Sleepyhead

FOURTEEN

The cat had sat and watched, content, unblinking, as a woman who loved her had been smashed across the back of the head and bled dry like a pig. Now she sat staring down at the face of a man who didn't understand any more than she had. Rising and falling with him as he breathed. Rising and falling and watching his eyes. They were dosed but she followed the movements of his eyeballs, darting back and forth behind the eyelids like tiny trapped animals. Looking for a way out. Searching for a weak spot. Heads bulging behind the eyes, threatening to burst through the paper-thin skin…. and Maggie Byrne smiled and lay back on the bed. She kicked off her shoes and rubbed her feet together. He could hear the nylon of her tights crackling. He said something – a joke maybe. She threw back her head to laugh and the red line beneath her chin started to gape. She blushed and reached for a scarf and he told her that it didn't matter but she was already starting to cry. She shook her head and sobbed and tried to tie the scarf around her neck. The gash gaped wider until it looked like something on a fishmonger's slab. The not-so-slender neck, hacked into sections like tuna. Pink then a darker pink then red. And his words would not comfort her. And he tried to take her in his arms but they slipped from around her neck. And his hands were stroking her collarbone and his fingers were exploring the damp and clammy interior of the wound.

Testing for freshness.

Maggie Byrne tried to scream but it came whistling from her neck.

He opened his eyes…

He hadn't been asleep and it wasn't a dream. Just a mental snapshot, twisted. A memory adjusted and warped by the unwelcome addition of an imagination. Something that lived in the ghoulish and morbid corner of his subconscious having its bit of fun.

He opened his eyes…

And waited for the images to blur and become distant. Lying on the sofa, hearing his heartbeat slow down. Feeling the beads of sweat on his face evaporate. Letting something creep back into its corner.

Until the next time.

He opened his eyes and stared back at the cat sitting on his chest.

'Fuck off, Elvis!'

The cat jumped off Thorne and slunk away towards the bedroom. Maggie had beer] a big Elvis fan and had named the cat before it had been sexed. She'd always thought it was funny. Sally Byrne had taken a couple of her mother's cats back to Edinburgh with her, and the rest had gone to the PDSA, but Elvis had been Thorne's from the moment he'd opened the door to Maggie's bedroom and breathed in the blood. The cat seemed drawn to him, Sally had said. To need him, almost.

Almost as much as he needed her.

Just over two weeks now since he'd opened that bedroom door. Just over twenty-four hours since Margaret Byrne's funeral. Thorne didn't know about the arrangements for Leonie Holden. He was what he'd once heard Nick Tughan describe as 'out of the loop' on that one. Her funeral might well already have happened. They'd found her a few hours before he'd found Maggie Byrne, and if Phil Hendricks had got the bits of her he needed, safely labeled in jars, then the body would have been released back to those for whom it still meant something real. Something in their hearts and in their guts. Then they could say goodbye.

There would have been an official presence at her funeral, of course. It was often just some flowers but he could picture Tughan at the back of a church, in black like an assassin. He wondered if Frank Keable would have put in an appearance. Or somebody higher up. If the body count carried on rising they'd end up having to send the commissioner along. A thin smile and a wreath of white lilies spelling out 'Sorry, doing our best'. Thorne had never made a habit of attending the funerals of his victims.., the victims of his cases – on his cases. He'd go on the occasions when they thought there was a fair chance of the killer turning up. He'd stand at the back then, scanning the mourners, looking for one who didn't belong. There was no chance of the killer attending the funerals of these victims, though. He wanted to forget the dead ones. They were his failures.

It suddenly struck Thorne like a hammer to the chest that he had no idea when Helen Doyle had been buried. Buried, of course, not cremated. Leaving it open for a second post-mortem, should one be needed, or demanded much later by the accused.

Even dead, her body was not her own.

Thorne swung his feet to the floor, sat up and rubbed his eyes. The sweat was making them sting. He was starving. There was a headache starting…

It was time to stop hiding.

He'd emerged briefly to pay the respects he felt were due to Margaret Byrne, that he guessed she'd never received when she was alive. He'd hugged the daughter of a woman he'd known only in death. He'd held her close as she wept. He'd laughed as she talked about cats and waved as she climbed into the funeral car.

He'd looked across the all-but-empty church at Dave Holland, who sat stony-faced and stiff, like a sixth-former in an uncomfortable collar. They'd nodded to each other and looked away quickly. It was probably best to keep a little distance with so much accusation still flying around. So much blame to be doled out.

Thorne had given himself a fair bit of explaining to do and hadn't made a particularly good job of it. They knew it was Holland who'd told him about Margaret Byrne and given him her address. They couldn't prove it, but they knew. It didn't change anything. It didn't explain to anybody how the killer had found out. Or how the killer had known that Thorne was close to a positive identification. Or how the killer had been able to pop round to snuff out the threat before calmly going . about the business of slaughtering Leonie Holden.

Nothing was easily explained, but what was obvious to everyone was that Thorne had no business being anywhere near Margaret Byrne. He looked unreliable.

He felt responsible.

Margaret Byrne had died because of what she knew and what she could tell him. That was obvious. She'd died because Thorne knew who the killer was and because she could identify him and because somewhere, in an inept operation that he'd once been a part of, there was a leak big enough to sink a battleship.

Thorne had an idea or two about who, but was at a loss to explain how or why. The press getting hold of stuff, which now they had, was never a mystery. The solution was always there, lurking inside the bank balance of a constable with a gambling problem or some sergeant with too much alimony to pay. But this was something else entirely. This leak had led a killer back to Margaret Byrne's door with an iron bar and a scalpel. This was something infinitely more sinister and something to be guarded much more fiercely. Ranks were swiftly closed. Eyes turned outwards, fingers pointing. And now, for Thorne, everything was in the balance. Keable had just told him to sit and wait. Thorne had little argument. He was in trouble and decisions needed to be made at a higher level. It sounded good, k sounded like a plan of action, but Thorne knew that really Keable just had no idea what to do with him. And Thorne was already sick of sitting and waiting. The nagging headache was starting to scream. He stood and walked towards the bathroom in search of aspirin, but his eye was taken by the small red light winking at him from the table near the front door. Messages on his answering-machine.

'It's only Dad. Call me when you get a minute…"

' Tom… it's Anne. I'll call back.'

Then a voice he didn't recognise. A woman's voice. Quiet. Reluctant. A catch in the throat…

'Hello, we've never met. My name's Leonie Holden and I was murdered a week or so ago. I would have been twenty-four next week and now I'm alone and I'm cold and frankly I don't give a fuck about who told who what, or your career, or matching carpet fibres and I'd be grateful if you could try and sort all this out, you know… '

He opened his eyes.

