The Boy Who Could See Demons (26 page)

‘Yes, he is,’ I say.

He nods. ‘And you
do
know one of the side effects of Risperidone is akathisia?’ Akathisia is extreme restlessness. I swallow, and he sees. It’s entirely doubtful that akathisia would have made Alex go to such lengths, but the possibility makes me feel ill.

I head to the interview room. Alex is seated in a daffodil-yellow armchair beside the shatterproof coffee table, his ankles crossed and hands pressed inside his thighs. He looks very on edge.

‘Hello, Alex,’ I say cheerily. ‘Sorry I’m a little late this morning. Did you sleep OK?’

He shakes his head, still looking down.

‘No? Is that why you went for a walk?’

He shakes his head.

‘Why
did
you go for a walk, then? And at three in the morning, I might add. Were you just sick of being in hospital?’

He looks up at me. His eyes are tired and hollow. ‘I want to tell you something,’ he says, ignoring my questions.

‘OK,’ I say, following his lead. I take out my notepad. He looks at it for a long time.

‘Is this bothering you, Alex?’

He shakes his head. ‘I don’t care if you write it down or not. I just want you to listen.’

I set my pen down. He takes a deep breath.

‘I know that you think I’m a danger to myself. But Ruen is real. And I have proof.’

He hands me a piece of paper. It is a piece of music with the title ‘A Love Song For Anya’ written at the top. The lines, notes and clefs are very awkwardly drawn, with evidence of much rubbing out and rewriting. But there is precision in its composition. There are accurate phrase marks, a time signature and octave sign, and at two points Italian terms are used:
andantino
and
appassionato
. A quick scan through the music indicates that it isn’t a love song in the ballad sense.

But there is something else that causes my mouth to go dry, before I tell myself that it’s nothing more than a coincidence: the opening melody is identical to the one Poppy composed on the night she died. A high B for three beats; a trilled A, G, A, each of them crotchets; another B for three beats; A, G, A; then a G for three beats; A for three; B again – a simple melody, and one that has passed through my head many times over the last four years, as if it held the secret to what happened the night she died.

‘Where did you get this?’ I ask him.

‘Ruen told me that he composed it for you because you like music. He told me to write it down for you as a gift.’

‘As a
gift
?’

He nods. ‘He said it’s only a short piece because I couldn’t manage to score a whole symphony, not yet.’

Alex’s voice is less animated than usual, and there is a firmness to his tone and manner that makes him seem to have aged several years since our last meeting. He seems reluctant, not excited, to show me what he’s written. I stare at the piece of music. Alex leans forward and looks me straight in the eye.

‘You ask my mum,’ he whispers, his eyes darting around him. ‘I don’t know how to play music, never mind write it. I can’t play any instrument at all. I can’t even sing. So how would I be able to write that then, eh?’

I put our interview on hold until after his schooling session with a private tutor. I run outside, dial Michael’s number, and leave a message on his phone to call me as soon as possible. He needs to know about Alex’s escape attempt.

Just as I am redialling his number, my phone rings. It is Michael.

‘Why is Alex on Risperidone?’ are his first words. Aggressive and concerned at the same time.

‘Did you know he attempted to run away last night?’

‘Of course I do,’ he snaps. ‘The hospital told me to come in first thing. I’m worried that we’re being over-zealous with the medication, Anya. The last kid I saw with a Risperidone prescription was eighteen and wiped off his face …’

‘Alex’s condition requires medical intervention,’ I say levelly. ‘Cindy shows no sign of getting out of the psych unit anytime soon. Would you wait a week before treating a broken leg?’

‘Well, you should know that Cindy isn’t doing so well,’ he replies stiffly. ‘Not since she heard she’d been deemed incapable of acting as Alex’s mother.’

That’s not my fault
, I think, then immediately feel guilty. I have had less than nine hours sleep over the last three nights – a combination of stress and playing catch-up with my other cases. I would do anything right now for a long, hot bath and a comfortable bed.

‘I’m going to speak to Cindy later this afternoon.’ I say. ‘And there’s something else.’

‘What?’

‘Has Alex ever had piano lessons?’

‘Not that I’m aware of. Why?’

I mention Ruin’s ‘gift’. I tell him that, as a pianist, I am astonished by its complexity. Even if Alex
has
had some musical training, this is quite a coup. More importantly, the piece makes me wonder if Ruin is more than a projection – if he is a living person with whom Alex is having regular contact, and who is genuinely threatening his well-being.

