FADE IN: INT. ST. OLAVE'S HOSPITAL, MORTUARY CORRIDOR, BERMONDSEY, LONDON, MORNING A corridor that was not built to be a waiting room. The walls are pale institutional green, the paint applied in a decade when optimism about public health was still a policy position. A clock on the wall reads 8:14. The date stamp on the admissions board reads: DECEMBER 9, 1952. PORTER WILLIAM HATCH (58) moves between two rooms at the end of the corridor. He is a deliberate man, big hands, soft-soled shoes, the economy of movement of someone who has been doing this job long enough that efficiency has become his natural posture. He carries a ledger. He carries it with the particular weight of something that has gotten heavier than expected. He pushes open the mortuary anteroom door with his shoulder. The room inside: two banks of filing drawers, a desk, a lamp already lit against the grey morning. DR. MORTUARY REGISTRAR HENSHAW (65) sits at the desk. He is writing. He has been writing for some time. HATCH sets the ledger on the desk beside the open one. Henshaw looks at it. Then at Hatch. Then at the ledger he has been writing in, which is full. HATCH We've run out of entries. In the main register. Henshaw looks at the full register. He looks at the second one Hatch has brought. He opens it. The binding cracks: new. He takes the pen. HENSHAW Date. HATCH Ninth. 1