A cold shower. And hot coffee. And real messages on a real answering-machine.

Time to stop hiding.

Voices, all of them anxious. His father, twice. Anne, twice. Phil Hendricks, needing to talk. Keable, still trying to save his career, or something. Sally Byrne to check on the cat. Dave Holland…

And Thorne needed to get out of his flat and talk to all of them, but in the spaces between the messages was a silence that spoke in a voice more insistent than any other. Murmuring the words that had exploded in his head a week or so before and now buzzed around his brain night and day, like aftershocks. He still heard them as they had been spoken to him, announced to him, with undisguised triumph, in Tughan's cold and oddly characterless accent. Words that still numbed him and would force their way, unspoken or otherwise, into any conversation with Anne Coburn or Phil Hendricks or Frank Keable or Dave Holland or anybody else for that matter.

Jeremy Bishop has a cast-iron alibi.

Jeremy Bishop could not possibly have killed Margaret Byrne.

Lunchtime. A sandwich and an energy drink from a nice deli and a stroll around the choking streets of Bloomsbury to stare at the dying.

He could still feel the shockwave up his arm as Margaret Byrne's skull had cracked. He'd felt it shatter like mint cracknel beneath the blow from the bar. That had shut her up. Silly mare had been squealing and running from room to room from the moment he'd kicked open the flimsy back door. It had only been a few seconds but still he wondered, as he followed her into the bedroom and moved towards her from behind, if the neighbours would be able to hear. As he locked his left arm beneath her chin to keep her upright, and his right hand reached into his pocket for the scalpel, he decided it would be all right. Probably just the TV up too loud. Nothing to get excited about. He might have been seen too. There had been a noticeable bit of curtain-twitching as he'd walked past the house earlier, but it was all a bonus in the long run, despite the confusion it was bound to cause in some quarters. The jewelry on the floor would probably have troubled them a little as well. They could hardly have thought it was a bungled burglary, but perhaps there'd been a struggle?

Perhaps the poor thing had thought he was going to rob her. It didn't really matter.

Whatever they were thinking was wrong.

He could still feel the rush as the blade moved across her windpipe. As the blood spurted and sprayed, soundlessly, on to the thick, ugly. carpet, he'd jammed a knee into the small of her back and begun hoisting her towards the bed, wishing he'd had the time to do it all properly. He could still hear the purring of the cats, the only noise that disturbed the silence as he stood watching the life run out of her. Given the time, he'd have liked to make it look like suicide. That way there would have been no confusion. No problems with the timing of events.

She'd needed dealing with quickly, however, and he'd done what was necessary. He now realised that the rushing, and the way his timetable had become compromised, had probably been responsible for the failure with the girl on the bus.

Leonie, the newspaper said her name was. They hadn't had time, of course, to get to know each other properly. It hadn't helped, that much was certain. He had not been calm enough during the procedure. The excitement of the earlier events had made him clumsy and thrown his timing. He'd have done it carefully, of course, the suicide. The layman's way. The slash horizontal across the wrist, as opposed to the vertical cut, wrist to elbow along the radial artery, which is far more efficient but hugely suspicious. Mind you, they might not even have spotted that. Everything else was taking in her an age.

But then there was Tom Thorne to consider. There was always him. He hadn't known exactly when Thorne was planning to visit Margaret Byrne, but he doubted she had many visitors, so there was a pretty good chance he'd get lucky. When the papers confirmed the name of the officer who'd discovered the body of 'Mrs. Byrne – 43' he'd whooped with joy. The one good thing that had come out of all this was Thorne's.. marginalisation. Looked at that way, he supposed that the timing could not have been any better. Now Thorne was more isolated than ever. An isolated Tom Thorne, he guessed, was a very dangerous one.

And that was just how he wanted him.

It was a twenty-minute stroll to Waterlow Park. Thorne had toyed with the idea of meeting at Highgate cemetery, but that was his and Jan's place. Or had been. It was a nice spot in which to waste a Sunday morning. She, desperate to feel like the heroine in some arty black-and-white film, and he, happy to kill an hour or two before a boozy lunch in the Old Crown or the Flask. Both content to spend time doing very little, and laugh every single time at the grave of the unknown Mr. Spencer that sat opposite that of the far more famous Marx.

Adjoining the cemetery at its north end was Waterlow Park, a small but much loved green space, which those who frequented it never tired of describing as a 'hidden treasure'. The clientele here was odd to say the least: a mixture of the chattering classes, drugged-up layabouts and community-care cases with a smattering of hugely pregnant women sent here from the Whittington hospital to walk about in the hope of bringing on labour. Thorne was fond of it, not least because of Lauderdale House, the sixteenth-century stately home at its entrance. Now it housed kids' puppet shows, antiques fairs and exhibitions of hideous modern art. It had a decent restaurant and a nice, if overpriced, coffee bar. But four hundred years earlier Nell Gwynne had stayed there as mistress to Charles II. A snotty woman had once told Thorne that Lauderdale House was where Ms Gwynne had 'received her King'. He told her that it was as good a euphemism as he'd ever heard, but the snotty woman had failed to see the funny side. Thorne decided she could have done with receiving a bit of King herself.

Now the place could always raise his spirits. This lovely listed building had basically been a top-of-the-range knocking shop. For this reason alone, the park had become a favourite place for sitting and thinking, with soundtrack courtesy of Gram or Hank on a CD Walkman, an unexpected gift from Jan for his fortieth birthday.

He walked along the huge curving path that ran towards a pair of ropey tennis courts. Every hundred yards or so he came across a figure made of grass, or carved from a dead tree. Organic sculptures. It was probably some Millennium project. What a waste of time and money that had been. He'd spent 31 December 1999 with Phil Hendricks, a chicken vindaloo and an obscene amount of lager. They were both asleep before midnight.

It was as good a place as any for a meeting. Thorne took off his leather jacket and sat on a bench, bolted on to the concrete pathway. He stared across the park at the huge green dome of St Joseph's. The weather was warm, considering that October was just round the corner.

A couple walked towards him hand in hand. They were young, in their early thirties, loose-limbed and straight backed. He wore baggy-fitting beige trousers and a white sweater. She wore tight white jeans and a cream fleecy top. They walked easily together in step, smiling at something said earlier.

As the pair came nearer to him, brash and bulletproof, Thorne felt envy burn though his body like caustic soda dissolving the fat in a drain. They were somehow so light and so immaculate, the two of them. An advertiser's dream couple, walking off the coffee and croissants enjoyed in some beautifully converted warehouse. Thorne knew that they had good jobs and cooked exotic meals for perfect friends and had great sex. They enjoyed everything and doubted nothing.

