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  ‘Are you sure he can’t see me?’ she asked, pointing across the ward at Trenchard.

  ‘If it worries you, we can get you moved to a different bed.’

  ‘I don’t mean that. Can he see? He stares and stares all day.’

  Kash was about to launch into an explanation of how ‘seeing’ wasn’t really anything to do with the eyes, it was something that happened in the brain, and Mr Trenchard’s brain was no longer functioning, then decided against it.

  ‘No, Liz, he can’t see.’

  ‘Terrible . . . terrible,’ Liz muttered, shaking her head.

  ‘Yes,’ Kash said simply.

  ‘He was a gentleman, I’ll tell you that much. Came to see me himself. Took an interest, even in an old woman like me.’ Kash could see tears forming in her red-rimmed eyes. ‘I can’t believe he’s ended up here. Such a cruel thing . . . so cruel. A man like him . . .’ She turned to Kash. ‘Is it true then, all those things they’re saying about him?’

  Kash stiffened. ‘What things?’

  ‘In the papers. All those stories. Sister Vale, she came in and snatched them all up, so nobody would read what they were saying. But Mr Duffy, the one with the cough – keeps me up all night sometimes, hawking and spitting like I don’t know . . .’

  ‘What about him? What did Mr Duffy do?’ Kash asked, sounding more impatient than he meant to.

  ‘Complained, didn’t he? Said if they didn’t bring his paper back he’d sue. Sue! Who does he think he is? Silly old fool. He only wanted it for the racing. The horses – or was it the dogs? And that’s a fool’s game if ever there was one. Both of them. Anyway, she had to bring them back. Didn’t look happy about it, but she did. Practically flung them at him. The look on her! And there it was, all over the front page!’ She patted her chest, over the heart. ‘It takes a bit to shock me, I can tell you, but I almost . . . well, I won’t tell you what I almost did, but it made me feel sick – sick to my stomach. And then the stories . . .’ She grabbed Kash’s arm. ‘I can’t believe it. Not Mr Trenchard!’

  ‘You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the papers, Liz.’

  ‘I don’t. That’s why I’m asking you.’

  ‘Some parts of it are true,’ Kash relented. ‘What happened here in the hospital. But you know the gutter press; a lot of it seems to be made up.’ Kash thought about the story Hilary Williams had told Ange, about Trenchard propositioning her.

  ‘Which parts?’

  ‘Well,’ he said carefully, ‘there seems to be a lot of speculation about his private life, with no evidence. “Sources close to the hospital” and all that sort of nonsense. People just making stuff up, basically.’

  ‘Awful people,’ Liz muttered. ‘They shouldn’t be able to get away with it.’

  Kash shrugged. ‘People tend to say unpleasant things when they know the person can’t answer back. Sometimes just to sell papers. Sometimes to get their own back for some slight, however small.’

  She looked appalled. ‘Why would anyone want to get their own back on Mr Trenchard?’

  ‘I don’t know, Liz. I guess anyone who’s successful has enemies. People who are jealous of their success. You said not everybody likes him.’

  Her brows knotted. ‘Did I?’ She thought for a moment. ‘Oh well, for someone who isn’t popular, he seems to have a lot of visitors.’

  Kash felt his blood beginning to boil. ‘I thought we’d stopped them? The journalists, you mean? And the photographers?’

  Liz shook her head. ‘Not those lowlifes. They’ve learned their lesson after Sister Vale turfed one out only a few weeks back. Grabbed him by the scruff of his neck!’ She chuckled at the memory. ‘No, not them. There’s a young bloke, turns up with an older lady. Lovely hair she’s got. Silvery. I heard them say he’s her godson, but I don’t believe a word of it.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Kash.

  ‘Well,’ Liz went on, ‘I can’t see much without me specs, and they’re still at my son’s, so I can’t really make out faces. But I can see some things well enough. Like when they say goodbye . . . you don’t have to have the eyes of a hawk to see he’s touching her up. Hands all over her bottom! Godson, my arse!’ she said gleefully. ‘I tell you what, if my godson ever did that to me, he’d get a lot more than a clip round the ear!’

  Kash was intrigued. ‘How many times have you seen them?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know – three, maybe four, and that’s only the times I’ve been watching, mind. I doze off most afternoons.’

