‘Yes, but it seems she did some research first,’ commented Jake, ‘checking on her victims to see if they were of the drunk-driver type. She admits that it got out of hand and it became an obsession, but she was conflicted between her Hippocratic oath and the need to avenge the death of her son and husband when she worked in the States. That in itself was enough to make her a killer it would seem. Revengeful obsession overtook the persona she really was, a caring doctor.’
‘Is she a psychopath?’ Stevens asked. ‘Like Tyler?’
‘When we were at university together,’ Kirsty said, ‘she certainly didn’t show any signs of psychopathy. I think that the years of mourning the death of her family took its toll on her mind. It’s a delicate balance after what had happened to her, but nobody saw that or, if they did, they did nothing about it. I don’t think that she’s a psychopath in the true sense of the word – but I’m not a psychologist.’
‘How does Simone fit into all this, after they abducted Steph?’ Stevens said.
‘She became so caught up with Nicholls’s work I think she had to choose. But, if you recall, Simone has a nasty streak in her as well.’
‘She was from “The Hood”, originally,’ Freeman said. ‘Not a nice thing to do, to drag your kids into this.’
‘She was getting more and more mentally unstable and had become an alcoholic, trying to drown her unconscionable actions – to forget what she had done. She became frustrated that the drug was not doing, what she wanted it to do.’
‘And what did she want it to do?’
‘She wanted to activate your sleep mechanism, but only when you were driving,’ Kirsty said.
‘Almost impossible, I would say,’ Jake said.
‘Yes, Jake, but she nearly made it.’
‘Pity she couldn’t have put her talents to better use for the good of society.’
‘Clearly, she was never the same, after her family died and that life-changing event altered the way her life was to go.’
Freeman stood. ‘OK everyone, I think we’re about done here. Good job, all of you.’ He went to leave the room.
As he got to the door, he turned back to face Randall. ‘And Randall?’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Welcome to Northants Police!’
62
Two Weeks Later
‘The Berrywood Psychiatric Hospital is formed out of the decommissioning of the St Crispin’s mental institution, originally called Berrywood Lunatic Asylum, and the mental handicapped hospital, The Princess Marina. It is a modern psychiatric institution with state-of-the-art facilities for treatment and recovery for adults and older people in a safe caring environment. So says the website.’
Kirsty was reading the information from her smartphone, while en route to the hospital with Jake.
‘I’ve never actually been there, other than to drop people off at reception,’ Jake said.
‘Not the sort of place I go to either,’ said Kirsty, as she replaced the phone in her handbag.
‘What are you expecting this afternoon?’ he asked.
‘If I’m honest, I don’t really know. An explanation? A reason? I don’t know.’
‘Have you made enquiries about her current state?’
‘I rang this morning. I get the impression that she’s on plenty of psychiatric medication, so we probably won’t get much out of her.’
‘How has she been described?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Is she psychopathic, schizophrenic, both, or what?’
‘They say she’s not a psychopath and she doesn’t hear voices in her head telling her to do things – like Tyler did.’
‘Just deeply disturbed then?’
Jake watched, as Kirsty played with her wedding ring. Always at the mention of Tyler.
‘It would seem that way. Are they prosecuting her for all those road deaths?’
‘Yes, they will, but they’re waiting to see whether she is fit to stand trial.’
‘That could be ages.’
‘Yes, it could. It depends on how she responds to treatment. She only needs to be cognisant of what’s going on and what’s happening to her.’
‘It still may take time.’
Jake pulled into the car park and they walked to the main entrance. A bright and air-conditioned reception area was to the right of the main doors with seating in front of it and a small café. Jake showed his badge to the receptionist and they were offered a seat to wait for the doctor to take them to Tanya.
A few moments later, a short overweight man in a white doctor’s coat approached them.
‘Are you here to see a patient?’ the doctor asked.
‘Yes, we are,’ Kirsty replied.
‘What’s the name of the patient and I’ll see you get taken up to the ward?’
‘Tanya Nicholls.’
‘Thank you, I won’t be a moment.’
‘Oi – Bob,’ the receptionist called out and came out from behind his work station and took Bob by the arm. ‘Come on, Bob, back to the ward with you.’
The receptionist turned to Kirsty and Jake. ‘Sorry about that, delusions. He thinks he’s a doctor, but he’s harmless.’
Jake and Kirsty chuckled to themselves.
‘Just our luck,’ Jake said quietly, as the receptionist put Bob in the lift, and a tall elegant woman, also in a doctor’s coat, approached them.
‘Dr Kingsfield?’
‘Yes.’ Kirsty stood.
‘Are you a real doctor?’ Jake said, teasing and also standing.
‘Yes, I’m Dr Dixon, and I see you’ve met Bob! She turned back towards the lift.
‘We were certainly taken in by him.’
‘He has that effect. Actually, he spends so much time reading medical texts, he’s probably a better doctor than I am,’ she grinned. ‘Come on, I’ll take you to see Tanya.’ They followed her.
