Poppet

  AJ shakes his head. This must be punishment for the way he was earlier. He gave Melanie such a hard time over helping Isaac to get his discharge. She needed his support, he didn’t give it, and now she’s in deep shit and there’s nothing he can do about it.

  ‘OK,’ he says. ‘I’m the senior staff member on the floor at the moment, so I am in control here. I want’ – he taps orders off on his fingers – ‘one, top priority: call the police. Two, we need to establish that our audio link into the room is live – I want to know if they can still hear us. If not, we have to figure out a way of communicating with them. And three …’

  He hesitates. Doesn’t know what three is. What he hasn’t voiced to himself, and what he will never voice to anyone, is that he wants to see that footage again. He wants to watch it again and again and again. Because looking at the closed door of the containment cell, with the unearthly muffled crying coming from the mounted Bose speakers on the security-pod wall, he is afraid this footage may be the last time he sees Melanie alive.

  ‘Three? Mr LeGrande?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I want this footage copied on to a separate drive – on the Trust’s central server, not downstairs. Now.’

  Jonathan Keay

  BERRINGTON MANOR IS turning out to be the creepiest place Caffery has ever been. Jonathan, according to his mother, is on the top storey of the house. ‘He wants shelter in our home, but he doesn’t want to see us or speak to us. So you’ll understand if I don’t come into the room with you.’

  She leads Caffery up narrow wood-panelled stairwells, not saying a word. The only noise is the creaking of the steps. Her back is rigid – it’s like following a prison warden, or a starchy matron in a boarding school. It crosses his mind that he won’t come out of here alive, that Mrs Keay is going to open a door and push him through it – and he’s going to find himself on a roller-coaster ride into the bowels of hell.

  They get to the top floor – a narrow, low-ceilinged corridor with lamps set in the dormer windows. A slightly medicinal smell, mixed with the scent of saddle soap, hangs in the air. Mrs Keay stops at a door, her fingers on the handle. She turns to Caffery, giving him that sad smile again.

  ‘I’m sorry – I’d love to come in. But he won’t want me there.’

  As Caffery steps through the door, Mrs Keay pulls the door closed behind him. He is left blinking in the gloom. She hasn’t locked the door, but that doesn’t take away the vaguest sense he’s somehow been hoodwinked.

  ‘Hello,’ says a voice. ‘You look like a cop.’

  He turns. No greased rubbish chute to hell – instead it’s an attic room with two dormer windows and shaggy flokati rugs on the bare floorboards. A tall man with a closely cropped greying beard sits at a low desk in front of an iMac.

  He pushes back his chair and swivels it to face Caffery. ‘You are a cop, aren’t you?’

  ‘You can tell?’

  ‘Got used to it over the years.’

  Caffery blinks. His eyes are adjusting to the light and now he can see Jonathan a little more clearly. He’s in his late thirties and dressed in a black T-shirt and shorts. There’s pink Kinesio tape in a star on his right biceps.

  ‘Detective Inspector Jack Caffery.’

  ‘Jonathan Keay.’ He gets up and crosses the room. Shakes Caffery’s hand.

  ‘Are you ill?’

  ‘That depends on your perspective.’

  ‘Your mother said you were in a fight.’

  There’s a long silence. Jonathan studies Caffery closely – his eyes travelling over his face. ‘Are you going to sit down?’ he says.

  ‘Am I invited?’

  ‘Why do you think I said it?’

  Caffery goes to a white leather designer chair with a steel pipe frame. He sits on the edge of it, peering at Jonathan, noting the sinewy limbs scattered in freckles. There are boxes of medication stacked on the cabinet next to the bed and the pink tape on his arm disappears up under his sleeve and emerges just out of the neck of his T-shirt.

  ‘Mr Keay. A few things I need to ask … and can I start with Hartwool Hospital, Rotherham? You worked there?’

  Jonathan sits down wearily, as if he’s resigning himself to a long and inevitably painful process. ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘And then from 2008 until last month you were working at Beechway.’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘I’ve been asked to look into some … inconsistencies at Beechway High Secure Unit.’

