ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 1 страница

4017.

Patrick prickled at the need for the offensively random code.

The door of the anatomy wing clicked shut behind him, damming the flow of other students and leaving him alone in the quiet corridor creek that led to the dissection room and, beyond that, the stairs leading down to the embalming room, where Mick spent most of his time.

His Pumas made a low squeak on the scuffed tiled floor.

The white double doors of the DR were not locked. It wasn’t a dissection day, and so the cadavers lay patiently on their tables, looking lost without their attending students. Patrick picked out Number 19’s domed form from across the room. He felt a sense of adversity that had not been there before.

You can’t keep secrets from me.

Mick was not in his office and a note on the half-glazed door told Patrick that he would be back at three thirty p. m. Patrick looked at his watch; it was only eleven a. m. but he was on a roll and had no interest in coming back at three thirty. Three thirty was light years away.

He tried the door handle and it opened, so he went inside.

Mick ran a tight ship. There were uncluttered shelves, a well-swept floor, a single pot-plant on a filing cabinet. The desk was clear, but for a tidy with two pens in it and a three-tier letter tray that held only a few donation and cremation forms. Patrick approved of the tidiness, even if it meant the clipboard which held the Cause of Death checklist was not just lying around.

There were two pale-grey filing cabinets beside the desk. Patrick tried the drawers of both, but they were locked. He rattled them, but this time it didn’t work.

His determination became frustration in a heartbeat. The cadaver was still trying to cheat him. Still guarding its mysteries, even though it was dead and had no use for them itself.

But Patrick had waited so long, and worked so hard. He deserved to know the answers. It wouldn’t be wrong; he was entitled.

He had seen TV shows and films where people did things like sneaking into villains’ headquarters to uncover top-secret information, so he knew it was possible, but the movies made it look like a major operation that was unlikely to be achieved without satellite communications and a grappling hook. A black turtleneck sweater, at the very least. He had none of those. He looked around the bare little office, then went back out to the dissecting room and selected a robust carving fork from the white tray near the door.

He inserted the tines into the metal drawer to lever it open. As he did, he noticed that the plant on top of the cabinet was tilted at a slight angle. He couldn’t leave it like that – he knew that the moment he saw it. He couldn’t even concentrate on the task at hand until it was righted.

He put down the fork.

Under the pot was a saucer, and under the saucer was the key to the filing cabinet.

Inside the top drawer of the first cabinet he opened was the clipboard.

Easy.

On the board was the form he’d only glimpsed before as Mick walked among them, wishing them ill. Patrick’s eyes were drawn directly to the last column, labelled ‘COD’. Cause of Death.

Number 19 had died of heart failure.

That couldn’t be right.

Patrick had held that heart in his hands. There had been no stenosis, no clots, no aneurysm. He had come in here to uncover a secret, only to find that the secret was a lie. He glared at the form, feeling cheated, wanting more, and noticed that the very first column was headed ‘NAME’. He ran his eyes down the list.

‘What are you doing here? ’

He turned; Mick was in the doorway.

Patrick looked at his watch. ‘What are you doing here? The note said you’d be back at three thirty. ’

Mick opened his mouth and raised his eyebrows so high that they almost touched the place where his hair would have been if he’d had any. He closed the couple of paces between them and snatched the clipboard from Patrick’s hand. ‘That’s confidential information. ’

‘I wanted the cause of death. That’s not confidential. Dr Spicer said we could ask any time, and this is any time and you weren’t here to ask, so I looked. ’

‘You broke into a locked filing cabinet. ’

‘I used the key. ’

‘The hidden key. ’

‘If it was hidden, I wouldn’t have found it, because I wasn’t looking. ’

Mick brushed past him and put the clipboard back in the drawer, then slammed the drawer and locked it. He dropped the key into his pocket.

‘What’s your name? ’

Why did everyone always want to know what his name was?

‘Patrick Fort. ’

‘You’re in a lot of trouble, ’ said Mick.

‘What for? ’

‘I just told you what for. ’

‘Why? ’ Patrick was confused; he had explained everything.

