‘You’re OK,’ he mumbled in his American drawl.

  I’d seen this before, someone pinballing between lucidity and unconsciousness, decency and depravity. The cocktail effect: mixing drugs that speed you up with ones that slow you down, ones that turned you into a prize knob with ones that chilled you out. I felt my hand move, ready to lob one of the yellow pills over to him. I stopped myself – what was I thinking? – and slipped them both into my jacket pocket, replacing the empty jar on top of the cupboard.

  ‘All women want it, you know,’ Lecter said, his voice still slurred. ‘Whatever they say.’

  I looked across at him with derision, decided not to deign his words with a response.

  ‘At least Clio makes it easy, she never says no,’ he continued, his shoulders rising and falling as he laughed to himself, still slumped against the wall like a park drunk. ‘Legs always open for business. She really hasn’t let you shag her? Man, that’s incredible. Unreal. You don’t have to ask, you know. Not with her. Maybe that’s where you’re going wrong. Too polite. You just have to—’

  I couldn’t listen to any more. I walked over and lifted Lecter to his feet by the lapels of his boilersuit. The curtain billowed again on the far side of the room.

  ‘Shut up, OK? Just shut the fuck up.’ I realised I was shouting. ‘And if I ever see you hassling Clio again, I’ll break your neck,’ I said, quieter now, my face close to his. ‘You understand?’

  For the first time that night, he seemed to believe me, his eyes creasing with fear as he nodded. I shoved him, harder this time.

  ‘You’re a disgrace,’ I said as he stumbled backwards across the bathroom. ‘Stay away from Clio if you value your life.’ I found myself pushing at his chest with the palms of both hands. ‘Understand?’ Each time he faltered and almost fell over, I stopped and we looked at each other. But it wasn’t Lecter swaying unsteadily in front of me. It was the man in Cornwall again, trying to stop me from reaching Tom. I froze. Lecter stared back at me, eyes wide with raw terror, as the student in Newlyn fell backwards, his skull smashing against the cobbles. Another draught blew in through the open window behind him and I turned away, locking the door behind me.

  28

  May 1998

  I knew something was wrong before I reached the ground floor. It wasn’t one scream this time but a chorus, coming from outside. A chilling cacophony of fear. People started to flood into the house, pushing and shoving to get away from something – someone – in the courtyard.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked as Louis strode past me from upstairs, moving against the flow of people.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, his voice full of concern. Louis was usually so unflappable. ‘But I think you might be needed.’

  For my medical skills? Was that what he meant? My head was too muddled by alcohol.

  ‘A guy just jumped out the window,’ I heard someone say as we edged our way through the crowd to the courtyard.

  The bathroom curtain billowed in my mind.

  ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ another woman said, sobbing.

  I knew who it was before we were outside. Lecter. And my drunken brain was already shaping the narrative. He had jumped out of the second-floor bathroom because the door had been locked. By me. And the open window had been the only way out – if you were veering from manic lows to euphoric highs. I should have closed the window before I left him.

  We found his broken body behind the stack of speakers, an unstrung puppet in a pool of crimson. He must have hit the edge of the top speaker before landing on the brick courtyard, but it wasn’t enough to soften his fall. I knew at once that he was dead – his head was at too awkward an angle, neck broken – but I still felt for a pulse, told Louis not to move him in case he was alive.

  ‘Has someone called an ambulance?’ I asked.

  ‘Is there any point?’ Louis replied, his voice cold and rational as he looked down at the body.

  We held each other’s gaze for a second. Maybe it was time for him to remove those ridiculous orange contact lenses. Out of respect as much as anything.

  ‘The police, then,’ I said. ‘Is there a phone in the house?’

  ‘In the kitchen,’ he said. ‘I’ll go.’ But before he turned to leave, he grabbed my shoulder and squeezed it, looking at me with his hideous orange eyes. ‘We don’t mention my drugs drawer to the police, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ I said, remembering that I had two Ecstasy pills in my jacket pocket.

