Part 1 (1/2)

Down Cemetery Road.

Mick Herron.

To my mother, and in memory of my father.

Acknowledgements.

When he opened his eyes he expected to find all the light squeezed from the world, but no: he was alive still, strapped to a bed in a sterile room, angry red claws of pain scratching channels in his flesh. They have tied me down to keep me from shredding myself, he managed, in a moment of clarity. To prevent me ripping the skin from my bones, and not stopping until I'm dead. This was a good thought: it pretended they had his welfare in mind. But the pain remained, like being chewed by fire-ants, and even when he slept he felt it working in his dreams. In his dreams, he was back in the desert. His companions were dead soldiers, their meat dropping off their bones.

The loudest thing in life was a helicopter. All around, the boy soldiers disintegrated; made puddles in the sand.

Here, when he was awake, there were other noises to occupy him. Outside his room, he imagined a long corridor of swept tiles and white light; an echoey tunnel that carried sounds past his door, some of which lingered to mock his boredom. A dropped fork rattled in his mind for hours. He heard voices, too, a low mumble that never separated into language, and once he thought he heard Tommy; thought he recognized a man he knew in a noise mostly animal: a rising scream, cut off by a slammed door. Footsteps clattered into distance. Something on wheels might have been a trolley. He tried to shout a response, but his voice got lost in the deep red caverns of his pain, and all he could do was weep silent tears that scorched his cheeks.

A doctor came once a day. He had to be a doctor: he wore a white coat. The nurse with him carried a tray; on it, a precise array of tools different-sized needles, small bottles of coloured liquids. Both nurse and doctor wore gloves and surgical masks, and both had olive skin and hazel eyes. Only the doctor spoke. His sentences were short and to the point: Breathe in. Breathe out. I take blood now. Even without the mask, he'd hardly have been fluent. It was another clue to his whereabouts . . . Not all the needles were for him, so he knew he wasn't alone here; there were other rooms, other patients, though patients wasn't the word he meant. Prisoners, his mind supplied. He was a prisoner here, though where here was, he couldn't be sure.

The doctor said, 'Sleep now.' As if it were a magic instruction, and he was a rabbit being put back into a hat.

The nurse, though, was beautiful, as nurses have to be. The nurse came more often and fed him, wiped him, saw to his bowel movements. Nothing he did made her speak. Even an erection, to him little short of a miracle, left her unmoved. For the rest, all he had were a few schoolboy phrases Parley voo? Spreckledy Doitch? which it wouldn't have helped him if she'd answered. And anyway he knew, was certain, that if she spoke it would be in a sand language, whose vast syllables would leave him adrift and uncomprehending, like a traveller caught between settlements. Soon, he forgot she was human. When he didn't want to see her, he turned his face to the wall.

Days pa.s.sed. There was no way of knowing how many.

His body was healing, but slowly: red weals marred all his flesh he could see, and a small detached part of his mind his black box told him he'd always be like this now; that his body was scarred and monstrous for ever, but at least the pain was dimming. He was no longer kept strapped down. An ankle-chain secured him to the bed. In time, he might do something about that.

Once, he stole a spoon during a careless moment; filched it from the tray when the nurse looked round at a noise from the corridor. He hid it under the mattress, but within the hour they'd come to fetch it three of them: male, silent, dark-featured. Two held him against the wall while the third retrieved his prize, though not roughly. He didn't struggle. But the effort exhausted him anyway, and he crashed as soon as they'd left. His dream took him back to the desert and the boy soldiers. Sand crunched as he fell from the truck, and the chopper's whine was the loudest noise in the world. And the boys were melting again, their faces turning runny while his black box recorded it calmly, noting that it's like watching a very wet painting hung in the wind but he was sweating when he woke, and sure he'd been screaming. There was n.o.body to tell him if that were true. Just as there was n.o.body to tell him if it were night or day.

He'd have sold his soul for a window. For natural light.

And then one day he had an idea it might be the winter; there was a cold bite to the air they took him out of the room. The same three men came to secure him to the bed. He was blindfolded and taken through the door, down the corridor he'd only imagined; wheeled past he was sure of this windows, from which light fell on to his face in a gentle strobe. He racked his body against the bed, but remained locked in place. When they removed the blindfold, he was in what looked like an operating theatre. The doctor was there, masked, suited up, and had the three interns guards untie him and fasten him in what resembled an open coffin. Because he thought they were going to kill him at last, he didn't struggle. But instead he was loaded into a large mechanical device, of a kind he might have seen in hospital films. Some kind of scanning machine. He was kept there for twenty minutes or so. The noise was constant but not too loud, like knowing there were bees nearby. He almost fell asleep.

Afterwards the doctor said, 'Good.' He was strapped down again, eyes covered, and wheeled back to his room. Again he felt the windows pa.s.s, and his one wish in the world was not even escape, but just to be able to stand in the light, and imagine the wind pulsing against his damaged skin.

