Rubbernecker (31 page)

Spicer shrugged.

‘Is that possible?’ asked White.

‘Many things are
possible
.’

White went on, ‘Forensics haven’t yet found any evidence of a peanut, but they say that gouges in the palate and throat of Mr Galen were likely to have been made very shortly before his death. If there
were
a peanut in Mr Galen’s throat – and I’m sure other students will remember if that was the case – then it’s possible that somebody tried to retrieve it as he was dying. And that that alone could have led to something called …’ He looked down at his
notes
in a show of getting it right. ‘Vagal inhibition. Have you heard of it?’

‘Of course,’ snapped Spicer.

‘Oh,’ said White. ‘I hadn’t. Apparently pressure on certain parts of the body, or extreme shock, can cause such a sudden drop in blood pressure that the heart simply stops beating. It fails.’ He made a helpless gesture with his hands. ‘Heart failure, Dr Spicer.’

‘Yes?’ said Spicer.

‘Which is what you wrote on Mr Galen’s death certificate.’

Spicer stared at him for a long, long time.

‘I don’t remember,’ he said tightly. ‘I’ve signed a lot of death certificates.’

‘I’m sure you have,’ said White. ‘We’ll take a look at those, too.’

‘What are you saying?’ Spicer stood up, angry at last. ‘If I’m being accused of something, then say so. And if I’m not, then I’m going home.’

White and Williams remained seated and looked up at him calmly.

‘Sit down please, Mr Spicer,’ said White. ‘We’re nearly finished.’

Spicer stood for a moment longer, then sat.

White continued, ‘Have you ever been bitten by a patient?’

‘Bitten?’

‘Yes. Teeth. You know?’

‘I
have
been bitten by patients.’

‘But not by
this
patient?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘I see you have scars on your fingertip.’

Spicer looked down at his own hand. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I cut it on the tin-opener.’

‘Really?’ White raised his eyebrows. ‘Because Patrick Fort seems to think that you may have been bitten by Mr Galen while he was alive – or in the process of dying.’

‘Patrick Fort is mistaken. Yet again.’

White leaned back in his chair and glanced at Williams. ‘That’s possible, I suppose.’

‘Many things are possible,’ agreed Emrys Williams.

‘Well, there’s an easy way to find out,’ said White cheerfully and nodded at Williams, who pulled on blue latex gloves with some difficulty, and then started to remove the head from the evidence bag.

Spicer tucked his hands into his armpits. ‘What are you doing?’ he said.

‘You just pop your finger in the mouth, would you?’ said White.

‘What? Why?’

‘Because if the marks don’t match the teeth then we’ll all agree that Patrick Fort is completely deluded.’

Spicer licked his lips.

‘Don’t worry,’ said White. ‘I have hand sanitizer.’

To prove it, he put the little bottle of gel on the table between them and smiled reassuringly while they waited for Williams to complete the unveiling.

Finally the head was exposed on the table, the teeth showing between the strange, stretched lips, the single eye glaring from the sunken socket.

‘This isn’t scientific,’ said Spicer.

‘No, but it’s a start,’ said White. ‘It seems like a simple way of discrediting Patrick Fort’s story, and I don’t want to waste your time, Mr Spicer.’

‘
Doctor
Spicer.’

‘We’ll see,’ said White. ‘Now, would you mind?’

He gestured towards the head. Spicer didn’t move.

‘Would you mind?’ said White again.

Emrys Williams noticed that Spicer’s fingertips were pressed so hard into his own sides that they had gone white. It made the pale-pink scars on the right index finger stand out even more starkly.

The silence was so deep that the loudest sound was the electric flicker of the fluorescent lights.

‘Would you mind?’ said White again, more softly.

Still Spicer did not move.

Williams realized that the clock on the wall was starting to tick. Or maybe it had always been ticking. He’d never noticed it before.

‘You don’t understand,’ said Spicer tightly. ‘People like you –
ordinary
people – don’t understand.’

‘What don’t we understand?’

Spicer hugged himself and shook his head slowly.

