Even the Dogs: A Novel (20 page)

He shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t be here. He should be in some fucking what some funeral home or something all laid out nice with flowers and candles and what and music. We should be here to pay our respects instead of all this. Who’s going to lay him out now. Where will they take him. The state of him once this lot have done. The box they’ll have to cart him off in, and who’s going to stick him in the ground, who’s going to pay for all that. No one’s going to get Yvonne to come back. Not now, not when she’s so far away. His parents are long gone. And will they find Laura, does anyone even know who she is. Someone’s got to take him and bury him and say all the prayers and all that. He shouldn’t be here, he shouldn’t even fucking be here. We shouldn’t be here.

Always in the wrong place, the wrong time. The wrong fucking body, the wrong fucking skin.

And remember what Laura said that time, about wanting a new body, wanting to start again with a new body so she could go round all over again. Don’t work like that but she wanted it to. When Danny found her that time. When she’d run out of veins or she thought she had. Been trying to get a dig for over an hour, sitting there by herself just poking around with the pin trying to get in to all those collapsed and raggedy veins, trying to find the other ones deeper in but the pin weren’t long enough. Rooting around and getting more and more desperate, more and more scared. Danny found her round by the bins behind the hostel and for a minute he thought she’d been cutting herself. All that blood. Looked like it was just seeping out through her skin. She was crying and swearing and going Danny fucking what Danny what am I going to do now? Scratching her neck and pulling her hair and going Danny I’ve been trying for fucking ages I can’t do it. What the fuck have I done? Cold and white and the rattles on her so bad he could more or less hear them. Blood all over her hands, and then blood all over Danny’s hands when he tried to find a dig for her. Her voice all thin and tired going Danny fucking what what I need to fucking start all over again or something don’t I. Don’t even want to stop but maybe I got no choice. Danny giving up in the end and finding Mike, Mike coming round and sticking one in her neck, going You don’t wanna try this yoursen though la, you need to see what you’re doing an it’s too easy to pop an artery, you know what I’m saying. It’s game over when you do that an no mistake. Laura with her chin right up looking way past Mike to the sky, her eyes spilling with tears and holding her breath while he eased in the pin. Clinging on to his arms to keep still, like he was her only hope or something. Like he was the one who could make her body new. A new body and what though but. A new heaven and all that. All Laura wanted was one more vein. One more chance to begin again.

Ben had a laugh when she said that. No chance of that is there, no one gets a second go and anyone who says you do is talking fucking bollocks. Laughing like it was a joke but he weren’t joking. Was he. Sweeping the hair out of his eyes and sniffing and smearing the snot from his nose with the back of his hand. No one gets a second go. Where was it. Remember that. Where were we when. Climbing up the garages round the back of Robert’s flat to get in that time, after he couldn’t get to the front door to open it. Mike giving Danny a leg up and Benny boy talking to Laura while they waited their turn and Einstein sniffing around the garage doors. Only a few days after Mike had helped her do the vein in her neck and she was talking about wanting another chance. Maybe if I give it a rest I can start up again once it’s healed, she said. The old woman with the tiger-paw slippers walking her dog round the edge of the playing fields and giving them a funny look like they were up to something. Her and her rat-faced little Yorkshire terrier with the tartan jacket, and Mike telling her she could take a picture if she wanted and that sent her shuffling on her way. When was this. Laura said What you talking about second goes and that, what would you know, you’re not even old enough to have had a first go yet. I don’t know about that Laura, he said, smiling even more than usual, I’m old enough, I’m old enough for a bit of you know what. She laughed, and reached out to smack him round the head, and as he ducked out of reach he grabbed her wrist and said Don’t you dare don’t you fucking dare. Pulling his face close to hers and stopping himself from saying whatever he was going to say next, pulling his face close enough that their foreheads touched, until she pulled away and told him to fuck off. The two of them out of breath a little, and the old woman watching them again, and Mike and Danny out of sight on the garage roof. And that smile again, and Ben going No but leave it out will you I don’t like girls giving out like that, it’s not right. What was he talking about. What did he mean. How should we know. Mike leaning over the edge of the roof and reaching out his hand, going Up you come la there’s room for everyone, up you come the two of youse. And then climbing in through that kitchen window and Robert sitting in his chair laughing at them all, that laugh deep down in his belly going Here comes the cavalry! Here comes the fucking mountain rescue! What you got for you Uncle Robert? When was this. Three days before Christmas. So what happened then.

