Having asked me to step away, Malaika was already doing her best, but for once her soft words of reassurance seemed only to be making it worse. I could see the genuine fear on her face, then the relief as Debbie came steaming in to take over.
‘What’s the matter, Shaun?’ Debbie stood there, the spittle flying on to her face and neck as he asked and asked, screeched and pleaded. She closed her eyes and sighed. ‘Yes,’ she said, finally. ‘Yes, I think you are. In fact I very much doubt you’ll make it to bedtime.’
Shaun stopped immediately, froze as though he’d been slapped.
Then he dropped to the floor like he’d taken a bullet to the back of the head and began to convulse, thrashing and squealing as Malaika pressed her alarm and Marcus and George rushed in to clear the room.
EIGHTEEN
This Is What I Believed.
Part Two . . . and I’m not going to waste my time or yours, so I can tell you straight off that it began with the lights at the end of the garden. Dim lights I could see pulsing through the trees from my bedroom window. I’d spotted them a few times when I was living with Sophie and she said it was just passing cars or lamps in the houses opposite us. She laughed and said maybe I should think about how much money I was putting in Billy’s pocket every week but I wasn’t convinced. I could sense it was something more than that, something bigger. I heard music, too, but not anything I could ever place; never a song I recognised or an instrument I could really identify. Just a funny kind of music I hadn’t heard before.
I knew I was meant to hear it.
It felt like someone was watching me.
At Andy’s place it got worse very quickly, late at night usually, and he said much the same thing as Sophie had said. So, in the end, I stopped telling him and he probably thought I’d forgotten all about it, besides which everything got sort of taken over by the cutting for a while.
I’d come across it on the job a time or two before. Young girls, usually, with scars on their arms and legs like rungs on a ladder and because I didn’t know any better then, I’d always asked myself why.
Stupid fucking question.
It was a . . . numbness, I suppose, an inability to feel much of anything. It was the agony of being ignored. I could always feel that blade against my arm, though (a Stanley knife quite often, oh the irony), and there was no way that even a dolt like Andy could ignore the bloodstained tissues on the bathroom floor. So, yeah, we spent a ton of time in A&E and there were lots of tears and plenty of shouting, but I thought my scars looked pretty cool, and however many days went by when I would say nothing or not leave the house, I never stopped being vigilant. I was always aware that there were people waiting out there in the dark that I couldn’t see, keeping an eye on me.
Then I did start seeing them and that’s when the whole business with the masks started.
In a nutshell (I might as well say it before you do – nutcase more like), I’d see these people in the back of shot on television shows. In crowds or walking through a scene. They were all people I’d helped put away at one time or another. A bloke who’d killed his wife with a hammer, a woman who drowned both her kids in the bath, a rapist who attacked women outside underground stations. I’d just be sitting there on the sofa with Andy eating crisps and I’d spot them in the background, pretending to be extras or whatever they’re called. Thing is, I knew it wasn’t actually them. It was people I didn’t know wearing masks – people connected to the lights and the music and the watching – disguised as these criminals from my past.
Standing at the end of the bar in the Queen Vic.
Or in a restaurant in MasterChef.
Or on Made in Chelsea, sitting at a table in some coffee shop.
I spent a lot of time on the Internet, back then – OK, I still spend a lot of time on the Internet – but it was exactly what I needed, because I realised I was not alone and believe me, that was massive. There were plenty of other people in plenty of chat rooms, plenty of people in YouTube videos all saying this is some scary shit and talking about the anonymous organisations that orchestrated this kind of stuff. They were speaking out about ruthless and powerful groups that were capable of anything and were seriously well connected. Secret societies that watched and waited, then moved against anyone they perceived to be a threat.
That was the only thing I never really understood. The thing I spent every day trying to crack. I couldn’t figure out how I was a threat to anyone, but I knew as surely as I’ve ever known anything that I was, and that one day soon they would come for me.
I could feel them getting closer.
The people behind those masks were looking straight at me, not remotely concerned that I saw them for what they were. Enjoying it, like: This is a warning you can do nothing about.
I was not going to be a pushover, though. I was not going to let myself become anyone’s victim, because that was not what I’d been trained to do.
But . . . you have to know your enemy, right?
I suppose I should say that this is when things got . . . cranked up a bit.
One day I just got out of bed and had a smoke and realised that there had to be people in my life who were part of this. It became blindingly obvious and I felt very stupid that I hadn’t worked it out before. How could these people who wanted to hurt me do it without recruiting those I was close to?
The ones who always looked so worried and told me to cut down on this and stop smoking that and, you know, maybe I should think about upping my meds.
Them.
I’d been such an idiot.
A few people laughed when I finally confronted them, which only made me angry and confirmed my suspicions. Sophie looked really sad, but I knew that was simply because I’d rumbled her. Because I’d seen through all of them. My mum just refused to engage however much I told her that I knew who she really was, and I remember the sound of my dad crying down the phone when I asked him how he could betray his child and how it had felt to sell his soul.
I was on it. I was one step ahead of the game.
