by Mo Hayder
He looked up at me. His pupils opened and closed a couple of times, as if he was struggling to take me in. 'What did you say?'
'Oh, come on.' I gave a short laugh. 'I know you so well. You're really upset. And it's not just because of Malachi Dove. It's her.' I jerked my head in the direction of the stairs. 'It's her too.'
He stared at me then, as if I was a complete stranger, as if I was someone who had just wandered in off the street and sat down opposite him at the table.
'Don't look so embarrassed, Oakesy. I do know. I know exactly what's going on in your head. I'm not stupid.'
He kept looking at me – so hard that a vein in his forehead rose and began to pulse steadily. 'Lexie, I know you're not stupid, I never thought you were, and I...' He trailed off. There was a pause, then he said, 'What's going on in my head?'
'You're disgusted.' I laughed. 'You don't like even sitting in the same room as her.'
'Disgusted?' he repeated, like a mantra. 'Disgusted.' Slowly, not taking his eyes off me, he laid down the manuscript and stood up, rather woodenly. He went to the sink, turned on the tap and scooped some water into his mouth.
'There's one basic rule, Oakesy,' I said to his back. 'One fundamental guideline for decency not only for medical professionals but for all human beings. You should try as much as possible to conceal your disgust. Especially from the person you find disgusting.'
He straightened then, his back still to me. He took several deep breaths, as if he was trying to control himself. Water ran down his arms and dripped off his fingers on to the floor. Just when I was about to speak he raised a foot and slammed it into the cupboard door, sending a crack shooting down to the bottom.
'For God's sake.' I stood up, stunned. 'What on earth do you think you're doing?'
He didn't answer. He stood there, arms dangling, head down, staring at his toenails where lines of blood had appeared at the edges. He turned, not meeting my eyes, and came to the table, dropping into his seat. He sat there in a heap, shoulders slumped, staring dully at the coffee-pot. He looked terrible.
I sat down cautiously, a little knot of anxiety tying itself in my stomach. He knows something, I thought. He knows something about Dove. 'Joe? What is it? What's going on?'
'Alex,' he said, not looking at me. 'I love you. You know that, don't you?'
I opened my mouth, then closed it. 'What? Well – yes. Of course I know. What's that got to do with anything?'
He breathed in and out, very, very slowly, as if the effort of just sitting upright was too much. For a long time he didn't speak. The only noise was the sound of rain pounding against the window. 'Nothing,' he said eventually, in a strained voice. 'Nothing's going on. I just want you to know that I love you.'
Well, that was it – he wouldn't say any more. He went upstairs and locked himself into the third bedroom, leaving me sitting at the kitchen table and looking in stunned silence from the broken cupboard to the stairs and back again. Now, I thought, putting my hands to my head, now I know the world has gone mad.
Oakesy
1
If I've got my hand on my unreconstructed heart, when I met Dr Guy Picot – he pronounced it the French way Ghee Peeko –I didn't like him one bit, with his wide, sculpted neck and these big kind of classical lips, and curls that looked like they'd been carved out of soap or stone or something. Adonis of the Gorbals. It's a mystery to me how anyone can get through the day dressed like a Versace model and not feel a total prat.
He didn't say anything to start with – just hello – then sat us in a line on the other side of his desk, watching Angeline as she settled down, taking her in from toes to head, staring particularly at her feet. Lex was anxious. She kept asking Picot who he'd got the referral from, was it directly from Mr Radnor. If I'd been thinking a bit clearer I'd've noticed this. But good old Oakesy, he of the concrete head – never do listen to the important stuff, do I?
Picot asked Angeline some questions – mostly about her feet, for some reason. Then he put his pen down, looked at her carefully and said, 'Angeline.' He got up from the desk and pushed back the screen. 'I'm going to give you a gown and I'm going to ask you to get undressed. Are you OK with that?'
She didn't answer straight off. We all turned to look at her. She was staring at her hands, moving them round and round compulsively, breathing hard in and out. The rash round her mouth had cleared up, I noticed, and she'd put on some of Lexie's makeup, but it didn't stop you seeing the blood pumping round her face.
