Soul Seeker by Keith McCarthy

the head fits the body from the garbage bin, and the body fits the head from the slurry pit. It’ll have to be confirmed by DNA, but I wouldn’t be too concerned about that.’
    Beverley murmured, ‘Thank God for small mercies.’ She looked less than delighted, although Lancefield at least found a smile. ‘Anything else?’
    She asked this more in hope than expectation, but Eisenmenger surprised her. ‘Yes.’
    â€˜Really? What?’
    â€˜The male had a mesothelioma.’
    If he expected generalized swooning and adulation, he was soon a wiser man; there was nothing but consternation. It fell to Beverley to seek enlightenment. ‘Which is what?’
    â€˜An exceedingly rare tumour, only occurring in people who have been exposed to asbestos.’
    â€˜How rare?’
    â€˜Very. And he’s had a biopsy. He’s been in hospital and will have medical records. He may even have missed outpatient appointments.’
    Lancefield said at once, ‘I’ll start checking straight away,’ but Beverley stopped her.
    â€˜Don’t bother. You won’t get anywhere, not if I know medics. They’ll clam up, claim patient confidentiality, all that crap.’ Of Eisenmenger, she asked, ‘Won’t they?’
    â€˜I expect so,’ he admitted.
    â€˜But you could find it,’ mused Beverley after a moment. ‘You work at the hospital. You have access to biopsy results.’
    â€˜Oh, no,’ he said at once. ‘Data Protection Act and all that. I’ve signed confidentiality agreements.’
    â€˜I’m not asking you to tittle-tattle on every patient with this type of tumour. You said it was rare, so there can’t be many to find; all I want to know is if you can identify who this might be. If you can, he’s dead, so no confidentiality problems.’
    It wasn’t as simple as that, though. He knew that he would be pushing dangerous, mined boundaries. ‘I’m not authorized to access medical records except for legitimate professional purposes.’
    â€˜These are professional purposes, John. My profession is finding the sick bastard who’s doing this, and I need to know the identity of that body and I need to know as soon as possible.’
    Still he hesitated.
    â€˜John . . .’
    He shook his head. He was not a born subversive. ‘Let me think about it, Beverley.’
    He knew that she was about to coerce him, so he said immediately, ‘Apart from that, nothing much. He had cirrhosis, although without complications so far. He had as much coronary atheroma as you might expect—’
    â€˜So nothing useful?’ she interrupted.
    â€˜Sorry.’

THIRTEEN
    could he yet call it love?
    E isenmenger did not dream of Helena – for so long his lover so recently dead – as he had once dreamed of Tamsin, a child he had barely known in her life but had known so well as she burned to death. He did not need to. She remained with him in a far more constant, continuous way than merely odd visitations in the night-time, vague ghosts in the darkness, flitting reminders. Even after Helena had fallen out of love with him, he had not stopped feeling for her in exactly the same way he always had done, this emotion tempered only by consternation that it was no longer mutual, disbelief and grief. This amalgam of emotions remained with him, would do so forever, only fading, never vanishing.
    And, recognizing this, he had made a conscious effort to move away from this episode in his life, this interlude that could never be relived; move away , mind, not move on ; it was a compartmentalization of the memory, not a journey beyond it. It was still within him, only now it was in a room to which he had shut the door; shut it but not locked it. He did not want to lose the joys of having known Helena, and would therefore endure the sorrows that were their conjoined twins. It had been difficult to persuade