Rabbit Hole

by Mark Billingham

  No, it’s not exactly the Gettysburg Address, but it’s a start, right? So I immediately rush off to grab some paper, then come back to see if Shaun has any other words of wisdom to impart. It’s got to be worth a try, because if he knew about Debbie killing Kevin, then chances are he knows who her accomplice is.

  Who killed Debbie.

  So far, bugger all, but let’s wait and see?

  There’s the usual noisy chatter, because by now quite a few others have been interviewed, same as I was, and are mad keen to tell everyone how it went. L-Plate’s twittering about her interview like she’s just been given the third degree.

  ‘I didn’t think those two women were very nice,’ she says. ‘The ones on Sunday were much nicer. Mind you, they took some of my clothes away with them.’

  ‘Mine too,’ Lauren says. ‘My best T-shirt and joggers. I’d better get them back or I’ll be kicking off big time.’

  I pointed out that clothing samples had been taken from everyone, staff included. Without stating the blindingly obvious and telling them it was because they were all suspects, I reassured them that it was standard practice.

  ‘Really though, they were a bit . . . fierce,’ L-Plate says.

  ‘Probably lesbians,’ Ilias says. The voice of reason as always, spraying the table with gobbets of shepherd’s pie.

  I didn’t think French and Saunders were fierce at all, but I suppose it’s daunting if you’re not used to it. Or if you ­haven’t been on the other side of the table yourself, like I have. I need to keep reminding myself that this lot are civilians, that they don’t know the game. When Donna asks when they’ll be taking our fingerprints and DNA, I gently remind her that it’s already on record, because the last lot did all that and your DNA doesn’t change from week to week, whatever she might have seen on CSI.

  Lauren tells me I’m a smartarse.

  I tell Lauren she’s an idiot.

  Big Gay Bob loudly tells everyone that DC French could probably do with losing a few pounds, which immediately sends Donna out into the corridor to start walking off the spoonful of peas she’s eaten. ‘Mind you, I quite like a chubby bird,’ Bob says. ‘They’re always grateful.’

  It doesn’t look like Shaun has anything else he wants to share, and Tiny Tears has nothing to say for herself either. She just sits there pushing her food around and watching me from the other end of the table, which makes me uncomfortable to say the least. I start to lose interest in the conversation when Tony says he had a feeling that the other copper might have been you-know-who and I finally zone out completely when Lauren starts singing ‘I Fought the Law’.

  Oh, the other big news is that Graham, the Waiter, has gone.

  Spirited away while I was being interviewed, just like that. Off to bang his head against a different wall, wait at a new meds hatch and chuck his dinner at the cameras on some other ward. Maybe Malaika said something after the chat we had about security yesterday, or Marcus took the roasting he got off those coppers to heart and decided he had no other option.

  Either way, we’re a body down.

  Three, obviously, if you count Debbie and Kevin.

  At least Graham can be thankful he wasn’t taken out of here in a bag.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  It’s been pretty full on since breakfast so, once I’ve gobbled down the last meds of the day, I decide to retire to my sumptuous boudoir a bit earlier than usual. Getting an extra hour or two of sleep feels like a top idea, plus I fancy some time on my own. Tempting as it might be to veg out in the TV room like I normally do and wind Lauren up if I get bored, I need to chill for a bit, so I sit on my bed working my way through a packet of Hobnobs and dicking around on the internet for a while.

  I start to feel more relaxed straight away. Just me, with my finger on a trackpad that can take me anywhere. I laugh out loud when it strikes me that this is the happy place I couldn’t get to a couple of weeks back, in that hideous assessment session.

  But what is more problematic is yet another email from Andrew Flanagan . . .

  I watch a few stupid videos for a laugh and catch up on some celeb gossip until I’ve finished the biscuits. Then I spend half an hour cruising some of the newsgroups and private chat rooms where, once upon a time I try not to think about too much, I wasted half my life.

