Poppet (3 page)

‘That’s good, Gabriella. And you haven’t been talking to the others about this, have you?’

‘No.’

‘Great – that’s great. You did the right thing. You keep it to yourself – I know you can. I know you can do that. Now we’ve got your care-planning meeting in the morning – I’ll mention this to the consultant – see what he says. And I’m going to put you on level four obs – just for tonight – OK? I’ll look in on you myself. But, Gabriella … ?’

‘What?’

‘You gotta put that … that
thing
out of your head, my sweetheart. You really have.’

Safe

IT’S FUNNY, TO
the Monster Mother, how AJ can’t see what’s happening. He can’t even say the words, ‘The. Maude.’ AJ is kind and he’s smart but he hasn’t got the extra eye – he can’t see the real things that are going on in this unit. He doesn’t believe her – that The Maude is out there. Scouting for someone else to hurt.

AJ can’t see the lengths Monster Mother has gone to, just to be safe. Maybe if he could he’d understand how serious it is. But he can’t see her stripped muscle and tendon. He cannot see the white of her skull or the glinting twin orb eyes without their lids. He is so blind to what is happening. ‘Good night,’ he says. ‘I’ll check on you – I promise.’

She slides the sheets back up over her. They rasp at her exposed nerves and skinless muscles. She lays her raw skull on the pillow and tries to smile – using just her cheek muscles. ‘AJ?’

‘Yes?’

‘Please be careful.’

‘I will.’

He waits for a few moments, as if he’s thinking, then he steps outside and shuts the door. The hospital is silent. She can’t close her eyes, she has no eyelids. But at least she is safe from The Maude. If it comes in it’ll go straight to her skin on the bedpost.

No one is going to sit on Monster Mother’s chest tonight.

Browns Brasserie, The Triangle

DI CAFFERY KNOWS
everyone in the restaurant is monitoring him for signs he’s going to react to the woman throwing wine on him. He can sense their universal disappointment when he isn’t pulled that easily.

He takes his time with the hamburger – refusing to be harassed or hurried. Occasionally, as he chews, his eyes go casually to the door – to the backs of the two bouncers – legs planted wide, arms folded, facing the glass doors. Beyond them the woman – now on her feet – staggers around on the pavement, hurling abuse at the doormen.

Caffery has spent the dullest lunchtime and afternoon at a Criminal Justice Forum: discussing liaison practices between custody suites and mental health unit admissions ward – he’s fed up with talking about stuff he’s not interested in, schmoozing and being nice to people he doesn’t care about. But this woman – her name is Jacqui Kitson – this woman has, at the eleventh hour, kickstarted an ordinary day into something extraordinary.

Extraordinary. Not pleasant. It’s what he’s been half expecting for a long time.

She has given up hectoring the door staff and is sitting in the gutter, her head in her hands, crying. By the time Caffery has paid his bill the staff have opened the doors again – allowing in the customers who’ve had to wait outside. They shuffle in edgily, casting cautious glances at the woman – only pausing to stand aside for Caffery to make his way out.

He puts his wallet in his inside pocket. The bill was forty pounds. Extravagant for a meal alone – but he doesn’t have much to spend his money on these days. He’s always tinkering around for a hobby to take his mind off work, but it doesn’t come naturally and he knows dining alone isn’t going to be the answer. Maybe if there was someone to eat with? There’s one woman he’d prefer to be with, but the complications there are taller than a mountain. Jacqui Kitson doesn’t know it but she is deeply connected with those complications.

‘Jacqui,’ he says, standing over her. ‘You want to talk.’

She turns her head to check out his shoes. Then she raises her face – half blind. Her eyes are swollen and there are long streaks of mascara down her cheeks. Her head isn’t steady on her neck. She has been sick in the gutter and her handbag is lying half in the road, straddling the double-yellow lines. She’s a total mess.

He sits next to her. ‘I’m here now, you can yell at me.’

‘Don’t wanna yell,’ she murmurs. ‘Just want her back.’

