round; although the reviews had been 'mixed' (mostly poor) there had been a couple of good ones; the book had not died of shame. Sedley still haunted him; over the intervening time, their lives, in fact, seemed to have become more and more entwined.
And now, Tranter reflected at his desk that Monday evening, the stuck-up little bastard stood between him and the Pizza Palace Book of the Year award.
At six o'clock, Gabriel said goodbye to Samson and the other clerks, then crossed the Temple to the Underground and took the Circle Line to Victoria.
At the other end of his short overground journey, he had to walk fifteen minutes from the suburban station to the hospital. He knew the way from five years of visiting his brother Adam in Glendale. He barely noticed the bookmaker's garish temptation, the pizzeria, the low-cost supermarket and the clothing chain; the surprisingly numerous pubs, some with Thai food and karaoke but most unregenerate and drab; the park, the dual carriageway, the famous red and gold burger outlet, once a single stall at San Bernardino racetrack; and then the forest of roadside warnings: camera, speed limit, hump and restriction. The bare chestnut trees were the first he saw of Glendale, their leafless branches dripping on the rusted iron rails. There was a porter's cabin with a raisable pole inside the main gates, where Gabriel was no longer asked to sign the visitors' book, but was simply waved through by Brian or Dave.
He held a cheap umbrella over his head as he walked up the tarmac drive, between the lime trees and the lawns beyond. Glendale was a relatively modern place, built mostly in the late 1960s, and its architect had avoided any suggestion of its famous Victorian precursors. There was no Italianate bell tower or home farm; no sound of locking doors and footsteps fading into half-mile corridors. Its first building had been planned as a unit of a still-functioning but older general hospital, to which it remained connected by a corridor.
The brick buildings were many and low, with bright orange or scarlet curtains. Double doors swung freely under fierce strip lights. Most of the houses were single-storey, double at the most, and took their friendly names from benefactors of the hospital: Collingwood, Beardsley, Arkell ... In the rainy darkness, the whole complex might have passed for the barracks of an unconventional tank regiment or the headquarters of a government listening post, had it not been for the signs at the mini-roundabout, with their NHS logos, and then the smaller arrows on the buildings: X-Ray, Long-Stay Unit, Secure Wing, Rainbow Room (for the terminally ill, Gabriel presumed) and Electroconvulsive Therapy.
Adam was in Wakeley, a low house towards the back of the plot in the shade of half a dozen pine trees. Gabriel made his practised way through the staff parking and the canteen delivery area with its giant cylindrical dustbins. The door was open on to the steamy kitchen behind, and he caught a whiff of a long-boiled gravy dinner as he passed.
Rob, the muscular charge nurse, was in the glass booth by the door of Wakeley when Gabriel went in.
'Evening, Rob. I called ahead. Did you get the message?'
'Yes, Dr Leftrook told me. If you'd like to come with me ...'
Gabriel followed Rob down a short passage and into the dining area of Wakeley. One or two patients sat in chairs round the edge of the space; these were people who had wanted to escape the television that played constantly in the day room beyond.
At one window was Violet, as she had been every time that Gabriel had ever visited: a thin, hunchbacked old woman, her skirt folded over at the waistband to keep it up, who stood gazing out into the darkness with her right arm raised in permanent greeting - or possibly farewell.
She didn't notice Rob and Gabriel as they went by. In the day room, the television was showing a celebrity competition with the sound turned up loud. There was a scuffle taking place for possession of the remote control between an elderly man, who wanted to change the channel, and a loud young woman with blonde hair showing black roots who wanted to stick with the celebrities. The central heating had made the room so hot that most of the patients were in tee shirts. It was too dark to read; a single table lamp lit up a level, surging fog of cigarette smoke, through which Gabriel was just able to