A Plea of Insanity (17 page)

Frank regarded her steadily then nodded. He pushed the one buff file to the side and brought out a second.

‘Cynthia Barclay,’ he said. ‘Police photographs.’

Claire opened the file.

The photographs were on the top.

She had met Cynthia Barclay once only. She would not have recognised her again. Not from these.

People who have ingested tablets and alcohol are inclined to vomit. Unconscious and lying on their back their vomit stays in their mouth and they breathe it in. Into their lungs instead of the fresh clean air that blows across our country so their lungs fill with acid. Hydrochloric acid to be precise. If they do not die from suffocation they will die from pneumonia caused by this alien substance in an organ which depends on oxygen. Inhalation pneumonia is a not uncommon cause of death for drunks and people who overdose on drugs. The noxious substances bubble from the mouth and nose as the dying person breathes their last.

Sometimes the bubbles are pink, blood-stained and
frothy.

Other signs are less constant. The eyes may be open. They may be shut. The body may be convulsed.

The first photograph was clear and well-coloured enough to discern everything. Cynthia Barclay lay on her back, her eyes, devoid of makeup, slightly open, as though she was peeping slyly from underneath the lids.
An illusion only
.

She was wearing a pale blue nightdress, demurely tied around her neck, with a narrow, darker blue ribbon. She wore a gold crucifix which lay, like a religious statement, halfway down her cleavage.

Pink vomit trickled from the side of her mouth.

Claire studied the picture for a minute before flipping it down on the desk, a discarded playing card.

The next photograph was of the side of her bed, a small table, with a drawer, a cupboard beneath. On the top was a bottle of tablets with its top unscrewed, a bottle of Gordon’s gin, its label clearly visible, a half-full glass and a travel alarm.

‘The tablets were barbiturates,’ Frank said. ‘The glass was full of neat gin. No fingerprints were found except hers on either the bottle of tablets, the drinking glass or the bottle. The tablets found in her stomach were pink Soneryl, the same as the ones in the bottle.’ He met her eyes. ‘We went right through the house looking for something suspicious. We’ve got Barclay’s record. We knew his mother’s death was convenient. We found nothing, Claire. Her GP informed us that she was addicted to Soneryl. She’d been prescribed them by his senior partner at the time of her husband’s death and no one had been successful at getting her to stop. In fact she would have to have been treated aggressively by the substance abuse
department to stop her habit. The lesser of two evils seemed to be to keep her on a maintenance dose, not increase, and stop her picking up more than a month’s supply at a time.’

Claire nodded. It all made perfect, logical sense.

But her original instinct had been to suspect Jerome Barclay of his mother’s murder. And that instinct was not melting away even with the police evidence.

‘Did she leave a note?’

The detective’s eyes were firmly connected to hers as he shook his head very slowly.

He wasn’t happy either.

‘There is something else that more or less tipped the balance,’ he said. ‘She had called the Samaritans earlier in the evening.’

Claire opened her eyes very wide, questioning.

‘It was a bit of a longshot on our part.’ Paul Frank couldn’t help preening a little. ‘We got a computer printout of her telephone calls. It’s more or less routine in a case like this. Added to that, in the newspaper deaths column there was a request that any donations be made to the Samaritans. We contacted them, explained what had happened and they were quite helpful. She’d been in the habit of ringing them once or twice a week when she was particularly worried about things. Two things in particular. Her son, behaviour bordering on criminal, and her own addiction, concerned about what would happen if one day her doctor simply refused to continue prescribing for her. That night, they said, she was quite tearful and on the phone for almost twenty minutes. They log all their calls,’ he explained.

But it would have been Barclay who would have inserted the death notice. And this alone made her smell a fat rat.
But she tucked this little fact away, said nothing and reluctantly closed the file on Cynthia Barclay.

Now her eyes were on the second file.

Without opening it she knew that this file would contain graphic crime scene photographs of Heidi’s murder-scene, the pictures that never would have been released to the general public. But they would have been shown to the jury in Stefan Gulio’s trial. She focused on the cover, knowing that Paul Frank would wait for her to open them.

‘In your own time,’ he said.

She reached out.

The photographs were clear and in colour, Heidi recognisable before she was cut down.

She gasped. ‘I hadn’t realised.’

Heidi was hanging upside down
.

She had been strung up by the ankles, her trousers flapping around her calves, arms and hair hanging downwards, her neck wound gaping, blood – seemingly gallons of it – pooling on the floor.

Claire felt faint. It looked so – animal. One word pushed into her mind.

Halal
.

‘Upside down?’

He nodded. ‘As you can imagine the blood loss was …’

‘But
this
.’ She jabbed her finger angrily on the colour plate. ‘
This
wasn’t made public. Why not?’

