Fat

by Rob Grant

  'Upsides?'

  'These farms will represent the biggest controlled experiment in history into how obesity actually works. They'll generate humongous amounts of data. It's a fantastic, unprecedented opportunity to finally lay all kinds of dietary myths and nonsense to rest. God, we might even find out how to actually cure some dietary illnesses, and wouldn't that be an unexpected bonus? We might even find the causes of overweight are genetic, or psychological, or even viral.'

  Jeremy nodded. He was wondering if he could use this particular plus in his pitch, but couldn't see how it would play very well, letting people know they were, fundamentally, signing up to be guinea pigs, and paying for the privilege.

  The chopper set down at London City Airport, which of all of London's airports had the advantage of actually being in London. Jeremy was slightly disappointed; he'd had visions of setting down in some sort of high-profile area, where the incoming passengers might be famous people, or at least politicians. He offered to share a cab with Jemma, but she was heading back to the university, in the opposite direction.

  If Jeremy was going to make a move, it was now or never. 'Look, I might need to pump you for some facts and figures and suchlike. Have you got an email, or a phone number I could reach you on?'

  Jemma fished in her bag and pulled out a business card. 'Why don't you come over on Friday for dinner? I can cook you some food that actually tastes of something.'

  Jeremy grinned. 'Great.'

  Jemma grinned back. 'I don't think my boyfriend will mind.'

  The boyfriend mention! Money in the bank. It was all Jeremy could do not to leap up and click his heels. It was all he could do not to tug his Versace shirt over his head and run in tight little circles of joy with his arms aeroplaned out.

  The boyfriend mention.

  Ker-ching!

  TWENTY-FOUR

  There's a ruined church spire in Hiroshima -- or was it Nagasaki? Grenville couldn't remember which -- that had been twisted into a tortured corkscrew in an instant by the sudden, terrible fury unleashed by the first atomic bomb, and has been preserved there as a testament to the power and the folly of which man is capable.

  That spire was precisely the same shape as Grenville's spine this morning.

  He had endured a night on the brick bed bench from hell, or at least, mostly on it. He'd had to get up a few times, just to make sure he still could get up, and he'd rolled off it at least three times, to his knowledge. Possibly more. He'd been in such a ragged state of exhaustion by the wee small hours, after the trials and tribulations of the day, he may very well have fallen off it eight or nine times, more, because when he finally awoke, he was lying on the unforgiving coldness of the concrete floor.

  His hips, his back, his arms, his arse were all potted with painful and probably ugly bruises. If he'd stripped off, he'd probably find he looked like a giant, overweight giraffe. Lovely. He'd probably be in better shape if those two coppers actually had set about him with their truncheons. He'd still be in pain, but at least he'd have a decent shot at a lawsuit.

  He arched his back, which cracked like Chinese New Year, but so painfully he was unable to derive any relief from the procedure, and he sat back down on the torture bench.

  What a day. A day he'd laughably started out thinking of as his 'health' day. Grenville shook his head, incredulous, and immediately wished he hadn't.

  The interview had concluded with him being virtually frogmarched back to his cell by two burly police officers, as if there were some sort of major risk he would run amok, handcuffed and barefoot -- yes, they made him remove his shoes yet again -- and single-handedly destroy the station. Yet all he'd done, when you boiled it down, was grab an idiot's phone and thrown it against the wall: a fairly minor act of harmless retaliation that was more than justified, under the circumstances. He'd done it before to a sous chef in his own kitchen -- in fact, he'd disposed of that phone in a bubbling pot of court bouillon, and, yes, they had used the bouillon later in the service to poach the turbot in -- without any repercussions whatsoever, yet here it led to his being denied bail for the utterly insignificant crime of hurting his own car, and manhandled into a prison cell like he was Hannibal fucking Lecter. On top of which, you could now add a second act of Criminal Damage to his charge sheet. And because they had removed the drawstring, and his hands were cuffed behind his back, his trousers fell down no less than three times en route to the pen, which was such a gross indignity, it wasn't even amusing to the police officers, who pretty much found everything about him amusing.