  Jonathan clenches one hand, then opens it. Peers at it distantly. ‘Yes. I guessed that was why you were here.’

  ‘It is. Are you ready to talk?’

  ‘I am. But it’s not going to be easy.’

  ‘It rarely is. We’ll get there. Let’s begin at the beginning. Take me back to Rotherham.’

  Jonathan moves his jaw from side to side. Eventually he begins to talk, haltingly, as if he is having difficulty with the words. ‘Yes – Rotherham. The mid-nineties.’

  ‘Keep going.’

  ‘One of the patients at Hartwool had a terror of being sat on at night. An anxiety disorder from childhood, something about being suffocated, I don’t know. There happened to be a grave on the site of the hospital, of a dwarf who’d been there when the place was a workhouse. It got conflated with the idea of something sitting on people – and it spread round the unit. We all tried to ignore it, but the hysteria kept building and then things started to happen – things we couldn’t put down to self-abuse. It escalated until finally we lost a patient. The inquest came back as suicide, but I was never convinced.’

  ‘The same as at Beechway?’

  Jonathan shakes his head. ‘There never was a grave or a dwarf at Beechway – it was only at Rotherham. It was always Hartwool’s story.’

  ‘But you brought it to Beechway? Helped it take root?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No? Then how did the story transplant itself down here?’

  ‘That’s what I’m going to tell you.’

  Tactics

  FLEA GETS THE call as they’re unpacking the van. The team has finished the day’s search, but there’s a dynamic situation at a secure psychiatric unit on the outskirts of Bristol. Can they go into overtime?

  She talks to the men briefly, then gets back on to Control to say they’ll be there in thirty. The men clamber into the van again and set about changing their kit and dragging riot gear out of the prisoner cage in the back. They are used to tactical entry and containment situations: when they’re not diving, they spend a lot of time on searches or executing arrest warrants – often on drug dealers. They have every tool of the trade for forced entry, and their ‘big red key’ – a battering ram – is looped in netting on the van wall. They head off through the rush-hour traffic, Flea driving. She is grudgingly grateful for this distraction. She doesn’t think she can stand another minute out in the countryside on this fake search.

  Beechway is all lit up at night, cordoned and protected by razor wire. Some of the team recognize this place – they’ve been here before. The last time they came was to search for the missing patient Jack was talking about last night. Pauline Scott. Flea remembers it well.

  The team aren’t the first on the scene: the place is crawling with vans and marked cars, lights flashing. Inside, it’s a fair approximation of pandemonium. She takes her men down to the containment area on the ward called Myrtle and, with her right-hand man, Wellard, assesses the door. It’s going to take under ten seconds to get through it with the ram, but they have to wait for the nod. She agrees their radio protocol then leaves Wellard in charge and makes her way back down the glass corridor to the security centre.

  The main players have congregated in the room that leads to the security pod. It’s a sort of recreation area for the security staff, with a fridge, a TV and a coffee-making machine. The boss of the show – the so called ‘silver’ commander – is a tall, gentle-faced guy Flea has worked with before. With him is his tactical advisor and the bronze commander. Hovering in
the glass-walled pod itself are the hospital security supervisor, one of his staff, and the most senior member of the nursing staff, a guy in a suit who is introduced as AJ LeGrande.

  LeGrande is good-looking and he’s very nice – Flea sees that right away. He’s sweet-natured and kind, and totally out of his depth. He is walking around the room, swinging his arms, clapping his hands together, shooting glances at the monitor in the pod. The screen is a steady, unchanging grey-hatched pattern. The hostage taker – Isaac Handel – has covered the lens with duct tape. It’s been three quarters of an hour and no one has any idea what is going on in there.

  ‘Do you think you should be sitting down?’ Flea murmurs under her breath when AJ is close enough. ‘You don’t look too good – no disrespect.’

  He glances at her. His eyes are very dark brown.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘But thanks all the same.’

  There’s more to this than meets the eye. There’s something personal in this for him – maybe something to do with the female hostage who is locked in the containment room. Flea can’t help herself, she turns her eyes to the monitor with the blank, hatched image. AJ sees her reaction instantly.