Paul Frank was unruffled by her anger. ‘Partly the indignity,’ he said. ‘It was unnecessary for the public to know. It would have achieved nothing except further revulsion for a sufficiently horrible crime.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘And partly?’

‘It was thought sensitive in the current political climate.’

‘
Halal
,’ she breathed again.

The detective looked uncomfortable. ‘We had a Muslim officer,’ he said. ‘A Pakistani guy. He explained that this was how halal meat is prepared. Upside down, the throat cut. The blood drains out. Quick, clean.’ He smiled. ‘The animal dies quickly. It wasn’t as though it had any bearing on the case anyway,’ he said defensively, ‘and we thought it was potentially inflammatory. It could have done more harm than good.’

‘And if Gulio had been a Muslim?’

‘The same,’ he said. ‘We would still have kept the detail of Doctor Faro’s murder secret.’

‘How did he manage it? Physically, I mean?’

‘Stunned with a blow to the back of the head, strung up and …’

‘How sure were you that you had the right man?’

‘We were sure. At the time.’

‘Did you seek a psychiatric opinion?’

‘Of course.’

But they both knew that Heidi was the one who could have given the most valid psychiatric opinion on Gulio. No one else would have known the secret passages of Gulio’s mind. And Heidi had been unable to speak either in his defence or to damn him.

‘Put your cards on the table,’ Inspector Frank said, ‘if you have any.’

She told him then about Barclay, holding nothing back from his history, telling him Sadie’s story, about the acid on her car, the story of the dead bird and the rabbit’s ears – even confiding to the detective the eerie feeling he gave her. ‘I have no firm evidence’, she said. ‘No real proof. Nothing except for the fact that I know he is capable. If I were an offender profiler I would describe Jerome Barclay and you
would be picking him up on my evidence alone. He is a danger.’

She closed her mind to the image of Kristyna’s terror, shut her ears to her colleague’s screams
. Drew in a deep breath. ‘And now he’s turned his attention on me.’

Frank looked rattled.

It was hard not to look again at the picture.

Heidi had been wearing navy blue trousers with black, kneelength popsox. The trousers flapped up around her knees, which were pale and swollen. She wore no shoes and her right big toe stuck through the popsock. The cord was looped tightly around her ankles, biting in to the flesh
.

In crime scene photographs it is often the detail rather than the whole which you remember afterwards.

Paul Frank waited while she studied the pictures. ‘I’ve looked back over Gulio’s conviction,’ he said, tossing statements towards her. ‘If you removed his confession we would have had a weak case. Between you and me it might have served us well to have kept more of an open mind. If you look at it from another angle most of the evidence was circumstantial. The blood stains
could
have come from him stumbling across the murder scene. He had no good reason for being there. But just remember he never retracted his confession. We gave him plenty of chances.’

She looked up. ‘Knowing Gulio’s history I could explain that. He has a sense of guilt. He’s likely to blame himself even when he is innocent.’

‘Maybe.’ The detective looked dubious.

‘And as for the second case, Barclay’s mother. You know how difficult these poisonings are, how little evidence there often is.’

‘She’d had quite a lot to drink that night – the equivalent of a bottle and a half of wine plus the gin. Her fingerprints
were quite clearly on the pill jar. There was just nothing to make us believe otherwise.’ He chewed his lip, frowning and thinking. ‘And as for Kristyna – we’ve nothing. Absolutely nothing. Completely nothing. We can only convict when we’ve evidence – hard evidence. What I’m saying is, Claire, our hands are tied. We can do nothing.’

‘You can do one small thing’, Claire interrupted, ‘apart from finding him, that is. You can at least check the dates he was in the country. See if they tally with the date Kristyna disappeared.’

‘I take it the hospital doesn’t have any way of finding Barclay?’

‘We’ve tried his mobile,’ Claire said. ‘It isn’t even ringing and we don’t have a current address for him. The one we have is his mother’s house which, of course, has been sold. So we have to wait for him to contact us.’

The policeman scratched the side of his mouth now. He was unhappy. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is a bit of a bummer. We’ll have to put out a find and apprehend which I didn’t want to do. You see, Claire, we’ve nothing really against him apart from your suspicions.’

She blinked. It felt a heavy responsibility on her shoulders. ‘He’ll be in touch,’ she said confidently. And in answer to his quizzical expression. ‘Barclay doesn’t function without an audience.’

She laid her outstretched hands flat on the desk, palms down and stared across the room at the miniscule bumps in the paintwork, splattered around the lightswitch. ‘Paul,’ she appealed. ‘Get to him before he gets to me.’

Almost without being noticed Nancy Gold slipped away. No one registered her absence as the sun began to rise, early on a Wednesday morning.

She had gone to meet her lover.

