The Resurrection of the Body (13 page)

T
he Intruder

When I got home at seven Harriet was waiting for me. I knew at once that something had happened because she looked very agitated and her face was rather pale.

‘Did you get on all right?’

‘Yes, it was fine, he was very understanding … What’s the matter, Harriet?’

‘You didn’t leave the chain on the door and go out the back way, did you?’

‘No. Why?’

It seemed that when she had got back from a friend’s house with the children at about half past six, she had not been able to get in through the front entrance because the
chain was across the door. She had thought at first that I must have come back and she was frightened because she thought that things might have gone very badly at the Bishop’s and that I had locked myself in. She went round to the back, but found everything was locked up and there was no sign of anyone. In the end she only got in by ‘borrowing’ a ladder from the neighbours and climbing up to the open bathroom window.

Now she thought there had been an intruder, because there were muddy footprints on the floor of the living room and some things had been curiously disarranged.

I went into the living room. Sure enough, there were muddy footprints, and some of the furniture had been moved. I went into my office. Papers had been moved from the desk and left on the table, and some of the books on the bookshelves were out of order. It was almost as if someone had been in the house searching for something, but failed to find it and left empty-handed.

I went through all the papers in the drawers of my desk, checking that nothing was missing. Then I went upstairs to tuck the children in.

‘Was it a burglar, Dad?’

‘He didn’t take any of our toys.’

They were both very excited and it took a while to calm them down and get them ready for bed.

When I went downstairs Harriet said she supposed we should call the police. I said that I saw no point in it, as nothing had been taken and we didn’t even need a crime number for the insurance people.

But Harriet wanted to call them; she was nervous, and quite frightened. ‘What is going on, Richard?’ she asked me.

I felt a sudden anger harden and tighten inside me. I began to wonder if I had not somehow stumbled on some kind of conspiracy. Perhaps Stone was right, and there really was something going on inside the church. Or perhaps there was some other meaning to it, something even worse, outside my experience, which I couldn’t even begin to grasp.

I was not ready to accept that something supernatural was going on. A reincarnation of Christ did not burgle houses and leave muddy footprints on the floor. If Christ were to return to the world, surely there must be some point in it, some purpose, some message he was trying to put across. He wouldn’t simply wander around Hackney fucking prostitutes and eating fish and chips.

No; there was a reasonable explanation somewhere, and I was going to get to it. I resolved to do something about it the very next day.

In a new mood of confidence I phoned the researcher on the London Programme and told her I would appear on their show the following night.

T
o Bart's Again

In the morning, after breakfast, I went to my office and cancelled my appointments. Of course I knew that there was a very real possibility that I was going mad, that I was having hallucinations, and that I had imagined something that wasn't there, but this explanation didn't satisfy me. It occurred to me that I could take someone else with me, someone objective, outside the church, to try to verify what I had seen, but this was impossible, because I didn't think that anyone else would ever entertain it. It meant entering the man's flat, forcing him to undress; how could I possibly do this? I could try again to tell the police and get them to question and examine the man, but I now distrusted the police and disliked Stone in particular so
much that I could never do it; besides, they wouldn't listen to me. I also knew that I couldn't hand this unknown man over to the police. He might be an illegal immigrant, in which case he might be arrested or deported; whoever he was, I had no reason to put him in jeopardy to prove that I was sane.

Second, there was the possibility that someone was deliberately trying to deceive me, had arranged this whole thing as some form of mental torture, but that seemed too close to paranoid thinking to offer any comfort. There was Detective Chief Inspector Stone's theory, that this was a conspiracy within the church to fabricate a miracle, which gave me no great comfort either. Then there was the possibility that something supernatural really had
happened
. If so, I would be able to prove nothing. The whole point about the supernatural is that it can't be
scientifically
tested.

But finally, there was some tiny possibility that nagged at my mind. Was it possible that the man had not actually died? Could he have been pronounced dead in the
hospital
, taken off the life support systems and placed in the mortuary, only to recover and leave the hospital, perhaps with loss of memory caused by the lack of oxygen to the brain? But then there was the post mortem; no one could have survived that. Unless there had been a mistake and the post mortem had been carried out on the wrong body. Surely this was possible? But then, where had the scars come from?

