EIGHTEEN

Dates unknown, 1971

It was the brightness that woke me up. I had been dreaming for what felt like forever, an intense fantasy where everything seemed real. The grass between my fingers, the sound of the gathering crowd, my feet slamming against the stairs as I raced upward, the heavy jerk of the wood against my shoulder as I pulled -

I blinked warily and immediately jammed my eyes shut again, struggling to adjust to the glare assaulting them. Everything was blinding white. I squinted, jamming my eyelids together to allow just the merest glimmer of light through. Gradually, painfully, I was able to relax the muscles of my face as I became used to the blazing whiteness around me. While I waited for my eyes to get used to the glare, I used my other senses to assess my surroundings.

I was lying in an unfamiliar bed - a thin single mattress on a sprung metal frame judging by the protesting squeak of springs every time I shifted. The sheets were brittle and roughly starched, the blanket thin and scratchy in my hands. The smell of disinfectant filled my nostrils - an acrid assault. Combined with the paper-thin gown I was wearing, all these details added up to one conclusion: I was in a hospital of some kind.

Gingerly I put my hands up to my face, lightly running fingers over the swelling on the side of my head, and across the bridge of my shattered nose. Although I could not remember how or why yet, I knew my face had been injured recently. But touching it caused no pain. My nose had been re-set and I could feel no contusion. The injuries had fully healed, yet I felt like I had only been unconscious for a few hours - how was this possible? How long I had been in this place?

Squeezing open an eye, I began to look around me for the first time. I lay in an old, cast-iron single-bed, one of two dozen identical beds lining opposite walls of a long, silent room. The beds were empty, all stripped bare bar one which was fully made up for another, unseen occupant. The floors were covered in black-flecked white linoleum squares, reaching out to the white-tiled walls. Above me the ceiling was made of clear glass sheets in a metal latticework, hence the glaring brightness. I was completely alone.

What the hell was going on? Last thing I could remember was going to New Scotland Yard, waiting to see a CID man... With a jolt of fear I recalled the appearance of the C19 operative from the secret doorway, the brutal beating I had received at his hands, and the intervention of a familiar voice. I knew I had heard the voice before but its identity remained frustratingly just outside the grasp of my conscious mind. It was lodged inside my memory, but right now everything was a jumble of images and sensations - it was hard to separate fantasy from reality.

Groping around by the side of the bed, I find a plastic cord ending in a small white box with a button set into it. A call switch? Not knowing the answer, I pushed it to see what would happen. A few seconds passed and then there was a rattling of keys from the doors at the end of the corridor. Perhaps I was in a prison hospital, I wondered. At least that would explain the other empty beds and the locked door.

The double doors swung open to reveal a stern-faced nurse in a crisp white uniform, pushing a metal medical trolley. On it I could see a range of pills, bedpans and medical equipment. I relaxed and smiled quietly to myself. For an irrational moment I had almost been expecting torture tools. The nurse pushed the trolley up to the edge of my bed and smiled at me.

'Mr Stevens, awake at last! You had us worried there for a while, didn't you?' she said chirpily.

'Did I?'

'Oh, yes. My word, we weren't sure if you would pull through.'

'Pull through? From what?'

The nurse smiled as if she thought my thinking had been impaired by whatever ordeal I had been through. 'From the accident of course! Still, you're nearly better now. Here, let me take your temperature.' She shoved a cold thermometer into my mouth. I tried to ask her another question but she hushed me to silence for the next minute. As she counted off the seconds on a watch fastened over her left breast she held my wrist and monitored my pulse rate. Eventually, the thin tube of glass was pulled from my mouth, examined and placed back on the trolley, rattling inside a kidney-shaped stainless steel dish.

'Well, you're nearly fully recovered, Mr Stevens,' the nurse said. I examined her uniform carefully but could find no name badge by which to address her, just a curiously large white belt around her waist.

'Does that mean I can go home soon?' I asked.

'Go home? Of course you can't leave, Mr Stevens,' smiled the nurse, slipping into her voice for simpletons again. Her next words sent a cold thrill through me. 'You're in the Glasshouse, Mr Stevens. Nobody ever leaves the Glasshouse!'

With that she bent over to look for something on the lower level of her trolley and I saw the handgun holstered politely behind her back. Turning my head I realized that the metal latticework on the glass ceiling was actually a series of bars to prevent escape; the heavy lock on the door to keep me in, not to keep others out. I was a prisoner in the Glasshouse.