by L. J. Ross
“There’s nothing to tell. He buggered off to Geneva to live in a bloody great mansion with his Barbie doll, while I was left to bring up his children. He barely even called when Emily was rushed into hospital. When any of them were.”
“Do you think their…illness, would have improved, if he had?”
She gave him a sly look.
“How could it have made a difference? They were suffering from very rare conditions, outside our control.”
Gregory’s lips twisted, but he tried again.
“Did a part of you hope that news of their ‘illness’ might have encouraged your husband to return to the family home?”
“I never thought of it,” she said. “All of my thoughts and prayers were spent trying to save my children.”
He glanced up at the large, white plastic clock hanging on the wall above her head.
It was going to be a long morning.
* * *
An hour after Gregory finished his session with Cathy, he had just finished typing up his notes when a loud siren began to wail.
He threw open the door to his office and ran into the corridor, where the emergency alarm was louder still, echoing around the walls in a cacophony of sound. He took a quick glance in both directions and spotted a red flashing light above the doorway of one of the patients’ rooms. He sprinted towards it, dimly aware of running footsteps following his own as others responded to whatever awaited them beyond the garish red light.
The heels of his shoes skidded against the floor as he reached the open doorway, where he found one of the ward nurses engaged in a mental battle with a patient who had fashioned a rudimentary knife from a sharpened fragment of metal and was presently holding it against her own neck.
Gregory reached for the alarm button and, a moment later, the wailing stopped. In the residual silence, he took a deep breath and fell back on his training.
“Do you mind if I come in?” he asked, holding out his hands, palms outstretched in the universal gesture for peace.
He exchanged a glance with the nurse, who was holding up well. He’d never ascribed to old-school hierarchies within hospital walls; doctors were no better equipped to deal with situations of this kind than an experienced mental health nurse—in fact, the reverse was often true. Life at Southmoor High Security Psychiatric Hospital followed a strict routine, for very good reason. Depending on their level of risk, patients were checked at least every fifteen minutes to try to prevent suicide attempts being made, even by those who had shown no inclination before, or who had previously been judged ‘low risk’.
Especially those.
There were few certainties in the field of mental healthcare, but uncertainty was one of them.
“I’d like you to put the weapon down, Hannah,” he said, calmly. “It’s almost lunchtime, and it’s Thursday. You know what that means.”
As he’d hoped, she looked up, her grip on the knife loosening a fraction.
“Jam roly-poly day,” he smiled. It was a mutual favourite of theirs and, in times of crisis, he needed to find common ground.
Anything to keep her alive.
“Sorry, Doc,” she whispered, and plunged the knife into her throat.
* * *
It was a long walk back to his office, but when Gregory eventually returned some time later, he found he was not alone. A man of around fifty was seated at his desk, twirling idly on the chair while he thumbed through the most recent edition of Psychology Today. He wore a bobbled woollen jumper over a pair of ancient corduroy slacks, and brought with him the subtle odour of Murray Mints.
“Are you lost?”
The man looked up from the magazine and broke into a wide smile that was quickly extinguished when he spotted the bloodstains on Gregory’s shirtsleeves. He rose from the desk chair and walked around to greet his protégé with open arms.
“Not all who wander are lost, m’ boy.”
Gregory was engulfed in a bear-like hug, which he returned, before stepping away to unbutton the shirt that clung to his skin and carried the faint, tinny odour of drying blood.
“What happened, Alex?”
“Suicide attempt by one of the regulars,” he replied. “She came through.”
He neglected to mention his own actions in keeping her alive, or the twenty minutes he’d spent performing CPR as the woman’s blood had pumped out of her body and on to his.
It was part of the job, and nobody knew it better than the man standing before him.
Professor William Douglas was an undisputed doyen in the world of academic and clinical psychology. Thanks to his years of experience dealing with matters of the mind, he was a leading authority on abnormal and forensic psychology. He’d been the Senior Consultant Psychiatrist when Gregory had first begun his clinical training at Southmoor, more than ten years previously, and had remained a good friend and mentor ever since.
Nowadays, he spent much of his time engaged in research, having taken up a fellowship at the University of Cambridge, a cool three-hour drive away.
“What brings you here, Bill? I thought we were due to have dinner next week?”
Douglas leaned back against the edge of the desk and watched his friend root around one of his cupboards for a fresh shirt.
“I had a phone call, yesterday,” he replied. “From the mayor of a small town called Ballyfinny, in County Mayo.”
“Ireland?” Gregory asked, as he shrugged out of the bloodied shirt.
Douglas nodded.
“They’ve had some bad business, and the mayor wants someone to go over there and help to give the Garda a steer in the right direction. I can’t go; I’m tied up at the university. But I mentioned your name—”
Gregory merely shook his head.
“Profiling? We’ve been down that road before, Bill. We set up a special department, with photocopiers and everything, and it blew up in our faces.”
