He had never come close.
Upinarms, Malaga, Freezeout, Luckbox. Each now knew the secret he was so desperate to share, but watching them die only left him feeling more empty than before. Still, Patrick wrote their names in quiet pencil lists because who else would mark their passing? His father had remembered Persian Punch with a pint and a bottle of Coke; it seemed only right to do something.
The carpet was filthy. He’d already emptied his bucket of dirty water twice, and only properly cleaned a patch a foot square. Under the dark brown it was a vile ginger. Patrick didn’t like it, but he was determined to reveal it anyway.
He emptied more blackened water into the bath, refilled the bucket and added another dollop of bleach.
‘What are you doing?’ said Jackson.
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ said Patrick.
‘Huh?’ he said, and Patrick showed him the scrubbing brush.
‘I’m cleaning.’
‘Ha ha, very funny,’ said Jackson, then followed Patrick back to his bedroom and hung around in the doorway as if cleaning were a spectator sport.
‘Have you seen Pete lately?’
‘What’s lately?’
‘In the last couple of weeks?’
‘No.’ Patrick realized he wasn’t going to be able to do this all in one go, so he mentally divided the visible carpet into squares.
‘I think maybe they broke up,’ Jackson went on.
Patrick didn’t feel that required an answer. Not that he had an answer. Or an opinion – although he did hope Kim had washed the kimono.
‘Do you think I have a chance?’ said Jackson.
Patrick sat back on his heels and thought about it. He wasn’t quite sure what Jackson was talking about, but horse racing had taught him that everything had a chance – of death and of glory.
The idea invigorated him, and suddenly he felt his determination surface again from the mud of betrayal. He was employed in solving a far bigger mystery than Number 19’s cause of death, so he shouldn’t let something as simple as that get the better of him! Patrick knew exactly where to get the information he was entitled to.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I do.’
Jackson said, ‘Thanks!’ Then – in a rare burst of generosity – he added, ‘Your carpet looks great.’
Not yet, thought Patrick, but it would. He got to his feet and dropped the brush into the bucket with a plop. He was newly filled with hope, and his head and nose felt suddenly clear again. He wondered briefly whether it was the bleach.
He lifted his bicycle off the wall and started down the stairs.
He wasn’t going to be beaten by a carpet or a corpse.
4017.
Patrick prickled at the need for the offensively random code.
The door of the anatomy wing clicked shut behind him, damming the flow of other students and leaving him alone in the quiet corridor creek that led to the dissection room and, beyond that, the stairs leading down to the embalming room, where Mick spent most of his time.
His Pumas made a low squeak on the scuffed tiled floor.
The white double doors of the DR were not locked. It wasn’t a dissection day, and so the cadavers lay patiently on their tables, looking lost without their attending students. Patrick picked out Number 19’s domed form from across the room. He felt a sense of adversity that had not been there before.
You can’t keep secrets from me.
Mick was not in his office and a note on the half-glazed door told Patrick that he would be back at three thirty p.m. Patrick looked at his watch; it was only eleven a.m. but he was on a roll and had no interest in coming back at three thirty. Three thirty was light years away.
He tried the door handle and it opened, so he went inside.
Mick ran a tight ship. There were uncluttered shelves, a well-swept floor, a single pot-plant on a filing cabinet. The desk was clear, but for a tidy with two pens in it and a three-tier letter tray that held only a few donation and cremation forms. Patrick approved of the tidiness, even if it meant the clipboard which held the Cause of Death checklist was not just lying around.
There were two pale-grey filing cabinets beside the desk. Patrick tried the drawers of both, but they were locked. He rattled them, but this time it didn’t work.
His determination became frustration in a heartbeat. The cadaver was still trying to cheat him. Still guarding its mysteries, even though it was dead and had no use for them itself.
But Patrick had waited so long, and worked so hard. He deserved to know the answers. It wouldn’t be wrong; he was entitled.
He had seen TV shows and films where people did things like sneaking into villains’ headquarters to uncover top-secret information, so he knew it was possible, but the movies made it look like a major operation that was unlikely to be achieved without satellite communications and a grappling hook. A black turtleneck sweater, at the very least. He had none of those. He looked around the bare little office, then went back out to the dissecting room and selected a robust carving fork from the white tray near the door.
He inserted the tines into the metal drawer to lever it open. As he did, he noticed that the plant on top of the cabinet was tilted at a slight angle. He couldn’t leave it like that – he knew that the moment he saw it. He couldn’t even concentrate on the task at hand until it was righted.
He put down the fork.
Under the pot was a saucer, and under the saucer was the key to the filing cabinet.
Inside the top drawer of the first cabinet he opened was the clipboard.
Easy.
On the board was the form he’d only glimpsed before as Mick walked among them, wishing them ill. Patrick’s eyes were drawn directly to the last column, labelled ‘COD’. Cause of Death.
Number 19 had died of heart failure.
That couldn’t be right.
Patrick had held that heart in his hands. There had been no stenosis, no clots, no aneurysm. He had come in here to uncover a secret, only to find that the secret was a lie. He glared at the form, feeling cheated, wanting more, and noticed that the very first column was headed ‘NAME’. He ran his eyes down the list.
