‘They turn up on the recipient’s face. But there are also some things that never change.’
‘Such as?’
‘If the eyes are left intact, they remain, and everyone has something that’s uniquely their own that isn’t dependent on looks. A way of walking, of holding themselves, an inflection in the voice.
We’ve learned to concentrate on mannerisms and the indefinable part of a person some call the soul.
But early studies suggest that face transplant recipients will need more protracted and in-depth counselling than organ transplant recipients. I heard this morning that the Los Angeles team is working on a transplant for someone who not only lost their face but was blinded in a fire. Psychologically that may be easier. At least he’ll never see himself as someone else.’
‘Is this by nature of an experiment?’
‘Probably.’ She helped herself to a slice of Turkish bread. ‘But if doctors had never experimented, people would still be dying of appendicitis and gangrene, and that’s without heart, lungs, and liver transplants. I believe in what I do, Trevor. The first time I saw a leper smile with new lips we’d grafted on to his mouth, it seemed like a miracle.’
‘From his point of view it probably was.’
‘Can’t you tell me what this is all about?’
He pulled out the folder of photographs from his inside pocket. ‘This man,’ he extracted the pictures of Tony, ‘was photographed a month ago in Jubilee Street. But he died two years ago in a hospital seventy miles from here. No doubt about it.
His death was verified by two doctors. He was identified by people who knew him well.’
‘And you’re thinking face transplant instead of look-alike?’
‘We’re thinking face transplant because his face was skinned from his corpse in the mortuary. It was peeled off down to the bone less than an hour after he died. Was there anyone working on transplants in the UK two years ago?’
‘As I said, not officially.’
‘Was there anyone capable of carrying out the operation living here at the time?’
‘I’d have to check. Those photographs are too distant and low quality to ascertain if that man has had a face transplant or not.’ She handed the photographs back to him.
‘You said there are British personnel working on the projects?’
‘At least four, including two consultants.’
‘We’d appreciate a list.’
‘I’ll get you one.’
The waiter, who’d been hovering at a distance, noticed they’d stopped eating and swooped down to remove their plates. Trevor wasn’t hungry, but he was beginning to wish the meal would never end.
When it did, he’d have to go home to Lyn. He was conscious of the debt he owed her. There had been some happy times. It was just that here, sitting opposite Daisy, it was difficult to remember them.
‘What time is it?’
Anna’s whisper echoing out of the darkness jolted Peter like an electric shock. He stretched his cramped legs and leaned against the bench. He was aching all over, especially the shoulder where Anna had rested her head for the last hour. Pulling back the sleeve of his anorak he pressed the button on his watch to illuminate the face.
‘Ten to ten.’
‘It feels like we’ve been here for ever.’
A cackle of insane laughter echoed up the stairs from the floor below.
‘Welcome to the house of fun. One dose of crack and you too can join in the merrymaking.’
‘I’d rather not. God this place is bloody freezing.’
‘I thought women didn’t feel the cold.’
‘This one does.’
‘Ssh!’
She heard it the same time as Peter, a shuffle like carpet slippers skidding over a hardwood floor.
The noise crept closer. Up the stairs. They both held their breath and tensed their bodies. A yellow glow shone beneath the door, a thin brilliant line that slashed through the darkness. They heard the sigh of slow, laboured breath. The door opened. After a moment it was flung back, slamming into the bench barely an inch from Anna’s head. She shrank back, hitting her spine. A hand closed over one of her clenched fists. Peter might be a bastard at times, but he also knew when to reassure.
Time hung suspended. Anna felt as though someone had pressed the pause button on the DVD
she was playing in. Light streaked in through the open door, illuminating the suitcase, sleeping bag and bean tin opposite them. The panting continued in short quick gasps. A black-booted foot came into view.
Anna’s trained eye registered height – six foot two inches. Hair dark, curling, long and matted.
Black overcoat, black trousers, light coloured knapsack slung over shoulder. The figure bent over the suitcase, unclipped the locks and removed a moth-eaten blanket. He straightened up, shook it out, spread it on the floor, then turned.
