Entangled

  ‘So … ?’

  ‘If that person exists, then it means I saw real things, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Not necessarily … Look, I’ve got to go …’ Bannerman gave her a nice smile. ‘But I’ll check it out, OK? I mean, about the receptionist. I’ll be in to see you around ten a.m. Now sleep.’

  * * *

  Just after six a.m. Leoni awoke with a start to find a crowd in her room. Mom and Dad were there, a janitor pushing an empty wheelchair, two men in suits and several nurses. Without a word one of the nurses got hold of her arm and began prepping her for a shot. Leoni screamed and struggled to pull free, but in an instant she felt the needle pierce her skin. The last thing she saw, as her vision blurred, was the look of absolute triumph and vindication on Mom’s face.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘You know where we’re going,’ said Ria to Brindle. ‘I don’t. So help me find a place where we can set an ambush.’ She experimented with a thought-picture, envisaging a forest with open country beyond it. Eight of the Uglies and Ria herself would hide amongst the trees to await the men following them. But the main column, still numbering more than forty, would continue on out of the forest where they should be in plain view for a long while as they crossed the open country. ‘Is there somewhere like that?’ she asked.

  Brindle’s eyes lit up: ‘Yes!’ He hesitated: ‘But near Secret Place. Maybe not good to let them get so close …’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how close it is. We have to kill them and then they won’t be telling any tales. The more important thing is, are you ready to murder these strangers? Because that’s what we’re going to have to do.’

  Brindle hesitated again and Ria felt herself becoming irritated at his instinctive gentleness: ‘I don’t want to hear any crap about them being spirits and people just like us,’ she prompted. ‘They’re killers. They slaughtered four Uglies for no reason. Just because they could. So now it’s their turn.’

  ‘I know,’ said Brindle. ‘Uglies must kill or be killed. Clan already teaching us this lesson every day. But hard for us to learn.’

  After reaching the lip of the plateau they hiked down a steep densely forested slope, in the lee of the wind. Ria loved all forests and this one was beautiful, silent and lit up at intervals by glints of golden sunlight thrusting down between the branches.

  At the bottom of the valley they emerged from the trees onto the rocky shore of a narrow gleaming lake and began to trek four abreast alongside it.

  Ria and Brindle were in the second rank, right behind the lumbering, grizzled leader. Now Ria noticed, as she had not when he had intervened to drag Duma, Grigo and Vik off her this morning, that three deep parallel scars ran down the outside of his right arm to a point below the elbow, the token of some violent encounter with a wild beast – bear? lion? – many years before.

  Brindle’s voice popped up inside her head: ‘Ten winters ago, hungry bear came into our camp and tried to grab Grondin’s wife. Wanted to eat. Grondin had other ideas. There was fight …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Bear lose. Grondin’s wife got fancy necklace from teeth and claws. Wears all time.’

  ‘Is Grondin part of a longer name, like Brindle?’

  ‘Ha! You really want to know? OK. Here goes: Grondinondin-grand-inadin-apciprona.’

  ‘The “apciprona” bit on the end sounds familiar.’

  ‘I am Brindle-phudge-tublo-trungen-apciprona, remember? Grondin is my father’s brother.’

  Again Ria shared a wash of sorrow and pain with Brindle and knew that thinking of his father had led him to recall the death of his mother and siblings at the hands of the Clan. She also received strong imagery of an Ugly elder, looking quite a bit like Grondin, but even taller and more massively built.

  ‘You’re showing me your father, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I love him! He’s a great guy. Best friend as well as father and King of all the Uglies.’

  ‘Hang on. You’re joking, right? Your father is the king?’

  ‘Not joking.’

  ‘So that means one day you’re going to be …’

  ‘King of the Uglies? Yes. If any Uglies left.’

  Ria looked puzzled.

  ‘We are last Uglies in world,’ Brindle explained. ‘Five hundred of us now at Secret Place. Maybe seven hundred more still living in camps outside. Can’t protect from attacks of Clan there. Trying to bring all to Secret Place.’

  ‘There are no others?

  ‘No more Uglies after we gone. All dead.’