Tanya had been put in the community day room on the female ward. There was a large picture window that presented the same views of the rolling Northamptonshire countryside, that Jake had from his apartment. The sun had warmed the room and there was comfortable seating with coffee tables spread around. In the corner was a machine which dispensed coffee or tea, depending on what cartridge you put into it.
As they entered, Tanya was standing looking out of the window. She turned and smiled at Kirsty, walked over to her and gave her a friendly hug. She shook Jake’s hand politely.
‘This is what my life is to be,’ she commented, as Dr Dixon left the room and locked the door behind her.
‘It didn’t have to be this way. You shouldn’t have done what you did,’ Kirsty said.
‘You should have left me on that bridge.’
‘I couldn’t do that, Tanya. You’re the last person I want to see in my mortuary.’ She smiled.
Tanya offered them a seat and got them both a drink.
‘I’m fully cognisant, Kirsty. They’ve put me on a cocktail of drugs to keep me calm, but most of it’s just counselling. Things I’ve not spoken about for years.’
‘Would you like to tell us?
Tanya looked at Jake.
He held up his hand. ‘Off the record.’
There was a faint acknowledgement from Tanya.
‘How did you get like this, Tanya?’ Kirsty asked.
‘I wanted to avenge the death of my son and my husband, Randy. I felt that the world had thrown me one hell of a curved ball, what with the same thing happening to my parents as well. And on both occasions I blame myself. But I didn’t want to make it obvious. I’m not a psychopath. I just wanted to be subtle and insolvable by you lot,’ she said, pointing to Jake.
He didn’t react, thinking better of it.
‘Revenge, vengeance. This is not like you.’
‘Yes, it always has been,
but I concealed it well.’
‘You did indeed. I had no idea. When did it start?’
‘While I was in America, after the accident, working with the company that developed new drugs. I saw my opportunity to do what I wanted to do. It had been my total driving force since. That’s all I ever wanted to do.’
‘Why didn’t you put your talents to better use?’ Jake couldn’t resist but ask. Tanya shot him a glance that said it all. Keep your mouth shut, Jake.
‘When I was in America, I discovered a way of combining the molecules of specific drugs to ensure a specific reaction.’
‘But chemists have been doing that for years.’
‘Yes, but I was able to make it resistant to being broken down, until activated by certain parts of the brain, motor functions, amygdala, you know. It took years, but eventually I had the basis for a drug, using pre-cursors of GHB. So I came back to the UK and tried it out. In some cases, it worked well, but more often than not, it didn’t. I had to monitor my subjects from afar.’
‘Hence you being noticed at the scene of a number of road deaths, in Simone’s car, as it turned out?’ Jake said.
Tanya shot Jake another look. He thought she was going to say something but just nodded.
‘But why drugs?’
‘Because a drugged driver killed them. Once I’d made my mind up, nothing was going to stop me.’
‘You got frustrated, though, according to Simone,’ Jake said.
‘Yes, I wanted to move things along. I felt that time was running out. I didn’t want to wait any longer. I had plans for SOMA-D. To sell it on the internet and make some money.’
‘SOMA-D? queried Jake.
‘Don’t you read, Sergeant? SOMA was the drug used in Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World.’ I just added the ‘D’ for driver.’
Jake raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
Kirsty continued. ‘So you knew these subjects were likely to kill themselves in a road collision?’
‘Yes, that was the idea.’
‘But they had no idea that they were…’ Kirsty thought for a moment. ‘… driving dead.’
‘They didn’t, no.’
‘You were so convinced that you were doing the right thing?’ Jake said, more irritated now than sympathetic.
‘Yes, and if it weren’t for your decoy, I’d still be doing it.’
‘How did you know that Parker was a plant?’
‘She stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb, as soon as she got in the club.’
‘You were already there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t we see you?’
‘Because I made sure you didn’t.’
‘What did you intend to do to her?’
‘Keep her to try various versions of the drug.’
‘So how did she get away?’
Simone convinced me to let her go, so we arranged that she could get away, but as she was still full of the drug, we could see how she reacted when she drove.’ She paused. A sinister smile crossed her face. ‘And it worked too.’
‘I thought you were my friend, Tanya. I don’t understand how the death of your family could make you do what you have done. Lots of families suffer this sort of trauma or worse. They don’t go around killing people. I don’t want to go around killing people because some psycho took my husband!’
Jake saw a flicker of anger cross Tanya’s face, but it soon went away. Probably the drugs she was on, Jake assumed.
‘I had lots of friends, for a time, but then I got fed up with them. I got fed up with people. I got fed up with those at work. I got fed up with my daughter and her boyfriends. I even increased the dose she gave to Ian, to see what happened. She thinks she killed him, but actually, I had a hand in it as well.
‘You know, society is sick. We’re all sick. People are becoming ignorant plebs, too worried about their image on social media, instead of being caring. We’ve become seekers of fame, without the fortune. I saw on the internet the other day, they let me play for an hour a day, a group of holiday-makers on a beach, passing around a live dolphin that had washed ashore taking effin’ selfies. What sort of society have we become that makes a group of people think that’s right? Tell me that? What I’ve done is just helping society to get rid of those undesirables. Those people, who put other’s lives at risk by driving drugged up.’