Peter was on his feet before Anna. Cramp had frozen her limbs during four hours of crouching in the bitingly cold, tomb-dark blackness.
The man stared at them. Even in the half light of the scuttering candle, Anna recognised him as Tony from the video.
Peter said. ‘Anthony George?’
The man lunged forward. There was a blinding flash. A cry. Pain exploded on the crest of a crimson tide that flooded Anna’s head. She heard the door slamming shut. Then there was only a sinking – and darkness.
‘If you looked at the film of our man, would you be able to tell if he’d had a face transplant?’ Trevor and Daisy had finished the second course. As neither of them had wanted dessert he had ordered another bottle of wine and Turkish coffee. The wine was going down slowly, and he couldn’t help wondering if Daisy was as anxious to protract the evening as him, or if there was someone waiting for her, if not in her flat, then on the end of a telephone, someone special who meant as much to her as Tim Sherringham once had.
‘Obviously there are scars. They fade in time but they never entirely disappear. We try to hide them in the hairline, and below the neck line. How detailed are the shots of this man?’
‘Not very,’ he admitted. ‘There are only one or two close-ups.’
‘I’ll take a look.’
‘Thank you. I’ll give you a ring tomorrow and arrange it.’
The restaurant had filled up, which wasn’t surprising given that the food was excellent and so was the service, if too attentive for Trevor. A large raucous party was sitting at the centre table they’d rejected, the women shrieking with laughter, the men noisily demanding more wine and beer from the waiters.
Trevor debated whether or not to suggest moving on to a pub. Daisy might take it as a hint that the evening was at an end and ask to be taken back to the hospital. He didn’t want to lose whatever time they had left together, but neither did he want to stay in the noisy restaurant. The excuse of business was no longer valid as they’d long since exhausted the topic of face transplants, and the notes she’d given him detailed all the information he was likely to need.
He looked at her hand resting on the linen tablecloth close to his own. He would have liked to have closed his fingers over it, looked into her eyes and asked her how she really was, but something held him back. Fear of starting something he couldn’t finish? Or guilt over Lyn? He took the bottle and poured the last of the wine into their glasses.
‘Would you like anything else?’
‘No thank you. It’s been a lovely evening, but I have to get back. I’m in theatre first thing tomorrow, and before you ask, it’s not a transplant.’
‘I’ll get the bill.’ He motioned to the waiter, then froze. Sitting with the boisterous party at the centre table were people he recognised as Compton Castle staff – and Lyn.
‘Someone you know?’ Daisy asked intuitively.
‘The girl I’m living with,’ he replied, making a swift decision that honesty was the only policy.
‘Would you like to meet her?’
‘Yes, I would.’
He handed his credit card to the waiter, and led Daisy towards the table.
‘Hello Lyn,’ he said quietly, pitching his voice below the hubbub.
‘Hello.’ The expression in her eyes told him she had seen him before he’d seen her.
‘Lyn, this is Dr Randall,’ he introduced Daisy.
‘She’s helping us with the case I’m working on.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Daisy extended her hand and Lyn took it. ‘Trevor told me you’re together.
You’re a lucky lady.’
‘I think so.’ Some of the animosity faded from Lyn’s eyes.
A mobile phone rang.
‘Is that yours, Trevor, or mine?’ Daisy asked.
Lyn’s eyes narrowed again. “Trevor”. There was something about the doctor. Something familiar. Then she recalled the numerous sketches Trevor had made during art therapy classes while he’d been a patient on her ward. A woman with long dark hair and an obscure face. A woman he had once told her he could have loved if there’d been time to develop a relationship.
‘Mine, excuse me, I’ll take this outside. Tell the waiter I won’t be long.’ Trevor was glad to leave the restaurant.
‘Why don’t you sit down and have a drink with us, Dr Randall,’ Richard, who was sitting next to Lyn, shouted, too drunk to see anything beyond a new and attractive face.
‘Thank you, but as soon as Trevor returns, I’ll have to go.’
‘Have you known Trevor long?’ Lyn asked.
‘We met about a year and a half ago when he was working on another case.’
‘Before his accident?’
‘Yes,’ Daisy replied, disturbed by the signs of jealousy Lyn was exhibiting.
