bitch, bitch, bitch, you mad fucking bitch, saying it to a rhythm without even meaning to and then holding her wrists down on the bed, thinking about the pipe, trying to think about nothing but the pipe and feeling himself lifted high above the room but still hearing her and feeling her and smelling her even with his eyes screwed tightly shut, the scabs and bruises of her thighs clenched around his legs, the cigarette burns across her stomach, her grunting and moaning and going Pull my hair fucking pull my hair you bastard you bastard and Ben trying not to listen, trying not to think of nothing but the pipe at the end of all this going You fat, fucking, bitch, you sick, fat, fucking, bitch, you sick, fucking, fucking, fucking, and Heather going Yes yes no please no.

We didn’t know this, before. Even Heather says she didn’t know, she sort of can’t remember, she must have been sort of out of it and she can’t quite believe it was her. But we know it now, we see it and we believe it now. None of us is shocked. Most of us have known something like it before anyhow. None of this is new. None of it matters no more.

The doctor turns back to the board and cuts open Robert’s lungs, and the airways spill into his hands like roots pulled up from the soil.

Lungs: normal external colour and appearance, heavy. Airways congested with aspirated blood. Primary bronchi and successive bronchi showing signs of tar-like deposits probably from cigarette smoke. Dilated airspaces at extreme upper lobes indicate probable emphysema. Note that trachea and large airways also contain blood.

The technician puts the heart and lungs and liver into a red plastic bag, and the photographer takes more pictures as the doctor weighs and dissects the other organs on the board. He shows something to the others, gesturing with his scalpel, and the technician goes to Robert’s hollowed body and fetches short lengths of his intestines, snipping them loose with a pair of blunt-nosed scissors and carrying them over to the workbench. She slices them open, washes them out at the sink, and puts them to one side. The doctor speaks again, and his junior makes more notes on the whiteboard.

Stomach: normal external appearance and colour, compressed and empty of food contents. Small intestine also empty of digestive content; descending section of large intestine contains faecal matter; conclude that the deceased had not consumed food for a period of approximately twenty-four to forty-eight hours prior to death.

We sit around talking in low voices, looking at him, and someone puts on his favourite CD, Neil Young singing I’m going to give you till the morning comes, and someone else comes out the kitchen with plates of sandwiches, sliced ham and cucumber and cottage cheese. Cut into little triangles and passed around the room, and when someone says Oh I couldn’t possibly someone else says Eh now come on you’ll want to keep your strength up la. And we light more candles. Do we bollocks.

People think it’s all about being hungry and that but hungry’s got nothing to do with it. Can always find food if you want it. Soup runs and day centres and hostels and that. Food don’t cost much. Food don’t cost nothing if you know where to look. Can go without eating for a couple of days, more when there’s other stuff you need to sort first. Like getting sorted. Food don’t matter when you got the rattles coming on, and when you’re sorted you don’t even care. But Robert always liked his food didn’t he though. Was always after sending someone out to get him something. Pizzas and kebabs and all that. Don’t know where he got the money from but he was never short of food. Something must have happened if he didn’t eat nothing for twenty-four hours. Something must have gone off. All that talk about where he got the money from but he never went short of food or drink. These little shits tried robbing him once but they only found a tenner on him. Remember that. They never tried it again after we’d done with them. Must have kept it somewhere but. Liked having something to eat.

Little shits must have been waiting for us all to go out, watching, because they got Robert when he was on his own and we didn’t often leave him on his own. Said he liked company. He gave them what they could find, a tenner and some fags and a bottle of cider, and he got a good look at their faces while they were knocking him about, and as soon as we got back he told us who it was. We didn’t need telling twice though did we. Remember that. That was what it was, it was like a what, an unspoken deal. He let us hang out in his flat, do what we wanted there more or less, sleep there if we needed to, and we looked out for him. Got rid of people he didn’t want there. Sorted out his debts. And found the little shits who tried to tax him, followed them down to the underpass near the canal and near enough broke their fucking legs with a short bit of scaffold pole that Ben had happened to find along the way. Only two of them so it weren’t hard. Certain things we’d all do for Robert and that was one of them.

He shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t be here. He should be in some fucking what some funeral home or something all laid out nice with flowers and candles and what and music. We should be here to pay our respects instead of all this. Who’s going to lay him out now. Where will they take him. The state of him once this lot have done. The box they’ll have to cart him off in, and who’s going to stick him in the ground, who’s going to pay for all that. No one’s going to get Yvonne to come back. Not now, not when she’s so far away. His parents are long gone. And will they find Laura, does anyone even know who she is. Someone’s got to take him and bury him and say all the prayers and all that. He shouldn’t be here, he shouldn’t even fucking be here. We shouldn’t be here.

Always in the wrong place, the wrong time. The wrong fucking body, the wrong fucking skin.

And remember what Laura said that time, about wanting a new body, wanting to start again with a new body so she could go round all over again. Don’t work like that but she wanted it to. When Danny found her that time. When she’d run out of veins or she thought she had. Been trying to get a dig for over an hour, sitting there by herself just poking around with the pin trying to get in to all those collapsed and raggedy veins, trying to find the other ones deeper in but the pin weren’t long enough. Rooting around and getting more and more desperate, more and more scared. Danny found her round by the bins behind the hostel and for a minute he thought she’d been cutting herself. All that blood. Looked like it was just seeping out through her skin. She was crying and swearing and going Danny fucking what Danny what am I going to do now? Scratching her neck and pulling her hair and going Danny I’ve been trying for fucking ages I can’t do it. What the fuck have I done? Cold and white and the rattles on her so bad he could more or less hear them. Blood all over her hands, and then blood all over Danny’s hands when he tried to find a dig for her. Her voice all thin and tired going Danny fucking what what I need to fucking start all over again or something don’t I. Don’t even want to stop but maybe I got no choice. Danny giving up in the end and finding Mike, Mike coming round and sticking one in her neck, going You don’t wanna try this yoursen though la, you need to see what you’re doing an it’s too easy to pop an artery, you know what I’m saying. It’s game over when you do that an no mistake. Laura with her chin right up looking way past Mike to the sky, her eyes spilling with tears and holding her breath while he eased in the pin. Clinging on to his arms to keep still, like he was her only hope or something. Like he was the one who could make her body new. A new body and what though but. A new heaven and all that. All Laura wanted was one more vein. One more chance to begin again.

Ben had a laugh when she said that. No chance of that is there, no one gets a second go and anyone who says you do is talking fucking bollocks. Laughing like it was a joke but he weren’t joking. Was he. Sweeping the hair out of his eyes and sniffing and smearing the snot from his nose with the back of his hand. No one gets a second go. Where was it. Remember that. Where were we when. Climbing up the garages round the back of Robert’s flat to get in that time, after he couldn’t get to the front door to open it. Mike giving Danny a leg up and Benny boy talking to Laura while they waited their turn and Einstein sniffing around the garage doors. Only a few days after Mike had helped her do the vein in her neck and she was talking about wanting another chance. Maybe if I give it a rest I can start up again once it’s healed, she said. The old woman with the tiger-paw slippers walking her dog round the edge of the playing fields and giving them a funny look like they were up to something. Her and her rat-faced little Yorkshire terrier with the tartan jacket, and Mike telling her she could take a picture if she wanted and that sent her shuffling on her way. When was this. Laura said What you talking about second goes and that, what would you know, you’re not even old enough to have had a first go yet. I don’t know about that Laura, he said, smiling even more than usual, I’m old enough, I’m old enough for a bit of you know what. She laughed, and reached out to smack him round the head, and as he ducked out of reach he grabbed her wrist and said Don’t you dare don’t you fucking dare. Pulling his face close to hers and stopping himself from saying whatever he was going to say next, pulling his face close enough that their foreheads touched, until she pulled away and told him to fuck off. The two of them out of breath a little, and the old woman watching them again, and Mike and Danny out of sight on the garage roof. And that smile again, and Ben going No but leave it out will you I don’t like girls giving out like that, it’s not right. What was he talking about. What did he mean. How should we know. Mike leaning over the edge of the roof and reaching out his hand, going Up you come la there’s room for everyone, up you come the two of youse. And then climbing in through that kitchen window and Robert sitting in his chair laughing at them all, that laugh deep down in his belly going Here comes the cavalry! Here comes the fucking mountain rescue! What you got for you Uncle Robert? When was this. Three days before Christmas. So what happened then.

