The car park at Accident and Emergency was constructed in a circle, the parking spaces surrounding a central flower bed, and stemming off from it like petals. I pulled my car into the first empty bay I saw, then ran across through the shock of the cold evening air, through the sliding doors into the hospital’s reception. The area had been transformed into a construction site: boxed off in the middle, with plastic chairs crammed in down the walls to either side. Vending machines were humming softly. The main reception desk was at the far end: a brightly lit cube of Perspex with a middle-aged woman reclining behind a desk.
‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘Which way is Ward fifty-seven?’
‘That way.’ She leaned forward, pointing with a biro down a hallway to the right. ‘There’s a passenger lift a few doors along. It’s floor five, then follow the signs.’
‘Thanks.’
The lift was easy enough to find, but I kept pressing the button, over and over, as it seemed to take an age to arrive.
Come on, come on
. Eventually the doors opened. Inside, the lift was little more than a small, steel box. The doors clanked shut, and the whole thing rattled alarmingly as it clambered slowly up to the fifth floor.
Don’t die
, I thought.
Don’t you dare fucking die
.
The lift doors opened and I stepped out. The ward was signposted to the left, and I found it a little way along, but had to ring the intercom and wait – again, for what felt like an age.
Don’t die, you bastard
.
When I’d answered the call from Ally’s mobile, I’d found myself talking to a woman named Doctor Matheson. A few hours earlier, she explained, an ambulance had been called to attend to an old man on a bridge in the city centre of Thornton. Passers-by had seen him, obviously in severe distress, doubled over and clutching at his chest, and alerted emergency services. According to witnesses, the old man had been determinedly throwing things into the river below: fumbling in his pockets for wallets and keys. A couple of people intervened to stop him – to help him – and the old man had fought back, apparently confused, before finally collapsing and being rushed here. A major heart attack, Matheson told me. He was still alive, but in a critical condition.
They had no idea who he was. The one thing the old man hadn’t had time to get rid of was a mobile phone buried deep in one of his coat pockets. Doctor Matheson had turned it on, checked the last number, and redialed it in the hope of making contact with a relative.
Got you, you fucker
.
The door to Ward 57 buzzed for a few seconds, and then the lock disengaged. I pulled it open and walked down a corridor, round into an area divided up by blue curtains. There was a new reception desk here, and the women behind it were deep in conversation.
‘Excuse me,’ I said.
‘Sorry.’ One of them rotated on her chair. ‘Can I help you there?’
‘Doctor Matheson’s expecting me. I’m here to see a patient that’s been admitted.’
‘Name?’
‘I don’t know. It’s a heart attack, but the patient had no ID. He was found on a bridge in Thornton centre.’
‘Oh yeah.’
The nurse craned her neck –
you’re in my way
– and stared at the wall behind me. I glanced back to see a white board divided up in straight lines by permanent black marker pen. Names and notes were scrawled on the grid in green. Most of the cells were full, while the empty ones still had ghostly, half-wiped smears detailing the bed’s previous residents.
‘Room A3.’ She pointed back the way I’d come. ‘Round that corner there.’
‘What, I just go in?’
‘Yeah, it should be fine. Just be very quiet, as I think he’s sleeping. I’ll tell Doctor Matheson you’re here.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’
You’ve got your own room then
.
I approached the door, feeling my pulse tapping in my temples. Was this really going to be him? Even after everything I’d read, everything I’d discovered, it was still hard to believe that such a person existed in real life.
But he did. And it had to be him because he had Ally’s phone.
I opened the door and stepped into the room.
It was small and amber-lit. The main overhead light was turned off, but a wall-mounted block shone softly down on the bed and its occupant. With all the clutter of machinery, and the pastel blues and yellows of the wallpaper, it reminded me of a child’s room. But the man lying asleep in the bed was far from that.
I paused for a moment, unsure what to do now I was here, with the old man in front of me. Then I closed the door quietly behind me and stepped across to the edge of the bed and looked down at him.
He was stick-thin beneath the covers, and almost bald aside from wisps of greasy grey hair at his temples. His eyes were closed but horribly prominent, as though a thin layer of skin
had been draped over marbles, while the lower half of his face was obscured by a soft plastic mask, a tube connecting it to a cylinder that was bolted on the wall. His head was tilted back slightly on the pillow, so that his neck was exposed; the skin there was baggy and lined. His Adam’s apple was solid as a knuckle; the tendons around it taut as cables.
He wasn’t dead – that was obvious from the steady, pulsing lines of light tracing his heartbeat on the display beside the bed – but he looked closer to a corpse than a living man. Lying very still, his skin waxen and yellow.
He was also much smaller and more emaciated than I’d been imagining. Because of the book, I’d pictured someone strong and fearsome, but this man seemed feeble. Of course, anybody would look feeble in these circumstances, with their life supported solely by bags of solutions and tubes punched into their veins, but even so. It was hard to believe he was the monster I’d been reading about. He looked like … nothing.
But that is what monsters look like
, I thought.
The same as everyone else.
My fists kept bunching: fingers stretching then clenching.
‘Where is she?’ I whispered.
One of his eyelids flickered. Just a little.
I took a step closer, about to repeat my question, and the door opened behind me. I stepped back, then turned to see a middle-aged woman dressed in pale-blue scrubs.
‘Hello there.’ She smiled and extended a hand.
I reached out and shook it.
‘Doctor Matheson?’
‘Yes. Thanks for coming – for getting here so quickly.’
‘I didn’t know how long he’d have.’