This was the same day Laura got Danny in her room for that one last hit. Which her worker had warned her about hadn’t he. Giving it all It’s so important that you stick to your script, Laura, you need to be clean when you start rehab, there’s no such thing as one last go, it doesn’t work like that, you know it doesn’t work like that. So then she was all panicking and crying and everything. After she’d kicked Danny out and after she came down off her nod she was all in a panic because she thought she’d fucked it all up again. Trying to phone her worker and explain and they kept going He’s out of the office now. Getting the hostel staff to find him, asking them to call the rehab and sort something out. Asking them to help her now. Thinking she’d blown her only chance and when she managed to speak to her worker the first thing he said was Listen, Laura, there’s always another chance. But let’s try and make this one work. And he must have made some calls because next thing was she was sat in the room with him and one of the hostel staff, what was her name, Ruth or someone, and he’s going Okay here’s the plan. They’re still going to take you, and they’re going to take you early, you can go up there tomorrow, they’ll put you on a detox before you start the course. And until then the best thing you can do is stay in your room, watch the television, don’t talk to anyone, don’t answer the door. Ruth’s going to bring you up some food, and she’s going to look after your mobile, and you’re going to sit tight until a taxi comes for you tomorrow. Do you think you can manage that? Laura crying and everything and nodding yes and then what. Climbed in the taxi with a couple of bags of clothes and drove out of town to the rehab, to the house in the country with the tall trees and the long sloping lawn. Into the, fucking, sunset and that. Easy as that. Stopped at Robert’s on the way, said her goodbyes and whatever else. And what else.

The doctor turns away from the cutting board and says Jenny, I think we’ll move on shall we? Jenny nods, and moves back to Robert’s body, to his head. She takes a new scalpel from the tray of polished tools and slices a long line across Robert’s scalp, slipping through the matted black hair and the raw reddened skin and the thin layer of flesh, the tip of the blade scraping against his skull. She takes the incision right across the crown, from ear to ear, and then peels back each segment of scalp like the skin of a bloody orange. She picks up the electric saw, and leans forward to brace her feet, and cuts a circle around Robert’s skull, the growl and grind of the saw once again filling the room. She puts the saw to one side, and she lifts off the top of Robert’s head.

We look at his brain, Robert’s brain, creamy-white and glistening, soft and heavy, fold upon fold of interconnected flesh which once fizzed with electrical code, with memories and visions and language and everything learnt in his short and thwarted life. We look at the doctor’s fingers moving around it, squeezing, prodding, tracing lines and shapes as he talks to the others, making comments, asking questions. We watch his fingers catch on something as he pushes down into the skull, and we watch him delicately work loose a dull-coloured fragment of metal the size of a fifty-pence piece. He holds it up to the light, and the photographer takes pictures, and they pass it between them, turning it over and over in their gloved palms. The doctor combs through Robert’s hair, above his ear, behind his ear, further round to the nape of his neck, and finds a faded scar, crescent-shaped, slightly ridged, about the length of a fifty-pence piece. The detective knocks on the window, and we hear his voice coming through a speaker overhead. Something interesting? he asks. I don’t know, the doctor says. Looks like it might be shrapnel of some kind. Looks old though. How old? the detective asks. Too old for you, the doctor says, and the detective goes back to his newspaper. The technician takes a long-bladed knife and slips it down into the skull to slice through the top of the spinal column. She takes Robert’s brain out of his head, places it in a plastic tray, and carries it over to the cutting board, where they weigh it and measure it and slice off samples to be stored in small plastic containers for further examination. The technician’s assistant places the fragment of metal into a plastic pouch, and the doctor dictates more notes.

