Sleepyhead Thorne 1

by Mark Billingham

  Bishop said nothing. His lips moved soundlessly as he counted away the time in his head.

  'This won't bring your mother back, James.' Thorne was shouting now. Anything to get a reaction, to make him stop. James was lost in concentration, readying himself for the difficult part, once the girl had stopped breathing. The manipulation.

  Time ticking away. Thorne felt the seconds hurtling past him, Rachel's breath rushing past him as he stood frozen and useless.

  'Please, Tommy...'

  'Helen?'

  'She's a child...'

  ' What can I do? WHAT CAN I DO?'

  Then suddenly, a voice from below them. 'James?'

  A reaction from Bishop. A reaction to the voice of his father. Fear maybe? Certainly a tension in his body and in his face. Tension in his fingers...

  'James? I saw you driving away with Anne - what's going on? Is everything all right? Somebody's forced open your front door.'

  Half a minute gone...

  There was no way of knowing what James would do with his father here but Thorne had little option.

  Ninety seconds left. Rachel was nearly half-way dead. Thorne shouted, 'Bishop. We're up here!'

  Jeremy Bishop appeared in the attic like a ghost rising up through the trap in a stage. The image was completed instantly as the blood deserted his face and the light vanished from the eyes.

  Thorne knew what he would look like when he was dead.

  'My God -James?' He leaned forward and for a second Thorne thought he was going to pass out. At the last moment Thorne realised he was moving towards his son and reached out an arm to stop him. Bishop glared angrily at him and then, as if woken from a dream, nodded slowly, taking in the full, horrific implications of what he could see around him.

  Anne. Rachel. James.

  Thorne watched the son glare at the father. Couldn't be much more than a minute now...

  James's voice was childish, taunting. 'What is it, then?

  Horror? Outrage? Or just surprise that I know how to do it? A pretty advanced procedure, all in all, considering that I couldn't cut it. Considering what a major disappointment I was...'

  'Please--'

  James screamed, 'Shut up! Fucking shut up, will you?'

  Rachel's eyes were rolling up into her head. Sixty seconds, if that...

  'I always meant to ask you something. When exactly did you start believing the things you do? There must have been a time when you thought the same as the rest of them.

  About the human body, I mean. All that bollocks about a miracle of design and efficiency. Christ, I'm grateful you 388

  taught me what crap that was. Your belief in technology was inspiring, did you know that? Truly inspiring. I'm just sorry I couldn't repay the faith you had in me academically. But even when I was fucking it all up, even when I was failing so brilliantly to become the doctor you wanted me to be, I still believed in all the things you did.' He started to cry. 'I still remembered everything you taught me.'

  The tears stopped as suddenly as they had started and the voice regained its edge. 'So, when was it? When did you start thinking that the human body was just a worthless piece of shit? Was it when you saw how easily it could be manipulated by drugs? How a body could be slowed up, and shaped if you filled it full of tranquilisers? Was she the wife you wanted then? Afterwards? Me and Becks used to call her Snow White - did you know that? Becks said that every rime she saw Doc, she went Sleepy and Dopey...'

  Rachel's breathing was starring to slow. Half a minute...

  'No, I bet I know when it was. It was when you saw how easily it got damaged, wasn't it? How fragile it was. How easily the skin could be torn by flying glass, or how little it took for a torso to be crushed or twisted. Or perhaps it was both those things. How the body softened up by tranquilisers reacts that much slower in an emergency, in an accident, and becomes a bigger target. Yes, that would make sense. I'd call that a road-to-Damascus sort of moment, wouldn't you? From then on you just saw patients decomposing in front of your eyes. Breaking down, rot ring, dying, faster than you could stitch them together or prop them up or overhaul them.

  'You'd learned a valuable lesson. A powerful lesson.

  Once you'd learned that, it was about teaching us. Then pushing and pushing...'

  Rachel had stopped breathing in. Just the last few messy exhalations.

