Rubbernecker

30

JEAN BOTTI HAD worked on the neurological ward for seven years, so she’d seen it all. Miracles and murders.

Oh, they happened – both of them – although neither was ever acknowledged by the hospital.

Since starting work on what was commonly known as the coma ward, she knew of three reliable miracles and two less reliable murders. The miracles were not of the walking-on-water, feeding-the-five-thousand variety. That would be silly, even to a staunch Catholic like Jean. But, in Jean’s eyes, they were events of such startling recovery that they would have challenged the story of Lazarus.

There was sixteen-year-old Amy Russett, who spent a year frozen in a coma and then, one chilly March night, got up, walked down the corridor and took herself to the toilet – marking the start of a rapid and unexplained recovery.

Then there was Gwilym Thomas, a sixty-six-year-old farmer, who had never been beyond the Welsh border but who, after being gored by his own prize bull, awoke speaking only French. Even more bizarrely, the only English he seemed to remember was the name of the bull. Jean could recall it even now: Barleyfield Ianto.

Mrs Thomas had proved to be a stoic, and hadn’t taken it personally. After a brief flurry of confusion, she had armed herself with a Linguaphone course and started a new, more Gallic life.

Jean’s personal favourite was Mark Strickland, who crashed his car as a drunken lout, and emerged from his coma six weeks later quoting a Bible he’d never read, and humbly asking the Lord for help as he sweated through the agony of physiotherapy.

Miracles all, in Jean’s eyes.

Then there were the murders.

Jean couldn’t help thinking of them that way, even though she knew they were not malicious. She would have preferred to think of them as ‘mercy killings’, but in her heart she knew that God didn’t agree with her.

Of course, just as the miracles were never official, neither were the murders.

Just a few months after she’d first started work on the ward, a boy named Gavin Richards had come in after being mugged. He had been hit so hard in the head that the shape of the claw hammer was clearly outlined in his shaven skull.

At first his family hoped for a miracle. They all did; it was only natural. But, as the days started to pass into weeks, and the weeks into months, it became apparent to everyone that seventeen-year-old Gavin was never going to make it. Everyone except his mother, that is. Gavin’s mother came in every day and spent hours holding his hand, clipping his nails, putting cream on his raw bottom, and singing childhood songs to him in a gentle, quavery voice barely above a whisper, while her other children – a boy of nine and a girl of fourteen – suffered the twin loss of a brother and a mother. Tragedy upon tragedy.

Despite the best care, Gavin slid slowly downhill towards death. Soon the doctors would start to speak to his family about withdrawing life support and allowing him to slip away.

But then, one terrible day, Gavin inexplicably opened his eyes and said, ‘Mummy.’

Immediately he’d sunk back into the hinterland of unconsciousness, but the damage was done. His mother redoubled her efforts – and her neglect. She started to bring in a sleeping roll and spend nights under his bed. ‘Don’t mind me,’ she told Jean as she crawled out every shivery morning. ‘I just want to be here when he wakes up.’

But Gavin was never going to wake up. That was the trouble. And even if he did, so much of his brain had been pulverized that his future held nothing but animal needs in a shell of a human body. But however often the doctors showed her the scans and explained the extent of the horrible damage the single hammer blow had caused, Mrs Richards would have no truck with the idea that he might not come back to her just the way he’d left on that fateful night. Mummy had been an aberration, a false dawn, a cruel neurological hiccup that would hold Gavin’s family captive forever unless something was done.

And so a senior consultant did something.

He suggested that Gavin was ready to go home.

Gavin’s mother cried with joy; Gavin’s father cried because he understood what that really meant.

With a bravery Jean was humbled to witness, the family made preparations for young Gavin’s homecoming. They altered their home with ramps and rails. They bought medical equipment and an optimistic wheelchair. They hired nurses. And they were not rich people.

Gavin left hospital with his mother alongside the trolley, beaming and waving as though she were leading in the Derby winner.

Five days later, Gavin was dead from the expected complications, and his family was reunited in grief – as they should have been months earlier.

Jean had received the news with a sudden welling of tears, but they were of relief – and of guilt. If he had not gone home, Gavin would still be alive.

In a manner of speaking.

And there was the rub. She’d hated the consultant for making a decision she would never have been able to make herself. She still had sleepless nights about it. Nights when she would sit up in bed and read trashy novels by the dim circle of a booklight, to avoid waking Roger.

The second murder – just last year – was more straightforward. An elderly woman, hospitalized after a massive stroke, who was being kept alive by means of a ventilator.

Her large, sweet-natured family had trooped in and out of the ward twice a day to suffer the slow, heartbreaking erosion of everything they had loved, while the nurses struggled to keep her alive when it was plain she would be better off dead.

Once more, it was left to a doctor to make the decision – this time a young man only recently qualified, but with a kind heart and a caring way with people.

On the fifth night of their vigil, he had suggested that the family might like to take a break in the coffee shop downstairs.

‘You’re exhausted,’ he said. ‘It’s important that you remain strong.’

They had been reluctant, but had finally nodded and left.

‘You look as if you could do with a coffee too, Jean.’

‘Oh, I’m fine,’ she’d smiled.

‘I’m not,’ he’d said. ‘I’d love one. Would you mind? I’ll hold the fort here.’

He’d insisted on giving her two pounds, and she’d left. It was only when she’d been halfway down in the lift that she’d wondered why he hadn’t simply asked one of the family to bring him a coffee.

Jean had returned to the ward just as he’d switched the ventilator back on.

Her heart had jumped so hard that she’d slopped the coffee on her hand. She’d heard of this before but never seen it – this kind of simple, final intervention that was undoubtedly in the best interests of the patient, and just as undoubtedly murder.

In a manner of speaking.

Jean had swallowed her heart and her shout, and backed away from the door of the ward. With shaking hands, she’d mopped up the spilled coffee and wiped down the half-full cup. Then, in a moment that would define her for ever, she’d re-entered and handed it to the doctor, along with his two pounds.

‘Mrs Loddon has passed away,’ he’d said, and Jean had noticed that he was holding the old lady’s hand.

‘Oh dear,’ she’d replied. And then, ‘Shall I go and get her family?’

‘No. Let them have their break.’

Jean had nodded and they had sat there together in silence in the semi-darkness until Mrs Loddon’s family had come back, refreshed.

There had been deaths since then, but deaths were expected on a ward like this, where patients prevaricated between living and dying, and frequently did one or the other against medical expectation.

Jean had not seen anything she could call murder since – but then, she no longer looked too hard. When Mr Attridge died last March she was relieved enough for all of them not to question it. When Mr Galen died just a few months later it had been more unexpected, but the pneumonia had not cleared entirely from his lungs, and it might only have taken some panic over a bit of phlegm to cause the heart attack that had killed him.

At the end of the day, it was almost always a merciful release for patient and family, and that sense pervaded all who worked on the neurological ward.

So, after all the good and bad she had seen, Tracy Evans was nothing to Jean. Her type had come and quickly gone over the years. Only the really good ones stayed. Angie had been here for three years, but Monica would be gone by summer, Jean would bet her housekeeping on it.

The only sad thing about Tracy leaving was that Mr Deal’s visits became shorter and less frequent. Jean had no indication of whether Mrs Deal had ever been aware of her husband’s presence, but the idea that she might suddenly be aware of his absence pained her. She tried her best to spend a little more quality time with Mrs Deal, telling her world news and ward gossip, but knew Angie was picking up her slack on meds and bedpans, and finally just had to give up and suffer the guilt.

Then, five months after Tracy had left, Jean made a last-ditch effort on behalf of Mrs Deal. She put an index card on the noticeboard: WANTED: KIND, RELIABLE PERSON TO READ TO PATIENT.

She then brought in three books from home, put them on Mrs Deal’s nightstand, and hoped for another miracle.

Meg saw the notice after finishing her ward rounds for the day. The rounds were exhausting and exhilarating all at the same time. Especially the current rotation – paediatrics. Meg had always wanted to be a paediatrician, but now wondered whether she might change her mind. Children – even sick ones – were such hard work. Every task had to be made entertaining, or painless, or explained in such a way that a screaming youngster would allow her access to his broken arm or her sore tummy.

Today – after being kicked repeatedly by a five-year-old boy with appendicitis – Meg had even considered switching to veterinary science, where the patients could be tethered, muzzled and caged.

She stopped at the noticeboard on her way out. It had become a habit that had started when she was looking for a bicycle. Watching Patrick Fort swing his leg over the bar of his shining blue bike had reminded her of how much fun it was to get somewhere fast and glowing with blood, with the wind in your hair.

She never did see a bike on the noticeboard, but instead became addicted to the randomness of the messages there.

Kittens free to good homes, only boys left.

Lift offered daily from Newport. Share petrol and wine gums.

Come whitewater rafting in Scotland! Under which some wag had scribbled ‘indoors if wet’.

Kind, reliable person…

The words caught Meg’s eye. She felt herself to be kind. She felt herself to be reliable. She read on.

Meg loved reading. The thought of someone not being able to read for themselves was horrible. The poor patient. But she had so much to do! Everybody knew that med students didn’t have time for anything but studying. There were hospital rotations and the mountains of books, and she only allowed herself two nights a week away from her work as it was. Fridays and Saturdays, when she went to the pub or the cinema with her housemates, or to the occasional party. But she was entitled to some time for fun, wasn’t she? She was only twenty years old, for God’s sake!

Meg walked away from the board, feeling defensive without ever having come under attack.

She stopped suddenly as she remembered that the dissection would soon be finished. There was barely anything left of poor Bill to be sliced and diced now, and soon he’d be off to the crematorium or the cemetery. That would clear two days a week for the rest of the term. She had planned to devote one to further study and the other to relaxation. TV, sleeping, reading; stuff like that. She’d determined to work her way through great literature she’d been told she should read. She already had Our Mutual Friend and something by James Joyce on her shelf, threatening to remain unopened for ever.

Would it really make any difference if she read them out loud – to someone who might be desperate to hear them?

Meg went back to the board and took down Jean’s number.

31

THE DIRTY BLUE-AND-WHITE trainer sat on the polished desk like a trophy.

‘This is very serious,’ Professor Madoc said and Patrick laughed because he thought that was funny, but nobody else did. Not Mick or Dr Spicer.

Patrick looked at the faces of the three men and tried to guess what they were feeling. He guessed at angry and thought he was getting better at this. He was certainly getting lots of practice.

Now Professor Madoc pointed at the trainer. ‘This is yours, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Patrick. ‘Can I have it back?’ He was wearing Jackson’s trainers and they were killing him.

‘So you admit you were in the dissection room last night?’

‘Yes,’ said Patrick again. ‘Can I have it back?’

Nobody said he couldn’t, so he took the shoe off the desk and held it in his lap.

‘I’m glad you admit it, Patrick, because we also have the record of your code being used to gain access.’

Patrick didn’t answer pointless statements. He’d already said he was there, hadn’t he?

‘You threw your shoe at Mr Jarvis.’

‘Who’s Mr Jarvis?’

‘I am,’ said Mick.

‘No,’ said Patrick. ‘I threw it over him.’

‘Why?’

‘I didn’t want to be locked in.’

‘Wouldn’t it have been easier to simply let him know you were there?’

Patrick said nothing. Technically the answer was yes, but he had no words to explain why that hadn’t happened. No words for the clamminess of his skin or the shallowness of his breath. Those things didn’t seem logical now; only foolish – like not having had sex yet.

But you had to get so close!

‘What was he doing there, anyway?’ Patrick said.

‘Not that it’s any of your business, Patrick, but Mr Jarvis frequently works unsociable hours in the embalming room. When he came upstairs and found the dissection room lights on, he became suspicious.’

‘But why switch them off?’ asked Patrick.

‘Because it gives me the advantage over an intruder,’ said Mick. ‘I know that room like the back of my hand. Doesn’t make any difference to me whether the lights are on or off.’

‘But if you’d left them on, you’d have seen me.’

‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

‘Yes, you would have,’ said Patrick enthusiastically, ‘because I was right under your nose.’

Dr Spicer made a little noise that turned into a cough, and Professor Madoc frowned at him, and looked back at Patrick.

‘At our last meeting I told you that we could not overlook discreditable behaviour simply because of your other issues. Do you remember that, Patrick?’

‘Of course I remember,’ said Patrick testily. What kind of goldfish did the man think he was?

‘Good,’ said Professor Madoc. ‘Because I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’

Patrick started to get up and then hesitated. ‘You mean leave the room or leave the whole… college thing?’

‘The whole college thing.’

‘Oh,’ said Patrick.

He remained hovering over the seat of the chair. Now that this was actually happening, he found he did care about leaving. He was quite surprised by how much. He decided against getting up, and instead sat down more firmly. ‘That’s a poor decision,’ he said.

‘Oh, really?’ said the professor, leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingers. Patrick also noticed that he went a little redder in the face.

‘Yes, very. It’s inconsistent. You said discreditable behaviour was inappropriate attitude to staff, a near-physical altercation with a fellow student over a cadaver, ignoring procedure during dissection, and unauthorized access to confidential donation details.’

Professor Madoc just looked at him with his mouth a little open, so Patrick patiently explained his point. ‘You didn’t say anything about throwing a shoe.’

‘I’d have thought that was implicit!’ snapped the professor.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘It would have been to any normal person!’

‘We’re getting off the point,’ Spicer interrupted smoothly. ‘The point is, Patrick, that you entered a restricted area at night without permission.’

‘Nobody said I needed permission,’ Patrick said. ‘I didn’t break in; I got in using the code I was given by you. I was not trying to hide from anyone, which is why I turned on the lights. When someone turned them off it wasn’t logical, so I did hide then. When I thought I might be locked in, I created a diversion and left. I didn’t hurt anyone, I didn’t damage anything, I didn’t steal anything. I was there to try to establish the cause of death, which is what we were told to do by Dr Spicer, and which I strongly suspect has been incorrectly recorded as heart failure, when in fact it is anaphylactic shock caused by the ingestion of a peanut.’

Patrick ran out of breath. His heart pumped and his jaw ached from saying so many words. The three men were staring at him so intently that it made him squirm, so he looked around the room for relief. He noticed that the Rubik’s cube was on the bookshelf, and that Professor Madoc had messed it up again. Even from here, he could see where he’d gone wrong.

‘A peanut,’ said the professor.

Dr Spicer spoke slowly. ‘There was a peanut in the cadaver’s throat, but it bore no relation to the cause of death.’ He looked at Mick, who nodded his own confirmation.

‘You were told,’ Mick said.

‘Scott was told. I’m not Scott.’

The silence around him resumed, and went on for some time, and Patrick felt himself growing calm once again. The three men exchanged looks and he was grateful that at last they were taking him seriously. Now that they realized the importance of the peanut, and why it was critical that he find it, everything would be all right.

Instead Professor Madoc sighed and said, ‘Nevertheless’ – and then expelled him on the spot.

Patrick left the oak-panelled office in a tight ball of confused shock.

He couldn’t believe what had just happened. Instead of doing the thing that made sense, Professor Madoc had expelled him! It was turning out the lights all over again. For a full minute he stood in the centre of the corridor, holding his trainer to his chest, as other students bumped and brushed past him. He didn’t even feel them.

Then he started to walk briskly to the end of the corridor. By the time he reached the stairs, he was running.

They were behind him. Not right behind him. But not in front of him, that was the point.

It meant he had a head start.

Patrick felt the adrenaline coursing through him once more – just as it had when he’d climbed the fence. He’d never had it before meeting Number 19, but he recognized it now and liked it.

One last look at the cadaver – that was all he needed. But a look through more suspicious eyes; eyes that were seeking clues from the past, not to the future. He would go straight for the throat, where the peanut had been. That was the logical thing. The throat, the mouth, the tongue. He thought of the cuts and nicks that Dilip had made – that he’d assumed Dilip had made. That was where he would start. He would find something. More chunks of black blood, another scrap of blue latex. Another thrill passed through him. He didn’t know what, but he would find something.

Still holding his trainer, Patrick ran past the porter at the entrance to the block – through the doors that were always open – and feverishly jabbed his code into the keypad on the anatomy wing door.

It didn’t open.

Patrick rattled the handle, then put his code in again. 4017.

Nothing. 4017. 4017. 4017. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Patrick banged the metal door so hard with the side of his fist that it rang.

‘Oi!’ said the porter, but Patrick didn’t hear him. He kicked the door hard, not even feeling it in his toes.

The porter grabbed his arm and Patrick shook it off, struggling to keep calm. ‘Don’t touch me!’ he said. ‘You have to let me in. I need to get in.’

‘No, you need to leave,’ said the porter. Patrick had never seen him standing up before, but now realized that he was quite burly.

‘I’m allowed to be here. I’m doing anatomy. I’m allowed to be in the dissection room.’

‘Not today you’re not, sunshine. Today you’re going home to sleep it off.’

The porter took his arm more firmly this time, and Patrick punched him in the face. The man was well built, but he still staggered backwards like a drunk – and then sat down and rolled comically on to his back with his legs in the air.

Patrick left before they came down.

He ran straight to the police station; it was only down the road behind the museum and City Hall.

‘I want to report a crime,’ he told the desk officer, who sat behind the thick glass window as if she were selling train tickets.

‘What kind of crime?’

‘I’m not sure. It might be murder, but I can no longer gather evidence myself, so I think the police should get involved now.’

She said nothing, and looked at his hands. Patrick noticed a smear of blood on his left knuckles.

The porter’s nose.

He quickly withdrew his hand from the counter and wiped it on his jeans. ‘That has nothing to do with it,’ he told her.

‘What has it got to do with?’ she said.

‘Something irrelevant. Are you going to take my report or not?’

The young woman stared at his face so he had to blink and look away.

‘Take a seat,’ she said. ‘An officer will be right with you.’

Patrick took a seat that faced the glass front wall of the foyer. The rain had left the air outside clear, the trees washed, and the pink gravel avenue sparkling in the February sunshine.

A police van pulled up at the kerb and an officer opened the back doors. Patrick expected to see a dog jump out, but instead a man did – the young man in a white tracksuit that Patrick had met in the park.

His sleeves were soaked to the elbows with blood.

Two policemen walked him up the wide steps to the foyer. His wrists were cuffed in front of him but he still had a casual bob to his gait and a faint smile on his face.

The trio came in and walked straight through to an inner door. One of the officers tapped in a code on the security pad. 1109; he made no attempt to conceal it. Patrick wondered whether the exit code was the same.

The young man, meanwhile, stared around the foyer and caught Patrick looking at him. He raised his chained, bloody hands as if pleading – or praying. ‘I didn’t do it,’ he said.

‘I doubt that,’ said Patrick, and both policemen laughed, even though it wasn’t meant to be a joke, and then ushered the young man through the door.

‘What’s your name?’

The desk officer was talking to Patrick, leaning forward, with one splayed hand against the glass.

He was suddenly wary. ‘Why?’

‘We can’t file a report without a name,’ she said.

Patrick was puzzled. He’d watched enough TV to know about anonymous tip-offs. Therefore the officer’s words made no sense. Therefore they couldn’t be true.

Therefore, thought Patrick, she was lying.

But why?

She’d looked at his knuckles. Patrick thought again of the porter’s nose spreading under his fist. Blood on his knuckles, just as the young man in the white tracksuit had blood up his sleeves. And how the police had laughed when that young man had turned to Patrick and said I didn’t do it. Even Patrick hadn’t believed him. The guilt was there on his sleeves for all to see.

And the blood was there on his own knuckles.

Nobody had seen the porter grab hold of him first, or Mark Bennett punch him in the back, the day his father had died.

So instead of giving the officer his name, Patrick stood up and walked out.

She came after him, but he was already running, and by the time he stopped on the steps of the war memorial, Patrick had only his ghostly breath for company in the pale winter sunshine.

The rare ringing of the phone woke Sarah Fort for the second time in twelve hours. This time it was daylight – a stabbing glare that made her wince and hate the world.

At least she didn’t have to get out of bed this time. This time she was already at the kitchen table, where a small puddle of spit marked her spot.

She snatched up the phone and said ‘Hello!’ far too loudly, so she said it again more carefully. ‘Hello?’

Silence. Someone was there; she could hear them breathing.

‘Hello?’ she said more forcefully.

Breathing.

‘Are you going to say anything, pervert?’

The breathing stopped.

Sarah put the heel of her palm in her eye and held it there to push the dull pain further back inside.

