Patrick ran out of breath. His heart pumped and his jaw ached from saying so many words. The three men were staring at him so intently that it made him squirm, so he looked around the room for relief. He noticed that the Rubik’s cube was on the bookshelf, and that Professor Madoc had messed it up again. Even from here, he could see where he’d gone wrong.
‘A peanut,’ said the professor.
Dr Spicer spoke slowly. ‘There was a peanut in the cadaver’s throat, but it bore no relation to the cause of death.’ He looked at Mick, who nodded his own confirmation.
‘You were told,’ Mick said.
‘Scott was told. I’m not Scott.’
The silence around him resumed, and went on for some time, and Patrick felt himself growing calm once again. The three men exchanged looks and he was grateful that at last they were taking him seriously. Now that they realized the importance of the peanut, and why it was critical that he find it, everything would be all right.
Instead Professor Madoc sighed and said, ‘Nevertheless’ – and then expelled him on the spot.
Patrick left the oak-panelled office in a tight ball of confused shock.
He couldn’t believe what had just happened. Instead of doing the thing that made sense, Professor Madoc had expelled him! It was turning out the lights all over again. For a full minute he stood in the centre of the corridor, holding his trainer to his chest, as other students bumped and brushed past him. He didn’t even feel them.
Then he started to walk briskly to the end of the corridor. By the time he reached the stairs, he was running.
They were behind him. Not right behind him. But not in front of him, that was the point.
It meant he had a head start.
Patrick felt the adrenaline coursing through him once more – just as it had when he’d climbed the fence. He’d never had it before meeting Number 19, but he recognized it now and liked it.
One last look at the cadaver – that was all he needed. But a look through more suspicious eyes; eyes that were seeking clues from the past, not to the future. He would go straight for the throat, where the peanut had been. That was the logical thing. The throat, the mouth, the tongue. He thought of the cuts and nicks that Dilip had made – that he’d assumed Dilip had made. That was where he would start. He would find something. More chunks of black blood, another scrap of blue latex. Another thrill passed through him. He didn’t know what, but he would find something.
Still holding his trainer, Patrick ran past the porter at the entrance to the block – through the doors that were always open – and feverishly jabbed his code into the keypad on the anatomy wing door.
It didn’t open.
Patrick rattled the handle, then put his code in again. 4017.
Nothing. 4017. 4017. 4017. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Patrick banged the metal door so hard with the side of his fist that it rang.
‘Oi!’ said the porter, but Patrick didn’t hear him. He kicked the door hard, not even feeling it in his toes.
The porter grabbed his arm and Patrick shook it off, struggling to keep calm. ‘Don’t touch me!’ he said. ‘You have to let me in. I need to get in.’
‘No, you need to leave,’ said the porter. Patrick had never seen him standing up before, but now realized that he was quite burly.
‘I’m allowed to be here. I’m doing anatomy. I’m allowed to be in the dissection room.’
‘Not today you’re not, sunshine. Today you’re going home to sleep it off.’
The porter took his arm more firmly this time, and Patrick punched him in the face. The man was well built, but he still staggered backwards like a drunk – and then sat down and rolled comically on to his back with his legs in the air.
Patrick left before they came down.
He ran straight to the police station; it was only down the road behind the museum and City Hall.
‘I want to report a crime,’ he told the desk officer, who sat behind the thick glass window as if she were selling train tickets.
‘What kind of crime?’
‘I’m not sure. It might be murder, but I can no longer gather evidence myself, so I think the police should get involved now.’
She said nothing, and looked at his hands. Patrick noticed a smear of blood on his left knuckles.
The porter’s nose.
He quickly withdrew his hand from the counter and wiped it on his jeans. ‘That has nothing to do with it,’ he told her.
‘What has it got to do with?’ she said.
‘Something irrelevant. Are you going to take my report or not?’
The young woman stared at his face so he had to blink and look away.
‘Take a seat,’ she said. ‘An officer will be right with you.’
Patrick took a seat that faced the glass front wall of the foyer. The rain had left the air outside clear, the trees washed, and the pink gravel avenue sparkling in the February sunshine.
A police van pulled up at the kerb and an officer opened the back doors. Patrick expected to see a dog jump out, but instead a man did – the young man in a white tracksuit that Patrick had met in the park.
His sleeves were soaked to the elbows with blood.
Two policemen walked him up the wide steps to the foyer. His wrists were cuffed in front of him but he still had a casual bob to his gait and a faint smile on his face.
The trio came in and walked straight through to an inner door. One of the officers tapped in a code on the security pad. 1109; he made no attempt to conceal it. Patrick wondered whether the exit code was the same.
The young man, meanwhile, stared around the foyer and caught Patrick looking at him. He raised his chained, bloody hands as if pleading – or praying. ‘I didn’t do it,’ he said.
‘I doubt that,’ said Patrick, and both policemen laughed, even though it wasn’t meant to be a joke, and then ushered the young man through the door.
‘What’s your name?’
The desk officer was talking to Patrick, leaning forward, with one splayed hand against the glass.
He was suddenly wary. ‘Why?’
‘We can’t file a report without a name,’ she said.
Patrick was puzzled. He’d watched enough TV to know about anonymous tip-offs. Therefore the officer’s words made no sense. Therefore they couldn’t be true.
Therefore, thought Patrick, she was lying.
But why?
She’d looked at his knuckles. Patrick thought again of the porter’s nose spreading under his fist. Blood on his knuckles, just as the young man in the white tracksuit had blood up his sleeves. And how the police had laughed when that young man had turned to Patrick and said I didn’t do it. Even Patrick hadn’t believed him. The guilt was there on his sleeves for all to see.
And the blood was there on his own knuckles.
Nobody had seen the porter grab hold of him first, or Mark Bennett punch him in the back, the day his father had died.
So instead of giving the officer his name, Patrick stood up and walked out.