‘Don’t play stupid games with me. I’m going to speak to Professor Madoc about this. ’

‘OK, ’ said Patrick.

Mick seemed disappointed that he wasn’t more worried by the prospect. ‘All right, you can get out now. ’

‘OK, ’ said Patrick, but didn’t go. ‘I think the cause of death is wrong. ’

‘What cause of death? ’

‘Number 19. You’ve got heart failure but the heart is not diseased. ’

‘If that’s what’s on the death certificate, that’s what it is. I’m not a doctor, and neither are you, by a very long way. ’

‘I know that. But—’

‘No buts. This conversation is over. ’

‘OK, ’ said Patrick, so started a different conversation. ‘When the people die, you embalm the bodies, right? ’

Mick looked at him but didn’t answer, so Patrick went on, ‘Where do they go afterwards? ’

‘They come up here, ’ said Mick. ‘Then when you lot have finished with them I put all the bits in a bag and they go back to the families for funerals. ’

‘Not the bodies. The people. ’

‘Excuse me? ’

‘Is there an exit? ’

‘A what? ’

‘An exit. In their heads. Like a door they go through. ’

‘Like the one I should have kept locked? ’

‘Yes, ’ said Patrick, ‘like that. Some kind of barrier that people go through when they die. ’

Mick squinted at Patrick; he shook his head; he made a face. ‘No, ’ he finally said.

‘Then what happens to them? Where do they go? Can they come back? ’

Mick stood and stared at Patrick for a long moment, then reached down and lifted up the phone. ‘Hold on a second, ’ he said, ‘I’ll see if the police know. ’

‘OK, ’ said Patrick, and waited to see if the police knew.

Mick stabbed the first two nines with a flourish and a glare, but then sighed and hung up.

‘Just get out, will you? ’

‘OK, ’ said Patrick.

In his excitement he’d forgotten his gloves, and by the time he’d cycled back to the house, his fingers were red and numb. He ran hot water into the kitchen sink and held them under, then stared out of the window that faced next door’s fence and let his mind drift like kelp on a turning tide. The window was dirty; he would have to wash it. He was hungry and he was out of bread. Once his hands had warmed up he would put on his gloves and go over the road and get chips. His mouth tingled in anticipation of vinegar, and he thought of all the twists and turns the chips would have to take as they dropped into his stomach. All the places they’d have to avoid; all the choices his body would make for them, all the chemistry it would employ to break them down; how his peristaltic muscles would guide them along the conveyor belt of his guts until he passed them some time tomorrow morning.

Patrick took his hands from the water and dried them on the tea towel, while his brain turned its inevitable wheel to what had killed Number 19.

The list on the clipboard was almost as disappointing as the brain had been. He had gleaned only one piece of additional information, and that felt like a very minor victory in a failed war of secrets.

The corpse’s name was Samuel Galen.

‘NOT BAD, SAM, ’ Leslie tells me, filled with gloom. But it’s praise indeed from him, and I redouble my efforts to retrain my tongue – stretching, sucking, blowing and braying.

‘Have you eating and drinking soon, ’ he adds grudgingly.

This turns out to be a big fat lie, but I do make progress. The tongue is a magnificent thing. I think about it a lot, now that all my hopes and dreams depend upon it, and less than a week after my wofe betrayed me to a possible killer, Jean and Tracy prop me up in bed and spoon orange juice down my throat.

Elixir of the gods. I know everything is relative, but it tastes so good to me that I actually start to cry.

‘Ahhh, look how happy! ’ says Jean.

‘Ahhh, ’ parrots Tracy Evans, but I can see she’s not interested. She barely looks at me and keeps clattering the teaspoon against my teeth. She’s looking for the man she’s trying to … well, seduce is too elegant a word. She thinks we don’t see. I suppose she thinks we’re all vegetables, but I see; I know what she’s up to. I knew girls like her at Hot Stuff in Merthyr. All the lads knew them – sometimes twice a night.

She puts the juice in too fast and I feel the strange and horrible sensation of it going down the wrong way.