She hadn’t felt this way for years. Years and years. Years when she’d had to be strong because it was just the two of them, and she’d had to do everything all by herself.

Wasted years now. It had been so easy to stop being strong that she couldn’t believe she hadn’t done it before. She looked down at her cream nightdress with the little blue flowers on it. She hadn’t even got dressed before throwing herself off the wagon – apart from the boots, of course. It didn’t matter; she had no one to get dressed for; no one who cared. Who would have her with a son like hers in the house? She should have done this years ago and saved herself the empty hopes.

She remembered she was on the phone and put it slowly back to her ear.

‘Patrick?’

The line went dead.

Patrick stared at the receiver in his shiny blue hand and knew that he could not go home. His innards vibrated like a ribbon in a storm. It was ten years since he’d felt this way, but it felt like ten minutes.

It was like riding a bicycle: the sound of his mother when she was drunk.

32

IN THE OVER-MASCARA’D eyes of Tracy Evans, a written warning for leaving the nurses’ station unattended on the night Mr Galen had died was a small price to pay.

Mr Deal had proved to be an adequate lover that night and on several subsequent occasions – and a more than adequate provider of gifts, whose worth grew in direct proportion to the sexual acts Tracy was willing to perform. She’d already had meals, a Burberry scarf and mid-priced trinkets, despite being uncharacteristically coy with her favours. There was no point in showing off all her wares at once, she reasoned; Mr Deal might be a once-in-a-lifetime cash cow and she was determined to milk him correctly. She would soon have her overdue rent paid, and they’d barely moved beyond the missionary position! Her grand plan was pregnancy – and a fiscal bond that would last a generation.

Plus, there was something about Mr Deal that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Despite their short, frenzied couplings, he remained quite aloof. He was pleasant but not fawning; his gifts were given casually and without sentiment. He took her to restaurants with tablecloths, and sent back the wine. He didn’t call her and rarely answered his phone, even though she knew he had caller ID. In short, there was nothing of the puppy in Mr Deal – nothing of the doormat – and Tracy found herself thinking of him at odd moments, even when she didn’t need twenty quid for the gas.

All in all, it was working out even better than she had imagined.

Of course, Tracy was sorry that Mr Galen had died. He hadn’t been a bad coma patient – no worse than any other – and his wife had been OK, despite the bacon-frying. If she’d heard the alarm that had accompanied his demise then Tracy would almost certainly have responded. It had simply been Mr Galen’s bad luck to go into cardiac arrest just as she was suffering her own little death astride Mr Deal in the ladies’ loo, behind a sign that read – aptly – OUT OF ORDER.

She’d explained her absence that night by saying she had a pelvic inflammation which required frequent toilet breaks. Her explanation was accepted and, ironically, proved to be true a few days after the sealing of Mr Deal’s fate.

Jean and Angie were disapproving. They said nothing to her face, but everything behind her back. Monica, on the other hand, was a staunch supporter of anyone who covered for her fag breaks, and nodded vigorously when Tracy told her, ‘They’re just jealous.’

Tracy honestly believed this to be true. Jean was a dried-up old martyr, whose pot-bellied husband wore a moustache with bits in it, and Angie had snagged herself a junior doctor and a ring, but was still emptying bedpans – so obviously didn’t understand the rules of engagement in the war of the sexes.

In August, a month after Mr Galen’s death, Tracy transferred to the geriatric ward, where people dying was even less unexpected than on neurological, and where few of them could reach the buzzer – or even remember that they had a buzzer.

Monica gave her a tiny white teddy bear holding a big red heart that said ‘We’ll all miss you’.

But Jean and Angie didn’t even say goodbye.

33

THIS WAS ONLY her second time, but already Meg wondered how much longer she could read to Mrs Deal.

She was normally a fluent reader, but here she was too aware of her mute listener, too distracted by the still horror of the situation to give her all to a book – even when it was The Da Vinci Code, which she’d found beside Mrs Deal’s bed and which had sucked her in so fast that she’d abandoned any pretence she’d ever had of tackling Ulysses. She would be going along just fine, then Mrs Deal’s finger would twitch and she would have to re-read a sentence three times until it made sense. Or she would turn a page and a machine would gurgle – then would wonder if she’d skipped a page, so would go back and start again – only to realize three-quarters of the way down that she was indeed repeating herself.

Meg stumbled over the prose for the umpteenth time, and saw Mrs Deal’s hand judder in apparent response. Was that how coma victims expressed annoyance? By flicking a finger and hoping that everyone understood how pissed off they were?

The finger flicked again. It drubbed a little, then stopped.

Meg sighed. Jean had warned her about imagining communication where none existed. There was no understanding in Mrs Deal, she said; no control.

Meg looked at Mrs Deal’s face. She wondered whether she’d been pretty once. It was hard to tell now; she was so ashen and thin, and the bottom half of her face was covered by the thick white plastic of the ventilator that kept her breathing. Sometimes her eyes opened and they were a pretty hazel colour, but mostly they were closed or showed only slim crescents of white, like now.

‘Are you OK, Mrs Deal?’ said Meg, and stroked her hand. Under her palm, the finger twitched again several times, then stopped.

It gave Meg the creeps. What was going on inside Mrs Deal’s head and fingers? Was the twitching a desperate attempt to communicate? Or just the sputtering leftovers from a failed electrical system?

She picked up the woman’s loose hand.

‘I could do your nails. Would you like that, Mrs Deal?’

The finger stayed still.

‘Would you like pink?’

The finger stayed still.

‘Or red? Go for the vamp look.’

The finger stayed still.

Meg sighed and placed Mrs Deal’s hand gently back on the pale-yellow cover. Immediately the finger juddered again, then stopped.

Meg frowned. ‘Can you do that again, Mrs Deal?’

She did it again.

‘Can you give one tap for yes, two for no?’

Meg held her breath. Mrs Deal’s finger started to tap, but kept going – five, six, seven, eight times, and Meg picked up the book again. She wondered whether she was just wasting her time. For the first time, she realized that her actions were not entirely altruistic. Deep down, she had hoped that reading to a coma victim would spark a recovery for which she would be responsible. It was humiliating to confess such a motive – even to herself. She was a kind person, sure, but was she also a glory-seeker? A show-off? Meg didn’t like the new light by which she found herself examined. It was not modest or selfless and it made her ashamed.

Chastened, she found her place again and resumed reading. From the corner of her eye, she saw Mrs Deal’s finger tapping and stopping, tapping and stopping.

Angie came over to check one of the machines beside Mrs Deal’s bed, and smiled at Meg.

‘Why does she do that?’ asked Meg, nodding at Mrs Deal’s juddering finger.

‘It’s just something that happens – a patient twitches or speaks, or opens their eyes, even when completely unconscious.’

Meg nodded slowly.

‘Does it bother you?’ asked Angie.

‘A bit.’

The nurse smiled sympathetically. ‘I know it’s upsetting at first, but after a few weeks you won’t even notice it.’

She smiled a goodbye and moved on to the next bed.

A few weeks!

With a sour ball of dread in the pit of her stomach, Meg stared slowly around the ward, at the bedridden lumps that had once been real people.

The idea of this clammy vigil becoming part of her future for weeks or months to come sent a shiver down her spine.

34

TEA WAS A curious time.

Kim made toast for herself and for Lexi, who wore the kimono. Patrick hoped that that meant she was Kim’s guest now, not his. Everything had gone so horribly wrong all at the same time, and he had neither the time nor the inclination to make cheese sandwiches or to sleep on the floor.

The three of them sat in the front room and watched some bright, noisy show with glove puppets and a robot, while in the kitchen Jackson slammed the cupboard doors. Patrick flinched at every bang.

‘Jesus Christ.’ Kim rolled her eyes and yelled, ‘Could you make any more noise in there?’

‘Sure!’ he yelled back and threw what sounded like cutlery into the sink.

‘Child,’ muttered Kim, and ate her toast.

‘Where did you go last night?’ Lexi asked Patrick. She had her feet tucked up beside her on the couch and Patrick noticed that the kimono – although a better fit on her than it had been on Pete – still showed an awful lot of thigh.

‘Out,’ he said.

‘Out where?’

‘He won’t tell you,’ said Kim. ‘Patrick likes secrets, don’t you, Patrick?’

Kim was an idiot. Patrick didn’t like secrets at all – especially today. The thought of never knowing the secret of Number 19 made him want to kick the TV.

‘Ooh, I love secrets!’ said Lexi. ‘I want to know. Tell me!’

He didn’t tell her. Let her find her own secrets at the bottom of a bottle. Someone – probably Scott – would stumble on ‘heart failure’ and claim they’d established cause of death, and then probably win the Goldman Prize for best student, when it should have been his. He hadn’t found his answers. His quest had failed, and without it he was lost.

More than lost.

Emptied of hope.

From the corner of his eye he could see Lexi crane her neck to try to make him look at her. ‘Tell me,’ she sang. ‘Tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me…’

Kim tutted. ‘He won’t; he’s such a killjoy.’

‘Nah,’ said Lexi. ‘He’s just playing hard to get.’

‘He’s playing it very well,’ said Kim and they both shrieked with laughter, showing soggy toast in their mouths, like washing in a machine.

Patrick glared at the robot on the TV. It was trying to take a cake out of a cardboard oven, but it kept crushing the sponge with its metal fingers. The glove puppets were giggling and pointing, but the robot didn’t understand what it was doing wrong, or why the cake kept crumbling through its hands.

Like meat crumbs falling out of the flesh-cake that was Number 19.

‘I went to see your dead father,’ Patrick said.

Kim giggled, but Lexi stopped laughing and said, ‘What?’

‘Last night, I went to see your dead father. That’s my secret. We’ve been cutting him up for months. He’s all in little bags now.’

‘That’s sick!’ said Kim, and giggled uncertainly.

‘What?’ said Lexi again. Her face had become ashen, and the toast she held in her hand had flopped sideways on to her bare knee and stuck there, Marmite side down. Patrick had the sudden, uncomfortable notion that being knocked unconscious off a swing with a broken nose was nothing compared to the shock drawn so nakedly on Lexi’s face that even he could read it.

‘What do you mean?’ she said through trembling lips.

‘You wanted to know.’ He shrugged, somehow wanting to make it her fault. He picked up a magazine from the arm of the chair. Art Forum.

Lexi turned to Kim. ‘What does he mean?’

‘Nothing,’ she said uneasily. ‘I mean, he’s a med student, but… Nothing, I think.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Lexi again. ‘What the fuck do you mean?’

Patrick didn’t look at her and wished that she would stop looking at him. He wished now that he hadn’t said it, but the glove puppets were so cruel! Why not just help the robot? Why did they have to laugh?

He threw Art Forum at the TV and walked out.

He was at the foot of the stairs when he heard Lexi coming, making a noise like a cat in a bag being thrown from a train. He turned and she slapped his face so hard that he fell backwards on to the stairs. She didn’t stop. She was a crazy animal flailing on top of him, slapping, scratching, gouging – and all the time howling with rage and profanity, while Kim screamed ‘Jackson! Jackson!’ over and over again.

Patrick covered his head and drew up his knees. He planted a foot in Lexi’s stomach and shoved her away from him. She crashed backwards into the front door, then curled into a ball and started to cry in huge, open-mouthed gasps.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Kim. ‘Jesus Christ.’

‘What the fuck is going on?’ said Jackson, running from the kitchen.

‘I don’t know,’ said Kim, and started to sob too. Jackson put an arm around her and she turned into him, pressing her toast into his shoulder.

Patrick sat up slowly and touched his nose; there was blood on his fingers and his heart was beating so hard he could see the pulse twitching under the skin of his thumb.

This felt bad. He felt bad, although it brought him no satisfaction to recognize it. He frowned at Lexi, hugging herself on the dirty hall carpet, and – out of nowhere – thought of his mother the night the policemen had taken him home and made him beans on toast. Wailing on the floor.

The two things felt connected but he didn’t understand why.

Why? That was the question. That was always the question, and always would be unless he took control and solved the puzzle.

To find out why somebody died, you have to consult the living.

Professor Madoc’s words came back to him unbidden, and cleared his head in an instant. He got up and went over and squatted down beside Lexi.

‘Just leave her!’ said Jackson, and Kim echoed him. ‘Leave her alone, Patrick!’

But he didn’t leave her. He needed her.

And maybe she needed him.

He didn’t know how to start, so he started awkwardly. ‘My father’s dead, too.’

‘Good!’ yelled Lexi, and a string of snot swung from her nose and attached itself to the carpet like an escape rope.

‘He was hit by a car,’ Patrick continued.

‘Good,’ said Lexi again, but with a lot less feeling.

‘I don’t know what happened to him or why,’ said Patrick. ‘I’ve tried, but I just can’t understand it. But your father—’

He stopped to think.

Slowly Lexi sat back on her heels to look at him, her arms clamped around her midriff and her face streaked with black tears and silver snot.

‘What? What about him?’

Patrick closed his eyes. He rarely spoke without knowing what he was going to say, but here he’d set off without a map, unsure of the footing ahead, or of where he might be heading. He had no evidence. He had no expertise. He had nothing but a missing peanut and the strangest feeling in his gut that was so strong he couldn’t ignore it, despite its lack of logic.

‘What about my father?’ Lexi insisted.

Patrick opened his eyes and they were all staring at him, so he looked away from them and at the grubby woodchip wallpaper before he could speak again.

‘I think your father was murdered.’

35

‘I’M PREGNANT,’ SAID Tracy Evans.

Her reflection looked perturbed by the news.

‘We’re going to have a baby,’ she tried again, and flashed her teeth, but it wasn’t the same as smiling.

Her face was getting round. She turned sideways and stood on tiptoes so she could see her stomach in the bathroom mirror. She stroked the gentle swelling there, frowning at her reflected hands. Even though it had been nearly four months since she’d peed on a stick, it was hard to believe there was a baby inside her. A tiny stowaway, riding her belly, stealing her food and pumping her blood… Even harder to imagine that whatever was growing inside her now was going to come out of her some time next June, come hell or high water…

Frightening.

Tracy chewed her lip.

She hoped Mr Deal would be happy. Raymond. His name was Raymond, but she couldn’t get used to it. Raymond, not Ray – he was quite firm about that – but the name rarely came easily to her lips, and never to her mind when she thought of him.

Which was often. Too often – she recognized that, but she couldn’t help it. She wasn’t sure why it was; she only knew she had never felt this way about any of the over-eager youths she’d slept with before, but – strangely – now felt no desire to sleep with again.

She saw Mr Deal three nights a week. He picked her up from work and took her to his home. Sometimes she stayed over. The house was like something from a magazine – white and spotless, with real art on the walls, where you could see actual brush marks if you cocked your head in the right light.

There was a steep spiral staircase and a bidet in the bathroom. On her first visit it had given her the opportunity to ask about whether they had children.

‘Why would you say that?’ Mr Deal had frowned.

‘Because there’s a kiddy’s toilet,’ said Tracy, and Mr Deal had laughed at her on and off for the rest of the evening. When Tracy had pressed him to explain how it worked, he’d told her to Google it.

Then they’d had sex. As usual.

Tracy looked into the mirror now and wondered when it was that she’d stopped thinking that an evening without a quick shag was an evening wasted. Now there were moments – just moments, mind you – when she took just as much pleasure in watching him eat food she had cooked, or smelling the side of his throat when they embraced. He didn’t use aftershave but he used coal tar soap, which reminded her that sometimes childhood had not been such a bad place to be.

On the four nights she didn’t see Mr Deal, she had no idea what he did. When she asked he just said, ‘Nothing much.’ Those were nights when Tracy had started to wonder, and to worry. Men were very easily led, and she didn’t want some slut luring Mr Deal away from her…

She’d begun checking his phone and his laundry when he was out of the room.

She’d stopped taking the pill at the end of August.

And this was the consequence.

Tracy stroked her belly again. She would have to work faster than she’d initially planned.

But she thought that if Mr Deal felt the same way about her as she might be starting to feel about him, then everything would be just fine.

36

‘I DON’T WANT to go in.’

Lexi stalled at the bottom of the driveway of the house on Penylan Road.

‘OK,’ said Patrick, and started up the gravel by himself.

‘Wait!’

He turned.

‘Are you going in anyway?’

‘Yes.’ Of course he was. Why would he not? It was what they’d come here for, wasn’t it?

‘Well, what am I going to do?’

‘I don’t know. What?’

‘I don’t know.’

Then why was she asking him? Patrick shook his head in confusion. ‘OK,’ he said again, and carried on to the front door. By the time he lifted the heavy brass knocker shaped like a lion, Lexi was beside him again, biting her lip nervously.

‘How do I look?’ she said suddenly.

Patrick looked her up and down, then shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

She glared, but it was wasted on him.

The door was opened by a dumpy woman in jeans and a big cardigan.

‘Alex,’ the woman said warily.

‘Hello,’ said Patrick firmly. He had prepared his opening lines and didn’t want to be diverted. ‘I need information about Mr Galen. Can I come in?’

The woman looked at Lexi. ‘Are you going to cause trouble?’

‘No,’ said Patrick.

‘I was talking to Alexandra.’

‘Who’s Alexandra?’

‘She is.’

Lexi crossed her arms and fidgeted, and Patrick leaned away from her to avoid accidental contact.

Lexi finally said, ‘No,’ and the woman opened the door and let them both in.

The house was about ten times bigger than any house Patrick had ever been in.

The dumpy woman looked at him and said, ‘I’m Jackie.’

‘I know,’ said Patrick. ‘Your ceilings are very high.’

‘Yes, they are,’ she agreed with a strange look.

She led them into the front room, and an old mongrel hauled itself off the rug in front of the blazing fire and gave a token bark.

‘Ssh, Willow. Friends.’

Willow wagged apologetically and came over to lick Patrick’s hand.

Patrick smoothed the dog’s head. ‘Soft,’ he said.

Jackie smiled and pointed to the couch. ‘Have a seat.’

Patrick sat down, but Lexi didn’t. Instead she wandered around the room, looking at things as if taking an inventory.

The room was like something from a magazine. Art Forum or something else. It had decorated ceilings and pale-pink walls, and a big white fireplace.

On the mantelpiece was a photograph of Jackie and a man with a snowy mountain and blue sky behind them. The man was smiling with teeth Patrick knew very well. It was Number 19, on holiday.

Patrick tried to imagine him in this room now, but couldn’t make him alive. Every time he tried, a cadaver clicked bonily into the room on zombie legs, or lolled, stiff and orange, on the couch, leaking fluids on to the chocolate leather.

‘How are you, Alex?’

Lexi shrugged.

‘You look well.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Lexi.

‘Are you going to introduce us?’

Lexi shrugged again, but said, ‘This is Patrick.’

‘How do you do?’ said Jackie.

‘Do what?’ he said.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Ignore him,’ said Lexi. ‘He’s… you know.’ And she made her fingers whirl around the side of her head.

‘Oh,’ said Jackie. ‘Well, I’m glad you came, Alex.’

‘Are you?’

Jackie flinched and Patrick noticed that Lexi had picked up a small china ornament – a shiny stag on a knoll of purple heather. He also noticed that the French windows at the back of the house had a pane of cardboard where the glass had been broken. It looked uglier from the inside than it had from the garden. He wished now that he hadn’t handed Lexi the stone. He didn’t know why she had done it; Jackie seemed nice – not what he’d expected. Somehow he’d thought she’d be wearing leopardskin.

‘How have you been?’ Jackie asked.

‘I’ve been poor,’ said Lexi.

Jackie’s lips went tight and Lexi pointed the stag at Patrick. ‘He thinks my dad was murdered.’

‘What?’ said Jackie.

‘He said he needs to insult the living.’

‘Consult,’ said Patrick. ‘To find out why somebody died, you have to consult the living.’

Jackie stared at them both, apparently lost.

‘You’re the living,’ he explained to her. ‘I’m consulting you.’

‘What’s this all about murder?’ she said. ‘Your father died because of a car crash, Alex. His car skidded on ice. You know that. You came to the hospital.’

‘But they said he was getting better. Then he just died.’

‘He got pneumonia and that led to heart failure. You’d know that, too, if you’d been there, like I was, twice a day, every day for months. He was so vulnerable.’

‘That’s not what Patrick says.’

‘I don’t give a shit what Patrick says! He wasn’t there. Who the hell is Patrick, anyway? Why is he here?’ Jackie turned to him now; her voice got louder and her throat was going red.

Patrick guessed she was definitely upset about something.

‘Tell her, Patrick.’

