The Madness Underneath

by Maureen Johnson

  “I was stabbed,” I said. “At Wexford.”

  “You’re that Ripper girl,” Sam said. “They said it was an American girl. She’s the Ripper girl.”

  That last one was to Stephen, who was forced to nod.

  “Why did you bring the Ripper girl here?”

  We were so far off track now that Stephen had no immediate reply to this quite reasonable question.

  “You saw the news reports,” Stephen said, after a moment. “Do you remember how the suspect was never caught on CCTV?”

  These words had an immediate effect on Sam. His arms went slack, and the restraints clanked against the table. The rest of his body became more alert.

  “I think something in that cellar wasn’t quite right,” Stephen said.

  Sam shook his head, as if he had water in his ear that he needed to dislodge. “No,” he said.

  “Sam, I don’t think you wanted to hurt Charlie. Did you hurt Charlie?”

  “I already said I did!”

  “But did you?”

  Sam began to cry. Tears dribbled down his face, getting stuck in the stubble. He turned his head back and forth as if trying to shake his face dry.

  “What was in that cellar, Sam?” Stephen pressed on. “Why did you call Charlie down there?”

  “I did it…”

  “Sam.” Stephen’s voice had taken on a deep, steady tone that was kind of hypnotic. “Sam, you called him downstairs. Why?”

  “The floor. I just wanted to show him the floor…”

  “What about the floor?”

  “The cross,” he said.

  “What cross?”

  “When I went down for the tonic water, there was no cross on the floor. But then when I went back down again for the crisps, there it was.”

  “The cross?”

  “It was drawn in chalk,” Sam said. “I thought there was something wrong with my head. And I got near it, and suddenly this glass came out of nowhere, like it had been thrown at me. I yelled for Charlie…”

  I realized my nails were digging into my thighs.

  “Charlie thought I was on something, but I wasn’t. I didn’t take nothing, I promise. And I was trying to tell him that…”

  Sam had started to shake, an all-over quiver that rattled his arms and pulled on the restraints that bound him to the table. Tears trickled freely from his eyes.

  “What happened next, Sam?” Stephen asked quietly.

  Sam shook his head.

  “Sam,” he said, “we will believe you.”

  “I don’t want you to believe me.”

  It was horrible to watch, this tormented man, chained into place.

  “Charlie started to wipe the cross away,” he said. “He was down on his knees and saying, ‘We’ll just clean this up and have a cup of tea and we’ll talk…’ He thought I was high and things were going bad in my head. And then, the hammer…It did it on its own. I promise you, it went right for him, on its own. Right through the air. I didn’t believe what I was seeing. I would have stopped it, but I didn’t understand what was going on…but that didn’t happen, did it? The hammer didn’t move by itself. I must’ve done it. It was just me and him, and I picked up the hammer when it fell to the floor, and…it must have been me. I must’ve killed him. I must have—”

  He broke down entirely, his body shuddering. He was chained to the table and weeping in agony.

  Stephen stood and indicated that I should as well.

  “You’ve done the right thing, telling us. This is a good place. They’ll look after you here.”

  Sam turned away from us to face the wall, and the tears streamed hard and fast again. His sobs filled the room, and the air got thick and humid. The horror of it all was in this room, in sweat and tears and adrenaline—the pain of a mind rejecting something that seemed unnatural, something that had no place in this world. Something violent that had no face or body.

  “Sam.” Stephen’s voice had gone very soft, softer than I had imagined it could go. “You’ll be looked after. You don’t need to be afraid.”

  “I did it,” Sam moaned. “I did it. I must have. Please tell me. Please. Please tell me what’s happening…”

  “What’s happening…” Stephen paused and looked for something to say. But how did you explain a thing like this to a man who’d seen his boss die right in front of him? A man who believed he committed a murder, and was now in a hospital chained to a table?

  “I’ll speak to someone outside,” Stephen said. “They’ll give you something. It will be all right. You will get all the help you need. Thank you for talking to us.”

  He nodded to me, and I stood up slowly and we left the room.