  ‘I don’t know where he got his from’ – he nodded at Lecter’s body – ‘but it wasn’t from me. OK?’

  I watched Louis close the French doors behind him, leaving me on my own in the courtyard with Lecter. I knelt down again behind the speaker and double-checked for a pulse, half expecting him to sit up. He had bounced back in the bathroom from unconsciousness, but not this time. I glanced up at the open window, thirty feet above, and looked down at Lecter’s body again. And if I ever see you hassling Clio again, I’ll break your neck. Primary flaccidity had already set in: jaw open, pupils dilated. Pallor mortis would soon begin as blood drained away from the skin’s smaller veins. And his body temperature would drop at a rate of 1.5 degrees per hour – algor mortis – until it reached ambient temperature.

  Louis would have called the police by now. I felt for the two Ecstasy pills in the inside pocket of my jacket and retrieved one of them. Where was the other? I searched the pocket again. Empty. I had definitely taken two from the jar. A new narrative was already taking root in my fertile mind, sprouting like tendrils. What if I had given him a pill? And he’d jumped as a result? Relax. I needed to stop being so paranoid. Looking around, I was about to hurl the single pill over the back wall of Louis’ courtyard when I hesitated. What if a child found it? I shoved it into a flowerpot, burying it deep into the dry soil with my forefinger.

  I don’t know how long I was with Lecter – long enough to offer up a small prayer – but it felt like an age before the paramedic arrived, followed by two police officers. I stepped aside as the paramedic knelt down beside him, checking for the vital signs of life. There was nothing I could do to save Lecter, but the desire to try still burnt strong.

  ‘No pulse,’ I said. ‘Pupils are starting to dilate.’

  The paramedic glanced up at me. I was only in my first year. What did I know? I turned away, looked back into the house and gasped. Clio was on the other side of the glass, staring back at me like an apparition, her face a ghostly white. We locked eyes and then she was gone.

  She was right. Bad things happened at Louis’ parties.

  29

  May 1998

  It was very late by the time I finally got back here, to college. I had to give a statement to the police at the house, along with Louis and a few other guests. The police said they would need to contact me again and, with a heavy heart, I provided them with my college details. It’s not the first case of a student jumping out of a window at a party – someone broke their arm just a few weeks earlier in similar circumstances – but it’s almost unheard of for someone to die. At least in Cambridge.

  Our director of studies’ words haunted me the whole walk home, his exhortation to us as medical students to behave. The death wasn’t my fault, but I was the last person to see Lecter alive. People don’t die at normal student parties. I shouldn’t have been there in the first place. The police officer told me that once they’ve completed their investigation, there’ll be a coroner’s inquest, to which I’ll undoubtedly be called and required to give a witness statement.

  Everyone was asleep on my corridor – apart from Ji. I was pleased to see the reassuring spill of light from his half-open door as I came down the passage. It reminded me of the low glow under Mum’s crooked bedroom door when I returned home late at night.

  ‘Falcon 4.0’s great,’ Ji said, coming out of his room as he heard me enter mine. ‘North Korea invades South Korea. You wanna play?’

  ‘It’s 3.30 a.m., Ji,’ I said. I didn’t add that I’d just spent the evening with the police because someone died at a party. After I’d locked him into a bathroom and he’d leapt out of the open window.

  ‘Eleven thirty a.m. in Shenzhen,’ Ji said. ‘Time is relative. Are you OK? You look—’

  I sat down on the end of his bed and decided to tell him the whole story from beginning to end, from Clio’s warning not to attend to the moment I saw Lecter lying dead behind the stack of speakers. I didn’t tell him about the drugs in the bathroom drawer, just as I hadn’t told the police.

  ‘Your lady friend stopped by earlier,’ Ji said quietly. I could tell he was processing what I’d just told him. He was like that, considered things carefully before he offered measured advice. ‘She was standing outside the window,’ he added.

  ‘Clio?’ I hadn’t seen her since the paramedic had arrived. Had the police interviewed her too?

  ‘She passed this through the window,’ he continued, handing me an envelope with my name on it. Clio’s handwriting.

