It was easier said than done, of course. With eight or nine blokes to find rooms for and no spare places on the female corridor – even as a temporary measure – it took some doing. Drugged up and sleepy as most of them were, nobody was very happy about the situation. Ilias and The Thing immediately volunteered to take the two ‘seclusion’ rooms and planted themselves outside the doors to make damn sure they got them. There happened to be a couple of empty rooms on the ward directly opposite this one and a few more on the floor below, though nobody was particularly keen on that, because by all accounts there’s some hardcore head-cases down there. There wasn’t much choice in the end and, except for a couple of the Informals who were collected by ambulance and taken to a nearby hospital, all the male patients were bedded down again by the time the police arrived.

That was the worst bit for me, the real kick in the teeth.

Shunted out of the way, like I was useless.

Like I was the same as the rest of them.

Even though it was the men’s corridor where the ‘incident’ had taken place, the nurses made it clear straight away that they wanted all the female patients who weren’t in bed already to return to their rooms.

I was wide awake, buzzing with it, but not being anything like ready for bed wasn’t the most annoying thing. I marched straight up to Femi like she didn’t know the rules. ‘We don’t have to be in bed until midnight.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘But this is not . . . normal. We need everyone in their rooms so that the police can do their job when they get here.’

‘That’s the point,’ I said. ‘I can help.’ My fingers were itching to wrap themselves around a warrant card that wasn’t there. ‘I know how this works.’

Femi just nodded, flashed a thin smile, then placed a hand in the small of my back and pushed. I pushed back, but only because I was pissed off. I knew it was a waste of time, because I could already see Lauren and Donna and a few of the others who had been woken up by all the commotion drifting back towards their rooms.

‘It’s not fair,’ I said.

‘We have a protocol,’ Femi said.

‘When someone dies, you mean?’

Femi said nothing, just made sure I was moving in the right direction.

‘Kevin is dead, isn’t he?’