The House of Sleep

by Jonathan Coe

  ‘In any case,’ she said, suppressing these thoughts hastily, ‘your career and the future of the Dudden Clinic might not be entirely unconnected.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, did you ever ask him?’

  Terry frowned. ‘Ask who, about what?’

  ‘Dr Dudden, of course: about Stephen Webb.’

  ‘Not in so many words, no: but I did…’ He broke off, as the implication of her question became clear. ‘So it was you, was it, who sent me that note, out on the terrace?’

  ‘I thought a little hint might get you moving in the right direction, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, I suppose it did.’ Terry shuddered, mentally revisiting a scene which for the last two days he had been doing his best to forget. ‘One night – a couple of nights ago – he took me down to the basement, you see.’

  ‘Where he experiments on the rats?’

  He nodded. ‘Have you been down there yourself?’

  ‘Once or twice.’

  ‘And did you ever see… the other equipment he uses?’

  ‘What other equipment?’

  Terry rubbed his eyes, trying to banish the thought of those whitewashed walls, the huge perspex cage… ‘It’s too big a story for me,’ he said. ‘I’m going to go into the office on Monday and tell the news desk about it. They’ll be able to handle it properly.’

  ‘But it’s your story, Terry. You got there first.’

  ‘I’m just… not that kind of journalist. That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Yes, but you hate the kind of journalist you are. This is your opportunity to change.’ She could sense that Terry wanted to hear this. He was on the point of believing her. ‘I mean, you could make a real name for yourself with this story. Do you have any idea what happened down there – any idea what you might be dealing with?’

  ‘All I know,’ said Terry, ‘is that Stephen Webb was a student at the university, and that he took part in a sleep deprivation experiment for Dr Dudden. I presume that as a consequence of this experiment, he was involved in – an accident of some kind? A fatal accident? – but nobody has yet made a direct link between his death and his time at the Clinic.’

  ‘It was a car crash,’ said Cleo. ‘The morning he finished the experiment Gregory had no beds available, nowhere for him to recover, so he was sent straight home. On his way back to the campus he walked out into the middle of the road and was knocked over. He died on the spot.’ She reached into the overnight bag on the seat beside her, and pulled out two files. ‘But as it happens, somebody has already made a direct link. There was another student taking part in that experiment – someone who survived it, and my guess is that Gregory paid her off, because she left the university and nobody’s heard from her since. Except that somebody must have tipped off the Royal College of Psychiatrists, because a letter arrived from them this morning. Apparently they want to set up an enquiry.’

  ‘What was this other student’s name?’

  ‘Bellamy. Karen Bellamy.’ She handed Terry the two files. ‘I found these in Gregory’s office and made copies of them. Take them. They’re yours. Do what you can with them.’

  For the rest of the journey, Terry sat reading through the documents relating to these two unfortunate students. From Stephen Webb’s file he was able to build up a fairly complete portrait of a popular, bright, academically gifted young man who was also a fiercely ambitious and talented actor. His involvement in Dr Dudden’s experiment might have stemmed from financial need, intellectual curiosity, or a combination of both. The information on Karen Bellamy was sketchier, and she remained a more shadowy, altogether more problematic figure. In her case, there did seem to be an obvious background of financial hardship. She had come from a poor area of London: her parents had lived in Denmark Hill, and it appeared that this was the last place anyone had seen her, more than six months ago. Terry made a mental note of this but found that his concentration was waning as he read further into Karen Bellamy’s file. Vivid but sporadic images from last night’s dream kept flashing through his mind, and he found himself clutching at them hopefully, only to watch them recede into spreading blankness, or feel them trickle through his fingers like sand. The sensation was maddening, and at the same time a source of inexplicable, immeasurable comfort. Once or twice, granted the sudden bounty of a vision slightly more concrete, slightly less ephemeral than the rest, he would seize his pen and scribble a few words down in the margins of whichever page he was reading: ‘a meadow’, he wrote at one point; ‘a young girl, laughing; a woman’s voice, humming beside me in the long grass; the knowledge that I can fly; cool water’. After recording these scattered impressions, he glanced up to find that Cleo was looking at him and smiling.

