A Plea of Insanity

by Priscilla Masters

  Claire shifted uncomfortably in her chair. She felt that Kristyna was being a little over dramatic. But the nurse hadn’t finished.

  ‘I said he was wrong and finished the consultation. I just wanted him out of the room. It was the only weapon I had, the only way to assert my authority – and he didn’t like it. He turned around as he reached the door and stared at me with a sort of cold hatred, then sauntered out – at his own pace. A bit like a rebellious kid from the headmaster’s office. Oh no, he didn’t like being dismissed.

  ‘I grew to dread the encounters. He defaulted on one but turned up for the following one. It was just as strained.’ Again she searched out the room for sympathy. ‘You know how it is – once you’ve lost it you’ve really lost it with a patient. Once they know they can get to you it’s hard to be professional. He’d make these sinister comments, like I had nice ears. We all knew about the rabbit incident. He’d pretend he knew where I lived by saying my house needed painting.’

  ‘And does it?’

  Kristyna nodded.

  ‘I remember one evening the papers were full of a story about an arson attack where a woman and her three children all died. It was headlines for a whole week. The paper was on my desk and he said something about fire being a useful destroyer. I queried the word useful. I thought it odd and he said for the arsonist because it left no trace except the indestructible – things like bra wires and teeth and splintered bones. He was always trying to frighten me.’

  ‘And did he succeed?’

  Kristyna nodded. ‘It got to me all right – and he knew it. The trouble was, Claire, he was free. Not like one of our patients – locked up at night. He was on the loose.’

  She was rubbing her forearms. Agitated now.

  ‘Then one night, about a month later, my car had acid poured over it.’

  ‘Are you sure it was Barclay?’

  ‘It was done late in the day,’ Kristyna reasoned, sensible now. Logical even. ‘I’d gone out to the car to fetch some notes in at four o clock and it wasn’t done then. He was the last patient of the afternoon. The car park was almost empty when I finally left.’

  Siôna made as though to speak again but shut his mouth instead.

  ‘Even then I might not have made the connection,’ Kristyna said, ‘but a week later he mentioned something about cars – about them being their owners’ pride and joy.’ She was frowning. ‘I looked at him and I knew.’ Her eyes moved around the room, landing on everyone in turn defiantly, begging their support. ‘I just knew.’

  Claire moved her head in the slowest of nods. Having had contact with Barclay she understood exactly what Kristyna was saying. More worryingly perhaps she and Kristyna shared something with Heidi. They were all women in control of his welfare and freedom.

  Rolf crossed his long, thin, stork’s legs, tugged at his earlobe, the age-old gesture of disliking what you hear. ‘You’re very troubled by Barclay.’ It was a trite observation – rather than a question.

  Kristyna nodded. So did Claire.

  ‘So was Heidi. Very bothered by him.’

  He was inching towards something.

  Rolf continued, unaware that Claire perceived his words as momentous.

  ‘It’s true,’ he mused. ‘She did really fret about that guy. She was quite convinced he was going to commit some ghastly crime one day. I argued with her a couple of times that there was nothing in his past that justified such a close supervision order but she wouldn’t have it.’

  Claire disagreed. ‘I feel the same way,’ she said quietly. ‘But I’m not convinced that a supervision order will prevent him re-offending.’ She wanted to say more – that according to all of them present it hadn’t been Barclay who had butchered Heidi Faro. It had been Gulio.

  And the more she toyed with this idea the less she liked it or believed it.

  Out loud she said. ‘In the end it was Gulio, wasn’t it, who was the greater threat.’

  That was when she realised that everyone in the room – Rolf, Kristyna, Siôna, the others – were all watching her with the same alert and wary expression.

  They nodded their heads but in no one’s eyes was there any hint of finality.

  The case was over, she wanted to protest. Gulio was in a secure mental unit, one up from Greatbach. He had confessed.