They were undamaged.

He thought of himself and Anne, and wondered if the two of them were not just being utterly stupid. Why was he finding it so hard to call her?

He'd left a message the day after he'd found Maggie Byrne's body, saying that something had come up, but since then he'd ignored her calls. It wasn't just about the connection with Bishop. It was about keeping something of himself back – that shadowy and indefinable part of himself that he'd need if he was going to get through this in one piece and stop the killing. He was willing to risk everything for that, and he knew that if things with Anne Coburn got any more serious, pieces might start to come away. It was armour and it was also camouflage, and he knew that the smallest crack might render it useless. Given time it would probably renew itself. It would harden eventually, but this was still not a good time to be… vulnerable. Yet still he wanted her close. He wanted her closeness. He watched the young couple strolling away from him towards the pagoda, much favoured by those keen on exchanging bodily fluids in the open air. He decided that he was being an idiot. He'd call Anne as soon as he got back to the flat. What the hell was he thinking of, anyway?

He was just a copper, at least in theory.

Cracks in armour? Jesus…

He imagined himself briefly as a boxer, unable to fuck before a big fight. It was a ludicrous analogy, but the pictures in his head amused him so much that he was still smiling five minutes later when his date arrived. There were times when it seemed that a woman deprived of the power of speech was the only person Anne Coburn could really talk to.

Sitting alone in the hospital canteen and pushing a tasteless bit of salad around a paper plate, she contemplated her failings as a professional. The sessions with Alison were going well, but Anne knew that if she wasn't careful there was a danger that they would become fully fledged therapy sessions.

And not for Alison.

Alison was having problems with her boyfriend and things were coming to a head, yet Anne had spent the large part of their last session together bitching about her own problems.

Problems with her daughter. And her ex-husband. And her lover.

Things with Rachel were not getting any better. At least they were talking but they weren't saying anything. There was an element of walking on eggshells on both their parts, the two of them well aware that the smallest comment could blow up into a major row. It was the work she wasn't doing for the resits and the early nights she wasn't getting and the truth she almost certainly wasn't telling. It was, Anne had begun to suspect – no, to be certain the boy she was seeing.

Anne had brought it UP once, casually, but Rachel's reaction, tight-mouthed and defiant, had left her in no doubt that the subject was off limits. It was so stupid. Anne would have no problems with a boyfriend. Why should she? There had been boyfriends before. It was just the timing that was so bloody silly. Important exams were only weeks away and Rachel was in danger of making a mess of everything and Anne couldn't do a thing about it. Rachel was stubborn, like her father, and now he wasn't speaking to Anne either. Relations between her and David had been distinctly frosty, bordering on downright venomous, for a while, but since she'd told him about Thorne, things had worsened rapidly. He'd seemingly broken off communication altogether, and at a time when a united front, as far as Rachel was concerned, would have been a nice idea.

What was so strange was that he'd seemed to know about the relationship with Thorne even before it happened. She thought back to the confrontation in the lift. He had been making comments about it even then. That was why she'd told him. She wasn't trying to score points well, maybe just one or two – but his suspicion was already providing him with ample bile to spit in her direction, so why not simply congratulate him on his prescience? But since she'd confirmed her involvement.., was it an involvement?.., with Thorne, he'd turned really nasty. Steve Clark walked past and smiled, and she smiled back and wondered if part of this business with Rachel might not have something to do with Thorne as well. Was Rachel jealous? Anne had made an effort to talk to her about Thorne. Since the big flare-up a few weeks earlier she'd tried to be more open. She'd told Rachel about the case and about her connection with it. She'd left out some of the more grisly details and skirted around Jeremy's… involvement, as much for her own peace of mind as anything. She'd kept her up-to-date with Alison's progress and, in general, had made a real effort to build bridges. But perhaps she hadn't explained to Rachel how she felt about Thorne.

Anne pushed away the plate of untouched salad and decided that it was because she hadn't actually worked it out herself.

She stood up and moved quickly to the rear of the canteen and out through the swing doors to the fire escape, where she lit a cigarette and took in the view of large steel bins and heaps of polystyrene packaging.

Thorne…

He seemed fairly central to all her problematic relationships. Not least the one with Jeremy Bishop.

She'd barely spoken to Jeremy since the night she and Thorne had ended up in bed. This… cooling off had been her decision, but she sensed that he was keeping his distance as well. She couldn't deny the possibility that Jeremy was jealous, and that an element of that jealousy might be sexual, but she also suspected that he was becoming involved with somebody himself. He'd made one or two typically oblique comments in the days before they'd stopped seeing each other. He'd seemed distracted and by something other than work. She hoped that it was a woman. She wished Jeremy happy as much as she wished anything.

She missed him.

But she wouldn't pick up the phone. She'd known this man for more than twenty-five years and despite the stupidity of Thorne's suspicions, to do so would have felt vaguely disloyal to the man she'd known for five minutes. She resented having her loyalty tested. To anybody and by anybody. And why the hell-wasn't Thorne calling anyway?

He'd rung to tell her there had been some sort of serious development on the case. Serious, to her, had sounded like another word for 'death', and two days later she'd read all about it. Then the other stuff. No mention of Alison, thank heavens, but plenty of gory grist to the media mill. The press blackout that Thorne had seemed so anxious about early on was well and truly ended. Outraged leader columns and pictures of five dead women.

She'd stopped looking at the newspapers now. She was living with enough sickness already.

Anne didn't want any involvement in this hideous case bar the one she had already through Alison. She didn't want to know anything else.

Until they caught him.

Thorne and Holland had walked down to the pond next to the park's southernmost exit. They leaned against the railings and talked, occasionally needing to raise their voices above the shouts from the children's playground only a few feet away. A father smoked and read a paper, while two children tried unsuccessfully to clamber up a slide and a third stood on a swing, demanding to be looked at. While Holland stared out across the water, Thorne watched a large brown rat scuttling about in the dust beneath the low hedge that skirted the pond. There were always a few here, on the lookout for badly thrown bits of bread and Thorne was always excited to spot one. It wasn't a beautiful creature, but while Holland's eye was taken by the variety of ducks and geese on display, Thorne's was naturally drawn to the rat. The scavenger, the chancer, the survivor. The villain.

This city could have no more perfect symbol.

'I hadn't got you pegged for a messenger boy, Holland.'

Holland could feel the redness rising up his neck as he turned to look at him. 'That's because I'm not, sir.'

Thorne instantly regretted his tone. It had been an attempt at dark humour but had just sounded sarcastic.

