by Tanvir Bush
Alex glugs more cheap vodka. She had decided, looking at the remnants of change in her purse, that she wanted to drink more than eat this evening, but now her stomach hurts and she feels a bit foolish. She’ll have a bad hangover in the morning, and she is supposed to be covering the opening of the flower festival at St Bartholomew’s Church. Funds are being raised for the opening of the new Grassybanks extension. Another ward, apparently … as if the place wasn’t monstrous enough. Alex had gone to the exhibition of the proposed extension at the Town Hall the previous year. It had been impressive: blueprints, billboards and a intricate model Grassybanks of the Future under glass, surrounded by trees with the river curving past.
She wonders what else had been in the running for that bit of land by the river and her fingers clip and trip over the keyboard. There had been three other proposals: a library and café, a skateboard park and a crematorium had all been put to the council, but the Grassybanks extension had won outright. No surprises there.
But wait. Again, she ups the magnification on her screen. That’s odd. The scanned proposal of the underground crematorium has not got a formal rejection stamp on it like the others. A mistake? She sits back for a minute, brain fizzing, and then leans in and clicks on the Grassybanks proposal again. She can’t be sure without printing both of the blueprints out, but it looks like Grassybanks has incorporated the crematorium into the east wing of its car park. They haven’t called it crematorium although it is in the same place and the dimensions are all the same. They have listed it as an ‘Underground Extension’.
Oh well, maybe it’s for storage … ?
She goes to the St Bartholomew’s Church community page to check the times for the opening ceremony and sees that the doctor in charge of overseeing the new Grassybanks extension will be there answering questions. She blinks and her mouth drops open.
His name: Dr Barnabas Binding.
A Bouquet for Dr Binding
As it transpires, it is Dr Binding who sees Alex first. He is being harangued by the mayor’s consort, a vile woman called Clarissa, who has fastened onto him like a tick. She is waving a bouquet of lilies in his face, and he is trying not to sneeze, although his eyes are beginning to water. Knowing his tendency to choke up around pollen, he is loaded up with antihistamine, but he still breathes shallowly and mentally crosses his fingers that he will make it through his speech. Why on earth did he agree to a flower show, for heaven’s sake?
A bearded roadie is checking the podium acoustics. ‘One-two, one-two,’ he breathes into the mike, and feedback screeches, causing the entire church hall to flinch. At that moment Binding catches sight of a tall, attractive woman with long, dark, frizzy hair pulled back into a high ponytail that swings almost insolently down between her shoulder blades. She seems to tower over the mass of geriatric flower-pushers milling about the echoing hall, her broad shoulders and voluptuous bosom encased in a tight white shirt. Amazonian, thinks Dr Binding. The crowd breaks for her, and it is only then that Binding spots the guide dog. Interesting, she doesn’t look blind, he thinks, shuffling through the possible retinal malfunctions he knows about.
Clarissa is whining about this year’s drought causing havoc with her Pelargonium nubilum. Her sour face is ripped through with anguish. The woman seems to Binding to be in a constant state of crisis and fury. If it isn’t the flowers or the weather, it is the economy, the scroungers and the layabouts who seem to ruin her city. She rarely pauses for breath and is completely uninterested in anyone else.
‘… as I was saying, Doctor, the ground is just so hard now that my husband nearly did his back in …’
Over her shoulder, Binding sees the tall woman stoop to ask one of the stallholders a question. The stallholder, an elderly man with enormous lupins, looks directly up at Binding and points. The woman asks again, this time making an obvious sweeping gesture over her eyes, and the man, realising his mistake, speaks into her ear, then grudgingly offers her an arm. She refuses. She turns her face towards the doctor and says a word to her dog, and they move directly forward in The Good Doctor’s direction.
‘Excuse me,’ she says as she closes on the tense back of the still querulous Clarissa, ‘I am looking for a Dr Barnabas Binding?’
‘You have found him, my dear,’ says the doctor and, reaching past Clarissa, takes her proffered hand. For a moment he almost kisses it, then catches himself, feeling foolish. She is quite the most attractive flower in the building, though.