  He'd stewed in his cell for hours on end. He found time passed a lot more slowly when you didn't have a watch. Maybe he'd stop wearing a watch. He'd feel like he was living longer.

  The wicket had delivered dinner. After the guilt and horror of the previous two meals that day, Grenville had absolutely no intention of eating it. He'd dutifully collected it and set it on the floor in the toilet area without even lifting the lids -- there were two dishes this time. But the minutes ticked on, and there was nothing else to do in this hell hole, so he'd got up again and peeked. Mixed grill. Good grief. You could eat like a lord in here. Who said crime didn't pay? Well, mixed grill, that was all right, GI-wise. He could eat meat with impunity, more or less. He just wouldn't have the chips or the peas. And he certainly would not be having that rhubarb crumble and custard, no way on God's good Earth.

  He looked over at the table now. Both of the plates were sparkling clean. The boredom, and the desperate urge for comfort, had defeated his finer ambitions.

  His fucking health day.

  And this morning, he was going to court. He was going on trial. DC Redmond had said he was entitled to call somebody to arrange for a change of clothes, if he so desired, but there was no one. He could, he supposed, have called his ex-wife, but he decided the potential for humiliation in that far outweighed the humiliation of turning up in court in his smelly jogging clothes.

  The door rattled, and DC Redmond was standing there. Grenville must have looked even worse than he'd dreaded because she actually took a slight step back when she saw him and her expression was fairly close to the expression adopted by the Bride of Frankenstein when she first laid eyes on the groom.

  Yeah, well, you try spending a night in the hole, lady, and see how you look to greet the morn.

  She escorted him to the front desk, where, once again, his trainers were returned to him, and he had to put them on, while everyone in the station, apparently, just had to watch. There must have been some sort of regulation compelling them. He wished there wasn't always someone looking when he was forced to do that. When he was done, flushed and breathless, they also returned his elasticated drawstring.

  'What, in the name of all that's holy, am I supposed to do with that?' Grenville asked, but the desk sergeant just shrugged. And then Redmond cuffed him again, though this time his hands were in front of him, which was a marginal improvement, at least.

  He made a stab at re-threading the drawstring as he was led through some corridors towards the back of the station, but it was hopeless. Hopeless. It would have been hopeless even if he hadn't been cuffed. You needed a safety pin or something to re-thread a drawstring, and they weren't likely to grant him that mercy, were they? They weren't about to hand a known berserker a weapon of mass destruction like a safety pin. He could have gone through that police station like Schwarzenegger in The Terminator with a safety pin. It would have been Assault on Precinct 13 all over again. A bloodbath. Bodies everywhere.

  He gave up and stuffed the drawstring into his pocket, and shuffled on, clutching the waist of his joggers.

  They reached the back door and Redmond signed him over to a uniformed Group 4 guard, and handed over the cuffs keys.

  The Group 4 man -- were you supposed to call them 'officers'? -- made him hold his cuffed hands out, and, yes, magnificently, his joggers fell directly to his ankles, right in front of Delectable Constable Redmond. Super.

  Group 4 just left them there while he re
moved the cuffs, then they banged heads as they both stooped to pull up his jogging bottoms. Or rather, Group 4 banged his riot gear helmet on Grenville's unprotected head, which left him momentarily stunned, and then the bastard pulled up Grenville's trousers for him. What was going through his tiny mind? You don't pull another man's trousers up for him, not ever. Not even if you've just had a homosexual liaison with him on Hampstead Heath. You certainly don't do it without his permission. Your tailor doesn't even do it. The only person who's permitted to pull up your trousers for you, in your entire life, is your mother. And she has to stop doing it well before you're four years old. Grenville was praying Redmond hadn't hung around to witness this particular escalation in his humiliation, but, of course, she was still standing behind him, waiting for her cuffs back. If there truly was a God, and Grenville ever got to meet Him, he was going to give Him a fucking good kicking, and that was for sure.

