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he’d seen was of a neurotic hypochondria of epic proportions. In other words, he’d driven himself half crazy.’
    ‘ Is there a history of mental illness?’
    Turning to the computer to search the medical record, Ansoni said: ‘He was admitted several times to Denbigh Hospital with depression, and even sectioned once when he went completely crazy, and he spent a good part of his childhood and adolescence in one hospital or another. Tonsils, appendix, joint pains, chest pains, ear trouble, balance problems, headaches, gastro-intestinal problems, virulent mouth ulcers.’ He took his finger from the keyboard. ‘No physiological cause emerged, so a psychiatric conclusion was inevitably drawn, and indeed, such diffuse symptoms often indicate depressive illness.’
    ‘ Did you think he was a suicide risk?’
    ‘ Not really, although there were times when he seemed near the end of his tether.’
    ‘ Such as?’
    ‘ The last time we spoke.’ The doctor ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Osteo-arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis are common conditions at Ned’s age, and he had both, together with low blood pressure, and he often experienced minor loss of sensation in the extremities, but he’d convinced himself that something perfectly normal was extremely sinister, and would necessitate amputation of his legs in the not too distant future. I said he was talking nonsense and he told me to stop patronizing him, because as he knew his bodily workings better than any doctor, he knew these new pains and strange changes heralded disaster.’
    ‘ You’re on a hiding to nothing in that kind of situation,’ McKenna commented.
    ‘ Which is probably why I subscribed too easily, if not wholly, to the psychiatric diagnosis and consequently never went out of my way to shape a therapy for him.’
    ‘ You can’t treat what isn’t there.’
    ‘ He had real pain, even if it was the product of inner turmoil.’
    ‘ But you didn’t prescribe pain-killers?’
    ‘ Most strong pain-killers are highly addictive, and we have enough junkies courtesy of the NHS, without making more. Anyway, he never asked.’ He smiled again, fleetingly. ‘He was always on the edge of a psychological abyss, and he stopped himself from toppling over by sheer strength of will, so he dealt with his pain the same way. He once told me he even derived satisfaction from it, because it enhanced his awareness of the world.’
    ‘ People on the borderline of insanity often have heightened perceptions and instincts.’
    ‘ And which causes which?’ asked Ansoni. ‘He said he experienced pain in varying degrees day after day and night after night. He was helpless inside a body constantly threatening to kill him, from which, as he put it, he had to have prior permission for every breath he took, so I’m not surprised he became obsessed with its rhythms and workings and almost paranoid about his physical self.’ He paused, gathering his memories. ‘He used to clip articles from newspapers and magazines, and he’d come across one about aneurysms in the abdominal aorta, so he lay in the bath watching the throb of his own aorta, thinking an aneurysm would be like a bomb in his guts, but he wouldn’t know when the timer was set for detonation.’
    ‘ Sickness is an existentially precarious condition,’ McKenna said, ‘whatever the reasons. He was intensely conscious of the dichotomy between mind and body, and perhaps his mind just caved in to the pressure from time to time. I suppose you could say his social body never separated itself from his natural body.’
    ‘ To me, he simply personified the unbridgeable gulf between the sick and the well, but now his natural body’s dead, you can be sure his social body was somehow the cause of it.’
    ‘ Have you any idea what he could have taken?’
    The doctor shook his head. ‘You’ll have to wait on the toxicology report, but I’ve seen people near death after eating a few strawberries. It could be an