ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 4 страница

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

‘A peanut, ’ said the professor.

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

‘You were told, ’ Mick said.

‘Scott was told. I’m not Scott. ’

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

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

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

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

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

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

It meant he had a head start.

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

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

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

It didn’t open.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patrick left before they came down.

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

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

‘What kind of crime? ’

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

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

The porter’s nose.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His sleeves were soaked to the elbows with blood.

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

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

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

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

‘What’s your name? ’

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

He was suddenly wary. ‘Why? ’

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

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

Therefore, thought Patrick, she was lying.

But why?

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

And the blood was there on his own knuckles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Hello? ’ she said more forcefully.

Breathing.

‘Are you going to say anything, pervert? ’

The breathing stopped.

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

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

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

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

‘Patrick? ’

The line went dead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But Jean and Angie didn’t even say goodbye.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She picked up the woman’s loose hand.

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

The finger stayed still.

‘Would you like pink? ’

The finger stayed still.

‘Or red? Go for the vamp look. ’

The finger stayed still.

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

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

She did it again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meg nodded slowly.

‘Does it bother you? ’ asked Angie.

‘A bit. ’

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

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

A few weeks!

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

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

TEA WAS A curious time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Out, ’ he said.

‘Out where? ’

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

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

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

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

More than lost.

Emptied of hope.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He threw Art Forum at the TV and walked out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And maybe she needed him.

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

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

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

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

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

He stopped to think.

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

‘What? What about him? ’

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

‘What about my father? ’ Lexi insisted.

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

‘I think your father was murdered. ’

‘I’M PREGNANT, ’ SAID Tracy Evans.

Her reflection looked perturbed by the news.

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

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

Frightening.

Tracy chewed her lip.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then they’d had sex. As usual.

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

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

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

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

And this was the consequence.

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

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

‘I DON’T WANT to go in. ’

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

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

‘Wait! ’

He turned.

‘Are you going in anyway? ’

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

‘Well, what am I going to do? ’

‘I don’t know. What? ’

‘I don’t know. ’

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