  ‘How long ago was this?’

  ‘Maybe an hour? Two hours ago?’

  ‘I’m going to get some sleep,’ I said, waving the card in his direction as I walked back to my room. ‘Thanks, Ji.’

  ‘No problem,’ he called out after me. ‘I’m here if you wanna talk – or play Mario Party.’

  Clio’s handwriting was as slurred as her speech had been at Louis’, but it was just possible to read:

  Thank you for protecting me tonight. Whatever happens in the coming months, I will always be grateful, as I have just told the police. Don’t blame yourself for his awful death. It wasn’t your fault.

  I still wish you had heeded my advice and not come to the party, not had to protect me – you can’t say I didn’t try to deter you. Bad things happen around Louis, worse than you can imagine.

  Tonight has changed everything. We weren’t speaking at the party, as you probably saw, and after this evening I have no desire to see him again. Ever. He has gone too far this time.

  Why am I telling you this? Because I don’t want to mislead you. We should not see each other again. Not because I don’t like you, but because I like you too much. If that sounds unfair or confusing, I’m sorry. I’m just trying to protect you. One day I might be able to explain, when I am strong enough to choose between Faustus’s Good Angel and Bad Angel. To read ‘the scriptures’ or ‘that damned book’.

  I must focus on my finals now.

  Take care,

  Clio xx

  30

  Adam leans forward and pauses the video player. He had planned to watch the whole film through to the end, fuelled by whisky, but once again he can’t bring himself to view the sickening coda, the last thirty seconds. He’s watched himself at the party, defending Clio from Lecter in his diabolical mask, mixing with the arts set – why was he so desperate to be a part of that crowd? – but he’s not ready to see the ending. Not ready to tell Tania what happened next.

  He glances at his watch. Two a.m. He should get some sleep. Although it’s a Sunday, he wants to go down to Wiltshire early, hopes that Tania will be willing to see him. He walks back into the kitchen and picks up the card again from the dresser, turning it in his hands like a croupier. Might Clio have left it? But why the letter ‘S’? What is its significance? S for son? She found Freddie in the park. S for sex? Not exactly subtle. She always liked to be cryptic, but this is odd, even for her.

  He will ask Tania later, check whether it’s Freddie’s. Again, he wonders if he’s got this all wrong; if there’s a simple interpretation for what happened today, one that exonerates Clio from everything apart from a misguided desire to look up an old flame from uni.

  He walks over to the kitchen window and stares out into the night. The heavy rain has almost stopped, but it’s still drizzling, tiny beads of water dancing in the orange glow of the streetlight above where the public footpath meets the road. What if someone did stand out there tonight in the rain and film him and Clio? He turns away, tries to dismiss the thought, but he can’t ignore the feeling in his stomach. It’s as if someone has got hold of his small intestine and is measuring it. Skipping with it.

  Ten minutes later he’s about to go to bed when his phone pings with a text. Tania. No message, just the photo. It takes a second to download and then he’s looking at Clio in her underwear, standing next to him in the kitchen. He’s holding up her dress and it’s not a good look. No wonder Tania assumed the worst. But he’s not so interested in the two figures, or the time and date stamp in the corner (19.31 – well past cinq à sept), included like court evidence to prove time and place. He’s trying to work out where the photo was taken from.

  His first thought is that Tania was right and it’s a still image taken from a video shot on Clio’s phone when it was on the dresser. There’s a slight blur to it. But filming through window glass might also distort the image. There’s no obvious sign of rain, but the window could have been wiped. Ditto the camera lens.

  And then he spots a small, single droplet of rain in the top right-hand corner of the image. A chill of fear ripples through him. The photo was definitely taken from outside.