‘What it’s like on those wards. People like you think people are
in
a coma or
out
of it. That’s what you see in films. Someone dies and everyone’s sad, or someone opens his eyes and everyone’s happy. That’s just Hollywood
bullshit
.’

Williams was surprised to see a sudden crescent of bright tears in Spicer’s eyes. They tipped over his lower lids and he brushed them angrily away, then stuck his hands back under his armpits once more, as if to protect them as he went on.

‘But some of them only emerge halfway. Halfway between life and death. Like zombies. Sometimes they can only blink. For the next forty, fifty, sixty years, they only blink and look at the ceiling. Sometimes they sing the same song until they die. Ask the same question. Sometimes they scream until their throats bleed. Sometimes they tear their hair out, or their eyes – or try to bite
you
or strangle
you
. Sometimes they cry and beg you to let them go.
Beg you
.’ He punched the table with the side of his fist, making the head wobble. Emrys Williams briefly put out a hand to steady it; and thought of doing the same thing to the boys when they were younger. A touch of acknowledgement and of reassurance.

‘Killing them is not the sin; keeping them
alive
is the sin.’

Spicer jutted a challenging chin at Williams and White, but when they said nothing, he wiped his eyes again and sighed deeply.

‘One of them was always ranting and raving. Crying. Violent.
Always
lashing out. He broke my fiancée’s finger. They had to cut her engagement ring off. I only gave it to her the night before, and she was so happy. Then she came home the next day and her finger was black and twisted and her ring was in pieces and she cried and cried.

‘I had the ring repaired but she’s only recently been able to wear it again.’

‘So you killed Mr Galen for breaking your fiancée’s finger,’ said White carefully.

‘No!’ Spicer shook his head. ‘His name was Attridge. Charles Attridge.’

Williams glanced at DCI White. Who the hell was Charles Attridge?

But Spicer went on, ‘His family were
relieved
when he died. They
thanked
me for everything I’d done. They understood. Nobody understands. Until they have to go through it themselves.’

There was a silence that somehow made the Spartan interview room seem just a little bit sacred.

‘And what about Mr Galen here?’ asked White quietly.

There was a long hesitation before Spicer said, ‘He saw me do it.’

Emrys Williams’s gut twisted.

Spicer went on in a dull monotone. ‘And then … and then he started to emerge.’ He blew his nose between his finger and thumb. He looked around, then wiped the resulting clear mucus across the front of his own sweater with a resigned shrug, and added, ‘Started to talk.’

Williams felt his throat tighten with tears, and was grateful he was not leading this interview. Samuel Galen had not been put out of his misery – Sam Galen had been murdered in cold blood just as recovery was within his grasp. Emrys Williams was not a wildly imaginative man, but even he felt sick at the idea of the fear, the sheer terror Galen must have felt, when he realized that he was about to be murdered – and couldn’t lift a finger to stop it.

‘So you killed him?’ said White quietly.

‘Yes,’ said Spicer.

‘With a peanut?’

Spicer nodded.

‘Answer verbally, please. For the tape.’

‘Yes,’ said Spicer. ‘With a peanut.’

‘And what about the dissection?’ asked White. ‘How did that come about?’

Spicer sighed. ‘That was just bad luck. I didn’t even know until we uncovered the head. It was a shock. A terrible shock. I could barely even touch him after that.’

He folded his arms on the table and rested his forehead on them like a man exhausted. He spoke but his words were muffled, and White and Williams both leaned in a little to hear him.

‘I did feel bad. I told him I was very sorry.’

Then he raised pleading eyes to the two detectives. ‘But what was I supposed to do?’

Spicer dropped his head on to his hands again, and wept.

52

EMRYS WILLIAMS STOOD
under a streetlight on the glistening pink avenue outside the police station, and checked his watch. He only had an hour before his next shift started.

He didn’t mind. He was on an adrenaline high, and felt happier than he had in many years.

What a night and day and night again! Every part of it seemed bright and vibrant in his memory, filled with shining images of discovery and justice. Williams wished he smoked. Now would be the perfect time to light up and savour.

Across the Boulevard de Nantes, he could hear the sounds of liquid celebration, and he smiled, even though he didn’t know who’d won.

