Poppet

  She goes back to her desk and he brings the cups over. She picks up hers, sips and raises her eyebrows at him. ‘So?’

  He unrolls Zelda’s painting and holds it out. Melanie stares at it for a while, then puts on her glasses and peers at it more closely. Eventually she shakes her head.

  ‘Sorry, no. I’m a dummkopf. What am I looking at?’

  ‘Zelda painted it.’

  ‘And? It’s Dracula. Or a bat – it’s hard to tell.’

  ‘I think it’s her running away. And here? See it?’

  He puts his finger on the face of the figure on the hillside.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘It’s you-know-what. The M word.’

  Melanie peers at the painting. After a while her face falls. She rubs her eyes wearily. ‘Oh, AJ, please God, not this again. It’s all done and dusted—’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes. I got a call from the review team this morning. They can’t say anything on record, but they gave me the nod things are going to be OK – there won’t be any further inquiries. Zelda will be buried with the dignity she deserves and everything will go back to normal. Normal.’ She emphasizes the word. ‘And you showing me this? AJ, seriously, the words “hornets’ ” and “nest” are coming to mind. Also the word “poke”. Poke in a nonsexual way.’

  ‘Hear me out, please …’

  She gives a long groan. But she doesn’t get up from the desk. She props her head in her hands and rolls her eyes. ‘Go on – hit me with it. I’m all ears. The eyes, though? They’re a different matter – no control over them. If you think I’m drifting – blame the eyes.’

  He sits down opposite her.

  ‘Look at this.’ He rests a finger on the figure. ‘Doesn’t it make you think of anything? Anyone?’

  Melanie is silent for a moment, staring at the image. She doesn’t dismiss it – she actually is studying it – giving it some thought. ‘Yes,’ she admits, taking off her glasses. ‘OK, yes, it does remind me of someone. It looks like Isaac Handel. It’s the pullover – his favourite pullover. And the hair – and his toys, of course.’

  ‘Isaac.’ AJ takes a long, controlled breath. ‘Exactly. Isaac.’

  ‘He’s gone. He was released yesterday.’

  AJ nods. He doesn’t say anything about the garden last night but he’s thinking it. He wonders if she is. ‘Melanie – looking back, do you remember him sometimes talking to Zelda?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Why would she draw him like this?’

  ‘I don’t know, AJ. I honestly don’t know.’

  ‘Isaac was a patient at the same time that Pauline died – do we know if they spent time together?’

  ‘I can’t recall things like that. It was years ago. And aren’t we going above and beyond our remit here? Losing Zelda – the whole bureaucratic nest of vipers it’s stirred – I thought it was all calming down, tying itself up.’

  ‘Think about it – it’s too much of a coincidence – the power cuts, the writing. And Isaac wearing the …’ He gestures at the picture, groping for the right words. ‘Him painted with this face. Can we call one of those cops – the ones we met at the forum? They deal with stuff like this. We don’t have to make it official, just ask to meet them casually and—’

  ‘AJ, please.’ Melanie covers his hand with hers. ‘Please, I know I’m not perfect, but – just let me be a slob on this? Let it lie, eh? Keep the unit moving in the right direction. No scandal, no police ferreting around. The Trust hates that sort of thing.’ She bites her lip, her head on one side. ‘Please, AJ. This means a lot to me.’

  He is silent. He looks at her fingers on his hand. She loves this unit so much. If he’s going to get into the proper world of relationships, these are the things he has to shut up about.

  ‘Something else,’ she says, while he’s still waging his internal battle. ‘I was going to ask, if it’s not too rude, whether you had plans for tonight?’

  He glances up. She’s smiling at him, those clear blue eyes like summer sky. She raises her eyebrows. ‘Well?’

  It’s as if she’s flicked a switch, releasing a stream of endorphins that surges through him. He shakes his head, sighs. ‘Yeah yeah yeah – OK. I’ll need to see to Stewart first though. I’m going to have to walk him – I leave him with Patience too long and he turns into a butter ball.’

  ‘It’s a shame you can’t bring him to my place. The lease is pretty dogmatic about animals.’ She pauses. ‘Dogmatic.’