  While Terry was occupied with the files, Cleo delved into her bag and took out the transcript Lorna had prepared for her: the record of Ruby Sharp’s strange nocturnal monologue. She read it through for the fiftieth time, still finding it hard to believe that any of it was true, or that the miracles it promised would ever come to pass, and still baffled by its relationship – prophetic? coincidental? – to Terry’s photograph, to that abiding image from her one well-remembered dream. Fumbling for rational explanations, she thought back over Ruby’s behaviour: her failure to introduce herself, when they had met on the beach two weeks ago; her unexpected appearance at the clinic yesterday, and even more abrupt departure this morning – for she had slipped away without leaving any kind of message (or payment). Unless the transcript itself were to be regarded as a message, of sorts.

  If so, could it be trusted?

  Yes. Yes, of course it could. Cleo reached this conclusion just as the train had penetrated London’s outer suburbs, and her reasoning was simple enough: for in the midst of all this confusion, all these unsettling convergences between past and present, at least one incontrovertible truth remained.

  Nobody told lies in their sleep.

  ∗

  Terry was at a loose end. Half an hour after saying goodbye to Cleo, he could not decide what to do next. He felt restless, unsettled. The thought of returning to his flat depressed him. It was three o’clock in the afternoon, and he could not face the prospect of a whole evening alone, at home, with only his television and video recorder for company.

  He bought a copy of Time Out and skimmed through the cinema listings, but somehow the titles meant nothing to him, and after a few minutes he tossed it aside, leaving it on a bench outside the station for the next passer-by.

  He opened his suitcase and took out the manila envelope which contained his photograph, and the two files which Cleo had copied for him. Then he walked back to the station and deposited his case in the left-luggage office.

  He took the tube across London to another mainline station, and from there he caught a connecting train to Denmark Hill.

  Terry himself could not have explained this decision. He was merely obeying some instinct – probably formed after watching a good many films on the subject – that this was what journalists (or was it detectives?) did when they were starting to investigate a story. If they wanted to follow a trail, if they wanted to trace somebody’s movements, then the first step consisted of empathizing with their quarry, getting inside that person’s head. He had never been to Denmark Hill before, and felt obscurely that this put him at some sort of disadvantage in his new task, which was to locate Karen Bellamy and unearth the truth about Dr Dudden’s sleep deprivation experiments. He was hoping that to visit the area in which she had grown up, and where she had last been seen, might yield something in the way of clues: a chance encounter with a friend, perhaps, or a conversation with a garrulous neighbour in the local pub.

  Terry was forced to admit, after several hours’ aimless wandering through the streets, bored loitering in cafés and solitary drinking of numerous pints of beer, that he still had a few things to learn about investigative journalism. He felt no closer to Karen Bellamy than when he had started; and he was also, by now, overwhelmingly tired. He was l
onging for bed, already, and nothing seemed more attractive at this point than the prospect of an early night – lights out by ten o’clock, say – followed by a solid twelve hours’ sleep. Perhaps if he got enough sleep tonight he would be visited by more dreams, and there might be a chance that he would remember them in the morning.

  He walked back to Denmark Hill station and ran down to the platform just as a train was pulling away. The disembarking passengers thinned out, plodded up the stairs to the ticket barrier, and left Terry with the platform to himself, apart from a solitary figure walking up and down past the snack machine. Terry had spotted this man before, while he was approaching the station from the road. Idly, he wondered why he hadn’t got on to the train along with everyone else. What was he doing here, after all, if not waiting for a train to central London? He decided to walk to the other end of the platform, to give this bulky stranger a wide berth. He did seem to be behaving rather strangely. He was about six feet two inches tall, wearing black jeans and a green combat jacket. He was pacing backwards and forwards along the platform, muttering to himself and occasionally shouting. The blade of his knife glinted in the evening sunlight.