Every so often one reads about cases of hospital
mistakes
, of people being given the wrong babies, having the
wrong leg removed, having operations which were meant for someone else. Once I read a terrifying headline which said that every year 1,900 people die from unnecessary operations. Medical procedures and doctors are not
perfect
. Perhaps here, by some series of unlikely but possible coincidences, lay the clue to this mystery.

I went home and fetched my jacket, pausing to look at myself in the mirror in the hall. Was I imagining it, or had my hair gone greyer already? I pulled at the hair on my temples. I looked pale and unwell. The thought came into my head: You are going to die. Of course we all know that, at one level, but this time I felt I really understood for the first time that it was true. I was really, inevitably, going to die. I pushed the thought away, not wanting to dwell on it; I must suggest to Harriet that we go away as the
Archdeacon
suggested.

I combed my hair and straightened my collar. Then I took the car and went down to Bart's.

It was silly to go without an appointment, but I felt I couldn't wait. I asked if the senior registrar I had seen before, Mr Hunt, was there and was told he was in theatre, but would be out at noon. I asked if I could have an urgent appointment to see him. Again, the dog collar helped. The receptionist asked me to come back at two-thirty.

I wandered out of the hospital and walked aimlessly through Smithfield, looking at the huge carcasses of meat on display; then I sat down at a small drivers' cafe on the other side of the market and had a coffee. At two-thirty I was back at the hospital. Hunt came to see me in a room which was probably reserved for giving bad news to
relatives. He was still wearing his operating greens and looked very puzzled to see me.

I thought I had better just come out with it. ‘I know that what I am going to say will seem strange, but I'd like you to answer my questions, no matter how odd they seem.'

Hunt seemed unimpressed; he glanced down at his watch. ‘I haven't got long, but I'll help you if I can.'

‘Is it possible for someone to be pronounced dead when they are still alive?'

He looked at me in puzzlement for a few long minutes. Then he said, ‘I remember you now. You came in to enquire about the man who died of knife wounds, about a month ago, the one who disappeared from the mortuary.'

‘That's right.'

‘Did the police ever find the body?' He paused, then smiled, and a look of something like impudence crossed his otherwise immobile face. ‘He hasn't turned up again, has he?'

His eyebrows had shot up almost into his hairline. I couldn't help smiling. The honest way he gave voice to what no one else would mention cheered me, as a child's fear often vanishes when it is named. For the first time in a long while I felt quite normal.

‘Please, just answer my question first.'

‘Well, as you are probably aware, there is a whole
protocol
we have to follow in the event of a person on life
support
being thought to be brain dead. In this instance, as I recall, we had a man who was admitted with no blood pressure, severe bleeding from the heart, pulmonary artery
and other vessels, and who had experienced a respiratory arrest. We had him ventilated at once but it's not clear for how long he hadn't been breathing. Following the
operation
he failed to breathe or show any other signs of life. It seemed pretty certain to me then that he was finished.

‘If you're really interested, what we do is this. When we suspect someone has suffered brain death, which is,
incidentally
, final and irreversible, we have to have two
doctors
carry out a series of tests. These tests have to be carried out twice with a reasonable interval between, in some cases as long as twenty-four hours. We test for the absence of any reflexes, such as the corneal reflex, the gagging reflex, where we pass a tube into the windpipe to see if the patient responds, and the vestibular-ocular reflex, in which we pass two mils of ice-cold water into the auditory meatus and look for any eye movements. We also test for any response to pain. We then remove the patient from the ventilator for long enough to establish that the breathing reflex does not occur when the level of carbon dioxide in the blood rises above the level which would normally trigger it. If all these things are negative on two separate occasions, as certified by two doctors, then the patient is pronounced dead and disconnected from the life support systems.'

‘Do you carry out a brain scan?'

‘In these circumstances a brain scan is not considered necessary. It might be done if there were any doubt about the diagnosis.'

‘Were you one of the two doctors who carried out the tests?'

‘I was one of the two doctors. Believe me, he was dead.' Hunt got up from his desk and went over to the window. ‘And if you are thinking there is any way it might be wrong, you also have the post mortem to consider. It was carried out on police orders on the Saturday, I believe, before the body disappeared.'

