“Or maybe he’s not all there,” Trevor says. “I don’t know, I’m not a doctor. Maybe he’s done something and he’s just keeping schtum. How would I know? Or he’s foreign, he might not even speak the language. Might not understand what we’re saying. Immigrant or something.”
“Okay, well. Let’s not jump to any conclusions. The last thing we want is an immigration officer down here. We all know how much everyone loves those guys.” Graceford looks back to Poole. “Where’s the nearest detention center, Chris? Could he have come from there?”
“There’s Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Center in Bedford. Or maybe Fulton Hall Removal Center in Lincoln— but that’s too far. You think it’s likely, that he’s illegal?”
Graceford shrugs. “I hope not, for everyone’s sake. And I don’t know why he’d be on a beach up here. Unless there’s some new North Sea crossing route we don’t know about yet? I suppose he could have just paid for passage on a fishing boat. The Norwegians get pretty close to the coast here.”
“Surely we’d have found a life vest or something on the beach. There’s no way he could have made it in without one.”
Graceford nods in agreement; neither of them are convinced. Besides, the man they found didn’t look like a refugee, at least not like their ideas of one. But why would he be silent? Perhaps he has a reason to stay quiet.
A nurse looks up as they enter the ward, scanning their uniforms and expressions with weary eyes. She rises to greet them with a tentative smile. “How can I be of help, Officers?”
Rhoda leads them to one of the ward’s single-occupancy rooms, where the patient is lying in bed, his head turned away toward the window.
“Hello, stranger,” Rhoda says, tapping at the open door.
The patient pulls his gaze away from the overcast sky and seems unfazed as the two uniformed officers fill the small room.
“I’ve brought some nice people to talk to you.” Rhoda’s tone is soothing. “Nothing too stressful, I promise. This is Beth,” she says, indicating Officer Graceford, “and Chris. They’d like to ask you a few questions. They are the police officers who found you this morning. You feeling up to that now?”
The man in the bed regards them placidly. He gives Rhoda the smallest of nods, then shifts himself carefully up onto his elbows, resting back against the pillows.
The officers pull up chairs and take a seat. When Graceford speaks her tone is kind. “How are you feeling now? You’re looking much better.” It’s true he’s almost unrecognizable from earlier that morning. There’s color in his cheeks, an air of self-possession about him. Graceford wonders if they’ve given him something, a sedative perhaps. She’ll need to ask about that later.
The man gives a restrained smile in answer, eyes shifting back to Rhoda. Graceford throws a quick glance to Poole. “They mentioned to us you weren’t speaking,” she says. “Is there any particular reason for that, sir? Can you understand what I’m saying?”
The patient’s brows knit slightly but otherwise his expression remains serene. He stays silent.
Either this man genuinely doesn’t understand what she’s saying or he’s a bloody good actor, she thinks. Poole and Graceford get lied to every day and people aren’t usually this good at it.
“Do you understand any of what I’m saying to you, sir?” Graceford asks, louder now. The man looks back to Rhoda again, who nods him on encouragingly. He holds her gaze and shakes his head slowly; he doesn’t want to do this anymore.
Poole tries now. “Sir, can you tell us what your name is?”
The man moves his head to look at Poole. Poole points a finger at his own chest. “Officer Poole,” he says in a labored and heavily accented voice. Graceford has to look down into her lap to stop herself from exploding with laughter. Poole is now pointing toward the patient, who watches him with intelligent eyes. “You?” Poole asks.
The patient nods. He understands. He’s been asked his name. He looks away from the police and the nurse and out at the murky sky. When he turns back he shakes his head, but this shake is different.
He can’t answer their question because he doesn’t know the answer.
16
DR. EMMA LEWIS
DAY 8—TEAMWORK
When I enter the empty conference room, Nick Dunning, the chief executive officer of the Princess Margaret Hospital and until recently its chief of strategic management, is dumping packets of sugar into a steaming coffee, spilling most of it on the table as he, distracted, taps away at his phone. According to Peter, it’s Nick I’ll be liaising with at the hospital. But at the moment he’s mid-email, head bobbed down over his phone. He looks up briefly as I round the conference table and take a seat, and flashes me a friendly harassed smile before plunging back into whatever crisis is playing out in the palm of his hand.
I pull my laptop and notes from my bag. And busy myself with them, fishing out my proposed action plan of tests and diagnostic methods. I study his face as he scrolls.
He’s a lot younger than I thought he’d be, dressed casually, a brushed-cotton collar peeking out from under a chic gray sweater. Stubble, fashionable horn-rimmed glasses that perfectly match the golden brown of his eyes. He’s very attractive.
After a moment he looks up again. “Sorry. Sorry, Emma. Nick.” He stretches his hand across the table and shakes mine warmly. “Rushed off my feet. It’s been a bit crazy around here the last couple of days.” He tips his phone by way of explanation. “I’ve been putting out a lot of fires, as you can imagine.”
