but I hadn’t a hope of tracking them down. If I phoned Scotland Yard and told them who I was they would probably put me through to SO10. But that could be completely the wrong thing to do. Don’t trust the police, Joesbury had told me.
OK, I wasn’t going to panic. Joesbury was more than capable of taking care of himself. Sniffy was looking after Evi. Jessica was safe in a secure psychiatric ward. Bryony was beyond our help. It looked like I was next on the list and I certainly wasn’t about to take my own life. I just had to sit tight.
Back at college, hot tea felt very appealing but mindful of Evi’s theory that I’d been drugged I wasn’t taking any chances. I brushed my teeth, drank some water from the tap and got ready for bed. I switched the light out and wondered if I’d ever fall asleep. Then a thought hit me.
According to Talaith, Bryony had been most scared of losing her looks. She’d dreamed about disfigurement. What if the fire had never been meant to kill her? What if that was just the last stage of the physical and psychological torture? What if all someone had done earlier today was to make sure the window of her room wasn’t locked and show her a mirror?
The beeping of a text message coming into my phone nearly made me leap out of bed. I grabbed it from the bedside shelf. Joesbury. Oh, thank God.
Oh, thank God, thank God. As I muttered it over and over in my head, the world slipped away.
The man who now had Mark Joesbury’s mobile phone put it down softly on the desk in front of him. ‘We have another twenty-four hours maximum,’ he said. ‘Is she out yet?’
A screen on the computer in front of him flickered to life and he was looking at a picture of a young woman in bed, apparently asleep.
‘Should be,’ he was told. ‘There was enough stuff in there to knock out an elephant.’
‘Are we going in?’ asked the third man in the room.
The man at the desk shook his head. ‘Not sure.’
‘Last chance, and at least we know that ruddy dog’s out of the way.’
‘Too risky. There’s someone else sniffing around. We’ll finish her off tomorrow.’
‘What about Evi Oliver?’
‘She’s had no real pain relief for three weeks now and we’ve been playing with her head till she hardly knows what day it is. According to Meg, she’s on the verge of losing it.’
‘Is that good? We haven’t had her to the unit yet.’
‘We may have to pass on that. There isn’t time to use them both and getting her out of the way was always the priority.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘Besides, Laura is the one I’ve set my heart on.’
Tuesday 22 January
‘LAURA! LAURA, I need you to wake up.’
A voice, a hand reaching down to me through the darkness. I had to get up there. Just wanted to sleep.
‘I may have to call an ambulance. Can someone get me my bag?’
A hand, lightly slapping my cheek. Evi’s hand. I could almost see her pale heart-shaped face above mine. It was shimmering, in and out of focus, and I knew she really wanted to talk to me. Oh, but sleep felt so good.
‘Thanks,’ said Evi’s voice again. ‘Stay with her, keep talking to her.’
A different person with me now. One of the girls in the block. I could see her long dark hair and creamy skin. Brown eyes looking into mine. The room was slowly coming into focus.
‘I’m OK,’ I told her and, with her help, discovered I could sit. I was in my room in St John’s. Another girl was hovering in the main room. No sign of Tox. Then Evi appeared in the doorway.
‘I’m OK,’ I repeated, not sure I could manage much more. It felt like I was talking through a thick mesh screen. A fly screen, or some of that frosted glass you see in bathroom windows. I was sinking again. ‘No ambulance,’ I forced out.
Evi looked as though she were about to argue then turned to the other girls. ‘Thanks, both of you,’ she told them. ‘Can I give you a call if I need you again?’
Puzzled but obedient, the girls accepted their dismissal and left the room.
‘I’ve been phoning you and phoning you,’ Evi told me once we were alone. ‘I was nearly frantic when you didn’t call back.’
I pulled the covers back and swung my legs round. The room started spinning and I had to close my eyes for a second. When I opened them, the bedside clock told me it was nine thirty in the morning.
‘What’s happened?’ said Evi. ‘Do you want me to call someone?’
‘Give me a minute,’ I said. Jesus, I had to get a grip.
Working on autopilot I found a tracksuit and trainers and pulled them on. Evi started to say something and then thought better of it but from the look on her face she wasn’t going to stay quiet for long. Just getting dressed practically exhausted me. When I was done I sat back down on the bed again.
‘Looks like you were right,’ I said. ‘About the drugs. I’ve taken something. Don’t ask me how or when, but …’
‘We need to get you to hospital …’ Evi began.
‘No time,’ I interrupted. ‘And I think I’m OK. I just feel seriously hungover. Fresh air, coffee, something to eat, I’ll be fine.’ To prove a point, I managed to stand up without swaying. ‘Buttery?’ I suggested. I really needed to get out of that room. Evi, though, was showing no inclination to leave.
‘How are they doing it?’ she said, looking round. ‘Tell me everything you did last night.’
Leaning against the door, I did, including the fact that I’d eaten nothing and drunk nothing but tap water all evening. She wheeled her chair closer to the sink.
‘Tap water’s impossible,’ she muttered to herself. ‘And if they’d let themselves in and stuck a syringe in your arm, you’d have woken.’
She reached out, picked up my toothpaste and sniffed it.
I shook my head. ‘Toothpaste? You’re kidding me.’
‘LSD is typically taken on small pieces of blotting paper that sit on the tongue,’ she told me. ‘Drugs are absorbed very quickly in the mouth,’ she went on. ‘Did you use mouthwash?’
I nodded.
Evi put both toothpaste and mouthwash into her bag and zipped it shut. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
We made our way to the Buttery and found strong coffee for both of us and toast for me. I was feeling better all the time. Still pretty bad, but improving. Evi, though, didn’t appear to be. It was as though her rescue of me had worn her out. Her face was pink and swollen, her eyes bloodshot. Every wrinkle in her face told me she was in pain and her voice was that of a woman who was seriously ill. Or one who’d spent the night crying.
‘You heard about Bryony?’ I asked her, when we were both settled at a table some distance from everyone else.
She nodded. ‘This morning.’ There didn’t seem much more we could say.
‘How’s Jessica?’ I asked.
‘Alive,’ she replied. ‘I guess everything else is a bonus, right now.’
‘Has she talked at all?’
Evi nodded. ‘That’s why I’ve been trying to contact you. She got quite agitated late yesterday evening. A lot of it was just the usual stuff about clowns, clowns chasing her, clowns attacking her, clowns hanging by the neck from trees, the sort of stuff she’s been having bad dreams about.’
The world still seemed to be operating in slow motion. Or maybe that was just me. I closed my eyes for a second, took a few deep breaths.