‘Dr Binding is very busy, I am afraid, young lady.’ Clarissa, sensing The Good Doctor’s change of focus, doesn’t want to let go. ‘He is about to open the flower show.’
‘It’s all right, Clarissa,’ Binding soothes. ‘How can I help you … Miss … ?’
‘Alex. Alexandra Lyon. I am a reporter with the local newspaper, the Cambright Sun.’
A journalist. Dr Binding’s lips and sphincter tighten. Of course, there will be journalists, he tells himself. It is part of the process. It’s all manageable, all fine. She will be here for the flower festival and the ward extension.
‘You will be here about the flower festival and the ward extension,’ he tells her. ‘It’s a very exciting day. I am not actually organising any of this, of course. I just felt duty bound to come and personally thank the wonderful fundraisers.’
‘That’s good of you, Dr Binding. I am sure you are a very busy man, what with working with St Mark’s Hospice and now taking on Grassybanks. It is a huge project, I gather? Another ward being built, and I heard a rumour there was an underground extension …’
How on earth did she hear about that? The Good Doctor is cross but doesn’t show it.
‘We are all very proud of Grassybanks,’ he says. ‘An absolutely state-of-the-art rehabilitation and high-care residence. Have you had a chance to look around? I will be leading a tour after this for the Mayor’s Committee, if you would like to join us?’
The woman is almost the same height as him. Her eyes are dark brown, so dark one can barely make out the pupils. Long lashes. She doesn’t seem to blink very much. He also notices that her eyes are slightly bloodshot, the skin beneath a little too dark and yes, her hand trembles ever so slightly. Ahh, he thinks. Likely one of my alcoholic flock. What a shame.
‘Dr Binding … it is a bit of a long shot, but with your connection to the St Mark’s Hospice in Manchester and so forth … well, I was just wondering if you had heard of the Homeless Action! initiative. Some kind of therapeutic experiment for transients?’
And there it is. Binding’s forehead goes cold, and his ears get hot.
‘I beg your pardon?’ He is trying to think of what to say.
‘It’s just a friend of ours, a homeless man called Phil, was apparently selected by them for specialised treatment in Manchester, and now he can’t be found anywhere. I tried calling the Manchester link number that had been left but I couldn’t get through.’
‘Dr Binding!’ Clarissa is back, and for once Binding is pleased to see her. ‘Dr Binding, you are being called, I’m afraid.’ She has grabbed his elbow and is actually pulling him towards the stage. Binding takes Alex’s hand again, a short, hard shake this time.
‘It was lovely meeting you, my dear, and good luck with your research and finding your friend … Phil, did you say his name was? I am sure he’ll turn up. And do take a tour of Grassybanks. I am sure you will get a great deal from it.’
Alex watches him as he is shuffled like a card back into the pack of city councillors and church committee members on the stage. Alex, in spite of her degenerating eyesight, can still see the colour red. In fact, it is almost the only colour she can still see clearly, and so she did not fail to notice The Good Doctor’s ears light up like beacons when she had mentioned Homeless Action! He knows something, that’s for sure.
She and Chris stand through the next half an hour of speeches and presentations, lost in thought. A homeless man, a new but secret therapy and a doctor, an expert on alcohol-related disease and a partner of TOSA … wh
at were all the connections? Her pocket is vibrating, and she reaches in for her phone. It’s Glenda from The Station.
‘Hold on, Glenda, I can’t hear you. I’ll just go outside and call you straight back.’
Outside in the graveyard, Alex pauses and unharnesses Chris before dialling.
‘What’s up, Glenda?’
‘It’s Phil.’
‘Phil? He’s back?’
‘No. No … err … apparently he is dead.’
Alex Joins the Dots
The Cambright Sun offices are up a twisty flight of stairs littered with boxes of paper, trailing electronic kit and other detritus that somehow Chris has to steer Alex around. On the second floor the office is more than a little cramped. Desks rammed up against desks; whiteboards, flip charts and storyboards flapping down from every partition. All the staff hot-desk, and only the editor has his own office. This makes life difficult for Alex, with her visual impairment that requires large-print text and magnification software. Every time she stumbles in she has to find an empty desk and redo the settings on the monitor. Today she is in luck. Half the team are out and the rest have parked themselves by open windows in search of some respite from the heat.