I can still remember the look on Andy’s face, the night it all kicked off. He was just sitting there watching football when I walked in and told him that we had to leave. He wasn’t in a great mood anyway because Arsenal were a goal down, but he paused the TV and followed me into the kitchen, stood staring at me like an idiot as I gathered up all the knives.
Asked me what I was doing.
Told me to put the knives back and calm down.
‘They’re coming,’ I told him. Why didn’t he look bothered? Why was he still standing there? ‘They’re coming to kill us right now and we have to get out.’
It only got physical when he tried to take the knives off me and the next thing we were scrabbling about on the kitchen floor with him talking about the police and me shouting that he was being stupid because we needed to protect ourselves.
I was trying to protect him, which was exceedingly fucking noble of me because I knew that he was involved in it, too.
I think I’m stronger than Andy is anyway and I was certainly feeling stronger than normal right then. The whole fight or flight thing, I suppose, and I was determined to do both. It was easy enough to push him away, and when he tried to take the knives off me again – pretty bloody carefully, mind you – I just reached for the half-empty wine bottle on the worktop because he hadn’t left me a lot of choice.
I wasn’t trying to hurt him.
But if I’d needed to, I wouldn’t have thought twice.
There was a lot of red wine everywhere and a fair deal of blood, but I couldn’t really think about it too much because obviously I had to search the rest of the house to try and find more weapons. I’d wrapped the knives in a tea towel so I could carry them, but while I was still rooting through the toolbox, Andy had managed to crawl back into the lounge, pick up his phone and ring for an ambulance. The ambulance cam
e with a police car in tow, and after Andy had told the police that he didn’t want to press charges – I should be grateful to him for that much, I suppose – we both got taken to the hospital.
One of the nurses in A&E recognised us.
Made some joke about a loyalty card.
So anyway, while Andy was being X-rayed and stitched up, I was in another room being assessed by a couple of psychiatrists and junior something-or-others from the mental health team. I wasn’t remotely taken in by them, of course, because I’d learned to recognise people who were part of the plot to kill me. I told them that all that business with the knives was just because I hadn’t slept for two days, but of course they didn’t listen, because they didn’t want to. They just looked shifty and refused to answer my questions about the organisation I knew damn well they were involved with, but either way, several tedious hours later – with my dad on the phone crying (again) as next of kin – forms were being filled in, calls were being made, and several hours after that, I was in the back of another ambulance and I was on my way.
Here.
Home Fleet home.
As I’ve tried to explain, a few things may have got jumbled up, the odd detail or whatever, but no names have been changed to protect those who may or may not have been innocent. That’s a fair account of how it all went down, and even if I can’t always remember exactly what happened and when, I will never forget the way I was feeling at the time.
This is what I believed.
Believed. Past tense.
For the most part.
NINETEEN
There aren’t too many reasons why I would ever be looking forward to my weekly assessment. I’ve sat through half a dozen of the bloody things already and the chat never changes much and the outcome’s always the same. Basically, I shouldn’t start packing just yet. That Friday though, after the conversations I’d been having over the previous couple of days, I was moderately excited by the prospect of sitting in a room with several people who could at least string a sentence together, none of whom was as mad as a box of frogs.
Whom. Listen to me.
All I’m saying, sometimes you miss just talking.
It was the usual suspects gathered in the MDR, though they’d moved aside the big desk that was used for staff meetings and tribunals. Or police interviews. Assessments were a bit more informal, a chat as much as anything, so that meant the tried-and-trusted circle of chairs, so beloved of junkies, alcoholics and other group therapy lovers everywhere.
Of people who need to share.
As always, once I’d sat down, they wasted a few minutes by formally introducing themselves for the record. There’s a camera mounted up in the corner, of course – it’s not one Graham’s been able to get at yet, far as I know – so I’m guessing the sessions are actually filmed. Maybe, when I finally get out, they’ll send me away with a copy of my greatest freak-out moments as a souvenir, like leaving Chessington World of Adventures with a picture of yourself screaming on a roller-coaster. A memory of a happy time you can treasure for ever. Anyway . . . Bakshi was present and correct, obviously, and Marcus and Debbie, and a trainee psychiatrist who said her name was Sasha, then didn’t speak again for the rest of the time I was in there. As always, I’d been told that I could have a friend or family member with me, but I decided against it. Aside from the fact that Mum and Dad were coming to visit later that day anyway, the last time they’d been there for an assessment, it hadn’t gone well.
I’d told Marcus that I didn’t need any help fucking things up.
When the staff had finished saying their names and telling people who already knew what they did . . . what they did . . . Bakshi looked at me expectantly.
‘Oh, I’m Alice,’ I said. ‘I’m the basket case.’
Nobody who knew me reacted at all, but I did get a smile from Sasha.
Marcus kicked things off by running through the current dosages of the assorted medications I was on and confirming that said medications had been taken and appeared to be effective.
‘That’s all very good,’ Bakshi said. She wrote something down then looked at me across the top of some rather snazzy glasses. ‘So, how are you feeling, Alice?’
