Trauma

Eight

Sarah began tidying up. She cleaned the wound site on McKirrop’s head with a swab soaked in surgical spirit and did her best to obscure any signs of interference, not that there were many. The degree of invasion she had used was minimal and there was no reason for the pathologist to be on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary. She cleaned and returned the instruments to their rightful place and disposed of the used swabs and their wrappings in the discard bin for subsequent incineration. Finally, she wound the sheet back round the corpse’s head and wheeled it back to the body vault.

To her frustration, Sarah could not remove the locking pin from the transporter in order to release the body tray. She tried again but it was stuck fast and she broke out into a cold sweat. This was ridiculous: she couldn’t get the body back into the vault! Her heart was thumping with the effort that she was expending, but without success. She cried out in pain as her fingers slipped off the metal and she broke two of her fingernails. Her fingers flew to her mouth, only half stifling the curse that sprang to her lips. Tools! She needed tools!

She hurried back to the Post-Mortem suite and returned with a chisel and mallet. They were really for use on human bone, but two blows with the mallet and the pin eased off. A third and it sprang out to dangle on its chain in a mocking dance. The tray slid smoothly back on to its shelf.

With McKirrop’s body safely back inside, Sarah checked twice that she had left nothing lying around before switching out the lights and listening at the door. She heard nothing, so she inched it open and took a quick look out in both directions before slipping out into the corridor. Locking the door behind her, she ran quickly along to the stairs leading up to the ground floor.

She paused at the head of the stairs to calm herself. It was over; she’d done it; she had found out exactly what she wanted to know. She started out along the main corridor, steeling herself to do so in a confident gait. No one was going to take much notice of her if she seemed purposeful.

Sarah reached the door leading to the outside and to the drive down to the main gate. She paused to consider for a moment. She’d been doing everything in reverse, almost without thinking, but now she fingered the mortuary key in her pocket and looked out through the glass doors into the darkness. Everything had gone well but did she have enough nervous energy left to complete the exercise? Could she go through the business of returning the key? No, she decided after a few moments thought, she couldn’t. She had run out of adrenaline and it would be silly to push her luck any further. She simply couldn’t face the stress involved. The key was about to go missing. No big deal. They could have another one made up. She turned away from the door and continued along the corridor. As she crossed the courtyard to the residency she dropped the key down a grating. The little splash it made marked the end of the operation.

Sarah closed the door of her room and felt weak at the knees. She sank down on to the bed and saw that her hands were shaking. Her mouth was dry and she felt that she might be sick in the not too distant future. Thinking about what she had discovered made matters worse now that she had time to think about it. Fear was taking over from nervous exhaustion. In answering one question, she had opened up a Pandora’s box of others. McKirrop had been murdered; he had been murdered by someone on the staff. It must have been someone on the staff, she reasoned. HTU patients were not allowed unaccompanied visitors, not that anyone had wanted to see McKirrop, anyway.

But who on the staff would want to kill a down-at-heel alcoholic — and why? What threat could he possibly have presented to anyone? Sarah could think of no good reason but she did come up with a bad one. It said that Derek Logan had killed John McKirrop because the results of her tests on the patient were embarrassing and were about to make him look foolish. McKirrop’s death had stopped that happening and had turned the tables on her. Her findings had been discredited and her professional competence brought into question.

But surely not even Logan could do something so awful?

Sarah found that she could not dismiss the idea altogether. She remembered Logan’s distaste for McKirrop. He had regarded him as being a worthless object who was merely taking up space in HTU, his only value being as a potential organ donor. But had McKirrop mattered so very little that his life had been expendable? A pawn to be used in a career game move? Logan was a thoroughly unpleasant individual but was he a murderer? Sarah baulked at believing it, but she was left with a list of questions seeking answers.