‘What are you doing here?’
He turned; Mick was in the doorway.
Patrick looked at his watch. ‘What are you doing here? The note said you’d be back at three thirty.’
Mick opened his mouth and raised his eyebrows so high that they almost touched the place where his hair would have been if he’d had any. He closed the couple of paces between them and snatched the clipboard from Patrick’s hand. ‘That’s confidential information.’
‘I wanted the cause of death. That’s not confidential. Dr Spicer said we could ask any time, and this is any time and you weren’t here to ask, so I looked.’
‘You broke into a locked filing cabinet.’
‘I used the key.’
‘The hidden key.’
‘If it was hidden, I wouldn’t have found it, because I wasn’t looking.’
Mick brushed past him and put the clipboard back in the drawer, then slammed the drawer and locked it. He dropped the key into his pocket.
‘What’s your name?’
Why did everyone always want to know what his name was?
‘Patrick Fort.’
‘You’re in a lot of trouble,’ said Mick.
‘What for?’
‘I just told you what for.’
‘Why?’ Patrick was confused; he had explained everything.
‘Don’t play stupid games with me. I’m going to speak to Professor Madoc about this.’
‘OK,’ said Patrick.
Mick seemed disappointed that he wasn’t more worried by the prospect. ‘All right, you can get out now.’
‘OK,’ said Patrick, but didn’t go. ‘I think the cause of death is wrong.’
‘What cause of death?’
‘Number 19. You’ve got heart failure but the heart is not diseased.’
‘If that’s what’s on th
e death certificate, that’s what it is. I’m not a doctor, and neither are you, by a very long way.’
‘I know that. But—’
‘No buts. This conversation is over.’
‘OK,’ said Patrick, so started a different conversation. ‘When the people die, you embalm the bodies, right?’
Mick looked at him but didn’t answer, so Patrick went on, ‘Where do they go afterwards?’
‘They come up here,’ said Mick. ‘Then when you lot have finished with them I put all the bits in a bag and they go back to the families for funerals.’
‘Not the bodies. The people.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Is there an exit?’
‘A what?’
‘An exit. In their heads. Like a door they go through.’
‘Like the one I should have kept locked?’
‘Yes,’ said Patrick, ‘like that. Some kind of barrier that people go through when they die.’
Mick squinted at Patrick; he shook his head; he made a face. ‘No,’ he finally said.
‘Then what happens to them? Where do they go? Can they come back?’
Mick stood and stared at Patrick for a long moment, then reached down and lifted up the phone. ‘Hold on a second,’ he said, ‘I’ll see if the police know.’
‘OK,’ said Patrick, and waited to see if the police knew.
Mick stabbed the first two nines with a flourish and a glare, but then sighed and hung up.
‘Just get out, will you?’
‘OK,’ said Patrick.
In his excitement he’d forgotten his gloves, and by the time he’d cycled back to the house, his fingers were red and numb. He ran hot water into the kitchen sink and held them under, then stared out of the window that faced next door’s fence and let his mind drift like kelp on a turning tide. The window was dirty; he would have to wash it. He was hungry and he was out of bread. Once his hands had warmed up he would put on his gloves and go over the road and get chips. His mouth tingled in anticipation of vinegar, and he thought of all the twists and turns the chips would have to take as they dropped into his stomach. All the places they’d have to avoid; all the choices his body would make for them, all the chemistry it would employ to break them down; how his peristaltic muscles would guide them along the conveyor belt of his guts until he passed them some time tomorrow morning.
Patrick took his hands from the water and dried them on the tea towel, while his brain turned its inevitable wheel to what had killed Number 19.
The list on the clipboard was almost as disappointing as the brain had been. He had gleaned only one piece of additional information, and that felt like a very minor victory in a failed war of secrets.
The corpse’s name was Samuel Galen.
24
‘NOT BAD, SAM,’ Leslie tells me, filled with gloom. But it’s praise indeed from him, and I redouble my efforts to retrain my tongue – stretching, sucking, blowing and braying.
‘Have you eating and drinking soon,’ he adds grudgingly.
This turns out to be a big fat lie, but I do make progress. The tongue is a magnificent thing. I think about it a lot, now that all my hopes and dreams depend upon it, and less than a week after my wofe betrayed me to a possible killer, Jean and Tracy prop me up in bed and spoon orange juice down my throat.
Elixir of the gods. I know everything is relative, but it tastes so good to me that I actually start to cry.
‘Ahhh, look how happy!’ says Jean.
‘Ahhh,’ parrots Tracy Evans, but I can see she’s not interested. She barely looks at me and keeps clattering the teaspoon against my teeth. She’s looking for the man she’s trying to … well, seduce is too elegant a word. She thinks we don’t see. I suppose she thinks we’re all vegetables, but I see; I know what she’s up to. I knew girls like her at Hot Stuff in Merthyr. All the lads knew them – sometimes twice a night.
She puts the juice in too fast and I feel the strange and horrible sensation of it going down the wrong way.
‘Ah!’