  'I would so like to have seen you in prison. Watched your skin go yellow and your bones turn powdery and your hope evaporate. You're soft and vain, and prison would have killed you very slowly. Then you'd have found out just how frail the body really is. Just how frail, Daddy...'

  Thorne couldn't hear Rachel breathing any more. James Bishop closed his eyes and whispered, 'Night night, ...'

  Anne Coburn screamed. A roar from somewhere down in her guts, and suddenly the room was full of noise and movement. Jeremy Bishop rushed forward, shouting his son's name as if ordering a dog to drop and play dead. James moved with the instinctive obedience of a frightened child, recoiling, taking his hands off Rachel, letting her tumble helplessly forward on to her face. Thorne ran to turn the girl over and began searching for a pulse.

  Come on ....

  He got one. She was still breathing. He picked her up, carried her across to Anne and gently laid her in the recovery position next to her mother. Anne's eyes turned up to him, the spark still strong, the relief evident in every tear that rolled down her cheek and dropped on to her daughter's face.

  There was a moment of calm.

  Just the noise of the rain coming down, like six-inch nails on to the tiles a few feet above them. Thorne turned to see Jeremy Bishop moving slowly towards his son, his arms outstretched, his face a death mask. James backed into the instrument trolley, which clattered and rolled away from him. He stopped and his head cocked to one side, and then his arm rose gracefully into the air.

  Almost as if he were about to take a bow.

  It was a movement so casual that he might have reaching to scratch a shoulder-blade. Thorne saw the glint of steel at his fist a second before the blood began to from the artery in his neck.

  'No...' Jeremy's voice was a whisper that could have blown down a house.

  Thorne leaned against the whitewashed wall and watched as James dropped to his knees and was followed by his father. Jeremy clamped a hand across his son's neck, but the blood gushed between his fingers, running down his arms and pooling across the bleached white floorboards. Up one board.., down another.

  Jeremy turned to Thorne, his face already spattered, his hair slick with it. 'Get an ambulance - call somebody.' His voice was thick with desperation. His face implored.

  But so did his son's.

  James Bishop looked at Tom Thorne and his eyes asked to die. They asked permission to look into his father's face and watch it contort as the blood emptied from the body. He wanted to die watching his father suffer. Thorne was tempted to let him.

  Jeremy's voice was hoarse between the sobs. 'For pity's sake, Thorne...'

  Then, as Thorne thought about sitting and watching, James Bishop bleed to death, he pictured Maggie Byrne, and Bishop watching as her life poured out on to a cheap duvet.

  And he remembered a promise he made to Alison Willetts.

  Dying would be easy. He was going to see the fucker tried and put away. He was going to watch James Bishop's hope evaporate.

  Jeremy was sobbing uncontrollably, his arms, wrapped tightly around his son's neck, slippery with blood. With a last look at Anne, Thorne stepped down, out of the white room and on to the stairs, hurrying back towards the street, where he hoped Holland would be waiting.

  PART FOUR

  THE SILENCE

  Don't get me wrong, I'm delighted he's dead. Thrilled about it. Prison is all well and good but I wouldn't want to lie here thinking about him writing his life story, cock of the fucking walk, probably out before he's fifty. Or else in some hospital somewhere, convincing them all he's mental while he pads around in comfy slippers, making model aero planes a
nd remembering the women he killed.

  Remembering what he did to me.

  Sod that, I'd much rather he was dead. If l could get taken somewhere for the day, you know, loaded up into some special van and taken anywhere I want, I'd like to see his grave. Obviously dancing on it isn't really an option but I'd be happy to be laid across it. Lifted up and laid down on top of him. And I'd lie there with my face on the ground and think dark thoughts that would seep down into the earth and eat into his box like poison.

  I'm glad he's dead. Stiff and still, like me. No, not like me. He's not scrabbling like a madman at the lid of the coffin, is he? Not tearing his fingers to stumps to try and get out. Not fed. Not wiped. Not breathed for. On the subject of which - no improvement. No response to the antibiotics and no chance of coming off this ventilator in the near future. Apparently the pneumonia in my lungs has been complicated by a fungal infection. Viruses and fungus. It's like I've become a breeding ground...