  AJ laughs. She’s everything he thought she wasn’t – she’s funny and sweet and silly and he’s falling in love with her. After less than twenty-four hours he’s actually toppling over the cliff he never thought he would. ‘How about after I’ve walked him? Say yours at eight?’

  ‘Sounds like a date to me.’

  He walks on air out of the office. On the next floor down the Big Lurch happens to be crossing the hallway. AJ hesitates – wondering whether to back up on to the gallery and wait for a moment when he won’t be seen, but it’s too late. The Big Lurch glances up – sees him, sees his face. Maybe AJ’s expression speaks volumes, maybe it’s advertising to the world that he wasn’t in the director’s office on plain business, because there’s a pause, during which neither of them seems to know how to react, then a sly, understanding grin creeps over the Big Lurch’s face. He goes on his way, his clenched fist held up to AJ, throwing him a gang sign.

  He’s saying, Congratulations. He’s saying, Respect.

  The Plan

  THE DAY PASSES slowly in the grey outdoors. The sky is low and furred. The trees in east Somerset reach down and drop bright wet leaves on to the men and women in black all-weather gear who move painstakingly and agonizingly across the steaming forest floors. It’s the Avon and Somerset support group on their second day of deployment to find the remains of Misty Kitson.

  At the RV point, the place all the search teams have parked their vehicles, Jack Caffery sits in his car, radio on to some chat show or other, window open to the bracing air. He wears an RAB fleece over his suit and is slowly puffing a V-Cig. He didn’t sleep last night – even half a bottle of Scotch couldn’t stop his hamster-wheel head shuffling away. Trying to decide how to work this – how to place himself in a flawed scenario he’s created. He thought he’d waited long enough for her to get into the place where she’d see the situation. But he hasn’t. She’s shocked and combative and reluctant; it’s up to him to deal with that.

  He looks out at the skyline – leafless, spindly trees against a boiled-white sky. There aren’t many days left for him to put his long-game into action. To add to the weight, first thing this morning the superintendent was waiting for him at the office, telling him grudgingly he was lucky – no new cases had come in. Reminding him that the moment a job did come up, things would change.

  It dawns on Caffery now that the person speaking on the radio is Jacqui Kitson. He clicks out the cigarette cartridge and closes the window, turns the volume up.

  ‘The police are doing everything they can – and I, you know, I want to say I think it’s about time too.’

  He taps the cartridge on the steering wheel as Jacqui continues.

  ‘Of course I pray my daughter’ll still be found alive. Even after all this time, I’m not giving up hope.’

  He clicks off the radio. Sits for a minute, head lowered. His mother was a Catholic; she’d say he’s committed an original sin. She’d search around for the name to the sin and what had led him to it: cowardice or lust. Not greed. That’s one thing she’d never be able to point at him.

  Knock knock knock. He jolts up straight. Blinks. Flea is staring through the passenger window at him, her breath fogging the pane. She’s still wearing her Tyvek search suit, hood rolled down. He hesitates then leans over and unlocks the door. She opens it, climbs in, and slams the door.

  ‘Right,’ she says. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Going on?’

  ‘We searched the road once and now the POLSA is sa
ying we’ve got to do it again. You’ve directed that, haven’t you?’

  ‘I had to make sure you hadn’t missed anything.’

  ‘Bullshit. It’s the only place you’ve chosen to have re-covered. You did it to put pressure on me.’

  He closes his eyes. Counts to ten. ‘OK.’ He puts his elbow on the steering wheel and turns to face her. ‘I’ve protected you for a long time – and in return I get rudeness.’

  She takes a long, levelling breath. Her face is ruddy from the cold. Her hair is tangled. ‘I’m sorry. Tell me what you were going to say last night. I might not agree with it but at least you’ll be done with it.’

  He puts the cartridge of his fake cigarette into the pocket of his fleece. Takes a few moments to get the words into his head. He’s gone through this before, rehearsed it, but he’s never done it in the face of this hostility.