Could McKirrop’s death have been some sort of bizarre accident? Perhaps the nursing staff had somehow made McKirrop’s wound worse while they were changing the dressings? Sarah shook her head and admitted that this was a ridiculous idea. Its only merit was that it distracted her momentarily from thinking that someone on the staff of HTU, had deliberately placed a blunt object into John McKirrop’s head wound and pushed his skull back into his brain.

After a restless night filled with bad dreams, Sarah was back on duty in HTU shortly after breakfast. Her first thought was to get her hands on the X-ray that showed the original injury to McKirrop’s skull. This would be vital in proving her case. She went immediately to the X-ray viewing room and flipped through the large manila envelopes in the rack below the wall-mounted light boxes. McKirrop’s films weren’t there! Sarah looked again but there was no mistake. The McKirrop file had gone. Frustration mingled with a hollow feeling in her stomach.

After one more search of the entire room she turned on her heel and went straight to the duty room to find Sister Roche.

“Sister, Mr McKirrop’s X-rays are not in the rack,” she announced.

Roche turned in her swivel chair and looked over her glasses. “No, Doctor,” she said. “Mr McKirrop is dead. His X-rays have been returned to Medical Records along with his case notes. That’s what always happens.”

Sarah felt her cheeks colour. “Of course,” she said. “How stupid of me.”

“Was there something you particularly wanted to see?” asked Roche.

“Not really,” smiled Sarah, attempting to cover her embarrassment. “A detail. I’ll just nip along and see to it while I remember.” She turned with another attempt at a smile and left the room feeling as if her shoes were full of tin tacks.

“McKirrop, John McKirrop,” Sarah repeated for the benefit of a clerk who seemed hard of hearing. “He died yesterday morning.”

The clerk turned away from the reception desk and put on spectacles that hung from a gold chain round her neck. She started to run her fingers along rows of cardboard folders, angling her head to see through the bottom portion of her bifocal lenses. “And you say he was from?”

“HTU,” repeated Sarah.

“We have a John McCluskey... and a John McIntyre.”

“McKirrop,” said Sarah through teeth that were beginning to clench.

“Ah yes, here we are. Couldn’t see it for looking at it.” The woman chuckled as she pulled the file and handed it to Sarah who opened the X-ray envelope. She pulled the films half way out of the envelope. There were two. “There were three!” she murmured out loud. She removed the two X-rays that were there and held them up to the light. The one she wanted wasn’t there! “One of this man’s X-rays is missing!” she said.

“I’m sorry. What’s missing?”

Sarah looked at her blankly. “An X-ray,” she said, but her voice was distant. She was thinking that this was no accident.

“Typical,” said the woman. “People are so careless these days. It’ll be lying around somewhere in the ward.”

Sarah handed back the case file and left the Medical Records office. She felt dazed. Her proof that John McKirrop had been murdered had evaporated. Without that X-ray, she had nothing. If she made an accusation now she would be ostracised — if not thought to be mentally deranged. The whole notion would be deemed to be quite ridiculous. A tramp murdered by a member of staff? Absolutely ludicrous.

Sarah had an anxious hunt around HTU for the missing film, just in case it really had been left out of the file through error but found nothing. In her heart she had known that that she wouldn’t find it. She had been out-thought. That in itself was a chilling thought. Someone had suspected she might go looking for the X-ray.

Derek Logan came into the doctors’ room while Sarah was still searching. “What have you lost?” he asked curtly.

Sarah felt gooseflesh break out her neck, “An X-ray,” she replied.

“You’ve lost an X-ray?” asked Logan sarcastically. It put Sarah’s back up.

“Not me exactly,” she said. “It appears to have gone missing somewhere between here and the Medical Records Office. I’m just trying to locate it.”

“What X-ray are we talking about?” asked Logan.

Sarah looked him straight in the eye and said, “One of John McKirrop’s head X-rays.”

Logan held Sarah’s gaze for what seemed to her like an eternity before saying, “What do you want that for?”

“I just wanted to see it again,” replied Sarah, watching him for any reaction she could construe as guilt.