‘Yes, tell me, Patrick!’

Patrick said, ‘Can you stop shouting? I can’t think while you’re both shouting.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ snapped Lexi. ‘Patrick found a peanut in Dad’s throat.’

‘What?’

‘There was a peanut in his throat. We’re allergic to peanuts.’

‘I know that.’

‘I know you do.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Lexi shrugged balefully.

Jackie looked at Patrick. ‘How did he—’

‘He’s a medical student—’

‘Anatomy,’ Patrick corrected her.

‘Whatever. He found a peanut during the… thing.’

‘Dissection.’

‘Yeah, during that. Patrick says that’s what killed him, not pneumonia.’

‘Could have killed him,’ said Patrick, but she ignored him and stood over Jackie.

‘I didn’t even know he’d left his body to science or whatever the fuck it is they do. Is that even true?’

Jackie nodded silently.

‘How could you let them just… cut Daddy up?’ Lexi’s voice broke.

‘Why are you shaking?’ Patrick said. She didn’t answer.

Jackie stood up, but didn’t go anywhere. She crossed her arms, then uncrossed them, then crossed them again. She bit her lip and Patrick saw her eyes go shiny.

‘It was his choice, Alex. He made it years before we met. I could only respect it.’

‘Did you give him the peanut too?’

‘Of course not! Don’t be disgusting! Nobody did; he was being fed through a tube.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Lexi. ‘Maybe you got sick of visiting him twice a day, every day.’

‘Yes, I got sick of it! I won’t lie. It was horrific. Someone you love gurgling and crying and wearing a nappy. The smell in that place! I held his hand and stroked his hair and chose his favourite music and he never even knew who I was! I spent two hours a night with him and another two crying in the car park. I cared about Sam every second he was alive, which is more than you can say!’

‘You fucking cow!’ Lexi hurled the deer against the pink wall. It burst into white shards that rained down on the dog, which leaped to its feet and started to bark.

‘Get out!’ said Jackie.

‘You’re the one who should be getting out! This is my dad’s house! You’re the fucking gold-digger keeping everything for yourself!’

Patrick felt they were getting off the point. ‘What about the peanut?’ he said, but nobody seemed to hear him.

‘Is that what this is really about?’ said Jackie. ‘The money? Because you’re wrong. We bought this house with our money.’

‘And what about my money? I would have had it by now if it wasn’t for you!’

‘And you would have drunk it, too!’ yelled Jackie. ‘Sam knew that! We both did!’

‘That’s none of your business!’ Lexi screamed at her.

‘You’re hurting my ears,’ said Patrick, which was true. He covered them with his elbows.

Jackie ignored him. ‘How is it none of my business? You did nothing but make him miserable. Running about God knows where, drinking God knows what, sleeping with God knows who.’

‘It’s my life,’ yelled Lexi.

‘You were fourteen! That made it his life, too.’

‘Bollocks. He never cared.’

‘He always cared.’

‘He cared before you came along. That’s when everything went to shit.’

‘I’m sorry your mother died, Alex, but don’t you dare blame me for something that happened before we even met! Our door was always open for you. It’s not my fault if you were too blind drunk to find it.’

Patrick stood up. ‘You’re too noisy,’ he said. ‘I’m going.’

Nobody noticed. He left the room and Willow followed him gratefully to the door.

He heard them yelling at each other all the way down the driveway.

When Patrick got home, Jackson and Kim were sitting together on the couch, watching Grand Designs.

‘Where’s Lexi?’ asked Kim.

‘With her stepmother.’ He couldn’t be bothered to go into details.

‘Hey,’ said Jackson, ‘have you been wearing my shoes?’

‘Yes,’ said Patrick. ‘But they’re too small.’

‘Not for me, they’re not!’

Kim said, ‘Did you find out who murdered Lexi’s dad?’

‘Not yet,’ he said, and went upstairs.

He sat at the window with Netter’s Concise Neuroanatomy open in front of him and watched the Valleys Line trains pass through the darkness in short, illuminated worms. He wondered whether Lexi and Jackie were still shouting at each other over the dog’s cowed head. Shouting about love and money, when death was all that really mattered.

Finally, at around midnight, Patrick curled up on his bed. Tomorrow he would have to come up with another way to find out what happened to Number 19.

Consulting the living was a big fat waste of time.

37

IT HAD BEEN almost a week, but everyone was still talking about Patrick punching the porter.

‘Remember that time he punched me?’ said Scott, with the point of his scalpel in Bill’s cerebellum.

‘He didn’t punch you,’ said Rob.

Dr Spicer said, ‘Watch what you’re doing there, Dilip; you’re going to sever the artery.’

Scott shrugged. ‘All I’m saying is he’s the violent type.’

‘He’s not,’ said Meg. ‘The porter grabbed him first, apparently, so that’s why he couldn’t press charges. It was self-defence.’

‘It wasn’t self-defence that time he punched me.’

Rob sighed. ‘He didn’t punch you, he deflected you. Stop making such a bloody meal out of it.’

Scott sulkily wiggled the scalpel back and forth in the grey matter. ‘He should be in prison, not here with normal people.’

‘Very compassionate,’ said Rob. ‘Remind me never to get the flu around you.’

‘Or a boob job,’ said Spicer.

‘Has anyone seen him?’ asked Meg.

‘Patrick?’ said Dilip. ‘No.’

‘I hope he’s OK,’ said Meg.

‘Whatever,’ said Dilip, then sighed. ‘I’m glad we’re almost finished with the dissection; I have never seen such a boring brain.’

Meg wondered idly what Patrick’s brain would look like. She imagined thousands of convoluted little boxes with locks and labels on them, and smiled to herself.

‘What’s so funny?’ said Rob.

‘Nothing. Just thinking.’

‘How’s the reading going?’

‘OK, I suppose. I think she likes it.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘I can’t really. Sometimes her hand twitches, but…’ She ended the sentence on a shrug.

‘What’s this?’ asked Spicer, so Meg explained about Mrs Deal.

‘If she’s aware of anything at all,’ Spicer said, ‘it must be the highlight of her week.’

‘Do you think they are aware of what’s going on around them?’

‘I’m sure some are,’ he said. ‘But I’m not sure that’s always a good thing.’

Meg nodded. She knew what he meant. They’d all done rounds in the neurological ward, shocked into silence by the horror of both the endless inertia of those who might never emerge, and the rage, pain and frustration of some who already had.

‘What are you reading to her?’ asked Dilip, bringing her back to the present.

Meg reddened slightly. ‘Well, I did start Ulysses, but neither of us liked that, so now we’re on some rubbish that I found on her bedside table.’ She didn’t tell them that it was The Da Vinci Code, or that she could hardly bear to put the book down between sessions, even if it did make her feel intellectually dirty.

She also didn’t tell them that when the book was finished she hoped never to go back to the coma ward.

‘I’m sure it’s not easy,’ said Dr Spicer, as if reading her mind. ‘Good for you.’

‘Shit,’ said Dilip, ‘I’ve gone through the artery.’

Talk of the devil, thought Meg. At the foot of the long ramp down to Park Place was Patrick.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

‘I got expelled,’ he said.

‘I heard. For hitting the porter?’

‘No, before that.’ He then cut her off before she could ask a follow-up question. ‘You have to do something for me.’

Meg arched a sarcastic eyebrow. ‘Of course I do.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘You have to take photos of Number 19’s mouth and oesophagus.’

Too late she realized her sarcasm had been wasted. ‘I can’t do that, Patrick. We’re not allowed to take phones or cameras into the DR. You know that.’

‘Then give me your code and I’ll do it.’

‘I can’t do that either.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because then I’d be expelled too.’

‘It’s an emergency.’

‘How can it be an emergency? Bill’s already dead. You’ll be asking me to do CPR next.’

‘That would be stupid,’ said Patrick. ‘This is not.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I think he was murdered.’

‘Who? Bill?’

‘Yes.’

‘Murdered?’

‘Maybe.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘OK.’ He shrugged.

‘No, I mean, explain to me why you think that.’

‘OK,’ he said again. ‘He was allergic to peanuts and was being fed through a tube, but he had a peanut in his throat when he died.’

‘OK,’ said Meg, nodding agreement.

‘That makes no sense unless someone gave it to him,’ said Patrick. ‘Anaphylactic shock could have led to a heart attack, which is what’s been listed as the cause of death, but that’s just how he died, not why.’

Meg frowned at him. ‘How do you know all this?’

‘I found out his name and spoke to his daughter. She’s inherited the nut allergy; that’s what made me think of it. But when I went to look at the peanut, it had gone. Someone took it and that means they’re hiding something. There’s only one dissection class left – then the bodies will be taken away and then I’ll never know what happened. That’s why it’s an emergency. That’s why you have to help me.’

Meg stared at Patrick in amazement. ‘You found out his name?’

‘Yes. Samuel Galen.’

‘And you spoke to his daughter?’

‘Yes.’ Patrick wondered if she was hard of hearing.

‘How?’

‘It’s not important. I can’t get in to do it. You have to help me.’

Meg was astonished into silence. How had he found out the cadaver’s name? How had he spoken to the dead man’s daughter? She shuddered at the thought of that social interaction. It all sounded crazy and, from anyone else, she would never have believed it. But Patrick was compelling. Not his words, but him. His usually blank expression was gone. He was flushed and alive. Even his eye contact was better as he begged her – in his own way – for help.

Looking at him, Meg felt her defences slipping. Still she stalled. ‘What is it you’re looking for?’

‘There were cuts in the mucous membranes of the throat, remember?’

‘Yes.’

‘At the time I thought Dilip had made them because he’s so poor with incisions. But now I think perhaps they were made ante-mortem.’

‘So you think the person who took the peanut could be the same person who put it there in the first place?’

Patrick stared at her so intently that Meg mentally kicked herself for sounding keen and involved when she was loath to be either. She looked into his eyes and felt a little shiver – before she realized that he wasn’t even seeing her. He was looking right through her to the solution on the other side.

‘Maybe,’ he said. His face split into the first smile she’d ever seen from him, and Meg knew with a sinking heart that she was about to do exactly what he asked. She made a last-ditch effort to get something out of it for herself.

‘I’ll do it on one condition.’

‘OK,’ he said.

‘You have to go and read to Mrs Deal.’

‘Who’s Mrs Deal?’

‘She’s a woman in a coma. There’s nothing to it.’

‘What do I have to do?’ he said warily.

‘Only read to her.’

He frowned. ‘Out loud?’

She smiled. ‘If you want her to hear you, yes, you have to read out loud.’

‘Read what?’

‘A book.’

‘Does it have to be a long book?’

It flitted through Meg’s mind to say, ‘It doesn’t matter,’ but then thought of poor Mrs Deal at the mercy of Patrick’s choice of reading matter.

‘It has to be over two hundred pages. It must be fiction and it must be popular. Off the bestseller lists or a classic. But it can’t be about war or some boy-rubbish like that. Or sci-fi.’

‘No war, no sci-fi.’ Patrick nodded sombrely, and Meg realized she could give him specific instructions and he would carry them out with the precision of a computer. For a cruel second she almost demanded Pride and Prejudice from him, but pushed it aside with an inner giggle.

‘If I do that, you’ll take the photographs?’

‘I will take the photographs.’

‘OK then,’ he said reluctantly.

‘Do your best,’ said Meg.

‘I always do my best,’ he said seriously.

She laughed and stuck her tongue out at him and he blinked.

38

‘I’M PREGNANT,’ SAID Tracy, and Mr Deal finished chewing a mouthful of steak, leaned back in his chair and looked at her. Tracy felt her smile falter and worked at it harder, despite the shaking inside her.

Mr Deal – Raymond – was a meticulous man, who felt no need to gush or to pander. She found him hard to read, but she also knew that if she pushed, he would take even longer to give. It was annoying, but strangely exciting, too.

He cleared his throat and sipped his red wine. ‘How far along are you?’

‘Far enough.’

‘Are you going to keep it?’

Of course I’m going to keep it! This is the plan!

‘If that’s OK with you?’ she said carefully.

He cut another piece of steak. He ate his meat blackened and bloodless. ‘Of course,’ he said.

‘Are you sure?’

Why are you checking? she asked herself. Why are you giving him another chance to say no?

Mr Deal finished that mouthful, then dabbed his mouth with his napkin and leaned across the table to kiss her cheek. ‘Of course I’m sure,’ he said. ‘It’ll give us something to put on the kiddy toilet.’

Tracy felt a giddy rush. Suddenly she couldn’t have stopped smiling if she’d tried.

They went to his bed after Newsnight and she did things to him she’d never done before. Not only because she thought she should, but because she wanted to.

Later – back at the house she still shared with less fortunate girls, she lay awake half the night with excitement. And when she went to work the next day, she was astonished to find that it did not seem quite so repulsive to wipe old Mr Cutler’s pooey bottom, or so arduous to tip cold soup between Mrs Aldridge’s drawstring lips.

Of course, she couldn’t wait to give it all up and never work another day in her life, but in the meantime, it felt almost rewarding.

When a buzzer sounded just as a few of them had sat down with a cup of tea, Tracy surprised herself by bouncing up and saying, ‘I’ll get it.’

Sally, who was the voice of the ward, said, ‘What’s with you today? You in love or something?’

Yes, thought Tracy with a thrill at the realization. Somehow, somewhere, she had fallen in love with Mr Deal, and in the blink of an eye, everything had changed.

She had changed – and it felt wonderful.

39

IT HAD TAKEN Sarah an hour to find the matches. She didn’t smoke and she didn’t have a gas cooker and she didn’t even know why she had matches, but she knew they were here somewhere, and got through most of the second bottle of Vladivar looking for them.

Now here she was, under the gibbous moon as frost formed on the roof of the Fiesta, trying to burn down the shed.

It was a lot harder than she’d expected it to be.

When she’d stumbled out into the frigid night air, she’d thought that a single match held close to the rotting timber would be enough to see the whole thing burst into flames.

Not so.

She’d gone through half the box, squatting beside the corner of the shed in her nightdress and wellingtons, turning slivers of pale wood into scorched twiglets. Once she’d dozed off, mid-arson, and burned her fingers.

She wove back to the house and got the letter, then came out and tried again, but striking the matches and holding the letter was close to impossible. Three things and only two hands. She swayed and cursed softly and dropped the box, then the letter, then the box again – before finally finding herself with the letter in one hand and a lighted match in the other, and bringing the two together.

The corner of the paper caught and for a moment Sarah could re-read it by an orange glow.

Dear Mrs Fort, I very much regret to inform you that I have had to ask Patrick to leave the School of Biosciences…

She squatted again and fed the paper under a splintered edge. The flame curled languidly around the wood, warming it slowly, as Professor Madoc’s words turned into black flakes that floated upwards as if by magic.

‘Come on. Come on,’ she muttered and rested the side of her face against the rough planking. ‘Come on, shed, you can do it.’ She giggled and opened her eyes. ‘Yes!’

The orange tendrils were feeling their tentative way up first one panel, then the next.

She stood up and backed away. She shivered. She wasn’t even wearing a coat. Or socks. Inside the rubber boots, her feet were numb.

The fire had a grip now. It found the vulnerable corner and clawed its way upwards.

Sarah released a long, emptying sigh. Why hadn’t she done this years ago? All she’d needed was Dutch courage and half a box of matches.

The corner of the shed was properly alight. Crackling. It would not go out now. It started to throw out heat, and she enjoyed that until sparks spat at her and she took a wavering step backwards.

I very much regret…

Patrick would be coming home soon and they would have to start again. Almost from the beginning. All the progress halted. Maybe reversed. She was exhausted by it. Exhausted by him. She didn’t want it. She wasn’t sure what she did want, but she knew that forwards was better than backwards, even if the destination was unknown.

‘Out of the way!’

Something pushed her aside and she stumbled to one knee, her palms in the gravel; the gravel in her palms.

An animal hiss made her look up to see that the dancing flames had been transformed into ugly grey smoke and cinders, which billowed across the gravel and made her cough.

Weird Nick turned towards her, water still spurting from the garden hose in his hand. ‘I got here just in time,’ he said, and stood, flushed and panting, waiting for his plaudits.

‘Yes,’ she said dully, and wobbled to her feet.

‘What happened?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Oh,’ he said.

He was Patrick’s age but looked older, slightly chubby, and wearing the kind of tinted spectacles she always imagined perverts did.

Sarah brushed the grit from her hands and was suddenly very cold. She noticed his gaze drop briefly to her breasts and folded her arms across them.

‘Well then,’ said Weird Nick, gesturing with the hose so that it made an arc of broken silver droplets in the air. ‘I’d better go and turn this off. We’re on a meter.’

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

‘No problem,’ he said. ‘Any time.’

Any time my shed burns down. She only had two neighbours – Weird Nick and his mother; why did both of them have to be so bloody helpful?

‘Night, Mrs Fort.’

She waved a vague hand and watched him follow the hose back towards his mother’s house like a slim green umbilical cord.

She thought she might be sick. The smoke and the vodka and the disappointment.

Ollie was on the back step, barring her way so she couldn’t fail to pet him. She stepped over him into the kitchen, and retched over the sink. Nothing came up. She laid her forehead on the cold steel of the draining board and cried a little, then went to bed.

When she got up the next morning, she left behind a ghost of grey ashes on the sheets.

40

FROM THE CORNER of her eye, Meg watched Mrs Deal’s finger drub mechanically on the bedspread.

‘Can you stop that!’ Meg said sharply, then added, ‘Please. It’s driving me mad.’

Immediately she felt a rush of guilt. Mrs Deal’s lashes did not flicker over her white crescent eyes. There was no forgiveness and no reproach. The finger paused – and then started again. Tap and stop, tap and stop.

Shit.

Meg closed the book.

‘We’ll go on next time, Mrs Deal. We’re almost at the end. After that my friend Patrick’s going to come and read a new book to you. I bet it will be nice for you to hear another voice. I don’t know what he’ll be reading, but I’ve told him no war and no sci-fi.’

She stood up and wound her scarf around her neck.

‘Anyway, I’ll bring him in and introduce you. And check on the book he’s chosen in case it’s crap. You know what men are like.’

She put the book back on the table and looked down at the thing that used to be Mrs Deal. She was only marginally better than dead. It was easy to imagine her as a cadaver in the dissection room. She would be more swollen, more orange, but essentially the same.

Apart from that finger.

Angie came in and smiled at Meg, then checked the drip on the young man in the next bed. His name was Robert and he was only twenty-five, but his hands were becoming claws, the wrists turning at weird angles and his short brown fingers pulling inwards, despite the efforts of the physiotherapist Meg had seen working on him. She never saw anyone else at his bedside, although there was a huge dusty leopard lying under it, so someone must have cared once.

‘You’re doing a great job,’ said Angie, and came over.

‘Am I?’ said Meg. ‘Sometimes it feels pointless.’

‘Never,’ said Angie firmly. ‘It’s never pointless. And Mrs Deal deserves it; she’s such a good patient.’ She leaned down and stroked the woman’s brow.

‘I imagine they all are,’ said Meg, looking around.

‘Oh, you’d be surprised!’ said Angie, with a quick roll of her eyes. ‘Some of them emerge stark staring crazy.’ She held out her left hand to show a crooked finger. ‘One of them broke that. It’s still swollen.’

‘Really?’ said Meg in surprise, and looked around. ‘Which one?’

‘He died,’ said Angie. Then she lowered her voice. ‘I wasn’t sorry.’

Meg said nothing. It seemed like a terrible thing for a nurse to say.

Angie read her face. ‘I know it sounds awful, but Mr Attridge was in a shocking state. Really distressed. And he wasn’t going to get much better. Sometimes dying is the easiest thing.’

Meg nodded slowly. ‘I’d never thought of it like that.’

‘Not Mrs Deal though,’ said Angie brightly – and for her patient’s ears. ‘We love Mrs Deal and hope for the best, don’t we, Mrs Deal?’

Mrs Deal’s finger tapped mechanically.

Angie touched Meg’s shoulder. ‘Thanks for coming.’

When she’d gone, Meg sat down again, all bundled up. She took Mrs Deal’s hand and stroked it. It was cold and so she sandwiched it between her own to warm it up a little.

‘I’m so sorry I snapped at you,’ she said. She sighed and then went on, almost to herself, ‘I’m a bit stressed out at the moment. It’s all Patrick’s fault. He wants me to take pictures of something important. But I only got my camera for Christmas and I’m totally shit at photos.’