Holland was already past it. 'DCI Keable thought that we might run into each other, that's all. He had tried to phone you himself…'

Thorne nodded. Lots of people had tried to phone him. Letting Holland convey this somewhat bizarre offer was a shrewd move. Frank Keable was not the most inspired or inspiring of officers, but he knew what was going on around him. He could read the troops. He always got a sense of the currents within an operation, which went way beyond who had the hump or who might fancy who. The rat was standing on its hind legs now, sniffing at a litter-bin attached to the railings. Thorne looked across at Holland. 'So, what do you think?'

Holland smiled, part of him flattered at being asked but the greater part well aware that his opinion would probably be worth less than nothing. 'I think it's a good offer, as a matter of fact. Sounds to me like you'll be pretty much a free agent and as long as you don't get into too much trouble…'

'Or mention Jeremy Bishop?'

Holland saw no point in sugaring the pill. 'It could be a lot worse.'

Thorne knew that he was right. Keable had hinted at disciplinary action after the discovery of Margaret Byrne's body, but with that and the Leonie Holden killing, castigating a rogue detective inspector with an overactive imagination had become something of a low priority. That's what Keable had said anyway. Either that or he'd had his own reasons for not wanting to make it official just yet and was giving himself time to think of exactly what best to do with Thorne. Either way, at the end of it all there was probably no more than a wrist-slapping in it.

Holland hadn't told him everything.

'They know about the fibres from Bishop's car boot.'

'Fuck.' Thorne kicked at the ground, the dust and grit sending the rat darting momentarily for cover. Somebody in Forensics with a very big mouth. That would explain the call from Hendricks. He needed to talk to him.

'So I'm in a bit of bother, which, if I accept this offer to become some sort of consultant or whatever bollocks title Frank Keable's come up with, might go away. Is that it?'

'He didn't exactly say that, sir.'

Consultant. He wondered what the catches were. Beyond the obvious one.

Leonie Holden was last seen on a night bus bound for Ealing and her body was discovered four hours later on waste ground in Tufnell Park.

Less than a quarter of a mile from Thorne's flat. The significance of this latest message from the killer to his favourite detective inspector was not lost on anybody. Consultant? A better word might have been 'bait'.

'What do you think about Jeremy Bishop?'

Holland phrased his answer carefully. 'I don't think he killed Margaret Byrne, sir.'

'He was supposed to have had a cast-iron alibi for Alison Willetts as well, and we found holes in it.'

'I still don't understand any of it, though. I still can't figure out how he could have done what he did to Alison and got her to the hospital in the time. Not to mention why. Why did he go to all that trouble just to give himself an alibi that didn't hold water?'

'I'll work it out, Holland. And I'll work out how he killed Margaret Byrne as well.'

'He didn't, sir.'

'A man fitting his description was seen acting suspiciously outside her flat earlier in the day.'

'Coincidence. Got to be. Besides, that woman opposite is a nutter. She thought I was suspicious.' Holland spoke calmly, no element of letting Thorne down gently, just stating the facts. 'I've been to the Royal London and spoken to everybody except the patients in deep comas. She was killed sometime mid-to late-afternoon, and Bishop was at the hospital, working through a routine theatre list. There's dozens of witnesses. Whitechapel to Tulse Hill and back without being missed is impossible.'

Thorne was grateful to Holland for having made the effort. He'd almost certainly done it in his own time, and in the knowledge that if Tughan had found out he'd have been in deep shit.

'No alibi for Leonie Holden.' Thorne was thinking aloud now.

'Sir…'

No alibi for Leonie Holden. Because he killed her. The fucker killed her and dumped her on my doorstep.

'So you think I'm barking up the wrong tree as well, then, Holland? Or maybe that should just be barking?'

Holland sighed. The questions just kept getting harder.

'I had been sort of coming round to the idea of Bishop as a prime suspect, sir. There's certainly nobody else in the frame, and even though it's all circumstantial I was willing to… go with it as an avenue of inquiry. But Maggie Byrne – her and Leonie Holden had to have been killed by the same man.'

They stood in silence. Thorne had nothing to say. Holland had plenty, but thought most was better kept to himself. Behind them, a child tumbled from the roundabout and began to scream.

Holland cleared his throat. 'All the same, as a theory it does have one thing going for it, sir.'

'Yeah?' mumbled Thorne. 'What's that?'

'It's yours.'

Thorne couldn't look at him. He clenched his jaw. He was scared for a second or two that if he looked at Holland his face would show far too much gratitude. It would be shining and desperate and pathetic.

The face that showed too much of everything. He turned and began to walk towards the gate. His sudden movement caused the rat to bolt again with a small squeal of alarm. The cheeky little bastard had been sitting on its haunches and cleaning its whiskers. They were so unafraid. Thorne had stood there before now and watched one scamper across his shoes.

He glanced over his shoulder. Holland was half a dozen paces behind him.

Whatever journey was ahead, Thorne had no intention of slowing down but sensed that Holland might be the sort of man, the sort of copper, who would close the gap and walk alongside him.

And perhaps, together, they would bring down Jeremy Bishop.

They reckoned that, in London, you were never more than six feet away from a rat. Thorne knew that you weren't a whole lot further from an altogether nastier breed of vermin.

More diseased. More human.

There is definitely no God. Or if there is, he, she or it is a right sick bastard. Like this isn't bad enough.

The way Anne explained it to me is like this. They have to keep pulling me about every ten bloody minutes so I don't get pressure sores, even on my lovely vibrating bed. So one of the nurses, don't know which one but my money's on Martina as revenge for the neck-coughing incident, accidentally dislodges the nasogastric feed, that's 'tube up nose' to you and me, as she's moving me. Just an inch or two, but that's all it takes. What happens then is that the feed, which is this tasteless white shire that's supposedly full of proteins and other great stuff, instead of going where it's supposed to go, pours into my chest. Loads of it. Now, you and other people who can cough and splutter, just cough and splutter this crap back up and pull a face, and a few days later you might develop a mild chest infection.

Not me, though. Oh, no.

This feed is like nectar to fucking bacteria. They love it. They swarm all over it and, hey presto, I get bastard pneumonia. This sort of thing was bound to happen sooner or later. I'm prone to infection apparently. Well, isn't that Just marvelous?

So, here I am back on the ventilator. Big mechanical bellows doing my breathing and l feel like I did when I'd just come in here.

Everything else stops now until I recover. Occupational therapy gets put on hold. The communication was going pretty well, it has to be said. l'd worked out a pretty good system using an alphabet that's based on how many times a certain letter is likely to be used. So it doesn't go, A, B, C, D, E. It's not an, A-Z so much as an E-X. We've also got shortcuts forgoing back, for skipping forward, to repeat words, and, 4nne has become the human equivalent of that thing on my mobile phone that guesses what I'm going to say. She finishes words for me and most of the time she's spot on. She's just about got used to my swearing as well.