“McKirrop is dead,” said Logan brusquely. “Do you think we could concentrate on our living patients before any of them decide to join him?”

“Yes, Doctor Logan,” Sarah answered through clenched teeth.

Before either had time to say anything else, an alarm went off on the console desk and a nurse called out, ‘Beta three! Cardiac arrest! Steven Miles!’

Logan and Sarah both ran through into Beta suite and personal animosity took second place to dealing with the emergency. Sister Roche and a younger nurse arrived close behind with the crash trolley and Logan took charge. The cardiac monitor over the patient’s bed had gone to flat-line instead of spikes and a continuous monotone had replaced the comforting regular bleeps. The patient was a seventeen-year-old boy who’d fallen from a third storey window and fractured his skull. He had been in a coma for four weeks but this was the first sign of complication.

Sarah took over from Logan in applying cardiac massage while he prepared to shock the patient. One solitary green spike on the oscilloscope had been the only reward for their efforts after ninety seconds.

“Preparing to shock,” announced Logan loudly.

The nurses cleared everything out of the way.

“Clear!” said Logan and everyone stepped back as the current was applied to the patient’s chest. There was a loud thump and the patient’s body responded to the voltage racing through him with an involuntary jump. The monitor started to bleep again and the horizontal base line on the scope broke into spikes. But the sound was irregular, two bleeps followed by a pause then three quick bleeps followed by the monotone again. Logan applied the paddles again: two bleeps followed by the monotone. A third attempt was no more successful. Logan straightened up and put down the paddles. “We’ve lost him,” he said as the continuous monotone jangled everyone’s nerves. “All agreed?”

Everyone did.

Logan noted the time of death and turned the monitor off. He walked away leaving Sarah and the two nurses with the dead seventeen-year-old.

Sister Roche turned to the younger nurse, “He has Sigma probes. Inform the lab will you?”

Sarah said, “I’ll do it. I need to ask them for some more chart paper anyway.”

Patients with Sigma Probes who died had to have them removed by skilled technicians. It was a delicate procedure and the probes were expensive but could be re-used after cleaning and sterilising if undamaged. When a Sigma patient died the HTU staff would call the lab and they would come immediately to deal with the body. Sarah called the number written on the wall beside the phone in the duty room and was told that the team was on its way. They would also bring her more Sigma chart paper. Within ten minutes Steven Miles’ body was removed from the unit.

A shadow hung over HTU for the rest of the morning. It inevitably did when a young person died. It always seemed so unfair, almost as if an unjust mistake had been made and everyone felt aggrieved by it. But by three in the afternoon, Beta three was no longer empty. A new patient had been admitted. He was a forty-four year old demolition worker who had been hit on the head by falling masonry. The empty bay was no longer a focus for grief and reflection. A new challenge had moved in to fill the vacuum.

The patient had been stabilised by the A&E team before transfer to HTU. Sarah checked his pulse and blood pressure again to make sure that there had been no worsening of his condition in the move. Satisfied that he still seemed stable she set about connecting the monitoring probes to his head. Logan arrived in the bay while she was positioning the last one. “Everything all right?” he asked.

“He’s stable,” replied Sarah.

“How about blood tests?”

“On their way to the lab.”

“He’s going to need surgery,” said Logan. “Did you send blood for cross matching?”

“Also on its way,” said Sarah. “But surely he’s too weak for surgery?”

“Agreed,” said Logan. “So what would you suggest in the meantime?”

“A full scan in the morning?” suggested Sarah. “That should give us some information about the degree of damage sustained without putting him under any added stress.”

“Pencil it in then,” said Logan. “You can do it.”

Sarah did not react to the suggestion. She simply said, “Very well. Is he to have Sigma probes inserted?”

Logan shook his head and said, “I don’t think so. The area of trauma is well defined and limited. We’ll decide after we see the X-rays.”

