Oxford

Will Parry finally finishes work at three o'clock in the afternoon.  He climbs into his ten year old VW Golf and drives home with extreme care.  The last thing he needs now is to be stopped by the police and suffer the indignity of being fined and having his licence endorsed for being unfit to drive through tiredness.

Closely followed by his cat-daemon Kirjava, he opens his front door and hangs up his coat in the hall.

He has a ground floor flat in an old house which overlooks the Oxford Canal.  The back garden runs all the way down to the towpath – an obvious security risk, but well worth it for the privilege of being able to sit and watch the boats pass up and down the canal on their way to the river Isis or the town of Banbury.

Will knows that he ought to go straight to bed and get some much-needed sleep, but he has things on his mind.  Like this morning's case.  He needs to talk it over with somebody.  Somebody outside the medical profession; somebody who can give him an intelligent outsider's view of what has happened.

He knows just the person.

Will sits in the fireside chair in his sitting-room, points his phone at the TV opposite him and speaks the single word 'Mary.'  The TV lights up blue as the phone uplinks to it, and it displays the message: Calling Mary.

Ten seconds later, the blue screen is replaced by Mary Malone's face.

'Will!  Hello!  What's up?'

'Hello Mary.  Can you talk?  Where are you?'  The picture is unusually grainy and he wonders if she is in an area of poor reception.

'All the time in the world to talk to you, Will.'  Mary winks with exaggerated irony.  'I'm in Colombo, Sri Lanka.  At the University.'

'You're not off on another jolly!'

'Particle physics is a hard row to hoe.'  Mary winks again.  Will can see that she is holding a glass of something.  'This is the sort of thing we poor researchers have to put up with, every now and again.'

'Mary, find yourself a quiet corner.'  There are party sounds coming from the TV speakers.  'I need to ask your advice.'

'All right, Will.  Get yourself a drink too.'

'What's the time there?'

'About half-past ten.'  Mary finds herself a table in a corner of the bar where she and her colleagues have been relaxing after a hard day of presenting and reviewing scientific papers.  She puts her phone down on the table in front of her and its lens swivels round and locks onto her face.  It hunts for a suitable screen and projects Will's image onto a white paper plate which she has found and rested against a spare glass.  Will's phone transmits a picture of his empty chair for thirty seconds until he returns, holding a whisky-and-soda.

'Cheers!'  They chink glasses in virtual space.

'Now what's all this about?  Heard from Lizzie or Lyra recently?  How are they?'

'I talked to Lizzie last week.  They're both fine.'

'And that nice nurse you introduced me to?'

'Judy?  Yes, she's fine, too.  Mary, she's not my girlfriend or anything.  Stop trying to fix me up!

'Now listen.  And put that glass down!'  Will and Kirjava can see Mary's daemon perched on her left shoulder, even over the phone link.  He pecks her on the cheek and turns and looks at Kirjava, who is curled up on Will's lap.  The daemons are the key – the key to everything.

'There was a man came in this morning.  Amputation of the right arm, just above the elbow.'

'What, like with a chainsaw or something?'

'Yes, and no.  I mean, I've seen things like this before, gardening mishaps or road accidents, but this case was different.'

Will had been woken by the crash call on his bleeper and simultaneously by Staff Nurse Judy Beckley knocking on the door.  'Dr Parry!  Casualty!'  He'd rushed into A&E reception to see a young man being carried in, supported by a woman and a middle-aged man.  His arm had been tied up in a tourniquet just below the shoulder but he had obviously lost a great deal of blood.  'The icebox!' the woman had called out, and Will immediately understood what had happened.  Something had severed the patient's arm and it had been preserved in the icebox in the hope that it could be sewn back on.

'We can do a lot these days.  The nanoes see to the nerves while we concentrate on the bones, muscles, veins and arteries.  I've heard of patients getting ninety-eight percent of their limb function back after an amputation, especially is the cut is clean.'

'And was the cut – oh, bugger off!  Sorry, Will.'  A drunken figure lurches against Mary, confusing the phone so that its lens whirls randomly around the room before it catches sight of Mary again and refocuses on her face.

'Was the cut clean, you were going to ask?'

'Yes.'

'It was the cleanest cut I've seen since…'

'Since when?'

'Since… this.'  And Will holds up his hand, the one with the two missing fingers.

'The Knife?'

'No, it can't be the Knife.  I'd know, or Kirjava would know, if the Knife came into in this world again.  Mary, do you know anything that can slice so cleanly that it leaves a mirror finish on the cut faces?'

'One or two.  Tell me, were there any signs of burning?'

'No, no cauterisation.'

'So it couldn't have been a laser or an energy weapon.  They didn't bring in the thing that had done it?'

'No.  It was very hard to get any details out of them at all.'

'What was the patient's name?'

'Farrell.  Jack Farrell.'

'A fine Irish name!  Where was he from?'

'They said Abingdon.'

'Get any other names?'

'No.'

'Hmmm.  Leave it with me, Will.  I've got some ideas, but I'll need to do some checking up first.  Get some sleep.  You look dreadful.'

'Thanks, Mary.  Have another one for me.'

'Bye.'

'Bye.'

Will takes a quick shower and falls into bed, Kirjava lying next to him, close to his heart.  'I must talk to Lizzie about this,' he thinks, as sleep overtakes him.