‘You didn’t visit him when he was in hospital.’
It was statement not a question. Lyn would have remembered Daisy if she had.
‘I’ve been out of the country.’
Lyn recalled the conversation she’d had with Trevor about the mysterious woman in his sketches.
“She isn’t in the country. I couldn’t get hold of her, even if I wanted to.”
‘You lost touch.’
‘There was no reason for us to keep in contact.’
Trevor returned. After punching his pin number into the credit card machine he turned to Daisy. ‘A fire’s broken out in a disused factory down the road.
They’ve sent for ambulances.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘You don’t mind?’
‘Not in an emergency.’
‘I’m sorry, Lyn. This probably means another late night.’
Before Lyn had an opportunity to reply they were gone, leaving her to her vivid imaginings of the beautiful, elegant Dr Randall in bed with Trevor.
‘Peter!’ Unnerved by the silence in the room, Anna shouted as loud as she could. From below came the panic-stricken sounds of people and the acrid smell of smoke.
Cursing the darkness which was tinged with a red she sensed came from the blinding pain inside her own head; she steeled herself against the thoughts of rats and crawled over the floor on her hands and knees feeling for one of the torches.
‘Peter!’ She forced herself to remain calm, then remembered. She fumbled inside her anorak for the pouch she had sewn close to her armpit. It was there, she could feel the shape. ‘Peter, damn you!’
she shouted angrily. ‘For Christ’s sake why won’t you answer me?’
It took an age and two broken fingernails for her to remove the torch she’d sewn into her coat.
She switched it on and swept the room with its beam. The heap of rags, the suitcase and the blanket the man had shaken out and spread on the floor were lying in front of the wall opposite her.
She gripped the bench and rose unsteadily to her feet. The screams were growing louder, the smell of smoke stronger. She took a step forward and stumbled over something large and soft lying on the ground.
‘Peter!’ She fell to her knees and shook his shoulder. Her hand felt damp when she lifted it away. When she looked at it she saw that it was covered with something wet and sticky. Blood! She rolled him on his back. There was a bullet hole in the left shoulder of his anorak. Damn it, the man must have been armed. But then so was Peter, why hadn’t he got in first?
A siren screeched outside the boarded windows.
She wondered if it was an ambulance or a police car, then smoke wafted into the room from under the door, eye-stinging, blinding and suffocating.
‘Peter!’ She sank to her knees and lifted his head on to her lap. His eyes remained obstinately closed. She laid her fingers over his mouth. She could feel his breath warmer than the air as it breezed over her fingers. He was alive. She went to the door and opened it in defiance of all advice and fire-drill procedure.
A voice shouted below her. Calm,
commanding, Tom Morris’s voice. There was no time for her to wonder what he was doing in the building. A gust of scalding air forced her back, but not before she’d seen flames licking at the banister, dancing up the stairs towards her. She banged the door shut. Coughing and spluttering, she ran across the room and picked up the sleeping bag. Rolling it tightly she jammed it against the foot of the door.
She had to get a grip on herself. That mistake might have been her – and Peter’s – last.
A crash followed by a scream echoed above the crackling of the flames. Smoke continued to seep into the room through the door frame. Head and heart pounding, she stood in the centre of the room and swept the torch beam around the walls. Peter groaned and she fought the instinct to go to him. It wasn’t mothering he needed, but an escape route.
The beam picked up the glint of glass blacked by a wood panel behind it. It was high on the wall.
A narrow window, no more than two foot wide. She ran towards it leaping up on a bench to get as close to it as she could. Taking off her shoe she pounded hard, wielding the sole like a hammer.
It took half a dozen knocks before a hail of glass splinters finally showered over her. No toughened glass in buildings this age, she reflected as she shook the larger pieces from her arms and shoulders. Picking up the blanket from the floor, she wrapped it around her arm and pounded on the wood. More glass splinters showered over her from the sides of the frame, but she kept hammering. Two lung-bursting, smoke-laden minutes later, she realised it was useless. Whatever had been used to fasten the wood in place on the outside was holding firm. How the hell had the kids Trevor had spoken to got into this building?