It was true. For every in-focus, in-frame photograph she’d lucked into over Christmas, there were two dozen that required immediate deletion. Two dozen shots of huge white faces, giant thumbs, the backs of heads and her own feet. How she was supposed to take clinically reliable close-ups of mucous membranes, precise enough to indicate whether the wounds might have been made post- or ante-mortem, she had no idea.

‘And I have to take them in secret too,’ she sighed. ‘In a place where cameras aren’t allowed. If I get caught, I could be expelled and my dad would go effing bonkers. So I’m sorry I was rude.’

Mrs Deal just lay there, and Meg blushed at the thought of telling the woman her puny problems, before leaving her here in her bed and rushing off to live her life.

She placed the hand gently back on the cover. Immediately the finger started twitching.

‘I’ll see you next week,’ Meg said, and hurried away.

41

PATRICK WASN’T SURE what to do with his time now that he had been expelled, so spent much of the following week pedalling slowly around the city. The glasshouse at Roath Park was a warm haven – dripping with tropical fronds – while outside the sunshine tried to break through the cloud cover of a Welsh spring. At the lake, he loaded his bike into a rowing boat and drifted slowly around the islands that were home to swans and ducks and old crisp packets. There were even hardy little red-eared terrapins that had survived being dumped after the Mutant Ninja craze, and which now basked on logs, surprising natives.

When it rained, Patrick went to the bookies. The third time he went, two horses died, but it happened away from the cameras. Patrick wrote them in his book anyway – Starbright and Mighty Acorn – and made the little marks next to their names which denoted that they had not helped his cause. Afterwards he went to the museum and bought a Coke for supper.

When he got home, Lexi was sitting on the couch between Kim and Jackson, even though it was really only big enough for two people. They were watching Deal or No Deal and Lexi was holding the remote control.

Patrick hovered in the doorway.

‘Hi,’ said Lexi. ‘What happened to you the other day?’

‘Which day?’

‘At the house. With Jackie.’

‘I left,’ he said.

‘I know that,’ she said, rolling her eyes at him – something he was used to. ‘But why?’

‘My ears were hurting.’

Lexi made a screwed-up face and Kim explained, ‘He doesn’t like loud noises, do you, Patrick?’

‘No.’

‘You missed a hell of a fight,’ said Lexi.

‘Oh,’ said Patrick. ‘Good.’

She stood up and dropped the remote in Jackson’s lap. He and Kim leaned gently into the gap where she’d been.

Patrick went upstairs and Lexi followed him.

‘Any luck?’ she said.

‘With what?’

‘Finding out who killed my dad.’

‘No. But Meg’s taking some photos of the throat, where there are wounds that could be ante-mortem.’

‘What’s ante-mortem?’

‘Before death.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Like post-mortem.’

‘Yes. But not.’

She nodded and followed him to the bathroom while he filled his bucket with water, then back to his bedroom. He shifted the bed away from the wall and started to scrub the carpet where it had been.

Lexi sat cross-legged on his bed for a while – then wriggled down inside his sleeping bag and stared at the ceiling, which was a-swirl with Artex.

‘What did you find in my dad? Apart from the peanut, I mean.’

‘Nothing.’

‘There can’t have been nothing.’

‘Nothing you wouldn’t expect to find.’

The carpet that had been under the bed was dusty as well as dark brown, and the water in the bucket was soon black and hairy.

‘It’s weird to think about you poking around inside his head when he’s dead. I wish I could have done that when he was alive.’

Patrick sat back on his heels. ‘Dissected his brain?’

‘Just to find out why he did some of the shit he did after my mum died. I mean, God knows what he was thinking half the time.’

‘I understand what you mean,’ he said, with an unexpected chink of empathy.

‘Was your dad an arse too?’ she said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t.’

‘Oh,’ said Lexi. ‘That’s nice for you.’ She played absently with the zip of the bag. It was a heavy-duty YKK that Patrick kept running smooth with WD40. He wondered if she might say something about it, but she didn’t.

‘Mine wasn’t always an arse,’ she said instead. ‘This one Christmas Eve when I was, like, three or four, I was asleep and he and my mum were downstairs with friends.’

‘How do you know?’ said Patrick.

‘How do I know what?’

‘How do you know they were downstairs with friends if you were asleep?’

Lexi frowned at him and said, ‘They just were, OK? You’re so fucking weird.’

She looked at the ceiling and Patrick pursed his lips. He didn’t like stories where he didn’t understand all the reasons why things in them happened.

‘So I’m asleep in bed and all of a sudden he grabs me out of bed, so fast I didn’t know what was going on, and he runs downstairs with me in his arms, and he’s so excited he’s kind of shaking, you know?’

Patrick nodded, even though Lexi wasn’t looking at him. Something about this story made him put his brush in the bucket and give her his full attention.

‘And he takes me through to the front room and all the lights are off, apart from the fairy lights on the Christmas tree, and all the presents are under the tree and my mum and their friends are by the window and the curtains are open—’

‘That’s how you knew,’ said Patrick. ‘Because the friends were there when you went downstairs.’

Lexi stared at him blankly, then smiled. ‘Yes, that’s how I knew.’

‘Go on,’ said Patrick.

She looked at the ceiling again and went on. ‘So, my dad ran to the window with me.’

She was quiet for a long moment, and Patrick watched her swallow, even though she wasn’t eating.

She went on, ‘I remember everyone was looking at me, sort of excited, and I didn’t know whether to be scared or excited or what was going on. And he holds me in his arms and points outside and whispers, ‘Look! Look!’

‘What was outside?’ said Patrick. He couldn’t help himself.

‘Outside was dark, but sort of light, too, because it had been snowing all day and it was still snowing, and the streetlights made everything orange.’

‘And what was outside?’ said Patrick impatiently.

‘And Father Christmas was going past.’

Patrick frowned. ‘But Father Christmas doesn’t exist.’

‘Yes, he does,’ said Lexi dreamily to the ceiling, ‘’cos I saw him. And it was wonderful. He was in a sleigh being pulled by a little white pony you couldn’t even hear because of the snow, so it was totally silent. And he wasn’t stopping or handing out presents; he wasn’t waving and showing off or ho-ho-ho-ing; he wasn’t somebody’s dad or uncle dressed up. It was too real and too quiet and too beautiful.’

Patrick sat on his heels and watched while a little silver river swelled out of the corner of her eye and trickled across the plain of her cheek.

She turned and looked at him and he didn’t look away.

‘It was like magic,’ she half whispered. ‘And he woke me up so I could see it.’ Then she looked back at the ceiling and wiped her eyes.

Patrick didn’t believe in Father Christmas. It didn’t make sense. And he thought that the Father Christmas that Lexi had seen had probably been somebody’s neighbour on his way to hand out presents and to ho-ho-ho at a house further along the street.

But, for some strange reason, he didn’t say any of that. For some strange reason that didn’t make sense either, Patrick said nothing and did nothing, and the silence filled the cramped, chemical-smelling little bedroom with something warm and quite wonderful.

Lexi sighed. ‘I like your room,’ she told the Artex. ‘It’s very calm.’

Patrick was not surprised; the ceiling was definitely the best part of his room.

He went to empty the bucket. A cushion of hair and fibres clogged the plughole and he plucked it out like a small, drowned animal and dropped it into the pedal bin. Then he peeled off his bleach-spattered clothes and showered until the hot water ran out.

When he returned to his room, Lexi was asleep. He carefully slid the bed back into place against the wall.

She did not wake up.

42

MEG STOPPED DEAD just inside the door of the dissection room, so that Scott almost knocked her over. She had to grasp the edge of Table 4 to keep from falling.

The bodies were gone.

Table 4, which had once been home to Rufus, with his curly red chest hair, was now just a clean and shiny stainless-steel surface under her hand, and Rufus’s limbs and entrails had disappeared from the shelf below it.

The room looked completely different. It had changed from white with fleshy orange outcrops, to white – with yet more white reflected in the steel table-tops. Without the cadavers, Meg wasn’t even sure at first which was Table 19. She walked over and touched it, as if she could only then be certain of the absence of a corpse.

The other students seemed to feel the same, and they milled about, apparently disorientated.

‘Where is he?’ Meg asked Dr Spicer.

‘Who?’

‘Bill.’

Dr Spicer turned and waved a vague arm and, for the first time, Meg realized that there was a row of trolleys lined up against the far wall of the room. On each was a white body bag.

‘The final week will just be a recap using prosections, if anyone needs a reminder.’

‘When will they be taken away?’

‘What?’

‘The cadavers.’

‘As and when funerals are arranged.’

Meg did a quick count. Already there were only twenty-seven.

‘You OK?’ said Rob.

She nodded slowly. ‘One day he’s here, the next he’s gone. It just feels weird.’

‘And that,’ said Spicer with a sympathetic smile, ‘is why we don’t like students to know too much about their cadavers.’

‘Now I get it,’ she said, wishing fervently that she didn’t.

‘Anyway,’ Spicer added, ‘it’s not all doom and gloom. On Friday night we’ll all have a bit of a get-together at my place to mark the end of dissection. Sort of a wake.’

‘I’m up for that,’ said Rob, and Dilip nodded vigorously.

‘Partay,’ said Scott in the fake American accent he thought made him cooler.

Meg nodded but she didn’t feel like a partay. Half of her was relieved that taking photos of Bill’s throat was now out of the question – she had no idea which bag held his body, or even whether his body was still there. But the other half of her knew it meant that she could no longer hold Patrick to his part of the bargain.

And the thought of reading Ulysses or Moby Dick while Mrs Deal’s restless finger marked erratic time made her feel queasy.

43

PATRICK’S DAY STARTED badly when he received a Valentine’s card. On the front was a photo of a heart made of seashells pressed into damp sand. Inside was nothing but a question mark. It confused him to the point where he had to seek clarification from Kim, who seemed disproportionately excited.

‘Jackson!’ she yelled up the stairs, ‘Patrick’s got a Valentine’s card!’

Once he knew what it was, Patrick hated everything about it – the anonymity, the concept and, most of all, the surprise. Patrick liked to be able to prepare; the unexpected was a threat and changes were bad. If he survived them, it was only because he’d taken the precaution of surrounding himself with enough that was unchanged to see him through the transition. His bicycle. His sleeping bag. His book of names. These were some of the constants that allowed him – with enough preparation and planning – to pick his way through the minefield of life. His mother’s drinking, the death of his father, the move to university. These had been survivable only because of his photos of death and his alphabet plate.

So the unexpected appearance of the card filled Patrick with foreboding about the day ahead.

The doorbell rang. It was Meg.

‘What’s wrong?’ said Patrick.

‘Nothing!’ she said. ‘Well, something, but not… y’know. Nothing terrible. Can I come in?’

While Patrick was thinking about it, Jackson shouldered his way past them both, winding his scarf around his neck and glaring at Patrick.

‘Fucking Valentine’s cards,’ he hissed.

‘What’s wrong with Valentine’s cards?’ said Meg cautiously.

‘Everything,’ said Patrick, and allowed Meg to follow him into the kitchen, where she told him the bodies had gone.

Patrick reeled. Despite all his precautions, life had blown up in his face.

‘Dissection is a twenty-two-week course!’ he shouted.

‘I know,’ said Meg.

‘But we’ve only had twenty-one!’

‘Sssh,’ she said soothingly. ‘I suppose that they consider a recap week using prosections to be a valid part of the course.’

‘But it’s not,’ said Patrick vehemently. Prosections were the chunks of abdomen, the slivers of brain, the disembodied hands. Reeking and grey with age, they were lifted, dripping with preservative, from the big white buckets in the second of the refrigerated rooms, to demonstrate what students should be looking for in the less obvious cadavers. Kidneys with renal vessels trailing like shoelaces, faces sliced like toast on a rack.

‘You have to find Number 19,’ said Patrick firmly. ‘We made a deal.’

‘Patrick, how can I? I can’t march over to the body bags in the middle of class and unzip them all until I find him. And then take photos.’

‘But we made a deal.’

‘The deal’s off. I’m sorry. Really sorry.’

Patrick looked lost. ‘How will we get the proof now?’

‘I’m not sure we can,’ sighed Meg.

Patrick turned away from her and stared broodingly at the kitchen tap. He could see Meg reflected in the stainless steel, looking at the back of his head. He realized that it was easier to look at her this way – without having to face her. For the first time he studied her without having to avoid catching her eye. The reflection was slightly distorted, but it made him remember his mother’s question at Christmas.

Is she pretty?

Meg had dark eyebrows over brown eyes, pale skin and a curved mouth. He didn’t know if she was pretty because that was not something he’d ever registered in anyone in the fleeting glances that were all he could manage. But her face was even, and calming to look at, even in a tap.

For the first time in his life he wondered what she saw when she looked at him. The curved steel tap stretched his face to a narrow strip, his eyes bugging out at the top like an alien stick insect. He closed them and refocused on the struggle to connect the dots of events and motivations.

The body was no longer available. But the peanut hadn’t been with the body. Therefore the peanut was still there to be found. Somewhere. It wasn’t much, but it would be better than nothing, which was what they had now.

He opened his eyes and glanced at Meg’s shoulder. ‘Where does Scott live?’ he demanded.

‘I have no idea,’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘He could have taken the peanut.’

‘Why would he have taken it?’

Patrick didn’t know the answer to that. He was desperate – that was all. At least Scott had threatened to kill him, and had tried to uncover the eyes of the corpse. If it wasn’t Scott, he was lost again.

‘I think you’re clutching at straws,’ said Meg.

‘I want to speak to him,’ he said stubbornly.

‘Really?’ She sighed.

‘Yes,’ said Patrick. ‘Really.’

‘In that case,’ said Meg with a wry little smile, ‘tomorrow night we par-tay.’

It was the second Thursday. Sarah hadn’t even noticed the first one after she’d received Professor Madoc’s letter; that week had passed in a liquid blur of calling in sick to the card shop, and the smell of her own unwashed sheets.

But this was the second Thursday, and now she sat by the phone all evening, with the cat on her lap, watching the local news. Every bulletin that passed without word of a young man hanged or drowned or found on the railway tracks allowed her to uncap the Vladivar and drink to the fact that Patrick was probably still alive.

Or that he hadn’t come home yet; she wasn’t sure which.

The thought of his return filled her with a slow panic. So much so that she had not called Professor Madoc or the Cardiff police to enquire as to where Patrick might be now that he’d been expelled. Nor had she driven the forty-odd miles to Cardiff and knocked on the door of the little terraced house where she had left him last September.

Not even when she was sober.

There was no reason for her to worry. She had paid Patrick’s rent until the end of the spring term, and he had twenty pounds a week to live on. It wasn’t much, but it was all she’d been able to afford without making applications and supplications, and coming to the attention of who knew what authorities? Easier just to tighten their belts. Luckily Patrick didn’t really care about clothing or food – or how little there was of either.

Sarah Fort eyed the phone warily. It was already gone eleven. It was unlikely to ring now.

The relief was immense and she celebrated by finishing the bottle.

If Patrick came back, he came back, and she would deal with it then. If he did not – then it would release her in more ways than one.

44

TRACY EVANS WAS fat.

Fat, fat, fat.

She glared at herself in the mirror at the top of the stairs. It wasn’t just her tummy; fat seemed to be laying itself down in rude slabs on her cheeks, her neck, her upper arms.

She’d looked forward to pregnancy. Gone were the days when a pregnant woman had to waddle around wearing a pup tent to cover her bulge. Nowadays young women flaunted their bumps in little black dresses and posed naked in magazines cradling their perfect, smooth bellies.

Nowhere in the celebrity gossip columns did she remember seeing anyone who looked the way she did after a mere five months – like a pumped-up version of herself, with trucker’s arms and increasingly piggy eyes. She’d bought a little black maternity dress, but she’d blown up so fast that she’d never had a chance to show it off, and now it mocked her every time she opened the wardrobe, where Mr Deal – Raymond – had cleared a space at the end of his rail for her. The dress was so narrow she couldn’t imagine getting a leg into it, let alone her entire bulk.

Mr Deal said she looked fine, but he’d stopped touching her in bed. She had failed to interest him even by expanding her range of sexual positions – like unlocking another level in Mario Kart. She still stayed over three nights a week, but now he only kissed her goodnight on the cheek, with his hand on her beefy shoulder.

Tracy watched the corners of her mouth suddenly tug downwards, as if operated by strings. She loved him. She loved him! Shouldn’t that have made it easier to eat for one and a tiny weeny foetus, instead of for six men and a boy?

Apparently not.

She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and looked at the ceiling, to avoid smudging her mascara. She didn’t have time to fix it; they were going for a Valentine’s Day dinner at the Thai House. Just the name of the restaurant made Tracy’s burgeoning tummy rumble and she was seized by a sudden hostility for the child within her. She imagined a troll: a rubber-faced, sharp-toothed predator, selfish and demanding and always ravenous. Of course, she knew that everything would be different four months from now when she held her in her arms and fell in love for the second time, but until then, her daughter (Jordan or Jamelia, she couldn’t decide) felt like an enemy to be routed from her body at the first possible opportunity.

In the meantime, outside the bedroom Mr Deal was displaying surprising enthusiasm. He had painted the fifth bedroom a happy yellow and she’d come round one day to find all kinds of baby stuff – clothes and toys, and a new crib. Not just new to them, but new to anyone. It wasn’t the crib with the white fairy-tale canopy that she would have chosen, but, whatever, the ticket said it had cost £895 from Mothercare, and Tracy had never spent that much on a car!

Raymond’s choice of baby clothes left a lot to be desired, too – all neutrals and whites and yellows, when everyone knew a little girl needed to be smothered in pink.

She thought it a bit strange that they hadn’t gone shopping together but she hid her disappointment. At least he was involved, which was more than she could have expected from most men of her own age, and she told him it was all wonderful.

And Tracy was sure it would be.

Sure because the nursery was her insurance. Where else would the baby live but that bright, sunshiny room? And where else would she live, if not with her baby? Raymond just did things differently from other men, that was all – and it was part of the reason she loved him.

She smiled bravely at herself in the mirror and poked her hair into perfect place.

Not long now. And once Jordan or Jamelia (or possibly Jaden?) came along, she’d lose the weight, and she’d start going to clubs again, and they would take long, exotic foreign holidays – the kind spent on a fancy lilo, while cute, tanned waiters swam out to serve them cocktails stuffed with pineapple slices and umbrellas.

Her mother had already agreed to have the baby.

45

PATRICK HADN’T BEEN to a party since he was five years old, when the clamour of twenty over-sugared children in such disorganized proximity had led to a meltdown on a scale rarely witnessed during musical chairs. The very word ‘party’ had the power to trigger in him flashbacks of wailing classmates, overturned furniture, and a big brown dog gulping down spilled jelly.

It all hit him with fresh clarity when Dr Spicer opened the door of his flat. The music alone made him take a nervous step backwards across the corridor.

‘Hi,’ said Spicer. ‘Come in!’

Meg did just that, but Patrick stayed where he was. Meg turned and pointed at the bottle of wine she’d insisted that they buy at the corner shop. Apparently it was their entrance ticket. He’d bought a bottle of Coke for himself. It was plastic, not glass, but it was better than nothing.

Patrick handed the wine to Spicer and said, ‘Where’s Scott?’

Spicer laughed and said thank you, and Meg smiled and let their tutor kiss her cheek.

Spicer looked at him. ‘Come on in, Patrick. It’s nice to see you.’

He looked very different without his white coat and blue gloves, and Patrick didn’t like it. He hadn’t been prepared for Spicer in jeans and a Cardiff rugby shirt. It made him feel as if he had already lost control of the situation.

‘Is Scott here?’ he said, without moving.

‘Yeah, he found out about it somehow,’ said Spicer with a wink that made Meg giggle.

Still Patrick stood rooted to the deep-green carpet of the hallway. ‘Can you get him for me?’

Spicer smiled and beckoned with the wine. ‘Why don’t you come in and find him?’

Patrick folded his arms across his chest and took a step backwards. ‘I’ll stay here,’ he said to Meg. ‘You go and get him.’

‘Don’t be daft, Patrick,’ she said. ‘No one’s going to bite you.’

Patrick looked past her to the people and the lights and the bass that made his stomach vibrate unpleasantly, even from here. He licked his lips, which were suddenly dry.

‘C’mon,’ said Meg, and took a step towards him. For an awful moment Patrick thought she was going to take his hand. Instead she said quietly, ‘If you don’t, you might never know.’

