His hands are on me now and he’s describing everything he’s doing. Telling me not to worry and to trust him. Talking me through it. He tells me the names of muscles when he touches them.
Stupid names. Medical.
He catches his breath and then he’s quiet for a while. A couple of minutes.
And I can’t hear myself saying a single thing about it. Not a word of complaint. Just the drip, drip, drip of my dribble as it spills out of my mouth and plops on to the tiles in front of me.
I can make a sort of gargling sound.
There’s a couple of grunts but now the sound starts to fade as I begin to slip away from everything.
Then something important. The last thing I can hear. Three words, echoey and strange as if they’re from a long way away. Like he’s whispering them to me from the end of a long pipe, like my friend saying hello down the vacuum-cleaner tube when we were kids.
I need to tell this, I think.
He says goodnight. Night-night . . .
It’s almost silly, what he says. Sweet-sounding and gentle. A word I’ve heard again since.
A word I heard when I woke up and was like this.
A word that says pretty much everything about what I am.
TWENTY-TWO
When Thorne woke up it was already dark. He looked at his watch. Just after seven o’clock. He’d been out of it for two and a half hours.
He had no way of knowing it, but two hours more and it would all be over.
Anne had gone. He got up off the settee to make himself coffee and saw the note on the mantelpiece.
Tom,
I hope you’re feeling better. I know how hard it was for you to tell me.
You mustn’t be afraid to be wrong.
I hope you don’t mind but I’m going to see Jeremy tonight to tell him that everything’s all right. I think he deserves to feel better too.
Call me later.
Anne. X
He made himself the coffee and read the note again. He was feeling better and it was more than just the couple of hours’ sleep. Talking about what had happened all those years ago had left him feeling cleaner. Purged was probably putting it a little strongly but, considering that his case had gone to shit, he had no friends and he was headed for all manner of trouble with his superiors, he might have felt much worse.
Tom Thorne was resigned.
It wasn’t so much that he’d been afraid to be wrong. He hadn’t even considered it. Now he had to do a lot more than consider it. He had to live with it.
Anne was going to see Bishop to tell him that he was out of the frame. That was fair enough. He’d never really been in the frame, if truth were told. Only in Thorne’s thick, thick head. It was time to face a few harsh realities.
Anne was doing a good thing. Bishop deserved to know what was going on. He deserved to know how things stood.
He was not the only one.
Thorne picked up the phone and dialled Anne’s number. Maybe he could catch her before she left. Rachel answered almost immediately, sounding out of breath, annoyed and distinctly teenage.
‘Hi, Rachel, it’s Tom Thorne. Can I speak to your mother?’
‘No.’
‘Right . . .’
‘She’s not here. You’ve just missed her.’
‘She’s on her way to Battersea, is she?’
Her tone changed from impatience to something more strident. ‘Yeah. She’s gone to tell Jeremy he’s not public enemy number one any more. About time as well, if you ask me.’
Thorne said nothing. Anne had told her. It didn’t matter now anyway.
‘How long ago did she—’
‘I don’t know. She’s going shopping first, I think. She’s cooking him dinner.’
‘Listen, Rachel—’
She cut him off. ‘Look, I’ve got to go, I’m going to be late. Call her on the mobile or try her later at Jeremy’s. Have you got the number?’
Thorne assured her that he had, then realised she was being sarcastic.
He tried Anne’s mobile number but couldn’t get connected. Maybe she had it switched off. She wouldn’t have a signal anyway if she was on the tube. Then he remembered that she was on call and guessed that she’d probably be driving. He had her bleeper number somewhere . . .
He picked up his jacket. He’d do what Rachel had suggested and get her later at Bishop’s. This time he wouldn’t have to withhold his number.
It wasn’t even that important; he just wanted to ask her how late Alison Willetts could receive visitors.
He was wearing one of the crisp white shirts he knew she liked so much. He’d stared at himself in the full-length mirror as he slowly did up the buttons. Watching the scars disappear beneath the spotless white cotton.
Now he looked at his watch as the car cruised sedately north across Blackfriars Bridge. He was going to be a little late. She would be on time as always.
She was very, very keen.
He was meeting her outside the Green Man as usual. It was a bit of a slog to drive all the way across the river just to turn round and drive back south again, but he’d rather do it this way than let her get on the tube or bus. He wanted to be in control of things. If she was late or missed a bus or something it could throw the timing of everything off.
When he’d told her that they would be going back to his place, he knew that she was thinking, Oh, my God, tonight’s the night. He could almost smell the rush of teenage oestrogen and hear the cogs in her silly little brain whirring as she tried to decide which perfume to dab between her tits and which knickers would turn him on the most.
Well, yes, it would be a night to remember for certain.
Back at his place.
It might be a little crowded . . .
On the drive to Queen Square, Thorne didn’t really need to think. He’d worked out what he was going to say to Alison Willetts. Now he just needed to be a little more relaxed in order to say it.
He popped out the Massive Attack tape and slid in Merle Haggard.
Getting relaxed enough to apologise.
‘Tommy?’
‘Yes, and to you too.’
