A Plea of Insanity

by Priscilla Masters

  She had heard it said that after a life-threatening event people take a while to phone the emergency services. Shock intervenes. Instead of summoning help immediately they wait, out of a fear that their attacker might return. Besides – she couldn’t find her mobile phone in her bag. It seemed to have slipped away. When she did find it she couldn’t locate the three nines. Her fingers missed the keys. She wanted to throw open the car door and get rid of the smell of him, the taste of him, the taste of her own fear. She wanted to be sick. But he might be outside – waiting for her. So she was unsure whether it was better to be inside the car or out. He was still here, inside, but outside might be worse. He could be lying in wait, ready to pounce. And outside was worse because the car was her only escape. After minutes or seconds – time had certainly stopped – blind instinct took over. She accelerated out of the car park, screeching through the security barrier the second it lifted and drove to the police station, parking right outside, leaving her lights on, her doors open, but having the presence of mind to pull the ignition key out of the lock.

  The desk sergeant stared at her, as did the plain clothes guy carrying two mugs of coffee. ‘Please,’ she managed. ‘Please.’ Before sinking down on the seat. ‘My car’s outside.’ She was going to babble, she knew it. She managed to say, ‘Paul Frank. Detective Inspector. Please.’

  ‘Just take it easy.’ The plain-clothes guy set down the two cups of coffee. ‘Now what’s happened.’ And suddenly she realised how much there was to tell. Too much.

  ‘I’m a psychiatrist,’ she began.

  It was good starting ground. ‘At Greatbach.’ She heaved out a long, shuddering breath. ‘We’ve had a lot of problems. Someone got into my car – this evening. Detective Inspector Frank. He knows all about it. He’s been managing the case.’

  ‘OK.’ The policeman looked suddenly decisive. ‘Let’s start with your name, shall we?’

  ‘Claire Roget. Doctor – Claire – Roget.’

  He scribbled it on a pad, went back behind the desk and picked up the phone, glanced across at her, closed the window.

  Excluding her.

  Claire wanted to burst into fits of hysterical giggles. He thought she was a nutter. That she was the mad one. She drew back her lips to giggle and pressed them together.

  Maybe she was. Maybe she was.

  To laugh would be inappropriate behaviour.

  The policeman must have spoken to Paul Frank. When he came back out again he’d lost the bothersome question from his eyes. And she thought how very ordinary he looked. Brown hair, average height, brown eyes, Chinos, an open-necked shirt. She would not remember him again.

  ‘He’ll be here in a minute. I won’t start taking a statement from you. He’ll get it himself. OK?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Cup of tea?’

  She would have loved a gin. A stiff gin with plenty of ice and lemon, drowned in tonic water, but it wasn’t on offer. She nodded. ‘Tea would be nice.’

  The tea was the wrong colour brown and it came in a styrofoam cup, well stewed. She drank it anyway.

  Paul Frank arrived in a surprisingly short time, took one look at her and read her mind.

  ‘You need a drink,’ he said and pulled a ready-mixed G&T from his sports bag.

  She could have hugged him.

  Just the sniff was enough.

  ‘Go fetch a glass,’ he said to the brown-haired plain-clothes guy. ‘With some ice in.’

  ‘Now then. Let’s talk.’

  He led the way along a grey-lined anonymous-looking corridor to Interview Room I. Took the iced glass from the young policeman and closed the door behind her.

  She spoke first. ‘You do realise it’s the anniversary of Heidi Faro’s death, don’t you?’

  He bumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. ‘I should have remembered. It only struck me as I was driving in. I heard the date on the evening news. I knew then.’

  ‘Claire,’ he said when she’d sat down at a pre-formed chair, across the table from him. ‘Do you mind if I record this?’

  ‘No.’ The gin was restoring her.

  ‘Now,’ he prompted. ‘From the beginning.’

  But somehow it didn’t come out as it had meant to. ‘He says it isn’t him,’ she said steadily, swishing the G&T around in her mouth. ‘He says you’re suspecting the wrong man.’

  ‘From the beginning,’ he said again.

