Babe was the only patient in the small four-bed ward. Lying on his back with a tube up his nose, he seemed shrunken and old. Ned knelt by his bed and looked at the face he loved so deeply.

‘Babe,’ he whispered, ‘Babe, it’s Thomas.’

‘I come back half an hour,’ said Martin, closing and locking the door. ‘You go then. Not see Babe again.’

Ned could see the thick orbs of Babe’s eyeballs rolling under the loosened skin of his eyelids.

‘Ned?’ The name came out in a whispered breath.

Ned took a hand. ‘It’s me,’ he said, tears starting to roll down his face. ‘Babe, you can’t leave me. You mustn’t leave me. Please … please … I’ll go mad. I know I’ll go mad.’ His voice cracked and he gave a huge sob. ‘Babe! Oh Christ, Babe! I will kill myself if you go. I swear to Christ I will.’

Babe pushed out his blackened tongue and passed it over dry and flaking lips. ‘I am dying,’ he said. ‘They will pack me in a box in the room next to this. I heard them talking when I woke up an hour ago. They will seal me in a crate and take me to the mainland where I will be certified dead, nailed into a coffin and sent home. They will burn me in England.’

‘Please don’t talk like this,’ the tears were dropping from Ned’s face onto the bed sheets.

‘We have half an hour, no more,’ whispered Babe, ‘so you must listen to me. In sixty-nine I was preparing to leave England. They caught me before I could leave and they brought me here, but they never guessed what I had been up to.'

‘Babe, please! You’re working yourself up…’

‘If you don’t listen,’ Babe took Ned’s hand and gripped it hard, ‘I shall die here and now!’ he hissed. ‘Be silent for once and listen. They took me before I could escape. But I had taken money. I knew the account numbers, dozens of them. I remembered them all. I funnelled and finagled them, united them all into one grand account. Here, take it, take it!’

Babe opened the hand that had been grasping Ned’s. A small fold of paper was clipped between his fingers. ‘Take it. There is money there, perhaps after thirty years it is more than you can spend. The Cotter Bank, Geneva. When they found out that it was missing they came here to question me. I had hidden its trail and they were mad with rage. “Where is it? What have you done with it?” I had been here no more than a month, but Mallo had passed that month jolting my brain with electricity and filling me with drugs. The violence of my behaviour had given him no choice. I had known they would come you see, and I wanted to be ready. When they arrived, I dribbled, I giggled, I simpered, I slobbered and I wept. You would have been proud of me, Ned. I was the maddest of the mad. A ruin of a noble mind. They went away cursing, in the belief that they had destroyed the sanity of the only man that knew where all that money lay. I’d love to know how they explained it to their Minister. Now, read that piece of paper, learn it and destroy it. The Cotter Bank, Geneva. All the money will be yours when you leave here.’

‘Why do you think I want money?’ Ned’s tears still flowed in an endless stream. ‘I don’t want money, I want you! If you die, I will die. You know I will never leave this place.’

‘You will leave this place!’ cried Babe with terrible urgency. ‘You will leave in a coffin. Listen to me. There is a metal spoon by my bed, take it now. Take it!’

Ned, weeping at this inconsequential madness, took the spoon.

‘Hide it on you, no not there. Not in a damned pocket! Suppose Martin searches you?’

‘Where?’ Ned looked down at Babe in bewilderment.

‘Your anus, man! Push it deep in your anus. I don’t care if it bleeds.’

‘Oh Babe…’

‘Do it, do it now or I swear by almighty Christ that I’ll die cursing you. There! I don’t care if it makes you scream. I don’t care if you bleed like a pig, push it up, push it up! Now, can you stand? Can you sit? Good, good, you’ll do.’

Babe leant back down on the pillow and slowed his breath. ‘Now then,’ he said at last. ‘Now then, Ned. You’ve got the piece of paper. Look at it. The Cotter Bank, Geneva. I dared not write that down. See on the paper. There’s a number, a password phrase and a counter phrase.

Learn them. Repeat them to me… good, and again. Again … once more. Now swallow the paper. Chew it and swallow. Repeat the number … the passwords … the address again.’

‘Why are you doing this, Babe? You’re frightening me.’

‘I owe you the money. Backgammon. You’re a devil at the game. Not much more now, lad. Cast your mind back to last winter. The week before Christmas. The day we talked together about Philippa Blackrow. I had been drawing a circuit diagram for you, do you remember? You kept it, like I told you?’

‘It’s in my room, I suppose. With all my other papers. Why?’

‘It’s Thursday. Paul is on night duty. You get on all right with Paul. Hold him in conversation, ask him about football as he closes you in. You’ll need your wits to time it. Use the teaspoon to catch the lock. There’s so much for you to do. You’ll need all your strength. I’ll go on the morning boat to the mainland. Christ, what’s that I can hear?’

A key rattled in the lock and the door swung open. Martin beckoned to Ned.

‘You come with me now. Leave Babe, come with me.’

‘You said half an hour!’

‘The doctor, he comes to look at Babe. You come.

Ned threw himself down on the bed, his tear-sodden face soaking Babe’s beard.

‘Goodbye, my boy. You have already saved my life. My mind will live forever in yours. Build great things in my memory and to my memory. We have loved each other. For my sake now, stop your howling. Go quietly and pass this last day in remembering. Remember everything. You take my love and memory with you for ever.’

‘Come now! Now!’ Martin strode to the bed and pulled Ned roughly away. ‘Against the wall. I search you. Many bad things in the hospital ward.’

From the doorway, Ned cast one last look back into the room as Martin pushed him against the wall.

Babe’s eyes were closed tight. All his concentration now was being spent on forcing his heart to beat faster and faster until it might burst in his chest.

An hour after lunch, Martin came to the sun-room with the news that Babe had died.

Ned, sitting alone at the chessboard, nodded. ‘Was he in pain?’

‘No pain,’ Martin’s voice was quiet and almost reverential. ‘Very peaceful. He has quick heart attack once more and was dead fast. Dr Mallo say there was nothing nobody could do,’ he added, with a hint of defensiveness. ‘Not in any hospital in the world.’

‘Would you mind,’ Ned asked quietly, ‘if I spent the rest of the day in my room? I would like to think and…, and to pray.

‘Okay, I take you there.’

They walked in silence to Ned’s room. Martin looked around at the piles of books and papers leaning up against the walls. ‘Babe, he teached you many things, yes?’

‘Yes, Martin. Many things.’

‘Some books in my language here, but you are not speaking.’

‘A little, I can read a little, but not speak very well,’ Ned replied, in halting Swedish.

‘Yes. Your accent is bad. Maybe, now Babe gone, we are better friends,’ said Martin. ‘You teach English, I teach Swedish. You teach music and the mathematics to me also.’

‘That would be nice,’ said Ned. ‘I would like that.’

‘I leave school early. I run from home where my father was beating me. The more you teach, the better friends.’

‘All right.’

‘It’s not necessary you have to be nice with me,’ Martin said, looking awkwardly at the floor. ‘I understand this. Sometimes, I am bad. I have bad feelings in my heart. You must have me in your prayers now.

‘Of course, Ned felt unwanted tears falling down his cheeks again.

‘Okay, Thomas,’ said Martin. ‘I leave now.’

It took almost half an hour for Ned to find the circuit diagram that Babe had drawn and two hours for him to be sure that he had memorised and understood it properly.