Deadly nightshade and henbane. Any part of the plant is poisonous, but it has a bitter taste, so it’s not so easy to eat by accident. It’s a deliriant, but highly toxic, easy to overdose.”
She’s watching me, I suppose, to see if I start to look shamefaced. The last thing I remember is being in the trailer. Beer. Food. A peace offering. Smiling. Talking. It was all . . . normal.
I shake my head, meaning, I don’t know, perhaps. Then something does swim into my mind.
“Isn’t ergot poisoning the same thing as Saint Anthony’s fire?”
“That’s a kind of ergotism, yes. Lucky for you, you didn’t ingest enough for that. Saint Anthony’s fire is the gangrenous form of ergotism. The capillaries constrict, your extremities shrivel up and drop off—but it’s almost always fatal, anyway. You’ve got a little desquamation, but that’s all.”
I must look puzzled, because she picks up my left hand again and turns it around to show me the skin on the forearm, flaking off as though I’ve had too much sun.
“There—not enough blood getting to the skin. Not serious, in your case. You only ate enough to cause the convulsive form: muscle spasms, weakness, hallucinations . . .”
“So . . .” I don’t really know how to put this. “If you took these things deliberately, what would you hope to happen?”
“I’m not an expert on this kind of thing, but I suppose you wouldexpect to get high, to have hallucinations. But you’d be taking a huge risk.”
“Could you use it to poison someone? To kill them?”
She looks troubled.
“I would think if you wanted to be sure of killing someone, you would give them a higher dose. You have had a very low dose. Scopolamine is used to make people forget. Where I come from, they used to give it during childbirth. It was called ‘twilight sleep.’ Women forgot the pain.”
“So I won’t remember?”
“Perhaps not.”
She looks at me with a calculating face, assessing something. Perhaps she’s about to tell me something else, but she doesn’t.
I have to think about this. Put the pieces together. There is a gap in my memory, but there are things I do remember. I know them without a doubt. And perhaps—I’m not saying more than that, just perhaps—my being here, in this state, is another piece of evidence. Because that’s the only way it makes sense.
I wonder when Hen is coming back to see me. Did he say? I’m sure I need to talk to him. Wasn’t there something I needed to tell him? Something about Rose . . . Something important but just out of sight, like a distant shore hidden by fog.
Then I remember it. And though Hen doesn’t know yet (how could I not have told him?), it doesn’t seem that important now, to tell the truth. It’s no match for the overwhelming desire to sleep.
It was all such a long time ago. After all, it’s not as though by finding her, I’ve saved her.
I’m far, far too late for that.
13.
Ray
It turns out to be off a slip road of the A32, not too far from Bishop’s Waltham in Hampshire. The road drops down behind a cutting, and there’s a half-hidden turning between overgrown hedges that leads toward a scrubby piece of woodland. A belt of evergreens planted as a windbreak ensures that passers-by will simply pass by. You have to drive through a narrow, angled opening to discover the paddock where the Jankos live. If I hadn’t been told the trailers were there, I would never have spotted them. I know this is farming land, privately rented; rather different from the council site where I met Kizzy Wilson. Here, the trailers—I count five—are arranged in a loose circle, tow bars outward. The large windows face one another, but small trees grow between them here and there—only the central space is clear, and there are signs of a fire. Other vehicles—a late-model BMW and a Land Rover—are parked behind the trailers. There must be other vehicles elsewhere, judging by large, deep wheel ruts in the mud. There’s a pile
She’s watching me, I suppose, to see if I start to look shamefaced. The last thing I remember is being in the trailer. Beer. Food. A peace offering. Smiling. Talking. It was all . . . normal.
I shake my head, meaning, I don’t know, perhaps. Then something does swim into my mind.
“Isn’t ergot poisoning the same thing as Saint Anthony’s fire?”
“That’s a kind of ergotism, yes. Lucky for you, you didn’t ingest enough for that. Saint Anthony’s fire is the gangrenous form of ergotism. The capillaries constrict, your extremities shrivel up and drop off—but it’s almost always fatal, anyway. You’ve got a little desquamation, but that’s all.”
I must look puzzled, because she picks up my left hand again and turns it around to show me the skin on the forearm, flaking off as though I’ve had too much sun.
“There—not enough blood getting to the skin. Not serious, in your case. You only ate enough to cause the convulsive form: muscle spasms, weakness, hallucinations . . .”
“So . . .” I don’t really know how to put this. “If you took these things deliberately, what would you hope to happen?”
“I’m not an expert on this kind of thing, but I suppose you wouldexpect to get high, to have hallucinations. But you’d be taking a huge risk.”
“Could you use it to poison someone? To kill them?”
She looks troubled.
“I would think if you wanted to be sure of killing someone, you would give them a higher dose. You have had a very low dose. Scopolamine is used to make people forget. Where I come from, they used to give it during childbirth. It was called ‘twilight sleep.’ Women forgot the pain.”
“So I won’t remember?”
“Perhaps not.”
She looks at me with a calculating face, assessing something. Perhaps she’s about to tell me something else, but she doesn’t.
I have to think about this. Put the pieces together. There is a gap in my memory, but there are things I do remember. I know them without a doubt. And perhaps—I’m not saying more than that, just perhaps—my being here, in this state, is another piece of evidence. Because that’s the only way it makes sense.
I wonder when Hen is coming back to see me. Did he say? I’m sure I need to talk to him. Wasn’t there something I needed to tell him? Something about Rose . . . Something important but just out of sight, like a distant shore hidden by fog.
Then I remember it. And though Hen doesn’t know yet (how could I not have told him?), it doesn’t seem that important now, to tell the truth. It’s no match for the overwhelming desire to sleep.
It was all such a long time ago. After all, it’s not as though by finding her, I’ve saved her.
I’m far, far too late for that.
13.
Ray
It turns out to be off a slip road of the A32, not too far from Bishop’s Waltham in Hampshire. The road drops down behind a cutting, and there’s a half-hidden turning between overgrown hedges that leads toward a scrubby piece of woodland. A belt of evergreens planted as a windbreak ensures that passers-by will simply pass by. You have to drive through a narrow, angled opening to discover the paddock where the Jankos live. If I hadn’t been told the trailers were there, I would never have spotted them. I know this is farming land, privately rented; rather different from the council site where I met Kizzy Wilson. Here, the trailers—I count five—are arranged in a loose circle, tow bars outward. The large windows face one another, but small trees grow between them here and there—only the central space is clear, and there are signs of a fire. Other vehicles—a late-model BMW and a Land Rover—are parked behind the trailers. There must be other vehicles elsewhere, judging by large, deep wheel ruts in the mud. There’s a pile
Similar Books