This was the same day Laura got Danny in her room for that one last hit. Which her worker had warned her about hadn’t he. Giving it all It’s so important that you stick to your script, Laura, you need to be clean when you start rehab, there’s no such thing as one last go, it doesn’t work like that, you know it doesn’t work like that. So then she was all panicking and crying and everything. After she’d kicked Danny out and after she came down off her nod she was all in a panic because she thought she’d fucked it all up again. Trying to phone her worker and explain and they kept going He’s out of the office now. Getting the hostel staff to find him, asking them to call the rehab and sort something out. Asking them to help her now. Thinking she’d blown her only chance and when she managed to speak to her worker the first thing he said was Listen, Laura, there’s always another chance. But let’s try and make this one work. And he must have made some calls because next thing was she was sat in the room with him and one of the hostel staff, what was her name, Ruth or someone, and he’s going Okay here’s the plan. They’re still going to take you, and they’re going to take you early, you can go up there tomorrow, they’ll put you on a detox before you start the course. And until then the best thing you can do is stay in your room, watch the television, don’t talk to anyone, don’t answer the door. Ruth’s going to bring you up some food, and she’s going to look after your mobile, and you’re going to sit tight until a taxi comes for you tomorrow. Do you think you can manage that? Laura crying and everything and nodding yes and then what. Climbed in the taxi with a couple of bags of clothes and drove out of town to the rehab, to the house in the country with the tall trees and the long sloping lawn. Into the, fucking, sunset and that. Easy as that. Stopped at Robert’s on the way, said her goodbyes and whatever else. And what else.

The doctor turns away from the cutting board and says Jenny, I think we’ll move on shall we? Jenny nods, and moves back to Robert’s body, to his head. She takes a new scalpel from the tray of polished tools and slices a long line across Robert’s scalp, slipping through the matted black hair and the raw reddened skin and the thin layer of flesh, the tip of the blade scraping against his skull. She takes the incision right across the crown, from ear to ear, and then peels back each segment of scalp like the skin of a bloody orange. She picks up the electric saw, and leans forward to brace her feet, and cuts a circle around Robert’s skull, the growl and grind of the saw once again filling the room. She puts the saw to one side, and she lifts off the top of Robert’s head.

We look at his brain, Robert’s brain, creamy-white and glistening, soft and heavy, fold upon fold of interconnected flesh which once fizzed with electrical code, with memories and visions and language and everything learnt in his short and thwarted life. We look at the doctor’s fingers moving around it, squeezing, prodding, tracing lines and shapes as he talks to the others, making comments, asking questions. We watch his fingers catch on something as he pushes down into the skull, and we watch him delicately work loose a dull-coloured fragment of metal the size of a fifty-pence piece. He holds it up to the light, and the photographer takes pictures, and they pass it between them, turning it over and over in their gloved palms. The doctor combs through Robert’s hair, above his ear, behind his ear, further round to the nape of his neck, and finds a faded scar, crescent-shaped, slightly ridged, about the length of a fifty-pence piece. The detective knocks on the window, and we hear his voice coming through a speaker overhead. Something interesting? he asks. I don’t know, the doctor says. Looks like it might be shrapnel of some kind. Looks old though. How old? the detective asks. Too old for you, the doctor says, and the detective goes back to his newspaper. The technician takes a long-bladed knife and slips it down into the skull to slice through the top of the spinal column. She takes Robert’s brain out of his head, places it in a plastic tray, and carries it over to the cutting board, where they weigh it and measure it and slice off samples to be stored in small plastic containers for further examination. The technician’s assistant places the fragment of metal into a plastic pouch, and the doctor dictates more notes.

Brain: normal appearance, softened by decomposition. No evidence of haemorrhage. Brown discoloration and glial scarring to small area of the surface around the lower mid-point of the left cerebral hemisphere, this appears to have been caused by the ingress and or the remaining presence of a metallic fragment whose composition and origin is unknown. Fragment sent for analysis. Medical records of subject, once identified, may provide further information. Fragment appears to correspond with a scar around the left side of the base of the subject’s skull, immediately above the hairline; possibility that this marks the original entry wound for fragment.