Then she turned and walked inside as if she expected him to follow.

Not knowing was not an option. So – after a long, long hesitation – he did.

Everyone was there. What seemed to be dozens of students, all looking impossibly sophisticated, with wine glasses and bottled beer in their hands, without their grubby paper coats. There were also several of the younger tutors – Dr Clarke, Dr Spiller and Dr Tsu – laughing and talking with two women Patrick didn’t recognize, and fitting in with everyone seamlessly. They all seemed to know why they were here. They all looked as if they belonged.

Meg said ‘Hi’ and waved to a slim, dark-haired woman whom Patrick didn’t recognize.

‘Hi, Patrick,’ said Rob, and Patrick nodded.

‘Nice party,’ Rob added.

‘Is it?’ said Patrick.

Rob stared at him for a moment, then shrugged and laughed. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Oh,’ said Patrick. ‘OK.’

‘Want a beer?’ said Rob, and picked one out of a barrel filled to the brim with ice and bottles.

‘No,’ he said, and hurried on.

Meg led him through to the kitchen, which was empty, and furthest from the stereo. Even so, by the time they got there, Patrick wanted to sob or scream with itchy repulsion and the pain in his ears. He sat with his back to the wall, then pulled the kitchen table towards him across the fancy quarry tiles so that no one could pass behind him. There was some small relief in having his back covered, even if his face and chest and hands and legs felt hopelessly vulnerable. There were a dozen bottles on the table and Patrick rearranged them into a glass barrier.

Meg found a tumbler in a cupboard. ‘Do you want a drink?’ she said.

He shook his head. The Coke was cold and tempting in his hands but he didn’t dare open it, because it had become his guardian for the night. Full, it protected him; empty, it lost its power. Opening it would seem like the action of a man who had dropped his guard.

Meg put the tumbler on the table and went over to the counter nearest the sink, where more bottles were waiting for customers.

Patrick noticed that the glass Meg had chosen had a faint smear near the rim. He got up and washed it.

‘Thanks,’ she said, sitting down and pouring herself some wine. She took a long gulp and smiled at him. ‘So, Patrick, how many Valentine’s cards did you get?’

‘One.’

‘Only one? Who was it from?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘You said you were going to find Scott.’

Meg stared silently into her wine glass for a while, then said, ‘OK then.’

When she’d gone, Patrick opened the cupboard and examined all the glasses. He ran a bowlful of soapy water and washed them and put them on the rack to dry. Then he opened the cutlery drawer. He emptied the whole lot into the hot water.

He flinched as Spicer came in on a wave of noise.

‘I didn’t realize the kitchen was contaminated,’ he said with a wink.

‘That’s OK,’ said Patrick. ‘I’m cleaning it now.’

Spicer laughed, and started to transfer pizzas from the freezer to the eye-level oven. ‘I’m sorry you were asked to leave the course, Patrick.’

‘Yes,’ said Patrick. ‘It was inconsistent.’

‘I hear you took it out on the porter.’

Patrick shrugged. Removing all the knives and forks and spoons and bits like tin-openers and broken candles meant he could now see that the tray needed washing too. And the drawer underneath that.

Dr Clarke came in and said, ‘Hello, Slugger.’

Patrick thought he must have confused him with someone else.

Dr Clarke sat on the corner of the table and drank beer from a bottle and made small talk with Spicer that Patrick didn’t listen to. Up to his elbows in warm suds, he felt suddenly more at home. By the time Meg came back with Scott, he was sitting at the table once more, rubbing the clean cutlery to a shine and placing it neatly back in its freshly washed tray.

Scott dragged a chair out with a clatter and flopped down into it. His Mohawk was half up and half down, and his face was shiny.

‘All right, Paddy!’

‘Patrick,’ said Patrick.

‘You’re such a tight-arse, you know?’

‘I know. Did you take the peanut?’

‘What peanut?’

‘The one I found in Number 19.’

‘Hey, I didn’t take your stupid peanut, so just get over it.’

Patrick didn’t stop polishing the knife in his hand, but he did stop thinking about polishing it. His heart sank. Scott had not taken the peanut. He believed that, not because Scott was inherently trustworthy, but because Scott was drunk, and drunks told the truth, in his experience. His drunken mother had once told him that she’d almost killed herself because of him – that on the day his father had died, she’d gone up Penyfan and come this close to throwing herself off. Because of you! she’d shouted. Because of you!

Scott put his head on the table so he could look up at Patrick’s face. ‘Did you hear me?’

‘Yes,’ said Patrick. ‘I heard you.’

‘Nut,’ said Scott. Then he laughed and said, ‘Get it?’

‘No,’ said Patrick, which made Scott laugh even harder.

‘Don’t be an arsehole, Scott,’ said Meg. ‘Just this once.’

‘OK,’ said Scott. ‘Just for you. You want to dance?’

‘All right,’ said Meg, and Patrick watched her leave. For some reason, he wished she hadn’t. Scott went after her, letting in another blast of gut-churning beat before the door swung shut behind him.

Patrick sighed deeply. At least the knives and forks were clean.

The dark-haired woman Meg knew came in and whispered something in Spicer’s ear and he smiled. She stretched her hand out for them both to admire. It glittered with a diamond ring that made Patrick blink. His mother had a diamond ring but it was dull and puny compared to this one. Patrick had taken it off her bedside table once and gone to the greenhouse to see if diamond really could cut glass, and then had left it in the garden. The memory of her fury still sent a little shiver through him.

The woman kissed Spicer’s cheek and he squeezed her waist and she left.

Spicer slid another pizza into the oven, then sat down. ‘You still on about that peanut?’

Patrick nodded.

‘What’s the significance again?’ Spicer opened a bottle of beer with an expert twist.

Patrick told him the significance, and Spicer nodded between slugs.

Dr Clarke got up and opened the oven to check on the pizzas, and Patrick felt the hot air drift across the kitchen to warm his face. He curled his hands around his Coke. He longed to twist it open and take a long bubbling swig. The curved coldness felt curiously close to his skin and he realized it felt strange to be in a room with Dr Clarke and Dr Spicer without his blue gloves on. His hands felt as exposed as theirs looked.

‘These are almost ready,’ said Dr Clarke, peering between his naked hands and through the glass. He had long, bony fingers, and the nails were bitten to the quick.

The smell of hot cheese came to Patrick, and he thought of Number 19’s salivary glands, which made him think again of the gouges and the black blood.

‘So what are you going to do about it now?’ said Spicer, slowly peeling the label off his beer bottle.

‘I don’t know,’ said Patrick. The warmth and the disappointment were making him tired and he couldn’t think too well. ‘Maybe go to the police again.’

‘You went to the police?’ said Spicer. ‘To report the theft of a peanut?’

Dr Clarke snorted and looked at him.

‘Yes, but there was blood on my hand, so I left before telling them about it.’

Spicer widened his eyes, then laughed. ‘I’m not even going to ask,’ he said, and put his hands up like a baddie in a cowboy film. He had large, fleshy hands – although he was not a big man – and the right forefinger was ringed with short pink scars.

‘What happened to your finger?’ Patrick asked, and Spicer looked at him as if he’d forgotten he was there.

‘My finger?’ he said, then looked at his finger as if he’d forgotten that was there, too.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I cut it on the tin-opener. Blood everywhere. I nearly fainted!’

Dr Clarke laughed, but Patrick felt a little electrical spark in his chest.

That was a lie!

He’d just seen the tin-opener in the cutlery drawer. It was a cheap, old-fashioned one – the kind his mother had at home – and it was rubbish. It worked more by pressure than sharpness, and would be almost impossible to puncture the skin with, let alone cause the two or three deep scars on Spicer’s finger.

Liar!

The knowledge made him tingle all over.

Spicer was lying. But why?

Patrick stared at his tutor’s hands, while bits of puzzle started a slow new circuit in his head. The scarred finger, the fragment of blue latex, the padlocked door – he wasn’t even sure they were bits of the same puzzle. There was so much confusion in Patrick’s life that he couldn’t assume anything. He tried to calm down; tried to think clearly.

Spicer’s hands curled slowly into loose fists and Patrick watched him put them down carefully on the wooden table, and from there to his lap. When he looked up, Spicer was staring at him.

The timer on the oven shrieked and Patrick clamped his hands to his ears. One hand was hard and cold; he was still holding the Coke.

‘Pizza!’ said Dr Clarke.

Patrick stood up, banging the table with his knees. The gleaming cutlery rattled in its tray.

‘Where are you going?’ said Spicer.

‘Home.’

‘Don’t you want pizza?’

‘No.’ Patrick opened the door and felt the harsh music hit him like a wall. He had to get out. He took a deep breath and headed straight for the front door. He looked for Meg; if he saw her, he would say goodbye. But he didn’t and he couldn’t go and find her in the flat that was too hot, too crowded, too loud.

Too much.

He ran down four flights. Outside the damp air was already starting to wrap itself around cars and lampposts. He stood on the pavement and sucked down the cold in grateful draughts. Dr Spicer’s flat was in what used to be Tiger Bay – where all the new buildings seemed to look a little like ships. They had round windows, and roofs that curved like bows or jutted like sails.

He unlocked his bike from the railings. The metal of both was frigid, and his fingers quickly became clumsy, but he felt his brain starting to recover as he swung his leg over the crossbar and headed towards the city centre, which lay between him and the house.

Dumballs Road was long and lined with industrial units. Garages and workshops that had once been on the fringes of the city, but which now found themselves squeezed by the townhouses and flats sailing up from the redeveloped Bay towards even more prestigious moorings.

But for now it was still deserted at night, and dark, with only the occasional car headlights making his shadow swing around him.

Calm.

The further he went from the party, the better Patrick felt. He stood harder on the pedals, and was rewarded with more speed – and more cold. His breath puffed in short visible bursts in the air, and on every inward breath he caught the exhalations of the nearby brewery that gave the city its malt flavour.

The road in front of Patrick grew suddenly bright – and something hit him like a steel tsunami.

His bike was washed from under him and he landed on the windscreen of a car with a glassy crunch. For a split second he was inches away from two white-knuckled hands clutching the wheel.

The car slewed, screeched, then jerked to a stop.

Patrick travelled fast through the silent air. Then something hit him hard in the back and he dropped to the ground and lay still.

The world was a cold black cube for a long, long time before a door cracked open in the ceiling. Or the floor. A bright white light strobed through his slitted eyelids.

‘Patrick?’

It was Spicer.

Patrick didn’t move. He couldn’t. The pain of no air sat on his chest.

Spicer’s shoes met the tarmac with a small grating sound. ‘Are you OK?’

ARE you ok?

Are YOU ok?

Are you OK?

The shoes crunched towards him.

Patrick’s breath came back to him suddenly and made him wheeze and then cough. With oxygen came motion and he rolled from his side on to his stomach and, from there, levered himself on to his knees, and then to his unsteady feet.

‘Patrick! Wait!’

Patrick obeyed, but then he saw his bicycle, blue and twisted, in the road and instead of waiting he started to walk away. His right knee gave out and he stumbled and fell.

Spicer grabbed his hoodie and helped him up. Patrick bent at the waist and wriggled out of it, then started to run.

‘Patrick! Hold on! I have to talk to you!’

But he kept going. Kept going, kept going. He didn’t know why; it made no sense. But he just kept going.

Behind him someone shouted Fuck! and Patrick heard the car door slam and the engine roar.

Spicer was coming to get him.

The thought was even more shocking than the crash had been.

Why? What were the implications? Patrick didn’t know. He looked ahead – a hundred yards away were the orange lights at the back of the central station. It was too far. He wasn’t going to reach it. He had to get off the road.

There was a multi-storey car park. Patrick ducked left and ran into it. Spicer’s car over-shot the entrance and nose-dived to a halt, then whined into reverse.

The sound of it coming up the ramp and after him filled the deserted concrete cavern like thunder, and Patrick knew he’d made a mistake. There were no people, just a few late-night cars within layers of grey concrete, bound by low walls. He was a rat in a Guggenheim maze.

Patrick looked for an exit and couldn’t see one. He reached the end of the first level and ran on to the second.

He could hear the car squealing up the ramp behind him. Before it could turn the sharp corner at the top, Patrick dropped and rolled under a Land Rover. He lay there on the cold concrete, looking up at the exhaust system, while Spicer’s silver car sped past him.

Exhaust, he thought. Exhausted.

The wailing of tyres told him Spicer had taken the ramp to the third level, and he began to roll awkwardly from under the car.

Then – somewhere above his head – he heard Spicer’s car stop, turn, and head back down towards him.

Patrick stayed where he was.

The silver car came down the ramp and ground to a ticking halt. Now that it wasn’t mowing him down or chasing him, he had the time to see that it was a Citroën. Patrick heard the door open and watched the suspension lift a little as Spicer got out.

He should have run while he could.

‘Patrick? It’s not what you think.’ Spicer didn’t shout; he didn’t have to – the half-empty car park was like an echo chamber.

What did he think? Patrick wasn’t even sure, so how could Spicer know it wasn’t what he thought?

Spicer’s feet stopped at the first car at the other end of the short row, and his legs folded as he crouched to look underneath it.

‘Patrick?’

Spicer’s head appeared and turned his way, and Patrick’s breath froze in his lungs.

Then Spicer straightened up and crept a few cars closer.

He hadn’t seen him! Patrick felt a huge wave of relief. The shadows had saved him – and the cover of tyres on the ten or so cars between them. But those things wouldn’t save him for long.

Patrick shuffled backwards on his elbows and knees, scraping his back on the chassis and number plate, until he emerged between the headlights of the Land Rover, tight up against yet another slab of dark-grey concrete. He straightened up slowly. Keeping the wheels between himself and Spicer so that the man wouldn’t see his feet, he waited until he saw the top of Spicer’s head bob into view, then quickly lowered himself back down, while Spicer took a few steps to his left. Patrick shuffled carefully to his left, between the cars and the wall, then stood up once more as Spicer knelt again.

Spicer rose and moved, Patrick crouched and moved the other way in perfect counterbalance. They pivoted silently past each other. The next time he stood up, Patrick spotted a pedestrian exit. A yellow door with a big 2 on it at the far side of the level, a good hundred yards away across the concrete.

Did he dare make a run for it? The thought of committing to it was terrifying, but if he stayed, Spicer would find him eventually. And what would he do then? Patrick tested his knee and grimaced; it would have to do. He edged between two cars, watching Spicer’s head disappear one last time. He was at the Land Rover; the end of the line.

It had to be now.

Patrick lurched from between the cars and ran towards escape.

The noise of his feet was like uneven gunfire.

‘Shit!’ Spicer shouted. Patrick didn’t look back. Behind him a door slammed, an engine roared, tyres squealed. He threw a desperate look over his shoulder. The car was coming at him fast. The yellow door was miles away.

I’m not going to make it. The thought was dull and dreadful. He had made a terrible miscalculation. His legs worked, his arms pumped, his breath burned, and he dawdled before the speeding car.

The headlights threw his long shape on to the low grey wall alongside him. Beyond that – through the uppermost branches of a tree – he could see the station, illuminated, and with people standing on platforms. A woman with a pink suitcase; two girls hugging their knees on a bench.

Unaware.

Patrick turned and ran towards them anyway, as if for help. The car was almost on him. Spicer wasn’t going to stop – he was going to spread him like jam along the wall. All his arms and his legs would be in the wrong places and his eyes would look nowhere.

And he would have all the answers.

Patrick jumped.

Over the wall and into the black night beyond.

46

THE CAR HIT the wall with a sound like a bomb.

Even as he hung for an infinite beat in the frigid air, Patrick saw the woman with the pink suitcase and the two girls turn their faces towards the explosion, while shards of concrete spat against his back and legs like shrapnel.

He didn’t want the answers!

Too late.

He dropped into the branches of the tree. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to cover his head, and a million firecrackers went off as twigs snapped and popped in his ears. His unprotected arms were pierced and scraped; a branch smashed into his back and he thought of a hammer and chisel and a breakable spine. He hit another and bounced off in a different direction. The next branch he hit, he snapped his arm around. The rough bark slid down his bare skin and tore at his fingers, and he couldn’t hold his weight there for more than a moment, but when he next fell, he only dropped a short distance to the ground and landed almost on his feet.

He rolled, then stood and looked up.

Spicer looked down at him. They said nothing.

Patrick jogged lopsidedly across the road and to the phone boxes at the back of the station.

He dialled feverishly, not caring even to cover his bloodied fingers. The phone rang and rang and rang and then went to voicemail, so he hung up and dialled again, jabbing the numbers without hesitation.

07734113117. It was a simple and beautiful number, filled with a lyrical rhythm of sums and products and patterns. He had often thought of it since the day he’d first heard it and wished that it were his.

‘Hello?’ Meg answered with the sound of Spicer’s flat behind her. Music and laughter. For a moment Patrick was struck dumb by the sheer strangeness of having been there so recently, when now he was here – light years away. For him the party had ceased to exist so completely that he was stunned that, for others, it could still be going on.

‘What’s your code?’ he said.

‘What code? Who is this?’

‘It’s Patrick. I need your DR code.’

‘Patrick? Why?’

‘I have to get in.’

There was a long silence. Something tickled the side of Patrick’s face and the back of his hand came back bloody.

‘Where are you?’

‘At the station,’ he said. ‘And my money’s running out.’ It was true – the digital readout on the phone was counting down his last sixty seconds. He fumbled in his pocket and came up empty.

‘When did you go? What’s happened?’ said Meg.

‘Dr Spicer tried to kill me.’

‘What! What are you talking about? He’s here.’

‘No, he wrecked my bike and crashed his car. I have to—’

‘Hold on,’ said Meg.

‘No!’ said Patrick, but she wasn’t listening to him. She was talking to someone else nearby. Where’s Dr Spicer? And the muffled response. Patrick looked back towards the car park and felt like smashing the phone and the box. But he needed the code. He gritted his teeth and held on as the numbers fell in front of him.

20… 19… 18… 17…

‘Patrick? Angie says he’s not here.’

‘I know he’s not there! He’s here.’

More muffled noises.

‘She says he popped out for beer.’

Another lie. There was lots of beer in the icy barrel.

12… 11… 10… 9…

Patrick dug for more coins. There was nothing there.

A car emerged under the fluorescent exit of the car park. A silver Citroën with a nose crumpled like a bad boxer’s. It swung into the road and turned his way.

‘Meg!’ he cried desperately, ‘Give me the code!’

4… 3… 2…

‘Five-five-fou—’ she said, and the line went dead.

Patrick dropped the receiver and ran away from the lights of the station and under the railway bridge, where his footsteps rang like bells and pigeons cocked their beady eyes from the steel girders. He ran past the pubs and clubs of St Mary Street, where youths clustered to shout and fight, and girls warmed by drink defied the cold in skimpy tops and sparkly shoes. He ran up Queen Street, with its bright windows wrapped around the homeless in the dark doorways, and then over the road, across the grass, past the circle of standing stones and into Park Place.

The door of the Biosciences building was locked.

Of course it was.

Patrick banged it once with the side of his fist, then leaned his hot face against it to recover his breath. His knee shouted for attention. He ignored it. He had to get in. Maybe there was a back door with glass he could break. He slipped quickly around the side of the building, through a narrow passage between this building and the next, and slithered down a steep muddy slope.

There he skidded to a stop.

Light spilled from a broad doorway at the back of the block. An ambulance was parked outside.

Patrick sneaked closer, hugging the dark wall.

He heard voices coming from inside. One of them was Mick’s.

It was the entrance to the embalming room. This was where the bodies were delivered and where Mick prepared them for the students. From here he could get to the dissection room! Must be able to! But he had to be fast. He guessed Spicer had the keys to the front door.

Without thinking about it, he stepped through the entrance and into a long, dark corridor. The only light overflowed from the windows in the double doors immediately to his right. Through them he could see Mick and two people he assumed were ambulance drivers. They were lifting a white body bag from a steel table on to a light gurney.

They weren’t delivering; they were picking up.

Panic gripped Patrick.

Had Number 19 already gone? Was he even now six feet under, or fallen in fine ashes over the roofs and gardens of Thornhill, where the crematorium lay?

He turned from the windows and hurried to the end of the corridor, where a flight of stairs led him up to a fire door. When he opened it, he wasn’t sure which way to go, so chose left and chose well – after two more doors he recognized the dissection room, even though it was from a new direction. And from this end of the corridor – where no students were supposed to be – no entry code was needed.

