Past Imperfect (18 page)

It didn't strike him as odd that he'd seen nobody run from 4A until he opened the door wide. No nurse or doctor, nobody in attendance. A split second elation that he'd been lucky and chosen a totally un-guarded moment before realizing - as he looked through the glass screen - that there was no boy either.

'Shit...
Shiiit!'
He stood transfixed, staring at the empty space. Around him, pandemonium was building. He was the only person on the second floor not in motion. A steady stream was now heading for the stairs, and a medic with a fire extinguisher was spraying the inside of the store room while a porter rushed for another extinguisher.

It took a moment for Chapeau to break himself out of his trance and ask someone passing where the boy had gone. He'd stopped three nurses before finding someone who knew. 'He was taken into the operating theatre over an hour ago.'

'Thanks.' Chapeau merged with the throng heading down the stairs. The porter had joined the medic with a second fire extinguisher. They would probably have the fire out within a few minutes.

In the first floor operating theatre, the alarm bell rang ominously in the background. The Chief Surgeon, Dr Trichot, asked one of the nurses to find out what was wrong.

She came back in after a moment. 'Fire on the second floor, apparently.'

'Is it confined to there?'

'I don't know, I didn't ask.'

Trichot nodded for his assisting nurse to dab his forehead, and silently cursed. 'Let's assume that there's no immediate danger, or at least someone will come running in when there is, and continue.
Please!
'

The assisting nurse took the scalpel from him as he held it out tersely. She thrust a self-retaining retractor into the same hand.

The boy, Christian Rosselot, had been on the operating table over thirty minutes now, but they'd lost vital time getting X-rays and angiograms and preparing for anaesthetic. In that time, the temporal skull section by the boy's ear had bulged alarmingly with an active clot.

But two nights ago he'd operated on the boy for a similar clot in the parietal lobe, snatched him within minutes from the jaws of death - and he was determined not to be defeated now. Fire or no fire. The clanging bell was enfuriating, grating at his nerves. It couldn't have come at a worse time. He needed all his concentration at this point. Implements were placed in his hand and taken back without him looking up, the last an electric burr drill. Its high pitched drone lowered as Trichot cut into the bone of the skull.

The extradural cortex was exposed. There was no sign of haematoma, and Trichot began to worry. He would have to go deeper. 'We must go into the subdural.'

Partly gelateneous, Trichot sliced through the dura easily with the scalpel, pulled back with a hook and prompted his assistant to shine a penlight into the aperture.

Grey and white tissue and vessels reflected brightly under the light; the dark matter of the blood clot only showed up as Trichot widened the arc of the penlight. It was in the upper portion of the temporal. He wouldn't be able to judge its size or remove all of it without a larger incision.

A nod, a dab. Trichot passed back the penlight. 'I'll have to go higher.'

The attending anaesthetist announced, 'Pulse rate sixty to sixty-five,' as the sound of the drill cut in again.

From seventy, seventy-five just a few minutes ago, thought Trichot. He looked across briefly at the blood pressure gauge. It had dropped 20 points to 116 over 67 in the same period. The burr hole made, he started sawing across, joining the two. The bleep rate dropped still further.

‘Fifty-four, fifty-one.' Now with a note of urgency.

Trichot was sweating profusely. Another dab. It was going to be a race against time. Another ten seconds of sawing, fifteen or twenty seconds to cut through the dura and widen the aperture. Then the time needed to suck away the clot itself would depend on how large it was. How much more would the pulse have dropped by then?

Trichot finished sawing, and pulled back with the hook. All but a small portion of the clot was now visible. The air pressure sucker was passed across.

'Forty-five...
.
three
.
.. dropping fast!
Forty!'

Trichot felt a twinge of panic. Once the pulse rate fell to thirty, thirty-two, it was effectively all over. He'd fought too hard for the boy to let him go now.

The air sucker ate into the congealed dark red mass of the clot. Within twenty seconds, Trichot had removed almost a third of it.

'.... Thirty-eight...
seven.'

