by Des Ekin
Mags Jackson’s flat.
He knocked, faintly at first, then loudly and decisively. No response.
Hunter’s stomach twisted and his pulse quickened with apprehension. The television was on, but no one was answering the door.
Mark Tobey’s voice echoed in his head. ‘They won’t find her because she’s probably lying in a ditch somewhere … You think these people would draw the line at killing a hooker?’
He took a deep breath, drew back a few steps, and flung himself full-force at the door. The cheap wood splintered around the lock as it flew violently open and ricocheted against the wall.
‘Mags?’
There was silence. The television was playing to an empty room. It was a TV drama. A clergyman was reading Psalm 23 to a crowded church.
‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want …’
‘Mags? It’s Hunter.’
‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death …’
‘Mags?’
Hunter glanced rapidly around. It was a typical lowrent flat: threadbare three-piece suite, stereo, video. Goldfish bowl. One of the fish was floating upside down on the surface of the water, dead.
‘Mags?’
The kitchen was clearly empty. An open door led to Mags’s bedroom.
‘I will fear no evil …’
Two fat bluebottles buzzed around the darkened room. On the bed, he could dimly perceive an ominous shape. He called out to it. The shape did not move.
Slowly, apprehensively, Hunter began to walk towards the open doorway, his gut churning, dreading to think what he might find there.
HUNTER bit his lip, hard, in a bid to control his fear as he crossed the faded carpet towards the bedroom. He reached the open doorway and looked in. He fought to adjust his eyes to the darkness as he edged closer to the ominous shape on the bed. Then he stretched out his hand to touch the dead body of Mags Jackson.
Only it wasn’t the dead body of Mags Jackson. It was just a rumpled duvet, which happened to be twisted at an angle across the unmade bed. He released his pent-up breath in a long sigh of relief.
Behind him, a voice said, ‘Who are you?’
Hunter jumped at the sudden sound. He spun on his heel to see a figure framed in the open door.
It wasn’t Mags. It was a much smaller, pear-shaped woman with dirty-fair hair pulled up by transparent pink hair-clips. She wore a faded tweed skirt, a sensible woollen cardigan and pink slippers. Dull blue eyes peered myopically at him from behind thick-lensed glasses.
At first he reckoned her age at around forty, but he revised his opinion as he looked her over. She was at least ten years younger than that; she just dressed old.
‘Who are you?’ the woman asked again. ‘What are you doing in here?’
Hunter realised she must be one of the other tenants in the building. Probably the one from upstairs, the one who’d been playing Leonard Cohen.
He wondered how he was going to explain the broken lock on the door. Maybe he wouldn’t have to; the woman didn’t seem to have noticed the shattered woodwork yet.
‘I’m sorry. You must wonder what I’m doing in here,’ he said. ‘You see, when Mags didn’t answer her door, I took the liberty of letting myself in. Is she somewhere around the building?’
‘Yes?’
The woman didn’t move.
Hunter assumed she must be a bit slow-witted. ‘Well, if she’s in the building,’ he said patiently, ‘would you mind telling her I’m here?’
‘I don’t need to,’ said the woman. ‘That’s me. I’m Mags Jackson.’
Hunter stared at her.
For the first time in his life, he wondered if he might be going insane.
FOR a long moment, Hunter felt the world stand still. Somewhere upstairs, a child cried and was smacked by its yelling mother. A heavy lorry rumbled past, buffeting the air and shaking the ground beneath his feet. They all seemed like sound effects in a movie. When Hunter spoke, his own voice sounded far away and detached, as though he were an actor delivering half-learned lines in a bad soap opera.
‘You can’t be Mags Jackson,’ he said stupidly.
‘What do you mean?’ The woman stared back at him.
‘You’re not Mags Jackson.’ Hunter’s voice grew louder. He was trying to hear it over the rushing inside his head. ‘I know Mags … and you’re not her.’
‘Pardon me?’ The woman changed the tone of her voice to make it clear her patience was running out. ‘Of course I’m Mags Jackson. There’s nobody else here called Mags Jackson.’
