Heaven's Light by Graham Hurley Page A

deck, and when he turned up the volume control he found himself listening to something sombre, heavily classical, scored for full orchestra. He lowered the volume again and noticed the flag for the first time. The Union Jack was huge, covering the entire wall, hanging limply from a line of drawing pins pressed into the picture rail. Barnaby touched it. It felt as damp as everything else.
    ‘What is it, man? Help you at all?’
    Barnaby spun round. A small figure stood in the open doorway. Under the army greatcoat, he was wearing a pair of boxer shorts. His feet were bare and his hair was brutally cropped against the bony outlines of his skull. In one handhe carried a mug of something hot. In the other was a kitchen knife.
    ‘Haagen,’ Barnaby said mildly. ‘No need for that.’
    Haagen stepped closer, peering at Barnaby. His face was as thin as the rest of him and though he recognized Barnaby’s voice, he plainly wanted to make sure. Without his glasses, Haagen was semi-blind.
    ‘Want these?’ Barnaby had spotted them on top of the audio stack. He offered them to Haagen, who put them on. They robbed him of a little of his menace.
    ‘Brahms,’ he muttered, nodding at the cassette deck, ‘Requiem.’ He stood by the door for a moment or two then sucked at the liquid in the mug. Then he looked up, studying Barnaby over the rim. The steam began to mist his glasses, and he took them off, rubbing the lenses on the greatcoat. ‘You want some toast or anything?’
    Barnaby thought about it. He hadn’t eaten for nearly a day. Toast might help the headache. He followed Haagen through to the kitchen. Another candle stood on a plate beside an ancient electric stove; its guttering flame cast a thin yellow light over the crumbling plaster walls. Haagen speared a slice of bread with a fork and held it over one of the rings.
    ‘I thought you’d be at the hospital,’ Barnaby said, after a while, ‘last night.’
    ‘I was.’
    ‘When?’
    ‘Before you came. And afterwards.’
    ‘Why didn’t you stay? Say hello?’
    Haagen glanced over his shoulder, a smile edged with the same faint derision Barnaby remembered from the first time he and Haagen had met. The social worker had done the introductions and Haagen had simply sat there in thecourt interview room, waiting patiently to have his say. When it came to the details on the charge sheet, he’d admitted everything with an indifference verging on contempt. He’d done the burger bar because they kept lots of ready money. The stuff about animal rights, Barnaby’s suggested line of defence, was bullshit.
    ‘This OK?’
    Haagen was holding out a blackened slice of toast, thickly coated with Marmite. Barnaby bit into it, realizing how hungry he was.
    ‘So when did you get back?’ he enquired through a mouthful of crumbs. ‘From the hospital.’
    ‘Midnight. They threw me out. Sussed I wasn’t a doctor.’
    ‘Why would they think you were?’
    ‘I’d copped a white coat. Found it in an office. It’s just like anywhere. Wear a uniform, people leave you alone.’
    Barnaby nodded, licking Marmite off his fingers. Haagen was the brightest nineteen-year-old he’d ever met, an East German refugee who’d fled to the West with his eldest sister and somehow ended up in Portsmouth. He’d attended schools in the city since the age of five but classroom learning had never appealed to him and at fourteen, expelled from a series of comprehensives for disruptive behaviour, he’d dropped out of formal education altogether. Thereafter, according to the social worker’s case notes, he’d embarked on a fitful career of burglary and petty theft, using the proceeds to fund years of voracious reading. He’d devoured Ernst Junger. He’d gone through most of Nietzsche. He’d read everything he could find on the history of the Third Reich. And with the knowledge he’d acquired went a scalding candour that landed him in almost permanent trouble. Not once had Barnaby knownHaagen stoop