By the time Harris reached St Matthew's, Colin Kerr had stopped saying Ben Macklin was dead.
This was inconvenient, since according to Dr Sayeed he had said it perhaps ten times.
The first nurse hadn't understood him. Colin's voice, unused for three years, was little more than a hoarse abrasion, and she had initially thought he was asking for something. She brought another nurse over. Between them they persuaded him to repeat himself until there was no ambiguity.
“Ben Macklin is dead.”
Nothing preceded it. Nothing explained it. These were, so far as anyone at St Matthew's could establish, Colin Kerr's first words in three years.
“And then?” Harris asked.
“He wanted to know the perimeter of the building.”
Harris looked at Sayeed.
“In meters.”
“Of course.”
They were sitting in Sayeed's office, a small overheated room in a secure hospital which Harris found disappointingly deficient in screams and padded walls. St Matthew's resembled an unsuccessful private clinic whose decorators had been told that everything should survive bleach.
Colin had spoken perhaps thirty or forty sentences since breaking his silence, most of them brief and oddly practical. He wanted to know how many circuits of the building would equal a half-marathon and, when told he couldn't presently run them, asked whether walking was permitted. He had also enquired whether the hospital needed help with procurement, his occupation before the killing, and what brand of disposable gloves the nursing staff used.
“Is this progress?” Harris asked.
“I've heard his voice for the first time in three years. Ask me in a month.”
Harris had already tried interviewing Colin that morning. Interviewing was generous. Colin sat beside a window in a communal room, thinner and greyer than the man Harris remembered, but apparently attentive. Questions about Steve Penderhurst produced nothing. Questions about the collision produced nothing. Questions about Ben Macklin produced almost nothing.
Only when Harris asked whether Ben Macklin was dead did Colin respond.
“Is Ben Macklin dead?”
His voice was so faint Harris had leaned towards him.
“Yes?”
Colin swallowed.
“Yes.”
“Who is Ben Macklin?” Harris pushed.
No answer.
Three years of silence and Harris had managed to conduct a conversation obtainable from a malfunctioning lift.
Sayeed could offer little explanation. Colin's medication hadn't changed. There had been no illness, procedure, unusual disturbance or obvious change in his physical condition. The original neurological investigations following Steve's death had found no stroke, tumour, seizure disorder or other satisfying mechanism. Colin had simply stopped speaking after killing a stranger with his car and, three years later, had started again.
There was, however, one difference.
“He seems less tense,” Sayeed said.
“Tense? He's barely done anything for three years.”
“Uncommunicative isn't unconscious, Inspector. Mr Kerr has always been aware of his environment. He eats, walks, follows routines, responds to instructions. But there has been a quality about him I'd describe as pressure.”
Harris disliked the word immediately.
“And now?”
“Less pressure.”
“Since saying Macklin is dead?”
“Apparently.”
Mills was waiting in the car park with his phone in his hand.
“You've got something,” Harris said.
“Possibly. Ben Macklin.”
“Go on.”
Mills had begun with Steve Penderhurst rather than Colin Kerr, working backwards through old companies, directorships and business associations. Seven years earlier, Penderhurst had run a small company with a man named Ben Macklin.
Harris looked back towards the hospital.
“Can we get hold of this Ben Macklin?” Harris said.
“No, we can't. He died this morning.”
Harris turned back.
“Cancer. Long-term. Treatment for several years. Nothing suspicious.”
“When exactly?”
“Just after six this morning, according to St. Judes hospice.”
For a moment Harris said nothing.
“When did Kerr start talking?”
“Just after seven, apparently.”
The hospital stood behind them, bland and rectangular in the afternoon light.
Mills looked at it.
“So Colin Kerr says nothing for three years. Ben Macklin dies at six in the morning. About an hour later Kerr starts talking.”
“Yes.”
“And the first thing he says is—”
Harris was already reaching for the car door.
“Ben Macklin is dead.”