  14

  I DIDN’T EXACTLY RUN OUT OF THE HOSPITAL WHEN WE finished, but I came pretty close. Once we were outside, I tipped back my head. The drizzle went up my nose, along with the smell of wet leaves in a parking lot. I loved everything about this wet parking lot. I loved the fog that smothered the landscape. It wasn’t the hospital itself that was bad. It was a perfectly nice and modern hospital—it was that it made me feel like I couldn’t breathe.

  “I told you it wouldn’t be pleasant,” Stephen said.

  “I’m fine,” I replied.

  Stephen took me at my word. We returned to the car, but he didn’t start the engine right away.

  “There are two possibilities here,” Stephen said. “One, Sam beat his employer to death with a hammer. Or, two—”

  “He saw an actual flying hammer beat his boss to death, and now he’s in a hospital for the criminally insane.”

  “That’s the other one.”

  “Which one do you think it is?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.” He rubbed at his hairline. “The forensics fit. The blood splatter on his clothes and body indicated that he had been standing about two feet away from the victim at the time of the attack. The pattern on the hammer was a bit more confusing. His fingerprints were on it, but they seemed to be old prints—the blood was over the top of them. The way the blood ran down the handle, someone’s fingers should have interrupted the stream, but they didn’t. The best guess was that he held the handle very low, and possibly with something like a cloth, but that was never recovered. The oddities about the grip patterns on the weapon could be overlooked because he said he did it.”

  “So it could have been a flying hammer?” I said.

  “So it could have been a flying hammer. Or it could have been a weird way of holding the hammer. And if you’re bashing people’s brains in with a hammer, you might hold said hammer in a strange way, because it’s a strange activity…Are you sure you’re all right?”

  As far as I knew, I was being completely normal. I wasn’t screaming or crying or twitching uncontrollably. And I was feeling increasingly better every second we were out of the hospital. Clearly, though, I was giving off a vibe that indicated I wasn’t okay.

  “Just, you know, being in there makes me feel like it might be me, you know? Weird in the head.”

  “You’re not weird in the head.”

  “There’s a giant talking chicken next to me that would say otherwise.”

  “You are not weird in the head,” he said, more firmly. “You went through something horrible, and you survived, and you’ve done amazingly well. You’re strong. Stop making jokes about it. There is nothing wrong with you.”

  I wasn’t expecting this little outburst, or the anger that edged his voice.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be sorry. Just don’t do it. It’s important. Because of what we do, it’s important to always remember that there is nothing wrong with you. Don’t make jokes about your own sanity. You didn’t like being in there. Neither did I. It’s scary because when you have the sight, you wonder if you’re going to end up in one of these places.”

  “Who knows?” I said. “If I’d told Julia what really happened, maybe I would have. Maybe I would have liked it in there. I think you get to do a lot of crafts. I like crafts. Cr
afts are good. I can make a mean God’s eye. And I bet you get to eat a lot of pudding. Give me pudding and give me crafts and I’m going to be content for a while…”

  “They’re not bad places. I liked my time in one better than school in many ways.”

  It’s not a good feeling when you realize you’ve been making jokes about something that the person you’re talking to has actually been through.

  “I didn’t mean…”

  “I know you didn’t. I’m just telling you. If someone needs mental health care, they belong in a facility like this. But what you have is not a mental illness. I didn’t go into hospital because I saw ghosts; I went because I attempted suicide. And that suicide attempt had nothing to do with the sight.”

  I’d never heard someone just come out and talk about their suicide attempt so matter-of-factly. Come to think of it, I’d never heard anyone talk about a suicide attempt at all. Something about the fact that we had just gone into that hospital together had opened a conversational door. I could feel his willingness to talk creeping out like a reluctant cat from under a sofa.

  “It was because of your sister’s death,” I said.

  “And my inability to deal with it. Or my family’s refusal to do so. Whichever you like. Both apply.”

  “How long were you there?” I asked.

  “Just over a month.” He pinch-wiped his nose. “My parents sent me to the Priory. No NHS for me. Posh hospital, and as far away as possible. I don’t know if they really thought I needed to go or if they were just trying to get rid of me for a while. I went to hospital. They went to Greece. There was a reason my sister did so many drugs.”

  He almost smiled.

  “Were you and your sister close?” I asked.