“I can.” I smile back blithely. Rushed off his feet is an understatement if ever I heard one. The amount of patient complaints and follow-ups over what happened on the ward last week alone would be work enough. Never mind having to field the level of intense public interest in one particular patient. “It’s no problem at all, take all the time you need, Nick, if you want to finish up.” But he puts his phone away briskly and picks up his coffee cup. I put my notes down and give him my full attention.
“Right,” he says.
“Right!” I say.
We share a moment.
“God,” he adds.
“Yep,” I say with a little nod. “Can I just say straight up front,” I gush, “that the last thing I want is for you to feel like you are crisis-managing this alone, Nick. Or that I am in any way here to take over. I want to work with you, I need to. I don’t know the hospital and I don’t know the case yet. I’m just hoping that we can get this situation sorted out together, quickly, as a team?”
“Yes, exactly.” He tastes a gulp of coffee and grimaces. “That’s exactly what we want here too. I can’t say how relieved I was when they sent over your details. I liked the tone of that misdiagnosis paper. The previous cases you reexamined. It’s reassuring.” He flashes a relieved smile.
He’s definitely not what I was expecting and I bet I’m not what he expected either. I suppose I was expecting the CEO of an NHS Foundation Trust hospital to be, well, older, a bit soft around the center, a middle-aged man in a cheap suit. Not my age and…well, attractive.
But I suppose the next generation of healthcare needs the next generation of management.
He taps a pen gently on the table in front of him. “Are there any questions you’ve got straight off the bat, Emma?”
“Well, I’ve looked through the notes and at this stage it’s looking like a psychiatric condition. I’m thinking post-psychological trauma, but I’m going to need more information, which means more tests. An EEG to check for seizure disorders. I need to be sure we haven’t missed anything physical that could be causing this. But I think our key diagnostic tool is going to be an fMRI. I’ll need to do that as soon as I can.”
His brows furrow slightly. Like most NHS Trust CEOs, he has no specialist medical training. The job of hospital administrator is a nonmedical posting. He’ll have sat in on meetings about
the patient, for sure, and he’ll have a degree of knowledge but it will only be lay knowledge.
I explain. “The fMRI will tell me if the patient is lying, faking his symptoms. As I know you know fugue has a bit of a history of that. He could be malingering for some reason or he could be Munchausen’s, meaning he’s doing all this for attention. Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t sound like it, but the only real way to be sure is to do an fMRI. That should tell us whether the hippocampus is being activated to access memory. You can’t fake memory loss in a scan.”
“And what about this mystery speck on his CT scans? The pituitary…?”
“Oh, the cyst, yes. Probably not related at all, but I will be looking into it, one hundred percent, you can take my word for that.”
His face relaxes slightly. “Great.”
“Can I ask what’s been happening regarding the patient’s lack of communication?” I ask.
“Sure.” He dives in, eager to update me. “We’ve been trying to organize a multilingual translator to come in. As you know, the media have been chomping at the bit with this whole foreign national thing, so I’ve been apprehensive about arranging anything that might confirm or strengthen those rumors without you having met him first. I’d rather hear your thoughts. I don’t want to add petrol to the flames here, obviously.”
My breath snags.
Petrol to the flames? What does he mean by that?
It’s a saying, Em, relax, it’s just a saying, I tell myself.
Nick catches my discomfort but misconstrues it. “Of course, I can arrange the translator straightaway, if you need me to?”
“No, no. I think you’re exactly right. No need for that just yet. His silence could be a number of things at this stage. Something may be affecting the language-processing areas of his brain; I’ll need to run some tests. Or he may not be talking because he’s scared. Any form of memory loss can be deeply disorientating. I’d like to do an initial assessment this morning, Nick, if it’s possible? And—has he communicated in any other way with anyone here at the hospital? Made any connections with other patients or staff?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Well, I’d love to pull anyone else he’s communicated with in for a quick chat, if that’s possible. It’d be useful to know in what ways and to what degree he’s been making himself understood over the last…what? Eight days?”
“Yes. Yes, of course I can find out who he’s been communicating with. We’ll make sure you get the opportunity to speak to those people, no problem.”
The idea suddenly occurs to me. “Of course, there is always the possibility that the patient is deaf or has preexisting speech problems. Do you know if anyone attempted to communicate with him via sign language?”
Nick squeezes his eyes shut tightly for a second. “Shit.”
I’m guessing that’s a no.
He rubs a hand across his forehead. “No, not to my knowledge, no.”
“Don’t worry, this is why I’m here,” I reassure him. “It’s just another avenue we’ll cover. There’s also the possibility that he might have sustained damage to his vocal cords if he did almost drown the morning he was found. Either way, best to cover our bases on those points before moving on any question of language.”
“Yes, that’s for damn sure.” He wets his lips now before continuing. “Can we just talk about the press? I know it’s not your remit but there are a lot of crazy ideas floating around out there. Do any of them sound…I don’t know, do any sound like possibilities to you?”