The rate of pulse drop had slowed, but part of the clot was still out of sight. Trichot glanced at the blood pressure gauge: 104 over 61. It was going to be a close call. If the rupture was behind the last portion of the clot; if it was difficult to reach to cauterize; if the pulse rate dropped more rapidly; if there was more than one rupture. Any one factor meant that he wouldn't make it in time. Beads of sweat massed on his forehead, and his own pulse drummed a double beat to the bleep from the monitor. Trichot moved his way upward with the sucker, praying that the ruptured vessel would soon come into view.

'Thirty-six...
thirty-five!
'

Outside, the alarm bell suddenly stopped ringing. Only the sound of the bleep remained, slowly counting down the seconds Trichot had left to save his patient's life.

Chapeau found a bar three blocks from the hospital and sat over a Pernod while he pondered what to do. How long would the boy be in the operating theatre: two hours, three? Probably he would be returned to the same intensive care room, but then what? He couldn't use the same fire distraction again, he would have to think of something else.

Nothing came to mind quickly, and Chapeau sharply knocked back another slug of Pernod. He should have made the hit the night before rather than wait till the morning. His best shot had probably now gone; he was going to be hard pushed to come up with an alternative plan that would be so effective and carry such low risk. Worse still, if the boy died on the operating table, there would be no more chances. He finished his drink, paid, and headed out. He needed a walk to clear his mind.

Early morning, nine-forty, the streets of Aix were coming to life. But Chapeau was in his own world, oblivious to passers-by: planning, scheming, weighing options. He'd walked for almost twenty minutes, blindly window shopping between his thoughts, when a smile slowly crossed his face. It was cheeky and audacious, but why not? He'd always liked a gamble, and the prospect of shafting that little paedophile prick, Alain, somehow appealed to him. He thought it through once more for possible pitfalls, but it was perfect: the timing matched almost exactly.

But he would have to wait over two hours to deliver the news: two pre-arranged phone kiosks and times. One in Le Luc for the midday call, one in Brignoles for the ten o’clock call. Chapeau decided to drive back to Marseille to make the call. At one point on the drive, the audacity of what he was about to do tickled him again, and he burst out laughing.

By the time he made the call, he'd managed to control his mirth. It rang only twice before Alain answered. 'It's done,' said Chapeau.

'When was this?'

'Just this morning. I created a diversion, pumped the boy with a syringe, and last thing I knew they were in the operating theatre trying to save him.'

'Are you sure he's finished?'

'Don't worry, he won't make it. Also, they won't suspect anything: it will look like he died from complications arising from his coma and the initial injuries.'

They made arrangements to meet and settle payment at six o’clock the next day at Parc du Pharo. Chapeau was sure Alain would probably phone the hospital that afternoon to check, but it was a reasonable set of odds. If the boy made it, he would just have to come up with another plan. If not, for once he'd get paid without having any blood on his hands.

ELEVEN

Third Session.

'...And when you fell back asleep, did the dream return?'

'Yes. But the wheat field had changed, it was different...'

A large reel tape whirred silently in the background. Eyran's eyelids pulsed gently as the memories drifted across. The second session had been disappointing, details of the dreams scant, so Lambourne had decided on hypnosis. The practice had become increasingly outmoded in his profession, he used hypnosis on less than four percent of his patients: only in the case of deeply repressed thoughts or where normal transference was poor or non-existent. And hardly ever on children.

But with the main clues buried in Eyran's dreams and so much either faded or selectively erased - he'd seen little other choice. He hadn't expected anything significant from the dreams until Jojo appeared after the coma - then suddenly sat up sharply as Eyran started describing a dream just before the accident: his mother folding out a map and Eyran staring at the back of her hair, willing himself back into a previous dream.

'In which way was it different when you went back?' Lambourne pressed.

'It was flat, not on a slope how I remembered. And suddenly it got dark, I couldn't find my way back. Everything was too flat - I couldn't pick out anything to tell me which way was home.'