Brain: normal appearance, softened by decomposition. No evidence of haemorrhage. Brown discoloration and glial scarring to small area of the surface around the lower mid-point of the left cerebral hemisphere, this appears to have been caused by the ingress and or the remaining presence of a metallic fragment whose composition and origin is unknown. Fragment sent for analysis. Medical records of subject, once identified, may provide further information. Fragment appears to correspond with a scar around the left side of the base of the subject’s skull, immediately above the hairline; possibility that this marks the original entry wound for fragment.

He backs away from the brain on the board, peeling off his outer layer of gloves and moving over to the whiteboard. He looks at the notes which have been written up, and asks his junior for any further comments. The detective’s voice comes out of the overhead speaker again, saying We’re done then are we? and the doctor says Sorry, Chris, there’s nothing criminal here. Not unless the toxicology comes back and it turns out your gentleman’s been poisoned by arsenic. In which case it’ll probably be the butler what done it. Jenny finishes labelling all the sliced samples of Robert’s organs and tissue and blood, slipping them into labelled plastic bags marked with biohazard stickers. She puts the slices of his brain into a red plastic bag lying open beside her. She packs cotton wadding into the scooped cavity of his skull, positioning the skull cap over it and pressing the two peeled-back flaps of scalp into place. She takes a needle and thread from the tray and stitches the scalp back together, stooping closely over it, taking her time. When she’s finished she carefully brushes Robert’s hair across the dotted threads, and as she stands back his head looks almost untouched. She smooths a stray hair back into place. She goes back to the cutting board, and places the rest of Robert’s organs in the red plastic bag with his brain. She puts the intestines and bowels into another bag, and nestles them both into the bare-ribbed cavity of Robert’s chest. She takes the sawn-off section of ribcage from the table and settles it back into place, and she folds the fatty flaps of flesh and skin back down together, picking up the needle and thread and stitching his body shut, working slowly and patiently while the others talk by the whiteboard, and when she’s finished there’s only a delicate Y-shaped seam to show he’s been cut apart at all.

Someone else comes in, and we move closer to the table where he lies. We light more candles, rest our hands upon his body, and wonder what more we can say. Someone asks about the funeral arrangements. Mike says Eh now there’s something you should see. I think youse had all best come and look at this. We look at each other, and we stand and follow him out through the door, out into the cold cracked dawn, walking along the empty streets and looking into alleyways and open garages, railway arches, tunnels, derelict buildings, the backyards of offices and pubs, the basements of multi-storey carparks, the locked rooms of hostels, the squatted flats above shops, the wasteground by the Miller’s Arms. And Mike says, There you go, there’s Danny. Slumped on the piss-wet floor of the phonebox. Einstein barking and yelping and hurling herself against the door. The bloody pin still in his hand, and his lips turning white, and his fingers folding over into claws. Curled up on the floor of the phonebox like a dog in a basket. Going over. Which we’ve all come close to doing before. Come close to that edge which is like no edge at all just a falling away of the ground. Always trying to get close to that, back to that peaceful place. To that, fucking, heaven. To be lifted, and held. Keep taking more and more to get back to that, to get past just feeling well again and all the way back to that peaceful place, and the more and more only takes us closer to going over. Which is like. What. Like, fucking, what was it, take the best orgasm you’ve ever had and multiply it by a hundred. And multiply it by a hundred again, and again, and it don’t stop, and you keep coming and coming until you can’t breathe, you can’t think, you can’t see or feel or hear nothing and your life goes pounding out of you in these great awful ecstatic thumps. And like, fucking, you’re still nowhere near.

And Mike says Eh keep up now I got some other place to be. And we follow him back down the hill. Past the Parkside flats and under the motorway bridge to the canal, across the lockgates and along the towpath and over a brick wall and up to a flat above a boarded-up shop. And we see Steve. Laid out on the mattress in his tidy, whitewashed room. His bare feet pointing to the ceiling. His boots placed neatly side by side, and his socks laid out to dry. One arm folded over his chest, the other arm hanging off the side of the mattress, his once filthy hand licked clean. H lying on the floor with his head on his front paws, waiting.