Sarah found it difficult to look Logan in the eye for fear that he might see suspicion there. Another part of her wanted to accuse him openly of complicity in John McKirrop’s death, and she was glad when he left. Shortly afterwards, Nurse Barnes came hurrying towards her. “Sister Roche asks if you would mind taking a telephone call?”

Sarah followed the nurse back to the duty room where Sister Roche, with her hand over the mouth-piece of the phone said, “It’s about Mr McKirrop.”

Sarah, feeling puzzled, accepted the receiver. “Hello, this is Dr Lasseter. How can I help you?”

“Hello Doctor. This is Father Ryan Lafferty. I was wondering how Mr McKirrop was?”

Sarah put her hand up to her forehead in anguish as she remembered the name from McKirrop’s admission sheet and the request that he be kept informed. “Oh I’m sorry,” she said. “How awful, I should have telephoned you earlier. Mr McKirrop died yesterday morning. I informed the police but I clean forgot about you, Father. I’m most terribly sorry. You didn’t see the television report?”

Lafferty could tell that Sarah’s distress was genuine. He said as gently as he could, “Actually, I don’t have a television.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Sarah, “but that’s no excuse anyway. I don’t know what came over me I really am most...”

Lafferty tried to assure Sarah that no great harm had been done before asking, “I don’t suppose that he regained consciousness at all then?”

“Well, yes he did,” stammered Sarah, feeling both embarrassed and ashamed at her oversight. “That is to say, no he didn’t...”

“I don’t think I understand,” said Lafferty.

“I’m sorry,” said Sarah who had now gone into an apologetic spiral. “It’s sort of debateable really. The official view is that Mr McKirrop did not regain consciousness.”

“And the unofficial view?” asked Lafferty, bemused by it all.

“I think he did for a short while,” said Sarah weakly.

“Well, I’m sorry to hear of his death,” said Lafferty. “I hope he has an easier time in heaven than he did on earth.”

“Quite so,” said Sarah.

“Thank you Doctor.”

The phone went dead and Sarah replaced the receiver. She still feltangry with herself.

Lafferty let out a weary sigh and stared balefully at the telephone in front of him. He felt utterly dejected. McKirrop had died without his getting a chance to speak to him so he was nowhere nearer finding out the reasons behind the stealing of Simon Main’s body. He had read just about every book he could find on the subject of black magic and satanic ritual. He was staring into space when the cleaner, Mrs Grogan came in and put down a cup of tea beside him. She had her outdoor clothes on.

Lafferty looked at his watch and said, “You’ll be off then, Mrs G?”

“Yes, Father see you tomorrow.”

Lafferty watched Mrs Grogan close the garden gate and wave to him. He lifted his hand in reply before turning to the book lying behind him on the table: Scottish Witchcraft by Nicholas A. Macleod. Having failed to find anything of use in the general academic works on satanism, Lafferty had decided to investigate the possibility that the reason for Simon Main’s exhumation might be related to some local or regional ritual or ceremony. There was precedent for this in that many towns and villages around the country had fairs or customs of their own which dated back to pagan days.

John Main pulled on his leather jerkin and checked that he had his keys in his pocket before setting out for his second evening of pub crawling in a row. John McKirrop’s unforeseen death had given him a new idea so he had decided to put his idea about asking around the spiritualist community on hold for the moment. The down-and-out’s death had been reported on television so the cemetery story would briefly be news again. People would talk about it in pubs. In these circumstances anyone who knew anything might be encouraged to say something, if only to impress. Main had set himself the task of visiting every pub within a one mile radius of the cemetery in the hope of picking up some gossip.

The tenuous logic behind this was that outside this circle it would be more likely that another cemetery would have been chosen. This assumed of course, that some — if not all — of those involved in the crime lived in the same area. If this was so — and it was a big ‘if’ — someone else within this circle might know something — even a rumour would be a start. Last night had yielded nothing. That left tonight and maybe tomorrow night before public interest started to wane and the story was forgotten again.