‘But you drugged them, Tanya.’ Jake said in frustration.
‘But they were all druggies anyway weren’t they.’ A cold smile.
‘The kid in the minibus wasn’t, was he!’ Jake stood. A beat. ‘And that still doesn’t answer Kirsty’s question.’
‘I just need you to help me out here, Tanya,’ Kirsty said. ‘I’ve had enough to deal with over the last twelve months. I didn’t expect a friend to end up as a murderer.’
‘I don’t see it as murder. I see it as a release.’
‘Yours or ours?’ Jake said, beginning to pace the room.
‘Mine.’ She looked angrily at Jake.
‘So?’ Kirsty said.
Tanya thought for a moment, then sat down opposite her and relaxed into the chair.
‘So, when I first moved across to the States, I went to work at the headquarters in Indiana, near Bloomfield. There I met my husband, Randy. I rose through the company, ending up as a VP, as did Randy. I married and we were happy, then Randy Junior came along and I was happier still. Then one day we had to go out. We lived on Tulip Drive, a few miles north of the city line. It was early afternoon and a tornado warning was in force. Tornado Alley, that’s what they call Indiana. We knew that we should not have gone out in that weather. We were told to stay indoors or in tornado shelters. We went anyway. Randy was a native of Indiana and said that it would be OK. Nothing had ever happened to him out in this weather. Life had to go on, didn’t it?
‘But the visibility was so bad. There were hailstones battering the car and the rain was almost horizontal. We were turning at a crossroads and didn’t see the semi that took us out, before we even realised what had happened.
‘They both died instantly. I was seriously injured with a broken pelvis, two broken legs and was in a coma for nearly three weeks. They didn’t even tell me that my husband and child had died, until I asked after them when I came around. That was the first question I asked – where’s my family?’
Tanya took a gulp of her coffee. Jake could see that the recounting of the story was hard for her, but she continued, steely eyed. He sat down again.
‘It wasn’t until the court case that I found out that the driver had been driving for nearly twenty hours without a break and was high on methamphetamine and didn’t even see us. She blamed the weather as the cause of the collision. An effin’ woman in a truck killed my family.’
‘What did she look like?’ Jake asked.
‘Like all the women I targeted with my drug, dark brown bobbed hair.’ Tanya smiled, but it wasn’t a warm smile; it never reached her eyes.
‘The truck had hit us at nearly seventy miles an hour. Pity it didn’t kill her as well – would have been better if it had.’
‘But why do it over here?’ Jake asked.
‘The company got into a bit of trouble. We had to move our operations from the US to the UK. I’m sure you’ve already found out why.’
Kirsty nodded.
‘Was that why you asked me that question about my involvement in the company, when you came to see me?’
‘Correct,’ Jake said.
‘I’m really sorry that you’ve ended up in this state,’ Kirsty said.
‘Didn’t expect anything else after you… “saved” me.’
‘Do you want me to visit you again?’ Kirsty asked.
‘I’d prefer it, if you didn’t.’
Kirsty looked at Jake, indicating that they should go. It was clear that Ta
nya was not going to allow them to get any further understanding, as to why she’d done what she’d done.
They left the hospital and, as they drove out of the car park, Jake said, ‘She could have been so much more.’
Epilogue
The intimate restaurant situated along the Wellingborough Road in Northampton was where Jake decided to take Kirsty on their first real date. He pulled out the dining chair to allow her to sit down at the table, when he revealed to her that he had never been to the restaurant before, so he had no idea whether the food was good or not.
Kirsty’s eyes wandered around the interior, purple contrasted by a lighter purple, almost lilac decor. Small intimate tables took centre stage with a raised dais at the far end of the restaurant with bench seats to sit groups of people, some of which were occupied.
‘It looks OK to me,’ Kirsty said, smiling at Jake. Jake touched her hand resting on the table to draw her attention to the approaching waitress and she took a menu from her. She quickly told them what the dish of the day was and took an order for drinks. Jake, a cola, Kirsty, an orange juice.
‘At least you didn’t suggest alcohol, unlike some I could mention,’ she said.
Jake smiled. ‘Homework, and previous knowledge, obviously.’
‘I don’t suppose I can blame him, really. He’s new.’
‘What do you think of him?’
‘Randall?’
‘Mmm… ’
‘I don’t know. I can’t get a handle on him. It must be difficult to blend into a new force. Not knowing anybody and having the background he has.’
‘Do you know how he got that scar?’
‘When he was in the army, is what he told me, when he lost his wife.’
‘I can see how he could be drawn to you, after what happened.’
‘I thought he was after something else.’
‘Figures. He probably was and he seems a bit of a maverick to me.’
‘You should know.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ he said, taking a swig of his drink.
‘If it weren’t for you chasing after Tyler in the warehouse, nobody would have found him.’
Driving Dead Page 30