  At once many things about Brindle that had puzzled Ria began to make sense, and she understood why he had so much authority amongst a large group of elders and braves. It wasn’t just some no-account crippled kid she’d rescued but the only surviving son of the King of the Uglies! She decided she would help him when she returned to the Clan. Murgh’s sinister campaign to wipe out these gentle creatures was all wrong and she had to try to stop it. It might not even be too difficult if she could prove what she suspected – that he and Grigo were taking their orders from ferocious outlanders like the two who followed them now.

  Ria had spent almost her entire life in the open air, gathering fruits and nuts in the forests, using her skill with stones to hunt rabbits, birds and small deer. She thought she was nearly as strong and skilled, as wily and tough, as many of the full-grown braves of the Clan. Even so, the relentless non-stop pace set by the Uglies – since they left the lake almost all their route had been up the side of what seemed to be an interminable mountain – had given her a persistent stitch low down in her side. This was embarrassing because she didn’t want to appear weak, and what made it worse was that none of the Uglies – not even the injured, or the stretcher-bearers, or crippled Brindle – showed any sign of slowing down.

  It was late afternoon when they entered a swathe of ancient forest growing right across the flank of the mountain and continued to wind their way upward under the shelter of huge pines. ‘We coming to place where must make ambush,’ Brindle warned. ‘Not far from here.’

  Ria peered back over her shoulder. The Uglies – despite their losses, there were still more than fifty of them – were leaving a clear trail amongst the thick layers of brown pine needles smothering the forest floor. Even a child would be able to follow them. But that was the whole point of her plan.

  Now they entered an immense grassy clearing, hundreds of paces from side to side, and marched straight across it, trampling the grass underfoot. When they passed back under tree cover on the opposite side of the clearing Ria saw that the edge of the forest lay close, and that above it reared a huge amphitheatre of emerald-green mountain meadow, lit up like a promise in the declining sun, hemmed in far above by a spectacular array of high and forbidding cliffs.

  Armed with flint knives, war axes and each carrying two heavy spears, Brindle, Grondin, and six other big braves stayed behind with Ria to set the ambush. She noted how they all seemed to be waiting for her to tell them what to do. ‘We not good at this sort of thing,’ Brindle admitted.

  Ria, who had filled her pouch with throwing stones at the lakeside, didn’t hesitate to take charge. Using Brindle to communicate with the others, she showed how the men behind them would be following the broad and conspicuous trail of the column. ‘If we’re lucky they won’t notice that some of us have turned back,’ she said. She pointed to the others hiking up the steep slope towards the still-distant wall of cliffs. ‘It’s just going to look like we marched straight through the forest and carried on climbing the mountain on the other side.’

  There was no time for elaborate tricks or traps. Ria ordered her ambush party to take shelter behind trees on both sides of the track, ready to rain down spears and stones on the killers on their trail.

  But a worm of doubt nagged at her.

  With their fatal gentleness, would eight Uglies be enough to win victory against such hard and violent men?

  Chapter Twelve

  As Leoni emerged from sedation she discovered,
to her horror, that she was strapped down in a metal-framed high-sided cot in an unfamiliar room. She was groggy but she knew what had happened. Mom and Dad had pulled strings and had her committed to a mental hospital – something that they had threatened to do before.

  It hit her that this must be what Mom had meant by ‘clearing up the dead wood’.

  She screamed and struggled against the restraints holding her wrists and ankles, and thrashed her head from side to side. Then, realising that she must be under video surveillance, Leoni forced herself to calm down. Acting mad was the last thing she needed to do in here.

  She looked around the room. It was quite large, and luxuriously furnished, but the door had three locks and an inspection hatch, and the windows were barred on the inside. Basically she was in a jail. ‘Hey,’ she yelled, ‘I need to use the bathroom.’

  Silence.

  ‘Hellooo. Is anybody out there? I need to use the bathroom.’

  Silence.

  ‘Look. Take me seriously. I’m going to wet the bed if someone doesn’t get me to a bathroom pretty soon.’

  Silence.

  Was this some kind of test? Leoni sighed and waited. She was, she realised, in very deep trouble. Mom and Dad had all the money in the world and in sunny LA, where money mattered so much, how hard would it be for them to find a psychiatrist willing to certify she was insane? The hospital was no doubt being well paid to accommodate her and would also have an interest in keeping her where she was – sweetened perhaps by the promise of one of Dad’s multi-million-dollar capital gifts.

