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Patrick stopped breathing; if he could have stopped his heart pounding, he would have.

The moment seemed endless. Then the legs walked away and back towards the door.

For a second Patrick was relieved – then he realized that if the man left the block, the outer door would be locked, trapping him inside.

He rolled off the bags of cold meat and one of his trainers squealed on the floor. He froze again, then quickly pulled the shoes off his feet and slid swiftly across the floor on his socks to Table 21, and from there to Table 13.

The man was still ahead of him. He had to catch him up. Or slow him down.

Patrick wasn’t a spy. He didn’t have a grappling hook or satellite communications, or even a black turtleneck sweater. He had his trainers – that was all – so he hurled one of them into a dim corner of the room, where it landed with a slap and a clatter.

He almost laughed when the man stopped, turned, and then followed the noise to the back wall like a stupid dog, while Patrick skidded out of the door in his socks.

He couldn’t ride properly with one trainer, so he walked. Ran. Half walked, half ran, pushing his bike, and with his socks wet and stretching and tripping him up until finally he peeled them off and dropped them in the gutter. His foot was shockingly white under the streetlights.

A police car passed and Patrick pressed himself into a garden hedge, even though he’d done nothing wrong. Something told him that this was one of those occasions when people might not understand what he’d been doing. And he had no answers tonight – only questions that made his head ache to think of them.

Before, Patrick had only thought about the peanut in relation to how Number 19 had died, not why. Why was a far tougher puzzle, and now that it was gone, the peanut seemed to be a critical piece of that jigsaw. How did Number 19 ingest a peanut that could kill him? And why would somebody steal it now?

Cold rain trickled under his T-shirt and down his back, and still he stood there. For the first time that he could ever remember – and he could remember almost everything – Patrick knew he needed help.

Patrick didn’t have his blue gloves with him, but he stopped at the payphone outside the bookies and dialled with a wet sleeve pulled over his shivering index finger.

It took thirteen rings before the mechanical rhythm was halted by the sound of sleepy mouth-breathing and a croak that might have been hello.

‘If there was something that proved how someone had died, ’ he said, ‘why would you want to hide that? ’

There was a long silence and then his mother said shakily, ‘Who is this? ’

Why is he asking? What’s happened?

Sarah Fort’s head asked the questions her heart didn’t want answered. She had been expecting the worst for years – ever since Patrick was a small boy – and yet time hadn’t dulled the sharp panic she felt pricking her chest and starting to turn her stomach.

‘What do you mean? ’ she asked him. Anyone but Patrick would have noticed her voice shaking.

‘Say someone dies, ’ he said again. ‘And then, if someone else – not the dead person – someone else—’

He was obviously getting muddled, but she didn’t help him out. She was in no hurry to hear what he wanted to say. She would wait all night – all her life – rather than help him to reach the point where everything she had done for both of them would fall apart.

But he persisted. He was always so bloody persistent.

‘If that someone hides something that might show why the other person died. ’

‘Yes? ’ she said faintly.

‘Well, what does that mean? ’

Sarah paused. ‘I don’t understand the question. ’

She knew she was being obtuse. Things would be so much simpler if she’d just said, What are you trying to tell me, Patrick? She didn’t ask because he would tell her – and she didn’t want to deal with whatever might happen after that. She would rather play this precarious game of denial.

‘Why are you calling tonight? It’s not Thursday. ’

‘I know, ’ he said. ‘I need help. ’

‘Are you all right? ’ She was surprised to hear a sharp note of concern in her voice, despite everything.

‘I lost one of my trainers and I need help to understand the actions. ’

‘What actions? ’

‘Hiding the thing, ’ he said in a tone that revealed his frustration, ‘that might show why something happened. What does that action mean? ’

She thought carefully of the best way to answer him, and then did.

‘People hide things because they don’t want anyone to know about them. ’

‘Why? ’

You tell me, Patrick! Rotting animals under your pillow, and pictures of dead children and crazy lists of weird words! YOU tell ME!

Instead she said, ‘I suppose … because they feel guilty. ’

‘About what? ’

Sarah felt sick. ‘Doing something bad. ’

‘Like what? ’

‘I don’t know, Patrick! Something bad! Something very, very bad! ’

There was a pause.

‘So what must I do about it? ’

What indeed? She felt emotion start to clog her throat.

‘Do whatever you think best, ’ she said hoarsely.

‘Best for who? ’

Sarah could barely whisper. ‘For you. ’

There was a long silence and then Patrick said an abrupt ‘OK’ in a tone she knew meant that, for him, the conversation was over.

She didn’t press him, even though it was three in the morning and any other mother would have done. Should have done. Any mother of a different son.

But she was only relieved that he’d stopped asking questions that made her fear him, even as she feared for him.

‘Good, ’ she said, and then ‘Goodbye. ’

She sat in the kitchen with the phone in her lap long after Patrick had rung off. It was a harsh February and the kitchen fire had long since gone out, but she shivered for other reasons too. The cold from the stone floor seeped through her socks and crept achingly up her ankles and her shins, and still she sat there, thinking about her strange son calling her on a strange night to ask a strange question.