'Was it important that you reached home?'

'Yes. I had the feeling that if I didn't make it back, something terrible would happen. I might die. Finding my way out of the darkness and home was my way of staying alive.'

Lambourne clenched one hand tight. If there was a significant gap between the two dreams, the accident could have already taken place by the second dream! Its later corruption after the coma and the introduction of Jojo could speak volumes. 'When did you first start dreaming about the wheat field?'

'I don't remember exactly. Quite a few years back.'

'Was it when you first went to California and started missing your friends?'

'No, I'd dreamt of it before. When we first moved into the house in East Grinstead and I walked into the field, it felt familiar. I had the feeling I'd been there before.'

'And did the dreams always feature the wheat fields?'

'No, sometimes it was the copse and the pond they led to, sometimes the woods at the back of the old house that led to the field.'

'Did you ever dream of the house itself?'

'I don't remember exactly. Perhaps once before. Then the dream recently where I was looking out of the back kitchen window and saw my parents, and met Jojo again in the woods.'

So, the wheat field and the copse were more significant than the house itself: his own private play areas, whereas in the house his parents were dominant. The house started to feature again only when he was trying to find them; he took the search partly to their territory. 'In the dream about the time of the accident, when you feared you couldn't make your way back home - how long did you feel had passed since the last moment in the car you remembered being awake?'

'It seemed to come almost straight after. But I don't know. The other dreams seemed to come with little gap, yet they told me when I awoke that I'd been in a coma for three weeks.'

Lambourne scribbled a quick note:
Timing inconclusive. First significant dream could have occurred before or after the accident.
Probably they would never know. 'And was there anyone else in the dream, any of your old friends from the copse?'

'There was someone, but not really a friend. It was a boy from my old school, Daniel Fletcher. He died just a year before we left for California. And then my father appeared, saying that I didn't belong there, that I should start making my way back. But it was suddenly dark and I couldn't make out anything familiar; and by then he'd disappeared and left me to find my way back on my own.'

'What was the stronger emotion? Anger that he'd deserted you, or fear that you were suddenly alone and lost?'

'I don't know, I felt both. Maybe more confused than angry. I just couldn't work out why he'd left.'

'And was your fear just because you were alone and it was dark, or was it also because you felt you should do as your father said. You were equally afraid to disobey him.'

Eyran frowned; he looked vaguely uncomfortable. 'It was because I was alone. I wouldn't purposely disobey my father and upset him, but I wasn't afraid of him. He was a very good father.'

'I know.' Lambourne noted the defensive tone; he changed track. 'Which was the first dream that Jojo appeared in?'

Moment's silence. Eyran's eyelids pulsed. 'It was the dream straight after that, again in the same place. The small pond in the copse.'

'And in that dream, tell me what you saw. What happened?'

Eyran's eyelids pulsed more rapidly. Only grey outline at first, hazy. But gradually the images sharpened, became clear...

Eyran could only just make out the brook in the darkness of the copse at first. A faint mist lingered across its surface. He moved forward cautiously, a figure on the far side becoming gradually clearer as he got closer. It wasn't Sarah or Daniel, it was a boy of about his age that he hadn't seen before, though the trees and mist cast a shadow over part of his face, so he couldn't be sure. He knew that the boy had seen him because he waved and called out to Eyran, his voice echoing slightly across the water.

'Who are you?' Eyran asked. 'I haven't seen you here before.'

'Yes I know, I don't normally come here. But we have met before, don't you remember?'

Eyran looked hard into the face. It was still indistinct. He felt suddenly uncomfortable admitting that he couldn't remember, the boy seemed so certain they had met before. 'It's the mist... I can't see very clearly across the brook.'

'Then you should come over this side with me.'

Eyran peered through the mist, but as part of it cleared, the expanse of water between them appeared to be much wider, a dark and fathomless lake. All the familiar landmarks of the brook were now far away, out of reach across the murky depths. 'I'm looking for my parents,' Eyran said. 'My father was here earlier. Have you seen him?'