She walked along the corridor and up three flights of stairs. As she emerged onto the corridor she saw a man and a woman walking towards her, deep in conversation. She knew him. Sam Goulding. She’d referred a patient to him and they’d met to discuss her. But that had been a couple of years ago. He wouldn’t be expecting to see her and he was distracted. She looked to one side. But as they passed, she noticed a movement and he said, ‘Hey.’ She kept walking and didn’t respond. He hadn’t said her name and she wasn’t even sure it had been addressed to her. But still. She looked at her watch. It was eight minutes to one. If he remembered her, if he knew what had happened to her, he’d still have to make a phone call. Someone would have to make the connection. Even so. She looked at her watch again. Ten past one: whatever happened, at the latest she would have until ten past one and then she would go.

She turned right, reached Wakefield Ward and went up to the nurses’ station. A nurse was fiddling with a paper jam in a fax machine. She looked up.

‘I rang earlier,’ said Frieda. ‘I’m Miles Thornton’s cousin.’

‘Visiting hours start at three,’ said the nurse.

‘I explained that on the phone. I’ve just come down on the train. They said it would be all right. I’ll only be five minutes. You can check if you like.’

The nurse gave a tug at the paper. It was thoroughly stuck. ‘He’s down there on the left,’ she said. ‘Bed two.’

‘Thanks so much.’

Frieda looked at her watch. Four minutes to one. The ward was more like a network of corridors. In the first bed, a very old man was sitting up, staring straight in front of him. As Frieda walked past, his eyes didn’t even flicker. The next bed, bed two, looked unoccupied, as if it had been left unmade. There was just a bundle of hair on the pillow that showed Thornton was there, unconscious or asleep. She knelt on the floor by his head. Three weeks earlier this face had been distorted with anger and resentment. Now it was swollen and discoloured, half swallowed by the pillow. Tentatively, Frieda put out a hand and touched his cheek.

‘Miles,’ she said. ‘It’s me. Frieda. Frieda Klein.’

He gave a sort of groan and his head shifted slightly.

‘Miles. You’ve got to wake up. I need to talk to you.’

His eyes opened and he looked at her, blinking. He raised his right hand towards her as if to shield himself. It was heavily bandaged. She took it in her hands as gently as she could. He gave another groan. Her touch seemed to be painful.

‘I’ve been looking for you,’ she said.

‘Drink.’

There was a jug of water on the table by his bed and a plastic cup. She half filled the cup and held it to his lips. He had to prop himself up to drink from it. She replaced the cup. She looked at her watch. One o’clock. She could see the front desk from where she was.

‘Where were you?’ she said.

‘Voice in dark,’ he said.

‘What voice? What did it say?’

‘Telling me. He was cross.’

She had heard this before. When he first came to see her, he was experiencing anxiety, but in the next sessions he had begun to talk about the voices he heard, about how angry they were with him, and Frieda had decided that talking therapy wasn’t going to be sufficient.

‘Was it the same voice as before?’

‘No. Not that. You’re wrong.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Didn’t just talk. Punish. Said punish.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Frieda. She was starting to think that this wasn’t going to amount to anything. It reminded her painfully of when the sessions had started to go awry.

‘No. Not that. Really punish.’

He started to fumble at the bandage on his hand.

‘No, don’t,’ said Frieda.

‘He came back every few minutes. Every few minutes. Took me to punish me. Then he’d come back every few minutes, day and night.’

Frieda looked at her watch again. Four minutes past one. It was nearly time to go. ‘What do you mean come back?’

‘Tied me up. Come back to hurt me more.’

Tears were running out of the corners of Thornton’s eyes. He pulled at the bandages. Frieda saw that he was in a state of terrible distress but he was still clearer than when she had last seen him. More lucid. More coherent.

‘Did my fingers,’ he said.

He pulled the last of the bandage off. The tops of the fingers of his right hand were nothing more than remnants. There were no fingernails and the upper joints were mangled and shapeless, as if they’d been flayed.

‘Oh, God,’ she said softly. ‘Where were you, Miles? Where?’

‘Far away.’ It was barely more than a whisper; a creak of sound. ‘Far, far away. Trussed up like a carcass for the journey. Bumping, bumping along, everything dark. Just a long road and then more dark. Nobody to hear me. Nobody came. So many days. Days and nights and nights and days. I couldn’t count any more.’

‘You mean you went on a long journey?’

‘He took me to the sea.’

‘Who, Miles? Who took you and did these terrible things to you? You have to tell me.’

‘I could hear the sea all the time. Even when I was crying I heard the waves. They wouldn’t stop, on and on. He wouldn’t stop. Never left me, never went away, never let me sleep. There was a clock on the wall and I watched it. Never away for more than twenty minutes. On and on. Then let me go. He said tell her.’

‘Tell who?’

Frieda heard a sound. Two men had come into the ward, one in a suit, one in some sort of uniform. Security. Suddenly it felt like she’d left things too late.

‘You,’ said Thornton. ‘Frieda Klein. He said tell her. It’s for Frieda Klein.’

The two men were talking to a nurse.

‘Tell her it’s for Frieda Klein.’

‘I see,’ she said. And she did see.

She had to go. She stood up and started to walk in the opposite direction from which she’d come. She heard a voice behind her. She mustn’t look round and she mustn’t run. She remembered the map. There was another exit from this ward. She reached the door. It was closed and there was a sign: ‘Fire escape only. This door is alarmed.’ She tried to remember the map. Was there another exit further down the ward? She couldn’t risk it. Someone was shouting her name. She pushed the door open and immediately there was an electronic pulsing alarm. She ran down the stone stairs. The noise was so loud that it hurt. One floor down, she pushed a door open and stepped almost into the arms of a man in a uniform.

‘There’s a woman in the ward above,’ Frieda said. ‘She’s causing a disturbance.’

The man ran past her into the stairwell. Frieda counted to five, then followed him back into the stairwell and went down rather than up. She counted the floors. On the ground floor, she saw the sign to the main entrance and went in the opposite direction towards the day clinic, which had its own exit and its own car park that led onto a different road. Within five minutes she was outside and away from the hospital, but she continued walking, taking a series of turns into different residential streets, until she was absolutely sure she wasn’t being followed.

She saw a bench and sat down. She needed to because her head was spinning and her legs shook. She almost felt as if she might faint. But she forced herself to calm down and to think clearly about what she had just heard.

Torture: to turn someone into an instrument, an object; to take away their humanity; to humiliate and wound them until all they are is pain, and then nothing. She thought of Miles Thornton’s wild, animal face and his creaking voice and his mangled stumps of fingers. She knew who had done that and she knew why he had done that, and for a few minutes she sat there and felt so sick and full of helpless anger and confusion that the world in front of her blurred.

Then she got out her notebook and pen and made a table of dates:

– Tuesday, 10 June: last sighting of Sandy.