Hunter felt the earth shift beneath him as he suddenly realised what had happened.
They’d got rid of Mags. They’d got rid of the only witness who’d seen Valentia abduct Kate Spain. And they’d planted this … this duplicate, this fake in her place.
He leaned on the fireplace for support as the enormity of the conspiracy suddenly became clear. This whole thing was bigger than he’d thought. Much bigger. Snatching a witness and replacing her with someone else – that wasn’t amateur stuff. Mark had been right. These were powerful political forces at work.
He had to keep calm. He mustn’t panic. He mustn’t play into their hands. But he had to let them know that he realised exactly what was going on.
‘Just who are you working for?’ he said with quiet intensity, looking the woman directly in the eye.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Which unit? Police Special Branch? Secret Service?’ His voice rose unintentionally. ‘Some shady dirty-tricks outfit we’ve never even heard of?’
For the first time, the woman who called herself Mags Jackson looked seriously alarmed. She backed out into the hallway.
‘What have you done with Mags?’ Hunter followed her, his voice growing louder by the minute. ‘Where is she? Stuck in prison somewhere? Or worse?’ His voice rose to a shout. ‘Lying in a ditch like Kate Spain?’
At the mention of Kate Spain’s name, the woman’s face changed. Her mouth dropped open; for one brief instant, Hunter thought she was about to confess everything, to come clean about the whole tawdry cover-up.
But instead, what she did was scream.
It wasn’t a full-blooded, horror-movie scream. More a frightened, sobbing howl.
‘Please. Oh, please.’ She backed up against the dirty plaster wall, her voice racked by anguished wails of sheer terror. ‘Please. Just leave me alone. I haven’t done anything. Just go away. Please!’
‘Stop it,’ Hunter hissed urgently. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to talk.’
‘No! Leave me alone! Just leave me alone. Please.’
Far away, down in the town centre, a siren began to shriek.
‘I’ll go away,’ Hunter said. ‘I’ll go away. I promise, you’ll never see me again. Just tell me what they’ve done with Mags Jackson.’ He grabbed her by the arm. ‘I need to know.’
‘Please go away. I am Mags. I swear I’m Mags.’
‘What’s the problem here?’
A heavy hand landed on Hunter’s shoulder, grasped him firmly and swung him around. He found himself staring at a bulky man in cement-stained overalls. The newcomer looked half-angry, half-afraid.
‘What’s the problem, mate?’ he repeated.
South London accent. Nervous, edgy attitude. A lump hammer swinging from his left hand.
‘Nothing,’ Hunter told him. ‘There’s no problem. It’s all right.’
‘Then why’s she screaming?’ He looked over Hunter’s shoulder at the frightened face of the woman who called herself Mags Jackson.
She whimpered. ‘Please,’ she sobbed at the builder, ‘call the police. He’s crazy. He thinks I work for the Secret Service.’
‘It’s okay, Mags,’ said the builder, listening as the siren grew louder. ‘I dialled 999, but the cops were already on their way.’
He turned back to Hunter. ‘Just don’t do anything stupid, mate. Secret Service, eh?’ His face lit up with sudden comprehension. ‘Here, are you f
rom that nuthouse up there? The Athmore Clinic? Tell them from me, they want to double your medication.’
‘He said something about Kate Spain,’ whimpered the bedsit woman. ‘Do you think he could be the one who …?’
Her voice trailed off in fear. The builder’s face turned ashen and he took a firmer grasp on the lump hammer. ‘Don’t move a muscle, mate,’ he said. The cockiness had left him and his voice wavered nervously. ‘Just keep calm. Okay? Okay?’
The police car howled to a halt outside, flinging angry splashes of orange light around the fronts of the houses. All along the terrace, doors were opened and heads poked out of windows.
Two uniformed officers ran up the path. ‘What’s going on?’ asked the driver, a red-faced cop with a Cork accent.
‘He’s some sort of nutcase. He’s been threatening Miss Jackson,’ said the builder. ‘Accusing her of being a secret agent or something.’
The Corkman glared at Hunter. ‘Okay. What’s going on here, sir?’