  Now, though, it isn’t about convincing myself I’m not paranoid. It isn’t a question of finding like-minded mentalists, so I don’t feel like I’m the only one going through . . . whatever it was I was going through. These days, it’s just curiosity.

  I swear . . .

  I watch the vlogs and read the bat-shit comments.

  I think, get a life.

  I only stop when I start to suspect there’s someone standing outside my door. Then I’m convinced there is. I know it’s not one of the nurses because Mia was round, doing the half-hour checks, ten minutes ago.

  I tell myself to calm down, that I’ve got sod all to be scared of.

  I creep to the door and press my ear against it. There’s definitely someone there, I can hear them breathing. It’s probably the gentlest of knocks, but I step back like someone’s let off an air-horn.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s Clare . . .’

  Oh, so now Tiny Tears is talking to me. I open the door and hold out my hands like, What d’you want? and watch her standing there looking awkward.

  ‘Were you asleep?’

  ‘Well, if I was, I’m not now, am I?’ She looks like she’s going to cry and I’m buggered if I’m putting up with any more of that. ‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘Is it OK if I come in?’ she asks.

  I sigh, and step back to let her in, and she lowers her gangly self down until she’s perching on the edge of my bed. She clutches at one hand with the other and shakes her head and says how awful it is, what happened to that nurse. She looks at me and I realise she’s waiting for me to agree with her.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say.

  The look on her face tells me that I haven’t quite managed to conjure the pity or sympathy she was expecting and it shocks me a bit, because I was really trying. Debbie is the first murder victim that I’ve been anywhere near since I left the police. Do I sound uncaring . . . do I feel uncaring because I didn’t much like Debbie and know what she was guilty of? Or is it because the empathy that was there on the Job is something I’ve lost? Would I be as destroyed as I used to be at the murder of a neglected toddler, or a pensioner who’s been battered to death, or anyone? I want to know the answer, but at the same time I really don’t want to be in a position where I get it.

  ‘So, come on then,’ I say. ‘How did you end up in here?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘It’s OK, you don’t have to keep it secret. It’s not like prison.’ I smile, because I really want to know. ‘Well, it’s a bit like prison.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘No probs,’ I say.

  I reckon her reluctance is a bit strange, though. Most people in here tend to fall into one of two camps. Either they’re desperate to tell you everything or they don’t believe they should have been sectioned at all and that there’s been some horrible mistake. Graham, for all his tricks and tics, was one of the latter, forever waiting for someone to acknowledge their administrative error and tell him he could go home. Kevin and Shaun only ever really confided in each other, but others are a bit more forthcoming about their episodes and misdemeanours.

  Ilias kept taking his clothes off in shops.

  Bob had a breakdown after his wife left him – what a shocker!

  Lucy freaked out after taking too much heroin. Or maybe it was because she hadn’t taken enough. Doesn’t make much odds.

  Actually . . . thinking about it, I kind of fall somewhere between the two extremes. Yeah, I’m happy enough to admit that I went a bit b
onkers, to talk about the knives and the people on my TV, but I still don’t think I should be here. So maybe it isn’t quite as clear-cut as I think it is.

  Still none the wiser about Tiny Tears, though.

  She says, ‘I think we could be friends.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Best friends, maybe.’

  She looks at me and I shrug like, Why not? but something about her is telling me to keep my distance.

  ‘You were so nice, the day I came in.’

  ‘I was being nosy,’ I say.

  ‘Nobody else really bothered. I mean obviously they wanted to gawp a bit, but none of them offered to help, like you did.’

  ‘Well, let’s see,’ I say.

  She seems happy enough with that. ‘Tell me more about the nurses,’ she says. ‘You were going to tell me, remember?’

  Right. The afternoon she arrived. Before she started blubbing for the umpteenth time in like ten minutes and I lost the will to live. ‘What do you want to know?’

  She shuffles her arse back on my bed a little, makes herself more comfortable. ‘Everything,’ she says.