‘Where are you?’ Michael says after a pause.

‘Still at the adult unit.’

‘Stay where you are.’

Ten minutes later, he’s striding towards me across the car park. I expect him to follow me inside and grab a coffee while we kill time until I can speak to Cindy, but he tells me to get into his car.

‘Where are we going?’ I ask.

He keeps his eyes away from mine. ‘I’ve arranged for us to speak to someone at the School of Music over at Queen’s University.’

‘Why?’

‘You said you wanted to prove whether Alex could have written it. Didn’t you?’

‘No, I …’ I tail off and glance at his car, parked badly on the kerb close by. ‘What was all that about the other night, Michael?’

‘You mean Alex?’

‘No
. You stroking my face.’ I feel embarrassed questioning it, but I hate ignoring what must be confronted.

‘Aye, there’s the rub,’ he says with a broken grin. ‘Look, I was just worried about you, OK?’

‘
Worried
? I said I was just getting some fresh air …’

I let him find the words he was searching for on the ground. When he looks up, his expression is sad. ‘It won’t happen again,’ he says slowly. ‘I promise.’

We head in Michael’s car to the School of Music at the university, directly behind the botanical gardens.

‘How’s the running?’ Michael asks.

I think of the fresh blisters on my soles from new track shoes, the suspicious bulge of fluid in my knee that suggests another steroid injection is due this year. ‘Not nearly as exciting as keeping an allotment,’ I tell him.

I notice a flash of colour in his cheeks at the mention of his allotment. He proceeds to tell me how his Green Windsor broad beans got blackfly and a rogue cockerel from a neigh-bouring patch took umbrage on his beetroot; how he’s taken up horse riding just so he can collect manure and take it home afterwards (‘Couldn’t you just clean out the stables?’ I ask, to which he responds, ‘I’m too polite to take it without paying
something’);
how his new potatoes were in his belly an hour after being in soil.

I find my mind turning to my paternal grandmother, Mei, whose English was limited to the phrase she used often:
my yin and yang
, the balance of my life. She would say Michael is my yang, my opposite. The one who has been sent to teach me, and vice versa. Listening to him describe his rundown shed, Sundays spent up to his knees in compost, I feel the habits of my own life – a Waitrose basket filled with plastic-wrapped, pre-washed organic vegetables, a rented flat on a twenty-eight-day notice tiled from floor to ceiling, the ability to unclip myself from the artificial wall of twenty-first century life and drop into another at any moment – lose their appeal. The other night I dreamed I woke up in a solar-powered, wind-turbined house built entirely of wood, mud and straw on an island in the Hebrides, my plate filled with produce from my own garden. Five years ago this would have been a nightmare. Now, to my astonishment, it feels the kind of life I would embrace.

Michael’s friend is a beautiful Californian blonde lecturer in musical composition with a PhD in Bach’s fugues and performance diplomas in oboe, tuba, piano and kettle drums. She has so many letters after her name that it reads like a sentence. She tells me to call her Melinda, and we follow her into her office.

Michael hands her Alex’s piece of music. She puts on her spectacles and glances at it.

‘Gee, written by a ten-year-old, you say?’

I fumble for the right explanation. ‘Well, sort of,’ I tell her. ‘He says he wrote it on behalf of … an imaginary friend.’

Melinda raises her eyebrows. ‘Wowee, some imaginary friend, huh?’ She glances at Michael. ‘Well, it certainly ain’t anything I’ve ever seen before. Some influences, here.’

She uses a short but immaculately manicured fingernail to point these out. ‘A little Chopin here,’ she says. ‘Maybe some Mozart in the closing bars. Of course, influence is highly subjective.’

She stands up, music in hand, and walks from behind her desk to an upright Yamaha piano against the far wall.

‘You play it,’ Michael says, nudging me. ‘It’s
your
song, after all.’

Melinda turns. ‘Oh, you play? Be my guest.’ She pulls out the piano seat and gestures for me to sit down.

I wring my hands. ‘I’m a bit rusty.’

‘Come on,’ Melinda says, smiling and patting the seat. ‘Don’t be shy. Let’s hear this masterpiece!’