She gets a muted ‘Hey Alex!’ from her friend Terry as he squeezes past with another stack of slippery posters. ‘Fancy a drink, later?’
‘Yeah, that would be good.’ Alex has known Terry for years. Back in the eighties he had been a roadie working with one of the bands Alex had been sleeping her way through. Later, disillusioned by the rise of ‘instant-pop TV’, he had retrained in IT. Now he works as a technician for the Cambright Sun, and it had been Terry who had suggested the newspaper to Alex as a possible job placement. She tries not to hold it against him.
Chris loves Terry and his tail helicopters in adoration. This is because Terry is not only a deeply gentle soul, but also because he has nowhere to hang out his washing apart from in the kitchen where he fries or reheats all his food. He never lets the clothes dry properly, so even ironed and folded they still stink of mushrooms and old onions. And he doesn’t wash as often as most, but does change his pants every day, which Chris feels is a shame as he has a particular warm ‘den’ smell that Chris is very fond of.
‘Can’t talk now, boy,’ says Terry, disappearing through another door, ‘but we’ll hook up later.’
It is very hot up on the office floor. All the windows are open and there are several desk fans churning up the warm air. Chris’s tail wilts, and Alex’s hair becomes sticky and frizzy. She sweeps it up off her neck and twists it, lodging a pencil through the knot to make it stay put.
‘Ooh, get you. Very elegant.’ Dino from Fashion is at the desk by the window. Alex can’t make him out against the light, but she knows he will be wearing a white linen suit and a cravat. The heat won’t worry him. Dino doesn’t seem to have sweat glands. ‘Haven’t seen you for a while, Killer.’ ‘Killer’ is Alex’s nickname in the office. Dino had found a piece about her in an ancient copy of Ms Sassy. There had been a photo of Alex in camouflage: ‘one of the youngest journalists to be embedded with the troops’. The article had gone on to big up her ‘killer instinct’.
‘Been working from home,’ Alex mumbles with a pen between her lips, tapping at the keyboard. ‘Dino, do you know if Gerald is coming in this morning?’
‘Talk of the devil,’ says Dino, and Alex looks up as the door across the office opens. Gerald is short, wiry and walks very fast. Once he is in his office there will be no chance to grab him, so Alex literally stands up and flings herself in his path, managing to fall over a pile of recycling paper.
‘Morning, Gerald.’
‘Good morning, Alex. Always nice to have women at my feet. Do you need a hand?’
‘No … sorry.’ Alex gets up carefully and realises her hair has come down and is frizzing out like Medusa’s. Chris is by her side looking a little anxious, and she can hear Dino giggling.
‘I am guessing you want to talk to me?’
‘Gerald. I think I’ve got a real story.’
‘Really?’ Gerald’s eyes narrow. He had agreed to take Alex on, in spite of her miserable situation with the blindness and all, because of her glittering past. He hasn’t seen much of the glitter as yet.
Alex leans in. ‘Can I talk to you in your office?’
Gerald hesitates. There are three other journalists at their desks listening, and he is not a man who likes to be dictated to.
‘Well, I am pretty busy …’
‘Gerald. People in Cambright are disappearing!’
Gerald’s office is air-conditioned and the windows have blinds blocking out the sun. The air is like a drink of cool water.
‘Um … Can I say hello to Chris?’ asks Gerald.
‘Sure,’ says Alex. She is fully aware Gerald’s one weakness is a very British, all-consuming love of dogs. Trying not to feel mercenary, Alex lets Chris out of his harness and watches as Gerald, now jacketless, rolls around the floor with an ecstatic hound.
They are playing tussle with a rather expensive-looking sofa pillow when Gerald asks, out of breath but happy, ‘So spit it out. What story?’
‘May I use your whiteboard?’ asks Alex. Not the flip chart. She needs to be able to wipe off what she is about to write.