Main walked into the Cross Keys Bar and found it half empty. It was obviously a working man’s pub. Three tables were occupied by domino players and two men in dungarees were playing darts in an alcove through the back. Not exactly the kind of place to find satanists, thought Main but what did satanists look like? Christopher Lee? Peter Cushing? What did they wear? Black silk capes? If they did, there would be no problem finding them.

“What’ll it be?” asked the barman as Main reached the bar counter, still looking around him.

“Half of lager,” said Main. He would have preferred a large gin but the night was young and there was a long way to go.

“There you go,” said the barman, putting down the drink in front of him. Main paid him and decided to push things along. “I see McKirrop’s dead then,” he said.

The barman looked blank. “Who’s McKirrop?”

“That old down-and-out who tried to stop the body-snatchers. It was on the telly.”

“Body snatchers?” repeated the barman who Main had decided was not rocket scientist material.

Another customer joined in. He said to the barman, “You know, Brian, these bastards who dug up the kid’s body in the cemetery up the road.”

“Oh aye,” said the barman.

“Sick bastards,” said the other man.

“Aye,” said the barman.

No one else responded. Main finished his drink and left. He fared no better at the second bar or at the third. He ordered a gin and tonic at the fourth, partly to break the monotony of half pints of lager but mainly because he was feeling fed up. An unwelcome shaft of realism was starting to penetrate the clouds of his obsession. Maybe this was a stupid idea. If he were honest with himself, it was the act of a desperate man who had run out of ideas. It was time to see reason; time he pulled himself together, went back to work and started to pick up the pieces of his life. Main read all this in the bottom of his empty glass while he leaned on the bar counter. It was the first time his resolve had wavered, and he didn’t like the feeling. It was very close to hopelessness.

“Same again?” asked the barman.

Main looked up and shrugged. “Why not.”

Shortly after eleven, Main found himself in the lounge bar of a pub called the Mayfield Tavern. He’d lost count of the number of pubs he’d been in that evening and with each failure he’d become more and more depressed. His alcohol intake had reflected this and he was far from sober although not overtly drunk. The alcohol, as alcohol always did, had merely exaggerated his mood. His lips were set tight and his eyes reflected the unbearable sadness he felt.

To the barmaid he was just another face at the bar, a man in the corner drinking quietly and keeping himself to himself, just another sad man. The world was full of them.

The bar seemed to have a wide mix of customers, unusual in this day and age, thought Main. Most pubs attracted allegiance from one sort of customer rather than another. Here, there were two tables occupied by students; they looked scruffy but their voices gave them away. They were obviously going on to a party and were trying to decide what they should take along in the way of drink.

“Not that rat poison you brought to Mandy’s!” said one boy to the long-haired youth who was collecting the money. “I was shitting through the eye of a needle for a week.”

“That was the thought of the exams — not the bloody wine,” said the collector.

“Don’t mention exams!” exclaimed one of the girls who, despite an elfin appearance, was drinking pints of beer. “I haven’t done a thing.”

Main moved his attention to the various couples dotted around the room. Most were young but there was a middle aged duo whose complexions said that they drank a lot. The man had a small suitcase at his feet, the kind people used in the nineteen fifties, the sort that German spies used to carry in early British films, the sort that Crippin might have carried his implements in. Main couldn’t guess what the couple did. Shopkeepers maybe? An off-license, perhaps.

There were two working men standing at the bar, still in their overalls. They obviously hadn’t been home. Both had hands that were stained with black grease. Main guessed at mechanics. He probably could have found out if he had wanted to by listening to their conversation which had been animated for the last fifteen minutes but half the verbiage seemed to consist of four letter words. Main took in a sound bite.

“I fuckin’ telt him fuckin’ straight, I’m no doin’ any more of these fuckin’ jobs.”

“Fuckin’ right,” replied the other man.