He backs away from the brain on the board, peeling off his outer layer of gloves and moving over to the whiteboard. He looks at the notes which have been written up, and asks his junior for any further comments. The detective’s voice comes out of the overhead speaker again, saying We’re done then are we? and the doctor says Sorry, Chris, there’s nothing criminal here. Not unless the toxicology comes back and it turns out your gentleman’s been poisoned by arsenic. In which case it’ll probably be the butler what done it. Jenny finishes labelling all the sliced samples of Robert’s organs and tissue and blood, slipping them into labelled plastic bags marked with biohazard stickers. She puts the slices of his brain into a red plastic bag lying open beside her. She packs cotton wadding into the scooped cavity of his skull, positioning the skull cap over it and pressing the two peeled-back flaps of scalp into place. She takes a needle and thread from the tray and stitches the scalp back together, stooping closely over it, taking her time. When she’s finished she carefully brushes Robert’s hair across the dotted threads, and as she stands back his head looks almost untouched. She smooths a stray hair back into place. She goes back to the cutting board, and places the rest of Robert’s organs in the red plastic bag with his brain. She puts the intestines and bowels into another bag, and nestles them both into the bare-ribbed cavity of Robert’s chest. She takes the sawn-off section of ribcage from the table and settles it back into place, and she folds the fatty flaps of flesh and skin back down together, picking up the needle and thread and stitching his body shut, working slowly and patiently while the others talk by the whiteboard, and when she’s finished there’s only a delicate Y-shaped seam to show he’s been cut apart at all.

Someone else comes in, and we move closer to the table where he lies. We light more candles, rest our hands upon his body, and wonder what more we can say. Someone asks about the funeral arrangements. Mike says Eh now there’s something you should see. I think youse had all best come and look at this. We look at each other, and we stand and follow him out through the door, out into the cold cracked dawn, walking along the empty streets and looking into alleyways and open garages, railway arches, tunnels, derelict buildings, the backyards of offices and pubs, the basements of multi-storey carparks, the locked rooms of hostels, the squatted flats above shops, the wasteground by the Miller’s Arms. And Mike says, There you go, there’s Danny. Slumped on the piss-wet floor of the phonebox. Einstein barking and yelping and hurling herself against the door. The bloody pin still in his hand, and his lips turning white, and his fingers folding over into claws. Curled up on the floor of the phonebox like a dog in a basket. Going over. Which we’ve all come close to doing before. Come close to that edge which is like no edge at all just a falling away of the ground. Always trying to get close to that, back to that peaceful place. To that, fucking, heaven. To be lifted, and held. Keep taking more and more to get back to that, to get past just feeling well again and all the way back to that peaceful place, and the more and more only takes us closer to going over. Which is like. What. Like, fucking, what was it, take the best orgasm you’ve ever had and multiply it by a hundred. And multiply it by a hundred again, and again, and it don’t stop, and you keep coming and coming until you can’t breathe, you can’t think, you can’t see or feel or hear nothing and your life goes pounding out of you in these great awful ecstatic thumps. And like, fucking, you’re still nowhere near.

And Mike says Eh keep up now I got some other place to be. And we follow him back down the hill. Past the Parkside flats and under the motorway bridge to the canal, across the lockgates and along the towpath and over a brick wall and up to a flat above a boarded-up shop. And we see Steve. Laid out on the mattress in his tidy, whitewashed room. His bare feet pointing to the ceiling. His boots placed neatly side by side, and his socks laid out to dry. One arm folded over his chest, the other arm hanging off the side of the mattress, his once filthy hand licked clean. H lying on the floor with his head on his front paws, waiting.

And we see Ant. Stretched out on the floor nearby, his works arranged carefully on a square of black cloth between them. His body stiffening and slackening again even while we watch. The flies already arriving to lay their eggs, in his mouth, in his eyes, in the weeping needle holes up and down his arms.

