Absolute Zero Cool by Declan Burke Page A

would pay good money for a ragged paperback bound in cheap blank leather?
    I cried that day in the bookshop for the poignancy of it, certainly, out of a lachrymose sentimentality for the blind orphan who found safe haven, but also because I knew I had finally discovered the person I wanted to write for, the one mythical listener every writer needs, my ghost audience and reader eternal.
    ‘Have you anything else like that?’ he says. ‘That was pretty good.’
    ‘No, I’ve nothing else like that.’
    He nods towards the chalet. ‘What about those Russians you have on the shelf?’
    ‘It’s a different kind of thing.’
    ‘Just as well,’ he says. ‘I mean, who can read those Russians? The characters’ names are nearly short stories in themselves.’
    ‘Being honest, they’re only there for show. Them and Kafka. And Beckett.’
    ‘Thank Christ for that,’ he says. ‘I was worried I might be the only moron around here.’
     
    •
     
    Today is a Red Letter day. Today was worth the wanton massacre of oxygen molecules required to keep me alive.
    Early this morning a nurse discovered an old woman dead in her bed. There are suggestions that the death was premature. There are hints that the old woman’s miserable existence, eked out between bouts of excruciating bowel pain, was abruptly terminated.
    Mrs McCaffrey’s was the third unusual death in nineteen months. All three suffered from chronic agonies with no hope of reprieve. All three had private rooms. Mrs McCaffrey appears to have been smothered with her own pillow, an embroidered affair she’d brought from her home when she realised she was in for the long haul.
    Rumours surge along the corridors. Scandal plummets down elevator shafts. The speed of light is left standing in the traps. There are uninspired whispers about an Angel of Death. The word ‘euthanasia’ enjoys a hushed renaissance.
    Despite the best efforts of the hospital’s board of directors, the cops are called in. They are, however, discreet. They are aware of the delicate nature of the situation. People cannot afford to believe that a hospital could be a place where people can die willy-nilly. There are research grants at stake here.
    I am called for an interview, held in the office of the director of public relations on the sixth floor. It is a big, airy office. Potted plants feature. I sit in the leather chair and immediately feel my posture improve.
    The cops ask if I was working last night. I tell them I was. They already know this.
    They ask if I knew Mrs McCaffrey. Yes, I say. They already know this too.
    They ask if I visited her last night with my concession cart.
    ‘Not last night, no.’
    ‘How come?’ says the cop with the salt-and-pepper hair.
    ‘She doesn’t like anything on the cart,’ I say. ‘I’ve offered to bring her anything she wants, but she can’t eat normal stuff. I think she has bowel cancer. Or had, rather.’
    ‘See anything unusual on your rounds last night?’
    ‘It’s a hospital. Pretty much everything that goes on around here is unusual.’
    ‘Okay. But was there anyone around who shouldn’t have been? Anything out of the ordinary?’
    ‘Not that I can think of, no.’
    The other cop has florid jowls and porcine eyes. He taps a folder on the desk in front of him. ‘It says here you’ve been the subject of a number of disciplinary procedures.’
    ‘That’s not exactly a crime.’
    He bristles. ‘We’ll decide what is and what’s not a crime.’
    ‘No, you don’t. If you want to criminalise attitude, call a referendum. Then we’ll decide what’s a crime and what isn’t, and you’ll enforce the laws we vote in. That’s the peachy thing about democracy.’
    ‘How come you’re trying to be difficult?’
    The way he says it, I am now officially Public Enemy Number 1. This is a man who needs enemies. This is a man who needs justification for the chip on his shoulder and has found his vocation as a vampire feeding off crime.
    ‘I’m not