In the half-light, Abass was standing staring ahead in the middle of the road, his hands hanging limply by his sides. Beyond him a man lay on the ground.
It took ten minutes to reach the car. Kai placed one of Adrian’s arms around his shoulders and hoisted him to his feet after he’d checked to see if anything was broken, running expert fingers across Adrian’s ribs. Abass ran ahead to open the door of the car so Adrian could lie on the back seat, but Adrian demurred, climbed gingerly into the front. Kai sent Abass to the boot to fetch water. The boy stood and watched, frowning and intent, while Adrian sipped from the bottle and then handed it back. Kai said little, but concentrated on finding his way back on to the main road. In the white light of the passing vehicles, Adrian’s skin was bluish, covered in a sheen of sweat.
‘Is Uncle Adrian going to be all right?’ asked Abass. The boy sat pressed against the upholstery, clutching the water bottle in his lap.
Adrian turned his head stiffly. ‘Yes. Don’t worry about me, Abass. I’m going to be fine.’ And then, ‘I was hit by somebody on a bicycle. I don’t suppose he saw me in the dark.’
‘A bicycle?’ repeated Abass wonderingly.
‘Yes.’
Kai said nothing and they left it there, by silent mutual assent. An hour and a half later they dropped Abass at home. The boy pushed the water bottle into Adrian’s hands, along with his new cassette. Adrian kept the water but handed the cassette back. ‘We’ll listen to it together another time. How about that?’
Abass nodded.
‘Tell your mum I’ll be back later,’ said Kai. ‘I need to take Adrian home.’
Kai listened to Adrian’s account of what happened. Of seeing Agnes, following her to the house, the son-in-law, the daughter, Agnes’s reluctance. Then had come the attack, by the son-in-law, Adrian had no doubt. The man had been with him one minute, gone the next. Kai drove in silence throughout.
‘You went to her home?’ he asked, when Adrian had finished.
‘Yes,’ replied Adrian. ‘I shouldn’t have. I mean, not strictly speaking. But these are unusual circumstances. She needs help.’
‘I’m just saying you have to take some care, you don’t understand this country. There are a lot of bad, bad people out there. You could have got yourself really hurt.’
In the apartment Adrian disappeared into the bathroom. Kai went to the kitchen, where he filled the kettle and put it on to boil. Though he wasn’t hungry he began rummaging through the cupboards, purely out of habit. A life lived without fast food and snacks had made him an opportunistic eater. As a child he ate whatever was put in front of him, meat was a treat, he and his sister fought surreptitiously with their forks over the best pieces. Then later, training as a doctor and eating on the run. Years of half-eaten meals, finished cold often hours later. He never suffered indigestion. He decided against tea, lifted the kettle from the stove and helped himself to a beer from the fridge instead.
Adrian appeared.
‘How do you feel?’ asked Kai.
‘I’ll live.’
‘Do you want me to take a look?’
Adrian shook his head. ‘Actually what I really want now is a whisky.’
‘Let me have a look at you.’ He stood in front of Adrian, surveyed his face, reached for his wrist and checked his pulse, pressed on the ends of Adrian’s fingers. Then he located one of the two tumblers Adrian possessed and poured a sizeable measure of whisky into it. He handed it to Adrian. ‘I could run a couple of X-rays. Just to be sure.’
‘No, really. I’m fine. He wasn’t trying to kill me. I’m sure if he wanted to he could have.’ Adrian poured a small amount of water from a bottle into his whisky, stared deep into the glass for a moment, swirled the contents and inhaled. ‘Smell that. My father used to call it releasing the serpent, the water frees the flavour. He was a whisky man. I didn’t really take to it until a few years ago. Funny, that.’
‘What did he want?’ asked Kai.
For a moment Adrian looked at him, perplexed.
‘The guy back there, I mean,’ said Kai.
‘I don’t know.’ Adrian shook his head and stared into the glass. ‘Money?’
‘And yet he didn’t steal anything from you?’ Kai took a sip of his beer and shook his head. ‘Makes no sense. He had every opportunity. You were out cold.’
‘What then?’
‘My guess? He just didn’t want you around.’
‘So it would seem.’
‘For sure not.’
They were silent. Adrian continued looking into his whisky glass. Then, without warning, he said, ‘I need to go back.’
Kai didn’t answer. Instead he tipped the rest of his beer down his throat, opened the bin and dropped the bottle inside. Then he opened the fridge and brought out some eggs, set the frying pan on the flame. By the time he broke the first egg into the pan the oil was so hot the edges of the egg curled up and began to brown. When he cooked he could think more clearly. He flicked hot oil over the surface of the egg, watched the white grow opaque, the yolk stiffen.
Behind him Adrian repeated, ‘I need to go back.’
Kai gave a slight shake of his head. ‘Don’t be fucking crazy.’
‘I need to.’
‘Listen,’ said Kai, more sharply than he intended. ‘You have no idea what you’re getting into. A lot of things have happened here. During the war, a lot of people did a lot of things. Others used the opportunity to make a lot of money. War makes some people rich. That guy is mixed up in something heavy. Whatever is going on in that house — drugs, most likely — you don’t want to know.’
‘What about Agnes?’
‘What about Agnes?’
‘She’s suffering post-traumatic stress. She’s ill.’
‘Jesus!’ Angry now, Kai turned to face Adrian; oil dripped from the spatula on to the worktop and the floor following the sweep of his hand. ‘How the hell can I explain this to you in a way you’ll understand? How many months have you been here? Two, three? There’s been a war. What do you expect? This isn’t a game. The guy in that house doesn’t give a damn that you’re a British passport holder. If he needs to kill you, he will.’
Adrian took a piece of kitchen roll and wiped the oil from the counter, squatted down to wipe the floor. Kai saw the grimace, the juddering in his breathing, evidence of the effort it cost him. Now he felt bad. He shook his head. ‘This isn’t your country, man. I’m sorry. But this isn’t your country.’
‘I know that,’ said Adrian. ‘I know this isn’t my country. But it is my job.’ He stepped forward, reached for the whisky bottle and poured himself another glass before returning to his former position against the wall, only this time he slid down it and sat on the floor.
Kai removed one egg and cracked another into the pan. It was errantry that brought them here, flooding in through the gaping wound left by the war, lascivious in their eagerness. Kai had seen it in the feverish eyes of the women, the sweat on their upper lips, the smell of their breath as they pressed close to him. They came to get their newspaper stories, to save black babies, to spread the word, to make money, to fuck black bodies. They all had their own reasons. Modern-day knights, each after his or her trophy, their very own Holy Grail. Adrian’s Grail was Agnes.
And yet.
And yet, for Kai it was simple. His patients came, an unending trail. If he worked as a surgeon his whole life it would never be enough. In that way his professional life was self-sufficient, possessed clarity. His achievements were measurable. The people he treated walked again, or breathed again, lived again. Kai knew something of Adrian’s early experiences here at the hospital. When they first met, he remembered his sense of the other man as, what? Unanchored. Since then Kai had witnessed the shift in Adrian. Talk of Ileana, of the man who ran the mental hospital. What was his name? Attila. Kai had met Attila only once. At a funding conference he had found himself alone with Attila for a few minutes, the only two black faces in the room. Kai had been impressed, thinking Attila had got closer to a kind of truth than anyone else. Attila understood something which Adrian didn’t. Not yet.