  But something clanged like a bell at the back of her head. That was just what Gulio, the brain-damaged, would do. To acquiesce was in character. Even to lash out against a perceived tormentor could be in character. But there was no indication that Heidi would have been seen as his tormentor. Claire searched the room, wanting someone to tell her why they had all been so sure Gulio was guilty. But how can a psychiatrist who inhabits a shadowy never-never land argue against the black and white evidence of the English copper? How can you say that person A is unlikely to have committed the crime and person B is therefore much more likely when the evidence points the other way?

  What exactly was the evidence?

  Probabilities are not enough to convict one man and let another go free.

  They cannot point the finger away from evidence and say: Consider this man. He could do it and feel no remorse, no guilt. Even watch another pay the price for his crime and gloat.’

  Claire stood up. It was almost ten. The meeting was at an end but the issue was only beginning.

  Not long now and she would ask all the right questions.

  In the meantime it was for her to fumble – clumsily.

  She was aware that Siôna’s eyes were on her until she had left the room.

  Greatbach was at times crowded with curios of the human race. Peer into any room and you will find them, the deluded, the psychotic, the insane, the … the descriptions go on and on, each one an aberration of that elusive concept a – normal – person.

  And what is that? In fact the inmates of Greatbach reminded her of the bottle kilns that peppered the Potteries, stunted oddities.

  Marcus Bourne was her first port of call that morning, the young potter who had murdered his girlfriend, now understanding the consequences of what he had done, depressed with the knowledge. Dispassionately Claire registered the traditional signs of remorse, the wringing of the hands, the ready tears, the eyes which dropped away from the human face, and still wondered whether it was all an act.

  What could she say except that he was young and would survive when privately she knew he must live his life carrying this burden from which he could never be relieved however skilled a counsellor she referred him to. People would know. He killed someone. He’s a murderer, you know.

  They would always gossip about the circumstances surrounding his crime unless he changed his identity.

  Murder is never forgotten.

  She knew way beyond his crime. She sensed that his hands would never mould clay again, that the purity of the action would forever be beyond him because his character was tainted.

  She spoke to him calmly, explained the processes, which would now be put into action, increased the medication for his depression and moved on.

  To Mavis Abiloney, handing out tea, coffee and biscuits to other inpatients, no hint of wanting to end it all – until her sleeve fell back and you glimpsed the mapped territory of her forearms. Striped with razor marks.

  Then on to Nancy, sitting cross-legged on her bed, not humming her theme tune now but merely looking smug, arms criss-crossed protectively over her stomach. Her very expression made Claire feel cold and shut out.

  She sat in the chair by the window and waited for Nancy to speak first to her, happy to share her maternal calm.

  The silence lasted less than two minutes. Nancy peeped furtively across, peering up through her lashes, a secret smile bending her mouth but not showing her teeth. It was not that warm, open type of smile but a grimace.

  ‘I was sick this morning.’

  Claire nodded. ‘It’s to be expected.’

  ‘I knew I was going to be the minute I opened my eyes. I could feel my stomach rumbling around the ba
by.’

  Claire felt tired with it all. ‘Nancy, we want to tell the baby’s father.’

  The cunning expression took her by surprise. It was so intelligent.

  ‘The father does know?’

  Nancy leaned towards her to whisper in her ear, rocking slightly. ‘I’ve been caught that way once before, doctor. It isn’t a good idea to get too involved, you know. Men! They don’t always understand as we women do. They don’t know about babies.’

  Claire wondered silently who was the father, what were the circumstances of Nancy’s pregnancy. What she was up to. Excluding the father completely this time? Or in the very back of her mind was she planning to dispose of this infant too – if it became a nuisance?

  Then she remembered the tear-blotched photographs.

  No one could accuse Nancy of not feeling remorse.

  She looked at the girl-child’s innocent face. What complicated, intricate beings the human race consists of.

  She must read through Nancy Gold’s notes and try to understand better.

  For now she concentrated on another issue. ‘Are you feeling well?’

  Nancy didn’t answer straight away but carried on hugging her flat little stomach and rocking to and fro. Softly she began to hum. ‘Mm mm mmm. Mm mm mmm,’ until Claire’s flesh began to crawl with the image the tune evoked.