And Mike strides off again, turning to beckon us on and muttering Will you come on now then will you, and we follow him further along the canal, past the arches, up to the train station and the bus station and the multi-storey carpark where we clatter down the concrete stairs to the basement. Did you think there would be answers. Did you think there would be reasons given. We hurry along the rippled concrete floor, past the glass-walled booth where the staff take their breaks and watch the cctv, down to the far end and the goods lift and the heavy-wheeled bins. Did you think anyone would know all these things or be able to explain. And Mike stands there and waits and then we see Ben. Curled up on the floor like he’s just gone to sleep. Like he’s tried to put himself in the recovery position but not quite managed. A puddle of sick beside his stone-cold face. The empty pin flung away. This is all just a coincidence, is it. All these. In this short little span of time. Come looking for reasons if you want but there’s nothing to it. This was always going to happen some time and it don’t mean nothing now.

And we keep walking through the empty streets, and we get to another whitewashed room where no guests are allowed, with the long white curtains blowing in across the bed and a carrier bag of shopping on the floor. We stand in the kitchen area at one end of the room, and we see another bag of shopping on the worktop. Toast crumbs spread across a board. A postcard and a magazine. A cold cup of tea, the surface bubbling with mould while we watch. And we see Heather and we turn away. The rot set in and the awful smell of death. Kneeling stiff by the side of the bed, her face sinking into the mattress. Her hands, black with blood, hanging heavy by her sides. That’s everyone then, is it. That’s all of us accounted for.

And Mike says Eh now then la I’ll be off. I got some things I need to do. I got a bus to catch. And we turn and watch, and we see Mike, still talking into his phone, his long coat flapping around his knees, striding out into the middle of the road. We see the bus coming, slowing but not stopping and Mike turning with his arms outstretched going I feel much better now thanks. The look on the driver’s face. We see an ambulance, and a police car, and a hospital bed. We see Mike going Eh now pal will you come and look at this, will you come and see the things I’ve seen. Got a bus to catch. Couldn’t even get that right.

They wash him again, and comb his hair, and slide him on to a long metal trolley. They cover his body with a thin cotton shroud, tying it at the neck and the wrists, and they wrap him in a long white sheet. They wheel him back into the other room, and put him away behind one of the heavy steel doors. They sign more forms. The technician’s assistant takes the trolley of bagged and packaged samples — slices of Robert’s brain, heart, liver, kidney and lungs, the clippings of his hair and nails, vials of his blackened blood — and pushes it out along the corridor to a table by a hatch in the wall, to be collected and sent on to the labs. And then they all disrobe, peeling off their gloves and sleeve protectors and aprons and scrubbing their hands for a long time at the deep stainless-steel sinks. They go to the shower rooms next door, and we hear the pound of steaming water, shouted conversations, the flap of clean white towels. And while the others are still getting dressed, the doctor comes out into his office and begins to write up his notes. We look over his shoulder, but we have trouble reading his writing, and trouble understanding what we can read. He looks up through the window at the comments on the whiteboard, and carries on filling in forms. We look through the window at the empty steel table, clean again now, with its coiled hose and drainage channels and silenced extraction fans. The doctor stops writing, and puts away the file, and goes upstairs to join the others for lunch.

We wait, days and weeks in that lifeless room with Robert behind the heavy steel door. The reports come back from the labs, and we stand over the doctor while he fills out the blanks in his reports. We should go now. There should be something more we can do. We hear more footsteps in the long corridor outside. Keys, voices, the door being unlocked. They open the steel door and slide Robert out on to another trolley, folding back the white cloth so that only his face can be seen. They wheel him into another room. We go with them. The lights are turned low. There are thick curtains, and comfortable chairs against one wall, and a box of tissues beside the chairs. They lay a heavy embroidered cloth across his body. It hangs down and touches the floor. What is this. They step outside, and step back in, and we see Laura, and a policeman, the younger policeman from the flat. They stand at the far side of the room, talking. And Laura comes forward, and we move aside to let them pass. Is she ready for this. She sees him and she stops and she moves closer and she looks and she nods and says something. She says something to the policeman and he thanks her and steps back. We all step away. We leave Laura there beside him. She looks at his cold blank face. She glances along the length of his body. She reaches out her hands, and they hover above him. She says something. She lifts a hand and holds it in the air and she says something. One of the men standing by the door glances at the policeman and gestures with his eyes. The policeman moves forward and touches her arm and she turns away. And then they’re gone, the door closing behind them with a quiet click. And Robert lies alone on the trolley, the room echoing with the small movements of her hands, her staggered breaths, the whisper of her voice saying Yes, that’s him.