‘Was that part of the deal?’ I asked.
‘Apparently so,’ said Dad. ‘Your mum thought it was when I told her. She said that only a fool expects to get something for nothing.’
That sounded like Mum, whose principal saying was, ‘If it doesn’t cost something, it isn’t worth anything’。 Actually her real principal saying was, at least to me, ‘Don’t think you’ve got so big that I can’t still beat you’。 Not that she ever beat me, a deficiency that she later blamed for my failure to pass my A levels. Numerous university-bound cousins were held up as shining examples of discipline through physical violence.
My dad picked up his tobacco tin and put it in his lap. I picked up the mugs and washed them in the kitchen sink. I remembered the groundnut chicken and rice in the microwave. I took that out to the balcony, ate the chicken but left most of the rice. I also drank about a litre of cold water, which is a common side effect of eating my mum’s food. I seriously considered going back to bed. What else was there for me to do?
I stuck my head out onto the balcony to ask my dad if there was anything he needed. He said he was fine. As I watched, he opened his tin, took out the roll-up and put it in his mouth. He took out his silver-coloured paraffin lighter and lit the fag with the same deliberate ceremony with which he had rolled it. As he inhaled for the first time there was a look of bliss on his face. Then he started coughing, nasty wet coughs that sounded like he was bringing up the lining of his lungs. With a practised twist he snuffed out the roll-up and waited for the coughing to subside. When it had, he put the roll-up back between his lips and lit up again. I didn’t hang about – I knew how it went on from there.
I love my dad. He’s a walking caution.
My mum has three landlines. I picked one up and called my voice-mail service. The first message was from Dr Walid.
‘Peter,’ he said. ‘Just to let you know that Thomas is conscious and asking for you.’
The broadsheets called it May Madness, which made it sound like a tea dance. The tabloids called it May Rage, presumably because it had one less syllable to fit across the front page. The TV had some good footage of middle-aged women in long dresses tossing bricks at the police. Nobody had a clue what had happened, so the pundits were out in force explaining how the riot was caused by whatever socio-political factor their latest book was pushing. It was certainly a searing indictment of some aspect of modern society – if only we knew what.
There was a big police presence in UCH’s A&E department, most of them loitering in search of overtime or trying to get statements from victims of the riot. I didn’t want to give a statement, so I slipped in the back way by grabbing a mop bucket and passing myself off as a cleaner. I got lost in the upper levels looking for Dr Walid before stumbling onto a corridor that looked vaguely familiar. I opened doors at random until I found Nightingale’s. He didn’t really look any better than last time.
‘Inspector,’ I said. ‘You wanted to see me.’
His eyes opened and flicked towards me. I sat on the edge of the bed so he could see me without moving his head.
‘Got shot,’ he whispered.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I was there.’
‘Shot before,’ he said.
‘Really, when?
‘War.’
‘Which war was that?’ I asked.
Nightingale grimaced and shifted in his bed. ‘Second,’ he said.
‘The Second World War,’ I said. ‘What were you in – the baby brigade?’ To have enlisted even in 1945 Nightingale would have had to have been born in 1929, and that’s if he’d lied about his age. ‘How old are you?’
‘Old,’ he whispered. ‘Turn century.’
‘Turn of the century?’ I asked, and he nodded. ‘You were born at the turn of the century – the twentieth century?’ He looked as if he was in his bluff mid-forties, which is a neat trick when you’re lying half-dead in a hospital bed with a machine that goes ‘ping’ at regular intervals. ‘You’re over a hundred years old?’
Nightingale made a wheezing sound that alarmed me for a moment, until I realised that it was laughter.
‘Is this natural?’
He shook his head.
‘Do you know why it’s happening?’
‘Gift horse,’ he whispered. ‘Mouth.’
I couldn’t argue with that. I didn’t want to tire him too much, so I told him about Lesley, the riot and being locked out of the Folly. When I asked him whether Molly could help me track Henry Pyke, he shook his head.