The splinter of progress she thought she’d seen at Christmas – away from the obsessive past and into a more normal future – now seemed like a cruel deception. She wasn’t a religious woman, but she wanted a sign. A single, solid indicator that Matt’s life – and hers – had not been wasted.

She couldn’t think of one.

Not one.

On another night – a warmer night; or if the fire had not gone out; or if the cat had been sitting on her lap – habit alone might have been enough to keep her going.

But this night was cold and this night was dark, and the cat was outside killing small things.

So there was nothing to stop her standing up and staring out of the kitchen window at the Fiesta outside the old wooden shed. Nothing to stop her pulling cold rubber boots on to her bare feet and crunching across the gravel under the slitted moon in her towelling robe; nothing to stop her driving six miles to the twenty-four-hour service station and buying two bottles of Vladivar.

One for now and one for just in case.

WHEN PATRICK GOT home it was four a. m., so he was surprised to see the lights were on. The minute he opened the door and pushed his bike inside, Jackson appeared at the top of the stairs in fake silk pyjamas. Patrick knew they must be fake because silk was expensive, but Jackson’s TV was a piece of junk.

‘Where the fuck have you been? ’ Jackson yelled at him.

WHERE the fuck have you been?

Where the FUCK have you been?

Where the fuck have you BEEN?

Patrick said nothing. He wiped his bike down with a towel he kept in the hall, then carried it upstairs and hung it on its hooks, while Jackson harangued him from the doorway.

‘I told you she had to go, didn’t I? She’s your fucking guest and you should have kicked her out. Then none of this would have happened! ’

‘None of what? ’

‘Oh Jackson, shut up! ’ Kim shouted from her room, and Jackson stomped down the short corridor to her door, and they yelled at each other for a bit, using words like ‘whore’ and ‘slag’ and ‘control freak’ and ‘arsehole’.

Patrick almost said something, but then reserved judgement on whether or not there was a need to swear. He used the time alone to strip off his sodden clothing, wring it out of the window and pile it on top of the hot-water tank. He stared at his single trainer and wished he’d had something else to throw. He only had one pair of shoes with him at college; now he only had half a pair.

‘Don’t pretend you give a shit! ’ yelled Kim.

‘I won’t! ’ Jackson shouted back. ‘I don’t! ’

Patrick pulled on dry shorts and a T-shirt, turned out his light and got into his sleeping bag, shivering with delayed cold, and feeling again the paintwork of the old door, pressed against his cheek as his parents fought behind it. Over him. This felt just like that.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake! ’ said a voice he recognized as Lexi’s. ‘Some of us are trying to sleep! ’

A dull thumping on the wall beside Patrick’s head told him that some of the people trying to sleep lived next door.

Kim’s door slammed like a gun.

‘Fuck you, too! ’ Jackson yelled, then came back to Patrick’s room and stood in the doorway.

‘Bitch, ’ he said. ‘Fucking bitch. ’ And then he walked in, sat heavily on Patrick’s legs and burst into tears.

Patrick stared at the ceiling. He hoped that soon Jackson would tire of crying, get off his legs and go back to his own room. But when none of those things happened, he asked him what was wrong.

Apparently what was wrong was that after Patrick had left, Lexi had crawled out of his bed and into Kim’s bed instead – where it turned out that Kim was a lesbian, after all.

A loud one.

‘If you hadn’t brought her home, none of this would ever have happened, ’ sobbed Jackson.

That was self-evident, thought Patrick. But then, if he hadn’t brought Lexi home, he would also never have found out about the allergies. He would still have two trainers, he wouldn’t have called his mother without gloves and on the wrong night of the week, and he would not now understand that the missing peanut might mean that someone was hiding something bad.

Cause and effect was a funny thing.

For the first time since he had come to the city, Patrick felt his need to complete his quest vying for space in his head with this new mystery. He had spent more than half his young life seeking answers about what had happened to his father, but suddenly it was Lexi’s rich, mean, mummified parent that excited his mind.

And the new mystery did not involve the intricacies of reaching out to a life beyond this one, only the simple question of who was guilty, and why.

PART THREE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miracles all, in Jean’s eyes.

Then there were the murders.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so a senior consultant did something.

He suggested that Gavin was ready to go home.

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

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

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

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

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

In a manner of speaking.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Oh, I’m fine, ’ she’d smiled.

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

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

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

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

In a manner of speaking.

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

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

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

‘No. Let them have their break. ’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kittens free to good homes, only boys left.

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

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

Kind, reliable person …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘You threw your shoe at Mr Jarvis. ’

‘Who’s Mr Jarvis? ’

‘I am, ’ said Mick.

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

‘Why? ’

‘I didn’t want to be locked in. ’

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

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

But you had to get so close!

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

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

‘But why switch them off? ’ asked Patrick.

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

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

‘Maybe. Maybe not. ’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘The whole college thing. ’

‘Oh, ’ said Patrick.

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

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

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

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

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

‘I don’t think so. ’

‘It would have been to any normal person! ’

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

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