She writes ‘Homeless Action!’ then ‘St Mark’s Hospice’. She writes ‘Grassybanks’ then ‘TOSA’, and then she connects them all with a line that leads to a name, ‘Dr Barnabas Binding’. Gerald is no longer on the floor with Chris. He is standing straight up and staring at the board. Before he can speak, Alex explains about Switch and Phil and The Station. She says she knows that Homeless Action! are affiliated to TOSA, and she has a hunch they are collecting homeless men and women and ‘experimenting’ on them ‘and then maybe … well, they die’.
Gerald scowls and shakes his head, hands out in disbelief. ‘Are you insane? You said “people” were going missing. I count one. A tramp. Really, Alex? A homeless man goes missing and you decide government conspiracy?’
‘Not missing any more. I had a phone call from the warden at The Station. She told me that Phil had died. They had received his death certificate from the treatment centre in Manchester. All official. On Homeless Action! and TOSA headed paper.’
‘So what’s the big issue?’
‘It said on his death certificate he had tragically died before treatment for appendicitis. But Glenda told me that Phil didn’t have an appendix. She had been with him three years ago when he had it out at Allenbrook Hospital.’
‘That’s all? An administration screw-up.’
‘Well yes, sure maybe, but that is one hell of an error, Gerald. It says on the TOSA website that they are upgrading Grassybanks. It is going to be overseen by, guess who, Dr Barnabas Binding.’
‘Let me get this right.’ Gerald is walking in a slow circle around Alex. It is unsettling. Chris watches with his ears cocked, head on one side. He likes Gerald, but the man is circling Alex as if he is stalking her. If Chris has to rip his throat out, he will. He would do that for Alex. Alex is his love.
‘You think that this Homeless Action! are picking up stray homeless people and then … killing them? For what possible reason?’
‘I know it sounds absurd, but I just have a hunch. Something about the setup isn’t right. They pick up street people with no family ties. None of the men and women listed by The Station have been heard of since, but because they had no family, no links with anyone in the community, no one has made a fuss. We found out about Phil only because Glenda at The Station made a few calls—’
‘And Grassybanks?’ Gerald cuts across her.
‘It’s too big.’
Gerald blinks.
‘It’s just too big.’ She shrugs. ‘It isn’t a hospital, and it isn’t a residential centre. It’s both, or maybe it’s something else. Why the underground extension – that no one is talking about? And Dr Binding is tied into the Manchester project somehow … he is definitely dodgy. I can smell it. I
can’t understand why no one seems to know anything about the new setup.’
Gerald stops pacing and sits heavily on his sofa. ‘Alex, you know how this sounds. There is no way I can approve an investigation into Grassybanks. Even if I believed it was a story that has legs, it isn’t a Cambright Sun story. Have you been to the police?’
Alex shakes her head. She turns and wipes down the board. Empty. White. They both stare at it.
‘The H5 police are not going to be interested in a homeless man going missing, or in a residential home. They would take some notes, and after I walked out of the door they’d bin them. It has to be journalism. It has to be investigated by the people.’
‘Running for office, are we? Jesus, Alex.’ Gerald is mulling it over. ‘You know TOSA is one of the big boys. You shake their trees and something heavy may fall out on your head.’
‘But … ?’
‘But I may let you do some snooping. However, you will need to make a compromise.’
‘Oh no, not those fucking articles.’
‘Yes. Those fucking articles, Alex. You promise me that you will finish the sanctioned pieces on “Why Work Works” as requested by the Ministry and Job Central, and I will let you do a little gumshoe around Grassybanks.’
Alex puts her hands on her hips and sighs. ‘It is so unfair. Like making the starving man bake the cakes for the party.’
‘Go bake,’ says Gerald. And he gives Chris one more cuddle.
Back at her desk, Alex does a search on Dr Binding again. He is kosher from birth in 1949 to the OBE of two years previously.
‘Hey, Killer?’ Dino sways over from the water cooler. ‘Gerald says you’re covering the “Why Work Works” articles? The “crip reports”?’ His laugh is a little forced, but then his white pants are a little tight. ‘You ever heard of Kitty Fox?’
Alex shakes her head, eyes still on the list of Binding’s awards.