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘Horrible, isn’t it? I’d rather see anything than that.’

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘God, yes. I know when that comes off it’s going to be like opening Pandora’s box, but it has to happen eventually.’

  Two trained negotiators arrive. One is the national negotiator – the senior of the two – and the other is a local Negotiator Support Officer, introduced to Flea as Linda. She has been appointed to conduct the negotiations and she shakes everyone’s hands efficiently as if to say, OK, relax, I’m in control now. She’s a small woman in her thirties with shiny chestnut hair. She wears jeans and a long striped cardigan with sleeves she keeps pulled down over her wrists as if she is cold.

  All six of them stand in a huddle, discussing strategies. When it comes to Flea’s turn she explains how long it will take to effect a forced entry into the seclusion room. ‘But,’ she says, eyeing Linda, ‘I’m assuming that’s our last-hope scenario.’

  ‘Of course. And look, Sergeant, whatever steps are being taken to put containment on that room, can you not tell me? If the commander decides that’s where it has to go, just do it – don’t inform me first. If I know the team’s about to storm the place it’ll come out in my voice. That sort of thing can completely smash rapport – I’m better off not knowing.’

  ‘Hear that?’ the commander tells the assembled team. ‘All tactical conversations stay in this room. And keep the volume to a minimum.’

  ‘I’d like to be able to speak to them too,’ AJ says suddenly. ‘Would that be possible?’

  Linda gives the commander a dubious look. ‘A TPI?’ she says. ‘That OK with you?’

  ‘What’s a TPI?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir – that’s like a third party. An intermediary. No reason he can’t speak, if there’s a place for him.’

  ‘Well?’ the commander asks AJ. ‘Is there a place for you?’

  ‘Definitely. I’m the senior member of staff here, I know the unit inside out. I’ve been here four years, and known Isaac all that time. I know him well – I really do. He’s not always as straightforward as he seems.’

  Linda scrutinizes AJ. ‘Uh, sir,’ she addresses the commander, not taking her eyes off AJ. ‘I won’t argue with this, but he’ll need to be properly briefed and, obviously, I want primacy.’

  ‘She must take the lead,’ the commander says. ‘If she needs your input, she’ll ask for it – understand?’

  ‘I understand.’

  In the security pod the senior negotiator begins arranging a workstation for Linda, complete with laptop, a microphone and a notepad. Flea stands in the lounge area, her radio at the ready. The moment she gets the nod from Silver she’ll relay it to Wellard down on Myrtle Ward. Linda is talking sternly to LeGrande, reeling off a long list of what he can and cannot say. Everything has to be done with a nod from her or the senior negotiator. Then everyone withdraws into the staffroom, leaving Linda alone in the pod, seated in front of the monitors. AJ stands in the doorway between the two rooms, shoulder to shoulder with the senior negotiator, who holds a notepad – ready to convey information between Linda and the command team.

  A signal from her senior and Linda begins to speak. ‘Hi, Isaac. Sorry, don’t want to make you jump in there, but my name’s Linda and I’m a hostage negotiator.’ She smiles. ‘That sounds a bit grand, doesn’t it, but actually my role is just to talk to you – to find out what’s going on, what’s brought you to where you are now.’

  On her laptop a spectrogram of her voice fluctuates in one half of the screen. On the other half a stopwatch app clocks up elapsed time. Beneath it neon-blue sand runs through an egg timer.

  ‘Isaac? Would you like that? Would you like to talk?’

  Everyone bends slightly, straining their ears for a reply to come through the speakers. On a screen that has been turned so it can be viewed by the commanders, but not by Linda, Flea’s men can be seen in the corridor, ready. From time to time one of them glances at the camera – sends a reassuring thumbs-up. Meanwhile, the image that Linda has in front of her doesn’t change: it’s the hatched greyish pattern of the tape on the lens inside the room.