  ‘I’m going to give you a scenario of what could happen. Picture this. You are searching the area we omitted to search last time. You find skeletized remains, say – oh, I don’t know … somewhere, anywhere out here and—’

  ‘Wait, wait! Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’

  ‘Think about it – how often have you dealt with a situation like that? Someone’s gone missing – you search, but you draw the search area a fraction too tight … Usually the remains are so decomposed it’s impossible to identify them or give cause of death. And in Misty’s case? She was an addict, depressed, her marriage was falling apart, she was in the press for all the wrong reasons. Maybe she found a quiet place to fix herself up, got a bit lost, lay down to sleep and didn’t wake up. It was May but it got cold that night – I’ve checked the temperatures. That night was a blip on the average. In her state she could have got hypothermic quite quickly, disorientated. It’s so common it’s almost a cliché. We scatter the bones the way animals would – a pathologist’s nightmare. And let’s not forget one salient point. The person who directs the forensics: the SIO. And in this case the SIO being …’

  She turns away. She knows that as Senior Investigating Officer he has control over where the forensics budget is concentrated. He could guide the pathologists in any direction he wanted.

  ‘And,’ he pushes home the point, ‘if I was there when you found the remains, any trace evidence we’d overlooked would just go down as a contaminated-evidence trail. We’re covered every which way.’

  She stares out of the window. In her holster the radio makes a low crackling noise. Outside, all the teams are coming and going, stopping to speak in the car park. The earnest faces of people who don’t know they’re on a wild-goose chase.

  When eventually she speaks it’s in a quiet, controlled voice. ‘I can’t dive. My ears are shot. And getting to the place you want to go is impossible. Even if you knew exactly where to go, you’d have to be a brilliant diver. An exceptionally brilliant diver.’

  ‘Is that a yes?’

  ‘What will you do if I say no?’

  ‘I haven’t thought that far ahead.’

  She sighs. Pinches her nose. ‘I’m sorry, Jack. I thank you for what you’ve done, but no. I’ve thought about it and thought about it – gone through and through it in my head and really this is the best way. The safest way. I’m really, really sorry.’

  Starbucks

  ISAAC HANDEL WAS the pudding-basin haircut guy who alerted AJ to what Moses was doing with the spoon in the breakfast room that day. Until yesterday morning when he was released into a halfway house, he had spent all of his adult life in Beechway High Secure Unit. He was admitted to the acute ward as a referral from a juvenile unit seven years before AJ arrived, and according to all the stories from that time he didn’t start off as the easiest patient.

  He was eighteen years old. Acned, greasy, and disorientated. He smelled awful – everywhere he went the smell trailed around with him. He also insisted on carrying two doll-like figures he called his ‘poppets’ tucked in the crooks of his arms – ugly things that smelled as bad as he did. He wouldn’t be parted from them – not ever.

  The smell got worse and the staff had to employ physical tactics to get Isaac to wash. Three orderlies took him to the shower and managed to undress him. But when they tried to prise the poppets away from him they were rewarded for their efforts by having Isaac urinate liberally on them. After that they never again tried to take the dolls away from him.

  Slowly, as the medication and therapy began to take effect, Isaac calmed. He started showering and stopped being so smelly that no one would sit near him. His collection of dolls grew – he bought materials with his allowance and in art-therapy classes with Jonathan Keay he was always sewing and painting the damned things. Keay used to help him a lot, in fact AJ often wondered if Keay favoured Isaac above some of the other patients. The poppets were freaky, with individual little teeth and lifelike eyes in woollen-crocheted faces. Or faces moulded from porcelain fired in the therapy-centre kiln, eyes outlined in red. But Isaac would not be separated from them. He’d carry as many as possible with him, the rest would be in his room, piled on the bed – distorted, lolling, squished together like miniature corpses.

  AJ can’t keep still. Despite his promise to Melanie he can’t stop thinking about Isaac Handel. Weird little Isaac. He waits until one of the office secretaries gets up to take a bathroom break and calls after her retreating back, ‘Can I use your station – check a rota?’ When she waves a dismissive hand, he slips into her seat.