  She dozed for a few moments. The next thing she heard was the sound of keys turning in the locks. Then the door swung open and two beaming beefy nurses marched in. ‘Hello’, they said in unison, and introduced themselves: Deirdre and Melissa. They fussed around Leoni, removed her restraints and helped her into a sitting position. ‘You were given quite a strong sedative,’ Deirdre explained. ‘You’ve been out for most of the morning so your legs are going to be a bit wobbly. We need to help you walk over to the bathroom.’

  ‘Wobbly’ was an understatement. Leoni’s legs felt like jelly. Still, at the bathroom door she insisted that she would manage the rest of the operation by herself. ‘No,’ said Melissa. ‘You have to be supervised.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Suicide watch. You’re under twenty-four-hour supervision. Dr Sansom’s orders.’

  Leoni was so embarrassed at having an audience that she couldn’t urinate. ‘Look, give me a break’, she protested, ‘I’d like a bit of privacy.’

  ‘Sorry, sweetie,’ said Deirdre. ‘Can’t do that. But don’t worry. In cases of shy bladder syndrome we usually catheterise.’

  ‘On the other hand you could just unclench and pee,’ added Melissa.

  The two of them were still beaming, but it wasn’t nice.

  Twenty minutes later, humiliated and furious, Leoni finished in the bathroom. She allowed Deirdre and Melissa to help her to her bed and was halfway across the floor, with her ass sticking out of the open back of her hospital smock, when a big man walked in. ‘Hi there, Miss Watts,’ he said. ‘I’m Dr Sansom. I’m in charge here.’ He ogled her as the two nurses lifted her onto the mattress and placed her between the sheets. ‘You can go,’ he told them.

  Sansom was a tall, florid Texan in an expensive business suit. He was aged around sixty, Leoni guessed, and had the authoritative, domineering air of a man used to getting his way. His hands, which were enormous, were rough and calloused – the hands of a labourer, not a physician. A spider’s web of broken blood vessels decorated the bulbous tip of his nose.

  ‘Welcome to Mountain Ridge Psychiatric Hospital’, he said. ‘Do you know why you’re here?’

  ‘Because my parents have paid you to say I’m mad?’

  ‘Quite a paranoid answer, Miss Watts, but then we get used to that sort of thing. Your parents love you very much and they are very concerned about your mental health. Your persistent drug abuse, your rampant promiscuity’ – he leered – ‘your fantasies about your father ̴’

  Leoni stared him down: ‘I don’t know what you mean. I have no fantasies about my father.’

  ‘I think you know exactly what I mean. False memories, crazed accusations. All this, culminating in your suicide attempt, amounts to obviously delusional behaviour.’

  ‘What suicide attempt?’ Leoni gasped.

  ‘You took an overdose of OxyContin. You would have died if your parents hadn’t rescued you in time—’

  ‘Bullshit. It wasn’t even my parents who rescued me. It was Conchita, our housemaid. If it had been up to my parents they would just have let me die.’

  ‘Paranoia again, Miss Watts. Frankly, the more I hear the more certain I am your overdose was a suicide attempt. That’s why you’ve been involuntarily confined at Mountain Ridge under section fifty-one-fifty of the California Welfare and Institutions Code.’

  ‘Confined here for what? I don’t get it. Why have I been confined?’

  ‘For your own good, of course.’

  ‘I can’t believe this is legal. Last night I was a patient at UCLA Med Centre recovering from a drug overdose, this morning I was sedated, kidnapped and imprisoned here. How can that be right?’

  ‘Kidnapped, Miss Watts? Imprisoned? Just more paranoid delusions. Your mother and father were worried – rightly, in my view – that you might make a second attempt to kill yourself. They decided it was irresponsible to leave you in an open-access hospital without the best psychiatric care and a suicide watch round-the-clock. So they went through due legal process and had you committed. Your declaration was written up by an accredited LA county clinician in the normal way. It allows us to hold you here at Mountain Ridge for seventy-two hours to evaluate your mental state and make sure that you aren’t going to pose a danger to yourself in the future.’