Patrick switched on the dissection room lights with a sense of déjà vu. Except this time he already guessed he would not be alone for long.

The room looked desolate without its corpses. He saw the white bags lined up along the far wall, where Meg had said they would be, and did a quick count. There were twenty-one left. Twenty-one out of thirty. The odds were still in his favour.

The gurneys holding the cadavers stretched nearly the length of the back wall. He hurried straight to the last one on the right, closest to the refrigerators, without even picking out a pair of gloves. The tab of each black zip was located halfway down the side of its white bag. The first Patrick opened exposed Dolly’s eternal nail polish, and the next revealed a woman too. The third was Rufus – the curled red hair down his freckled forearm giving him away even before Patrick registered the ‘4’ stamped on the dutiful tag on his wrist.

Patrick unzipped a gash of less than six inches in the fourth bag, and recognized Number 19’s hip as if it were his own. The faint tan-line under the orange hue of embalming, the dark hair that stopped at the top of the thigh in a remarkably straight line. Here was the jagged edge that Scott had made; here was the mark on the ball joint where Dilip had dug too deep. The dull metal tag was redundant. Patrick unzipped the entire side of the body bag and threw it off the cadaver. Mick had packed Number 19 away in roughly the right shape: the legs at the bottom, the head at the top, the torso and arms in between. The organs and skin and fat were in neat bags where Number 19’s stomach used to be, and his spine was draped across his chest like an ambassadorial sash.

Patrick pulled the mouth open and peered inside, surprised by how much sharper the teeth felt without the protection of latex gloves—

The realization hit him as hard as the car had, and he almost shouted with the thrill of discovery.

The scars on Spicer’s finger were bite marks!

Patrick stared down at the teeth, instinctively knowing it made sense, but trying to understand why.

Had Number 19 bitten Spicer? If the fading marks on Spicer’s fingertip matched these teeth in this head, then it meant Spicer had interacted with the living, breathing Samuel Galen.

And not in a good way.

The teeth would be proof. And all Patrick knew for sure was that he needed to keep that proof from Spicer at all costs.

Patrick seized the gurney at one end as if to push it from the room. Then he stopped. Even if he made it out of the building without running into Mick at one exit or Spicer at the other, how far was he going to get pushing a corpse through the city on a trolley?

There was only one solution.

Patrick skidded over to the white trays full of the odd assortment of tools and cutlery, and picked out what he needed.

Then he started to saw off Samuel Galen’s head.

47

IT WAS REPULSIVE. There was none of the clinical finesse Patrick had come to expect. Instead, the head lolled from side to side with every stroke, as if begging him not to continue the outrage; frayed flesh spattered from the metal teeth and settled on the waxy cloth of the body bag; the thick neck muscles and the gristle of the larynx made him sick with the brutality of it all.

And all the time, the single remaining eye looked nowhere, and Patrick did not look at it.

Patrick wiped the sweat from his forehead and tried not to think about anything but the job he needed to do.

Not Samuel Galen smiling in the winter sunshine; not Lexi.

Definitely not his father.

He kept close to the shoulders, to preserve as much of the throat as possible. Luckily the spine was gone, and within five minutes the head was held on by no more than a few minor strands at the back of the neck.

Four small, familiar beeps made Patrick spin to look at the dissection-room door.

Someone was entering the code that would allow them on to the anatomy wing.

Spicer.

His time was up.

Patrick dropped the saw, seized the head and pulled. The gurney slid towards him and he put a foot on it and pulled again, as hard as he could – his fingernails digging into the raw flesh under the stripped chin. He tugged and yanked. Then he staggered a little as the frayed tendons snapped with a twang.

And the head was his.

Footsteps approached down the echoing corridor. Patrick tugged the body bag back over what was left of the cadaver. No time to zip it up. No time to run. The lights were on and he was exposed, his only way out blocked.

He pulled open the white sliding door of the nearest refrigerator – the one filled with large yellow plastic receptacles that Scott called the ‘skin bins’.

Patrick slid the refrigerator door almost closed behind him, clambered awkwardly into the nearest bin and let the lid drop over his head.

The stench was unbelievable – even for someone who had spent almost six months in the close company of death. The bins had been emptied of the bulk of their contents, but had not yet been washed out, and the sides were slick and gobby with fatty deposits, while the bottom held a half-inch of stinking bodily juices that seeped through Patrick’s trainers and thick socks, and rose coldly between his toes. He retched and then swallowed the vomit, desperate not to add to the contents of the bin.

He lifted the lid a little so he could breathe. The head in his lap squinted upwards, its mouth open as if even it were trying to suck cleaner air into its absent lungs.

Patrick could hear Spicer moving about, going down the line of bodies, he presumed.

He heard the moment when Spicer found the headless corpse of Number 19. It was marked by a word he’d never heard before, but which he assumed was an expletive just by the venom with which it was said.

The narrow strip of light that marked the edge of the fridge door darkened suddenly, and Patrick let the lid settle quietly again.

The heavy door slid open.

‘Patrick?’

The light went on, making the yellow plastic seem a poor defence. Patrick felt like an embryo in a jar.

He held his breath and looked fearfully up at the lid. He waited for Spicer to lift it, and thought of how he would find both of them – him and Number 19 – staring back at him, mouths agape.

But Spicer didn’t lift the lid. He didn’t lift any lids.

The light went out and the door closed, and Patrick heard the door of the second fridge open instead.

‘Patrick?’

‘Sssh,’ Patrick whispered at the head. Or himself. One of them, anyway.

The head was quiet and Patrick was grateful, and felt an unexpected surge of protectiveness. The head was his responsibility now. No longer attached to its body, or cocooned in its waxy white bag, Number 19 was relying on him.

RELYING on me.

Relying ON me.

Relying on ME.

Instead of feeling that pressure, Patrick felt proud and fierce, and curled his arms more tightly around the head.

The sound of the second fridge door closing.

The sound of brisk footsteps receding across the lino.

The sound of the dissecting-room doors swinging together with a creak and a bump.

Patrick strained to hear the beeps of the keypad, but couldn’t. Instead he waited until he realized he’d just woken up, freezing cold, still jammed tightly into the fetid yellow bin.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘let’s go,’ and he struggled out of the bin and made his quiet way to the anatomy-wing door, where Meg’s code turned out to be 5544. Typically balanced and memorable.

The outer door was also an emergency exit, which he opened easily from inside by pushing a metal bar. An unexpected break.

Patrick tucked the head under his arm and walked home as fast as his knee would allow. All the way there his chest fizzed with adrenaline.

The dead can’t speak to us, Professor Madoc had said.

But that was a lie.

Samuel Galen was dead – but he was still telling Patrick all the truth he needed to know.

48

PATRICK HEARD THE scream of a rabbit being taken in the night. Without truly waking, he listened for another but nothing came, and so he drifted back into sleep.

‘Wake up,’ said his father. It was dawn and they were going to go hiking on the Beacons. Maybe up Penyfan if it wasn’t too busy. At the weekends it was one long string of over-equipped hikers, but midweek it was almost deserted – especially if the weather was lousy. Patrick hoped it was hot and too busy because, for some reason, every part of him ached.

‘Wake up.’

‘My head hurts, Daddy.’

‘I said wake up!’

Patrick opened his eyes slowly and looked into the hole in the middle of a gun. Not the middle; the end of a gun. Where the bullets come from. The deep black holey thing. The—

‘Barrel,’ he said, relieved that he’d remembered.

‘Shut up,’ said the policeman at the other end of the gun. ‘Shut up and turn over. Hands behind your back.’

He was short and shaven and not alone; there was another, older man in the doorway, and Patrick’s landlord – the waspish middle-aged Mr Boardman – hovered in the background.

From somewhere downstairs he could hear Lexi crying.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Patrick.

The shorter policeman made a snorting noise and said, ‘You tell us, sunshine. There’s a head in the fridge.’

‘Yes,’ said Patrick. ‘It’s mine.’ Then he laughed because it wasn’t his head, of course – it was Number 19’s.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Shorter. ‘He’s completely crazy.’

‘And look what he’s done to my carpet!’ wailed Mr Boardman.

‘It was dirty,’ shrugged Patrick.

‘It was brown!’ yelled Mr Boardman.

‘I told you to get this man out of here!’ said the older policeman sharply.

There was a noisy pause while several sets of feet pounded up the stairs and Mr Boardman was led down them, muttering.

Older cleared his throat. ‘Patrick Fort,’ he said, ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of murder.’

Patrick frowned. ‘That doesn’t make sense.’

The policeman held up a hand, closed his eyes and spoke over him. ‘You do not have to say anything—’

Patrick interrupted him, finishing more quickly. ‘But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something that you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

‘Done this before?’ said Older.

‘No,’ said Patrick, ‘I watch TV. Aren’t you supposed to ask me if I understand it?’

‘Do you understand it?’

‘Of course. I’m not an idiot.’

‘Smart-arse,’ said Shorter. ‘Turn over and put your hands behind your back.’

‘Why?’ said Patrick.

‘Because you’re under arrest.’

‘But I didn’t do anything. The head in the fridge is just proof.’

‘Of what?’ said Older.

Patrick frowned. ‘I don’t know. There’s a lot of bits to it. Number 19 had a peanut in his throat, although he was allergic to them. Dr Spicer has bite marks on his finger. But he lied about them and then tried to kill me. So I took the head because of the gouges and because of the teeth. Maybe Number 19 bit Dr Spicer, but I’m not sure.

‘It’s your job to find out the rest,’ he added. ‘I’ve done my bit.’

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ said Shorter.

‘Patrick!’ yelled Jackson up the stairs. ‘Don’t say anything without a lawyer!’

‘I don’t need a lawyer,’ Patrick told Older. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘That’s good,’ said Older, jotting down notes in a small black book. ‘Then you won’t mind answering a few more questions down at the station.’

‘No,’ said Patrick. ‘I don’t mind.’

Older nodded at Shorter.

‘Then turn over and put your hands behind your back!’ said Shorter.

‘I have to get the head,’ said Patrick and stood up. Shorter gripped his shoulder – and everything went from calm to mayhem in the blink of an eye. Patrick punched and flailed against the hated hands on his bare skin, and soon had his face in the pillow, a knee in his back, what felt like hot wire around his wrists – and a left ear that buzzed so hard that the only underwater sound he could hear was Kim shrieking, ‘Don’t hurt him! Don’t hurt him!’ over and over again.

While Patrick Fort was half dragged, half carried out to the car, Detective Sergeant Emrys Williams stared once more into the fridge and thought, This is how everything changes.

There was salad and chocolate on the top shelf, old rice and curling bacon on the bottom, and – squeezed on its side on the middle shelf – a severed human head, lips drawn back, veins poking from the frayed flesh and pressed against the frosted glass. One eye socket was empty, the other was hidden by a jar of Tesco Value peanut butter.

Williams stood, bent at the waist, lit by the fridge as if bowing down before a golden calf, and knew that here, finally, was the Big One – the case that would put him on the map.

Emrys Williams had become a policeman straight out of school because the careers master had told him he’d be able to retire at forty on two-thirds of final salary. The careers master had seduced a lot of them that way – early retirement on good pensions or – for teachers – long summer holidays. He’d been more of an anti-careers master, really, selling them the spaces between work.

But neither the careers master nor the young Emrys had foreseen that life’s rich tapestry would weave him two ex-wives, four gadget-hungry sons, and a girlfriend who only seemed happy to drain him at night if she were permitted to drain his wallet for the other twenty-three and a half hours a day.

So, at the age of forty-eight, Williams was still a policeman. And a policeman who was still only a detective sergeant, years after his contemporaries had climbed the promotion ladder. Somewhere along the line, petty crime and paperwork had squeezed all the ambition out of him.

Of course, he’d helped to put away his fair share of burglars and muggers and rapists and wife-beaters. They’d had murders knocked down to manslaughter on a plea, and murders that had stuck. But never – not once – had DS Williams been involved in a Big One. He had never been part of the kind of high-profile case that captures the public imagination and the newspaper headlines. He’d never been on the telly – not even the local news; never worked a case that anyone else would have heard of or cared about – bar Gary in the canteen, who was some kind of OCD memory freak.

Sometimes Emrys Williams felt as though he had spent the entire thirty years of his working life in an interview room with hard chairs and bitter coffee, and achieved little more than bad breath and piles.

But this was different.

Whatever the outcome, Emrys Williams knew that this case would always be about this moment. This was what the boys in the station would remember about him; this was what they’d joke about every time someone opened the staff-room fridge to get a Coke or a cheese triangle. And even though he would hand the case over to a superior as soon as the day shift arrived, it would be his testimony of discovery that the reporters would be crowding the benches to hear when the case went to trial at the city’s Crown Court. The head-in-the-fridge case, they’d call it. Or something clever and journalisty that he couldn’t think of right now.

Something he would be remembered by, even in jest.

Emrys Williams straightened up into a new phase of his policing career, and found he did have a tiny sliver of ambition left.

He puffed out his chest.

‘This is a crime scene,’ he said. ‘Everybody out.’

The car swung away from the house, and from Jackson and Kim with Lexi between them, and from the curious, slippered neighbours.

Patrick had calmed down as soon as Shorter pushed him arse-first into the back seat and shut the door. Now he rested his head against the glass and watched the bright, Saturday-morning city pass through his vision, while a great peace settled over him like warm silk.

He had solved the mystery of Number 19.

Soon the police would realize their mistake and let him go, and arrest Dr Spicer instead. Soon Lexi would know what had happened to her father, and for some strange reason, that felt good – even though it didn’t benefit him. Without knowing how or why, Patrick felt there was something about having given something back. It was curious and he didn’t understand it, but that didn’t make it untrue, even if it had not helped him in his own quest.

In that he had failed, and yet he no longer felt like a failure. He had come to the city for answers and he had found them here. They were just different answers – and to different questions.

There were mysteries that could be solved, and others that could not. Maybe what had happened to his father was one of those that could not. The idea had never occurred to Patrick before and it did now with a sudden surge of hot emotion. He had done his best. Maybe that would have to be enough. He didn’t think he had any more left inside him.

The idea of his quest slipping away brought heat to his eyes. He wiped them, then stared curiously at the shimmering trail on the back of his hand.

It made him feel strangely normal.

49

DS WILLIAMS HAD only been in charge because he was on night shift. The big guns came in by day.

Williams briefed DCI White as soon as he arrived, then went down the corridor and opened the flap in the cell door to check on the suspect, who was pale and wiry, and still wearing only his boxer shorts.

He didn’t look much like a killer, but then, killers rarely did.

‘All right?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said the boy. ‘My head hurts.’

‘Drink much last night?’

‘I don’t drink,’ said the boy, with an edge that surprised him. ‘I went to Dr Spicer’s party but I only did the washing up. Then I saw the bite marks on his finger and left. That’s when he ran over my bike and tried to run me over. I had to jump out of the car park and into a tree.’

Williams wondered what he could say in the face of such craziness. ‘First time in a police station?’ he asked cautiously.

‘No,’ said the boy. ‘I went to a police station after my father died.’

Emrys Williams bit his lip. He always tried to keep an open mind about suspects – even when they were found covered in blood and with a severed head in their fridge – but Patrick Fort wasn’t doing himself any favours. The skinny goth at the crime scene had said something about him having some mental health issues. They had to do this properly; they didn’t want a killer wriggling off the hook on a technicality.

So he just said, ‘The doctor will be here soon. And the duty solicitor.’

‘I don’t need a solicitor. I haven’t done anything wrong. I just want to tell you what happened. but nobody wants to listen.’

‘All in good time,’ said Williams. ‘We’re trying to get hold of your mother now.’

‘My mother? Why?’

‘She needs to be with you.’

‘She won’t come,’ said the boy.

‘Why not?’

‘She doesn’t like me that much.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ said Williams, even though he thought it might be.

The suspect shrugged and then shivered. Williams could see the gooseflesh on his chest from here. It reminded him of drying the boys after swimming when they were younger. Rubbing warmth back into them while their teeth chattered.

He fetched an old blue sweatshirt from Lost Property.

‘Here, put this on.’

Patrick Fort took it from him warily and held it up, wrinkling his nose. The slogan on the front said LITERACY AINT EVERYTHING.

‘It has sick on the sleeve,’ he said, pushing it to the other end of the slatted bench. ‘And no apostrophe.’ Then he looked around the cell and said, ‘Do you have a dustpan and brush?’

Williams sighed and withdrew, shaking his head.

Sergeant Wendy Price passed on her way from the machine with a cup of grey coffee. ‘What’s up?’

Williams jerked a thumb at the cell door. ‘Kid’s got a severed head in his fridge but he wants a bloody feather duster to do a bit of housework.’

She grinned and leaned up to peer through the flap. ‘Oh, him,’ she said.

‘You know him?’

‘He came in a few days ago with blood on his hands and said he wanted to report a murder. When he saw I’d clocked the blood, he legged it. I chased him halfway to Splott!’

‘You gave up before the war memorial,’ Patrick corrected her.

Sergeant Price blushed and snapped the flap shut.

She lowered her voice and added, ‘I think he knew Darren Owens.’

Williams looked at her sharply. Darren Owens who had been found in the park, up to his elbows in a disembowelled jogger? ‘What makes you think that?’ he asked.

Sergeant Price shrugged. ‘They said something to each other in Reception. I don’t know what, but I’d definitely say they’d met before.’ She lifted her cardboard cup in a toast of ‘You’re welcome,’ and disappeared through a doorway.

Emrys Williams watched her go, and – with a growing sense of foreboding – wondered just how much he’d really discovered when he opened that fridge door this morning.

If the boy knew Darren Owens, then a severed head might be just the start of it.

He looked through the flap again with new eyes.

This is how things change.

When Sarah Fort finally got the call, it wasn’t the one she’d been expecting.

A Sergeant Price told her that Patrick had been arrested.

‘For what?’ Sarah asked. ‘Not wearing his helmet?’

‘Resisting arrest, theft and murder,’ said the officer, apparently reading off a list.

‘Murder?’ said Sarah.

‘Yes,’ she answered, as if this was old news.

‘Murder of whom?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that at this stage.’

‘Oh,’ said Sarah, because she didn’t know what else to say. She thought of the picture of the dead girl, and of the countless birds and animals Patrick had dissected over the years, and wondered whether he really did have it in him to kill a person.

Probably.

Didn’t everyone have it in them, if circumstances were bad enough?

‘Has he admitted it?’ she asked.

‘We haven’t questioned him yet. Is it true that he’s handicapped?’

Sarah had long since stopped getting angry about handicapped. Everything was a matter of degree. Patrick was handicapped, in the most literal way, by his condition – just as she was handicapped by him.

She said, ‘He has Asperger’s Syndrome.’

‘Is that like Alzheimer’s?’

‘No, it’s like autism. He finds it difficult to interact with people.’

‘Oh.’ Sergeant Price sounded disappointed. ‘We thought he was just rude.’

‘Yes,’ said Sarah, ‘he is rude. But he can’t help it.’

‘Hm,’ said Sergeant Price. ‘That’s what my sister says about her kids. But they can’t all be bloody autistic, can they?’

‘Probably not,’ agreed Sarah.

The officer sighed heavily. ‘Well then, in that case, he needs to be interviewed in the company of an appropriate adult. Can you come down to Cardiff?’

Sarah thought about that for so long that the officer said, ‘Hello?’

‘Hello,’ said Sarah back. ‘Yes, of course.’

She hung up and stared across the kitchen for an hour or two.

Then she fed Ollie and went to work, feeling better than she had in a long, long time.

Emrys Williams told DCI White to expect Mrs Fort any time now. Then he hung about, reluctant to go home, hoping White would remember him when it came to putting a team together – and when he spoke to the press. He also wanted to tell the head-in-the-fridge story to the day crew in person.

That was worth it. Colleagues laughed and shook their heads and said ‘lucky bastard’; WPC Dyer made a little paper nameplate for his desk that read HEAD BOY, and, before the hour was up, some joker had put a doll’s head in the vending machine where the Curly-Wurlys ought to be. It all gave him a warm glow.

And then – just after nine a.m. – a well-spoken young man came in, identified himself as Dr David Spicer and said he had come to report the theft of a head from the university medical school.

And just like that, the Big One was over. Emrys Williams could almost hear his career farting around the room like a balloon, and dropping into a corner, all sad and shrivelled and a bit of an embarrassment.