  There doesn’t seem much point in telling her about Debbie, but for the next half an hour or so I give her the skinny on the rest of them. I tell her Malaika’s probably the best bet if she needs a fag and that Femi-Nazi’s got a temper on her. I tell her that George is a failed copper and that Marcus can be pretty strict sometimes and that she shouldn’t hold out too much hope for any deep and meaningful conversation with Mia.

  She seems to be enjoying herself. She laughs at my jokes and my daft attempts at some of the accents and looks suit­ably shocked when she’s meant to. I’m actually quite enjoying myself, but then she stands up, just like that, and announces that she’s tired. She tells me she wants to go to bed, says it like it’s the most important thing I’ve heard all day.

  I say, ‘Oh, fair enough,’ and watch her walk to the door.

  After she’s gone, I wait until I’m fairly sure everyone else is in their room and pay a quick visit to all the other women on the corridor. I knock on doors and put my head round. Sorry to disturb you, just a quick question.

  I want to know if any of the others have had a visit. If anyone else has been asked if they want to be Clare’s best friend.

  Nope. Just me.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Banksy says, ‘I’m amazed it took you this long to call.’

  ‘You’re happy that I have though, yeah?’ I’m trying to be funny, but I’m genuinely chuffed that he’s even speaking to me. I think I’d been a bit off with him last time he was here. ‘You’re happy, I can tell.’

  ‘I’m ecstatic,’ he says.

  I’m back in my room, watching rain battering at the window and it’s almost like I can hear the grease from the bacon at breakfast cranking up the cholesterol and turning my arteries to Twiglets. ‘You heard the latest news from the Ward of Death, then?’

  ‘Yeah. Like I said, I was expecting you to call Sunday night.’

  ‘I was a bit busy,’ I say.

  ‘What the hell’s going on in that place?’

  ‘You know it was me that found her, right?’

  ‘No.’ There’s a pause. ‘I did not know that.’ He sounds concerned and it’s lovely. I suppose it’s fair enough, because we’re close, plus he knows that the last time I was anywhere near a blood-soaked body, things didn’t turn out so well. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Straight up?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ Stupid question, bearing in mind what I just said, but Banksy knows better than anyone that, when I was on the Job, I dealt with far worse things than a single murder victim on a bathroom floor. I tell him I’m good, or as good as I’m ever going to be surrounded by nutters, at least one of who’s homicidal. I tell him not to worry. I tell him he’s a top mate.

  ‘So, come on then . . . what are you hearing?’

  ‘What am I hearing where?’ he asks.

  ‘From the MIT. Their plan of action or whatever. It’s a DCI called Brigstocke who’s running things, apparently, but I don’t know if—’

  ‘Al . . . we went through all this before. I don’t have any information, because it’s not my team.’

  ‘You said you knew.’

  ‘About what happened, yeah. It’s not like there’s that many murders, is there?’

  ‘I know how many murders there are,’ I say.

  ‘That’s all, though. Look, if any stuff . . . filters through or if I happen to hear something, I’ll let you know, but right now you’re asking the wrong person.’

  ‘Has someone told you not to say anything?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Have you been told not to talk to me about the case?’

  His sigh rattles a bit. ‘I haven’t got time for this, Al.’

  The rain’s getting heavier. Tin tacks falling on a drum. Above the noise I can hear Lauren singing in the distance, which is definitely the best place for her to be.

  ‘Remember when you were here last time?’ I ask. ‘When we talked about the drugs gang and how maybe they’d sent someone in pretending to be a patient to kill Kevin?’

  ‘Yeah, and I thought it was stupid,’ he says.

  ‘Yeah, and so did I eventually . . . and then I knew it was because I found out who really killed Kevin, but maybe this time it isn’t. A new patient arrived just before Debbie was murdered.’

  I let that sink in, then tell him all about Tiny Tears. How she was weird when she came in, and yeah, I know everyone’s weird when they come in, but there was definitely something off about this one. I tell him about her coming to my room last night.

