Free Epitaph by Shaun Hutson Page B

them otherwise and they never failed to let him know it. But the woman who worked there was different. More on his level. She didn’t sneer at his lowly position. In fact, she chatted to him most days when she had some spare time. There was a large staff canteen housed within one wing of the hospital and Frank usually had his lunch there, sometimes with the woman from the pharmacy.
    He sat patiently and listened to her problems and her complaints, nodding and smiling in all the right places, offering sage words where he thought it appropriate. She talked about her teenage daughter and how she had become increasingly hard to control and how, on one stupefying occasion, she’d returned home to find the sixteen-year-old naked on the living-room floor with her nineteen-year-old boyfriend. The woman from the pharmacy had been outraged but still laughed about it when telling Frank the story. He couldn’t see what was so amusing but he’d smiled when he thought it appropriate. Just as he’d smiled when she told him of her drunken nights out with her friends and how much alcohol they each consumed in what, to Frank, seemed a pointless waste of time and money.
    The exchange of information wasn’t always reciprocated, though. She knew that he was married and that he had a young daughter but that was about it. Frank didn’t mind hearing what other people had to say about their own lives but he’d always been reluctant to share too many details of his own, even with people he felt comfortable with. No one at the hospital knew any more about him than they needed to know and Frank was happy with that. What went on away from work he felt was his business, not something to be shared. Besides, he’d never been comfortable talking about himself. It had always been easier to listen to others.
    Frank had been at the hospital long enough to have made plenty of friends among the other workers and one of his closest companions was a male nurse in paediatrics. The man hated being alone and when lunchtimes came around he invariably sought out company when eating his midday meal. That was how the two of them had first met. Frank had been sitting eating his sandwiches, reading his paper when the man had approached him and asked if he could share the table. Frank had assented andthey’d hit it off immediately. There were, Frank had found over the years, some people who that just happened with. He could count them on the fingers of one hand and that included his own wife. Their relationship had been like that at the beginning. Not so much now, though, he lamented. Now was different. She was more demanding and yet, at the same time, more distant. He wished he knew why. He wished he could bring himself to ask her but, he told himself, perhaps he didn’t want to hear the reasons.
    He slowed his pace slightly as he passed the pharmacy door, peering back to look at it.
    The door was left unlocked but that was partly due to the fact that at least one person was meant to be on duty in there twenty-four hours a day. However, that was not always the case. Sometimes, especially late at night, the solitary occupant of the pharmacy might have to leave for a couple of minutes even if it was only to answer a call of nature. When that happened, if someone entering knew what he or she were looking for and where to find it, they could acquire almost any drug they desired.
    Frank stopped and looked up and down the corridor once more.
    It was empty in both directions.
    Later on that evening it would be even quieter.
    He turned and began pushing the trolley once again.

22
     
    Paul Crane screamed.
    He couldn’t think what else to do.
    He opened his mouth and bellowed as loudly as he could. It wasn’t a recognisable word that he roared in the confines of that satin-lined box. It was just an animal exhortation of dismay, horror and fear all mingled together in one wrenching cry.
    This couldn’t be happening. It was impossible. Things like this only happened in