either. “You’re a very rugged young man. One of our Celtic cousins?”
“Scottish,” said Cormac shortly.
“Ooh, lovely. Although I do miss busy Lissa . . . Is she well?”
Cormac shrugged. “Never met her.”
“Oh, that is such a shame. Seriously, my tastes are”—he gave Cormac a long-lashed look—“very broad, but she is sweet as a peach.”
He sighed and sat down. Cormac frowned. This man didn’t seem terribly ill at all.
“Sorry, but . . . why isn’t this being handled by your GP?”
Barnabas sighed. “Oh yes . . . we had a little bit of a rumpus . . .” He smiled at the memory. “Goodness me, she was quite the . . . well. Mustn’t be disrespectful.”
“Did you get struck off the list?” said Cormac, amazed.
“Oh, darling, we both got struck off,” said Barnabas, smiling cruelly. “Ho hum. And I’m banned from Bupa. Hence the riffraff like you, darling.” He lifted up his glass. “Are you sure you don’t want a little glass of this? Just emptying Daddy’s cellar . . . It’s quite tremendous.”
Barnabas stood up and unbuckled his trousers. He was wearing Calvin Klein underpants, and although too thin, he was in beautiful shape: a narrow waist, long legs, a broad back. He looked like a statue on the beautiful sofa and gave a “I just can’t help being so gorgeous” look directly at Cormac.
“Aye, aye,” said Cormac. His attention focused on a small lump on the side of Barnabas’s underpants, and he put on gloves to take a look at it. He had a good idea what it was, but he was utterly horrified when he finally unwrapped the bandage. Suddenly it became clear why Barnabas needed so much aftershave.
What was revealed wasn’t merely a wound.
It was a hole, directly into his groin. Even Cormac, who had seen a few things—a man gored by a stag for starters; a tankful of soldiers picked off by snipers—had never seen anything quite like this.
“I know,” said Barnabas, continuing to drawl. “A little dramatic. Although it’s quite the party piece.”
The thing was vicious, infected, oozing, incredibly deep.
“Why aren’t you in hospital?!”
Barnabas rolled his eyes. “They won’t give me the good stuff and they time everything.”
“You need a skin graft!”
“Yeeeaass . . .” said Barnabas, staring out the window and gulping his wine, and suddenly the full horror of what was actually happening struck Cormac forcibly.
Barnabas wasn’t getting help because he didn’t want it. A direct route into his body was actually fairly useful to feed his habit. The two men looked at each other, Cormac trying his best to hide his horror and disgust.
“And they still want to fuck me, can you believe it?” said Barnabas languidly.
The pain of it, Cormac thought. The amount of drugs he must need.
“I’ll need to clean it out,” he said, gulping.
“Yes, please,” said Barnabas. “I do pretty well, but it tends to make me faint.”
He slurped more of his wine, and Cormac got to work, glancing at the beautiful telescope and the great hanging works of art and out the vast floor-to-ceiling windows, the Thames in full flow, dredgers, commuting boats, sightseeing boats, and huge tugs full of slurry traversing up and down the great expanse underneath the bridges. It was a profound and extraordinary sight; the city lay at your feet, yours for the taking, everything you could possibly want. And what this beautiful dissipated young man had wanted was to stuff himself so full of drugs that he had created an entire hole in his body.
Cormac hadn’t really come up against money before—even the local laird was more or less skint, or certainly dressed as though he was. This hushed, thick-carpeted world was new to him.
He didn’t like it at all.
He refilled Barnabas’s glass at his request (Barnabas slugged it as if it were water), then he anesthetized the area—Barnabas laughed at the idea of that doing him any good at all—and cleaned and swabbed it, then filled it with packing and taped it together as best he could. It was nothing like enough.
“You need to be in hospital,” he said urgently. “If you get sepsis, it could kill you.”
“Certainly not,” said Barnabas. “I’m having far too good a time.” He waved his arm around. “You should join us tonight, there’s a Shoreditch restaurant opening. Some filthy fusion thing, but the champagne should be good.”
Cormac looked at him in amazement. “You’ve just met me!”