A Delicate Truth A Novel

fire to it,broke the ash and washed it down the plughole. For good measure he did the same with the duplicate contract for his hire car from Bodmin Parkway railway station.
    Satisfied with progress so far, he showered, changed into fresh clothes, put the two burners in his pocket, packed the envelopes and parcel into the carrier bag and, observing the Security Department’s well-worn injunction never to accept the first cab on offer, hailed not the second cab but the third, and gave the driver the address of a mini-market in Swiss Cottage which he happened to know operated a late-night post-office counter.
    And in Swiss Cottage, breaking the chain yet again, he took a second cab to Euston station and a third to the East End of London.
     
    *
     
    The hospital rose out of the darkness like the hulk of a warship, windows ablaze, bridges and stairways cleared for action. The upper forecourt was given over to a car park and a steel sculpture of interlocking swans. At ground level, ambulances unloaded casualties in red blankets on to trolleys while health workers in scrubs took a cigarette break. Aware that video cameras stared at him from every rooftop and lamp post, Toby cast himself as an outpatient and walked with an air of self-concern.
    Following the stretcher trolleys, he entered a glistening hallway that served as some kind of collecting point. On one bench sat a group of veiled women; on another three very old men in skullcaps, bowed over their beads. Close by stood a minyan of Hasidic men in communal prayer.
    A desk offered Patient Advice & Liaison, but it was unmanned. A signpost directed him to Human Resources, Workforce Planning, Sexual Health and Children’s Day-stay, but none to where he needed to go. A notice screamed: STOP! ARE YOU HERE FOR A&E ? But if you were, there was nobody to tell you what to do next. Selecting the brightest, widest corridor, he walked boldly past curtained cubicles until he came to an elderly black man seated at a desk in front of a computer.
    ‘I’m looking for Dr Probyn,’ he said. And when the grizzled head didn’t lift: ‘Probably in the Urgent Care unit. Could be triage. She’s on till midnight.’
    The old man’s face was slashed with tribal marks.
    ‘We don’t give out no names, son,’ he said, after studying Toby for a while. ‘Triage, that’s turn left and two doors down. Urgent Care, you gotta go back to the lobby, take the Emergency corridor.’ And seeing Toby produce his cellphone, ‘No good callin’, son. Mobiles just don’t work in here. Outside’s another story.’
    In the triage waiting room, thirty people sat staring at the same blank wall. A stern white woman in a green overall with an electronic key round her neck was studying a clipboard.
    ‘I’ve been informed that Dr Probyn needs to see me.’
    ‘Urgent Care,’ she replied to her clipboard.
    Under strips of sad white lighting, more rows of patients stared at a closed door marked ASSESSMENT . Toby tore off a ticket and sat with them. A lighted box gave the number of the patient being assessed. Some took five minutes, others barely one. Suddenly he was next, and Emily, with her brown hair bundled into a ponytail and no make-up, was looking at him from behind a table.
    She’s a doctor, he had been telling himself consolingly since early afternoon. Hardened to it. Does death every day.
    ‘Jeb committed suicide the day before he was due at your parents’ house,’ he begins without preamble. ‘He shot himself through the head with a handgun.’ And when she says nothing: ‘Where can we talk?’
    Her expression doesn’t change but it freezes. Her claspedhands rise to her face until the knuckles of her thumbs are jammed against her teeth. Only after recovering herself does she speak:
    ‘In that case I got him all wrong, didn’t I?’ she says. ‘I thought he was a threat to my father. He wasn’t. He was a threat to himself.’
    But Toby’s thinking: I got you all wrong, too.
    ‘Does anyone have any idea why he killed himself?’ she enquires, hunting for detachment and not finding it.
    ‘There was no note, no last phone call,’ Toby replies, hunting for his own. ‘And nobody he confided in, so far as his wife knows.’
    ‘He was married then. Poor woman’ – the self-possessed doctor at last.
    ‘A widow and a small son. For the last three years he couldn’t live with them and couldn’t live without them. According to her.’
    ‘And no suicide note, you