  ‘After seventy-two hours I can go?’

  ‘In your dreams,’ Sansom boomed. Suddenly he leaned closer and lowered his voice to a confidential whisper: ‘Between you and me, when the seventy-two hours are up I’m certain we’ll have no shortage of reasons to renew the hold and keep you here for … well … as long as we want to. I’m looking forward to treating you for several years at least.’

  ‘Not a chance, asshole. I’m out on bail for drug and driving offences. There’s going to be a court hearing in a couple of months so you can’t just make me disappear.’

  ‘Already dealt with. California Highway Patrol have dropped the charges against you. They agreed with us that the stress of a court appearance might just make you crazier. So it looks like we really do have you all to ourselves. I think you’re going to be a very challenging case.’ He pressed a buzzer by the bed and moments later Deirdre and Melissa bustled into the room.

  ‘Restrain the patient again, please,’ Sansom ordered, and left without a backward glance.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Leoni’s next human contact came when Deirdre delivered her lunch and removed her restraints to allow her to eat it. Half a dozen pills of various sizes and colours had also been set out on the tray and Deirdre made her swallow these when she had finished her meal. Finally Leoni accepted the offer of another toilet visit and then was strapped down in her cot again.

  The pills made her sleep. When she awoke it was dusk and a weedy, weaselly man with thinning grey hair and stained teeth was hovering over her bed like a wraith. She recoiled and gasped – ‘Ugh!’ – and he flapped his arms and fluttered his pale little hands in a gesture that fell far short of being reassuring. ‘Who’re you?’ Leoni croaked.

  ‘Er … ah … Dr Grinspoon. I’ve come to ask you some questions.’

  ‘I don’t want to answer questions. I’m tired. Go away.’

  ‘It’s part of your psychological evaluation, Miss Watts. It’s not optional.’

  Grinspoon turned on all the lights, removed her restraints and had her sit up in bed, propping her back against a heap of pillows. He then handed her a pen and a huge sheaf of paperwork at
tached to a clipboard. ‘This should take you no more than ninety minutes to fill out,’ he said.

  ‘Ninety? What is it?’

  ‘It’s called the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. There’s … let me see … five hundred sixty-seven test items …’

  ‘Whaddya mean, five hundred sixty-seven test items?’

  ‘Ah … er … five hundred sixty-seven questions. Each one you answer either true or false. It’s extremely straightforward and if you’re honest it’ll give us a clear snapshot of your mental health problems.’ He smiled, exposing his rat teeth. ‘It’s a good thing, Miss Watts. Once we know what’s wrong with you we’ll be able to treat you and get you well again …’

  Leoni couldn’t help herself: ‘This is such bullshit,’ she hissed. ‘You guys aren’t “treating” me. You’re keeping me prisoner here’ – she indicated the straps and buckles that Grinspoon had just freed her from. ‘I’m a prisoner! Admit it … I’m not even allowed to take a piss without somebody watching me.’

  ‘Well, this is because you are on suicide watch, of course. When we’re satisfied that you’re no longer a danger to yourself these restrictions can be lifted. I know that Director Sansom wants you to be comfortable here … Now, please fill out the questionnaire.’

  A cellphone began to croon the Brahms Lullaby and a furtive look crept over Grinspoon’s face. He fumbled in his pockets. When he found the instrument, after some pantomime, he answered in a low voice and scuttled from the room, leaving Leoni unrestrained.

  Her first impulse was to run at once, but that made no sense. She could hear Grinspoon mumbling right outside the door but even if she could evade him, or any other staff who might be passing, she had no idea which way to go. If she was going to escape she needed a plan, possibly allies, preferably a knight on a white charger to come to her rescue.

  Like John Bannerman, for example. Leoni’s beautiful saviour from the emergency room had seen how things were between her and her parents. Surely he’d be suspicious – wouldn’t he? – about her sudden overnight transfer from his care. He was interested in her experiences and he hadn’t for a moment seemed to think she was mad or a danger to herself, so she hoped that even now he might be moving heaven and earth to get her out of Mountain Ridge. Having witnessed him in action she didn’t think all the Watts lawyers and money would be enough to divert him if he wanted to help her. On the other hand, if he was going to help her then why wasn’t he here now?