Three men in their early twenties sat at a table near the cigarette machine. They would burst into laughter periodically and Main guessed by their glances that some joke had been made at the expense of the students. He could sense the animosity between the two factions. There didn’t have to be a specific reason. Students were like a red rag to a bull to certain groups of other young people. One of the girls got up from the student tables and went to the lavatory. She had to pass the table where the three men were sitting. One, the tallest, dressed in a leather jacket and denim jeans leaned across and said something to her. Main did not catch what it was but the girl reddened and the man’s companions burst into laughter. Main looked at the student tables where he saw one boy start to get up angrily. He was restrained by his friends. “Let it go Neil, let it go,” he was advised. “It isn’t worth it.”

Sound advice, thought Main. The boy looked no match for the man in the leather jacket no matter how sound his cause. The girl returned from the toilet, pointedly avoiding eye contact with the three on the way as she passed. Nothing more was said and the students got up to leave soon afterwards.

As they passed out through the door a thickset young man in a denim jacket came into the pub. He had red hair, cut short with such a well defined shave line over his ears that he must have had it cut that day, thought Main. The man looked around him, spotted the three men and joined them at the table.

Main was just about to lose interest when he heard the newcomer say, “I see that lying old bastard McKirrop’s snuffed it.”

Main froze at the mention of the name. He had turned back to the bar but he could see what was happening behind him in the bar mirror.

“Who?” asked one of the others.

“The old wino in the bone-yard.”

Main’s throat was tight with apprehension and anticipation. Just as he had been on the verge of giving up hope, someone had mentioned McKirrop’s name. His fingers were wrapped round his glass but nothing moved. He remained completely immobile as he strained to hear every word that was being said.

“No kidding?” said the man in the leather jacket.

“It was on the telly. Some geezer smashed his head in.”

“Serves him right.”

“He didn’t mean any harm really,” said another of the four., but he was pounced on by the others.

“That old bastard could have gotten us into real deep shit, you stupid git,” said the newcomer.

“All right, all right!” protested the one who’d dared to run against the herd. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Of course I’m bloody right!”

“Well, he isn’t going to get anyone into trouble now is he?” said another.

The four fell silent for a few moments before one asked, “What else did they say?”

“Not much,” shrugged the red haired man. “Just went on about him being the geezer who put up such a brave fight in the boneyard.”

“Bunch of crap!” sneered the man in the leather jacket. “Anything else?”

“Just that the police weren’t getting anywhere.”

This brought laughter from the others.

Main could feel the blood pounding in his temples. He had come out this evening hoping to pick up a rumour, any snippet of information but he’d hit the jackpot! These four were the actual men he was looking for. But satanists? These yobs? It didn’t make sense. Unless of course, they were just the hired help and they’d been paid by others to do the grave robbing. That would make more sense. But where was ‘sense’ in all of this?

Main recognised that somewhere along the line he had decided that Satanism and witchcraft were middle-class ‘pastimes’, like tennis and skiing — the province of the white collar worker, educated people but maybe this was wrong. The truth was that he had no idea what sort of people were attracted to the occult. One thing was for certain, however: whatever these four were, they knew something about the disappearance of Simon’s body.

Main’s eyes narrowed as he watched the men in the mirror. In his mind he saw them lift his son’s body out of his grave to expose him to the night. The thought made him ball his fists and close his eyes tightly for a moment while he fought to muster self control over the urge to create mayhem.

“Are you all right?” asked a female voice. There was no real concern in it.

Main opened his eyes and said to the barmaid, “Yes, thank you, fine. Just a bit of a headache.”

The girl looked at him suspiciously and Main sensed that she was wondering whether or not to summon the manager. He managed a smile in the hope of changing her mind.

“Migraine,” he said. “It’s the bane of my life.”

“Well, if you’re sure you’re all right...”

“I’m fine.”

The girl went about her business, but kept glancing back at him every few moments. He saw her confide something to another customer who immediately looked in his direction. The customer said something that made the barmaid laugh. The sound made him think of a duck flying across the marshes.