Jean notices – bless her. She jumps up and rushes to get a machine I’ve seen them use on other patients. It’s like a vacuum cleaner and she feeds it down my throat and sucks stuff out of my airway with a nasty rattling sound, while Tracy stands there with her arms crossed, as if I’m making a fuss about nothing and had better not blame her. But in Jean’s eyes I can see how serious this could be.
She puts the horrible tube into me twice more, and collects watery orange mucus in a kidney bowl while my eyes stream with something similar, and I fight to keep breathing.
Finally she stops and takes Tracy away. For a bollocking, I hope.
I lie there panting, feel as if I’ve been punched on the inside, all my fresh hope scrunched into a stupid ball and tossed away.
Even if they’re not trying to kill me, they might yet succeed.
And all I can do is lie here and wait for it.
‘Patrick Fort!’ said Professor Madoc, as if he were a long-lost friend. ‘Have a seat.’
Patrick sat down and looked around. Professor Madoc fiddled with a Rubik’s cube behind the vast wooden desk that held two silver-framed photographs – one of a smiling young woman, and the other of a boat. There was another photo of the same boat on the wall behind him, with the professor himself looking tanned and rich, waving from the puffy red depths of a life-jacket. Patrick could read the name painted on the prow: Sharp End.
‘Damn thing,’ said Professor Madoc at the cube. ‘You ever done one of these?’
‘Yes,’ said Patrick.
The professor put it down and cleared his throat. ‘I hear you’ve had a few run-ins, Patrick. A few problems.’
‘No,’ said Patrick. ‘No problems.’
‘That’s not what people have told me.’
‘OK.’
Professor Madoc looked at a piece of paper in front of him.
‘Inappropriate attitude to staff, a near-physical altercation with a fellow student over a cadaver, ignoring procedure during dissection, and unauthorized access to confidential donation details.’
‘I wanted to know the cause of death; that’s not confidential.’
‘That’s not the point,’ said Professor Madoc. His hand strayed towards the cube but he caught it in time and drummed his fingers on the desktop instead. ‘You broke into a locked filing cabinet.’
‘I used the key.’
‘It was locked for a good reason.’
‘What reason?’
‘For reasons of confidentiality.’
‘But the cause of death isn’t confidential.’ How many times did he have to say it?
‘But the identity of the donor is.’
‘But I don’t care about the identity of the donor. I only wanted to know the cause of death.’
‘Listen,’ said Professor Madoc more sharply. ‘This is a medical school, not a kindergarten. We won’t tolerate this kind of disruption from our students, even ones with issues.’
‘What issues?’ said Patrick.
Professor Madoc took a moment to adjust to frankness. ‘We understand about your Asperger’s, Patrick, and we certainly have made allowances for it, but I have formally to advise you that we cannot make endless allowances. If I have further reports of incidents of this nature, I will be forced to suspend your studies here at Cardiff. Do you understand?’
Patrick pursed his lips.
‘Do you understand?’
‘Yes, I understand,’ said Patrick. ‘I’m trying to decide whether I care.’
Professor Madoc raised his eyebrows the way Mick had. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I might not care. I might have finished here. I don’t know if there’s any point in going on.’
‘No point in going on? What does that mean?’ The professor’s hand twitched again towards the cube.
Patrick thought that Professor Madoc might have a touch of Asperger’s himself, because he didn’t seem to comprehend anything he was saying.
‘I think t
he cause of death on the sheet is wrong. What’s the point of going on if I’m basing judgements on bad information?’
‘Cause of death is certified by a doctor.’
‘Doctors get it wrong all the time. You see it on TV.’
Professor Madoc’s hand flinched, and this time he followed through with a pick-up and started to twist the cube’s little coloured blocks – frowning at them disapprovingly as he went on.
‘The DR technician told me you asked him about a … doorway in the brain? Does that have anything to do with all of this?’
‘Yes,’ said Patrick, and stared at the cube turning in the man’s long, elegant fingers. ‘I want to know what happens.’
The professor sighed deeply and put down the cube. ‘You know, Patrick, all we see in the dissecting room is the physical aftermath of a life. A medical student starts his journey with the dead and works backwards.’
Patrick pursed his lips. ‘But I want to start with the dead and work forwards.’
Professor Madoc gave a small laugh. ‘The dead can’t speak to us, Patrick, although our lives would be immeasurably simpler if they could. While doctors might discover the mechanics of how someone died, they are privy to neither why they died nor to what happens to them after they die. To solve those puzzles I think you’d need to consult a detective … and a priest.’
He smiled, but Patrick didn’t.
‘And how do they solve those puzzles?’ said Patrick, leaning forward.
Professor Madoc looked a little taken aback by the sudden interest in a throwaway remark. He spread his hands in new uncertainty. ‘Well, I imagine a priest doesn’t actually know. That’s a matter of faith.’
‘Superstition,’ Patrick corrected him. ‘How does the detective know?’
The professor gave it serious thought. ‘Well,’ he finally said, ‘I suppose that to find out why somebody died, a detective would have to consult the living.’
‘What kind of living?’
‘Friends and family. Witnesses. Attending medical professionals. People like that, I suppose.’
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