You can’t keep secrets from me.
Mick was not in his office and a note on the half-glazed door told Patrick that he would be back at three thirty p.m. Patrick looked at his watch; it was only eleven a.m. but he was on a roll and had no interest in coming back at three thirty. Three thirty was light years away.
He tried the door handle and it opened, so he went inside.
Mick ran a tight ship. There were uncluttered shelves, a well-swept floor, a single pot-plant on a filing cabinet. The desk was clear, but for a tidy with two pens in it and a three-tier letter tray that held only a few donation and cremation forms. Patrick approved of the tidiness, even if it meant the clipboard which held the Cause of Death checklist was not just lying around.
There were two pale-grey filing cabinets beside the desk. Patrick tried the drawers of both, but they were locked. He rattled them, but this time it didn’t work.
His determination became frustration in a heartbeat. The cadaver was still trying to cheat him. Still guarding its mysteries, even though it was dead and had no use for them itself.
But Patrick had waited so long, and worked so hard. He deserved to know the answers. It wouldn’t be wrong; he was entitled.
He had seen TV shows and films where people did things like sneaking into villains’ headquarters to uncover top-secret information, so he knew it was possible, but the movies made it look like a major operation that was unlikely to be achieved without satellite communications and a grappling hook. A black turtleneck sweater, at the very least. He had none of those. He looked around the bare little office, then went back out to the dissecting room and selected a robust carving fork from the white tray near the door.
He inserted the tines into the metal drawer to lever it open. As he did, he noticed that the plant on top of the cabinet was tilted at a slight angle. He couldn’t leave it like that – he knew that the moment he saw it. He couldn’t even concentrate on the task at hand until it was righted.
He put down the fork.
Under the pot was a saucer, and under the saucer was the key to the filing cabinet.
Inside the top drawer of the first cabinet he opened was the clipboard.
Easy.
On the board was the form he’d only glimpsed before as Mick walked among them, wishing them ill. Patrick’s eyes were drawn directly to the last column, labelled ‘COD’. Cause of Death.
Number 19 had died of heart failure.
That couldn’t be right.
Patrick had held that heart in his hands. There had been no stenosis, no clots, no aneurysm. He had come in here to uncover a secret, only to find that the secret was a lie. He glared at the form, feeling cheated, wanting more, and noticed that the very first column was headed ‘NAME’. He ran his eyes down the list.
‘What are you doing here?’
He turned; Mick was in the doorway.
Patrick looked at his watch. ‘What are you doing here? The note said you’d be back at three thirty.’
Mick opened his mouth and raised his eyebrows so high that they almost touched the place where his hair would have been if he’d had any. He closed the couple of paces between them and snatched the clipboard from Patrick’s hand. ‘That’s confidential information.’
‘I wanted the cause of death. That’s not confidential. Dr Spicer said we could ask any time, and this is any time and you weren’t here to ask, so I looked.’
‘You broke into a locked filing cabinet.’
‘I used the key.’
‘The hidden key.’
‘If it was hidden, I wouldn’t have found it, because I wasn’t looking.’
Mick brushed past him and put the clipboard back in the drawer, then slammed the drawer and locked it. He dropped the key into his pocket.
‘What’s your name?’
Why did everyone always want to know what his name was?
‘Patrick Fort.’
‘You’re in a lot of trouble,’ said Mick.
‘What for?’
‘I just told you what for.’
‘Why?’ Patrick was confused; he had explained everything.
‘Don’t play stupid games with me. I’m going to speak to Professor Madoc about this.’
‘OK,’ said Patrick.
Mick seemed disappointed that he wasn’t more worried by the prospect. ‘All right, you can get out now.’
‘OK,’ said Patrick, but didn’t go. ‘I think the cause of death is wrong.’
‘What cause of death?’
‘Number 19. You’ve got heart failure but the heart is not diseased.’
‘If that’s what’s on the death certificate, that’s what it is. I’m not a doctor, and neither are you, by a very long way.’
‘I know that. But—’
‘No buts. This conversation is over.’
‘OK,’ said Patrick, so started a different conversation. ‘When the people die, you embalm the bodies, right?’
Mick looked at him but didn’t answer, so Patrick went on, ‘Where do they go afterwards?’
‘They come up here,’ said Mick. ‘Then when you lot have finished with them I put all the bits in a bag and they go back to the families for funerals.’
‘Not the bodies. The people.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Is there an exit?’
‘A what?’
‘An exit. In their heads. Like a door they go through.’
‘Like the one I should have kept locked?’
‘Yes,’ said Patrick, ‘like that. Some kind of barrier that people go through when they die.’
Mick squinted at Patrick; he shook his head; he made a face. ‘No,’ he finally said.
‘Then what happens to them? Where do they go? Can they come back?’
Mick stood and stared at Patrick for a long moment, then reached down and lifted up the phone. ‘Hold on a second,’ he said, ‘I’ll see if the police know.’
‘OK,’ said Patrick, and waited to see if the police knew.
Mick stabbed the first two nines with a flourish and a glare, but then sighed and hung up.
‘Just get out, will you?’
‘OK,’ said Patrick.
In his excitement he’d forgotten his gloves, and by the time he’d cycled back to the house, his fingers were red and numb. He ran hot water into the kitchen sink and held them under, then stared out of the window that faced next door’s fence and let his mind drift like kelp on a turning tide. The window was dirty; he would have to wash it. He was hungry and he was out of bread. Once his hands had warmed up he would put on his gloves and go over the road and get chips. His mouth tingled in anticipation of vinegar, and he thought of all the twists and turns the chips would have to take as they dropped into his stomach. All the places they’d have to avoid; all the choices his body would make for them, all the chemistry it would employ to break them down; how his peristaltic muscles would guide them along the conveyor belt of his guts until he passed them some time tomorrow morning.
Patrick took his hands from the water and dried them on the tea towel, while his brain turned its inevitable wheel to what had killed Number 19.
The list on the clipboard was almost as disappointing as the brain had been. He had gleaned only one piece of additional information, and that felt like a very minor victory in a failed war of secrets.
The corpse’s name was Samuel Galen.
24
‘NOT BAD, SAM,’ Leslie tells me, filled with gloom. But it’s praise indeed from him, and I redouble my efforts to retrain my tongue – stretching, sucking, blowing and braying.
‘Have you eating and drinking soon,’ he adds grudgingly.