  ‘You said he gets lots of visitors. Who else do you see?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘Girls, mainly. I shouldn’t call them that, should I? Some of them are doctors. I can see the white coats. And then there are nurses. And then ones in blue uniforms. They must be cleaners, I suppose.’

  No, not cleaners, Kash thought to himself.

  Kash let Liz ramble on for another ten minutes, then said he had to go. He’d check on Mr Trenchard later. At the nurses’ station, Sister Vale was looking at the duty roster.

  ‘I see you were chatting up our Mrs Murray,’ she said without looking up.

  ‘She told me one or two interesting things,’ Kash replied.

  She put the roster to one side. ‘Such as?’

  ‘Mr Trenchard gets a lot of visitors, apparently.’

  ‘Hardly surprising, considering his reputation.’

  ‘Yes, but there was one she took particular notice of, or rather two. A couple. A young man and an older woman. Liz said he was “feeling her up” – in front of Mr Trenchard. Rather odd behaviour, don’t you think?’

  Sister Vale made a dismissive sound. ‘Overactive imagination, that one. She doesn’t know what she’s seeing half the time, and the other half she makes it up. I wouldn’t pay her too much attention.’

  She seemed adamant, and Kash decided not to pursue it.

  ‘I’m sure you’re right.’ But he did have another question he wanted to ask. ‘There was something else, though, while I’ve got you.’

  She raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Hilary Williams – the anaesthetist.’

  ‘I know who Hilary Williams is,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, of course. I was just wondering – somebody told me she was hard up for cash, after her husband died. He made a lot of bad investments or something, and left her with nothing?’

  Sister Vale snorted. ‘I don’t know who told you that. You need to improve your sources if you want to keep up with hospital gossip. Not that it’s anyone’s business, and I don’t know exactly how much, but I know for a fact he left her pretty well off. Well enough off that she didn’t need to work again, anyway. I think the only reason she carried on here at the Victory is because Mr Trenchard begged her.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Kash, who didn’t see at all. The more questions he asked, the less he understood.

  There was only one person who could untangle it all, he thought.

  And he was the one person who wasn’t talking. Who couldn’t talk.

  24

  Kash struggled to sleep. For two hours he’d tossed and turned, his thoughts a chaos of contradictions. Could he be wrong about Mr Trenchard injecting himself? Was he clutching at straws, desperate to avoid the truth: that the man he had admired was in reality a pervert who would also abandon patients in need? Everybody seemed to want to believe the worst of Trenchard now. But were people just trying to make sense of that terrible tableaux in his office, restrospectively attributing to him a history of imagined sexual misconduct? How often in the mess had he heard people saying, ‘Now that I think about it, there was always something a bit creepy about him . . .’ But then there was Hilary Williams. Had she made that story up? Or was Sister Vale the one not telling the truth, loyally covering up for the man she’d worked alongside for twenty years?

  It was, of course, much easier to accept that Mr Trenchard had always been a monster than that he was the victim of a malicious and cunningly executed att
ack that had rendered him a living corpse – with his reputation in tatters into the bargain. It would not only be easier, Kash had to admit, it would also be good for his relationship with Claire. She was never less than supportive, but he sensed that her patience would sooner or later run out. In the end, would he have to choose between the living dead and a beautiful, funny, sexy young woman?

  Now that was definitely what they called a no-brainer, he thought wryly.

  If he was going to pursue this, he realized, he’d have to do it on his own. He certainly had no intention of going to DI Lambert again, just to be humiliated. Which meant he’d have to try and figure it all out himself: firstly how it was made to look as if Mr Trenchard had accidentally half-killed himself; and then, who had done it and why. Kash felt ill-equipped for the task on so many levels, but in a strange way, DI Lambert’s dismissal had emboldened him. It wasn’t exactly part of the Hippocratic Oath, but wasn’t he bound, somehow, to pursue the truth, whatever the cost?

  When sleep finally came, his dreams were no less turbulent than his daytime thoughts, a roiling mass of disturbing images, ending with a long and complicated dream in which he was lying on a trolley in the ICU, unable to move, Claire leaning over him with a sad expression, as his monitor trace became flat and its alarm was triggered. Bleep. Bleep. Bleep.

  He bolted upright, breathing hard, and reached out reflexively for his pager. Rolling over, he silenced it, read the number, lifted the receiver of the bedside phone, and dialled, his heart still thumping against his ribs.