He looked like an ordinary decent cop. Hunter decided he had nothing to lose by telling him the truth. He tried to calm himself, although his heart was hammering like a pneumatic drill. He took a deep breath and launched straight in.
‘My name is Hunter. I’m a journalist,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve come here looking for a woman named Mags Jackson, because she has important information about Kate Spain’s abduction and murder.’
‘It’s not true. I don’t.’ The bedsit woman shook her head in tearful denial. ‘I never even heard of Kate Spain before last week.’
‘This woman says she lives here, but she isn’t the real Mags Jackson,’ Hunter pressed on. ‘The real Mags Jackson is about so tall’ – he gestured above the bedsit woman’s head – ‘and she’s got dark-brown hair. Her features are much sharper, much harder. She works as … well, she’ll tell you she works as a librarian, although that’s not strictly true …’
He paused, confused, and glanced around to see the builder rotating a finger around his own temple in an unmistakeable gesture.
The second police officer was talking urgently into his radio. But the Cork cop appeared to be totally engrossed in Hunter’s explanation. ‘Go on,’ he said.
Encouraged, Hunter warmed to his theme. ‘There’s a conspiracy to cover up a very serious crime, and this woman is part of it.’ He tried to keep his voice low, steady, sane. ‘I suggest we all go down to the station. Then I can tell you the full story, and we can find out who this person really is.’
The cop nodded gravely, and for a fleeting moment Hunter thought his nightmare was over.
But then …
‘There’s no need for Miss Jackson to go down to the station, sir,’ the policeman said reasonably. ‘I already know who she is. She’s been fining me on my overdue library books for the past two years. She’s been reading my kids Postman Pat at story-time for as long as they can remember.’ He smiled fondly at the bedsit woman, then turned back to face Hunter. ‘You’re the one whose stability we have to worry about.’
He took Hunter’s arm and led him gently down the path towards the road. A small crowd had gathered, and there was some nervous catcalling as he got into the back of the patrol car. Just as they were about to drive off, someone stuck a camera up against the window.
The Cork policeman winced as the flash lit up the interior of the car, highlighting his prisoner’s gaunt, haggard face. There was no doubt about it, he thought, as he looked at the journalist’s soaking-wet hair, his red-rimmed eyes and his haunted expression of utter confusion. No doubt about it at all. The guy was completely, utterly off his trolley.
Chapter Eleven
EMMA paced around her house in frustration, unable to burn off her nervous energy. She’d made food, but she wasn’t hungry. She’d had all the coffee she could drink. She’d tried unsuccessfully to read the news in the daily papers, but she hadn’t been able to concentrate on a single word. She’d attempted to write a complex psychological report and had given up after the first line.
But that didn’t matter any more. There was no need to write reports when you were out of a job.
She’d known something was wrong as soon as she’d arrived at work that morning. Familiar faces turned away, as though afraid to meet her eyes. Colleagues laid sympathetic hands on her arm as they quickly passed by.
As she walked towards her office, she was surprised to see Geraldine waiting for her halfway down the corridor.
‘There’s someone here to see you,’ the secretary whispered anxiously. ‘Says he’s an executive from the Athmore County Health Board. He hasn’t got an appointment and he won’t tell me what it’s about.’
Emma had raised her eyes to heaven and walked purposefully into the office. She’d been fully prepared to deal with some minor dispute over funding, or some bureaucratic query about fire regulations. She definitely hadn’t been prepared to hear this civil servant, this middle-echelon pen-pusher, tell her that she was suspended from her job as clinic director. Suspended, not just for a day. Not just for a week. But indefinitely.
‘I’M what?’ Emma gaped incredulously at the man who faced her across the desk.
‘You’re suspended from duties. On full pay, of course. Without prejudice. Just until the inquiries are completed.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ said Emma, looking him directly in the eye. ‘You’re accusing me of assaulting one of my own patients?’
Mr James Wombourn looked pained. ‘I represent the Health Board, Dr Macaulay,’ he said. ‘We’re not accusing you of anything. I have been sent here to inform you that a complaint has been made against you by one of your patients at the clinic and that, in line with procedure, an investigation will take place.’