‘Ah! ’

Jean notices – bless her. She jumps up and rushes to get a machine I’ve seen them use on other patients. It’s like a vacuum cleaner and she feeds it down my throat and sucks stuff out of my airway with a nasty rattling sound, while Tracy stands there with her arms crossed, as if I’m making a fuss about nothing and had better not blame her. But in Jean’s eyes I can see how serious this could be.

She puts the horrible tube into me twice more, and collects watery orange mucus in a kidney bowl while my eyes stream with something similar, and I fight to keep breathing.

Finally she stops and takes Tracy away. For a bollocking, I hope.

I lie there panting, feel as if I’ve been punched on the inside, all my fresh hope scrunched into a stupid ball and tossed away.

Even if they’re not trying to kill me, they might yet succeed.

And all I can do is lie here and wait for it.

‘Patrick Fort! ’ said Professor Madoc, as if he were a long-lost friend. ‘Have a seat. ’

Patrick sat down and looked around. Professor Madoc fiddled with a Rubik’s cube behind the vast wooden desk that held two silver-framed photographs – one of a smiling young woman, and the other of a boat. There was another photo of the same boat on the wall behind him, with the professor himself looking tanned and rich, waving from the puffy red depths of a life-jacket. Patrick could read the name painted on the prow: Sharp End.

‘Damn thing, ’ said Professor Madoc at the cube. ‘You ever done one of these? ’

‘Yes, ’ said Patrick.

The professor put it down and cleared his throat. ‘I hear you’ve had a few run-ins, Patrick. A few problems. ’

‘No, ’ said Patrick. ‘No problems. ’

‘That’s not what people have told me. ’

‘OK. ’

Professor Madoc looked at a piece of paper in front of him.

‘Inappropriate attitude to staff, a near-physical altercation with a fellow student over a cadaver, ignoring procedure during dissection, and unauthorized access to confidential donation details. ’

‘I wanted to know the cause of death; that’s not confidential. ’

‘That’s not the point, ’ said Professor Madoc. His hand strayed towards the cube but he caught it in time and drummed his fingers on the desktop instead. ‘You broke into a locked filing cabinet. ’

‘I used the key. ’

‘It was locked for a good reason. ’

‘What reason? ’

‘For reasons of confidentiality. ’

‘But the cause of death isn’t confidential. ’ How many times did he have to say it?

‘But the identity of the donor is. ’

‘But I don’t care about the identity of the donor. I only wanted to know the cause of death. ’

‘Listen, ’ said Professor Madoc more sharply. ‘This is a medical school, not a kindergarten. We won’t tolerate this kind of disruption from our students, even ones with issues. ’

‘What issues? ’ said Patrick.

Professor Madoc took a moment to adjust to frankness. ‘We understand about your Asperger’s, Patrick, and we certainly have made allowances for it, but I have formally to advise you that we cannot make endless allowances. If I have further reports of incidents of this nature, I will be forced to suspend your studies here at Cardiff. Do you understand? ’

Patrick pursed his lips.

‘Do you understand? ’

‘Yes, I understand, ’ said Patrick. ‘I’m trying to decide whether I care. ’

Professor Madoc raised his eyebrows the way Mick had. ‘What do you mean? ’

‘I might not care. I might have finished here. I don’t know if there’s any point in going on. ’

‘No point in going on? What does that mean? ’ The professor’s hand twitched again towards the cube.

Patrick thought that Professor Madoc might have a touch of Asperger’s himself, because he didn’t seem to comprehend anything he was saying.

‘I think the cause of death on the sheet is wrong. What’s the point of going on if I’m basing judgements on bad information? ’

‘Cause of death is certified by a doctor. ’

‘Doctors get it wrong all the time. You see it on TV. ’

Professor Madoc’s hand flinched, and this time he followed through with a pick-up and started to twist the cube’s little coloured blocks – frowning at them disapprovingly as he went on.