The night shift was shattered. Six am and they’d spent half the night with a thirty-year-old who’d tried to kill himself while suffering delirium tremens, the hallucinations caused by chronic alcohol poisoning. He’d screamed for hours about ants and spiders crawling up the wall. Eyes distended, pointing with a shaking hand at insects and arachnids which were as real to him as the nurses who tried to convince him otherwise. He was strong too – and terrified. They’d pumped him full of Chlorpromazine and waited while he sunk back into oblivion. He was a thin man, an ex-sailor, with numerous tattoos and hands that shook so badly it was anybody’s guess where he was pointing. It was hard to imagine him ever otherwise.

Nancy Gold was cradling her pillow when the summons came. Who knows how. It came and that was enough. She hugged her pillow one last time before laying it down gently on the bed. Then she fished some loose cotton trousers out of her locker and a dark blue sweatshirt. All the time she dressed she kept her eye trained on the porthole window. No one must see her. She must remain invisible.

Seconds later she slipped out of the room, opening the door only as wide as was necessary to ease herself through. Her blue eyes darted up and down the corridor, making sure no one was around to see her. Then she tiptoed towards the door at the top end. She heard the alcoholic
man ranting and raving, both nurses trying to restrain him. He could almost have been in his employ. He was so provident.

‘
Get outside and to a phone.
’ It had been her instruction and mouthing it to herself she followed it blindly.

Like a wraith she passed through the front gate while the porter was attending his burning toast and then, exhilaratingly, she was outside, in the city. The fast, thumping city, sleepily coming to life after another ice-cold night. She stood and breathed in the scents and sounds of freedom, her hands stroking her bump. Almost in response the child moved inside her, alerted by the unfamiliar noises.

Nancy shivered. It was a frosty morning and her sweatshirt was thin. Added to that she was accustomed to hospital central heating which made it summer all the year around. But she would be all right. She knew that. So far she had done well, saying nothing to anyone. No one had prised the name out of her, the magic name which would grant her what she wanted most in the whole world – her own baby again. She whispered it to herself to conjure it up.

‘My baby.’

Back on the ward the nurses were just pouring their early morning tea, rubbing their eyes, discussing what a night they’d had. Their hallucinating alcoholic had responded to the sedation and there was no need yet to check on their other patients. It was a window of peace, a haven of rest when they believed that nothing was happening.

At home Claire was under the shower. Grant had finally found a suitable property. A late Victorian house, detached in a rundown area in Burslem. Waterloo Road, connected for years with the red light district. But eighteen months
ago a property developer had finally realised that these houses were truly wonderful, Victorian ‘greats’, full of style and original features, ten minutes away from the city centre. So he had bought up two and converted them into luxury flats, landscaping the back gardens and adding private parking and secure, electric gates to the front.

The tone of the place had started to alter slowly and subtly.

Grant had discovered a third property. Only slightly smaller than the others, missing out on a few original features. The fireplaces had gone from the ground floor when it had been turned into offices and the rooms had been divided with sheets of plaster board and batons. But upstairs little had been touched. They had viewed it the night before and Claire had listened as Grant had muttered in her ear about reclamation and authenticity, stone mullions and perfect plasterwork and she had realised with piercing clarity. It was in his blood, this renovation.

He had come to life, found a purpose and changed.

As for her, she had been convinced the moment she had stepped through the french windows into the garden. A high brick wall trailing with honeysuckle surrounded it. No one had touched it yet so it had retained an ancient cricket pavilion in the corner, damp, green wood, a gnarled apple tree, a bed of pretty, but neglected rose bushes and an excellent lawn, springy, damp and mossy, now spattered with fallen leaves from the apple tree. She bent down and touched it. It was soft in a way that pure grass never can be. She swivelled her neck to peer up to the skyline.

All around may be the factories, the city and industry but right here was something better. A green haven, a mossy place to return to. She turned back towards the house, pictured the long portico repainted and renovated,
the glass cleaned of algae and moss, the windowframes restored or replaced, the sash windows thrown wide in the summer. She had sat on a hideous green plastic chair, getting colder by the minute and known for sure. This could be home.

Grant squatted beside her. ‘So, Claire?’

She had nodded and hoped the estate agent didn’t have an inkling of how enthusiastic these buyers were.

She rested her hand very lightly on Grant’s shoulder. ‘Let me do the talking.’ She didn’t trust him. His eyes gave too much away. He gave her a light, soft kiss on the mouth. It was a surprisingly erotic gesture.

Together they had stepped inside, the estate agent waiting for them, the question in his eyes.

Always begin with a negative
.

‘It wants a lot of doing up.’

The estate agent had his answer ready. ‘Reflected in the price.’

‘Shame about the fireplaces having been ripped out.’