  ∗

  Earlier that afternoon, Lorna had finished her shopping in town, and then, walking back up the hill towards Ashdown, she saw something most peculiar. Seven cars from the local taxi service drove past her in the direction of the railway station: five of them containing patients, it seemed, while the other two contained members of the cooking and cleaning staff. She stared after the taxis in bewilderment, and a sudden, nasty premonition visited her: she knew that something wrong, very wrong was happening at the house. She quickened her pace up the hill, and by the time she arrived outside the gates of Ashdown she was almost running.

  She could tell, as soon as she entered the hallway, that the house was now completely empty: it had a ghostly, abandoned air, and the front door had been left to swing open and shut in the wind. But although empty, it was far from quiet, because somewhere beneath her – somewhere in the basement – loud music was playing. Amazingly loud music: for not only could Lorna hear it, she could even feel it, through her feet. The whole floor was shaking with the force of this music. Lorna recognized it at once: nobody could have failed to recognize it, it was one of the most famous arias in the world, sung by one of the world’s most famous tenors. As she dropped her bags of shopping and stood in the hallway, fearful, undecided, the music came to an end but started again almost immediately. Somebody had loaded it on to a CD player, with the repeat function engaged.

  It took Lorna a few more minutes – during which time the aria stopped, and started again – to summon the necessary courage. At last, having looked into Dr Dudden’s office, and looked into the dining-room, and looked into the L-shaped kitchen, she willed herself to open the door to the basement, and slowly descended the stairs. Even when she had walked only as far as the laundry, still ten yards from the half-open door to the laboratory which she had never before been permitted to enter, the music was quite overwhelming. She put her fingers in her ears as she crept along the brightly lit corridor; and then, after steadying herself against the wall, and taking a series of long, deep breaths, she gently pushed the door wide open and stepped inside.

  Lorna could not have said how long she stood there, horrified, unable to move, struggling to make sense of the scene before her. Perhaps it was only for a few seconds. The room seemed to contain twelve tables, each supporting a glass tank. Some of the tanks had been upended, one or two had been shattered: four of them contained dead rats, and three contained dead dogs. In addition, there were a number of dogs, rats and rabbits scuttling dazedly about the room, showing every sign of malnutrition, mistreatment and exhaustion. Electric wires were strewn everywhere. Lorna drifted among the animals, regarding them warily, with a mixture of pity and revulsion, occasionally stooping down to take a closer look but unwilling to touch them.

  Her priority, in any case, was to locate the source of the music and to turn it off. It appeared to be coming from a room at the far end of the laboratory, and she made her way hastily towards this, knowing that she would not be able to think clearly until silence was established.

  The room she soon found herself in was large enough, but it contained no furniture except for one straight-backed, uncomfortable-looking chair, a television and sound system, and a variety of exercise equipment. Guessing herself to be in some sort of sleep deprivation centre, Lorna blocked her ears even more firmly and knelt down by the CD player, trying to see how it could be turned off. As she did so, a chill descended on her, and she froze in the act of reaching for the off button. She was aware, abruptly and very distinctly aware, of a human presence in the doorway behind her, just a few feet away.

  She turned, saw Dr Dudden, and screamed at the top of her voice.

  It was not the fact that he was almost naked – naked except for a pair of swimming trunks. Nor was it the crazy, hostile gleam in his eye, although that was frightening enough. What most terrified Lorna about Dr Dudden’s appearance that afternoon was the condition of his hair. It seemed to have gone berserk, to have acquired a lunatic life of its own. He must have plastered it thickly with glue, for it stood up stiffly, in four or five spiky clumps, and he had stuck about a dozen electrodes at random all around his skull: some of them were wedged into his hair, one was even glued to his ear, and all were connected up to a network of thick, multicoloured wires which dangled along the floor behind him: yards and yards of them, trailing out of sight. He looked like a cross between Medusa and a deranged punk.