  He was shepherded up a small set of metal steps into the waiting prison van. Inside were two ranks of cubicles, each about half the size of the average toilet cubicle, with a small bench seat in each of them. Surely they couldn't be expecting Gren to occupy one of those? He would never fit in there, and even if he did, they'd never be able to get him out again. But, yes, that was the intention he deduced from the witty push in the back from the Group 4 man.

  He squashed himself into one, uncomfortably, and looked up.

  There was another man in the cubicle opposite staring at him with what Grenville could only assume was murderous hatred.

  They'd put him in the van with a bunch of hardened criminals.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Hayleigh opened her eyes from some very, very strange dreams. It wasn't quite dark, but it wasn't quite light, either. The room was illuminated by an artificial yellowish glow, and that was the first oddness.

  Oddness number two: she had no idea where she was. She was in an unfamiliar bed, but she didn't remember having made any arrangements for a sleepover. Plus, as far as she could tell, there was no one else in the room. And when you have a sleepover, you really don't do much sleeping, not until the early morning, and you wake up in broad daylight. She did, however, have something close to the sleepover sore throat and hoarse voice, normally the result of copious amounts of laughing and talking, but this felt different, in some way. Her throat was drier than it had ever been in her life, as if someone had spent the night attacking it with Mum's creme brulee blow torch.

  She looked around for water. There was a vase by the bed with flowers in it, and Hayleigh seriously thought about emptying them out and glugging down the entire contents of the vase, that's how thirsty she was. Fortunately, there was a plastic water jug just beside it, and an empty glass. She started to reach over for it, when she realised that, oddness numero trois: there was something in her arm.

  Something in her arm.

  She looked down at it. There were three thin rubber tubes running down from some plastic bags which were dangling from a sort of white metal coat hanger, and another tube attached to a box with a digital read-out on the other side of her bed. And all of these tubes were attached to a huge needle that was taped against her arm, just below the elbow, but on the other side.

  She was in some kind of hospital.

  What was she doing in some kind of hospital?

  Oh, the leg. She'd hurt her leg, she seemed to remember.

  She lifted herself onto her elbows to check the damage. And what was this, now? It wasn't only the rubber tubes that were attached to her. There were wires taped to her chest and, she felt with her free hand, to her temples. What was going on? Were they turning her into some kind of Borg or something? And, oh God -- a tube was stuffed completely up her nose.

  A wave of cold horror flooded through her entire body.

  They were force-feeding her.

  They were deliberately trying to make her fat.

  That was totally in violation of her European Human Rights.

  Well, they'd picked the wrong gal to mess with this time, me ol' buckaroo. With some urgency, because Lord knows how many calories per second they were pumping straight into her veins, where they would cause the absolute maximum damage in the quickest possible time, she tore off the tape and carefully tugged the needle out. It was a very long needle, and she almost fainted a couple of times, whether from the actual pain, or just the thought of the pain, she wasn't sure, her head felt so fuzzy, but eventually she got the evil thing out and let it drop to the floor, where it could spit out its poison with impunity.

  Now it was the turn of the nose tube. Heaven alone knows what damage that was wreaking to her figure, second by wicked second, but it was coming out right now, believe me. She gave it a gentle tug, trying to ascertain just how far up her nose they'd stuffed it, and she gagged and started dry-heaving so violently she thought she might actually choke to death right there and then.

  The tube went all the way down her throat. It might even possibly go all the way down directly to her stomach! What bald-faced, unexpurgated malice! It was a very thick tube, too. They were probably pumping the most fattening foods possible straight into her. Probably a liquidized version of the legendary Snickers Bar Cake, the most calorifically lethal foodstuff in the history of the world.

  Well, that tube was coming out right now, or Hayleigh would choke in the process. Either way, this madness ended now.

  She tugged again, but hardly got any of it out before the gag reflex kicked in again, and she seriously thought she wasn't going to recover from this one. Finally, it stopped, but it left her weak and breathless, flooding with tears and on the brink of unconsciousness, and she just had to rest for a couple of minutes.