  What I really can't stomach is that it was his choice. He chose this for me and he chose death for himself.

  I'll tell you what's really ironic. I'm actually a dead positive . person. I really am. You may not believe that and I know I've been a bit up and down but you can't blame me for that. Try this for a while. Lie on your back and stare at the ceiling until your eyes start to water, and imagine it. Imagine being half dead and half alive, and the two halves not adding up to anything. Cancelling yourself out.

  It's not easy to be happy all the time.

  I am a positive person. But, lying here, I don't think of myself as a person at all any more. Not even a person alone, without anyone close. I wouldn't feel sorry for myself anyway because of that, but I can't even feel it. I just feel like something in a museum.

  I just feel like the thing he created.

  And I don't believe in God or anything afterwards. I'm sorry but I just don't, I never have. I believe in the way things are. The way I am. I believe in the capacity for people to do terrible things like he did and I believe that some people can do good.

  I'd like to do something good. I want to do something. Most people don't have a choice about a lot of things. They don't choose to be unhappy or poor, and they don't choose to lose children or get cancer. That's just life, though, that's just the lottery, isn't it? It's the same for all of us. But he chose to kill people and he chose to do this to me, to take away my life and give me the one he decided I" should have. And then, when he was good and ready, he chose the manner of his own death... Anne's coming back to work next week, I think. We need to talk.

  I can't do very much, but I can choose too. I want to have a say.

  I don't want to let him win.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Thorne hadn't been able to make good on his promise of a box. Hendricks wasn't pleased, but they were showing the game on Sky anyway, and he agreed to settle for half a dozen cans of cheap lager and a home delivery from the Bengal Lancer.

  There had been no great making up, no moment of acceptance or forgiveness. Hendricks called as soon as he heard what happened and they'd talked for a while. It was all that was needed.

  Nearly a month now.

  When James Bishop died on the operating table, Thorne had blamed himself. Then the post-mortem revealed the drug, and he knew that, even if he'd reacted quicker, the outcome would have been the same. Warfarin. A drug prescribed to treat certain 'heart and lung disorders and, ironically, used to prevent strokes. An anticoagulant. A drug that prevents the blood clotting,

  They couldn't be certain but they guessed he'd been taking it for at least a couple of weeks. Had he been planning it all along? Or had he been taking the drug just in case it ever came down to it? Down to him and his father and a scalpel.

  They'd never know for sure.

  They'd never know for sure, though Thorne felt pretty certain that Bishop had been the one who'd gone to the press. Leaking the story to free up the channels of information. Once a few decent holes had been torn in the veil of secrecy, he was able to learn so much more about what was happening on the case. The pipeline that fed Bishop information had been a complex one, running back and forth, in many directions and at different speeds from Thorne himself, via Jeremy Bishop, Anne and, of course, Rachel, who James had been seeing for some time. She never re-sat her exams.

  Anne wasn't sure when Rachel would go back to school or when she herself would go back to work. That's what she'd said a few weeks ago. Thorne had spoken to her frequently in the days following that night in Bishop's attic, but not since. He thought about her a lot, but never without wondering if his stupidity had somehow contributed to what had happened. Had he been responsible for Anne and Rachel being in that attic?

  One of many unanswerable questions with which he liked to torture himself.

  It wasn't as if he'd done anything that night to make Anne feel inclined to think better of him. There had been no heroics. Just those who died, and those who nearly did. Perhaps one day she'd call. It needed to come from her. He knew it would take a while for the bruises he couldn't see to fade, but he was starting to feel better. He had got it wrong, and he knew he would do so again. It was a comforting thought. He had been wonderfully, horribly wrong, and in truth, it felt as though a curse had been lifted. Fucking-up might just have saved him.

  And Helen and Susan and Christine and Madeleine and Leonie? The girls had gone rather quiet. Thorne knew this wasn't because they were 'at peace' or 'avenged' or anything like that. He didn't believe in that sort of crap. He was pretty sure that the silence was only temporary. They would make enough noise when the time came. Them, or others like them.