Now all that's got to stop until I'm a bit stronger. Until I'm better.

Yeah, well, when you're like this, better is a relative term. The blackboard's gone from the end of the bed. I am so fucking frustrated.

To be honest, I say the communication was going well and it was compared to a few weeks ago but it didn't make things any easier with them. All the things I'd planned to say went out of the window once we got down to it.

He just stood there with the pointer in his hand, looking lost. Even if you can spell the most complicated words in the world as fast as anything, they're just words, aren't they? You can't spell out feelings with an eyelid and a pointer. I couldn't really make him understand.

In the end all I could do was spell out the one word and say it over and over again.

G.O.O.D.B.Y.E.

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye…

'I shall be glad to have you around, Tom, but having said that…'

Keable was behind his desk making a speech. Tughan leaned against the wall, greasy-haired and gimlet-eyed. Ostensibly Keable was welcoming Thorne back to Operation Backhand, albeit in an unorthodox and somewhat undefined role, but in reality he was laying down ground rules. What those rules were, Thorne would need to clarify later. Now he had one eye on his old friend the Exmoor stag.

He saw new things in this dreary piece of ersatz West Country dross each time he looked at it. Today he glanced up from his chair and was drawn by something in the set of the animal's jaw that seemed overtly aggressive. It was probably just fear, or the readiness to charge the photographer at any moment, but Thorne was mentally adding a thought bubble to the side of the stag's head which read, 'We don't like your sort round here.' It was only a matter of days now until the stunning view that encapsulated October would be unveiled. He was sure that Keable looked forward to this moment every month. What riveting image might Thorne find himself staring at next week? 'Badger At Dusk', perhaps. He wondered if he'd be here long enough to see it.

Keable had finished. 'Well?'

Thorne gave Keable his full attention. The DCI's expression seemed open and amenable. So far this had gone a lot better than might have been expected.

'We should make it clear,' chipped in Tughan, 'that nobody's asking if you're interested in accepting this offer, because it isn't really an offer. You don't have any choice.'

Thorne knew he was hooked and landed, but he still wanted to struggle a little. He ignored Tughan and spoke directly to Keable. 'I appreciate you keeping the disciplinary side of recent events low-key, Frank, but I'm still a bit confused as to exactly what you want me to do in return.'

Because I wasn't really listening. Sorry. 'Consultant… secret weapon.., supersub, whatever you choose to call it, I'll still be the one DI too many. Brewer's still around, I don't think Nick's planning on going anywhere…'

He smiled at Tughan. The Irishman smiled back, his face blank.

'… so what am I actually going to be doing day to day, Frank?'

Keable took a few seconds to formulate a response. When it came it was spoken gently but the steel was barely hidden. 'It was you who wanted out in the first place, Thorne, and you got what you wanted. You made a bloody mess of it and here you are again. You're not in any position to be questioning anything.'

Thorne nodded. He needed to be careful. 'Yes, sir.' He glanced across at Tughan. This time the bastard's smile was genuine.

Keable stood and walked round his desk. There was a small mirror on top of the filing cabinet in the corner and he crouched to catch his reflection and adjust his tie. 'I want you as an unofficial part of this operation. I know that you're anything but stupid and you realise that while you're here the killer knows where to find you.'

He'd know where to find me wherever I was. He's watching. 'This seems important to him and what's important to him is important to me. There's not a great deal we're sure of, as far as this case goes, but the killer has some.., affinity with you, which I intend to take full advantage of. If you're unhappy about that, tough.' Keable stood up. His fie was perfect. 'Are you?'

Thorne shook his head. He was anything but unhappy about it. Not that he intended to sit about and wait for the killer to pop by and say hello. The initiative, which he'd had at one point, had slipped away. He'd allowed it to slip away. He wanted it back.

Keable was moving past Tughan, back towards his chair. 'Plus, if you're here, we know where to find you as well.'

Thorne almost smiled. 'One question, sir…'

'Go ahead.'

'Jeremy Bishop. Off limits?'

Thorne Saw the look pass between Keable and Tughan. He could almost have sworn that he heard the temperature drop.

'I was getting to that. Dr Bishop is quite aware that you turning up at his house a fortnight ago was a charade of some sort. Be thankful he doesn't know that you were illegally gathering carpet fibres from the boot of his car.'

He still hadn't spoken to Phil Hendricks. He'd call him later.

'They got stuck to my briefcase, which he offered to put in the boot.'

'Of course they did,' scoffed Tughan.

'Do they match?'

Keable's mouth actually dropped open.

Tughan pushed himself away from the wall. 'I think people are right, Thorne. I think you've fucking lost it. Yes, they match, but so would fibres taken from any Volvo of that colour and mode made since 1994. Do you not think we checked those things? Have you any idea how many cars that is?'

Thorne hadn't and didn't much care.

Keable picked up the baton. 'Dr Bishop has rung several times to complain about anonymous phone calls. He's making accusations.'

Thorne met his gaze, unblinking. Keable was the first to look away.

'These calls are becoming more and more frequent.'

How many times had he called Bishop since the funeral? He could barely remember. They seemed like things he was doing in his sleep.

'Dr Bishop is predictably angry and upset, as is his son, who has been in to complain, and now his daughter is jumping on the bandwagon. She rang yesterday to ask what was being done.'

The daughter rallying to the cause. That was interesting.

'If I ever get confirmation that you know more about this than you're saying, Tom, I won't be able to save you. I won't want to save you.'

Thorne tried to look suitably chastened. Then a smile. Needing to lighten it. 'You've still not answered the question, Frank. Is he off limits or not?'

Things got no lighter.

'Detective Inspector Thorne, are you in any doubt that the person who killed Margaret Byrne is also responsible for the deaths of Helen Doyle, Leonie Holden and the others?'

Thorne thought for a second or two. 'I'm in no doubt that the person who killed Leonie, Helen and the others was responsible for the death of Margaret Byrne.'

Keable stared at him. His thick, unruly eyebrows knotted in confusion. Then he saw the subtle difference. His face reddened in an instant and his voice dropped to a threatening whisper. 'Don't play fucking silly games with me, Thorne.'

'I'm not playing games…'

'I don't want to listen to this rubbish again. Psychopaths do not hire hit men.'

Jeremy Bishop was no ordinary psychopath, but deep down Thorne knew that Keable was right. The alibi had to be flawed. Else?

He didn't know what else.

'So I'm not even allowed to mention his name?'

