She’d lied. Quill had done this. But how? When?
‘No,’ he answered.
‘Relative?’
Nicholas shook his head.
‘Uh-huh,’ said the nurse, suspicious.
An idea occurred to Nicholas. He reached to his neck and unclasped the elder-wood and sardonyx necklace.
‘She wanted this. Can I put it on her?’
‘No.’
‘It means a lot to her,’ he said.
‘Then why in’ she wearing it already?’ The nurse glanced at the rough necklace, then fixed Nicholas with a humourless, don’t-waste-my-time arch.
‘Fine. Can you give it to her for me?’ he asked.
The nurse watched him for a moment, sighed far too loudly, then held out her hand.
He dropped the necklace onto her light brown palm. As its touch left his skin, the world suddenly lurched and he staggered. He heard a rustling in his ear, a high-pitched squeal like a million cicadas trying to burrow into his skull. The bay and the nurse swam out of focus.
‘Sir?’
‘Feeling. .’
The nurse pressed the necklace back into Nicholas’s palm and shut his fingers over the wood and stone. The world steadied, leaving only the aching weariness.
The nurse was watching him anxiously with careful eyes. ‘I think you need it much as her.’
She looked away and wouldn’t meet his eyes again.
‘Nurse?’
She hesitated beside the bay’s front curtain, anxious to be gone.
‘Can you tell me where Intensive Care is?’ he asked.
‘Take the lifts to five,’ she said, and lifted her meaty arms to wave him out of the ward as if he were an evil smell.
Pritam was in a closed ward sealed with glass. An oxygen tube fed under his nose. A neck brace held his face rigid, and a web of stainless-steel frames hovered over his body. To Nicholas, he was a rock in a squally sea, lying motionless as men and women surged around him silently: jerking, vomiting, dying, lapping into one another like morbid smoke. There were so many that they were a blur, but through the thrashing haze Nicholas saw their eyes — dozens of eyes — watching him.
His heart beat fast and his neck grew hot.
The duty nurse walked past and Nicholas asked her in a voice that, he hoped, sounded more upset than selfishly miserable how Reverend Anand was doing. She explained that the operation to repair a split renal artery had been successful, and he would be in theatre again tomorrow morning to set his pelvis, left leg and two breaks in his clavicle. A CT scan had revealed a minor swelling of the brain that was being monitored.
The nurse left, and Nicholas fixed his gaze on a spot in the corner where no dead seemed to accrete. He stared at it, thinking.
And Miriam Gerlic was dead; he was grimly certain of it.
Pritam opened his eyes and blearily looked around.
Nicholas called a nurse. Through the glass, he watched her enter Pritam’s small room and speak with him, asking basic questions. Can you tell me your name? Do you know where you are? Do you know what day of the week this is? Do you remember what happened? Pritam’s eyes wandered across the trelliswork of steel supporting him, over the ceiling, down to the glass and finally found Nicholas. His mouth moved, and the nurse pursed her lips. She reluctantly waved Nicholas inside.
He didn’t want to go, but his legs shuffled him in.
‘You can stay for a minute,’ said the nurse, stumping out. ‘The doctor’s on his way.’
Nicholas looked down at Pritam. The young reverend’s normally brown face was as pale as milk. He raised his eyebrows.
‘Lazy bastard,’ said Nicholas. ‘Hell of a way to get out of Sunday service.’
Pritam smiled. His eyes stayed on Nicholas. They twinkled like night stars under the shifting layers of heaving, gasping, weightless dead.
‘It was John,’ he whispered. ‘But it wasn’t John.’
Nicholas shook his head slowly — I don’t understand.
‘John called me over the road,’ croaked Pritam. ‘But John’s dead. It was Quill.’
The name hit Nicholas like a wave of frosted air.
‘Laine’s in here, too,’ he whispered.
Pritam’s eyes closed and he took a rattling breath. ‘How?’
Nicholas shook his head again, and shrugged. ‘And Hannah Gerlic’s sister is missing.’
Pritam’s eyes rolled up to the ceiling.
‘Key under. .’
‘I can’t hear you, Pritam.’
‘. . key under the mat,’ he whispered.
Nicholas understood. At the presbytery. ‘Oh, that’s clever.’
Pritam gave a weak smile.
‘Computer. Last search.’ He licked his dry lips. ‘’kay?’
Nicholas nodded.
Pritam’s eyes folded shut. He sank back under his shroud of writhing ghosts.
Nicholas watched the steady rhythm of the coloured lines on the monitor. He departed as fast as he could.
It took the taxi driver three-quarters of an hour to negotiate the rain-worried traffic and get to the Tallong Anglican Church. On the way, Nicholas dozed.
‘We’re here,’ said the cabbie.
Nicholas paid with a credit card. As the cab drove away, he looked at the road where Pritam had been hit this morning. There wasn’t the tiniest sign anything had happened.
The presbytery key was, indeed, under the rubber and coir mat. Nicholas entered. A half-cup of cold tea rested beside the computer; the screensaver scrolled shots of sunsets, mist over placid ponds, light streaming through trees, silhouettes of praiseful people on cliff tops arching to the heavens. He touched the mouse. ‘Connection timed out’ read a message box. He shut it and clicked the ‘refresh’ arrow. The modem whistled.
He stared as the page updated.
The manifest from the
Nicholas sat heavily and for a long while did nothing.
‘Rowena,’ he whispered to himself.
He unplugged the modem and rang Suzette.