  ‘What’s wrong with wanting a friend?’ he asks. ‘Wouldn’t you have wanted that when you got there?’

  ‘It was like she had an agenda.’

  ‘Doesn’t make her a killer, Al.’

  ‘Like . . . commit the murder, then make sure you get matey with the one person on the ward who can solve it, because she’s an ex-cop. Same as she solved the last one. Got to be worth thinking about, at least?’ I keep at him for a while and I know he’s probably not listening, but eventually he promises me that yes, he will think about it.

  Then he says, ‘Shall I come in to visit next week?’

  Before, Tim’s always said I’ll be in tomorrow or See you on Wednesday or something, but now he’s made it a question, and I suspect that’s because he wants me to say no.

  I say, ‘Only if you’ve got time.’

  My dad rocks up in the afternoon. I say rocks, but my dad’s never actually rocked anywhere in his life. He’s more of a lolloper, a marcher on a good day, but anyway . . . he arrives.

  Femi comes to find me and takes me to meet him.

  I stretch out a hand for his plastic bag of goodies before I’ve even said hello.

  Of course I’m happy to see him, but I wish he’d let me know he was coming, or at least give me some notice so we could arrange the best time. He still hasn’t got his head round the timings of my meds so, depending on where I am in the cycle, he could turn up and find me bouncing off the walls and yapping like an excited dog, or I might be Mogadon Mary. Today, he’s drawn the short straw and gets a daughter who’s not exactly at her sharpest and talks like she’s coming round after an operation. Several times he has to ask me to repeat myself or I just ignore what he’s saying completely.

  It’s not sparkling, all I’m saying.

  We’re sitting at one end of the music room and Clare’s reading a book in the opposite corner. I know she’s earwigging and I wonder if she’s expecting me to bring her over, maybe introduce her to my dad as my new bestie. After a few minutes she gets up and wanders out, which is a relief, because she’s starting to give me the willies.

  Once we’ve got the chit-chat out of the way – Mum’s fine and Jeff a
nd Diane send their best and hope the operation went well – I catch him up with my news. The latest murder. It takes a while for me to pass on all the grisly details, droning like a recording on half-speed.

  It’s a few seconds before Dad says anything. He just opens his mouth and closes it again. Then he says, ‘This isn’t bloody acceptable.’

  He’s got a point. I mean, catching MRSA would be bad enough, but nobody expects to be taken into a hospital where patients are getting bumped off every couple of weeks. ‘No, it isn’t.’

  ‘Do you feel safe?’

  ‘Well, not . . . particularly.’ It’s quite an effort to get such a difficult word out. ‘But what can I do?’

  ‘It’s ridiculous,’ he says. ‘Somebody should go to the papers.’

  ‘It’s already in the papers, Dad.’ They’d run a story in the Evening Standard the day before about the murder, though they hadn’t named the victim or linked it to Kevin’s death. The paper was being passed around the ward like a cheap prostitute.

  ‘To complain, I mean.’

  ‘What’s the point of complaining?’

  ‘I can’t hear you, love.’

  I ask him again. ‘You going to go on Tripadvisor? Give it a one-star review?’

  He swallows hard and looks upset. ‘No need to be nasty,’ he says. ‘I’m only concerned about you. Alice . . .’

  I focus a bit and smile at him. ‘Yeah, I know. Thanks.’

  ‘So, apart from . . . all that. You feeling any better?’

  I smile again. Sometimes, straight after a dose of benzos, you can’t help smiling even when you’ve got sweet FA to smile about. ‘I feel different,’ I say.

  ‘A good different?’

  I nod. Slowly. ‘Most of the time.’

  My dad’s face lights up. Same way it did when I won the 400 metres in the house athletics or when I played a comedy servant girl in that stupid play in the fourth form. ‘That’s fantastic,’ he says. ‘Your mum’s going to be really happy when I tell her that.’

  ‘Mum hasn’t called me for ages,’ I say.