'You're being childish. If you want to waste your time you can think what you like, but don't waste mine, or this operation's. Tom…' Thorne looked up. Keable was leaning forward and staring deep into his eyes. 'It's been four weeks since Helen Doyle was killed, two months since he attacked Alison Willetts, six-months or more since Christine Owen was killed, and Christ knows when he began planning the whole, sick bloody thing.'

Then he stole the drugs. Something about Bishop stealing the Midazolam still bothered Thorne. It floated about at the back of his head, but he couldn't grasp it. Like a tune he couldn't place.

Keable got to his point. 'Despite the blather in the papers and the earnest faces at the press conferences, we've got nothing, Tom.'

Tughan looked at the floor. Was that the merest glimpse of guilt? Thorne looked back to Keable.

'I just can't understand your refusal to look at this with an open mind. There are no other suspects. So far, this operation has achieved nothing.'

Tughan wasn't having it. 'Every officer on this operation has been working his balls off, Thorne. We've done everything we should have, everything. We found a very credible. witness in Margaret Byrne-'

Thorne cut him off. 'And got her killed.'

The words struck Tughan like hot fat in his face. He marched across the room shouting, the spittle flying on to Thorne's mouth. 'Jeremy Bishop has got nothing to do with it. Nothing. While you've been in Cloud fucking Cuckoo Land we've been doing our jobs. Bishop is not a suspect. The only courtroom he's ever going to see the inside of is the one trying the lawsuit for harassment, which he'll be bringing against you.'

Thorne was out of his chair in a second. He casually took hold of Tughan's wrist and began to squeeze. The blood fled from the Irishman's face. Keable got to his feet and Thorne released his grip.. Tughan stepped quickly back towards the wall, breathing heavily.

Thorne wearily raised an arm and made a lazy, swatting motion at something unseen by anybody else in the room. He lifted his jacket from the back of the chair and slowly pulled it on murmuring, 'No other suspects, Frank…' He took a step towards the door.

Keable screamed, 'Then get me some!'

Even Tughan, rubbing his wrist in the corner, looked shocked.

Detective Chief Inspector Frank Keable was trying to look hard, but Thorne met his eyes and saw only desperation. Holland was working at a computer, unaware that anyone was behind him until he heard the voice.

'It's a nice day, isn't it? I thought I might take a bit of a trip.'

Holland didn't turn round. 'Anywhere in particular?'

'Bristol's nice.'

Holland carried on typing. 'Traffic's a nightmare on the M4 on a Friday.'

'I quite fancied the train anyway. Hour and a half each way. Get the papers, patronise the buffet…'

'Sounds good. I'll buy a copy of Loaded if you buy the tea.'

'You should probably lie about where you're going…'

Holland shut down the computer. 'I'm getting quite good at lying.'

Thorne smiled. Holland was closing the gap.

He glanced inside the newsagent and one headline in particular caught his eye. 'Champagne Charlie', it called him. A day or two after the Margaret Byrne killing the papers had got hold of the whole thin.

The multiple killings.

At first he'd been upset and angry. He was no multiple killer. But he saw that it made sense. Obviously the full story was being held back – the truth of it. He guessed that the police had only agreed to co-operate if the press left out some of the key details to avoid hoax confessions or copycats.

They needn't be worried. When he chose to get in touch again, they'd know it was him.

He was enjoying his daily dose of tabloid speculation and chest-beating. The lack of progress on this 'horrific' case was now a matter of national concern. Making the police look stupid had never been what he wanted, far from it, but the hollow-sounding assurances of assorted commissioners and commanders, in papers and at po-faced press conferences, amused him greatly.

Champagne Charlie. Unimaginative but predictable, and ironic, considering he wouldn't be using the stuff any more. With Leonie, the grab and the jab had done the job nicely. Plus the knife to the throat, of course, to ensure silence while they waited. It was all over very quickly. The champagne had always provided forty minutes or so of small-talk. He'd missed that: it had made what came later that much more interesting. But with the needle, the difference in the speed of everything was fantastic. The adrenaline had fast-tracked the drug through the girl's body so rapidly that she was in the car on the way back to his place within a few minutes of getting off the bus. He hadn't even heard her voice properly.

She'd only said the one word, whispered it really. Please…

And then he'd failed again. The distraction of the Margaret Byrne killing only a few hours earlier, was a convenient excuse but he was beginning to realise that the odds were against him. He had elected to perform a horrendously difficult procedure. He accepted that. The success rate would be small. He'd known that all along. Still, failure was deeply upsetting.

But the results when he got it right made it all worth it.

He had enjoyed killing Margaret Byrne immensely. It had been a jolt of unadulterated shame admitting that to himself, but there was little point in self-delusion. He had imagined being her. He had imagined feeling the cold blade singing on his skin. Holding his breath for the split second between that sweet song finishing and the blood beginning to flow.

It was a feeling he had once known and loved, and had almost forgotten.

The killing had none of the lingering beauty, none of the grace of his normal work. There was some skill needed, of course, but a pale, stiffening cadaver could not compare to what he had achieved with Alison. That was something truly elevated. Something unique.

All the same, the success rate was incomparable. His work was ground-breaking, of that he was certain, but he had only succeeded once and now doubts were beginning to creep into his mind and squat there like bloated black spiders. Might not the quick kill be the next best thing? Would not this euthanasia be a service in itself?. There was no bright, breathing, painless future like the one he'd given to Alison, but it was.., an ending. He tried to dismiss the idea. He could not picture himself stalking the streets with a scalpel in his pocket. That was not who he was.

He carried his newspaper-to the counter and fished around for change. A woman stood next to him. A puzzle magazine, a lottery ticket and a fistful of chocolate. She smiled at him and he remembered how important his work still was. Yes, killing her would be simple and she would be far better off, no question. But nothing worth having was ever achieved easily.

Death was something medieval. He could offer people a future.

During the short taxi ride from Temple Meads station to the hospital, Thorne and Holland had worked out their plan for talking to Dr Rebecca Bishop. Simply put, they didn't have one. Holland had rung ahead and established that she was working today, but beyond that they were making it up as they went along.

A year earlier, Bristol Royal Infirmary had been at the centre of a damaging public inquiry into an alarming number of babies and toddlers who had died during heart surgery. The resulting scandal had cast a long, dark shadow across that hospital in particular and the medical profession in general, which some believed was well deserved. Doctors could no longer be trusted to regulate themselves.

Rather like police officers.

Since he'd begun working on this case, nothing that happened in hospitals could surprise Thorne. He was becoming used to the strategies employed to get through the days by those who worked in them. All the same, the Bristol Royal Infirmary inquiry had been disturbing. There had been some shocking revelations. One ward had been known as 'the departure lounge'.