  ‘He was in my car,’ she said. ‘Waiting for me.’

  Frank sucked in a noisy breath.

  Her mobile phone interrupted and looking at the display she knew it was Grant. They exchanged a few terse words and she flicked it off. Grant was too stunned to react.

  ‘He was waiting for me in the car.’ An involuntary shudder. ‘I was so frightened. I thought, I believed I would die.’

  Frank’s face didn’t move a muscle. He stared at her with a wooden expression.

  ‘He said it wasn’t him,’ she repeated. ‘He said that he’d had his fun but that now it wasn’t funny any more and to call you off.’

  She swigged at the gin, finding comfort from the cold of the glass.

  Frank leaned in closer. ‘You’ve seen him. You’re a psychiatrist. What do you think?’

  She stared back. Confusion reigned. ‘He is,’ she said slowly, ‘a dangerous psychopath. Capable of violent, serious crime.’

  Antagonised by his clinician which gives him a motive.

  ‘What are you basing the assumption on?’

  She hid behind the textbook stuff. ‘Disregard of human life and suffering. He is capable, Frank. As a child he cut off a rabbit’s ears, cooked a bird live in the oven, slowly warming it to prolong its suffering. He threatened his girlfriend. Terrorised his mother over a number of years. He shows a wanton disregard for law and rules and frightening cruelty.’

  Paul Frank stared at her, hard for a minute. ‘You saw the pictures of Heidi Faro,’ he said.

  She nodded, knowing he was doubting her word.

  ‘And you heard the details at Kristyna’s inquest.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I agree that Barclay is all the things you say,’ Frank said. ‘But as for being capable of both these murders … I’m not convinced.’

  She leaned towards him, almost as though she wanted to exclude the tape recorder from listening. ‘But you don’t think it was Stefan Gulio either, do you?’

  Stefan’s reedy voice came into her head. ‘I hear screams. There is blood.’

  She tried to convey this to Frank. ‘He hears screams. He sees blood. He picks up the knife. He runs along the corridor. He makes no mention of the actual assault. Ever. Not in one of his statements. Imagine if he was summoned to see Heidi, is waiting outside the room. He would hear screams. Then he enters the room and sees mayhem. So he runs. And is found by Siôna Edwards.’

  ‘But we’ve got no connection with Barclay. We don’t even know that he was there that day.’

  Time to produce her joker card. ‘He had a motive,’ she said.

  Paul Frank looked dubious.

  She explained as best she could the circumstances of Heidi’s trial, including the fact that it had been unethical enough to be illegal.

  And watched him remain sceptical. ‘Claire, Nothing puts Jerome Barclay anywhere near the crime scene on the night of Heidi Faro’s murder. No one saw him. CCTV didn’t pick him up.’

  She could almost feel the doubts crack the surface of her theory. She sat back in her chair, quiet now and listening to sounds in the rooms and corridors outside.

  She took another drink of her gin. The ice cubes must be melting. It tasted watery.

  ‘You see, Claire, I have a real problem with this.’ Paul Frank was not meeting her eyes. ‘If Jerome Barclay is all the terrible things you say why did he let you go tonight? Why didn’t he kill you?’

  She had no answer except possibly one.

  Perhaps it had not been her time.

  ‘It must be Barclay,’ she said firmly. ‘It must be. Bec
ause …’ If not Barclay and not Gulio – who?

  She held on to the end of the sentence and made an effort to speak to the policeman in his own language.

  ‘He must know we’re after him and seriously does want to speak to you.’

  ‘I’m willing,’ he said, ‘I want to speak to him. But he must realise he is a suspect in a murder case.’

  ‘Then make it public,’ she said. ‘I think he’ll listen. Otherwise he is smart enough to know that he can never shake you off.’

  She felt like a traitor towards Heidi, Nancy Gold and Kristyna.

  Suddenly she felt helpless, almost in a state of collapse. ‘So what next, Inspector? We wait for another murder?’ She was struggling against rising hysteria. ‘I can’t do that, Paul. I can’t. We’ve had three awful murders at Greatbach. Three people I knew.’