  The egg timer flicks itself over to show one minute has elapsed. Linda switches the mic on again. ‘I’ll just say that again – sometimes these microphones aren’t very clear. My name is Linda and I’m here today to try to understand what’s happening to you. I am here for you, Isaac. If you’ve got a mobile phone I can give you my number. You can call me on it. Then it’ll be just you and me speaking – no one else needs to hear what’s going on. Just you and me.’ She pauses. ‘I am here for you, Isaac – I am.’

  Silence again. Nobody seems agitated. Only AJ. He keeps flicking helpless glances over his shoulder at the senior negotiator, as if to say, Do something. Make something happen.

  Linda switches on the microphone and gives her mobile number in a very clear, calm voice. She does this three times, then says, ‘Isaac, you’ve been without a proper place to sleep for days now. You must be tired. Wouldn’t it feel better if you just had a quick chat to me? I want to help you, but I can only do that if I understand what’s going on with you.’

  There is still no answer.

  It’s been an hour now. Who knows what has happened behind that door.

  Berrington Manor

  JONATHAN IS A fragile greyish-white, and dark-brown circles have appeared like bruises under his eyes. He eases himself around to face Caffery, his face creasing with the effort.

  ‘I’m listening,’ Caffery says pointedly. ‘Waiting.’

  Keay takes a long, tired breath. ‘Yes, yes, yes.’

  ‘You’re going to tell me how all the hallmarks of what happened in Rotherham came to be circulating Beechway unit. Ultimately resulting in two deaths and—’

  ‘Two?’

  ‘Yes. One in 2009—’

  ‘Pauline Scott.’

  Caffery hesitates. ‘Pauline Scott. Yes. You were at Beechway when it happened.’

  ‘Yes, but what’s the second death?’

  ‘Zelda Lornton. She died almost a fortnight ago. At the moment it’s an open verdict from the coroner.’

  ‘Zelda?’

  ‘Yes. You knew her, obviously.’

  There’s a long silence. Jonathan scans Caffery’s face as if he’s looking for the answer to something very painful. Then he gives a long shaky sigh and swivels the chair away. Folds his arms across his chest. At first Caffery thinks he’s going to start tapping away at the computer; it takes him a while to realize Jonathan is crying. Silently, helplessly, his shoulders jerking and heaving convulsively.

  Poison

  IT’S BEEN AN hour and a half and AJ cannot, cannot, keep still. He stands in the security pod shaking, but so far only two people have noticed. One is the Big Lurch, who has put a hand on AJ’s
back – left it there just long enough to say: I know, mate. I know what’s happening to you. And though I’m not going to acknowledge it publicly, please believe I’m with you on it. The other is the support-group sergeant, a woman with wiry blonde hair and very blue eyes. Although she is dressed for business in a bulletproof vest that bristles with equipment and radios, she’s sensitive enough to have noticed. He’s felt her eyes on him. She knows.

  On screen, men in black uniforms and riot vests are trying doors, checking cameras, doing risk assessments and scrutinizing the blueprints of the building and its fire-response system. When they stand still, they do so with their legs slightly apart as if to suggest their limbs are so muscled it’s impossible to close them properly. Their shoulders and noses and arms are so wide and strong that AJ feels completely inadequate.

  The other screen shows the grey canvas tape. Nothing has changed. The volume of the speakers has been turned up in the team’s attempts to catch every nuance of what is happening in the seclusion room. But it’s just silence bearing down on them – a complete and utter lack of noise.

  The egg timer flicks itself over again. And again. Maybe it helps Linda concentrate. All it reminds AJ of is the sort of thing Mum would instinctively shield her eyes from – knowing it would trigger an epileptic episode. Each time it tips over, another minute has passed in which Isaac Handel has had carte blanche to do whatever he wants to Melanie. And there will be lots of things – AJ is sure of that. He recalls the way Handel used to watch Melanie going through the corridors. His eyes narrowing to slits in his face. He’ll be playing out all those things he’s thought about doing.

  AJ hopes and prays his imagination is better and crueller than Handel’s.

  DI Caffery is out of signal range. AJ would feel so much better if Caffery was here. I am so so sorry, I’m so sorry, he mouths to the screen with the tape on it. Melanie, I am so sorry …