  She must have dropped off to sleep again, because the next thing she knew, the evil fattening tube was not her primary concern. She was snapped back to reality again by the bona fide Guinness Book of World Records Worst Pain Anybody Has Ever Felt, Ever.

  Check it out, it's definitely in there. Hayleigh Griffin's leg. Page two thousand and seventy-four.

  It felt like someone had splintered her leg with an axe, and just kept on chopping. She wanted to scream, but she couldn't. Her mouth was too dry from the tube of evil. She thought about pouring a glass of water, and how sad was that, to need a glass of water just to be able to scream, but the mad woodsman swung again, and a tiny squeal did manage to squeeze itself out of her this time.

  Mama mia, her leg was caning. She had to die right there and then, please God, because this was unbearable, and there was nobody to make it stop. There was nobody to save her.

  But there was somebody. The best somebody, as it turns out.

  That tiny squeal had been just enough. It wasn't loud enough for the nursing sister, sitting at a desk just outside Hayleigh's room, to identify, competent and caring and efficient as she was. Even if she'd heard it, she'd probably have thought it was a bed spring squeaking, or a chair leg moving across some flooring. But it was plenty loud enough for a mother to hear. Plenty loud. Even thirty feet away down a corridor. Even engaged in the most distressing conversation of her life with a psychiatric specialist, and even though her heart was breaking and her world was falling apart around her while all she could do was stand by helplessly and watch it happen, she heard that squeal all right, and she knew exactly what it was, and she said nothing, because that would be wasting time, she just turned around, dropped the paper coffee cup some well-meaning idiot had pressed on her and ran, leaving her husband and the psychiatrist staring after her, bewildered. Oh, she ran. You will never see running like this. She would have flown, if she could. For all we know, she did.

  She crashed into the room, and saw Hayleigh writhing on the bed, and saw immediately that the precious tubes were dangling free and not in her precious daughter's arm. She yelled for a doctor, and the ward sister was already in the room beside her, saying, 'Oh my God, the morphine!' and they both dashed over to the bed, the nurse to the side where the tubes were and the mother to the other side. And while one disinfected the n
eedle and jabbed it back in again, the other held her daughter's hand and mopped her brow and tried to pour her love into this tortured little girl, every last drop of it, using a method that not even mothers knew they knew, and no scientist would ever understand, and prayed that she could have the pain instead. Every last drop of it.

  PART TWO:

  Sixteen Days

  'Here's the smell of blood still.

  All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.'

  (Shakespeare: Macbeth, Act V scene i)

  TWENTY-SIX

  They'd wedged him into a cubicle from which there was no escape, in a van quite literally packed with hardened criminals who were utterly unhampered by restraints of any description whatsoever. There was a guard sitting by the door, but what use would he be if a van riot broke out and everyone decided to pile into Grenville? Would he even care? He wasn't even a proper, trained police officer. He was an employee of a security firm, and probably cheaply employed at that. Let's face it: he'd probably failed the police entrance exam. He probably failed it because he was an idiot who pulled up other men's trousers for them, unbidden, amongst many other reasons. He wasn't about to wade in with his dismal truncheon -- selected not for its effectiveness or its sturdiness but solely for its magnificent cheapness -- into a psychopathic mob, bent on gang-raping a defenceless overweight guy, braying at him to squeal like a pig. They might as well have thrust a spit up his backside and stuffed an apple in his mouth. Still, at least when they'd all finished having their brutal way with him, he'd have someone to pull his trousers back up.

  Grenville stopped looking at the sociopath opposite. These were prison rules, now. No eye contact. He thought he might enjoy studying the sides of his cubicle for the duration of the trip, but he was wrong. Someone had etched the words 'I goin to kill you' on it in a very ragged hand. Marvellous. Nothing quite as scary as a grammatically incorrect death threat. And what tool had been employed in this etching? It didn't look like it had been scratched in with fingernails, or, if it had, then those fingernails would, themselves, constitute deadly weapons. Someone had somehow smuggled some kind of sharpened tool into the vehicle. Hell, they probably all had. It was probably standard practice if you were a regular visitor.