He was the middle-aged man they’d long expected. Mick had shaved his head before embalming, but his straight nose had greying hairs in it, and his crows’ feet were deep enough to have survived the swell of formalin and glycerol.
Patrick noticed with relief that his eyes were closed – and that Scott made no attempt to open them. He also noticed that Meg’s lower lip trembled, and he watched with interest the way it pulled her chin out of shape.
‘Why are you crying?’ he asked.
‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘Shut up.’
‘There are tears in your eyes,’ he said.
‘Shut up, Patrick,’ said Rob firmly.
Patrick glanced around the table and realized that everyone felt something that he didn’t. The students looked… angry? No, that wasn’t right.
He suddenly thought of his father’s face on the day Persian Punch had died, and his heart jolted at the sudden connection. Sad! The other students looked sad. Even Dr Spicer was pale and uncharacteristically quiet, and – for the first time he could ever remember – Patrick thought he knew the feelings of strangers. He was sure he was right. The excitement almost overwhelmed him. All he wanted to do was to drink in the clues on their faces so that he would know Sad if he ever saw it again.
‘He looks like a Bill,’ said Meg, adding snot to the sleeve of her paper coat, which was already disgusting with yellow fat and brick-brown blood.
‘Yeah, he does,’ said Scott, and was rewarded with a tiny smile from her.
Spicer stood at the head with his scalpel, and they joined him there with more than a touch of what felt like first-day nerves. Nobody looked as if they wanted to start. For all the incisions they’d made so far, there was something quite different about slicing into the throat with the face exposed; something executional.
Spicer was about to make the first cut, then changed his mind.
‘Patrick can do the honours, I think.’
The others sighed with relief and glanced at each other. If this was Patrick’s punishment for his previous infraction, they were in full support.
As Patrick took the scalpel from Spicer he noticed a slight tremble in the man’s hand, and wondered if he was a drinker. Lots of doctors were, he’d heard – although his mother was a shop assistant.
He followed Spicer’s finger to the starting place below the hyoid bone, and traced a murderous line across the throat, and then slid the blade boldly over the bumpy thyroid cartilage, through the old pale scar, down to the base of the neck.
‘Well done, mate,’ said Rob and patted him on the back. The touch was over before Patrick could flinch.
Under Spicer’s guidance they all took turns at cutting and cleaning and scraping, peeling back flat layers of neck muscle until Bill’s throat was spread about him like the flaps of a startled basilisk.
‘There’s something in the oesophagus,’ said Dilip, and they all watched as he sliced and clipped back a six-inch gash in the tube of muscle. The pink membranes inside were thickly freckled with dark fragments.
‘Pharyngeal debris is quite common,’ said Spicer. ‘Usually it’s blood or vomit. Just clean it up using the swabs.’
‘Is it relevant to the cause of death?’ said Scott.
‘Might be.’
‘Ace,’ said Scott. ‘So he might have choked or had internal bleeding or something?’
Spicer smiled faintly; he was giving nothing away. Patrick hoped it was not the case; he was trying to be faithful to his pearl of a tumour.
Meg started to wipe away the debris to reveal the multiple folds of the throat. Unlike the flesh, which was made strangely orange by the embalming fluids, the membranes and organs remained pink and lifelike.
There were several nicks and cuts in the soft palate and back of the throat where Patrick could see Dilip had been clumsy with the scalpel, and a fragment of blue latex made him check his gloves feverishly. They were not infallible – especially around the sharp edges of ribs and teeth. Patrick was relieved to find his intact on this occasion, but he peeled them off and got a new pair anyway.
When he returned, Meg had finished clearing the throat, which was gleaming and alien. The root of the tongue was lumpy with tastebuds and larger papillae.
‘What’s that?’ said Patrick.
‘What’s what?’ said Meg.
Patrick was so focused that he brushed against her shoulder without even noticing, as he leaned in and touched a particularly large, discoloured lump. It moved a little, so he plucked it out with his forceps and held it up to the light.
‘What’s that?’ said Dilip.
‘You pulled his tonsils out, idiot!’ said Scott.
‘No I didn’t. It wasn’t attached.’
Patrick turned the lump slightly in the afternoon light. It was pale tan and about half the size of his smallest fingernail, domed on one side, flat on the other, with a single groove running down its length.
‘You think it’s a tumour?’ said Meg, looking as concerned as if the corpse would have to be told the bad news.
‘Looks more like a cyst,’ said Scott.
‘Or a nodule,’ helped Rob. ‘You get them on the vocal cords.’
‘It’s a peanut,’ said Patrick.
They all laughed, even though he was serious.
Dr Spicer came over and confirmed Patrick’s diagnosis. ‘Probably brought up from the stomach with the rest of the debris.’
‘There was nothing in the stomach,’ Patrick reminded him.
‘Maybe that’s why,’ said Rob.
‘I bet he choked on it,’ Scott insisted.
‘It’s too small, isn’t it?’ said Dilip. ‘Something that size couldn’t block the airway. It would just be sucked into the lungs, wouldn’t it?’
‘What are the post-mortem symptoms of choking?’ said Spicer.
‘Blood in the eyes?’ said Meg.
Scott leaned over the face and Patrick looked away as he checked the sunken eyes.
‘Nada,’ said Scott. ‘Shit. I give up. I’m asking Mick.’
He walked away and Patrick dropped the peanut into a fresh bag.
‘I don’t really think that’s necessary,’ laughed Spicer.
‘Anything and everything you take off or out of this cadaver gets bagged and tagged so it can be put back together again at the end of the course for burial or cremation,’ said Patrick, and Spicer looked stunned to hear himself quoted verbatim.
‘Are you being funny?’ he said carefully.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Patrick, and fastened the bag, tagged it, and then put it under the dissection table along with Bill’s left arm, both feet, and that day’s skin and fat. Spicer shook his head and turned his attention to the table again.
Scott came back from the office, frowning, and they all looked at him expectantly. ‘It’s not choking, but he wouldn’t say what it was. That bastard likes watching us suffer.’
They all turned towards the glass-walled office. The bald lab tech gave them a wave, looking as cheerful as they had ever seen him.
When five o’clock came round the students started to peel off their gloves and leave.
‘See you tomorrow, Bill,’ said Meg.
Patrick didn’t go.
Instead he slid his fingers into the cadaver’s mouth and ran them around the inside of the stiff lips and under the leathery tongue. Then he checked from the other end too, wiggling his index finger up behind the soft palate and into the nasal cavity.
‘What are you doing?’ said Meg, wandering back to the table.
‘Looking for vomit.’
‘Any luck?’
Patrick glanced at her over the corpse. ‘Would it be lucky or unlucky to find vomit with my finger in the mouth of a dead man?’
She paused and then smiled. ‘You’re joking.’
‘You can laugh,’ he said.
She shrugged. ‘Maybe later.’
Patrick checked thoroughly, then held up a clean blue finger.
‘Luck,’ he said, and she laughed.