FIVE

The phone by my bed rang at six the next morning. I ought to be used to this kind of thing, but I’m not; in fact, as I grow older, I resent it more and more. I do a one-in-seven on-call rota, which ought to mean that I do a corollary six-in-seven not-on-call rota, but it doesn’t seem to work like that. Believe me, I love my job and I really care about my patients, but one of the golden rules about medicine is never to let any of them get hold of your home number; if you do, you may just as well set your alarm clock to go off three times a night, every night.

‘Yes?’

‘Lance? Didn’t get you up, did I?’ My father once rang me at four in the morning because he’d lost his driving gloves and he thought he might have left them at my house. And (can you believe it?), his first words on that occasion were also, ‘Didn’t get you up, did I?’

‘Well . . .’

‘Good. Look, can you give me a lift to the school? I want to pick up the car as soon as possible. I’ve promised to take Ada to Texas Homecare this morning and unless I get a move on, I won’t make it.’

‘I didn’t think you had a replacement; you said that you hadn’t got around to buying one.’

‘I’ve been scouting about in the garage and found an old one. I’m sure it’ll fit. No point in spending money when there’s no need to.’

‘Dad, I’m due in surgery at eight thirty . . .’

‘Plenty of time to drive me over there, then. Can you pick me up in half an hour?’

Which was how, at just after seven, I drove again through the gates of Bensham Manor School, accompanied by a father who was so bloody cheerful, he made me want to scream. At least this time, Mr Hitler had apparently repaired to his underground bunker for a good night’s rest before again imposing his will on the undisciplined masses. There was only one other car there, a Morris Minor which looked to be in almost perfect condition. Dad explained, ‘That’s George’s car. I expect he’s opening up.’

After revelling in the illicit pleasure of parking in what last night had been the Mayor’s parking space, Dad and I went across to his car and for the next fifteen minutes we wrestled with his alternator. I say ‘we’ but in fact he quickly began to complain of a bad back (which was new to me) and made groaning noises every time he bent over the engine. Then he said he was having trouble undoing some of the bolts, and within a very short time it was I who was covered in grease and who was dirty (despite the fact that I was dressed for work), while Dad gave me oh-so-helpful advice and lots of negative encouragement (as in, ‘For God’s sake, Lance, you’ll never do it like that’). I had only just succeeded in getting the old alternator off when on the warm morning air there came a faint cry, one that came with weak, ill-defined echoes. I might have thought nothing of it, except that Dad said at once, ‘That sounded like George.’

It had come from the back of the school. Dad said in a worried tone, ‘He sounded as if he might be hurt.’ And now I came to think about it, there had certainly been an anguished quality to the sound. He continued, ‘Perhaps we should go and look for him.’

I was sweating profusely, had seriously scuffed and dirtied hands, grease on my shirt sleeves and an oil spot on my tie; all I wanted to do was to get the new alternator fitted and rush back home to shower anew and get a change of clothes. ‘I’m sure he’s all right.’

But Dad was already walking off. ‘He didn’t sound it to me,’ he said over his shoulder. I would have carried on with the car, but when I went to look for the new alternator, I discovered he had taken it with him. By the time I realized this, he was out of sight around the main building.

‘Dad?’

I hurried after him but when I rounded the corner he still wasn’t in sight; I couldn’t help wondering how a man with such a bad back could move so quickly. I heard him call out, ‘George? Is that you?’ and hurried onwards. Around the next corner, I saw him stepping into the front doors of the gymnasium.

‘Dad?’ He was already inside, though. I walked across the quadrangle to follow him, feeling all too familiar feelings of irritation.

Feelings which vanished completely as I entered the coolness of the foyer, for ahead of me, Dad was kneeling over a body lying just in front of the opened double doors of the main gymnasium hall. I rushed over to join him to discover that it was George. He wasn’t unconscious, but he was a long way from being totally with it; in fact, my first thought was that he was drunk. Dad was feeling for a carotid pulse and had checked his pupils.

‘He seems just to have fainted,’ he said.

‘Is he under the influence?’

Dad looked shocked. ‘George hasn’t had a drink for twenty years. He’s very proud of that.’

There was no obvious smell of alcohol, but I still wasn’t absolutely convinced; at least not until I looked up and into the gymnasium hall.

‘Oh, shit.’

Dad looked up at me, frowning. ‘Please, Lance. There’s never a need for language like that.’

Then he saw what I was looking at. ‘Oh, fuck,’ he breathed.

The gymnasium was a large square space about fifty yards a side that could be separated into areas of various shapes and sizes by drawing across curtains suspended from the ceiling high above. The floor was marked out with plastic lines of varying colours into basketball courts, badminton courts, indoor cricket nets and two five-a-side football pitches; on the wall were scattered climbing frames and in the far right corner, close to the side door that led out to Dad’s gardening area, there were thick climbing ropes, most of which were tied to suspension points on the wall so that they were out of the way.

One of them wasn’t, though. One of them hung down, straight and true. One of them ended in a noose, and in that noose was a dead woman.