He frowned. That made no sense; he had bagged it and tagged it himself. He was too impatient; it was small; he must have missed it. He went through the process again in slow reverse, sitting on the cold floor, loading the shelf under the table more carefully this time.
The peanut was not there.
Patrick sat very still. One of the others had got there first. Scott? Dilip? But how? How had they known about the allergy when he’d only found out by accident? Had he missed something obvious? And if they didn’t know about the allergy, why would they take it?
The lights went out and he was blind. He quickly squeezed his eyes tightly shut. It was a trick his father had taught him on night walks in the Beacons.
Too late he registered that the main door of the Biosciences block had been open. He’d not noticed it because he’d never seen it closed, but in the middle of the night it would have been; should have been – unless someone was already inside.
Idiot!
He opened his better-adjusted eyes. A black figure was framed in the charcoal doorway.
Patrick started to get up to leave but, before he could, the man entered the room.
Strangeness rippled up the back of Patrick’s neck. Turning off the lights before entering a room made no sense. So, instead of standing up and asking why the lights were off, Patrick stayed put on one knee and one spread hand, his stomach knotting with a fear that was all the more fearful because he didn’t understand it.
The man walked confidently between the bodies, as if he did so in the dark all the time. There was no fumbling, no banged shins or muttered expletives. Between the struts of the tables and the remains of the ruined bodies, the figure walked swiftly towards him, announced only by the small squeak of shoes on polished linoleum.
He was coming straight for him.
Without thinking, Patrick crawled silently on to the shelf below Table 19, along with the bags of meat and bone and offal.
Lexi’s cold father gave a little under his body, and he almost cried out with the idea of the cold flesh cushioning him.
Only the plastic between them stopped him screaming.
He bit his own lip as the shadow stopped beside him. In a moment that rushed him back to the bookies and the Labrador, Patrick watched the knees and the thighs of the man’s black trousers turn slowly, as if scanning the room, looking for something.
Patrick stopped breathing; if he could have stopped his heart pounding, he would have.
The moment seemed endless. Then the legs walked away and back towards the door.
For a second Patrick was relieved – then he realized that if the man left the block, the outer door would be locked, trapping him inside.
He rolled off the bags of cold meat and one of his trainers squealed on the floor. He froze again, then quickly pulled the shoes off his feet and slid swiftly across the floor on his socks to Table 21, and from there to Table 13.
The man was still ahead of him. He had to catch him up. Or slow him down.
Patrick wasn’t a spy. He didn’t have a grappling hook or satellite communications, or even a black turtleneck sweater. He had his trainers – that was all – so he hurled one of them into a dim corner of the room, where it landed with a slap and a clatter.
He almost laughed when the man stopped, turned, and then followed the noise to the back wall like a stupid dog, while Patrick skidded out of the door in his socks.
He couldn’t ride properly with one trainer, so he walked. Ran. Half walked, half ran, pushing his bike, and with his socks wet and stretching and tripping him up until finally he peeled them off and dropped them in the gutter. His foot was shockingly white under the streetlights.
A police car passed and Patrick pressed himself into a garden hedge, even though he’d done nothing wrong. Something told him that this was one of those occasions when people might not understand what he’d been doing. And he had no answers tonight – only questions that made his head ache to think of them.
Before, Patrick had only thought about the peanut in relation to how Number 19 had died, not why. Why was a far tougher puzzle, and now that it was gone, the peanut seemed to be a critical piece of that jigsaw. How did Number 19 ingest a peanut that could kill him? And why would somebody steal it now?
Cold rain trickled under his T-shirt and down his back, and still he stood there. For the first time that he could ever remember – and he could remember almost everything – Patrick knew he needed help.
Patrick didn’t have his blue gloves with him, but he stopped at the payphone outside the bookies and dialled with a wet sleeve pulled over his shivering index finger.
It took thirteen rings before the mechanical rhythm was halted by the sound of sleepy mouth-breathing and a croak that might have been hello.
‘If there was something that proved how someone had died,’ he said, ‘why would you want to hide that?’
There was a long silence and then his mother said shakily, ‘Who is this?’
Why is he asking? What’s happened?
Sarah Fort’s head asked the questions her heart didn’t want answered. She had been expecting the worst for years – ever since Patrick was a small boy – and yet time hadn’t dulled the sharp panic she felt pricking her chest and starting to turn her stomach.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked him. Anyone but Patrick would have noticed her voice shaking.
‘Say someone dies,’ he said again. ‘And then, if someone else – not the dead person – someone else—’
He was obviously getting muddled, but she didn’t help him out. She was in no hurry to hear what he wanted to say. She would wait all night – all her life – rather than help him to reach the point where everything she had done for both of them would fall apart.
But he persisted. He was always so bloody persistent.
‘If that someone hides something that might show why the other person died.’
‘Yes?’ she said faintly.
‘Well, what does that mean?’
Sarah paused. ‘I don’t understand the question.’
She knew she was being obtuse. Things would be so much simpler if she’d just said, What are you trying to tell me, Patrick? She didn’t ask because he would tell her – and she didn’t want to deal with whatever might happen after that. She would rather play this precarious game of denial.
‘Why are you calling tonight? It’s not Thursday.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I need help.’
‘Are you all right?’ She was surprised to hear a sharp note of concern in her voice, despite everything.
‘I lost one of my trainers and I need help to understand the actions.’
‘What actions?’
‘Hiding the thing,’ he said in a tone that revealed his frustration, ‘that might show why something happened. What does that action mean?’
She thought carefully of the best way to answer him, and then did.
‘People hide things because they don’t want anyone to know about them.’
‘Why?’
You tell me, Patrick! Rotting animals under your pillow, and pictures of dead children and crazy lists of weird words! YOU tell ME!
Instead she said, ‘I suppose… because they feel guilty.’
‘About what?’
Sarah felt sick. ‘Doing something bad.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know, Patrick! Something bad! Something very, very bad!’