  He goes back downstairs in his boxer shorts and T-shirt, opens the back door and steps out onto the wet lawn in a pair of slip-on garden shoes. No obvious footprints by the kitchen window, but it’s rained continuously since Clio was here. He heads over to where the footpath runs down the side of the garden. A part of the fence that he’s been meaning to repair is low enough for an adult (but not Freddie) to climb over. He grabs the post and levers himself up and through the gap to the footpath, jumping down with a squelch into the mud. He looks up the deserted path, checks that Lynda isn’t at her window, twitching a curtain. It’s too late, even for her. And then something catches his eye by his feet. A fragment, white and fragile. Is it a sliver of plastic? A cigarette butt? It’s something more organic. He bends down and picks it up. Eggshell. An image of Louis peeling eggs at his party comes and goes; the way he slipped them into his mouth.

  Adam retreats to bed, but sleep eludes him almost until dawn. At 4 a.m. his body is finally at rest, but his brain is busy with housekeeping duties, cleansing itself of toxic waste, storing new information as it enters non-REM sleep. His heart rate and breathing begin to regulate as his temperature drops and he falls into a deep slumber. But it’s not for long. Soon his eyes are moving rapidly beneath his eyelids and his body enters a state of temporary paralysis as he starts to dream.

  Louis is at the back of the garden, eyes glowing orange in the dark, filming with his old camcorder as the rain pours down. All around him the ground is littered with eggshell. Louis is not alone though. A packed audience sits in rows of plastic chairs on the lawn, bright theatre lights shining in through the window, bathing the kitchen in a warm glow. And everyone is watching him make love to Clio on the kitchen table. They are both naked and his elbows are sore from supporting the weight of his body, but Adam doesn’t care. Clio is desperate for him, clawing at his bare back, urging him on as the audience applauds every thrust of his buttocks. Even Lynda is clapping, watching from her window through a pair of opera glasses, her underwear glowing beneath a dark cotton dress. And then the kitchen door swings open and Tania is standing there, holding Tilly on her shoulder, Freddie at her side. They stare at him in silence until the curtain falls.

  ‘Jesus,’ Adam says, sitting up in bed, looking around him, relieved that he is on his own.

  Breathing fast, he glances at the clock – 8 a.m. – and swings out of bed, pulling back the curtains. The rain has passed, leaving the garden cleansed and shiny. Lynda next door is already up, deadheading roses and removing slugs. He prays she didn’t see him out on the footpath last night in his boxer shorts. Or naked in his dream. What the hell was all that about?

  He picks up his phone, hoping that there might be a message from Tania, a conciliatory text asking him to join them all for lunch down at her parents’. Crispin has perfected the Sunday roast. Nothing. He considers ringing his mum. Maybe he should head down to Newlyn, stay a night or two in his old attic room, seek refuge in the Swordy, meet up with Clemo, Jori and Morgan. It’s been a while, but there will always be someone he knows sitting in the corner of the pub. Ji, his old friend from Cambridge, might be a more practical option. For the last few years he’s been living in central London and they are due a catch-up.

  He opens the photo that Tania sent again. It was definitely taken from outside. Did Clio know? Or was it chance that she turned to look out the window?

  He’s about to put the phone down when he looks at the time and date stamp in the corner of the image again. In the early hours he’d only noticed the time, but now he looks at the date: 6 May. He pulls out his memory box from under their bed and finds his student diary, flicking frantically through the pages until he comes across the entry he’s searching for. He’s right. Louis’ fateful party was also on 6 May. He stares out the window, his heart full of dread. There’s something else about the date. The party was twenty-four years ago. To the day. He needs no reminding of its significance, or of the lines he spoke all those years ago on the ADC stage: Doctor Faustus had promised his soul to the devil in exchange for twenty-four years of knowledge and power. Now his time was up.

  For the vain pleasure of four and twenty years hath Faustus lost eternal joy and felicity. I writ them a bill with mine own blood. The date is expired. This is the time. And he will fetch me.

  And there’s no place to hide.

  31

  May 1998

  I woke up at 10 a.m., hungover and scared. Someone died last night. Lecter’s was the first dead body that I’ve seen outside the Anatomy Building. I’d felt surprisingly calm as I watched the paramedic go about his business and knew that I could do his job, deal with the dying or the dead on a daily basis. But I didn’t wake up calm today. And I’m far from calm as I write this now.