'Angeline, would you like to—'
'Yes.' She stood abruptly, her eyes wide. 'Yes.'
It was awkward – her limping away behind the screen, the sound of her undressing – and for a while there was a silence in which none of us could meet each other's eyes. Lex and me both picked up a magazine and pretended to flick through them. Then Angeline called, 'Ready,' and Picot went behind the screen, pulling on his gloves.
It was an old-fashioned screen, with green fabric strung over the frame, like something from a Carry On film. There was a slit in both sides and Lexie tilted her chair back as far as it would go, craning her neck to look through the gap and see what was happening back there. After a moment or two she put down the magazine silently and crept, very carefully, towards the screen. She stood, side on, her chin drawn into her neck so she could just peep through the slit.
'Hey,' I said, kind of disgusted by her. She shook her head, put a finger to her lips and was about to step closer when, from the other side, Picot tugged the screen closed with an impatient noise. She froze for a second, not looking at me, colour gathering in her face. I thought she was going to say something, be pissed off with Picot, but instead she made a little huffing sound – like 'These doctors're all the same' – snatched up the magazine from her chair and went to the window at the far end, standing with her back to the room, staring out at the car park.
I watched her for a bit, then went back to my magazine. I wasn't reading it: I was thinking about Dove, about that bridge. Spectacular. 'My death will be spectacular.' I glanced up and saw that when Picot had moved the screen he had accidentally opened one of the slits nearest to me. I could see part of what was happening in there.
I didn't move. I sat totally still, hardly breathing. I could see obliquely along one side of the table, could see the little toe on Angeline's right foot poking out from a heavy white sheet, her hand holding the side of the table, and Picot standing next to her, his gloves pulled over his shirt cuffs.
'Now, I'm not going to hurt you,' he said, his head on one side, looking down to where her face must be. 'I'm just going to look. Is that OK?'
I shot a glance at Lexie. She was still staring out of the window, tapping her nail on her teeth, not interested in me. Behind the screen, just out of my eyeline, Angeline must've nodded because Picot was folding down the sheet. 'I'm going to feel your spine and ...' He stopped and I sat up a bit, watching his expression. He was staring down at Angeline's lower half, just out of view, and you could tell he didn't know what to say. There was a moment's more hesitation, then he must have sussed Angeline was looking at him, because he put his shirt-sleeve briefly to his head and said, 'Yes, good. Just – uh – let me see now. Turn a little – this way. That's it. On to your side.'
There was a long, long silence, when no one spoke and no one moved, and the only sound was the distant clatter of trolleys in the hospital corridors. Then he cleared his throat. 'Right,' he said. 'Angeline, I'm looking at your spine. OK? I'm just going to run my fingers down it...' He swallowed and took a step towards the head of the table, bending sideways and moving both hands just out of sight, drawing them downwards, his tongue between his teeth. 'OK. Now, can you shuffle towards me a bit? That's it – no, stay on your side. I want to see how strong your ankles are.'
Angeline moved, and suddenly, into the small space between the screen and Picot's shirt front came the yellow underside of a foot, and then, when she'd shuffled a bit more, the section of her back that extended from her shoulder-bla
des to her knees. I was looking up the length of her body. The growth had arranged itself away from her legs so it lay straight down the table towards him, and I could see the exact point where it converged with her spine. I could see the eye-shaped crevice neatly creased between her thighs, just like any other woman, and I could see further up to the point of the eye, to the junction where the growth began, widening away from her coccyx. I blinked. This was weird. I put my hand to my chest. My heart was thumping hard under my shirt.
'I'll just cover you here,' said Picot, reaching under the chair for a blanket, which he placed over her buttocks, so that it hung down into the gap behind the growth, shutting off my view. 'Then I want you to tell me what you can feel and what you can't.'
