Tom’s aunt, who had said nothing for a while, smiled and nodded at them both and took advantage of the quiet to ask if anyone wanted another biscuit.
Chapter 13
One cup of tea each, and twenty seven minutes later, they had what they both agreed would turn out to be either an excellent, well thought out plan or, heaven forbid, a disastrous, mess of a scheme.
It had been Dorothy’s idea.
‘The best place to hide something is often in the most obvious place of all,’ she said. ‘Where’s the one place that people are most likely to die?’
‘Dunno,’ said Tom. He thought for a while. ‘In a cemetery?’
‘They don’t die there.’
‘On the roads? Dump the two of them in a gutter in the hope that whoever finds them will think they were hit and run victims?’
Dorothy thought for a moment. ‘Not a bad idea,’ she admitted. ‘But I think my idea is better.’
‘Go on then, where?’
‘In the hospital.’
Tom stared at her and frowned.
‘People are always dying in hospitals,’ she pointed out. ‘No one will take too much notice of a couple of extra bodies. If we could put the bodies in empty beds the staff will assume they died there.’
Dorothy had, since childhood, been a diabetic. She had, over the years, been a frequent visitor to the hospital. Like many long term patients she knew how the local hospital worked as well as, or better than, most of the staff. She’d seen the hospital grow and she’d seen it decline.
‘Don’t they, sort of, keep count of the patients?’
‘The admissions system is all computerised,’ Dorothy pointed out.
‘I know how to access the computer. Do you know their names?’
‘I can find them.’
They went back into the hall. The two bodies had begun to stiffen. Tom rescued Dorothy’s bras and handed them to her, and then removed the incriminating notebook from the fat sprout’s pocket. He took out their plastic identification wallets. Dorothy took the bras from him as though they were contaminated and then put them on the stairs. ‘I think I’ll wash these before I wear them again,’ she said. Tom put the sprout’s notebook on the fire in the kitchen. He also burned the identification papers he had taken from the two men. The notebook was half empty and for a moment Tom was tempted to tear out the used pages and keep the rest. It was a long time since he’d had the luxury of a notebook to put in his pocket. But he knew that would have been a dangerous thing to do. Helped by Tom’s aunt, who was much stronger than she looked, and who didn’t seem in the slightest bit surprised that they were now dragging bodies through the house, Dorothy and Tom half carried and half dragged the two sprouts through the kitchen, out of the back door and into the small yard at the back of the house where Tom kept his bicycle and, more importantly, the small wooden trailer which he used for carrying logs and vegetables back to the house. Occasionally, Tom used the trailer to help Dorothy with bigger deliveries in the neighbourhood.
‘It’ll be a squeeze to get them both in at once,’ said Dorothy.
‘We have to,’ replied Tom. ‘I don’t want to have to make two trips.’
Tom removed the back of the trailer and he and Dorothy crammed in the larger of the two corpses. They then lay the smaller corpse on top of it. The legs of the biggest corpse stuck out. They didn’t have an old carpet in which to wrap the bodies (‘How come people in films always have a spare carpet handy?’ asked Tom) so they covered them first with an old blanket, then an old sheet, next with some sheets of cardboard and finally with a sheet of rusting corrugated iron which they took off the roof of their small shed. They used an old washing line to tie the load onto the trailer. The result was a mess but it had the dubious advantage of looking so untidy that it didn’t look as if they were trying to hide something. It looked as if they were wheeling rubbish to a recycling centre.
‘It looks terribly heavy,’ said Dorothy.
Tom hitched the trailer to the tow bar on his bicycle, climbed onto the bicycle and pressed down on the pedal. It took all his effort but he managed to move forwards a foot or two. ‘It’ll be all right once I’ve got moving,’ he said. ‘Just keep your fingers crossed that I don’t have to stop suddenly.’
And then they waited for it to get dark.
Tom put water in the saucepan he hadn’t used to kill the sprout and put the pan on the stove. As the water first boiled he added a few potatoes, a couple of carrots, a swede and finally some stale bread that was too hard to eat.