Patrick Fort was not a murderer; not a crazed killer; nothing to do with Darren Owens and his empty jogger. The Big One was just a student prank that had gone beyond the bounds of the acceptable because the student in question had a tentative grasp on what was normal human behaviour and what was not.

Williams felt the disappointment like a physical thing – a sharp pang in his belly and a burning neck of shame.

This was what they’d all remember now, every time they opened the staff-room fridge.

Still, he was not the type of man to leave someone else to clean up his mess, so he told Wendy Price he’d sort this one out on his own time, and then ushered Dr Spicer over to his desk and took his statement.

The more Spicer talked, the more it all made sense to Detective Sergeant Emrys Williams. Patrick Fort had been expelled and had apparently taken the head out of some kind of revenge.

‘He can’t help it,’ said Dr Spicer.

‘So we’ve been told,’ sighed Williams.

‘He’s not a bad kid. As long as we get the head back, I doubt the university will want to press charges.’

‘That’s very generous.’

‘What will happen to him?’ said the young doctor.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Williams, because that was true. ‘Would you mind reading that, Dr Spicer, and then signing your name at the bottom?’

Williams watched Spicer read the statement carefully and then sign his name.

‘Thank you.’

‘Not at all,’ said Spicer, standing up. ‘Where’s the head?’

‘It’s with our forensics team.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘I would very much like to get it back to the university as soon as possible.’

‘Of course,’ said Williams. ‘But until we decide whether to charge Patrick Fort with a crime, the head is evidence.’

Spicer nodded slowly and chewed the inside of his cheek. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘The trouble is that the body is supposed to be released to the family on Monday for cremation. Obviously that can’t happen if it’s incomplete.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Williams. ‘I can assure you we’ll get it back to you as soon as we can.’

‘By Monday?’

‘As soon as we can.’

Still Spicer didn’t let it go. He stood there, drumming his fingers on the corner of Williams’s desk. ‘What if I personally guarantee that we will not press charges against Patrick?’ he said.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Williams. ‘We have made an arrest and I cannot pre-judge the outcome of our own independent inquiries.’

‘What inquiries?’ said Spicer. ‘Surely it’s quite clear what has happened? It seems like a waste of police time to do more.’

‘It seems that way, sir, I agree. But we have our procedures. Believe me, when we are able to release the head, the university will be the first to know. Now, I’m on my way home, let me walk out with you.’

Williams pulled on his jacket and let them both out through the double doors. Spicer thanked him and left, but DS Williams stood and stared through the glass after him for so long that Wendy Price said, ‘You all right, Em?’

‘Yes,’ said Williams. ‘Just thinking.’

He was just thinking about Dr Spicer’s reluctance to leave the head in police custody.

And about the jagged scars around the tip of his index finger.

They did look like bite marks.

50

IT HAD BEEN a long night, but Emrys Williams still didn’t go home. Instead he copied Dr Spicer’s address off the statement, then drove his ten-year-old Toyota down to the Bay, against a tide of red-shirted rugby fans walking into town for the international.

It was only ten a.m. This wouldn’t take long and it was on his way.

Sort of.

He swung the car around outside Dr Spicer’s flat, and started to drive slowly back along Dumballs Road. It was Saturday, and most of the industrial units on the broad, grubby street were closed by steel shutters.

Williams stopped twice, once to look at broken glass that turned out to be a Heineken bottle, and again towards the station end of the road for a pigeon that refused to take off as he approached. It strolled defiantly across the road while he sat like a lemon, instead of like a vastly superior being on vital police business. Rats with wings, his father called pigeons, but Emrys Williams had always rather liked them – especially these city pigeons with the iridescent throats and all the attitude. So he watched in vague amusement as it strutted between two parked cars and hopped on to the pavement. If he hadn’t, he would never have seen the short skid mark that had left rubber on the kerb.

He double-parked and got out. Only one tyre mark was visible from the road; the other was under one of the newly parked cars. He got down on his knees to look. There were fragments of red plastic in the gutter under the car. He picked up the largest of them, which was about the size of his thumb. It looked like part of a lens cover. A brake light, maybe?

He checked the lights of the parked car, then stood up and stared around. He was standing near the corner of a brick-built unit. SPEEDY REPAIRS AND MOT. Williams walked to the end of the building, which was the last in the row before the multi-storey car park. Between the two was an alleyway, a patch of littered grass, a steel fence.

And, behind the fence, a bicycle.

It was years since Emrys Williams had climbed anything, and he’d got heavy or his arms had got weak – one or the other. Maybe both. He got halfway up and then just hung there, and three men in Wales shirts stopped and shoved him the rest of the way with encouraging grunts and a general-purpose ‘Ooooooooh’ as he hit the ground on the other side.

He brushed himself down from the ungainly drop and thanked them, and they waved and went on walking.

Williams gazed down at the bike. It was an old Peugeot ten-speed racer, but it had been in good condition until whatever had happened had happened to it. Now it was just a Chinese puzzle of blue and chrome, the chain drooping and the wheels twisted rubber loops.

The lens of the rear light had been smashed. Williams put the thumb of red beside it.

It matched.

He hauled himself back over the fence with new gusto and twisted his ankle as he dropped on to the pavement. He cursed out loud and vowed to start jogging again. He walked feelingly back to the car and drove the short distance to the car park.

He found one of the few spare bays on the second level and got out. From here he could see the back of the station, through the bare branches of a tree.

I had to jump out of the car park and into a tree.

With curiosity bubbling in his belly, Emrys Williams walked as briskly as his ankle allowed to the concrete wall that hemmed the second level. It was chest high. You’d have to be mad to jump it. Mad or desperate.

Cars were parked all along the wall and he squeezed behind them.

Directly opposite the tree, the concrete wall was cracked and missing several large chunks, which lay on the ground, along with more broken glass – clear and orange this time. Headlight and indicators.

Williams leaned against the wall and looked over the parapet. It was a good twenty-five feet to the grass below. The dark branches of the tree were flecked with raw cream, where boughs and twigs had snapped and splintered as something large had fallen through them.

Something as large as Patrick Fort.

It was eleven forty-four.

Emrys Williams thought the dissecting-room technician looked like a cadaver himself. He was gaunt and pale and had a funereal air about him. He also smelled of rotting flowers.

Williams did his best to hold his breath while he spoke, which was less than successful.

‘I understand you are missing one of your heads,’ he opened.

Mick Jarvis looked at him in almost comic astonishment.

‘What?’ he said. ‘First I’ve heard of it.’

‘Really?’ said Williams. ‘That does surprise me. Would you mind checking?’

The technician immediately strode to the back wall of the hangar-like room and started unzipping what Williams now realized were body bags. He kept his distance.

‘Head,’ said Jarvis impatiently as he went down the row. ‘Head. Head. Head. Shit.’

‘No head?’ enquired Williams, and Jarvis nodded.

Jarvis called the chair of the medical school to report the theft, and then made them both a cup of strong tea.

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Jarvis. ‘That kid was always weird. He broke in twice before, you know?’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. Found him in here once, going through confidential files. Then one night he threw a shoe at me in the dissecting room. Biscuit?’

Williams took a HobNob. ‘How does one break into a place like this?’

‘Well, the first time he used his own entry code, but at a time when he was not allowed to be here. But that code was suspended once he was expelled.’

‘So how did he get in last night?’

‘Let’s see,’ said Jarvis, and fired up the computer. He stared at the screen, while making annoying little half-sounds that he seemed to imagine were keeping Williams informed.

‘That’s there. Here we… There. Now we’ll see… OK, I get it… Cheeky little bastard!’

‘What?’

‘He must have used another student’s code. Belongs to a girl called Megan Jones. Here, you see? At a quarter past midnight.’

Williams nodded slowly. He had a thousand questions, but as he dunked, he asked the one he felt was most pertinent. ‘This sounds like a silly question, Mr Jarvis, but I’ll ask it anyway. Is it at all possible that Number 19 was a murder victim?’

Jarvis laughed. It was a strange sound in a strange place and from a strange-looking man. ‘Absolutely not. Our donors have generally died from age-related heart conditions or cancers, or complications like pneumonia. Every death is properly certified by an attending doctor. Even then, we can only accept donations if the body has not been too badly damaged by an illness or injury. We need them to be in reasonable shape so that students know what a standard body looks like. There’s no point training students on bodies with broken limbs or with severe internal degradations.

‘For the same reason we can’t accept autopsied bodies, so the donors will have been expected to die from their disease or injuries. Autopsies are always performed on murder victims.’

‘If you know they’ve been murdered,’ mused Williams.

‘True,’ nodded Jarvis and took another biscuit, so Williams did the same. He’d missed breakfast because of all this.

‘Would it be possible to see the paperwork relating to Number 19?’

‘Of course.’ Using a key that was poorly hidden under a saucer, Jarvis opened one of the two filing cabinets and withdrew a slim folder.

Emrys Williams studied the records. The first form was a donor application in the name of Samuel Galen.

‘This is dated almost ten years ago!’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Jarvis. ‘People can make a donor application at any time. If they change their minds, they only have to let us know and we destroy the documentation.’

Williams ran his eye down the form. He noticed that Samuel Galen and he shared a birthday. Same day, same year. Emrys and Sam. He wondered whether Sam had celebrated his birthdays the same way he did – with a few pints down the Three Tuns and a phone call from his aged mother, who never forgot.

It gave him an uncomfortable sense of his own existence being on temporary loan, and he had to brush the idea aside to concentrate on the matter at hand.

The donation form was short and contained questions that left no room for sentiment.

All the donor had to do was tick boxes. Mr Galen had ticked burial, then apparently changed his mind and gone for cremation.

In a different pen.

Williams pointed it out to Jarvis, who frowned.

‘I don’t know how I missed that. Any changes should be signed at the point of the change, or a new form must be filled in. They can’t just cross things out!’

Williams flicked to the back of the thin sheaf. Attached to the rear of the form was a largely blank page headed PERSONAL DECLARATION (OPTIONAL).

Samuel Galen had exercised the option.

Emrys Williams was caught off-guard. The declaration was an oddly moving thing to hold in his hands when just this morning he had found the man’s head in a fridge, crammed between the best and the worst of student cuisine.

‘Most applicants attach a personal statement,’ said Jarvis. ‘Why they choose to donate is important to them.’

Williams went through the rest of the file more quickly. There were next-of-kin consent forms, signed by a Mrs Jackie Galen one day after the date of death, transfer documentation from the local hospital to the university, undertakers’ permissions, and a copy of the death certificate, which gave the cause of death as ‘heart failure due to complications of coma’.

‘Another HobNob?’ said Jarvis, shaking the packet at him.

Williams didn’t hear him.

The death certificate had been signed by a Dr D. Spicer.

51

JUST BEFORE THREE p.m., Emrys Williams opened the double doors and said, ‘Thank you for coming back down so quickly, Dr Spicer.’

‘No problem.’

Williams stood aside for Dr Spicer to pass him, then lingered for a moment to listen to the national anthem swell out of the stadium and float across the city – a sound that never failed to take hold of his heart and give it a patriotic squeeze. The city would be loud tonight and filled with Welshmen dressed as daffodils with their arms around the shoulders of Frenchmen in berets, all celebrating the result in the common language of not being English.

Williams sighed and closed the door.

They talked while they walked. ‘There are just a few things we hope you can help us with. About Patrick Fort, mostly.’

‘Of course,’ said Spicer. ‘Is he OK?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Good,’ said Spicer. ‘Because he’s quite vulnerable, I think.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. You know he was at the university on a disability quota?’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Yes. He’s autistic.’

‘I thought he had Asperger’s?’

‘Well, it’s all on the spectrum. He can be quite detached from reality at times. Paranoid. Confused. That kind of thing.’

‘Sounds like my ex-wife.’

Spicer laughed.

Williams opened the door to Interview Room Three and ushered him inside.

‘Dr Spicer, this is DCI White, who is in charge of the case,’ he said. ‘And you already know Mr Galen.’

The head was on the table in a clear plastic evidence bag.

There was a long silence.

Spicer finally looked at White and said, ‘Hi.’

‘Thanks for coming, Dr Spicer.’

‘No problem.’

‘We’ll try not to keep you long,’ said White. ‘DS Williams is a long way past the end of his shift, and I’m supposed to be at the match.’ He smiled ruefully. Spicer only nodded.

They all sat down, the head between them. Williams and White never glanced at it; Spicer could look at little else. The head was a magnet for his eyes, dragging his gaze back to it whenever it strayed. A fold in the plastic touched the remaining eyeball, making it stand out as if peering directly at Spicer through a peephole to another dimension.

DCI White opened a folder. ‘Patrick Fort has told us some story, Dr Spicer.’

‘I’m not surprised. World of his own. He needs help really.’

‘I agree. But maybe together we can separate fact from fiction.’

‘Yes.’

‘Good,’ said White. ‘Patrick says that you tried to kill him last night.’

‘Does he? That’s ridiculous.’

DCI White flicked through the folder in a show of not knowing what it contained. ‘He says you knocked him off his bicycle on Dumballs Road and then tried to run him down in a car park.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘But he was injured.’

‘How would I know?’ said Spicer. ‘Look, Patrick came to a party at my flat last night. He got very drunk. He left early. If he fell off his bike or got knocked off it, I wouldn’t be surprised.’

DCI White nodded and flicked through the paperwork again. ‘This morning he had a blood alcohol level of zero.’

‘I’m surprised,’ said Spicer, and folded his arms across his chest.

‘Did you leave the party at all?’

‘Yes,’ said Spicer. ‘I went out to get more beer.’

‘Bad planning?’ said White.

‘Students. Free booze. You know?’

‘But not Patrick Fort.’

‘Not if you say so.’ Spicer shrugged. ‘He appeared a little irrational. I assumed he was drunk.’

‘What time did you go out?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Guess.’

‘About eleven.’

‘And what time did you get back?’

‘About half past, I should think.’

‘Get a receipt for the beer?’

‘I’d have to check.’

‘Which shop did you go to?’

‘Asda. In the Bay. What has this got to do with Patrick Fort?’

‘I’m getting there. You didn’t go out again?’

‘No.’

‘You have witnesses?’

‘Yes! Everyone. My fiancée, other students. Anyone can tell you where I was.’

‘Patrick tells us you were trying to run him over at the time.’

‘Well, he’s wrong.’

‘We found his bicycle. Someone threw it over a fence. Certainly looks mangled. Forensics are taking prints from it now.’

‘Good. I hope you catch whoever did it. If someone did it.’

‘DS Williams here also found paint and headlight debris from a car that hit a nearby car park wall at speed. What kind of car do you have, Dr Spicer?’

Spicer paused. ‘A Citroën.’

‘Colour?’

‘Grey.’

‘Silver grey?’

‘Sort of.’

‘In good nick, is it?’

‘I’ve had a few bumps. Nothing major. My fiancée drives it too.’

‘That’s nice.’

Spicer shrugged and looked at his watch. ‘Is this going to take much longer?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said DCI White. ‘But you appreciate we have to check out Patrick’s story, Dr Spicer. We wouldn’t be doing our jobs otherwise.’

‘Of course,’ said Spicer.

‘Thanks for your forbearance,’ smiled DCI White.

‘No problem.’

‘Can we get you a cup of coffee or anything?’

‘No. I’m fine.’

‘Good. Patrick admits that after he escaped from you, he went—’

‘He didn’t escape from me,’ said Spicer with air-quotes. ‘I wasn’t there.’

‘After he was knocked off his bike,’ amended White, ‘he went to the dissecting room, where he removed the head of poor Mr Galen here.’

‘That’s appalling.’

‘Indeed. Although he says he removed the head to preserve the evidence that shows that Mr Galen was in fact a murder victim. And that you followed him there to try to stop him doing just that.’

White raised his eyebrows at Spicer, who gave an expansive shrug.

‘I’m sorry, Inspector, but you can’t expect me to comment on paranoid delusions.’

‘I don’t,’ said White. ‘And it’s Detective Chief Inspector.’

‘Sorry,’ said Spicer. ‘I’m just getting a little bit fed up with you seeming to believe everything this clearly delusional student has told you, however bizarre.’

‘Oh, we didn’t believe it!’ said White. ‘Not one little bit!’

Spicer looked surprised for the second time and White went on, ‘That’s why DS Williams here took it upon himself to see if his story was supported by any physical evidence.’

DCI White waited for Spicer, but when the young doctor said nothing, he continued. ‘And it was. Apart from the bicycle and the evidence in the car park, DS Williams discovered that you used your dissecting-room code twice last night – once at 11.45 and again at 11.57.’

Spicer stared at White for a long moment. ‘That’s not true. Someone else must have stolen it. Patrick no longer had a code; it was suspended when he was expelled. He had to get in somehow. Why don’t we ask him? Why don’t we get him in here and ask him a few questions? I don’t see why I should have to sit here and listen to all these accusations and insinuations without my accuser being present.’

‘Patrick Fort is no longer in our custody,’ said DCI White.

‘Well, whose custody is he in?’

‘Nobody’s.’

Spicer looked stunned.

‘What? He cut off a man’s head and you let him go?’

‘Wasn’t that what you wanted?’ said Williams.

‘No! I mean, not now I hear all this other stuff. Now it seems he’s more crazy than I thought.’

‘Well, you’re the doctor, of course,’ said White. ‘But, all things considered, we felt there was no need for anything stronger than a caution.’

‘That strikes me as very odd.’

‘Well, we’re all capable of odd things at times, Dr Spicer, wouldn’t you agree?’

Spicer frowned. ‘I’m not sure I would.’

‘Anyway,’ continued White, ‘before he left, Patrick told us that he thought it was possible that Mr Galen here died after being force-fed a peanut, to which he was dangerously allergic.’

Spicer made a sound that was a cross between a bark and a laugh. ‘That’s ridiculous! Look, Detective Chief Inspector, this is a mentally disturbed student who spent two days a week for six months doing a pretty poor job of learning anatomy. He wasn’t even doing medicine! And he was expelled for discreditable behaviour. Now you’re relying on his diagnostic expertise?’

‘Mr Galen’s allergy was clearly stated on his hospital notes. To which you had access.’

‘Along with many other people,’ said Spicer.

‘I’m told – and I’m sure you’ll correct me if I’m wrong – that anaphylactic shock can cause death by the swelling shut of the airways. And that such swelling would subside to the point of being almost undetectable after death.’

Spicer shrugged.

‘Is that possible?’ asked White.

‘Many things are possible.’

White went on, ‘Forensics haven’t yet found any evidence of a peanut, but they say that gouges in the palate and throat of Mr Galen were likely to have been made very shortly before his death. If there were a peanut in Mr Galen’s throat – and I’m sure other students will remember if that was the case – then it’s possible that somebody tried to retrieve it as he was dying. And that that alone could have led to something called…’ He looked down at his notes in a show of getting it right. ‘Vagal inhibition. Have you heard of it?’

‘Of course,’ snapped Spicer.

‘Oh,’ said White. ‘I hadn’t. Apparently pressure on certain parts of the body, or extreme shock, can cause such a sudden drop in blood pressure that the heart simply stops beating. It fails.’ He made a helpless gesture with his hands. ‘Heart failure, Dr Spicer.’

‘Yes?’ said Spicer.

‘Which is what you wrote on Mr Galen’s death certificate.’

Spicer stared at him for a long, long time.

‘I don’t remember,’ he said tightly. ‘I’ve signed a lot of death certificates.’

‘I’m sure you have,’ said White. ‘We’ll take a look at those, too.’

‘What are you saying?’ Spicer stood up, angry at last. ‘If I’m being accused of something, then say so. And if I’m not, then I’m going home.’

White and Williams remained seated and looked up at him calmly.

‘Sit down please, Mr Spicer,’ said White. ‘We’re nearly finished.’

Spicer stood for a moment longer, then sat.

White continued, ‘Have you ever been bitten by a patient?’

‘Bitten?’

‘Yes. Teeth. You know?’

‘I have been bitten by patients.’

‘But not by this patient?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘I see you have scars on your fingertip.’

Spicer looked down at his own hand. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I cut it on the tin-opener.’

‘Really?’ White raised his eyebrows. ‘Because Patrick Fort seems to think that you may have been bitten by Mr Galen while he was alive – or in the process of dying.’

‘Patrick Fort is mistaken. Yet again.’

White leaned back in his chair and glanced at Williams. ‘That’s possible, I suppose.’

‘Many things are possible,’ agreed Emrys Williams.

‘Well, there’s an easy way to find out,’ said White cheerfully and nodded at Williams, who pulled on blue latex gloves with some difficulty, and then started to remove the head from the evidence bag.