‘You can replace them from a reclamation yard.’

‘At a price,’ muttered Grant in her ear.

‘Or put reproduction ones in.’

Claire did a mock shudder.

‘We’ve already sold our property,’ she said. ‘We’ll get a search done and then get back to you.’

‘Other people are interested.’

Grant cleared his throat. Claire scowled at him.

When they were outside she’d scolded him lightly. ‘We’ll get it. It is lovely. But if he knows we’re really keen …’

She took his face in her hands. ‘Trust me,’ she’d said, smiling. ‘I’m a doctor. Remember?’

So this morning, at the very same time that Nancy Gold was slipping through the front gate of Greatbach
‘In-Secure’ Unit, Claire, wrapped in a huge, white bathsheet, was sitting on the end of the bed with a ticklist.

‘You speak to the surveyor,’ she was saying, ‘and I’ll talk to the mortage company. If we get our skates on maybe we can exchange by the end of the week.’

Grant threw the covers off in a fit of energy and she fished around in the wardrobe for something to wear.

So her mind was clean and happy, full of ideas for the new house, as she turned into the car park. She parked, picked her bag up from the back seat and turned around to meet a security guard.

‘Morning,’ he said, boxing her in as she locked the car.

‘Morning.’ Something must have struck her. ‘Is anything wrong?’

‘One of the patients. Gone walkabout.’

‘Which one?’

‘Nancy Gold,’ the guard said.

With an almost physical thump in her solar plexus she knew right then. Nancy was a vulnerable patient. She should have paid more attention to her. Had her mind not been full of Kristyna and Barclay and Heidi she would have spent more attention with the dangerous little doll.

Because her mind was concentrating now on Nancy she was at last facing the obvious.

Someone had made her pregnant. Had manipulated her into this position, taking what they had wanted, by pretending to give Nancy what she wanted
.

That person had used Nancy’s terrible yearning for a baby and had played with her, teasing her that if she played her cards right she could not only have her baby but keep it.

So first Nancy had had to escape.

To where?

To the same place
, whispered the voice. To the place where glaze mixed with bone dust and chinaclay, fragments of pottery and slip. Slip, the mixture of clay and water, used both to decorate and bond. The same place where Kristyna had been kept prisoner by the same person who had learned his trade, cut his teeth, on Heidi Faro. Her feet moved fast towards the hospital main entrance and a telephone.

Siôna was waiting in the hallway. ‘The night staff were busy,’ he explained. ‘She must have gone in the very early morning. We’ve got people looking all over for her.’

‘Have you phoned the police?’

‘No. Surely that’s a bit premature? She might be …’ The words faded into the grey air.

‘Her baby is due next week,’ Claire said fiercely. ‘She’s waited for this moment.’

A blue Honda pulled on to the car park. Rolf climbed out, listened to what the security guard was telling him, approached with dragging footsteps, already looking drawn and tired and haggard around the eyes.

This monster was bigger than them. It would eventually swallow them all, staff and patients alike, and spit out their bones before belching and searching out more victims. It never could be satiated.

So what was the monster? Why – a disorder of the personality
.

She knew it was an irrational fear and yet it clawed at Claire’s heart, making it difficult for her to breathe. She gasped and both Siôna and Rolf looked across at her, concern etching lines across both their faces.

She dialled the police from the main desk telephone, using the 999 code. It seemed too urgent to locate the number for the local copshop.

The police make a great deal of noise. It’s called ‘showing a presence’. Quite suddenly, within seconds, all was activity. Tyres screamed across the car park towards each other as though threatening to collide, sirens blaring, blue lights blinking. And all Claire could think was what a great joke this was for Barclay. How he must be enjoying it. If he was watching.

Of course he was watching. Otherwise what was the point? If not for Barclay’s entertainment. Sticks and top hats click-clacked across her mind. ‘
That’s entertainment
.’

Paul Frank climbed stiffly out of one of the cars as though he too was dog tired. He stepped slowly towards her, his eyes hooded and defeated.

His first words were, ‘Not –?’

‘It’s possible.’

What was she saying? Barclay’s name had been on her lips since she had learned that Nancy was missing.

DI Frank looked even more exhausted, as though he could have dropped to the floor, curled up and slept for ever.

Claire felt she must say something. ‘It’s all suspicion,’ she said. ‘We don’t have evidence.’

Behind him she scanned the skyline. The tall towers of the blocks of flats stood against the sky, lights sparking against the greyness.

Somewhere, here in this city, she thought, he was waiting
.

Nancy was cold. ‘Stay here,’ he’d said. ‘Don’t move. If you want your baby, Nancy, we must do it alone. They will take it from you the second it draws breath. They are your enemy, Nancy. Trust
me
, Nancy. Not
them
. Trust
me
.’