The car park was crammed There was a queue of buses, cars, taxis, ambulances both ways at every exit. There seemed to be patients wandering everywhere: some complaining, some apparently enjoying the break from hospital routine, some actually pushing their drip bottles on portable stands. At the exits, hospital staff were chasing their patients, trying to get their details before they became lost in the crowds. A policeman was trying to ensure a one-way traffic flow through the grounds, but the system wasn’t working.

A cry went up when an ambulance, reversing, knocked over a wheeled stretcher. Fortunately the stretcher was empty.

She heard the hospital managers conferring with each other, and the consultants and senior nurses. Where the hell were they going to put all these patients? The Health Service had gotten very sleek and efficient, it seemed, but it didn’t have an ounce of spare capacity…

She found a senior police officer, a superintendent, trying to bring some order to the chaos; she told Morag to help out with room clearing.

Morag went into the hospital.

Away from the reception areas, the building had already mostly been cleared. The National Health: bulk-bought green paint on the walls, echoing corridors, metal-framed beds, the all-pervasive stink of disinfectant — as a child Decker had had an unhappy time in hospital, an extended stay to treat a badly fractured leg. Being here brought all of that back. Especially the smell.

But still, in here she was away from people for a time, the car horns and shouts of the exit areas were receding to a background wash of noise, and the loudest sound was the click of her heels on the polished floor.

She could feel herself starting to unwind, just a little. Was that wrong?

The doors to the wards were closed. When she looked along the corridors she could see pillows propped up against each of the doors, their fat cotton bellies protruding from the door frames. The pillows were a mark that the rooms had been cleared. It was standard procedure. You couldn’t go back into one of these rooms without knocking over the pillow, and you couldn’t prop it up again from inside the room. Fail-safe, supposedly.

She heard something from inside one “cleared” ward. A low mumbling.

She kicked the pillow out of the way, opened the door and went inside.

Bright sunlight streamed into the room, dazzling off the polished floor. There was a row of beds, roughly abandoned, sheets and blankets pulled aside and crumpled. She searched, quickly. Medical charts, clothes lockers, a trolley with medication.

The whimpering was coming from under one of the beds.

Morag went over and looked under the bed. There was an old woman huddled there, in a thick flannel nightdress. Bright, rheumy eyes stared out of the dark at Morag. “Who are you?”

“It’s all right, dear. You need to come out now.”

The woman clutched bird-like arms to her chest.