A white cockerel with a small French flag knotted around its neck strutted towards him from the direction of the stadium. He leaned down in a wide-armed but half-hearted effort to catch it. It eluded him with ease and a squawk, then resumed its jaunty journey to who knew where.

His phone shook in his pocket and he checked the messages. Shelli (with an i) had left several about a cruise to Mexico she’d seen online.

He didn’t call her back. He didn’t want to share this with her. She wouldn’t understand.

Because she didn’t care.

The realization didn’t hurt him, so he obviously didn’t care
either
. He would go home soon and tell her it was over. No hard feelings.

He was moving on.

Just the thought gave him a thrill inside.

DCI White had shaken his hand for far longer than was merely formal, and if he’d been clapped once on the shoulder by passing colleagues, it had happened twenty times. Even the forensics lads had been uncommonly chatty when they’d come to reclaim the head of Samuel Galen.

Only Patrick Fort had been unimpressed by Emrys Williams’s extraordinary accomplishment. When Williams had opened the cell door and told the boy that his story had been checked out and that he was free to go, Patrick Fort had simply shrugged and said, ‘I told you so.’

Williams had laughed then, and now laughed again softly at the memory, as the golden moon rose slowly over the city.

Soon he would start his shift, and work and life would go on, but nothing would be the same. For the first time in years, he had a sense that life was still his to be lived.

He was too young to be a fat old man.

This is how things change
, he thought.

THIS is how things change
.

53

THE FUNERAL WAS
only delayed by two weeks, because David Spicer had pleaded guilty at his very first court hearing, and the head of Samuel Galen was released to the family.

By then, Patrick had run out of rent money, but not out of goodwill, and Kim, Jackson and Lexi let him stay on the couch for free so that he would be able to attend the service.

It took place on the first weekend in April, when the verges were still sunny with daffodils and the sky was seaside blue.

It was also Grand National day, but – by his standards – Patrick barely made a fuss about missing the world’s most famous steeplechase for the first time he could recall.
And the last
, he vowed silently, as he watched post-time roll around, right in the middle of ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd’.

Despite the fact that Sam Galen had died almost nine months before, the church was full, and heady with the scent of spring flowers, with no accompanying smell of shit.

As he didn’t sing and didn’t pray, Patrick remembered fleeting snatches of his own father’s funeral. The day had been bitterly cold, and the church had seemed even colder, and throughout he could smell the black polish his mother had made him apply and reapply to his school shoes in an attempt to cover the scuffs.

His father had been in a box just a few feet away, and while the vicar talked about tragedy and God, Patrick had been overwhelmed by a desire to open the box and see if he was really in
there
. He had fidgeted and fretted until finally his mother had held his hand so tight that he’d cried.

This was very different. He had seen Number 19 with his own eyes – opened his heart, cradled his brain, sawn off his head. He knew now exactly why Number 19 was dead, and there was no doubt that he was inside the coffin that floated on a sea of flowers – some of which spelled the words THANK YOU in white and blue. Meg had organized that, and it had cost a fortune, but they had all chipped in.

Lexi sat in the front pew with Jackie and when she cried Jackie put an arm around her shoulders – and Lexi let her.

Mick was there from the dissecting room, and Professor Madoc too. As they left the church, Patrick saw DS Williams standing at the back.

‘Did you want to talk to me about Dr Spicer?’ he asked, but DS Williams said no, it wasn’t the time or the place. Patrick didn’t understand that; they were both in the same place at the same time, weren’t they? Surely that was ideal?

Then DS Williams said goodbye and tried to shake his hand, but Patrick saw it coming.

Later, at the graveside, Jackson and Kim stood on either side of Lexi and held her hands. Not to make her squirm, but just
because
.

Afterwards they all went to a pub and Lexi cried some more and drank too much, but Patrick didn’t say a thing. Meg sat close to him, but not
too
close, and there were sandwiches and cakes and large bowls of potato salad with chives in it, and Patrick wondered if this was the exception, or whether this was the way a funeral was
supposed
to be.

Much later, back at the house, Jackson – who had become a lot more free and easy with the remote control – let Patrick watch the repeat of the Grand National on BBC2.