My meds were beginning to wear off. I’d become well used to the sensation, like bathwater draining away, and to tell you the truth I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. Was I better at all this, at doing my job, with or without the anti-psychotics and the Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, whatever the hell they are? I wasn’t sure what ‘clear-headed’ even meant any more. I stood in the corridor staring at the sickly-yellow wall, panting like some knackered old dog and wondering what Johnno would think about it.

Knowing exactly what he would say.

Take a fucking break . . .

I could see that, as per usual, Tony was standing at the exit with his bags packed, as I walked across to the meds hatch. There was, equally predictably, one person ahead of me, waiting for his mid-afternoon prescription. That was fine though, because the Waiter was exactly the person I was looking for.

‘Sounds like you had fun with those cameras,’ I said. ‘Last Saturday, after dinner.’

Graham spoke without turning round because he did not want to miss that hatch opening. He was staring at it all the way through our conversation. ‘I always have fun.’

‘Just random, is it?’

‘What’s that mean . . . random?’

‘Which camera you shut down. Just an accident, was it, that on Saturday night it happened to be the camera covering the men’s corridor? Kevin’s room.’

‘Yeah, an accident,’ Graham said.

‘You sure nobody suggested it? Nobody asked you if . . . maybe you fancied doing what you do to that particular camera?’

‘I just picked that one.’ He shuddered and shook his head. ‘I didn’t like the look of it.’

‘Do people ever ask you?’

He took so long to answer that I wasn’t sure he’d heard me. ‘Sometimes.’

‘Like when?’

Another long pause. Graham looked at his watch. He thrust his hands into his pockets, took them out again. ‘Once someone asked me to put food on the camera in the music room because someone else had been playing the guitar and she didn’t like it, so she wanted to go in there and smash it. Smash the guitar. Don’t ask me who it was, though, because I’m never going to tell you her name.’

I didn’t bother, because it wasn’t important. Lauren, obviously . . .

‘Did you tell the police about that?’

‘Yes, I had to, didn’t I?’ He tapped at the hatch window. ‘Someone obviously told them that sometimes I mess about with the cameras, because they asked me all sorts of questions about it. It wasn’t very nice, actually. It was like they were accusing me of something.’

‘That must have been upsetting,’ I said.

‘Are you accusing me of something?’

‘Absolutely not,’ I said.

He tapped at the hatch again. ‘Good, because I wouldn’t like that.’

The window opened to reveal George, who said, ‘Hello, Graham. Fancy seeing you here.’