Susan, Christine, Madeleine, Helen. Thorne knew how insistent were the voices of those whose lives had been snatched away. He pitied those who still heard the screams of twenty-nine dead babies.

Rebecca Bishop worked in the department of orthopedic surgery. Sitting opposite them on moulded green plastic chairs, in a corridor just off a waiting area, her manner left Thorne in no doubt as to the strength of the confidence gene in this particular family. 'I'll give you half an hour. After that, I'm assisting at a riveting lecture on the biomechanics of fracture repair. You're welcome to attend.'

She smiled coldly. Aside from the dark, frizzy hair and slightly elongated chin, Rebecca had the features of her father and brother. She was a handsome woman, as they were handsome men. Handsome but not pretty. There was nothing soft about her. Thorne wondered where the influence of Sarah Bishop was to be found. Had she been soft?

Or pretty?

Maybe he'd ask Jeremy one day, when they had time to talk. In an interview room perhaps.

Thorne opened his mouth to reply but Rebecca Bishop had her own agenda. 'You could start by telling me why they've sent the man my father believes is responsible for harassing him to talk to me about it.'

Thorne flicked his eyes to Holland. He got back the facial equivalent of a shrug.

'Nobody is harassing your father, Dr Bishop. Nobody we are aware of anyway. The very fact that I've come down here myself should assure you that we're taking his allegations seriously.'

'I'm pleased to hear it.'

'But you must understand we do have other priorities.'

She got up and walked across to scrutinise a notice board.

'Like catching Champagne Charlie? I've been reading all about it.'

Holland was content to play the ebullient sidekick.

'Don't believe everything you read in the papers, Dr Bishop.'

She looked at Holland, and Thorne thought he spotted 270 the merest hint of a blush. Did she fancy him? So much the better. He tried to catch Holland's eye but couldn't. Rebecca Bishop turned and stared at Thorne, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of a baggy brown cardigan.

'And is my father a suspect, Inspector Thorne?'

Lying was never pleasant, but it was easy. 'No, of course not. He was questioned routinely and eliminated from the inquiry.'

She looked at him hard. He felt nothing. Doctors kept patients in the dark. Ditto policemen and members of the public.

Holland took over. 'Can we talk about this harassment business? Exactly what is happening, as you understand it?'

She sat down. 'I went over all this on the phone.'

Holland took out a notebook on cue. Thorne had to admire the timing. She sighed and carried on. 'Right, well, Dad's been getting these phone calls… Oh, and there was somebody taking photos outside his house, but it's mainly the phone calls.'

'Your dad told you about this?'

'No, my brother James rang me. Dad's really upset and angry, and James thought I ought to know what was going on. To add another professional voice of complaint, I suppose. James and I don't exactly chat every day, so I guessed it was something important when I got his message.'

She began to chew intently at a fingernail. Thorne noticed that they were all bitten to the quick, some raw and bloody.

It was time to dig a little. 'So you and James are not… close?'

She looked up and he could see her considering a reply, and whether to give it. Was this territory she felt safe bringing strangers into? Maybe it was Holland's smile that did the trick.

'We're not a hugely close family. You must know most of this…'

They looked at her as if they didn't "know anything at all.

'James and I aren't best friends, no. Dad and I don't get on either, if you must know, but that doesn't mean I want to see him upset.'

Holland nodded, full of understanding. 'Of course not.'

She began to speak slowly, but with a detectable relish.

'James and Dad like to think they're close, but really there's a lot of denial flying about. They fell out a bit a few years ago when James went off the rails a little, and now he just sees the old man as a glorified bank manager who's there to dole out cars and deposits on flats, so that good old James can fuck up anything he turns his hand to and not really worry about it.'

Thorne stirred the pot a little. 'I'm sure he does worry about it.'

'Oh, yeah, you've had the pleasure of meeting James, he told me. Christ, how bitter do I sound?' She tried to laugh, but it caught at the back of her throat.

Thorne's voice was quiet, measured. 'And how does your dad feel?'

'Guilty.' An instinctive answer. Word association. Thorne willed his face to show nothing Let her carry on dishing the family dirt.

'Guilty that Mum was off her face on tranquilisers and he was too pissed to drive. Guilty that he put her on the fucking tranquilisers in the first place. Guilty that he screwed up both his kids. Guilty that he didn't die instead of her. We're big on guilt, the Bishops. But Jeremy's the top man.'

Tranquilisers. That made a lot of sense. Was the Midazolam doing to his victims in a few short minutes what the tranquilisers had done to his wife over a number of years? Was all this about something as prosaic as revenge? No, not revenge exactly but… Thorne didn't know what.

Almost as soon as he'd thought it, he knew that it was too simplistic and, in a strange way, too poetic. The answer to this case wouldn't lie in everyday motives tied up in Christmas cracker psychology.

But he was getting under the skin of Jeremy Bishop. He gazed across at Bishop's daughter. She looked exhausted. She had been saying something she had not articulated for a while, or so it seemed to Thorne. She was speaking as if he and Holland weren't there. He needed, gently, to remind her that they were.

'And what about you, Rebecca? What are you guilty about?'

She looked at Thorne as if he was mad. Wasn't it obvious?

'That I wasn't in the car.'

While Tom Thorne was questioning Rebecca Bishop, a hundred miles away, her father, was having lunch with the woman who, at least in theory, was sleeping with him. He'd rung the night before. Anne had grabbed at the phone, hoping it might be Thorne, and was more than a little thrown when she'd heard Jeremy's voice. They'd agreed to meet. A pasta place in Clerkenwell, more or less midway between Queen Square and the Royal London. The hug was perhaps a little forced but the wine soon relaxed them and the conversation flowed easily enough. They talked about work. Stressful – hard to go home and relax. Tiring – when was it anything else? He was starting to think about a change of direction; she was intrigued. She was disappointed and upset about Alison's setback; he was sympathetic.

They talked about children. Was she expecting too much of Rachel? Was she too pushy? He told her not to give herself a hard time over it. He'd always expected the best from Rebecca and James and almost certainly had been too pushy. He was proud of Rebecca, and maybe James would work out soon what he wanted.

She told him he should be proud of both of them. Then a silence, which was just the right side of awkward, when Bishop broke it. 'Did you not phone because your boyfriend told you not to?'

Anne lit a cigarette, her third since they had finished the meal. 'You didn't call me either.'

'I was worried it might be awkward. I've read the papers and clearly I can't be a suspect any more, but he still seems to have something of a… problem with me.'