  He jerked forward. ‘But you didn’t know Heidi Faro. You never met her.’

  ‘I did.’ It almost felt like an admission of guilt. ‘I attended clinical meetings she was teaching at. I learned most of what I know from her. She was my mentor. My guru. A friend.’

  ‘I see.’ All of a sudden suspicion danced in his eyes. ‘And then you took up her job, stepped into her shoes – as it were.’

  She nodded very slowly, understanding he was heading somewhere she refused to follow and returned to her original line of thought.

  ‘I can’t just wait for something else to happen, Inspector. We’re all at the end of our tether. And if I left no one would step into my shoes. The word would out that Greatbach is not safe. The place will close. Secrets will lie, the patients and staff disperse and you, Inspector, will have an unsolved mystery on your hands. Three murders. If you don’t find some settlement, this is what will happen.’

  She had not voiced this even to herself until now but having said it she knew it was the truth.

  There had been criticism of the unit and their methods, a complaint that it was not as secure as it might be considering the inmates and their past. If on top of the events of the past years word got out about Heidi’s so-called treatment of psychopathic patients they would be finished anyway and their work discredited. The treatment of personality disorder would slide back to the last century. She’d watched it happen to other forward-thinking psychiatric units. If they weren’t achieving Government targets they would be closed. And in no Government paper were three murders considered a target.

  Chapter Twenty

  It took the police precisely eleven more hours to locate Jerome Barclay, and Paul Frank informed her briskly at nine o’clock that very night that her patient had requested she be present at his initial interview instead of a solicitor.

  She’d been at home, watching a DVD with Grant, nicely relaxed in jeans and a T-shirt, but as soon as Paul Frank had spoken one sentence the adrenalin started to flow. Excited to be in at the kill she changed back into her work suit. At last, she told herself, they would learn the truth.

  But driving in she still felt a mounting apprehension. Barclay was her patient. He would know of her involvement with the police investigation. What role would he choose for her?

  She would soon learn.

  Inspector Frank met her at the doorway of the police station and all around him was an excited buzz of static. All the police personnel were moving quickly. There was none of the sluggishness that had marked them before.

  Murder has this effect on the police. Like a serious accident has on the medical profession. It is a challenge which stretches your skills.

  ‘Let’s talk,’ Frank said, keeping his voice very steady. There was only the vaguest hint of a quaver that leaked his excitement. She followed him through a wide hallway, turning right into a short corridor and through a semi-glazed door with his name on.

  No mention of Stefan Gulio now, mouldering in Broadmoor, she thought, with a hint of spite that surprised even her.

  ‘So?’ she said, glancing around the small, untidy office.

  ‘We’re not there yet,’ he warned. ‘There’s a lot we don’t know.’

  ‘How can I help?’ Nail him to the cross?

  ‘I just need to know how to extract the right information from him, how to ask my questions, which questions to ask. I want to trip him up.’ He looked as eager as a spaniel puppy.

  ‘Then let him talk,’ she said. ‘Keep your questions, as far as possible, open-ended. Don’t direct him unless he’s veering way off subject. He’s attention-seeking. He’ll do anything to keep you listening. He loves the sound of his own voice. So let him enjoy himself. Just – let – him – talk. Give him a free reign. Ask him how he felt about Heidi, how well he knew Kristyna. Those sorts of things. But I’ll give you a word of warning. Don’t try and pretend you’re his friend. He’s too intelligent to fall for that one. He’ll see right through it and lose respect for you. And then he’ll clam up.

  ‘One more thing, Paul. I’d leave his mother’s death out of it for now. After all – you have two violent deaths, undoubted murders, to keep you occupied. The evidence to make him responsible for his mother’s death is likely to be very circumstantial and he’ll know it. He’ll also know you won’t be able to pin it on him and assume your case against him for the other two is equally weak.’

  Something almost defeatist softened DI Frank’s eyes so he looked vulnerable.

  He was frightened. Not of Barclay but of failure, of having his quarry in custody and letting him go.