After that, it became regular. Once every three days, as far as his body could tell . . . There were no other clocks available. That was one of the discoveries he'd made: that the body was a kind of clock. It couldn't be rewound, and couldn't be replaced. When it finished telling the time, its job was done . . . Once every three days they took him to the theatre, and scanned him with their device. He never asked a question. This was his plan: for them to forget he was there, and turn their backs for one moment. Even without a spoon, he thought he might win an eye or a tongue.

. . . He never knew this, but it was on a Wednesday that it all changed; that he caught his glimpse of the outside world, and found it upside down.

He was asleep when the nurse came. Genuinely asleep. The pills did this, along with the blood they took: he never did anything, but often felt weak and sleepy. By the ankle-chain, he was tethered to the bed. She must have thought this enough. Perhaps the others, the men, were having a day off. He never knew. It didn't matter. She wheeled him from the room like that, just the ankle-chain holding him down.

It was the movement woke him. He'd been dreaming again the dream never left him, or perhaps he never left the dream his head full of boiling faces when he forced his eyes open, the way he always woke. For a moment he thought it hadn't started yet, that he was back in the truck, and instinct tipped him over the side where he hit the floor with a crash of spilled metal. The bed jerked to a halt. And with his gown flapping open, bare-a.r.s.ed to the world, he lay with a window just two feet above him, its blinds pulled tight against the light, and both his hands untethered.

Even then, the nurse didn't speak. She pressed something on her belt instead, though he heard no alarm, and as he reached a hand for the blind, came round to arrest him. He thought she'd be soft. She punched the back of his head. It had been a while since he'd been hurt quite like that, and he collapsed back to the floor, taking the blind with him. It sounded loud as a helicopter. And then there were feet coming, and a p.r.i.c.king in his arm to send him back into the desert, where he really didn't want to go, not now he'd seen the light not now he'd seen the sky, and the treetops, and the arch of the building opposite, with its grey stone scrolls and pigeon s.h.i.+t and everything about it screaming England but then the needle opened the window in his head, and he flew back to the desert. The light was just the morning sun, building its killing heat. The boy soldiers were dying again, but n.o.body heard their screams.

Chapter One.

BHS.

I.

On discovering a fire, the instructions began, shout Fire and try to put it out. It was useful, heart-of-the-matter advice, and could be extended almost indefinitely in any direction. On discovering your husband's guests are a.r.s.eholes, shout a.r.s.eholes and try to put them out. This was a good starting point. Sarah was one gla.s.s of wine away from putting it in motion.

But the instructions had been pinned to the wall in her office when she'd had a job, and did not apply in the kitchen. Here, Mark would expect that all emergencies be met with predetermined orderliness crisis management was his Latest Big Thing and graded instantly by size, type and career-damaging potential: earthquake, conflagration, shortage of pasta. His guests would not figure on the chart, since they came under Acts of G.o.d, and were to be borne as such. Of course they're a.r.s.eholes, Sare, he'd say, when they were gone and he could afford to be ironic. He's rich and she's dumb: what did you expect, they'd be nice? But if Sarah asked when rich got important, he'd lose a little of the irony. Since rich got on my client list, he'd say. Since rich started buying lunch. Self-promotion was his other Latest Big Thing. He had these in pairs now, so as to be sure of not missing anything.

And now he came into the kitchen, to make sure she missed nothing either. 'Coffee done?'

'Just about.'

'Anything I can do?'

'You could try asking that first in future.'

'In future? You think I want to go through this again?'

She banged a cupboard, just quietly enough to sound accidental next door, but loudly enough to leave Mark in no doubt.

'I mean,' he went on hissing 'Wigwam? Rufus?'

'You said,' she said, through gritted teeth, 'another couple. You wanted company.'

'I wanted Stephen and Rebecca.'

'Busy.'

'Or Tom and Annie. Or '

'Busy.' She took a breath. From the living room came that awful dead sound you probably got on battlefields before the buzzards swooped. 'And you said, when I said it was awful short notice, you said just get anybody. Anybody who could make it.'

'I didn't mean '

'Well, you should have said so at the time. Because it's a bit late now, isn't it?'

Mark gave a short laugh, which might easily have been aimed at himself. It was one of his characteristic declarations of surrender, though she had no doubt this would be temporary. And his next words, anyway, were 'You did get some of those mints, didn't you?'

'Yes. Mark.'

So he changed tack, put his arms round her: 'Come on. It's not been that bad, has it?'

He really didn't get it. Two hours he'd sat watching war being declared in slow motion, and he still thought it hadn't been that bad. 'Did you just arrive?'

'He has firm opinions, that's all. Gerard does.'

'Well, I didn't think you meant Rufus.'

'He's used to playing rough. Cut and thrust sort of '