‘You might be leaving today,’ Elvis said, keeping his disingenuous voice as bright as possible. ‘Once we get you home, I’ll get you nice and comfortable in front of the television. Would you like that? I’ve ordered you a box set of an American TV series called Atlantic Boardwalk. It should be delivered tomorrow, with any luck, so there’s plenty to watch. And I think you’ll like it, Mum. It’s all about the Prohibition era. You love that historical stuff, don’t you?’ Elvis stroked his mother’s hand, making a conscious effort not to look directly into her eyes, lest he see the end in hers and she see his secret in his.
The medical equipment that was sustaining her life hissed and bleeped industriously. But those reassuring sounds were all but drowned out by the rattling noise coming from her chest and the laboured sound of her breathing into the monstrosity of a mask that the doctors had put on her to get oxygen into her bloodstream. Glancing at it, he shuddered. It was more of a cage than a mask, with its metal head-straps and tubing, reminding him vaguely of a tie-fighter pilot from Star Wars. His mother had always hated Star Wars.
‘I’ve got to go in a minute, Mum,’ he said, finally steeling himself to look at her properly.
It was a terrible sight. His once robustly built, pink-cheeked mother was unrecognisable; wasting and wan in a hospital bed with just one skeletally thin arm visible above the bedding, plugged with cannulas, the skin wrinkled with malnutrition.
The dragging sensation that seemed to stretch his heart was a mixture of sorrow and guilt, he realised. He was certain that the end was near and yet, hadn’t they both been here several times before, only to have been duped by antibiotics and fate? In truth, he wanted it over with, so that she would stop suffering and he could move on with his life instead of being trapped in this exhausting cycle of juggling work with caring and hospital visits. Part of him just wanted to be happy and experience the lighter side to life, like other men in their thirties did. Look forward with optimism. Enjoy the moment. Make plans.
But Elvis felt like the antithesis of a man in his prime at that moment. His epiphany with Arne, which promised much and gave him a tantalising glimpse of what could be, only served to make him feel distinctly sub-prime.
The dying are the most selfish people in the world, he thought. Let go, Mum. Let’s get this over with.
While his mother was still alive, she was involuntarily sucking from him every ounce of energy and every minute of non-work time that he had. His mother would never ever sanction a relationship between two men, either. She was stealing his future and he was sick of it. Worse still, Elvis was wracked with crippling guilt for acknowledging such deep-seated resentment.
‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ he said, leaning over to kiss her forehead. She smelled of decaying skin and medicinal alcohol. He took the clean, small sponge the nurse had given him and moistened it in iced water. Lifted the mask momentarily so that the oxygen machine’s reading plummeted abruptly, reducing the apparatus to a riot of alarm bells and flashing warning lights. He wiped his mother’s mouth gently. Responding to his touch, she smacked her lips and stuck her tongue out to receive the moisture. ‘I’m a shit son,’ he said. Replacing the mask, waiting until the oxygen levels had risen again. Leaving.
Outside, his phone pinged with a text from Van den Bergen.
He was about to respond when he felt a tap on his shoulder.
‘Hello, Detective,’ a man said. ‘I heard you’re looking for information on the Rotterdam Silencer.’
With his fist drawn back, anticipating attack, Elvis spun around to see a grubby-looking man in his fifties, who wore yellowing jeans and a beat-up biker’s jacket. His long grey hair hung about his shoulders in greasy tracts and was topped off with a bandana, giving him the air of an old Guns N’ Roses roadie whom the years hadn’t been kind to. Elvis knew exactly what sort of raddled eyes were behind the mirror shades.
‘You?’ he said, lowering his fist and laying his palm over his chest. He realised that the man must have been following him on a regular basis to have worked out that he would be visiting the hospital on his own at this time of day. ‘I called you last week and you gave me an earful of bullshit about how you’d gone straight and didn’t want to speak to the cops anymore. What the hell have you got to say that I’d want to hear?’
The man’s scabbed lips peeled back to reveal a cartoon villain’s grin of florid, receding gums and blackened stumps. ‘For the right price, I’ll tell you.’