She flicked non-existent ash into the ashtray. 'I haven't spoken to Tom in over a week.' Bishop raised an eyebrow. More nervous ash-flicking. 'We've never really talked about you, anyway, Jeremy. Best to keep the personal and the professional separate.'

Bishop leaned forward and smil6d, interlocking long, slender fingers and resting his chin on them. He stared deep into her eyes. 'I do understand all that, Jimmy, and I know this is hard for you. But what do you really think?'

She held the eye-contact and tried with all her heart and soul to imagine this man the way Tom Thorne did. She couldn't do it. 'Jeremy, I don't…'

'I heard a story yesterday about a GP with a morphine addiction. He'd prescribe it to his older patients, then he'd make house calls and steal it back from them. They'd come into the surgery thinking they'd lost it, you know, going doolally in their old age. He'd smile at them, full of understanding, and prescribe them some more. And so on.'

Anne was not hugely shocked. Many doctors had problems with addiction. There was even a rehab centre exclusively for those who worked in the medical profession. Bishop carried on: 'The guy who told me this had known the man for twenty-odd years and had absolutely no idea.'

She looked at him. Holding her breath. His voice was barely a whisper.

'People have secrets, Anne.'

Anne looked down and fixed her eyes on the cigarette she was stubbing out in the ashtray. Carefully and deliberately she removed any trace of burning ember. What did he expect her to say? Was this just a piece of typically theatrical and provocative weirdness or…?

She looked up and signaled for the bill, then turned back to him, smiling. 'Talking of secrets, Jeremy, are you seeing somebody?'

His mood seemed to change in a moment. She saw it, and thought about backing off but decided against it. She wanted to turn the tables a little, to enjoy his awkwardness.

'You are, aren't you? Why are you being so coy?' She saw something like an answer in his eyes. 'Do I know her?'

He stared down at the tablecloth. 'It's not really serious and it's probably not going to last very long for all sorts of reasons, but if I talk about it, it will be like I'm cursing it somehow. Condemning it to an early grave.'

She laughed. Why this sudden superstition? 'Come on, since when have-'

'No.' His tone stopped the tail end of her laughter in its tracks. End of conversation.

'It would be like wishing it dead.'

Thorne arrived home fizzing and fidgety. There were people he needed to call. His dad. Hendricks. Anne, of course. But he felt too energised.

It had happened as he'd stepped out of Kentish Town tube station and was wondering which lucky off-license would have the benefit of his business on the way home. The conversation behind him had gone something like this. 'Big Issue…'

'Get a fucking job!'

'This is my job, you arsehole!'

And it had gone off.

Thorne had stepped in a second or two after the first punches and kicks began to fly. Wincing as a stray punch caught him on the side of the head, he'd grabbed the get a-job merchant round the neck and hauled him into a nearby doorway with more force than was strictly necessary. The Big Issue seller, having picked up the magazines scattered during the ruck, had moved in close to watch. Thorne had looked at him, 'Piss off,' then turned his attention back to the one who had a home. Drunk, of course, or maybe stoned. A student, Thorne reckoned, with blood from a split lip running on to his white button down shirt.

Thorne had held him against the door with a stiff arm at his throat arid casually kneed the little tosser between the legs as he removed his badge from the inside pocket of his leather jacket and pushed it into his face. 'Have a guess what my job is.'

Now, back at home, opening the first can of cheap lager, he wondered what might have happened if he hadn't been around with a badge in his pocket and some aggression to offload.

If one of them had been carrying a knife.

These were typical murders. Ordinary killings, simple, banal and understandable. People dying because of anger or frustration or a basic lack of space. Dying for a grand cause or a stupid comment. Or a few pence.

Wives and husbands killing with hammers and fists, or men being men with drink and knives, or drug-dealers holding guns as casually as combs.

Thorne understood them, these deaths died in cities. He knew what they were about. Each made its own strange kind of sense.

But not this. Not killing as a side-effect. Bodies as a byproduct of some sick fucking madness.

He downed the last of the beer, pulled on his jacket, and within forty-five minutes he was standing in a street in Battersea, looking up at the shape that moved behind a light at a second floor window.

He stood for nearly an hour, melting back into the shadows with each twitch of the curtains, real or imagined. Then he stepped back quickly into the anonymous darkness as Jeremy Bishop threw open the curtains and stood looking down at the street.

Bishop stared hard at Thorne, or the place where Thorne was, seeing a shape, perhaps, but certainly no more. As Thorne returned the stare, he felt a glacial tremor run through every bone in his body as Bishop's face suddenly changed.

From this distance, Thorne could not be sure. It might have been a grimace.

It might have been a smile.

I know that I've made jokes before about the NHS and the lack of money and everything. I was taking the piss out of the blackboard when it first appeared, you know, compared with all the flashy stuff they've got in America.

But this?

Anne's been telling me for a while that her and the occupational therapist are going to try to rig up a couple of devices so that I can read and watch TV. Obviously I've been gagging for it, and even more so since I've been back on this bastard ventilator. When a machine is doing your breathing for you, life can get sooo boring, darling. But I didn't realise they literally meant 'rig up'. Honestly, it's spit and fucking earwax. They've screwed some sort of pivoting arm into the ceiling and the TV now hangs down from there so I'm staring up at the screen. Great. If I was in hospital in Fuckwit, Illinois, or wherever, I'd be able to control the volume and, crucially, change the bloody channel with my eyelid. Here, in good old London Town, on the good old National Health Service, those little details seem to have been overlooked. So I have to wait for a nurse to show up, and blink. to indicate that I'd like her to turn over. She does exactly that and buggers off again. Leaving me staring at Supermarket Sweep or some moronic cookery programme until she puts her head round the door again twenty minutes later and I'm blinking my head off in an effort to get the football on.

I don't want to sound ungrateful, but this is heaven compared to my new reading arrangements.

It's based around a music-stand, [think, though there might be a bit of old coat-hanger stuck in there as well. All right, I'm exaggerating, but not much. I get raised up and this metal contraption is placed across my tits with little clamps that fold down to hold in place my book or magazine of choice. Good in theory. First, I'm hardly in a position to make complex requests on the book front. I'm racking my brains to think of books I might fancy reading with really short titles. Same with magazines, though I'm more or less sorted thanks to OK! and Hello!. Not too taxing on the eyelids. The problem is the same as with the telly, though. I'm hardly Brain of Britain, but even I can read a page of pretty much anything in twenty minutes, or however long it is until the nurse comes in again. I don't expect them to come tearing in here every ninety seconds to turn my page for me but there must be something somebody can do. I can't pay for anything, and I haven't got family who can pay for anything or try to raise money, but even so… Everything's fucking half-measures.

Half-measures for half a person.