‘I know that – we all do – we all want her back.’ He pats his pocket for one of the silver-and-black tubes he’s been hauling around for months – V-Cigs – trying to break his old bad habit, which, after years of pressure from the government and friends, he has at last done – replacing it with fake steel replicas. He clicks the atomizer into the battery housing. He is still faintly embarrassed by the gimmickry of the V-Cig. If he was sitting outside himself and watching he’d be tempted to make a scathing comment. The passing motorists and pedestrians let their attention brush briefly over the pair sitting on the pavement. A pink Humvee stretch limo crawls by, the blackened windows open. A woman in a pink cowboy hat and strapped on L-plates leans out and waves at Caffery.

‘
I loves you
,’ she yells as the Hummer passes. ‘
I do!!!!
’

Caffery sucks in the nicotine vapour. Holds it and blows it out in a thin stream. ‘Jacqui, you’re a long way from home. How did you get here – are you on your own?’

‘I’m always on my own now, aren’t I? Always on my fucking own.’

‘Then how am I going to get you home? Did you drive here?’

‘Yeah.’

‘All the way from Essex?’

‘Don’t be a fucking idiot. I’m staying here – in a hotel. My car’s …’ She waves her hand vaguely down the hill. ‘Dunno.’

‘You didn’t drive like this, did you?’

She focuses hazily on the V-Cig. ‘Can I have one of them?’

‘It’s not real.’

‘Gimme one out of my—’ She squints, searching for her bag. Then slaps her hands down – feeling around in panic.

‘Here.’ Caffery passes her the bag from the road. She pauses, scowls accusingly at him and grabs it – as if he was on the point of stealing it. She starts rummaging through the contents, but every time she lowers her head the alcohol sets her off balance and she has to put her head back and take deep breaths.

‘Oh,’ she says, ‘it’s all going round and round. I’m arsed, aren’t I?’

‘Close your bag, Jacqui. You’re going to lose all your stuff. Come on.’ He gets to his feet. Holds a hand out to her. ‘I’ll drive you back to your hotel.’

The Old Workhouse

AT BEECHWAY’S HEART
are the remains of the workhouse – extensively redesigned to rid itself of the stereotypical asylum image: the old water tower – a common safeguard against asylums being set ablaze by inmates – was remodelled and given a huge clock, as if to justify the tower’s existence. The layout of the wards, which deliberately or inadvertently had been designed to resemble a cross from above, was thought to have religious overtones, so some bright spark on the Trust came up with the idea of turning the cross into a four-leaf clover.
Much more organic
.

Each arm of the cross was extended, laterally, into the shape of a clover leaf to make Beechway the place it is today. Each ‘leaf’ is a ward, with two floors of bedrooms, glass-fronted communal rooms on one side, and managers’ offices and therapy rooms on the others. The windows are large and smooth and the walls rounded. There’s a ‘stem’ – a glassed corridor that leads from the wards in the clover, down through a central garden, known as the courtyard, to the long arced block that contains all the administration offices. Everything – every ward, corridor, room, bathroom – is named after a flower.

It’s definitely organic.

When AJ leaves Monster Mother he goes slowly into each leaf, patrols each ward, each corridor – Buttercup, Myrtle, Harebell – checking the other patients haven’t been disturbed. Most are fast asleep, or halfway there – off in the clutches of medication. Some he stops and speaks to quietly. He doesn’t mention Monster Mother and her skin.

He passes the nurses in their TV room, still laughing at
Men in Black
, and heads back to his office, through the stem and into the admin block. He’s about to open his office door when he notices, about twenty metres further down the corridor, one of the security guards. It’s the mountainous Jamaican guy they call the Big Lurch. He’s standing, hands in his pockets, quite preoccupied with a framed print on the wall. Something in his face makes AJ break step and stop. The Big Lurch glances sideways, sees him and smiles. ‘Hey, AJ.’

‘Hey.’

‘Fraggles asleep are they?’

The Big Lurch is talking about the patients. No one would ever say it to a board member, but the staff call the patients Fraggles after
Fraggle Rock
. ‘Oh yes, they’re asleep.
The magic is always there as long as we keep looking for it
.’ He comes down the corridor. ‘What’re you up to?’

‘Oh, dunno.’ The Big Lurch gestures at the print, faintly embarrassed. ‘Just checking this out. Suppose I’ve never bothered to look at it before.’