  At first, he expected the bark of an angry registrar. Or perhaps it was Dr Carney demanding him on ward, or Sister Vale dragging him up to ward fourteen. But he wasn’t on duty – was he?

  ‘Kash, it’s Ange. You haven’t forgotten, have you?’

  ‘Forgotten?’

  ‘Edmund Chaloner,’ Ange said. ‘The inquest starts in, what, three hours . . .? We were going to get breakfast?’ She paused. ‘I was going to buy you breakfast. Something to fortify us, down at the Hombre? Kash, are you listening?’

  He tucked the receiver between ear and shoulder as he reached for some clothes.

  ‘On my way.’

  He wrenched the wardrobe open to snatch at his one smart suit and a shirt straight from the dry-cleaning packet. He shaved while chewing on some toothpaste. Then he was out the door.

  He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten. It just showed how much was going on his head that the inquest wasn’t the thing keeping him awake. But the strange truth was, he realized, going to the inquest would be not so much an ordeal as a blessed relief from the hospital, haunted as it was by Mr Trenchard’s restless and unquiet spirit demanding justice.

  *

  The Hombre styled itself as a Mexican breakfast bar, which seemed simply to mean green peppers in the eggs, chilli sauce in bottles, and nachos with everything. Even the nachos.

  Kash never did have an appetite for any breakfast beyond caffeine. Angela would normally add cigarettes and peppermint gum. Whatever, her nachos sat untouched in a bowl to one side, her fingers trembling each time she lifted the coffee cup to her lips.

  ‘DTs?’ Kash ventured. ‘You don’t shake like that when you hold a scalpel. Thank God.’

  She raised her head, but didn’t smile. ‘Courtroom quaking. The fear of what I can’t control.’

  Kash ordered a coffee of his own, his eyes wandering over the other customers. To the right sat a man with a thick, heavy beard, his multiple layers of clothing, split shoes and darkened complexion suggesting a life on the streets. It seemed to Kash that all-night cafés were the last sites of holy sanctuary, where a small offering to the Gods of the Gullet could be exchanged for a roof over a wanderer’s head through the cold hours of the night.

  ‘What is it with you, Kash? You don’t look anxious at all . . .’

  He smiled. ‘It’s quite nice to be in a situation I can’t control for a change, to be honest.’

  She shook her head. ‘There speaks a man who’s never been to an inquest. You remember all the years of exams? Two for A-levels, six at medical school, and always the fear of fucking it up no matter how hard you’d worked? Well, an inquest feels like going into an exam for which you can’t prepare and where they’re actively trying to fail you. The examiners don’t want your grades – they want your blood . . .’

  Kash took a sip of his coffee. ‘How many have you been to?’

  ‘Only one,’ she admitted. ‘But I’ve heard the stories. And for me, one was quite enough. I was a doctor in the emergency department, doing a locum weekend. Some chap came in with a headache. Said his girlfriend insisted. He’d been drinking hard all the day before, after playing a rugby match. Still smelled of booze, as a matter of fact, but he seemed well enough. All the bloods were fine. There was nothing on his neuro exam. I’d wanted a CT scan but the chap plain refused. Just didn’t like the thought of all those X-rays. All he really wanted was some painkillers, he said. We laughed about it. He said he supposed he deserved a headache, after a session like that. And I agreed, Kash. “Divine retribution” I called it! Only, when he got back home and his girlfriend sent him to bed to sleep it off, it was the last thing he ever did. He was dead in bed the next morning. Turned out he had a massive extradural bleed pressing on his brain.’

  ‘Oh, Ange . . .’

  ‘I got it easy at the inquest, actually. I’d made really clear notes. And the family were good about it too. They even sent me a card, thanking me, if you can believe it. Grief does some funny things to you. The coroner said I wasn’t to blame and that was that.’

  She stopped talking. For the first time, her fingers weren’t trembling as she put the coffee cup to her lips.

  ‘The thing is, I knew I should have pushed him. Call it an instinct, whatever. Made him have the scan. But I just didn’t. And that night the Chaloner boy came in – I had the same feeling, Kash. I knew he was sick. That I couldn’t do it, and needed a consultant. That I needed Michael Trenchard. And instead I marched on anyway . . .’