One of the men had left the table to go to the Gents. This gave Main his plan of action. He would wait until the weakest of the four did the same. He judged the weakest to be the one who had shown some semblance of feeling about McKirrop’s death. He would follow him and try to get whatever he could out of him. They were all drinking beer so he shouldn’t have to wait too long. Just as long as the silly barmaid did not try to bring some excitement into her dreary life by drawing too much attention to him. He noticed her looking at him again and summoned up another smile. It was hard.

Main’s target was the third of the men to go to the gents. Main followed thirty seconds later. He had to stop himself from tackling the man immediately when he suddenly realised there was another man already in the toilet. He had overlooked this obvious possibility and alarm bells rang in his head. Be more careful.

Main pretended to look at himself in the mirror and ran his fingers through his hair until the unwanted man left. As soon as the door swung shut Main turned round and walked up quietly behind the yob who was urinating at the wall. The man seemed to sense that something was amiss and stopped whistling. He had half turned his head to the side when Main pushed his face hard up against the tiled wall and held it there.

“What the fu—”

The heel of Main’s hand sunk into the yob’s cheek making speech impossible. He had wet his trousers and his shoes before he managed to stop urinating.

Main felt an almost overwhelming desire to cause pain to the man he held. He wanted him to suffer. He wanted to smash his fist into this man’s face with every ounce of strength he possessed and just at that moment, it seemed formidable. With the greatest of difficulty, he held back and hissed through his teeth, “I am the father of the boy you dug up you shit-faced little cunt! Start talking or, so help me, I’ll turn you into a basket case. Where is my son?”

The yob’s eyes filled with fear. Main relaxed his grip so that he could speak.

“You’ve got it all wrong Mister!”

Main re-applied the pressure. “Wrong, my arse!” he snarled. “I heard what you were saying back there about McKirrop. Start talking!”

“All right, all right! We were there that night, but you’ve got it wrong. You’ve got it all wrong.”

“Talk, you bastard!”

“I can’t — You’re hurting me!”

Main let the yob move away from the wall. It was a mistake. As he straightened up, the man brought his right knee up into Main’s groin and Main doubled up in pain on the floor. Just at that moment the door swung open and another man from the table came in, the man in the leather jacket.

“What the fuck is going on?” he demanded of his companion who was holding the side of his face and standing over Main.

“This guy says he’s the kid’s father.”

“What kid? What are you talking about?”

“The kid’s grave in the cemetery, for Christ’s sake!”

“Jesus!”

The talk of Simon gave Main new strength. Despite his pain he launched himself at the yob who’d kneed him and caught him in the midriff. The man fell backwards with a gasp on to the wet floor with Main on top of him. “Where is he?” rasped Main through gritted teeth. “Where is Simon?”

“You’ve got it all wrong pal,” said the man in the leather jacket but Main persisted.

“Where is he?” he repeated, grabbing the yob on the floor by the throat.

“Get him off me for Christ’s sake!” squealed the man.

His companion kicked Main hard in the ribs, and, as he rolled over in pain, took another kick, this time to the side of his face. Pain exploded in his head but he still rose above it and struggled unsteadily to his feet to charge in again. “Where... is... he?”

“The bastard’s off his head,” complained the first yob; his voice had become high and almost girlish with fear.

Leather jacket caught Main with a vicious punch as he came in and again Main fell back. He saw his assailant grab a bottle of toilet cleaner which was perched on the window sill and, through his pain, he thought that it wasn’t going to make much of a weapon; it was plastic and soft. As he struggled to his feet the contents of the bottle were flung at him and caught him full in the face. In an instant, his eyes were filled with bleach.

Main let out a scream of pain and heard the door bang as the yobs ran out. His eyes were screwed tight shut, but there was no escape from the progressive burning of his eyeballs. He stumbled towards where he thought the wash basins were and groped wildly for the taps. Everything seemed hard, unforgiving and elusive. He found the top of one tap and water started to flow. Main flushed it maniacally up into his face, fearing that he was about to lose his sight for ever. He was only dimly aware of other people having come into the Gents.