‘The DR technician told me you asked him about a … doorway in the brain? Does that have anything to do with all of this? ’

‘Yes, ’ said Patrick, and stared at the cube turning in the man’s long, elegant fingers. ‘I want to know what happens. ’

The professor sighed deeply and put down the cube. ‘You know, Patrick, all we see in the dissecting room is the physical aftermath of a life. A medical student starts his journey with the dead and works backwards. ’

Patrick pursed his lips. ‘But I want to start with the dead and work forwards. ’

Professor Madoc gave a small laugh. ‘The dead can’t speak to us, Patrick, although our lives would be immeasurably simpler if they could. While doctors might discover the mechanics of how someone died, they are privy to neither why they died nor to what happens to them after they die. To solve those puzzles I think you’d need to consult a detective … and a priest. ’

He smiled, but Patrick didn’t.

‘And how do they solve those puzzles? ’ said Patrick, leaning forward.

Professor Madoc looked a little taken aback by the sudden interest in a throwaway remark. He spread his hands in new uncertainty. ‘Well, I imagine a priest doesn’t actually know. That’s a matter of faith. ’

‘Superstition, ’ Patrick corrected him. ‘How does the detective know? ’

The professor gave it serious thought. ‘Well, ’ he finally said, ‘I suppose that to find out why somebody died, a detective would have to consult the living. ’

‘What kind of living? ’

‘Friends and family. Witnesses. Attending medical professionals. People like that, I suppose. ’

Patrick sat back in his chair and Professor Madoc blew out his cheeks in relief. He wasn’t sure how this conversation had turned from him issuing a formal warning to a student firing awkward philosophical questions at him. He needed to get back on track.

‘You know, Patrick, Dr Spicer tells me that despite these difficulties, you’re a real talent in the dissection room. He says you’re a leading candidate for the Goldman Prize. It would be a shame to give up now, wouldn’t it? ’

Patrick remained still for an uncomfortably long time. Finally he nodded silently and rose to his feet, then paused and reached across the desk. The professor withdrew slightly, but Patrick picked up the Rubik’s cube.

Professor Madoc watched as the matching colours spread quickly up the six sides until the puzzle was complete and Patrick laid it back on the desk.

‘It’s not difficult, ’ he said. ‘I can show you, if you like. ’

‘Thank you, ’ said Professor Madoc, and Patrick left.

THE ORANGE JUICE has gone to my chest.

Pneumonia. They don’t say it, but I know that’s the fear. People die of pneumonia – even healthy people. But I’m incredibly vulnerable. Phlegm rattles in my throat and my back is agony every time I breathe, so I try not to do that.

It doesn’t work.

Jean and Angie use the vacuum on me almost constantly. It’s disgusting and painful. Two doctors come. I wonder if one of them is the killer. Who knows? I would, if only I’d kept my eyes open that night. Would it be better or worse to know whether a killer was standing over me, taking my pulse, checking my drip? Right now I don’t care if one of them killed the man in the next bed, as long as they help me.

‘Blink twice if it hurts, ’ says one, tapping my chest in that creepy way that doctors do – as if they’re trying to find a secret passage in a smuggler’s wall.

I blink lots and they exchange worried looks.

Without warning, tears roll out of my eyes and into my ears. I’m going to die, and I will never have seen Alice or Lexi again. I’ll never have told them how much I love them or why I never came home that day, or where I’ve been since.

‘Aaaaa! ’ I say.

‘Don’t try to talk, ’ says the younger doctor. ‘It will only hurt. ’

He’s right, but I don’t care. I don’t want to slip into unconsciousness and die without doing my best to leave something behind, even if it’s a single word.

‘Aaaaa, ’ I say. ‘Duh. ’

‘Ssssh, ’ says Jean, holding my hand and looking nervous. I reckon she and Tracy will get it in the neck if I die. Leslie will be furious – in a monosyllabic sort of way. All that work wasted. Even now my tongue curls away from where I want it to be, and I have to think of everything he taught me. I make an enormous effort, full of grunts and phlegm.

‘Aaaan. Dee. ’

‘What’s that? ’ says the older doctor, then turns to Jean. ‘Do you know what he’s saying? ’

‘I’ll get the Possum, ’ she says, but I don’t want it. I want to hear my own voice.

