The Order of Things by Graham Hurley Page A

to please. My pleasure, I used to tell him. And you know something? I meant it.’
    They moved in together. They became a couple. They left LA and went upstate to San Francisco. They lived in Haight-Ashbury, hung out with the art crowd and got on with their lives. Jeff worked in IT. Alec taught dance in a local performance centre. Weekends they’d use a particular bathhouse until Alec woke up one morning with swollen glands, a raging fever and a mysterious rash. HIV had ravaged a generation of gay men by now. Antiretrovirals could slow down the progress of the disease, but Alec was careless with his meds, and very slowly his body’s immune system began to collapse. He was dying and they both knew it.
    ‘We were over here by now. I’d been in England before. I loved it. Man, we were so, so frank with each other. I said there was no better place to die, and Alec believed me. We had a little money. Enough to meet the rental on this place and maybe travel a little. I bought a car from a guy up in Exeter, a big old Jaguar, seven hundred bucks, drank gas. I polished it up real nice, looked after it. A ride fit for a king, I told him. Alec loved that car. He loved the leather seats, loved the way you never heard the engine, loved the way people looked at us from the sidewalk. I drove my adorable man everywhere in that car. There isn’t a beach, a cove, a bay we didn’t visit. But most he loved Cornwall, the north coast, the light especially. When the sun shone, he’d say it was a trailer for heaven. When the wind blew and the gales came, it was a trailer for hell. Either way, he couldn’t care less. We’d had a fine life. We’d had each other. Towards the end he was so, so thin. Nights he would sweat so much. I’d try and hold him but he’d push me away. Then the sores came, places you didn’t need them, and his glands blew up, and then it even got tough to breathe. That man’s whole life had been his body, and it was like – hey – you’ve betrayed me. I can’t tell you how pissed he felt. And he hurt too. He hurt bad. And that was hard for both of us.’
    He swung off the sofa and fetched a photo from a drawer. The face in the photo could have belonged to a man in his eighties: the dullness in his eyes, the sagging flesh, the thinning hair, the purple blotches around his mouth.
    ‘This is Alec?’
    ‘Yep.’
    ‘Sad.’
    ‘Yep.’
    Lizzie took another look. Jeff was right. This thing of beauty, key to a precious relationship, had become a husk of a man. She wanted to know whether Jeff had been registered with a doctor.
    ‘Sure. A guy right here in Dawlish.’
    ‘And what did he say?’
    ‘He said Alec would need care. Maybe a hospital. Maybe a hospice. Neither of us wanted that.’
    ‘So what was the alternative?’
    ‘Alec needed to die at home.’
    ‘You mean here?’
    ‘Sure. With me. On our own terms.’
    ‘Not easy.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You talked about it?’
    ‘You bet we talked about it. Heroin was one answer. That’s not hard to find, but you never really know what you’re buying out on the street and quality can be an issue. Plus there’s all the drama afterwards. A death like that, you can guarantee an autopsy. They’re gonna find this stuff in his system. And they’re gonna be asking questions.’
    ‘So there had to be another way? Is that what you’re telling me?’
    ‘Sure. And there was.’
    ‘Harriet Reilly?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Care to tell me how?’
    For the first time he hesitated. He wanted to know what Lizzie was going to do with all this stuff. He wanted to know where this story of his might be headed next.
    ‘It’s background,’ Lizzie said.
    ‘Background for what?’
    ‘Background for an investigation I’m running.’
    ‘Investigation? I don’t want any part of some bullshit investigation. You told me on the phone this conversation would stay private.’
    ‘That’s true.’
    ‘So how come we’re suddenly talking investigation?’
    Lizzie explained about