I shot Lexie another look. She had opened the magazine and was leafing through it – still with her back to me, like she was making a point. I shifted very, very silently in my chair, taking care not to make it creak, so I could watch what Picot was doing. I'd seen the growth before – just for a bit, in the house on the island, but I hadn't seen its base: it was wider than I'd expected – as wide as a wrist – and very pale, with almost the quality of marble to it. I'd had this image of what she'd look like down there – I wouldn't have admitted it to anyone but I'd spent a long time in the last few days wondering about it – and it hadn't been like this. I hadn't expected anything so – I fumbled for the word – so beautiful. Yes, I thought, feeling like a bit of a tart for the choice of words: beautiful. That bit of flesh had something I couldn't put a name to – like a sculpture, or a piece of architecture.
'OK,' Picot said, after a while, and there was something different about his voice – a nervousness. He lifted the sheet to cover her. 'I'm – I'm ... let me see.' He fiddled uncomfortably with his tie and stared at the telephone on the wall, like he wanted to call someone and ask for help. After a while he scratched his neck and, like someone invisible had just asked him what he was going to do, said, 'An X-ray, then an MRI. Yes – right, right.' He pulled off his gloves. 'OK. If I can arrange it, I want to do an MRI. Do you know what an MRI is?'
Angeline shifted on to her back and began to sit up so that everything I had been looking at was replaced by her left hand. 'I think so. It's a—' She broke off. She had moved upright so quickly that I hadn't had time to look away, and she'd caught me staring at her from the other side of the office: pale, bug-eyed, my magazine clutched tightly in my hands. I was frozen, couldn't drag my eyes away, and for a moment we were stuck there, holding each other's eyes, both too surprised and embarrassed to know what to do.
'Angeline?' Picot said. 'Are you ... ?'
'Yes,' she said hurriedly, grabbing the sheet and pulling it round her protectively. She hadn't taken her eyes off me. 'I'm ready. Where do we go?'
One of Danso's PCs drove us back to the rape suite. I didn't say a word. I sat in the passenger seat, elbows on my knees, smiling rigidly at the windscreen, my head pounding. I was fighting the sinking feeling that this had been waiting somewhere inside me for a lifetime, that it had always been destined to be dragged to the surface one day.
He was a shrewd one, Picot, keeping his cards close to his chest. Even after the MRI he wasn't giving away what he thought was wrong with her. Instead of answers, we came away with nothing except more questions and a limp, flesh-coloured surgical support. It was just a piece of bandage, boiled soft and covered with hospital laundry marks, and we all knew, when he held it out to Angeline, that it wasn't designed for her and probably wouldn't fit or make any difference anyhow. Back at the house she sat on the sofa under a duvet, one hand hidden beneath it. I couldn't see for sure, but I think she was feeling herself, walking her fingers down her body, re-examining it. I walked round the place, not knowing where to put myself, avoiding meeting her eyes. In the end I went to bed early and lay there, wondering why the fuck I couldn't get what I'd seen out of my head. That night I had an erotic dream about her.
She was sitting on the edge of a swimming-pool, her feet dangling in the water. She was wearing some kind of pink bikini thing, shorts up to her waist, the growth peeping out of one of the leg openings. It lay next to her left leg, glistening with pool water, the tip of it in the pool like it was a creature sucking up water. I was a few feet away in the pool, staring at it, mesmerized. I said something to her, something indistinct and meaningless, and she raised her eyes, smiled, and let the tip of the growth move up her left calf, pausing at the knee. I opened my mouth to speak again, but this time the water rose in a wave behind me and carried me towards her. She opened her arms and her legs and snaked the tail out, like an arm, to pull me hard against her. I woke in the sticky sheets, my heart thudding, buzzing with excitement and sadness.
'What is it?' Lexie murmured sleepily, throwing out a hand. 'You all right? You ill?'
I swung my legs round so my back was to her, put my feet on the ground and sat up to stare at my wet thighs. It was early morning – there was a faint line of light round the curtains. 'I'm fine.'
I waited for the feelings to go – a feeling in my chest like I'd just taken a drug straight in the heart, pure nicotine or one of those amyl-nitrate poppers we used to do at uni. When the blood stopped pounding and my head came back to the ground, I went into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror, staring at myself.