By the time the three of them had finished eating the resultant stew, it was dark. They stacked the dirty dishes in the sink and treated themselves to a rare coffee. Tea was difficult to find, and expensive, but coffee was usually available only on the black market. A man who regularly employed Dorothy to deliver messages had a supply of instant coffee and occasionally gave her a jar as a tip. The jars were always long past their ‘Best Before’ date but neither Tom nor Dorothy cared about that.
‘Is it too soon?’ asked Dorothy, when she and Tom had both finished their coffee. They had made the drinks last as long as humanly possible in order to give themselves something to do while they waited. Those who talk about bravery and courage often forget that it is only the fearful who can be truly brave. The stupid, the thoughtless, the unimaginative, the reckless and the impulsive may appear to be brave but often their actions are merely a result of their failure to understand the consequences of what they are doing. And the real courage must be found by those who must wait; enduring those eternal minutes of fearful expectation without giving up or abandoning their plans.
Tom looked at the old clock on the wall.
‘What are we going to do with your aunt?’ asked Dorothy, nodding in the direction of Tom’s aunt, who was nibbling another biscuit, her fifth of the day.
‘Do you think we can leave her here?’
Dorothy looked at him, looked at his aunt, thought for a moment and then shook her head. ‘No. She might wander off.’ His aunt’s dementia was still in the early stages and she had moments of lucidity but on several occasions Tom had had to comb the streets looking for her. One early evening he’d found her in a local park. She’d been standing next to a lake, crying. Very few people walked in parks, especially after dusk. Anyone who did so could be arrested under the For Your Own Safety Curfew.
He touched his aunt gently on her shoulder. ‘Get your coat,’ he said. ‘We’re going out.’ His aunt smiled with delight. She rushed to the back door, grabbed her coat off the hook and put it on. She then picked up the cat and held it, unprotesting, in her arms.
‘You can’t take the cat!’ said Tom.
His aunt’s response was to cling ever tighter to the cat. Feeling squeezed, and unable to breathe, Tabatha started to struggle.
‘OK,’ said Tom softly. ‘Bring the cat. But don’t squeeze it too tight. And for heavens sake don’t let it wander off.’ His aunt kissed the cat on the nose and relaxed her grip. The cat stopped struggling.
And then they set off. Tom riding the bicycle. The two dead sprouts in the trailer. And Dorothy and Tom’s aunt (with the cat) walking behind.
Chapter 14
Apart from one scary moment when the trailer nearly tipped over, spilling its contents on the road, the journey to the hospital went more smoothly than they could have hoped. Tom rode his bicycle and towed the trailer with the two corpses in it. The added weight of the trailer meant that he couldn’t have travelled at much above walking pace even if he’d wanted to. Dorothy and Tom’s aunt (at Tom’s insistence, carrying Tabatha in a shopping bag) walked along the pavement. Occasionally, Tom slowed a little to allow the two women to catch up with him. Dorothy kept an eye on the trailer to make sure that the cargo didn’t slip. The streets at that time of night were dark and almost deserted. There were no revellers, and no drinkers wobbling home, because there were no pubs. The public houses that had survived the ban on smoking had eventually succumbed when the ban on drinking alcoh
ol in public places had been introduced. These days people sat at home and drank and smoked alone. Naturally, to help ease their loneliness, they drank and smoked far more than they had ever smoked and drunk when they’d been able to do so in company.
The energy crisis meant that there were no street lights. The roads were pitch black. The lack of light, and the lack of people in the streets, meant that there were no CCTV cameras switched on. The cameras (the ones that hadn’t been stolen) were still there (most thieves had quickly realised that there was no point in stealing things for which there was no market). But they weren’t switched on. There wasn’t enough electricity to run them and EUDCE didn’t have the money to spend on hiring people to watch the pictures they took.
