They told Matthew there was nothing he could do. Lukas wasn’t being operated on, and no, Matthew couldn’t see him. They asked Matthew if he knew what Lukas had taken, but Matthew said no, that he didn’t. They wanted to know if Matthew knew what Lukas had done with his penis, but Matthew said that he didn’t, that he didn’t know.

He felt sick in the stomach. The ride in the ambulance had made him feel sick.

He went to sit down again, but an orderly came up to him. He said that Matthew couldn’t stay in the waiting room like that, covered in blood. It was distressing to other people. He would have to wait outside, outside the main entrance. A police car was coming. A police car was coming to pick him and take him back to the house.

Matthew figured he had to get rid of Lukas’ penis. If the police saw it in his pocket, saw the bulge, of if they searched him. Already, there was a spot of fresher blood where his pocket was, blood that hadn’t been rainwashed, but had leaked.

He said he had to use the toilet, and the orderly showed him where it was. He walked inside, and locked himself in a stall, thinking he would flush it down the toilet, but as he pulled it out, and looked at it, he couldn’t help himself. He didn’t want to do it, but if he didn’t, he knew he would regret it. He smiled, thinking he really shouldn’t, but it was a morsel.

He popped it in his mouth.

And started to chew.

It was like gristle. And cold. And there was no way he could bite through it.

He would have to swallow it whole. He worked it around in his mouth, worked up the courage, and then he swallowed it, bending forward and holding onto the back of the stall door as he did so.

It was a lot to be swallowing in one go, and as it went down it hurt, going down the wrong way, and making his eyes water.

Almost instantly, he felt sicker. There was blood in it. Cold blood. He had swallowed Lukas’ blood again, and he knew that feeling.

He flushed the toilet and walked towards the mirrors. He washed his hands, not looking at himself, and then he looked up.

He really was handsome. It wasn’t like it had been in that painting. He really did look good. It was just his eyes. They were black. But he had been covered with blood.

He dried his hands under the drier and walked through the waiting room, keeping his head down. Outside, he stood under the eave, and watching the rain, he waited.

After a minute or so, he felt really ill. And decided he should go back in, and go the toilet, and vomit. He was going to vomit anyway. He was sure of it. He decided to move, but saw the police car. It pulled up the drive and rounded the circle, coming to a stop in front of him.

Shit, Matthew thought.

He stepped into the rain.

‘Matthew Mason?’

Matthew nodded.

‘Get in the back.’

Matthew opened the door and got in. Before he even had a chance to put the seatbelt on, they were moving and the siren was on. The driver pulled onto the wrong side of the road to get out of the hospital entrance, almost hitting an incoming ambulance, and then he tore along the Westaway to Eden Park, and entered Riverview Drive.

When they pulled up to the house, there were four other police cars already there, all of them with their lights flashing in the rain.

Matthew knew he was going to vomit. He couldn’t keep it down. He put his hand on the handle, to open the door, but it was locked. He looked for the switch, but it was missing.

The policeman in the passenger seat got out and opened the door for him, and then he ran away, running toward the porch through the rain.

Matthew staggered out of the car. He bent forward, and coughed, holding his stomach. He felt a river of bile rising up from his throat and flowing into his mouth, and he spat it, and swallowed, forcing himself, determined to keep himself from vomiting.

He managed it, and walked through the rain, to the porch, where one of the policemen was waiting.

‘Finding the whole thing exciting, are you?’ the policeman said, nodding at Matthew’s groin.

Matthew looked down. He had his loosest jeans on, and his cock was sitting up in them, as hard as it could get. Matthew put his hands over it, and shook his head.

It had been like that all day, he figured. In the ambulance? He didn’t know.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ the policeman said, gripping Matthew’s shoulder.

Matthew felt like hitting him. He didn’t know him. He didn’t have any right to…

Matthew was cold.

He shivered.

And shook his body like a dog.

Upstairs, he had a shower. He pulled himself, thinking of how Lukas’ groin had looked in the rain. Nothing there. Just like he had imagined. And washed clean by the water, it had looked okay, except for the pulsing blood.

When he had finished. He changed into the tight jeans and went downstairs.

One of the policewomen stared at him, stared at his groin, and the bulge there.

They had given him ten minutes. Ten minutes to shower and change, and now they wanted him to come downstairs with them.

He walked to the workroom door, and stopped.

He didn’t know how it had ever got to look like this. There was blood everywhere. All over the bench and the floor. Pools, and puddles of it. Though the worst thing. The obvious thing, was his footprints. The pattern on the base of his runners, trailing toward the music room, to the bathroom, to the music room, to the door, back in, and back out again.

They wanted him to look into the music room, but told him to cross the workroom carefully.

‘Is this where you found him?’

Matthew shook his head, not so much in answer to the question, but because of the look and the smell of the room. There was a pile of shit in a puddle of dark blood. Sprays of blood on the wall. Footprints. And blood on the piano keys, which seemed to be the worst thing.

He stepped forward, but someone grabbed his shoulder.

‘I think that’s enough,’ one of the policeman said.

‘So you found him in here, did you?’ another one asked him.

Matthew didn’t know what to say. He nodded.

They led him out of the workshop, into the cellar, and before Matthew knew what was happening, they were cuffing his wrists.

A policeman was standing in front of him in the dim light of the cellar.

‘Matthew Mason. I’m charging you on the suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand the caution?’

Matthew looked up at them, hardly daring to understand.

He nodded, and felt like a pit had opened in his stomach.

They led him up the hall steps, in darkness, but he had become someone else now, as far as they were concerned. A person who didn’t matter. They talked to each other like he wasn’t there, like he was a dog that they were leading away, or someone deaf, and dumb, and blind. A person they couldn’t even see.

In the kitchen, as they walked him through it, McCady was grim-faced. She stared at him, and offered a silent little nod of affirmation, as though all her predictions had finally come true, and she was satisfied. She had never liked him. Even when he was a boy, she had never liked him.

They pushed his head down, pushed him into the car, and drove him into the city. The car entered the police headquarters building by a back way, going down into a tunnel that Matthew had never supposed to exist. They pulled up in a lighted area. On one side of the car, there was a line of perspex cells.

They opened the door, and Matthew stood there, in an underground concrete tunnel, while the policemen spoke through the intercom.

On the other side of the cells, Matthew could see the inside of the station, brightly lit with fluorescent lights, with a shining linoleum floor, a long metal bench with policemen behind it, and other prisoners, dressed in orange jumpsuits, standing there.

The door to one of the cells opened automatically. They put Matthew into it, and then asked him to pass his hands out, through a slot in the door, and they took his cuffs off.

Matthew turned around and looked at all of the policemen behind the counter. There was ten or fifteen of them, but none of them so much as even glanced his way. There was one prisoner, with his back to Matthew, talking to a policeman, while the policeman tapped something into the computer.

When the prisoner was finished, he turned, and looked at Matthew. He winked. And smiled.

‘Shit!’ Matthew muttered, when the guy had turned away.

He sat down on the bench and put his head in his hands.