‘Is there any chance there could have been a mistake there? That they could have done the post mortem on the wrong body?'

‘I believe that the police also have a very strict protocol to follow. You could ask at the city mortuary and they might be able to tell you what the system is.'

I stood up and he opened the door. ‘Now tell me,' he said, ‘I've told you what I know, now you must tell me your end of things. Has he turned up, or what?'

‘No, the body was never found.' I felt I had to say something more in explanation. ‘We priests think so often of the spiritual side of death that we sometimes neglect to think of the physical realities. What you have said has been very helpful to me. I am very grateful to you for giving me your time.'

I went back to my car and made my way to the mortuary.

T
here Can Be No Doubt

I climbed up the concrete steps to the coroner’s office and rang the day bell. The coroner’s officer was there and let me in, taking me into his office and sitting down at his desk.

I explained my concern that there might have been some confusion about the body. I said that I knew this was unlikely, but that I wanted him to explain to me the
procedure
, so that I could be sure there had been no mistake.

The coroner took a deep breath, swivelling round in his executive chair. ‘In the event of a violent death, there will be a police officer there on duty at the hospital. When the patient is pronounced dead, the body will probably be kept
on the ward for the relatives to view and it will then be brought down to the mortuary. If it is a suspicious death, in this case, I believe you said, a murder, then the post mortem will be done here. The body will be transported here from the hospital in an ambulance and there will be a police officer in attendance.

‘The police officer will formally sign the body over and may return after the post mortem is done to view the body and ascertain that the post mortem has duly been carried out on this same body. After that the relatives usually arrange for the undertaker to collect the body. We do all this so that there can be no possible doubt.’

‘Do you remember the man who died on Easter Sunday from knife wounds? The one whose body disappeared the next day?’

He looked at me curiously. ‘Yes, I do. We’ve had to review our security arrangements. Someone is coming to see me about that this very afternoon.’

‘Is there any way I could find out who the police officer was who signed the body over?’ A suspicion had come unbidden into my mind. Once you suspected corruption in the police force, there was no limit to where this could lead. If Stone could suspect me, then surely I could
suspect
him.

He said, ‘I could probably look up the records for you. Please wait here, and I’ll go and see.’

He was gone for perhaps ten minutes. I sat in the office, patiently waiting for him. I realised as I sat there that I had been expected to attend a meeting at the priory that afternoon and would simply not have turned up.
Once again I was neglecting my duties; almost certainly I was having a breakdown. I put my face in my hands.

He came back into the room. ‘It was a Sergeant Black from Stoke Newington Police Station. But in fact, I should have told you at the outset, I was present at the post mortem. I know that it was the same man who came in, whose picture was in the papers, who the sergeant signed for. I was there and saw it done. So you see, there can be no doubt.’

I looked at the man, at his solid, reassuring manner, and wondered, as I have often wondered before, how
people
can do such jobs. I thanked him and left the building. Outside, it had started to rain. People were scurrying
backwards
and forwards in the unexpected downpour, holding jackets or waterproofs over their heads, running for cover. I stood there for some time, bewildered, not knowing what to do. The trail I had been following had come to an end. There was no explanation. It was as if a giant hole had appeared in the ground before me, opening up a new vista into which I didn’t dare look. It was as if everything I had based my life on, everything I had taken to be true and solid, had dissolved away before me. It was not as simple as a revelation that there was no God. Perhaps it was a revelation that there was a God, and that he worked in ways I could not imagine, and I, through my own
weaknesses
and fears, could not believe that his purpose was a benign one. I tried to bring myself back to reality, to decide what I had to do. Then I remembered with sudden horror: I was supposed to appear on television that night. I had to get a number 55 bus. I could get to the priory for the end
of the meeting. I would ring the television people and say I was ill, and go to ask the doctor to put me on
tranquillisers
. I would ask Harriet to take us away for a few days.

I put up my arm to shield my face from the downpour and made a run for it across the road. The noise of the horn and the screeching of brakes were blurred into one sound for me as I saw the taxi and felt the impact, and then suddenly everything was darkness.