Man, I thought peering at myself. Hair and muscle and dick. That's all we amount to. I looked down at my cock, still red and half hard. What is going on here, Oakes? I asked myself. What is happening to you?
2
Later that day Angeline went missing. She was gone for four hours, and it was me who found her. I took the Fiesta and drove round the deserted streets, the sound of syringes cracking under the tyres. She was half a mile away, on the main road that bordered the estate. There was a newsagent with bars on the windows and a postbox outside, and she was standing in front of them, staring at the traffic going back and forward. We'd given her some money to spend in Dumbarton and she was dressed differently now: under her leather coat she was wearing a skirt she'd patched together out of two others and a ribbed brown sweater with a McFly badge pinned to it. I watched her for a moment or two from the car, trying not to think about what was under that coat. I'd made up my mind. It was time to tell her to move on.
I pulled into the kerb, leaned across the passenger seat and opened the door. 'Hey. We didn't know where you were. Everyone's worried.'
She hesitated. Then she climbed into the car and closed the door, arranging the coat round her, rubbing her nose. I didn't look too close, but I got a sort of thumbnail image of raw eyes and veins broken in her cheeks. She'd been crying. We sat there for a long time not speaking. The billboard outside the newsagent said, 'Terrorist Experts in Nationwide Manhunt'.
'Angeline?' I said. 'Were you trying to go somewhere? Someone's house? Do you want me to drive you somewhere?'
She shook her head and wiped her eyes. 'No,' she said thickly. 'I just wanted a walk.'
'There's nowhere I can take you?'
'I don't know anyone. Only you.' She pulled on the seatbelt, the way she'd seen Lex and me do it, and sat, her hands on her lap, looking out of the windscreen. 'I've been thinking,' she said, 'about what happened yesterday.'
I felt the muscles in my face lock solid. I knew she was looking at me, shyly searching my face, trying to make sense of me.
'I've made up my mind. If there's an operation I'm not going to have it.' There was a long, long pause. 'You think I'm right, don't you? You think I'd be wrong to have an operation.'
I should say something. I was supposed to say something – something adult. But my head had gone rigid. I reached across her and locked the door. 'Do something for me, Angeline.' I put the car into gear and took off the handbrake. 'Don't come out here again. You don't know who might drive past.'
The next few days there was this slow, pressure-cooker feeling in the rape suite. Angeline ignored what I'd said about going out on the road: every day she'd leave the house and be gone for hours. The surve
illance car didn't follow her either: me and the officers had talked about it and decided to stop arguing with her, decided we weren't her keepers. Secretly I was relieved. It was easier when she wasn't around. I didn't like the way she kept watching me, like she was waiting for me to say something.
Lexie knew something was wrong. She kept staring at me and asking me weird questions until my chest was tight and my head felt like it was full of blood and I spent as much time as I could away from her, locked in the office I'd rigged up in the third bedroom, the one with the cot and puke on the wall, trying to work on the proposal. I shut myself up and wrote like crazy: two K words a day, trying to cram all my thoughts on to the hard drive, my hands clamped to my head, moving ideas around until my brain was like catfood and I knew how the Sputnik monkey felt. But it didn't matter how hard I wrote, I couldn't get two people out of my head: Angeline Dove and her dad, Malachi.
Danso and I talked about it all the time: we spent hours going through the paperwork from the cottage, pushing it all around. Every night he'd stop by on his way home from work and every night he'd bring things for us. Bribes to keep me sweet, I decided, to stop me going back to London. One day it was a bottle of Jura malt whisky. One day a pound of farmed smoked salmon. Fuck knows where he was financing it from – his own pocket maybe – but none of us complained. Lexie got one of the guys in the surveillance car to bring down a jar of capers from Oban when he came on duty and we ate them with the salmon, using our fingers, sitting in a circle like cave people. I always asked Danso about the sightings of Dove. I asked him to show me on the map where they all were and I plotted them. When he'd gone I'd spend the night looking at the map, thinking about what these random sightings meant.