  AJ has never known – never wanted to know – what put Isaac in Beechway in the first place. By the time he arrived at the unit, Isaac was a different person – silent and pliable and non-confrontational – he took his medication without fuss. In fact, in a weird way, AJ got on with the guy. The only thing he didn’t care for was the way Isaac behaved whenever Melanie made an appearance. Sometimes he’d stop and stare at her when she passed him in the corridor, like a horny dog watching a bitch – as if she was leaving a hormone trail. He’d ask AJ inappropriate questions about her: Where does she live? How old is she? Is she married? AJ’s used to the male patients reacting this way to Melanie – she’s a conundrum that their drug-pickled brains can’t decipher. In the grand scheme, Isaac wasn’t much more intrusive about Melanie than the rest of the patients. AJ had no other good reason to dislike him.

  The secretary whose desk he’s sitting at is the appointed MHA administrator on the unit’s review tribunals. It’s her job to transcribe the tapes of the meetings. AJ finds Isaac Handel’s transcript on her desktop instantly – she’s extremely organized and neat – and he swiftly downloads it on to a gimicky memory stick Patience was given as a loyal customer by the betting shop. It’s in the shape of a horse’s head. AJ is old enough for it to bring to mind the dead horse’s head in the Godfather movies – but the stick serves its purpose, and he pockets it.

  He can’t read this here in the unit – he imagines Melanie coming in and catching him. If she finds out he’s not letting this go it will be the last time he’s invited back to her house in Stroud. He knows this. He sends her a text: Got to disappear bit earlier babe, Patience just called – Stewart acting up. See you later xxx. PS you look beautiful on no sleep. Must be good genes.

  He drives to the nearest Starbucks, orders the first thing on the menu – which turns out to taste more like a heated-up coffee milkshake than a proper coffee – and sits in the corner, his back to the rest of the customers, his laptop open. He calls up the transcript of the tribunal:

  Isaac Peter Handel v MHRT

  Wednesday, 10 October

  Beechway Psychiatric Unit

  Chair: Mr Gerard Unsworth, QC

  AJ was at this tribunal. He’s been to hundreds of these over the years and there wasn’t much about it that made it memorable. Ancillary staff had set up and cleaned the conference room on the admin block and provided a slew of sandwiches and Thermoses of tea and coffee. AJ was only there briefly as a witness to present the Patient Nursing Report to the panel. It was all routine shit: he talked through
Isaac’s response to his meds, the logging of his behavioural markers, his level of engagement with therapy and his relationships with other patients.

  Most reviews that recommend discharge are little more than a formality; usually an informal decision has been made in the routine tribunal six months previously. Isaac and his solicitor were therefore already primed: as long as he’d toed the line since the last hearing he’d be recommended for discharge. There were a few hoops to jump through, the usual protocols to be observed, but it was all routine.

  With the exception, AJ realizes in hindsight, of Mrs Jane Potter.

  On every tribunal panel there must be a lay person – someone responsible but objective. Jane Potter is part of a pool of lay people and AJ has seen her on panels before – she’s president of the local Women’s Institute and is an Ofsted inspector. This time he recalls noting, briefly, that her posture was different from how it usually was. She sat stiffly, her hands clenched, as if she was angry – or shocked.

  Now he wonders what had made her so tense. He takes a sip of coffee-flavoured froth and skims the transcript for the sections before he came into the room. He wants to see if something had happened to make Jane Potter react like that. His lips move silently, fast-forwarding through the usual stuff:

  … panel will consider an application for conditional discharge of Isaac Peter Handel … appellant present, and Ms Lucy Tripple, appellant’s advocate … panel consists of chair Gerard Unsworth, QC; Dr Brian Yeats, consultant psychiatrist, responsible clinician to the appellant; Ms Melanie Arrow, clinical director; and Miss Bryony Marsh, Mental Health Act Administrator; Mrs Jane Potter …

  In the transcript each panel member is given an acronym: IPH, LT, GU, BY, MA, JP. There is the usual stuff of people introducing themselves: The QC explains who he is – that’s a laugh because they all know Unsworth. He’s chaired numerous tribunals, and before he rose to the bench he prosecuted a number of high-profile cases against hospitals on behalf of patients detained under the Mental Health Act. With Unsworth in the chair everyone who worked on the unit was on high alert. Melanie in particular must have been stressed. Was it just after she and Jonathan separated, AJ wonders? That would have made it worse.