‘Aaanduh! ’ I say as my lungs protest, my back spikes, and sweat and tears pour down my nose and cheeks.

I can’t do the S. ‘Aandee! ’

There! I did it!

‘Angie? ’ says Jean.

Not Angie, for Christ’s sake! Lexi! But it’s all I can do and it really doesn’t matter whether they understand or not. If it’s just the first word of thousands, or the last one ever to pass my lips, at least I’ve named the most important thing in my life.

‘Well done! ’ says Jean, looking as relieved as she does encouraging. ‘I’ll get Angie to come and say hello. You’ll be ordering us all about by lunchtime. ’

Another big lie.

Who cares? I don’t even know what’s true any more. If you can’t trust a mirror, what can you believe?

Jean bustles away with the older doctor. The younger doctor takes my notes off the end of my bed. I can’t see it happen – I just see the top of his head – but I know the feeling and the sound like my own breathing. The gritty little metal noise and the tiny vibration it makes in the steel frame and through the mattress. The princess had her pea; I have my notes.

He moves slightly so that I can see him as he reads them intently – I wonder what’s written there: just the injuries from the flying Ford Focus? Or everything from childhood measles onwards? He reads them like they’re instructions for a bomb disposal. Then he comes over, jabs a needle into my hip and I close my eyes, exhausted by the effort and the pain of living.

If I wake up dead, so be it.

THERE WERE ONLY two Galens in the Cardiff phone book, and only one with the initial S.

The house was up Penylan Road – a large red-brick home set towards the back of a broad, unimaginative garden, where the only flowers were snowdrops and primroses in a narrow stripe either side of the wide gravel driveway. Everything else was shrubbery made of laurels and conifers. Patrick was allergic to conifers and regarded them all with suspicion. If he lived here, he’d dig them all out and have a bonfire.

He wheeled his bike past a late-registration BMW. This was how Number 19 had lived: well. It was a start, but to find out how he had died, Patrick guessed he needed more than he could gather from noting what kind of car the man had driven. He wasn’t sure what he needed, or how he was going to get it, but Patrick also knew that there were too many variables for him to have formulated a watertight plan of action. The front door might be opened by anyone – a wife, a mother, a son, a cleaner – and each of them would require a different strategy.

But he only had one strategy.

Therefore the only concrete opening he had prepared was My name is Patrick Fort and I want some information about Mr Samuel Galen. He assumed everything would fall into place from there.

Patrick put down the kickstand on his bike and knocked on the door. He could see his silhouette in the glossy black paint, and his face in the chrome letterbox.

‘Go away! I’ve called the police! ’

Patrick blinked in surprise. It was a woman’s voice, high and screechy. And illogical. Why would she have called the police before he’d even knocked? She didn’t know why he was there.

Even so, he was wary. He took a step backwards. Maybe he’d done something wrong; something he couldn’t understand. It happened all the time. Once when he was fourteen he’d almost been arrested for walking out of Asda wearing jeans and a blue striped T-shirt so his mother, who was in the car, could approve the purchase. Patrick had tried to explain to the security guard that he had left his own clothes in the fitting room, so how could he be stealing these ones? Especially with the labels still swinging off them.

Maybe this was like that. Somebody not understanding things.

The faint sound of breaking glass drew him and his bike around the side of the house to the back garden. He flinched as glass broke much closer to him this time.

A girl stood in the garden. A girl or a woman; Patrick was never quite sure when one became the other. She was as slim as a girl, but as angry as a woman. She had startling white-blonde spikes of hair, and – despite the late-winter chill – wore a white T-shirt, black leather mini skirt and motorcycle boots.

She drew back her arm and hurled what looked like half a brick through a downstairs window.

‘I’ve called the police! ’

‘So have I! ’ the girl/woman screamed back at the house. ‘You fucking old cow! ’ She turned away and Patrick thought she was going to run, but instead she started to look around for something else to throw. It wasn’t easy; the garden was as well-tended as the house – apart from the broken windows. Even the soil in the shrubbery looked stone-free. Patrick couldn’t see where she’d got the half-brick from.