‘Tip-top,’ I said. ‘Ticking along nicely, ta.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. I have to say I’m not quite so pleased at hearing about some of the things you’ve been discussing with the other patients.’ She glanced at Marcus. ‘With some of the staff, too.’ She waited, but I just stared at her. ‘Asking questions about this and that . . . the tragic events of last Saturday evening . . . as though you were still working for the police.’
I was getting seriously cheesed off with hearing the same thing and I really didn’t want to talk about it. I told Bakshi as much. ‘I will say this, though.’ I sat forward. ‘Aren’t we always being encouraged to hang on to who we are? Stuff like that. How important it is to remember the people we were before we became ill? Just seems like you’re saying one thing one day and then you’re moving the goalposts or whatever.’
I noticed Sasha making a note, which pleased me enormously.
‘Normally, that would be the case,’ Bakshi said. ‘But it can be dangerous if the thing you were doing before was what led to your illness in the first place. One of the earliest things you said to me was that it was what happened when you were working with the Met that started all this. The death of Detective Constable Johnston.’ She was looking down at her notes. My notes. ‘The PTSD and so on.’
I had no smart comeback.
I was thinking about Johnno and all that blood coming through my fingers.
It was time for Marcus to chime up. ‘Alice, what Dr Bakshi is saying is that it’s fine to think like someone who works with the police . . . that’s understandable, because you did so for many years . . . but you need to stop acting like you still are.’
Bakshi nodded. Debbie nodded. Sasha nodded.
‘People who retire from the Job are used for all sorts these days,’ I said. ‘Cold cases, all that.’
‘Not when they have been medically retired.’ Bakshi looked at her notes again. ‘Not when they are deemed unfit to ever return to work.’
I was just about ready to smash something, but I didn’t want them to know that. I wrapped my fingers around the edge of the chair and took a few long breaths until I felt calmer.
‘Then there’s the unfortunate incident with the cannabis.’
I smiled, because I couldn’t help myself.
Cannabis, like she was saying phonograph or wireless.
‘If we’re going to move forward at all, I need your assurance that you will not try to use again. It’s my professional opinion that the use of these drugs has been negatively impacting your mental health for a long time and will continue to do so.’
I tried to look shamefaced. I’m good at it, because I’ve had plenty of practice.
‘Obviously while you’re denied unescorted leave that can’t happen, but if such restrictions were to be lifted . . .’
‘I won’t do it again,’ I said. You won’t catch me doing it again. ‘I promise.’
‘Well, I’m going to have to take you at your word,’ Bakshi said.
‘I’m sure she means it,’ Marcus said.
‘But what is more problematic is yet another email from Andrew Flanagan.’ She raised a printed sheet. ‘Another message left on his voicemail two nights ago.’
‘Not by me it wasn’t.’
She began to read the email out, but I had no intention of listening, so I closed my eyes and tried to think of something else. A happy place, or a babbling brook or whatever it is that shrinks and therapists are always wanking on about. I couldn’t think of anything suitable quickly, so I just made the loudest noise I could inside my head and thought about Andy being on fire.
‘Well?’ Bakshi said, when she’d finished.
I kept my eyes closed. ‘It’s not true, obviously. It’s . . . fake news. He’s gaslighting me again, same as the last time. He hates me because I “attacked” him.’ I used my fingers to put quotes around the word. ‘Talking about me being violent when you should hear some of the things he liked to get up to in the bedroom. I can tell you all about it if you want. He’s obviously still angry and he’s vindictive and he’s obsessed with doing anything he can to make sure I don’t get out of here.’ I thought about hitting him with that bottle; the clunk of it and the lovely vibration that ran up my arm. ‘He’s probably got brain damage.’
‘His email is very reasonable,’ Debbie said. ‘He sounds concerned.’
Now I opened my eyes and stared hard at her. ‘How’s Shaun today?’
Debbie smiled, like she’d been expecting the question.
‘Only I heard he’s still not speaking.’
‘You know very well that we’re not allowed to discuss the health and welfare of other patients.’
‘Alice . . .’ Bakshi waited until she had my attention again. ‘I’m sure you understand that in light of this, and the incident with the cannabis, I won’t be approving any lifting of your section today.’
‘Oh, really?’ I stood up. ‘I’m all packed and everything.’
‘But I think we can put you back on to basic fifteen-minute observation and we’ll see how things go from there.’
I said, ‘Cheers,’ but I was already on my way to the door. I opened it then turned to look at Sasha, the trainee. ‘What does any of this actually train you for? No, really, I’d love to know.’
She opened her mouth and closed it again, looked to Bakshi for help.
I walked out, slamming the door behind me and shouting as I walked away down the corridor.
‘Sitting in on a water-boarding session next week, are you?’
TWENTY
I was still in a fairly arsey mood after lunch and post-lunch meds. Trudging towards the music room, I noticed Tony sitting patiently by the airlock with his bags, as likely to be leaving any time soon – courtesy of his non-existent American relatives – as I was. He waved but I couldn’t be bothered waving back.
Rabbit Hole Page 11