  Right this minute, they just didn't have anything to say. He watched, confused for a few seconds, as Hendricks jumped from the settee and began to dance around the living room. He glanced at the TV in time to catch the replay. Arsenal had scored. Three more points out of the window and another nail in this season's coffin. Just one more thing to which Tom Thorne was resigned.

  EPILOGUE

  Alison and Anne had decided to speed things up. The process was set down and not open to question. It was ponderous, but that was the way of things when those who took the decisions had to be sure. There was no room for clouded judgment or woolly thinking or, God forbid, overdue haste. The agreement, the rubber stamp of a second consultant, and then, finally, the hearing in front of a judge. These were necessary stages in the process. Divorce, the custody of children, domestic violence. The High Court Family Division held sway over a great many lives and Alison did not get priority. If anything, her case might be judged less important than some others. So, it was taking time. Alison had first spoken to her over two weeks ago now, and after the tears, the arguments, the doubts, had come a determination on Anne Coburn's part to do what she'd been asked.

  To help a friend.

  She'd set everything in motion, but it was all too slow for Alison.

  Anne walked towards ITU, willing one foot to go down in front of the other and keep moving. Steeling herself. Jeremy was doing a lot better but it was going to take time. The relationship he'd been having with a junior doctor had ended only a few days before James's death, but even if there had been someone around for him to lean on, to take comfort from, Anne would have wanted to be there as well. As it was, he was alone and desperate, and the twenty-five years she'd known him meant that she would always be nearby, ready to help.

  Equally, she could never see Tom Thorne again. It was as if the two of them had survived the +rash of a plane Thorne had been flying. Relieved, but unable to look each other in the eye. Guilt and blame and bad memories were not the stuff of a future.

  Her future was Rachel.

  Alison had been moved to a side room a couple of weeks earlier. It could not be watched directly from the nurses' station, and they wouldn't disturb her. Anne opened the door. Alison was awake, and pleased to see her.

  She moved across to the window and closed the blind. If anything, the room was even more sparse and functional than the o
ne she'd been in before. Anne remembered the half-dead flowers that Thorne had brought from a garage and wondered for a moment where he was and how he might be feeling. She closed her eyes, wiped away the image of him and turned back to Alison.

  They spent a few minutes !laughing, and crying, before Anne went to work. Her movements were quick, quiet, professional. She removed the oxymeter peg from the end of Alison's finger and clipped it, at a ninety-degree angle, to its own cable. It was unspoken, but most doctors knew that this would short-circuit the alarm and prevent it sounding when the ventilator was switched off. In twenty minutes or so, she would reattach it, when it was over, and she had turned the ventilator back on again. That had been Alison's idea. Take no risks, make it look natural. Don't fuck about with your career, pet...

  Anne moved across to the ventilator and flipped back the plastic cover that protected the switch, as if it were the button that launched nuclear missiles. She looked over at the bed.

  Alison had already closed her eyes.

  Whatever the quality of the strange, laughable life that Alison had lived these last months, it had been lived to a permanent soundtrack of humming, hissing, beeping, dripping. Twenty-four hours a day. A life defined by noise. James Bishop had condemned her to that, but Alison had refused to let herself be his victim.

  Now, finally, the noise had stopped.

  More than anything, Anne Coburn hoped that Alison might hold on to life just long enough to enjoy the silence.

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  My research into locked-in syndrome has made one thing abundantly clear: there is no such thing as a typical case. There is certainly no such thing as a typical recovery, if one is made at all.

  That said, any liberties that might have been taken with timeframes, procedure and so on have been taken purely in the interests of the story or else are simple, honest mistakes. No aspersions as to the efficiency, dedication or commitment of medical staff at any hospital mentioned in this book are intended. Any comment on the parlous state of the National Health Service is meant to reflect badly not on the workers within it but on politicians and bureaucrats who, while they happily purchase private healthcare, consistently refuse to fund the NHS adequately in the hope that it will die a nice quiet death.