‘Hi, ’ said Patrick.

The girl/woman looked at him for the first time. ‘Who are you? ’

‘Patrick Fort, ’ said Patrick. ‘Are you Mrs Galen? ’

‘No, I’m fucking not, ’ she spat vehemently. ‘And neither is she. ’ She parted the shrubbery. Patrick noticed a smallish stone next to his foot.

‘Here, ’ he said, and held it out to her.

The girl looked at him suspiciously, then came over and snatched it from his hand like a wary monkey. ‘Cheers, ’ she said, and threw it through an upstairs window. It made a neat black hole and a web of white cracks.

‘The police are coming, ’ he pointed out, and she cocked her head at the sound of approaching sirens.

‘Bollocks. ’

‘I thought you called them? ’

‘Yeah, right, ’ she snorted, and walked over to the six-foot wooden fence that surrounded the garden. ‘You going to gimme a leg up or what? ’

Patrick wheeled his bike across the lawn and edged his way through the shrubs. He hesitated, then went to put his hands around her waist so he could lift her up.

‘Watch where you’re putting your hands, mate! ’ she said, and he took a step backwards. ‘Like this. ’ She made a stirrup with her fingers.

He flinched as she stepped into his interlaced fingers, and then almost slung her clean over the fence, she was so light, and he was so keen to be rid of her. He wiped his hands hard on the seat of his jeans.

‘You coming? ’ she said from the other side.

Was he? Patrick stood for a moment, weighing up his options and objectives. He wanted information. The woman in the house wouldn’t speak to him, whereas the girl in the garden had. She was probably his best bet.

‘OK, ’ he said.

He’d never escaped over a fence before and wasn’t quite sure of the procedure. He propped his bike against it, then stepped on the crossbar and lay precariously along the fence, with the planking digging a long line of discomfort from his shoulder to his balls, while he gripped with one hand and his feet. He teetered there, and stretched an arm back down to grip the crossbar. He should have put the bike over the fence first.

‘Come on! ’

‘I’m getting my bike, ’ he explained.

‘There’s no time! ’

Two uniformed policemen walked briskly round the side of the house and Patrick realized too late that he’d chosen the wrong team. They saw him and started to jog across the lawn.

‘Oi! ’ shouted one. ‘Stay right there! ’

A rush of adrenaline took Patrick completely by surprise. It fired a stream of white-hot excitement through his body. No video game had ever made him feel this way, and he laughed at the policemen as they speeded up across the grass.

But the bike anchored him on the wrong side of the fence. He should really leave it.

He didn’t. He hauled it up, one-handed – his shoulder burning with effort and his chest and balls shrieking to be allowed off the narrow wooden ridge. He would have overbalanced back into the garden, except that the girl who wasn’t Mrs Galen grabbed two handfuls of him – his jeans and his hoodie – and provided a counterweight as he lifted his bike up to join him, until his weight shifted and they both rolled off the fence and dropped on to the ground, only missing the girl because she jumped out of the way with a shriek.

He lay in the alleyway, winded and staring at the same sky that had been there the day of the monkey bars and the swing.

The first of the policemen hit the other side of the wooden fence with a grunt. The girl yelled, ‘Run! Run! ’ then took her own advice and disappeared from his field of vision.

Patrick was on his feet in an instant, running alongside his bike until he had the presence of mind to jump into the saddle, like a Dodge City bank robber on to a getaway pony.

He heard the police shouting something behind him, but never looked back, and very soon his pedalling took him to a calmer, quieter place – as it so often had.

He caught up with the girl in the park down at the bottom of the hill. She was walking now, not running, and staying close to the shadows of the rhododendrons.

He slowed his bike beside her and said, ‘Hi. ’

She put a hand to her chest. ‘Shit! You nearly gave me a heart attack! ’

But she started laughing then, and didn’t stop until she was crying.

‘Shit, ’ she said again. ‘That bitch! ’ She wiped her eyes, leaving dark streaks from her eyes to her temples. Patrick waited until she’d finished.

‘You want to get a drink? ’ she said.