Spicer tucked his hands into his armpits. ‘What are you doing?’ he said.

‘You just pop your finger in the mouth, would you?’ said White.

‘What? Why?’

‘Because if the marks don’t match the teeth then we’ll all agree that Patrick Fort is completely deluded.’

Spicer licked his lips.

‘Don’t worry,’ said White. ‘I have hand sanitizer.’

To prove it, he put the little bottle of gel on the table between them and smiled reassuringly while they waited for Williams to complete the unveiling.

Finally the head was exposed on the table, the teeth showing between the strange, stretched lips, the single eye glaring from the sunken socket.

‘This isn’t scientific,’ said Spicer.

‘No, but it’s a start,’ said White. ‘It seems like a simple way of discrediting Patrick Fort’s story, and I don’t want to waste your time, Mr Spicer.’

‘Doctor Spicer.’

‘We’ll see,’ said White. ‘Now, would you mind?’

He gestured towards the head. Spicer didn’t move.

‘Would you mind?’ said White again.

Emrys Williams noticed that Spicer’s fingertips were pressed so hard into his own sides that they had gone white. It made the pale-pink scars on the right index finger stand out even more starkly.

The silence was so deep that the loudest sound was the electric flicker of the fluorescent lights.

‘Would you mind?’ said White again, more softly.

Still Spicer did not move.

Williams realized that the clock on the wall was starting to tick. Or maybe it had always been ticking. He’d never noticed it before.

‘You don’t understand,’ said Spicer tightly. ‘People like you – ordinary people – don’t understand.’

‘What don’t we understand?’

Spicer hugged himself and shook his head slowly.

‘What it’s like on those wards. People like you think people are in a coma or out of it. That’s what you see in films. Someone dies and everyone’s sad, or someone opens his eyes and everyone’s happy. That’s just Hollywood bullshit.’

Williams was surprised to see a sudden crescent of bright tears in Spicer’s eyes. They tipped over his lower lids and he brushed them angrily away, then stuck his hands back under his armpits once more, as if to protect them as he went on.

‘But some of them only emerge halfway. Halfway between life and death. Like zombies. Sometimes they can only blink. For the next forty, fifty, sixty years, they only blink and look at the ceiling. Sometimes they sing the same song until they die. Ask the same question. Sometimes they scream until their throats bleed. Sometimes they tear their hair out, or their eyes – or try to bite you or strangle you. Sometimes they cry and beg you to let them go. Beg you.’ He punched the table with the side of his fist, making the head wobble. Emrys Williams briefly put out a hand to steady it; and thought of doing the same thing to the boys when they were younger. A touch of acknowledgement and of reassurance.

‘Killing them is not the sin; keeping them alive is the sin.’

Spicer jutted a challenging chin at Williams and White, but when they said nothing, he wiped his eyes again and sighed deeply.

‘One of them was always ranting and raving. Crying. Violent. Always lashing out. He broke my fiancée’s finger. They had to cut her engagement ring off. I only gave it to her the night before, and she was so happy. Then she came home the next day and her finger was black and twisted and her ring was in pieces and she cried and cried.

‘I had the ring repaired but she’s only recently been able to wear it again.’

‘So you killed Mr Galen for breaking your fiancée’s finger,’ said White carefully.

‘No!’ Spicer shook his head. ‘His name was Attridge. Charles Attridge.’

Williams glanced at DCI White. Who the hell was Charles Attridge?

But Spicer went on, ‘His family were relieved when he died. They thanked me for everything I’d done. They understood. Nobody understands. Until they have to go through it themselves.’

There was a silence that somehow made the Spartan interview room seem just a little bit sacred.

‘And what about Mr Galen here?’ asked White quietly.

There was a long hesitation before Spicer said, ‘He saw me do it.’

Emrys Williams’s gut twisted.

Spicer went on in a dull monotone. ‘And then… and then he started to emerge.’ He blew his nose between his finger and thumb. He looked around, then wiped the resulting clear mucus across the front of his own sweater with a resigned shrug, and added, ‘Started to talk.’

Williams felt his throat tighten with tears, and was grateful he was not leading this interview. Samuel Galen had not been put out of his misery – Sam Galen had been murdered in cold blood just as recovery was within his grasp. Emrys Williams was not a wildly imaginative man, but even he felt sick at the idea of the fear, the sheer terror Galen must have felt, when he realized that he was about to be murdered – and couldn’t lift a finger to stop it.

‘So you killed him?’ said White quietly.

‘Yes,’ said Spicer.

‘With a peanut?’

Spicer nodded.

‘Answer verbally, please. For the tape.’

‘Yes,’ said Spicer. ‘With a peanut.’

‘And what about the dissection?’ asked White. ‘How did that come about?’

Spicer sighed. ‘That was just bad luck. I didn’t even know until we uncovered the head. It was a shock. A terrible shock. I could barely even touch him after that.’

He folded his arms on the table and rested his forehead on them like a man exhausted. He spoke but his words were muffled, and White and Williams both leaned in a little to hear him.

‘I did feel bad. I told him I was very sorry.’

Then he raised pleading eyes to the two detectives. ‘But what was I supposed to do?’

Spicer dropped his head on to his hands again, and wept.

52

EMRYS WILLIAMS STOOD under a streetlight on the glistening pink avenue outside the police station, and checked his watch. He only had an hour before his next shift started.

He didn’t mind. He was on an adrenaline high, and felt happier than he had in many years.

What a night and day and night again! Every part of it seemed bright and vibrant in his memory, filled with shining images of discovery and justice. Williams wished he smoked. Now would be the perfect time to light up and savour.

Across the Boulevard de Nantes, he could hear the sounds of liquid celebration, and he smiled, even though he didn’t know who’d won.

A white cockerel with a small French flag knotted around its neck strutted towards him from the direction of the stadium. He leaned down in a wide-armed but half-hearted effort to catch it. It eluded him with ease and a squawk, then resumed its jaunty journey to who knew where.

His phone shook in his pocket and he checked the messages. Shelli (with an i) had left several about a cruise to Mexico she’d seen online.

He didn’t call her back. He didn’t want to share this with her. She wouldn’t understand.

Because she didn’t care.

The realization didn’t hurt him, so he obviously didn’t care either. He would go home soon and tell her it was over. No hard feelings.

He was moving on.

Just the thought gave him a thrill inside.

DCI White had shaken his hand for far longer than was merely formal, and if he’d been clapped once on the shoulder by passing colleagues, it had happened twenty times. Even the forensics lads had been uncommonly chatty when they’d come to reclaim the head of Samuel Galen.

Only Patrick Fort had been unimpressed by Emrys Williams’s extraordinary accomplishment. When Williams had opened the cell door and told the boy that his story had been checked out and that he was free to go, Patrick Fort had simply shrugged and said, ‘I told you so.’

Williams had laughed then, and now laughed again softly at the memory, as the golden moon rose slowly over the city.

Soon he would start his shift, and work and life would go on, but nothing would be the same. For the first time in years, he had a sense that life was still his to be lived.

He was too young to be a fat old man.

This is how things change, he thought.

THIS is how things change.

53

THE FUNERAL WAS only delayed by two weeks, because David Spicer had pleaded guilty at his very first court hearing, and the head of Samuel Galen was released to the family.

By then, Patrick had run out of rent money, but not out of goodwill, and Kim, Jackson and Lexi let him stay on the couch for free so that he would be able to attend the service.

It took place on the first weekend in April, when the verges were still sunny with daffodils and the sky was seaside blue.

It was also Grand National day, but – by his standards – Patrick barely made a fuss about missing the world’s most famous steeplechase for the first time he could recall. And the last, he vowed silently, as he watched post-time roll around, right in the middle of ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd’.

Despite the fact that Sam Galen had died almost nine months before, the church was full, and heady with the scent of spring flowers, with no accompanying smell of shit.

As he didn’t sing and didn’t pray, Patrick remembered fleeting snatches of his own father’s funeral. The day had been bitterly cold, and the church had seemed even colder, and throughout he could smell the black polish his mother had made him apply and reapply to his school shoes in an attempt to cover the scuffs.

His father had been in a box just a few feet away, and while the vicar talked about tragedy and God, Patrick had been overwhelmed by a desire to open the box and see if he was really in there. He had fidgeted and fretted until finally his mother had held his hand so tight that he’d cried.

This was very different. He had seen Number 19 with his own eyes – opened his heart, cradled his brain, sawn off his head. He knew now exactly why Number 19 was dead, and there was no doubt that he was inside the coffin that floated on a sea of flowers – some of which spelled the words THANK YOU in white and blue. Meg had organized that, and it had cost a fortune, but they had all chipped in.

Lexi sat in the front pew with Jackie and when she cried Jackie put an arm around her shoulders – and Lexi let her.

Mick was there from the dissecting room, and Professor Madoc too. As they left the church, Patrick saw DS Williams standing at the back.

‘Did you want to talk to me about Dr Spicer?’ he asked, but DS Williams said no, it wasn’t the time or the place. Patrick didn’t understand that; they were both in the same place at the same time, weren’t they? Surely that was ideal?

Then DS Williams said goodbye and tried to shake his hand, but Patrick saw it coming.

Later, at the graveside, Jackson and Kim stood on either side of Lexi and held her hands. Not to make her squirm, but just because.

Afterwards they all went to a pub and Lexi cried some more and drank too much, but Patrick didn’t say a thing. Meg sat close to him, but not too close, and there were sandwiches and cakes and large bowls of potato salad with chives in it, and Patrick wondered if this was the exception, or whether this was the way a funeral was supposed to be.

Much later, back at the house, Jackson – who had become a lot more free and easy with the remote control – let Patrick watch the repeat of the Grand National on BBC2.

Nobody died, and Patrick felt oddly pleased.

54

THE TUESDAY AFTER the funeral, Meg went back to the coma ward to finish reading The Da Vinci Code to Mrs Deal.

The day was unseasonably cold and wet, and it took some willpower to go, but kindness and responsibility were her crosses to bear.

Jean waved brightly at her from down the corridor, and Meg draped her jacket over Mrs Deal’s motionless legs and pulled up what she’d learned was the least obnoxious of the vinyl easy chairs.

The book sucked her into its vortex and two hours passed, when she’d only planned one. It seemed to have the same effect on Mrs Deal, who lay motionless the entire time, which Meg interpreted as rapt attention.

‘The End,’ said Meg at last. She closed the book and put it in her lap, and blew out her cheeks as if she’d just run a mile. ‘How bloody brilliant was that?’

Mrs Deal was speechless in her appreciation for Dan Brown.

And then she started tapping.

Jeeeesus Christmas, thought Meg. She needed to go home, have a hot bath and then eat a lot of chocolate ice cream in front of the telly.

‘Hi,’ said Patrick.

‘Shit, you made me jump.’

He didn’t say sorry or anything else, so Meg went on, ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I came to say goodbye,’ he said. ‘I’m going home.’

‘Home home?’

He frowned in confusion and repeated, ‘Home.’

‘I mean, to Brecon?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh.’ Meg wasn’t sure how she felt. She would miss him, but she wasn’t quite sure how much there was to miss.

‘What will you do there?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Patrick.

‘Are you going to apply to another university?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Will you come back to visit us?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Meg tried not to feel hurt. There was only so much you could expect from someone like Patrick. Still, he had come to say goodbye, which was surprisingly socially interactive of him.

‘How’s Lexi?’ she asked.

‘She likes my bedroom,’ he shrugged, and Meg was confused into silence.

Patrick looked past her. ‘Is that her?’

‘This is Mrs Deal,’ said Meg. ‘Come and say hello.’

Patrick stepped forward a few tentative paces until he was at the foot of the bed. ‘Hello,’ he said to the wall over her head.

‘She can’t speak. Come closer, so she can see you.’

‘Can she see me?’

‘Of course,’ said Meg, even though she realized now that that was an assumption she had made just because Mrs Deal’s eyes were open.

Patrick edged closer.

‘Mrs Deal, this is Patrick. Remember I told you he was going to read to you? Well, he can’t now, but he’s come to say hi anyway.’

‘Hi,’ he said. He waited, then added, ‘Does she know I’m here?’

‘Don’t be rude,’ snapped Meg. ‘She can hear you!’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Why is her finger twitching like that?’

Meg was annoyed at his insensitivity. She was about to snap again, then she remembered that she’d asked the same question herself. She reddened at the memory. ‘It just does. She can’t help it. You don’t notice it after a while.’

‘Oh,’ said Patrick, and seemed to lose interest. He looked around the ward. ‘Is the girlfriend here?’

‘You mean Angie?’

‘Spicer’s girlfriend.’

‘Yes, that’s Angie. She left, apparently.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe she had to. Or maybe she just felt she had to. I feel very sorry for her. I mean, it wasn’t her fault, was it? She only ever did her best for the patients.’

‘Eight and five,’ said Patrick.

‘What?’

He pointed at Mrs Deal’s fingers. ‘Eight and five, eight and five, see? Then she starts again. Eight and five.’

Meg counted. Eight taps and then five. Eight and five. She had never noticed.

‘You’re right! What does that mean?’

Patrick shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘That’s helpful.’

‘Not really,’ said Patrick. Then, after a short pause while they both stared at Mrs Deal’s hand, he went on, ‘It could mean lots of things. Or nothing. Thirteen. Or eighty-five. Or it could be simple code, like for the alphabet. The eighth letter is H and the fifth is E.’

They both looked down at Mrs Deal’s still finger and waited. Meg giggled nervously. ‘Watch, I bet she won’t do it now!’

But she did.

Eight and then five.

And then sixteen.

‘There goes your theory!’ laughed Meg.

‘P,’ said Patrick.

‘HEP,’ said Meg. ‘Help?’

Patrick ignored her. Mrs Deal was tapping again. For a long time without a break.

‘U,’ said Patrick.

‘HEPU?’ Meg screwed up her face. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Get a pen,’ said Patrick. ‘It’s starting again.’

Meg took a pen from her bag and wrote on the rear inside cover of The Da Vinci Code.

Mrs Deal tapped and Patrick called out the letters and Meg wrote them down in one neat stream of randomness.

Finally Mrs Deal’s finger rested. They waited but there was no more.

Patrick looked over Meg’s shoulder as they ran their eyes across the letters, looking for natural breaks.

They both saw it at the same time, and Meg felt a weird tingle lift the hairs on the back of her neck, all the way up to her ears.

‘HE PUSHED ME,’ said Patrick.

Monica didn’t like the crib either. She agreed with Tracy that the traditional wooden bars were too masculine, and then agreed with her again about the one with the fairy-tale canopy.

‘I mean,’ she said, ‘you’re having a girl, not a monkey!’

Tracy giggled, but thought that that was pretty rich, coming from someone who had brought nothing but a pair of home-knitted bootees and a bottle of Asti Spumante to her baby shower. She didn’t say anything though, because although six friends had said they’d come, Monica had been the only one who’d actually turned up. Also because Monica had been quite adamant that Tracy would have a baby that weighed no more than seven pounds, ‘because that’s all you look like you’ve gained’.

‘It’s scientific,’ she’d added, stubbing out her cigarette with authority, and Tracy had had another cupcake.

Monica did too. There were dozens of them, all with pink icing and little silver balls. Raymond had agreed that she could have the shower at his house. She told him it was because it was closer for everyone, but really it was so she could show off.

‘Maybe you could swap it,’ said Monica.

‘What? The baby?’

They shrieked with laughter; Asti was fizzy as hell.

‘The crib. I bet Mothercare would take it back and he’d never even notice.’

‘I’m not sure about that,’ said Tracy. ‘He notices everything.’

That was true. Badly squeezed toothpaste and drips on the toilet seat were prime among them.

Monica shook her head, dismissing all men with a wave of a cupcake. ‘Oh, they never notice stuff like that. He probably just went in and bought the first one he saw.’

‘You think so?’

‘I know so.’

After Monica left, Tracy vacuumed the rug around where her feet had been, and thought about the crib.

She didn’t plan to have another baby, so this was her only chance of a fairy-tale canopy. She’d always regret it if she didn’t get exactly what she wanted.

She went through the bathroom bin and found the price ticket. £895. Incredible.

Then she called Mothercare and asked whether she could exchange the crib for the fairy-tale one.

The lady on the phone was as nice as pie. She checked the prices and said that the crib with the canopy was actually only £650, so there would be a refund as well, as long as Tracy had the receipt.

‘Oh, I don’t,’ said Tracy. ‘My husband has that. I don’t want to ask him for it because I don’t want him to know I’m exchanging the crib he bought.’

‘I totally understand,’ said the nice lady, ‘but I’m afraid in that case it would just have to be a straight swap.’

Tracy was a bit cheesed off about that. Bloody Mothercare, making money on the deal! Still, she really wanted the fairy-tale crib, so said that that would be OK.

The lady only needed the code off the price tag, but when Tracy gave it to her there was a long pause, while there were the clicks of a computer keyboard and a few puzzled little sounds.

‘I’m not sure that’s one of our models,’ the woman said slowly.

‘It’s got Mothercare on the ticket.’

‘Has it? Hold on.’ More clicking and soft, internal noises.

‘Ah yes, here it is,’ said the woman. ‘But it’s not current stock. I’m afraid that means we wouldn’t be able to exchange it, after all.’

‘He only bought it two weeks ago,’ said Tracy.

‘From which branch?’

‘Yours, I suppose. We only live a few miles away.’

More clicking.

‘I’ve just checked, madam, and that particular crib hasn’t been stocked in any of our stores for at least two years.’

‘That’s impossible,’ said Tracy crossly. ‘He bought it two weeks ago!’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I think I’d notice a bloody great wooden cage in my house if it had been there any longer!’

That wasn’t strictly true; she didn’t live here, after all. There was a garage she’d never been in, and a hatch to an attic at the top of the stairs. But it sounded true, and that was the main thing.

There was a longish silence at the other end of the line. ‘Perhaps he bought it elsewhere? Secondhand?’

‘He wouldn’t buy it secondhand!’ spat Tracy. ‘He’s rich.’

‘Well,’ said the lady coolly, ‘he didn’t buy it from us in the past two years, and it is no longer current stock, so I’m afraid I can’t help you.’

‘Fine!’ said Tracy and slammed down the phone.

‘Fucking bitch!’ she yelled at the vacuum cleaner, then she frowned hard at the ticket on the crib.

Raymond was rich. He had a big house and an expensive car, and Tracy had found his bank statements while he was in the shower. He didn’t need to buy anything secondhand. The crib still had the tags on it. It must be new!

Maybe he’d hidden it from her for a while, as a surprise. Raymond didn’t like surprises, but maybe he’d made an exception. Maybe he’d bought it as soon as he’d found out she was pregnant. Maybe there was an Aladdin’s cave of gifts for her up in the attic, waiting to be dispensed.

He was a dark horse.

She should just ask him, really, but Raymond was not the kind of man you could just ask. He didn’t get angry, but he did get quiet, which was worse.

Tracy glanced at the mantel clock; he wouldn’t be home for an hour. Plenty of time to see what she could find.

She giggled and finished what was left of the Asti, which was only a gulp. Then she went upstairs carefully, holding on to the banister. The stairs were steep, and Jordan/Jamelia/Jaden unbalanced her even at the best of times.

She found the pole that Mr Deal – Raymond – kept behind the bathroom door. It was heavy and wooden and the brass hook on the end was tiny and had to go into what seemed to be an even tinier brass ring on the attic hatch. The pole waved and wobbled in her hand. Stupid thing!

She knew she was snooping and that that was a bad thing to do, but if Raymond didn’t want her asking questions, he shouldn’t be so mysterious! Buying her a crib that was two years out of date. Getting baby clothes without her. And all the wrong colour, when they knew they were having a girl. What was wrong with him?

She got impatient and off-balance, and the hook banged the wall and tore the paper.

‘Shit,’ she said. Mr Deal’s house was very, very neat and tidy, and he would be sure to notice a six-inch gash and peeling paper right there on the landing. He’d be terribly cross. She’d have to stick it back on before he got home.

Suddenly an hour didn’t seem like a long time at all.

She took twenty minutes to find glue, then she couldn’t reach the tear, and so she got a chair from the second bedroom and placed it on the landing.

That’s where Mr Deal found her when he got home, glueing her own stupid fingers to the wallpaper as she teetered like a beach ball on the delicate chair that was far too close to the top of the long, winding staircase.

And he was cross.

Terribly.