The only people out and about were shadowy householders dumping rubbish in the gutters and shadowy scavengers searching through what had been thrown away in the hope that they could find something to eat or to wear or to sell. Dumping rubbish was illegal but everyone did it. The official recycling centres were miles away. Tom knew two men who had been caught, charged, arrested and deported for breaking into people’s homes and dumping rubbish in them. And he knew a former surveyor who spent his nights searching for empty food tins. The man earned pennies for food by peeling off the labels and selling them to a man who turned them into pulp from which he made hand-made paper. Occasionally, a few suspects would hold a dog roast in the street but these were frowned on by the sprouts because people seemed to enjoy them.
The only motorised traffic belonged to sprouts, travelling on official business (or on business they said was official, which wasn’t necessarily the same thing at all). Suspects had no cars. Only sprouts had access to what little oil was left.
At the hospital Tom parked his bicycle in a dark corner of the almost empty car park.
‘Wait here,’ said Dorothy. ‘I’ll get a trolley.’
Tom looked at her.
‘We can’t just carry the bodies into the hospital,’ she explained.
‘But no one will look at us if we’re wheeling a body in on a trolley.’
It was ten minutes before she returned, pushing a hospital trolley. Lying on top of the trolley were a white sheet, a red blanket and a white coat.
‘Put on the coat,’ she told Tom. ‘I borrowed it from the staff room.’
‘Did anyone see you?’
‘No. It was deserted.’
Tom put on the coat. And then, after untying the rope holding the bodies in the trailer, he and Dorothy manoeuvred the top corpse up onto the trolley. It was much more difficult than they thought it would be. Tom found himself cursing the body he was struggling to manhandle. But, as he started to get angry, he remembered that if he got angry he would become impatient and that if he became impatient he would be careless. And carelessness would lead direct to death. For the three of them. He took deep breaths and calmed down. Once he’d managed to heave the body onto the trolley he and Dorothy then covered it with the sheet and the blanket.
‘You push the trolley,’ said Dorothy. ‘Your aunt and I will walk along beside as though we’re worried relatives.’
And that’s exactly what they did.
No one spared them a glance.
The hospital accident department looked like an Arabian indoor market. Suspects weren’t usually entitled to be admitted to hospital for care. Their only hope of seeing a doctor was to sit and wait and hope that they would one day be seen. If there was a queue it was difficult to see where it started and where it ended. In a corner three men were brewing tea on a small fire. No one seemed to have noticed. If they had noticed they didn’t care. Only sprouts were admitted for medium or long-term treatment.
‘Where do we go now?’ asked Tom, when they’d passed through the accident and emergency unit. Despite the time of night the unit was remarkably busy. A drunk was arguing loudly with a nurse. He was twice her size and attempting to be threatening, but she looked bored and unconcerned and not in the slightest bit frightened. A man and a woman, both white-faced, were sitting holding hands, giving each other comfort. Tom felt more nervous now. He could feel his shirt sticking to his back. When he’d been riding the bicycle, and pulling the trailer, he’d had to work hard and concentrate on where he was going. He hadn’t had time to worry. Now the worries were piling up. What if someone found the body they’d left out in the car park? He’d left it in the trailer, covered with the cardboard, the old sheet and the corrugated iron. But what if someone tried to steal the bicycle. Damn! He should have at least locked the bicycle. He looked around. Everyone seemed busy with their own problems but how long would it be before someone asked him who he was, why he was wearing a white coat and why he was pushing a patient along the corridor.
‘Down the corridor straight ahead,’ replied Dorothy. ‘Just keep going down the main corridor.’ She sounded calm and that helped Tom.
‘This is the hospital,’ said Tom’s aunt suddenly.
‘Yes,’ agreed Tom.
‘Is someone poorly?’
‘No, we’re just visiting,’ said Tom.
‘Go right,’ said Dorothy suddenly.
Tom turned the trolley into another corridor. It was darker and the walls were lined with empty trolleys.
‘Just stop here a moment.’
‘Where are we taking him?’
‘I was thinking of putting him into a bed,’ said Dorothy. ‘But this is much better. Less chance of being noticed, or getting caught.’