The truth is, I feel extremely nervous about playing the piece. I’ve already heard the melody in my head by cold-reading the notes, but I’m not sure how I will feel when I play those eight bars out loud. Poppy’s song. It’s a feeling far beyond my professional rationale and it makes me very uncomfortable. A coincidence, I tell myself, but the memories of my previous sessions with Alex are churning in my head, the unsolved riddles of the things he seems to know about her.

Nonetheless, I get up out of my chair, take a seat in front of the piano, slide my fingers up the smooth white keys, and begin to play. I hold my breath as I chime out the opening melody, gritting my teeth against thoughts of Poppy’s dark head behind the piano in our Morningside flat. When I get to the second section, I allow myself to breathe out and focus on the technique of the piece. There is a simplicity, an impishness and a determination to it that grips me as I perform it. The melody of the second half is demanding, lyrical, passionate. I glance at the title ‘A Love Song for Anya’. Then I note the smaller text beneath it: ‘From Ruen.’
Ruen
. I had always thought the name of Alex’s so-called demon was ‘Ruin’.

When I finish, Melinda and Michael applaud me.

‘I liked that!’ Michael says.

Melinda nods. ‘A very talented performer.’ She winks, then walks over to the piano and bends down to have another look at it. ‘Kid isn’t very good with annotation, though. Needs a little practice with his treble clefs …’ She turns to Michael. ‘You want me to run this through our software, check if it’s plagiarised?’

Michael nods. ‘Definitely.’

Outside the School of Music there is a moment when we are due to part ways.

‘You want a lift back to see Cindy?’ Michael asks.

‘It’s not far. I’ll walk.’ I start towards the botanical gardens and Michael follows.

‘I’m parked this way anyway.’

‘Thanks for contacting Melinda. She certainly was helpful.’

He searches my face. ‘Something about that piece bothers you, doesn’t it.’

It isn’t a question. ‘I don’t think you know me well enough to—’

‘Is it because you think Ruen actually wrote it?’

I glance at a car trying to reverse park close to us. It backs so close that its reflection pours across the other’s bonnet. We walk on.

‘I wonder if Ruen is Alex’s father?’ I muse.

‘A
demon
?’

‘No, I mean, if Alex is actually visiting with his dad. If the physical violence he experienced was at the hands of …’ I stop. The thought that Alex’s father is not dead at all but has been meeting with him on the sly is ludicrous. But I have run out of answers. The music, the attack, the way he asked about my scar the first time we met … And then I think of Ursula. Her urge for me to abandon labels.

We are at the foot of the botanical gardens now. A woman is jogging with two Dalmatians trotting alongside her. Michael sidesteps behind me so that he is between me and the dogs.

‘OK,’ he says, pushing his hands in his pockets and grinning. ‘So let’s consider the possibility.
Is
Alex seeing demons?’

I turn to read his face. He is serious. This is a side of Michael I haven’t yet encountered. How could this intelligent, perceptive man even consider that there is such a thing as demons, that there is even the slightest possibility that someone could see them?

‘You’re kidding?’

We are close to the hothouses. Michael takes a step in front of me, tilting his head slightly to draw my attention away from the group of students.

‘When I studied for the priesthood I did a lot of research into belief narratives. I read a lot of things by people who claimed they’d seen the unbelievable – angels, demons, God, what have you. People who said they thought they’d seen demons with forked tails, then realised that these tails were links that gradually grew fatter, binding them to the demon, destroying them.’ He pauses. ‘Crazy.’

‘What made you so interested in that stuff?’

He takes his hands out of his pockets and gestures at a seat facing the green lawns of the university. We sit down. He takes a breath and combs his hand through his hair.

‘I saw my sister when I was little. My parents have never spoken about her. I only found out she even existed last year. My nan let slip that there’d been complications during my birth because of the other dead baby inside my mother.’ He leans close to me to avoid anyone else overhearing this sensitive conversation. I sense that he is offloading something that has made him feel lonely for a long time.

‘I grew up knowing I had a sister named Lisa,’ he continues, ‘because
she
told me. I knew that she looked just like me, only she was a girl, and that only I could see her. My parents took me to psychologist after psychologist, changed my diet, and then when I was about eight and they were getting really sick of it, my dad threatened to put me through a glass window if I mentioned Lisa again. He said she wasn’t real. One way or another, I stopped seeing her.’ He chews his cheek. ‘But I know she was real. She was.’