After circling the square for nearly ten minutes, swearing loudly, he double-parked and stuck a dog-eared piece of cardboard with ‘Police Business’ scrawled on it in the front window of the Mondeo.
The evening was turning chilly. He wished he’d grabbed a warmer jacket on his way out. As he walked quickly towards the hospital’s main entrance, he felt the first drops of rain and remembered making this same journey in reverse two months earlier. It seemed a lot longer ago, that day in August when he’d first met Alison Willetts. He’d run through the rain towards his car and found the note. He’d begun to understand the nature of the man he was dealing with.
Today, on the same spot, with the rain starting to fall, Thorne was coming to terms with the fact that he still had no idea who that man was.
Nearly eight o’clock. The latest that Thorne had been inside the hospital. It was a very different place after dark. His steps echoed off century-old marble as he strode through the older part of the building towards the Chandler Wing. There were few people around and those he passed, nurses, cleaners, security staff, looked at him closely. They seemed to be studying his face. He’d never been aware of such scrutiny during the day.
Somewhere in the distance he thought he could hear what sounded like somebody weeping softly. He stopped to listen but couldn’t hear it any more.
Even the modern part of the hospital seemed spookier. The lights that normally bounced off the bleached wood in the Medical ITU reception area had been dimmed. The only sounds were the muted tones of a faraway conversation and the low hum of distant equipment of some sort. It might have been cleaning carpets. It might hav
e been keeping somebody alive.
He looked at the row of payphones in Reception. He’d try Anne again as soon as he’d been to see Alison. He’d forgotten to bring his mobile.
As he walked from the lift, he caught the eye of a woman in the glass-fronted office in Reception. She waved at him and he recognised her as Anne’s secretary. He couldn’t remember her name. He pointed at the doors and she nodded, signalling at him to go on through. He remembered the three-digit code that opened the heavy wooden doors and stepped through them into the Intensive Therapy Unit.
He let the sister on duty at the nursing station know where he was going and set off down the corridor towards Alison’s room. As he walked past the other rooms he realised that he knew nothing about the people inside. He’d never spoken to Anne about her other patients. He presumed that none were suffering in quite the same way as Alison was, but that all had seen their lives changed in a few short seconds. The time it takes to trip on the stairs or mistime a tackle or lose control of a car.
The time it takes for a brain to short-circuit.
He listened at the door of the room opposite Alison’s. The same telltale hum of machinery from within, like the lazy throb of a dozing beehive coming slowly to life after a long winter. Whoever lay in the bed inside that room was here by accident. That was the difference.
Thorne turned and moved across to Alison’s door. He knocked quietly and reached for the handle.
He gasped as the door was yanked open from the inside and David Higgins all but pushed him back into the corridor.
‘She’s not here.’ Higgins was in his face.
‘What?’ Thorne tried to push past him into the room.
‘You’re out of luck, Thorne. Sorry.’
Thorne looked at him, not understanding. Higgins began to raise his voice. ‘My fucking wife. My fucking wife, who you are fucking. She. Isn’t. Here.’
Thorne could smell Dutch courage.
‘I’m not here to see Anne. Move out of the way.’
‘Of course. Have fun.’
Higgins took a step to his left but Thorne didn’t move, just looked at him. ‘What does that mean?’ Knowing exactly what it meant but wanting to hear him say it.
‘Well, in the absence of the lovely Anne, who doesn’t actually enjoy it that much anyway, you might as well . . . make hay with someone who really doesn’t have a great deal of say in the matter. Like a blow-up doll with a pulse.’
Thorne had always thought that the accusations about his relationship with Alison were a little cheap for the killer. A little beneath him. Now he knew who had been responsible. The motivation was obvious but Thorne asked anyway. ‘Why?’
Higgins swallowed, licked his lips. ‘Why not?’
As his right arm bent and swung at speed, Thorne unballed his fist. A slap seemed so much more appropriate. Higgins wasn’t man enough to punch.
The hard flat hand caught Higgins across the jaw and ear, sending him sprawling across the highly polished linoleum. He lay still, whimpering like a child.
Without looking at him, Thorne stepped across Higgins’s outstretched leg and opened the door to Alison Willetts’s room.
The second he looked at her, she began to blink. Once, twice, three times. Thorne realised that she’d heard the noise from outside and was disturbed. Maybe he should call for a nurse. What had Higgins been doing in her room anyway? Probably just looking for Anne, but couldn’t he have spoken to someone at reception?
Thorne’s mind was racing. He needed to calm down if he was going to be able to say what he came to say.
Alison was still blinking. One blink every three or four seconds.
‘It’s OK, Alison. Look, I’ll try and keep this short. It’s about what I said the other day, about being close to him, the man who did this to you . . .’
She was still blinking.
Please, for fuck’s sake shut up, and listen. Get the board . . .
‘What’s the matter?’ His eyes darted across to the blackboard, still lying against the wall and covered with a sheet. He looked back at Alison. One blink. Yes.
Yes!
He moved across the room, whipped off the sheet and dragged the blackboard to the foot of the bed.
