Page 192 of The Examiner

Ludya

It’s in the store cupboard, behind some boxes underneath the bottom shelf. No one will find it there. What did you do with the body?

Jonathan

There was a roll of fabric propped up in the corridor. Wrapped it in that and dragged it to the bins.

Ludya

That’s material for the tunnel. Gela and Jem will be looking for it – if Griff and Rita don’t first.

Jonathan

It’s got blood and dirt on it now. Shit!

Ludya

Unwrap it, screw it up and chuck it by the bins. Make it look vandalised and thank fuck the art department is so underfunded there’s no CCTV.

Jonathan

This fucking phone.

Ludya

Dump it in the bins with the body.

Jonathan

We can’t leave it for a second. It has tech I’ve never seen before. You’re our techie, you need to see this.

Ludya

Look under Settings. There must be a way to change the level of security.

Jonathan

We’re trying but haven’t found it yet. Shit, shit. It’ll be light soon. We’ll have to take the body back to the house.

Ludya

I’ll come round the side, leave the door unlocked.

Royal Hastings, University of London Multimedia Art MA *Final Project*

Candidate name: Patrick Bright

Candidate number: 0883480

I lay low in Glasgow for weeks. I wore the second-hand clothes I found in the suitcase and told the family at home I didn’t want anyone coming looking for me, and to say I was in Manchester. Didn’t even go to Finny’s funeral. Ma’s cousins left me alone in their annexe and I got by selling little bags of heroin to fellows on the streets.

I was no big-shot dealer. Whenever I ran short of cash, I went out to the car and chopped a bit off the block to sell. I had no idea how much it was worth and probably sold short, but it was just to get by.

After a while the local dealers got wise to me and I told the cousins I was going to Newcastle. I drove straight to King’s Lynn instead. Saw it on a road sign and liked the name. Turned out King’s Lynn had a heroin problem too. I stayed in B&Bs and did the same, to pay the rent and buy food. It was survival. I was dead inside the whole time. I drove from city to city, town to town. Never staying anywhere longer than a couple of months. It got that I could turn up anywhere and know where the junkies would be. Could spot them even when they weren’t huddled in doorways, under piers or in car parks. I went in, did my business and hopped out before the regular chaps got territorial. And that’s how I lived for the best part of a year and a half. But eventually the second block started to run down. I finally turned the car towards London.

How I got the job at Modern Art is a miracle, or luck, or Finny was looking down on me and pulling strings. I was parked up in a back street as the sun came up one morning. You could drive right into London in those days, with no ANPR and no Congestion Charge. I’d just sold the last of my brick to the junkies behind Leicester Square and was wondering where I could go from there. Saw an old man struggling to carry a box into the back of a shop and jumped out to give him a hand. It was an art shop and we got talking about Schull and the artists who lived there. I showed him my little sketchbook.

By sunset I had a job in the shop, a room in the back where I kept an eye on the stock overnight, and even a parking space down the alley. Got rid of the dodgy Escort with its Irish number plates as soon as I could, settled in with a proper job contract and tenancy agreement. And there I stayed. Too scared to go home. Not even for Ma and Da’s funerals. Too scared to go anywhere.