‘Here?’ asked Tom in surprise.
‘This corridor leads down to the scanner. They don’t use this much at night. We can leave him here.’
Tom looked at her.
‘Where?’
‘Just park the trolley,’ she said. She moved an empty trolley out of the way so that there was a space. ‘Put the trolley there and we’ll use this empty trolley to fetch the other body. It makes more sense for two patients to have been forgotten down here, and to be together, than for two patients to be forgotten in different parts of the hospital,’ said Dorothy.
‘What happens when they find them?’ asked Tom.
‘They’ll think they were admitted and then forgotten,’ said Dorothy.
‘But would they have got this far without going through the official admissions system?’
‘Probably not,’ agreed Dorothy. ‘But I’ll put them into the computer. It will look as though they were admitted and then just lost and forgotten. The porters are always losing patients. They park a patient somewhere, go off for a fag and then forget about it.’
Dorothy led Tom and Tom’s aunt (still carrying the bag containing the cat) back into the main corridor and then down another corridor.
‘Where does this go?’
‘The women’s medical ward,’ whispered Dorothy. ‘They don’t admit new patients here at night because they have a special admissions ward. I just want the computer in the ward manager’s office.’ She opened a door into a small room which contained a desk, a chair and a computer. Everything in the room was old and looked tired and well past its best. A noticeboard fixed to the wall was thick with papers fastened to it with coloured pins.
It was a real squeeze for the three of them (and the cat) to get into the room so that they could close the door and turn on the light.
‘How are you going to access the computer?’ asked Tom. ‘Don’t they have passwords and stuff?’
‘Of course,’ said Dorothy. ‘But look!’ She pointed to the computer. It was, like most of the ones in use, an old-fashioned one with a cracked and dirty case. A small red light signified that, against the rules, it had been left on stand-by and at the top of the screen, in the flat area above the screen, a sticky label, curling at one corner where the gum had come partly unstuck, gave the ward manager’s undoubtedly useful aide memoire. Her access code, ultra secret password and personal identity number had been neatly written on the small label.
(‘How does anyone expect us to remember all this stuff?’ the ward manager had demanded when a colleag
ue had remonstrated with her. ‘I’ve got different four digit pin numbers for my bank card and for three credit cards. I’ve got a password to access my email address and a code word I have to give when I telephone the bank. The lock on my bicycle can only be opened by putting in the correct four digit code and to get into my flat I need another four digit code. I’ve got passwords and code numbers corning out of my ears. If anyone thinks I’m going to remember this lot as well then they’ve got another think corning.’)
Dorothy typed in the access codes and Tom gave her the names of the two men. She put them into the system, both admitted as road accident victims.
‘Switch on that printer would you,’ she said.
‘What on earth do you want a printer for?’
‘I’ll print out a couple of name labels. We’ll label their wrists.’
‘So that it looks as though they were officially admitted?’
Dorothy nodded.
When she had finished Dorothy closed down the computer, leaving it on standby. They turned off the light, closed the office door and headed back to where they’d left the body they’d brought into the hospital. Dorothy fastened the appropriate label to the wrist of the cadaver. They then headed back to where they’d left the other body.
To Tom’s great relief the second body was where they’d left it. They loaded it onto the trolley in the same way as before. Dorothy fitted the label around the man’s wrist and then Tom pushed the trolley through the hospital. Dorothy walked alongside and Tom’s aunt, carrying the cat in her shopping bag, walked behind them. They had passed through the accident and emergency unit and were hurrying down the main corridor when they heard firm footsteps, half running, half walking, behind them. A man shouted.
‘Excuse me! Could you stop a moment please?’
Tom and Dorothy both turned. The man following them down the corridor was short, round and red-faced. He had tiny eyes, puffy eyelids and a red flush on both cheeks. He looked to be in his sixties but might have been younger. He wore an ill-fitting uniform, complete with well-shined boots and a peaked cap, and was out of breath. Tom and Dorothy looked at each other and both stopped. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. There was nothing to be said.
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