He knew roughly how the system worked. He hurried to switch off the main light and then, using the remote at the end of the bed, he raised Alison up so that she was nearly sitting. Then he picked up the pointer, switched it on and positioned the small red laser dot beneath the first letter: E. He began to move the pointer slowly along the letters.
Nothing.
Starting to speed up, studying her face, watching for the smallest reaction.
Come on . . . come on . . .
Then a blink. He stopped.
‘S? Was that an S, Alison?’
Yes, for Christ’s sake! Of course it was! Hurry up.
Move. Wait. Watch. Move. Wait. Watch. Move . . .
Another blink. Thorne was sweating. He threw off his jacket. ‘L. Yes? OK, that’s S, L. Right.’
Back to the beginning again and . . . a blink. No, two blinks.
‘Is that a no to the E, Alison?’
No, it isn’t fucking no. Two blinks is usually no but when I’m doing this it means ‘repeat’. Didn’t Anne tell you any of this?
‘Or do you mean two Es? Yes? Right. S, L, E, E . . . sleep? Do you want to go to sleep, Alison?’
Fuck, fuck, fuck . . .
Two strong blinks. One, two.
No. I. Don’t. Have you got any idea how hard this is?
He raised the pointer again. Point. Stop. Look. Point. Stop. Look. Point. Stop . . . a blink. No question about it. A big fat positive Y.
‘You’re sleepy? I’m sorry, Alison, I can come back when . . .’
She was blinking quite rapidly now. Repeatedly.
Do I look fucking sleepy? Well, do I? Come on, Thorne, sort it out . . .
The sweat was running off him. He was making a complete mess of it. One more try and then he’d go and get somebody. Back with the pointer. And Alison blinked. And blinked again.
An H. Another E . . .
And the word became obvious.
And a firework went off in Thorne’s stomach.
A memory file, a tiny soundbite was pushed forward in his brain and something pressed the button marked ‘play’ and lit the fuse. The charge began to churn through his guts and the explosions rang in his ears and the sparks were dancing behind his eyes, green and gold and red and silver, and he was squeezing Alison’s hand.
And he was scrabbling in his pockets for change for the phone.
Running from the room.
‘Bishop? This is Thorne . . .’
‘What?’ Weary, but also frightened.
‘I know what you said to her. I know what you said to Alison before you stroked her out. What you said to all of them.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘“Night-night, Sleepyhead.” Same thing you said to me when you put me out for that hernia operation last year.’
His tongue heavy in his mouth, his voice growing weaker as he counts backwards from twenty, wondering if it will hurt when he wakes up, and seeing the smiling face of the anaesthetist looming above him. Murmuring . . .
‘Is there a point to any of this, Thorne? I’m expecting somebody.’
‘The same thing you said to me, Bishop. “Night-night, Sleepyhead.”’
‘Look, if it helps you, yes, I say that to patients sometimes when they’re going under and I say, “Wake up, Sleepyhead,” when they’re coming round from the anaesthetic. It’s a silly catchphrase. A superstition. For God’s sake, I used to say it to my children when I put them to bed at night. Is this helping you, Thorne? Is it?’
‘I was about to let it
go, do you know that? You were so close to walking away. I thought I was wrong, but I wasn’t, was I? Now I’m fucking certain . . .’
‘You need help, Thorne. Serious professional help . . .’
‘You’re the one who needs help, Jeremy. I’m coming for you. I’m coming for you right now.’
Jesus . . . Jesus . . . Jesus . . .
I thought he was never going to get it.
I thought maybe it would be important, you know, because I’d heard it when I woke up as well as when he was doing it to me.
That same word.
I thought it was probably significant and as soon as I heard Thorne outside the door I knew I wanted to try to tell him, but I hadn’t expected him to shoot out of here quite like that.
Like shit off a shiny shovel, my old man would have said.
He was obviously still worked up after punching Anne’s old man.
Like a blow-up doll with a pulse. What a fucking charmer. I hope Thorne knocked his teeth down his throat.
So it has to be that doctor who brought me round. The anaesthetist who came in here with Anne a couple of times is Champagne Fucking Charlie. The one who’s her friend. The one Thorne had the photo of. He obviously suspected him all along.
How can you be a doctor and do . . . this?
Jesus, though, I thought that was going to take for ever. That’s the best I’ve ever done. Anne would have been dead proud, I reckon. I was fucking spot on.
Blinking for England. I said I would, didn’t I?
It was so hard, though.
Now I really am sleepy . . .
TWENTY THREE
Dave Holland stared at the film Sophie had rented, not taking in a single word. He pushed bits of cold lasagne round his plate, not really hungry.
Thinking about Tom Thorne.
He hadn’t been there that morning when Thorne had stormed out of the office at Edgware Road. He was still trying to bring himself round after the night before when he’d drunk far too much trying to forget about Helen Doyle’s parents. They’d made quite a night of it, him and Thorne. Even though he’d been pissed, and asleep some of the time, he could remember a lot of what Thorne had been saying. Lying on the settee late into the night, eyes closed, head spinning, while Thorne talked about blood and voices. Things Dave Holland wouldn’t forget in a long time.
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