  She tried to stop her singing.

  ‘Nancy, we need to know who the father was.’

  Nancy stopped singing. She gave Claire a direct stare and unmistakably shook her head like a naughty child. ‘Uuugh-ugh,’ she said. Finger across mouth. Zipping it closed. ‘Big mistake that. Nancy keeps her secrets this time round, Doctor Roget. It’s the baby I want. No accidents this time.’

  There was no mistaking her determination.

  She was telling her something. Claire knew it, and yet she couldn’t quite decipher it. It sat in the back of her head like a shadow while Nancy’s bright little eyes were morseing the information to her and yet she couldn’t read it clearly. It was as indecipherable as the code to the uninitiated.

  Unless. Surely Nancy could not be innocent? It could not be that she had sheltered Austin?

  She was suddenly desperate. ‘Nancy, you know that your baby was harmed.’

  Blank eyes telling her nothing.

  ‘We can’t take the chance with this child.’

  A coy smile, head on one side, like a chicken. ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying, Doctor.’ Arms even more protectively round stomach again. ‘This is Nancy’s baby. Not yours. Not anyone else’s. Mine. To do as I please with.’

  Like Barclay with his rabbit.

  ‘We must safeguard it,’ Claire insisted, blinking away rogue visions of Nancy cutting the baby’s ears off.

  Then the tiger jumped out. ‘You can’t think I’d hurt my own little child.’ She almost spat at Claire. ‘You can’t accuse me of that. I won’t let you. Nancy doesn’t hurt her babies. You can’t take it away. I won’t give my consent.’

  They learn these words without understanding their meaning. Consent must be informed consent or it is invalid. The consent clause also contains the phrase, being of sound mind.

  ‘You may not have the choice,’ Claire said flatly.

  Nancy wasn’t understanding any of it. ‘I won’t let you touch me. Or the baby.’

  ‘At some point, Nancy, we will have to examine you – check that everything is going all right. For now …’ She stood up and left the room. There was time enough to address these issues.

  So she thought.

  She met up with Kap sauntering towards the bathroom, pale-blue cotton pyjamas neatly tied around his waist, sponge bag dangling from his hand. ‘Good morning,’ he said, with the widest of smiles and the whitest of teeth exposed as clearly as in a skull of pure black coal.

  ‘And how are you today, Doctor?’ He spoke jauntily.

  There was even the hint of healthy humour in his dark eyes.

  ‘I’m fine, Kap,’ she responded. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Better,’ he said. ‘Much better. I feel I am out of the woods.’

  Ah – if only we can trust our patients’ diagnoses. But you cannot. One minute they appear lucid. The next …

  She touched his shoulder. ‘That’s good news, Kap. Very good news.’

  ‘Exactly what I think. And now I want to go home.’

  She felt weary. ‘In time, Kap. In time.’

  She could not release him on the streets with the chance he would have a knife in his hand.

  The afternoon clinic was filled with the self-absorbed depressives, a couple of manics, a few recent discharges, a psychotic man who believed he had a parrot perched on his shoulder and kept jerking his head round to catch a sight of it. By the end of it Claire felt miserable and drained herself. But the weather was unexpectedly warm and sunny, an Indian summer on an October day, and she suddenly realised she didn’t want to go home to the Disney-coloured house, to Grant, to any of it. She wanted to meet a friend, drink red wine warmed to blood-heat, spend more than an hour chomping her way through a Caesar salad and then feel white chocolate ice cream slip down her throat.

  She sat in her office and toyed with her mobile phone until she reached the number who would suit.

  Julia.

  Julia Seddon and she had been medics together. As all Claire’s friends had been – students, flatmates, colleagues and finally qualified doctors.

  But Julia was special. A GP in the city with her own practice, never married, lived with another woman – an artist – no offspring and always glad of an invitation. Claire left a message on her answerphone and sat in her office for a while, waiting for the return call, watching the sun sink behind the uniform lines of grey roofs until they turned them into angular, pointed silhouettes like witches’ hats, the only curve the belly of the bottle kiln on the sky-line.