He thought back to three years ago, when he’d agreed to work alongside his friend to provide scientific profiles of the perpetrators of violent crimes to police forces who asked for their help. They’d focused on cases where there were few forensic leads, or too many suspects for the police to handle with the limited resources at their disposal. The hope had been to provide a way for the police to narrow their search but, in one unforgettable case, it had helped to incarcerate an innocent man. While the police had expended time and energy prosecuting the fall-guy, the real killer of male sex workers had remained free to kill again.
And, when the shit hit the proverbial fan, their little profiling unit had been the perfect scapegoat for the public’s condemning eye.
“The profiles were never supposed to be definitive,” Douglas argued. “You and I both know that. We never said we could wave magic wands, or that we were clairvoyant. The profiles were created to give the police the benefit of our experience, dealing with men and women who might have committed similar crimes. There are shared traits that can help to inform their investigations—”
“You don’t have to convince me,” Gregory interrupted him. “I remember the work we did, and I know there were a hundred other times when we helped to save lives. It still doesn’t change where we are now.”
Bill Douglas ran a hand over the stubble on his chin, then decided to try a different tack.
“Before you say ‘no’, at least let me tell you about the case.”
Gregory raised an eyebrow.
“I’ve got a feeling you’re going to tell me, anyway.”
“About a month ago, a father and daughter came home after Saturday swimming practice to find the mother dead. The little girl was the first to find her, because whoever killed Claire Kelly posed her on the kid’s bed, with a teddy bear under one arm and a storybook open in her hand.”
Gregory stuck his hands in his pockets and walked around his desk to stare out of the window across the lawn leading down to the perimeter fence. What kind of warped mind would set such a scene, for a little girl to find?
“Alri
ght,” he murmured. “You’ve got my attention.”
“They have no forensic leads, no witnesses…nothing in the woman’s past, no disgruntled lovers or angry ex-boyfriends. The husband’s alibied to the hilt, and the whole town would give him a character reference even if he wasn’t. The victim was a pillar of the community, and the police are running out of ideas—so they came to us, Alex.”
“They came to you,” his friend replied.
“Same difference,” Douglas shrugged. “I’m not too proud to admit when my work’s done. There isn’t much more I can teach you about the human mind, and you know the door’s permanently open if you want to join me at the university.”
Gregory gave a small shake of his head and turned around to face him.
“There’s a hell of a lot more you can teach me, and we haven’t even scratched the surface of what lies out there, undiscovered.”
“There might be something to learn from whoever killed that woman in Ireland.” Douglas gave him a knowing smile. “You could catch a flight tomorrow and be there by lunchtime.”
Gregory huffed out a laugh.
“If you can’t appeal to the man, appeal to the clinician, is that it?”
Douglas was unrepentant.
“Did it work?”
Alex thought of a little girl who’d lost her mother, and of the kind of distorted mind that was responsible. The doctor inside him wanted to prevent as well as to cure, and the man…
The man just wanted to help, however he could.
“It worked,” he said softly.
CHAPTER 3
Friday afternoon
County Mayo, Ireland
He was not ready to die.
This epiphany struck Gregory like a lightning bolt, as he clung to the edges of his seat inside the tiny, tin-pot aeroplane, which bounced its way through heavy storm clouds towards the landing strip at Knock Airport. He wasn’t afraid of flying—never had been—but he promised himself that, if he survived this ordeal, he’d drive next time.
Or take the bus.
Hell, he’d walk, if he had to.
“Nearly there, folks,” the captain’s lyrical voice crackled over the tannoy. “Had a bit of turbulence back there but we’ll soon have you on the ground one way or another, right enough!”
One way or another?
The plane dipped hard to the left as it began its descent, and his bowels followed with a sickening lurch.
“Makes you feel alive, doesn’t it?” the man next to him called out.
Gregory gave him a queasy smile and wondered if his neighbour had been helping himself to those little bottles of booze from the trolley.
“That’s one way of putting it,” he said, and ordered his stomach to retain the contents of his last meal, when the plane nose-dived again.
The man laughed and gave him a slap on the back, before folding his arms and leaning back to catch a quick nap as they continued to plummet through the air.
A few moments later, he was snoring.
The plane gave another sudden jerk, and Gregory looked out of the window to check the propellers hadn’t failed.
What he saw there made him catch his breath.
The plane emerged from the thick layer of cloud into glorious sunshine, which blazed trails of amber light over lush green hills and lakes glistening diamond-bright in the valley below. Like a child at the window of a sweet shop, he pressed his nose to the glass and hardly noticed the rollercoaster peaks and troughs while he soaked in the passing scenery that was Ireland’s beautiful heartland.
And as the ground eventually rose up to meet the little metal bird, he was smiling.
* * *
When he stepped off the plane and onto the tarmac, Gregory felt like a new-born deer. Pride prevented him from hugging the nearest person, which happened to be an old woman of at least eighty who seemed entirely unfazed by the fact they’d recently escaped certain death. Instead, he hauled a scuffed leather weekend bag over his shoulder, grasped his briefcase, and made his way towards the low terminal building, keeping his head bowed against the driving wind that whipped across the airfield.