  Aloud he said, ‘The only trouble with giving him a free reign, Claire, is the time factor. The PACE clock ticks away. If he rambles on I’m going to have to release him without finding anything out. I can apply for a couple of extensions but I’ve got nothing on him. I can’t charge him, Claire.’

  She smiled, wanting to pat his arm. ‘I know, but you will get there. I promise.’

  ‘I hope so.’ His face softened for an instant then he stood up, squared his shoulders, cleared his throat. ‘He’s refused to have a solicitor present. He wants only you.’

  ‘Suits me,’ she said bravely, but as she walked along the corridor she started to worry. What did he mean, he wanted only her. What game was he playing?

  Frank pushed open the door of the interview room.

  Barclay was sitting quite still, his hands stretched out in front of him, palms down, flat on the table. He looked up briefly as they entered, didn’t smile. Didn’t speak.

  He was wearing a turtle-necked, grey cashmere sweater, sleeves pushed up to the elbows, exposing a gold watch on powerful-looking forearms.

  Claire sat down opposite him, meeting his strange eyes without a smile and noting an answering lack of expression on his face. No curiosity, no interest, no fear. Nothing. Even though she had half anticipated this it still disconcerted her.

  ‘Hello, Jerome,’ she said – quite formally, aware that he would despise any greeting short of authentic.

  He nodded back, swivelled his eyes around to watch DI Frank settling down in his chair.

  Paul Frank switched the tape recorder on and announced their names into the microphone with the time and date. Then he addressed Barclay.

  ‘You understand that we are questioning you in connection with the deaths of the psychiatrist Heidi Faro on March 17th 2003 and the death of Kristyna Gale on or around December 10th 2003?’

  Barclay’s eyebrows registered some surprise. Maybe that he wasn’t being questioned about his mother’s death too. Claire resisted the temptation to glance across at Inspector Paul Frank and see his face from Barclay’s angle.

  ‘Yes.’ Barclay’s answer was steady and clear. Ideal tape recorder material. Claire watched him closely. Still unsure what game he was playing.

  ‘We’ll start with the murder of Heidi Faro. She was your psychiatrist, I believe.’

  ‘That’s right, Inspector. And she helped plenty of other people too.’

  What a clever, consummate little actor he was. Convincing in his part of innocent, victimised patient. Playing co-operative. So far.

  ‘Can you
remember where you were on the day she died?’

  ‘That’s a long time ago, Inspector.’

  ‘It is indeed, Mr Barclay, but it would be very helpful if you could tell us where you were.’

  ‘It so happens I was at work.’

  ‘You know we will be checking up on this.’

  ‘As far as I remember,’ he added.

  Innocent eyes.

  ‘What time do you finish work?’

  ‘Round about six – the other side of town from here.’

  He folded his arms. ‘I remember the day particularly because that night it was on the news that there had been a murder at Greatbach Psychiatric Unit and I wondered who had been killed. If it was anyone I knew.’ A faint smirk. ‘And how.’

  That was when she understood. Barclay wanted accolade, admiration, the slow handclap, fear for Heidi’s mode of death. It had all been designed to provoke fear.

  In spite of the presence of Inspector Frank it had its effect. Claire was chilled. She studied the performance with respect and fear. She had never before realised just how conscienceless these people were. And Barclay was giving it all he’d got. She was learning more about psychopaths than she could possibly have done from any existing textbook. She could almost feel Heidi Faro sitting on her shoulder, applauding.

  Paul Frank gave her a swift glance before asking Barclay another question. ‘How did you feel when you heard it was your own doctor who had died?’

  Barclay had to think about that one. He had no appropriate response in his repertoire.

  Frank was about to repeat the question when he answered. ‘Well – that’s a difficult one. I thought …’ His eyes rolled around the walls of the interview room. ‘To be honest I wasn’t that surprised. There are some dangerous people out there. And she – well –’ A swift smirk at Claire. ‘She wasn’t always fair on people, you know?’

  Frank gave a startled look at Claire. ‘What do you mean – she wasn’t fair?’