‘Oh. Well, he’s stable for the moment.’ Matheson closed the door then stepped around me to look down at her patient. ‘We won’t be sure of the damage to his heart until we get the results of the blood tests, but in the meantime we’ve got him on
painkillers and anti-clotting agents, and we’re keeping him hydrated. Keeping an eye on him. Aren’t we, fella?’
The last comment was directed almost affectionately at the old man.
Fella
. Matheson, of course, knew nothing about the kind of man her patient really was.
‘You know him, I presume?’
I’d been thinking about this, how to handle it. I couldn’t give him a false name, as I assumed the records were computerised, but given that he had hold of Ally’s phone it was going to raise questions if I claimed not to know him at all. I was going to have to call the police now – obviously I was – but I didn’t think Doctor Matheson was the first person to confide in and explain all this to.
‘Sort of,’ I said. ‘He’s my girlfriend’s uncle. His first name’s John, but I don’t know his surname. The family’s all split up. I’ve been trying to get hold of her, but she’s not at home right now. And obviously, he had her mobile for some reason.’
‘Does he have a history of dementia?’
I shook my head. ‘Not that I’m aware of.’
‘The reason I’m asking is because of his behaviour before the ambulance arrived. Throwing his things away. By all accounts, he seemed very confused and disorientated.’
Yes, I thought, that was how it would have looked to people: an old man acting strangely, not knowing what he was doing. But that wasn’t what had really been happening, was it? No, caught out away from his home, and thinking he might be dying, he’d been trying to remove anything that might lead authorities to his door. So they wouldn’t find his home and discover what was kept there.
Keeping his
family
safe.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘Do you know what he was doing in Thornton?’
‘No. Have you not been able to ask him anything?’
‘He’s only been semi-conscious. And not often.’ She looked
back down at him. ‘At the moment, I’m happier letting him rest and settle. I was just curious.’
I nodded: I was curious too. Not so much about
what
he’d been doing. The real question was
where
he’d come from to get to that bridge in the centre of Thornton. Did he live just a few miles away? Was it hundreds? It was frustrating to think the farm might be nearby, perhaps just minutes from where I was standing, and yet there was no way of discovering it. I might be so close to where Ally was being kept right now and never know. Or not know in time.
Where did you come from?
Something occurred to me.
‘You said he threw everything in the river?’
‘That’s what I was told, yes.’
‘Car keys?’
She thought about it.
‘I don’t know. Somebody mentioned keys. They might have been house keys. Why?’
‘Just planning ahead.’ I did my best to smile. ‘Working out what we’re going to have to do when he’s back on his feet again.’
‘Oh, of course. I get you.’
What I was actually thinking was whether there might be a vehicle parked up somewhere: a rusty, crimson van he’d been forced to abandon. Because if that could be found, maybe the police could trace the license plate. Get an address from it.
‘Listen,’ Matheson said. ‘I need to do the rounds. It’s fine for you to sit with him for a short time, if you like? Not for long though please.’
I nodded.
‘Maybe I will, just for a little while. I’ll chase up the surname too.’
She closed the door very gently behind her, and I was left alone with the old man.
Silence.
The only movement in the room was the display on the monitor, the beep as it registered his vital signs faltering onwards. I watched the bony cage of his chest rise and fall under the blanket for a minute. Then I leaned down until my mouth was close to his ear and spoke quietly.
‘Can you hear me?’
There was no response. Just the same steady breathing. The same undulating trails of light beside the bed.
‘Where is she?’ I said. ‘Where did you come from?’ Again, no response. I stepped away.
Then took a deep breath and went downstairs to phone the police.
Outside, back in the car, I dialed the number I had for Hannah Price: the number for the investigation into the bodies found at the viaduct.
If I was going to talk to the police, it had to be her. For one thing, she was in charge of the investigation at the viaduct. If the murders of Dennison and Wiseman were coming to light, then it meant she
couldn’t
have been involved in them originally – or else she’d surely have been trying to cover them up right now. She was also the easiest person to talk to, because she already knew at least some of what I was going to try to explain. How much, I’d find out shortly.
A woman answered.
‘Whitkirk Police Department. How may I help?’
‘I need to talk to DS Hannah Price please.’
‘One moment.’ There were ten seconds of silence on the line, and then: ‘I’m sorry. DS Price isn’t available at the moment.’
Fuck
.
‘Can you ask her to phone Neil Dawson back as soon as possible?’
‘What’s it regarding? It’s possible that another officer can assist you.’
‘No, I have to talk to her specifically.’ I thought about it. I
needed to get her attention, and there was one obvious way to do that. ‘You can tell her it’s in connection with the bodies of Charles Dennison and Robert Wiseman.’
‘With Charles—?’
‘Dennison,’ I said. ‘And Robert Wiseman. I’m driving back to Whitkirk now. Tell her to call me as soon as she can – on this number, my mobile. It’s very important. Urgent. Have you got all that down?’
‘Umm … yes, sir. I have. Can I just—’
I hung up.
Then picked up my father’s road atlas from the passenger seat.
I’m driving back to Whitkirk now
. That was exactly what I was going to do, but the centre of Thornton was only a few miles from here, and it was more or less in the same direction as Whitkirk. Only the slightest of detours.
It would help my story a lot if I could find that fucking van.
My fingertip traced the roads, searching out the route I’d have to take – even though I knew, realistically, I had no chance of locating the vehicle once I got there. The old man might not have driven to Thornton at all, or he might not have used the van. Even if it was there, how the hell was I supposed to find it? He could have parked it anywhere in a town I’d never been to before.