Doctor Straub opens the door.
The room is lit by a glorious rectangle of light which scythes down from a high, undraped window set in a wall painted in deep crimson and adorned with black and white sketches in chunky gold frames.
In the centre of a wrought-iron, four-poster bed, lays Anne Montrose. Both of her arms rest above the smooth, cream and gilt bedspread and her blonde hair puddles on the pillowcase like a pool of molten gold.
The drip that feeds her, and the other that takes away her waste, are discreetly hidden behind two tall, rococo lamps, and McAvoy’s eye is drawn to a hand-carved, pine bedside table and matching bookcase that stand against the near wall, beneath a giant mirror which makes the room seem even bigger and more opulent than it is.
‘She looks like a princess,’ breathes McAvoy.
Behind him, Doctor Straub laughs. ‘The families of our patients sometimes like to decorate the rooms. Whether it’s for them or the patient, I couldn’t say, but this one is a definite favourite with the staff.’
‘The light that comes through …’
‘There’s a set of bulbs up there,’ explains Doctor Straub. ‘Even when the weather is shocking, it’s like a summer’s day in here. That’s how it was set up.’
‘Can’t have been cheap.’
‘Her bills are always paid very promptly, I’m led to believe,’ says Doctor Straub, cautiously, crossing to the bed and smiling at the figure in its centre. ‘And there are never any problems when we want to try new techniques that may cost that little extra.’
‘I’m sure Colonel Emms is very generous,’ says McAvoy, staring into Doctor Straub’s eyes.
‘I wouldn’t be able to discuss that,’ she says with a smile that tells McAvoy all he needs to know.
Curious, he crosses to the bed and leans over Anne Montrose’s sleeping body as if leaning out over a ravine. Her skin is perfect. Her face unwrinkled. Her hair full of lustre and life.
‘It’s like she’s …’
‘Sleeping? Yes. That’s the difficult thing for loved ones to understand. They’re grieving for somebody who’s still here.’
‘Is she still here?’ he asks, dropping his voice to a whisper. ‘Do they come back?’
‘We get some of them back,’ she says. ‘Not always as much as was there to begin with, but they can come back.’
‘And Anne? Will she …’
‘I hope so,’ says Doctor Straub with a sigh. ‘I’d love to get to know her. From her records we would appear to have lots in common, though I fear that the work she did abroad would have been beyond my generosity.’
‘You know about her charity work?’ asks McAvoy, stepping back from the bed.
‘I’m her doctor,’ she explains. ‘It’s my job to try whatever I can to get a response.’
‘You remind her of who she was?’
‘Of who she still is.’ She stops herself and purses her lips. ‘What’s this about, Sergeant?’
McAvoy opens his mouth and begins to tell her it’s just routine, but stops himself before he has made a sound. ‘I think somebody is killing people who have survived atrocities and disasters,’ he says, ‘and I think Anne is involved somehow.’
‘You think she might be in danger?’ asks Doctor Straub, pulling a face and raising a hand to her mouth.
McAvoy shakes his head. ‘Perhaps,’ he says.
‘But …’
McAvoy just shrugs. He’s too tired to go through it all, to explain the thought processes that have brought him into Doctor Straub’s world.
‘Does she get many visitors?’ he asks gently.
‘Her mother,’ says Doctor Straub, and there is more animation and excitement in her gestures now. ‘Her sister occasionally. Obviously, we have visiting doctors and students …’
‘I understand she was in a relationship at the time of her death,’ says McAvoy.
‘Yes, her personal effects were brought here when she was transferred to this facility and I have spoken to her family as much as I can to get some details of her life. She fell for a soldier she met while working in Iraq. I’m led to believe he may even have been a chaplain with his regiment. A grand passion, it seems. Such a tragedy to have it cut short.’
‘You use this in the therapy, do you?’
‘We use whatever we can.’
‘You read to her?’ asks McAvoy, nodding at the bookcase.
‘Sometimes,’ she replies. ‘I’ve read her the odd romance. Some poetry. Talked to her about the political situation in Iraq.’
She smiles at McAvoy’s expression of surprise.
‘Things she was interested in, Sergeant. I’ve got a patient downstairs who appears to become more withdrawn when we don’t tell him how Sheffield Wednesday got on. They’re still people. They’re just trapped in there. We’re looking for whatever it is that unlocks them. We’re trying to disentangle a miracle …’
McAvoy runs his tongue around his mouth. He looks again at the figure on the bed. Closes his eyes. Looks inside himself. Grits his teeth and presses his large hands to his forehead as he tries to make sense of what he thought he understood …
‘Sergeant, are you OK?’
His vision is blurring. The room is starting to spin. His legs feel weak, as though unable to support the weight of his thoughts.
‘Wait there,’ says Doctor Straub urgently, as she lowers him into a sitting position on the floor. ‘I’ll get you some water.’
The door swings open and McAvoy is left alone in the room, his huge body folded into a schoolboy pose, cross-legged, heavy-headed on the wooden floor.
He finds the strength to look up.
Focuses on the bookcase.
Romances and poetry, fairy-tales and myths.
He reaches out and takes a book at random.
The title swims in his vision. He blinks. Focuses.
Holy Bible.
Gives a half laugh and opens it.
The pages fall like leaves from a dead tree.
McAvoy finds his lap covered in pages of text, torn into confetti, ripped into angry strips and shards.
He stares at the hardback binding.
Scrawled in angry, jagged letters on the inside cover of the empty book he holds in his hands, McAvoy makes out five words, scrawled again and again; deep enough to be fatal if etched in human skin.
The Unjust Distribution Of Miracles
And in the centre of the mantra, amid the mass of angry letters and ferocious scribbles, a piece of scripture, dug into the page in the same furious hand.
McAvoy forces himself to his feet; torn pages of the scripture falling from his body as he yanks himself upright.
He is breathing heavily, trying to make sense of this rage, bitten deep into the Holy Bible.
He stares again at the figure in the bed.
He scrabbles through the pages; creasing and crumpling leaf after leaf of mania.
Holds up a page of artful lines. Another. More.
Among the scrawls, the furious words, are half a dozen pen-and-ink drawings; vague and abstract, beautiful and unreal.
The tears in his eyes, the blue tinge to his gaze, make the images suddenly swim into focus.
The pictures are all of Anne Montrose. Intricate, loving, detailed images of her laughing, smiling face.