Having dredged through hours of media coverage online the night I agreed to take the case, and again last night in bed, I’m aware of what those floating ideas are. “Well, um, the idea that he may be military and have returned from deployment in Syria is theoretically a possibility. Dissociative amnesia is a form of PTSD. He could have had trouble reacclimatizing to civilian life. It’s a possibility. The refugee idea is equally plausible; refugees are just as likely as a soldier to suffer from PTSD, they’re in the same war zones. Failed suicide, yes, possible. A fisherman falling off a fishing boat, sure, it’s a possibility, but as far as I’m aware, there’s no evidence of that, no one missing. Um…and second coming of Jesus, slash, he’s an angel, medically speaking not my remit—”
Nick lets out a loud laugh and I smile.
“—oh, um, and in terms of the Russian idea along the lines of the nerve agent released in Salisbury. Chemicals are definitely worth testing for, although, to my knowledge, he’s not showing any related symptoms.” I pause for a moment to see if there’s anything I’ve missed. “I mean, it is very strange, given the amount of press coverage, that nobody has come forward in eight days to identify him. That should be telling us something. Although I’m just not sure exactly what it’s telling us.”
“Yes, quite.”
“Have the police made any progress?”
“In a word, no. They’ve been keeping us in the loop, but they haven’t been able to trace his journey before the beach. No abandoned cars found in the area. They’ve checked CCTV at King’s Lynn train station and the local shops, but he hasn’t shown up on anything yet. Plus, no ID on him, as you know, and his fingerprints aren’t on the national database, so no luck there.”
“Have the police run DNA?”
Nick raises his eyebrows. “No. No, I don’t think they have yet,” he says hopefully. “Definitely worth asking them for an update as of today.” He taps a note into his phone briskly, then looks at me with a smile of gratitude. “Can I just say, Emma, I’ve never been so glad to have the troops called in on me. Something tells me before long we’ll have something solid to show for our efforts.” He rises, signaling that our meeting is officially over. “Right, I hope you don’t mind me springing this on you, but I’ve asked all nonessential staff to gather up in the canteen—I thought you could do a quick intro and get your face out there so they all know who you are. How does that sound?”
Not good, Nick. Not good.
17
THE MAN
DAY 2—HOW COULD HE KNOW
A THING LIKE THAT?
Rhoda arrives for her shift forty-five minutes early, her rucksack heavy on her back. After what happened yesterday they’ve asked her to stay on the patient’s ward again today. They told her she’d be staying on with him at least for today, considering what he’d been through on the ward and given his unusual situation.
If Rhoda were a cynical person, she’d say the hospital might be trying to cover their backsides over what happened there yesterday. How had that situation been able to occur on an active ward? Why had a confused and recently bereaved man been placed on an open ward and left unattended? It was a valid question that a lot of people were already asking.
There had been reporters hanging around the hospital entrance last night after her shift ended, a woman and a man. They asked her what she thought about hospital security. What she thought about immigration. What she thought about the patient found on the beach that morning. Did she think he was a hero? they asked. Did she know his name? She hadn’t wanted her picture taken, though they’d asked her politely if she would, but it had been a long day and she had worried it wouldn’t come out well. Finally, she had told them she needed to go and she’d thought no more about it.
Since the scuffle on the ward she’d replayed the incident with Mr. Garrett over and over in her mind.
Should she have done something? What if her patient hadn’t stepped in? What if it hadn’t gone the way it did, if something very bad had happened? People could have been hurt because of her failure to act.
She’d tried to remember her counselor’s words while she made a cold-plate supper for herself that night, her cream cockapoo Coco bouncing around her heels. Her counselor has been telling her for the past five weeks, since the incident in the park, that it wasn’t Rhoda’s fault. But it’s hard not to blame yourself
when something bad happens to you. Because she knows if she’d just fought back, then maybe things would have been different. The fact is, in actuality she did nothing and she let something terrible happen to her. She knows she can’t blame herself, she shouldn’t blame herself, but she does.
Her thoughts had circled back around to her new patient, the odd feeling she’d had that he’d known about what happened to her. It was the way he’d looked at her, the way he’d pointed out the scar running jagged down her temple, her dark skin puckered and still tender where the stitches had been. She’d been styling her hair differently to cover it; people at work had only noticed her new hairstyle. But Rhoda noticed the scar every time she looked in the mirror. And—somehow—he’d noticed it too.
How had he known? She hadn’t told anybody what happened to her in the park. She’d only called the police, grudgingly, after realizing that she wouldn’t want the same thing to happen to someone else next time, someone younger or older, someone frailer.
She’d reported it but she hadn’t told anyone else, not her friends and certainly not her family. She didn’t want them to see her that way, to think of her like that. She’d lied in those days after it happened and told anyone who asked that she had slipped on the stairs in her building, rainwater on the steps, and people had grimaced and sympathized but thought no more about it.
The police had filed a report but they told her that they couldn’t do any more without eyewitnesses. And there had been no one else there that day. Just her and Coco and the skinny old man with his walking cane, sitting on a park bench. She’d noticed his dog, a Staffie, nosing around a bin for scraps, off the leash.
It had all happened so quickly.
Usually Rhoda would unleash Coco as soon as they got to the park, letting her run free in her dizzying circles as happy as can be. But that day, seeing the Staffie there, running loose, she’d kept Coco close.
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