AJ peers at the framed print. It’s a watercolour of the workhouse from the mid-nineteenth century, when it was new. These prints are everywhere – they show Beechway High Secure Unit in various incarnations: copperplate etchings of it as the poorhouse, framed newspaper articles when a new director was appointed in the 1950s, even the 1980s artist’s impression of the finished, revamped unit with its wrap-around glass windows. He is drawn into the picture, noting the various recognizable parts of the building – the parts that have survived over a hundred and fifty years. There’s the central courtyard, the tower, the axis of the cross which is now the centre of the clover leaf.

‘I don’t like it in a storm,’ the Big Lurch says suddenly. ‘It makes me think about the weaknesses.’

‘Weaknesses?’

He nods. ‘The places those eighties architects didn’t really think through properly.’

AJ throws a sideways glance at the Big Lurch. What he sees there is the fear, the same uneasy look that’s becoming so familiar in the unit the last few days. He can’t believe it, just can’t believe it. He has long learned not to get too friendly with staff, but with the Big Lurch he’s made an exception. He
likes
this guy. He’s been for drinks with him – met his wife and his two little girls – and in all that time he’s never taken him to be impressionable.

‘Come on, mate. I’ve got enough problems with the patients without the damned security staff turning into big girls’ blouses.’

The Big Lurch half smiles. He puts a finger up to his brow, as if to cover his embarrassment. He’s about to give a neat reply when the lights flicker. Both men put their heads back and stare at the ceiling. The lights flicker again. Then they seem to steady, and the corridor is as normal. AJ narrows his eyes – looks at the Big Lurch. There was a power cut a week ago – the last thing they need is another one. That will send the patients through the roof.

‘Doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo.’ He sings out the
Twilight Zone
theme and makes ghost fingers in the Big Lurch’s face. ‘Come on, Scooby, let’s go hide under the sofa.’

The security guy grins sheepishly, bats AJ’s hands away. ‘See, that’s why guys don’t
share
. Because of wankers like you.’

AJ sighs. This isn’t going to be laughed off. The Big Lurch is genuinely,
genuinely
, not joking.

‘Haven’t you noticed, AJ? Everyone’s calling in sick?’

‘Yeah. I did happen to notice. You do a double shift to cover for people and it kind of etches itself on the memory.’

‘Yes. And you know what they’re saying? The staff?’

‘We don’t need to talk about this now.’

The Big Lurch shifts uncomfortably. Runs a finger around his collar. ‘One of them woke up the other night. He was on Dandelion Ward and he woke up and he says he saw something in his room.’

AJ laughs. Too loudly – the sound echoes down the corridor and back. ‘Oh, come on, that was an angina attack. They took him to the doctor and it was an angina attack.’ He shakes his head. ‘This – this whole … thing … it’s just—’

‘AJ, you know what I’m saying. I’m having a hard time getting any of the guys to do night shifts. If I rota them in I know I’m just going to get a call claiming they’re sick, or their car’s broke down or something.’

AJ puts his hands in his pockets and looks at his feet. He knows where this is leading. Mass hysteria, that’s where. After years of silence on the subject of ghosts and haunting suddenly the stories and rumours are all back. Staff calling in sick, Monster Mother panicked, the Big Lurch antsy. And even he, AJ, getting infected. Dreaming about the damned thing.

He looks up and down the corridor. It is still and empty. The only light comes from the knee-level security spots, the only noise is the ticker-tacker of branches and leaves on the windows. The time has come. He’s going to have to make it official – speak to the clinical director first thing in the morning. They’re going to have to nip this in the bud before the whole unit goes into meltdown.

Hotel du Vin, The Sugar House, Bristol

AS THEY DRIVE
it becomes clear that Jacqui Kitson has been trailing Caffery all day. She veers between drunken flirtatiousness, and abusive, furious tears.

‘You’re so fucking fit,’ she says, sucking angrily on her cigarette. ‘I’d give you one if I didn’t hate you so much. You ugly bastard.’

From what he can piece together she has parked her car near his office in St Philips and has been following him on foot ever since. Tomorrow she’s got an interview with a national newspaper. They are paying for her hotel and probably she’s planned it so she could accost Caffery at the same time. She started drinking at lunchtime.

Jacqui Kitson, being who she is, has chosen the Hotel du Vin – because celebrities occasionally stay here and it’s got a bit of boutiquey glamour to it. The staff give pained smiles when she arrives, dishevelled and smelling of vomit – escorted through reception by someone who has the demeanour of a security guard – except for the red stains on his shirt and collar.