When he reached the arrivals area, Alex found a small welcome party waiting for him. A stocky man of indeterminate age held a card with his name written on it—which seemed superfluous given he was one of only six passengers to exit the plane—and a woman of similar build stood beside him. Both were dressed in oiled wax jackets and boots caked in mud.
“Doctor Gregory?” The woman proceeded to give him a thorough once-over.
He was a good-looking devil, that was for sure. Had a bit of the Irish about him too, if she wasn’t mistaken, with his curly dark hair and green eyes. Younger than she’d imagined, but with a serious look about him that spoke of experience. Travelled light, which was no bad thing.
Once she’d completed her assessment, Alex smiled.
“Do I pass?”
The mayor of Ballyfinny pursed her lips.
“You’ll do,” she declared, and stuck out her hand. “Mayor Margaret Byrne. You can call me Maggie, most people do. This here’s Padraig—he works at the hotel.”
“I’ll take your things,” the man said, and slid the bag from Gregory’s shoulder before he could protest.
“It was good of you to meet me,” Gregory said, as they followed Padraig’s loping gait towards the exit. “I’d have been happy to get a taxi.”
“Hard to come by, on Fridays. All the young ones book them up for a night out in Galway. We’re near the county border here,” she added.
“I was sorry to hear of the trouble you’ve had.” he said quietly. “I don’t know if I can help you, but I’m willing to try.”
The mayor paused beneath the canopy outside the terminal and heaved a sigh as she watched people coming and going, raising an occasional hand to those who passed by.
“Some say I did the wrong thing, calling Bill Douglas, inviting you over here to meddle in our affairs,” she said, forthrightly. “You should know that, from the get-go. People in these parts are hurting, and, as for the local Garda, they want to be the ones to bring in whoever’s responsible for taking Claire Kelly away from her family. Last thing they need is an outsider—an English outsider—coming over to tell them how to do their jobs.”
“I don’t intend to do that.”
She nodded.
“Just as well. Ballyfinny might be a small town, but we’re no hillbillies. My boys trained over at the Garda College in Templemore—and the NBCI in Dublin—before they came back home to Mayo.”
She referred to the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, headquartered in Dublin, whose detectives were responsible for investigating serious and organised crimes in Ireland.
“Your boys?” he asked.
“My sons,” she told him, with a touch of pride. “They’re both with the Divisional Garda, and they’ve been working the case. You should know that, too.”
Small towns, Gregory thought. Everybody knew everybody else, which was something that could help them to catch Claire Kelly’s killer.
“Seems like you had a lot of opposition,” he said. “It’s not too late to change your mind.”
Maggie gave him a considering look.
“You’ve got a quiet thread of steel in you,” she observed. “You’ll need it.”
With that, she jutted her chin towards a battered-looking Land Rover, where Padraig was leaning against the driver’s door puffing his way through a rollie.
“Come on, lad. You must be ready for a good meal.”
“I ate on the plane.”
She smiled.
“Like I said, you must be ready for a good meal.”
CHAPTER 4
There was little conversation as the Land Rover ambled its way off the beaten track and into the wilds of County Mayo, following winding, single-track lanes past hills and glades on the picturesque journey from Knock Airport to Ballyfinny. Gregory watched the passing hamlets and villages, noting the ancient churches a
nd quaint, white-painted cottages Ireland was famous for and thought that, had the circumstances been different, he would’ve liked to spend more time exploring its treasures.
“Hotel’s up here on the left,” Maggie said. “It’s the only one around these parts—also happens to be the best.”
“That’s a happy coincidence,” he replied, and made her smile.
“I should know,” she said. “My brother manages the place.”
Small towns, Gregory thought again. He’d need to be careful what he said, and to whom.
The Land Rover braked sharply and made a left turn through a set of imposing, pillared gates onto a thick, forested driveway. The trees were old and had grown tall, blotting out most of the natural light as they followed the road leading to the main entrance of the Ballyfinny Castle Hotel. There was a stillness to the forest, Gregory thought, as they drove further beneath its canopy.
And darkness that could conceal all manner of sins.
Presently, they emerged from the trees back into the light, and Padraig slowed the car as the road forked. To the left, an impressive, crenelated castle perched atop a gentle hill, its manicured lawns falling away to the banks of an enormous lough which glimmered in the late afternoon sun.
“Where does the other road lead?” Gregory asked.
“To the town,” Maggie replied. “You can walk there in ten minutes, if you’ve a mind to. Folk have their houses all the way around the waterside, dotted here and there. Some have their own boats.”
“Where was Claire Kelly’s house?”
The mood in the car shifted, and Padraig’s spine stiffened behind the wheel.
“About five minutes further along that road,” Maggie replied. “The Kelly house is on the edge of town. Somebody will take you there, if you want to see it.”
Gregory wanted to get a feel for the place straight away, eager as he was to get started, but he knew things didn’t work that way. There were hoops to step through, first.
“Took the liberty of inviting my boys to come and meet you over dinner,” Maggie continued. “Thought it’d be good for you all to…get acquainted.”
Under the watchful eye of their mother, he surmised.