  Then Julia rang back.

  They met at one of the new restaurants, in Hanley’s cultural quarter, marked by cosmopolitan eating houses – French, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Vietnamese, Thai, a mulitplex cinema and a huge theatre. They chose the Italian where the atmosphere was as she had wanted it, garlic-scented, a background of soft, romantic arias which declined to intrude yet completed the illusion of rural Italy. Small tables, check cloths and authentic waiters completed the picture. It reminded her of New York’s first generation immigrants. Claire switched the tone of her mobile off. Almost immediately the talk moved through to Grant, and Julia was accusative.

  ‘You always do this, Claire, pick men for the uncomfortable feeling they give you.’ Julia’s large, slightly prominent eyes stared at her. ‘You want to dump him? Throw him out?’ Claire couldn’t argue against what was surely the truth. ‘But you haven’t got the guts,’ she finished.

  ‘It isn’t as easy as all that, Julia,’ she protested. ‘We live together.’

  Julia tossed her head in a spirited fling. ‘Nonsense. Just tell him to go. Bugger off. And stop painting your flat like a sixties psychedelic discotheque. Unless, of course.’

  The perceptive GP peered out of her face, ‘you don’t really want to. Not in your heart of hearts.’

  Claire had a swift vision of Grant, paintbrush in one hand, hair brightly spotted in the same colour, appealing to her to appreciate.

  Julia watched her for a few moments, eventually nodded with satisfaction and changed the subject. ‘Now then – tell me about the new job.’

  ‘Interesting, absorbing, draining. Personality disorders are hard work.’

  Julia groaned. ‘Tell me about it.’

  They spent a pleasant couple of hours, eating, drinking, talking as old friends do on one subject then another, moving from patients to new treatments, make-up, plays, books, holidays. What do friends talk about? Everything. No subject is taboo.

  Finally they landed at the subject of Heidi Faro and Claire confessed.

  ‘I’m not convinced they’ve got the right guy.’

  Julie regarded her without speaking, ce
rtainly not jumping in with both feet to defend the police evidence.

  ‘Too much hinged on the confession of Gulio.’ She paused. ‘When there should have been others in the picture.’

  Julia gave a delicate frown. ‘If it was an unsound conviction an appeal would have been lodged – surely?’

  ‘Gulio wouldn’t have done. From what I’ve read he simply feels confused – and guilty. And from what I’ve heard of his mother she’s been destroyed – first of all by the initial assault and then by subsequent events. It’s all been terrible for her.’

  Julia nodded. ‘I only half remember the detail of Gulio’s condition. He’d had a severe head injury, hadn’t he?’

  Claire nodded. ‘A tragic case. He’d been a promising physics student when he was assaulted outside a nightclub in Hanley when he was seventeen years old. He’d been predicted an ‘A’ in Physics and Maths and had a provisional place at Cambridge to study AstroPhysics. His mother said he was a peaceful, intelligent young man. Slightly introverted. And that’s what his teachers said about him too. After the assault he suffered permanent brain damage, mood swings, inability to concentrate – the lot really. And to top it all he took to assaulting anyone who crossed his path. Into which category, I suppose, you have to include Heidi.’

  Julia’s face was grave. ‘But you’re not sure?’

  ‘Oh – I don’t know.’ Claire sighed. ‘Maybe it’s just because I’m naturally suspicious of too neat and tidy a solution. Or confessions. Or maybe I simply suspect Barclay of every single felony that happens within his circle. Or maybe – I’m just confused.’

  A faint smile was spreading slowly across her friend’s face. ‘Then you know what you ought to do, don’t you, Claire, to convince yourself?’

  ‘Interview him. Find out the facts.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  They split the bill down the middle; Julia kissed her goodbye and held on to the hug, speaking quietly into her ear. ‘And consider Grant. What is it that pushes you into pathological relationships?’