Part 63 (2/2)

'G.o.d wants to k-kill me,' he says, pulling the oxygen tube from his nose.

'Why do you think that?'

'I can't bear it,' he whimpers.

'You know ... the Jews say that a righteous man can fall seven times and get up again, but the unG.o.dly stumble when calamity strikes ... and you're going to get up.'

'Am I r-righteous?'

'How should I know?' she smiles.

'That's what you m-meant, isn't it?'

Nelly can see that the oxygenation of his blood is falling, and reattaches the tube to his nose.

'Erik saved me and I just wanted to save him,' he whispers.

'Yesterday, you mean?' she asks tentatively.

'He c-came to me and I gave him food and l-lodging,' he says, and coughs lightly. 'They p-promised not to hurt him.'

'How did he look when he came to you?'

'He had an ugly c-cap on, and his hand was bleeding. He was d-dirty and unshaven, and had scratches on his face.'

'And you just wanted to help him,' Nelly says.

'Yes,' he nods.

Margot is standing by the window eating her sandwich, but can still hear Nestor's careful answers. His description of Erik fits someone who ran off through a forest and has been sleeping rough.

'Do you know where Erik is now?' she asks slowly, turning round.

'No.'

Margot meets Nelly's gaze, then leaves the room to set a large-scale police operation in motion.

'I'm starting to get t-tired,' he says.

'It's a bit early for the medicine to take effect.'

'Are you Erik's g-girlfriend?' Nestor asks, looking at her.

'What did Erik say before he left?' Nelly asks, but can't help smiling. 'Do you think he's planning to give himself up?'

'You m-mustn't be angry with Erik.'

'I'm not.'

'My mother says he's b-bad, but ... she c-can just shut up, I think ...'

'Get some rest, now.'

'He's the nicest m-man you could get,' Nestor goes on.

'I think so too,' she smiles, and pats his hand.

'We meet sometimes ... but you c-can't see me,' Nestor says. 'You can't hear me, and you c-can't smell me. I was b-born before you and I'll be waiting for you when you die. I can embrace you, b-but you can't hold on to me ...'

'Darkness,' she replies.

'Good,' Nestor nods. 'If a man carried my b-burden, he ... he would ...'

Nestor closes his eyes and gasps for breath.

'I'm going to go home now,' Nelly says quietly, and carefully gets up from the edge of the bed.

When she leaves the post-operative care unit she notices that the police officers are no longer guarding the door.

110.

The bell in St Mark's Church is ringing under an open sky. The wheel turns, pulling the great bell with it. The heavy clapper hits the metal and the peal reaches across the wall of the churchyard, in amongst the trees, all the way to the buried animals.

The dirty single pane of gla.s.s in the window of the shed where Erik is hiding rattles. The red shack in the pet cemetery consists of thin timber walls and a stained chipboard floor. Presumably there would once have been a plastic mat on the floor. The shed may have been used by local cemetery workers before everything was streamlined. In recent years only Nestor has been here, as the solitary but conscientious guardian of the animals' last resting place.

On one wall there is a cold-water tap above a large zinc trough.

Erik has moved five sacks of compost and lined them up on the floor to form a bed.

He's lying on his side listening to the church bell. The smell of earth around him is pervasive, as if he was already lying in his grave.

Who can understand their own fate? he thinks, watching the morning light s.h.i.+ne in through the grey curtain and wander slowly across the sacks of gra.s.s seed and grit, spades and shovels, then down across the floor to an axe with a rusty blade.

His gaze lingers on the axe, staring at the blunt edge with its deep indentations, and thinks that Nestor must use it to chop off roots when he's digging graves.

He turns on his bed, trying to get more comfortable. He spent the first few hours curled up in the corner behind the sacks, he'd cut his thigh on a sharp branch, had a ringing sound in his ears, felt nauseous and was shaking all over.

The ambulance siren died away, the helicopter disappeared, and silence enveloped the little shed.

<script>