‘But it’s a ridiculous complaint. I’ve never assaulted a patient in my life.’
James Wombourn fiddled with his gold-plated Cross pen. ‘I have no reason to doubt it, Doctor,’ he said in his harsh North Antrim burr. ‘But I’m sure you appreciate that all such complaints have to be taken seriously and thoroughly scrutinised. As you probably know, it is Health Board policy that staff under investigation should not remain on duty during inquiries. For obvious reasons.’
Emma gave a sharp sigh of frustration. ‘Mr Wombourn,’ she said, ‘it may have escaped your notice, but this is my clinic. I set it up. I got it up and running at a time when your Health Board didn’t want to know about the problems of alcoholics and drug addicts in this county. I worked single-handedly to make it a success. Now you’re ordering me out of it?’
Wombourn clicked his pen slowly. ‘I’m informing you of the Board’s decision to suspend you. On full pay.’
‘And what if I refuse?’
Wombourn shook his head. ‘That would be most inadvisable, Doctor. You see, in that case, we’d have to ask the police to help us enforce our decision.’ He kept clicking the pen, with irritating regularity. ‘I take your point that you set up this clinic all on your own. You rarely let an opportunity pass to remind the public of that fact. But you’re now grant-aided by us, and even if you weren’t, we would still remain the regulating authority.’
‘But this is so ridiculous.’ She spread her hands to encompass the sea of paper on her leather-topped desk. ‘Who’s going to do all this? Who’s going to look after things? This is a crucial time for my clinic, Mr Wombourn, in every way – organisationally, financially, in terms of patient welfare.’
‘I’m sure that, like all good managers, you have made arrangements to delegate.’ Wombourn obviously didn’t care.
‘Which patient has made this claim, anyway?’ Emma demanded. ‘I have a right to know who my accuser is. Who’s claiming I’ve assaulted him?’
Wombourn opened a folder. ‘Her, actually, Doctor. The police have received a statement from a Ms Judy Hayton, in which she makes some very serious allegations against you. She says you came into her room at midnight, tied her up and cut her flesh with seven knives as part of some sort of religious ritual.’ He looked up sharply.
‘Have I said something amusing?’
‘I’m sorry. It’s relief, not amusement. You see, Judy is a paranoid schizophrenic. She imagines all sorts of things. Only a couple of days ago, she accused another patient of putting a microchip in her head. Now she’s accusing me of being a Satanist? This is just too outlandish.’
‘Has she been independently diagnosed as schizophrenic?’
‘No. I’ll have the diagnosis completed later today or tomorrow.’
Wombourn shook his head. ‘Retrospective diagnosis? I’m afraid that won’t carry much weight, Doctor. We still have to carry out a full investigation. And I’m afraid you will remain under suspension. The police will require a full statement from you. The investigating officer will be …’ He checked his notes. ‘Sergeant George Arkwright.’
Emma’s headache was growing worse by the minute. She felt as though the top of her skull was about to explode.
‘This is a put-up job, isn’t it, Mr Wombourn?’ she said quietly.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘It’s designed to discredit me over the Kate Spain case. To destroy my reputation so that nobody will listen to me.’
He smiled thinly. ‘Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Tell me, who is the chairman of the Health Board?’
‘You know that as well as I do. It’s Joseph Valentia.’
A BRIEF phone call to the Irish Medical Organisation had confirmed that the Health Board was within its rights to suspend her. It was standard procedure, they’d assured her, and held no implications about her fitness to practise. At least, not at this stage.
So she’d circulated a memo to all her staff, explaining the situation, thanking them for their understanding, and making it clear that she’d be back as soon as possible. Only Romaine, the supercilious receptionist, had taken any pleasure in her embarrassment.
Now, sitting at her kitchen table that same evening, Emma tried to come to terms with being unemployed for the first time in her life.
She perked some more coffee, even though she knew she probably wouldn’t drink it, and started cooking some pasta, even though she knew she wouldn’t eat it. Then she tried again to concentrate on her report, even though she knew she wouldn’t be able to write it.