  ‘Don’t turn that off.’ There was an icy control in his voice, even though he was shouting to make himself heard above the thunderous, endlessly repeating aria. ‘Whatever you do, don’t turn the music off.’

  ‘But it’s so loud…’

  ‘What are you doing snooping around here, anyway?’

  Lorna stood up, but came no closer to Dr Dudden. He was blocking the doorway to the laboratory, her only escape route.

  ‘I wanted to know where the noise was coming from,’ she shouted.

  ‘Noise?’ echoed Dr Dudden. ‘You call this noise?’

  ‘Well, it just sounded so different, from – from what you normally listen to…’

  ‘What’s the matter with you, woman? Are you scared of a bit of passion – a bit of emotion?’

  ‘Dr Dudden… are you all right?’ she asked now. ‘Where is everybody? What’s happened to all the patients?’

  ‘Patients! Ha!’ He snorted and, much to Lorna’s relief, turned his back on her and walked away, the yards of wire slithering behind him. She followed him into the laboratory, straining to hear what he was saying but catching only a few words: ‘patients… worthless… waste… cretins…’ Then, quite without warning, he wheeled around and confronted her face to face. He had seized a loose length of wire from one of the tables, and was now stretching it between his hands, winding it around his fingers, tugging it viciously taut. Lorna took a few steps away, until her back was to the wall.

  ‘Look, doctor… don’t you think you’d be more comfortable with some – with some clothes on?’

  He ignored this suggestion, and hissed: ‘Who’s Ruby Sharp, then?’ The aria faded away, and promptly started again, seeming louder than ever. ‘I found an EEG in my office relating to someone called Ruby Sharp. I’ve never heard of her.’

  ‘She… she was a patient,’ Lorna said, her eyes not leaving the wire, and his restless hands. ‘She came here last night.’

  ‘You admitted a patient, without a referral? Without my permission?’

  ‘She was – Dr Madison seemed to know her. She said that she talked in her sleep.’

  ‘And did she? Did she talk in her sleep?’

  ‘She… she talked, yes. I transcribed it this morning. But –’

  ‘But what?’

  Lorna hesitated, constrained by her own incomprehension now, as much as by fear. This incident had been worrying her all day: she did not un
derstand the secrets, the private history shared by Ruby and Cleo, who so clearly knew each other from some bygone period in their lives. Nor did she understand what Ruby had been trying to tell her former friend – or former lover, whatever she was – by pouring out the unbroken, incantatory stream of words which had been captured on tape during the early hours of the morning. But she did know one thing: Ruby had not been asleep at the time. Lorna had not mentioned this to Dr Madison, but she was certain of it. The polysomnograph readings had proved it.

  ‘Well – she talked, but she wasn’t asleep,’ she explained, stammering. ‘I think she was faking it, for some reason.’

  Dr Dudden looked at her for a moment, then started to laugh. It was a shrill, mirthless laugh, with an audible undertone of mania.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘I see: they’ve started already, have they? They’re already sending their spies down here. Sneaking into the clinic, posing as patients. Snooping around in the middle of the night. Planting cameras and microphones, I wouldn’t be surprised. Oh yes, it’s started, all right. But they won’t smuggle any more people in here – and do you know why? Because from now on, there are going to be no patients at all. From now on, Lorna –’ he advanced towards her, raising the wire towards the level of her throat ‘– it’s going to be just you and me.’ They stood like that, inches apart, their eyes locked together, until he lowered the wire, took hold of her wrist in a pincer-like grip, and said: ‘Come with me.’

  He pulled her in the direction of the second door at the back of the laboratory: the door behind which his long trail of wires seemed to disappear. He tugged it open with his free hand, and for the second time Lorna screamed, as soon as she saw the enormous perspex cage, with its giant turntable and its blue pool of water.