  Kash reached out and took her hand. ‘Nonsense, Ange. It wasn’t your fault. You tried to get him. I tried to get him. We couldn’t. And the boy couldn’t be left. You know that. You had to press on. It’s not your fault that Mr Trenchard was off doing what Mr Trenchard was doing and . . .’

  There was silence as both Kash and Ange stared into their coffee cups, reading the runes of the sediments within.

  Kash was first to speak. ‘What about today?’

  ‘It could be bad,’ Ange whispered. ‘I can’t imagine the coroner being quite as friendly to me this time around.’

  ‘Switchboard will have logged all my calls, Ange. I can testify. We tried to call him. I even called him at home. His pager, his telephone – we did everything we could.’

  Ange was up on her feet, heading for the door. ‘It goes deeper than that, Kash. It’s me. I wasn’t up to the operation. If I couldn’t get hold of Trenchard, I should have called another consultant in.’

  Kash caught up with her and followed her out, turning up his collar as their breath fogged the air. ‘Ange, there wasn’t time. Edmund Chaloner would be dead if we’d waited. And you’d be beating yourself up just as much. You—’

  ‘That’s not the point. It’s not the reality, but the perception. I should have been seen to call another consultant, and I didn’t.’ Together, they walked to her car. ‘I’m exposed here, Kash, and you know it.’

  Suddenly the inquest seemed far less like a day away from the hospital. Wherever he went, Trenchard would haunt him.

  25

  There, she thought, he’s gone. But her work was far from done. Slipping a plastic Guedel into his mouth to depress his tongue and keep the airway clear, she reached into the small leather bag once more. She lifted out a black rubber bag and pressed the portable mask attached to it to his face. Supporting his jaw with one hand, she squeezed the bag firmly with the other. One, two, three, four, five. She smiled, watching as Trenchard’
s face turned from black to blue to its old ruddy hue, fresh oxygen surging back into the blood. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. Somewhere in there, she knew, Trenchard was surfacing, called back to the light.

  She stopped, placing the bag and mask to one side. Moments later, she had a tourniquet in her hands. She rolled back his shirt sleeve, tightened it around his biceps, and ran her fingers along the veins in his left hand, flicking them to engorge them further. Again, from the bag, she produced a green butterfly needle, and deftly slipped it into the vein at the first attempt. She would leave no bruises. Trenchard was aware now. A moment later, he felt a cold flush in the vein.

  A second syringe. Atracurium, thought Trenchard, understanding now what was happening to him. That would extend his paralysis.

  Once again came the drive to breathe, the pounding heart, the black ocean sucking him down. But once again, her fingers clamped beneath his jaw, pressing the mask to his face. His chest rose and fell. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five.

  Then she stopped. With splayed fingers, she hauled his eyelids upwards, lowering her face to look deep into his eyes.

  ‘Does it feel as if you’re dying, Michael? Well, I’m not going to let you.’

  What did she mean? Trenchard’s body cried out for more breath, but his tormentor had returned to her case. From its bottom she produced one of the hospital oxymeters, and clipped its split-thimble clamshell over his middle finger. The LCD display lit up, a beep just about audible to him through the Holst, its tone reflecting the blood’s oxygen level. The woman glanced down. ‘Heart rate one-seventy, oxygen saturation ninety-six per cent. Pink and paralyzed and petrified.’ She kneeled and watched as, slowly, the oxygen started to deplete. The beeps became faster, their tone lower. Nonchalantly, she returned to the mask and began manually inflating his lungs. ‘Relax, Michael,’ she whispered. ‘I have control now.’

  The oxymeter showed his blood saturation at only 76 per cent. With each squeeze of the bag she brought it back to 80, to 90, to 95. ‘Good,’ she said, gently stroking his forehead. ‘You don’t have to worry about a thing. But I wonder . . .’ Here she paused before inflating the bag. On the oxymeter, the heart rate started to spike as it fought desperately to pump what little oxygen it had around his body. ‘How does it feel, Michael?’ she leaned closer and whispered in his ear. ‘What’s going through that head of yours? What’s happening in there?’ She again pried open one of his half-shut eyes, certain he could see her peering in. ‘I’ll say this fast,’ she began, one hand caressing his hair, sweeping it back from his eyes. ‘You must be feeling pretty faint by now.’