  “She was three years older. We both went to boarding schools, different ones. I didn’t even see her that often. I mean, we cared for each other, but we weren’t in each other’s pockets. I had no idea about all the things she’d been doing. I think that was partly why I felt so guilty. She was taking massive amounts of drugs, really dangerous amounts, and I had no idea. None of her so-called friends were all that surprised when she overdosed. I was the only one who was shocked. I was fine for three years, and then…” He cut himself off and brushed some imaginary lint off his sleeve. He was drawing a line under this subject.

  “These things,” I said. “They keep happening. Murders.”

  “It’s not that there are more things happening. It’s that you’re aware of them now.”

  “I think more things are actually happening,” I said.

  “It’s still a question of perception. When I did the training to become a police officer, I got to see crime reports. I worked a desk on a Saturday night and saw what came in to the station. I saw people beating each other and stabbing each other. You start to see violence everywhere.”

  “I can’t go on like this,” I said. “School’s a joke. I lie to everyone. My friends think I’m pathological.”

  “That’s why it’s easier not to say anything at all.”

  “How do you not say anything to anyone?”

  “When you have no friends, it makes it easier,” he said, with that weird little half smile.

  “Not helpful.”

  “No…but more to the point, is what Sam told us true?”

  Sharing time was over, and we were back to the matter at hand.

  “I think I believe him,” I said.

  “I’m not sure where I am with it, but it’s worth a trip to the Royal Gunpowder, at least. Callum and Boo should be back from hospital soon. We can go over this evening or tomorrow.”

  “Or you can go now,” I said. “With me.”

  “Rory.”

  “Because if there is something down there, what are you going to do about it?”

  “The same thing I’ve been doing for the last few weeks—I’m going to talk to him or her.”

  “Yes, but he or she probably killed someone with a hammer, so maybe that’s not a good idea. You need me with you.”

  “You need to understand,” he said. “This is our job. I am glad you are back and that you want to help, but—”

  “I’ll go by myself, then.”

  “You really are difficult, aren’t you?”

  “This should not be news.”

  “This isn’t a game,” he said.

  “When, at any point, has any of this been fun or gamelike to me?” I asked. “Getting stalked for weeks? Getting stabbed? Going into a deserted underground station in the dark to see a man who had murdered about a dozen people? Tell me which part was the game, because I’m missing it.”

  I had him there, and he rubbed his nose again.

  “Same rules,” he said. “Let me do the talking. And I mean it this time. Promise me, and keep your promise.”

  “I promise,” I said. “But, you know, he talked to me—and my talking is the thing that got him to talk.”

  “We got away with it in there, but we won’t get away with it in a more public setting. We’ll say you’re a social worker, victim services, just there to observe. Keep your head down and don’t engage. And remember, the owners of this pub just lost a family member.”

  “I know.”

  “So a certain amount of—”

  “I’ll be quiet. You go first. I get it.”

  What mattered was that underneath all of this Stephen was saying yes.

  The Royal Gunpowder was very crowded. It appeared that some kind of informal memorial gathering was going on. There were flowers on the bar, and the conversation was loud, but respectfully so. We got some looks when we came in—well, Stephen did. I had shed the police accessories and was now playing the part of a person who was not going to say anything. Stephen worked his way to the front in a practiced way. (I’d noticed that most English people knew how to get to the front of a crowded bar, that there was an understood way to shoulder slide to the front without actually cutting anyone else in line.)

  There was a woman behind the bar in a plain black dress, deep in conversation with a group of men who were holding their AA chips. She nodded a lot and wiped her eyes a few times. Stephen interrupted as politely as possible and showed his warrant card. I stared into the back of Stephen’s jacket as he introduced himself and made some polite inquiries about how things had gone with the reopening.

  “Do you feel comfortable here?” he asked.

  “What you mean, comfortable? My father-in-law was beaten to death with a hammer in the basement,” she said. “So, no, I suppose you could say I don’t feel comfortable.”

  “I’m very sorry,” Stephen said quickly. “Let me rephrase that. Has anyone been disturbing you? Any vandals? Anything we need to be aware of? Sometimes crime scenes get hangers-on, so we like to check up.”

  I peered around Stephen in what I hoped was a casual manner, to see how this was going.

  “Oh,” she said. “Course. I see. No, nothing like that.”

  “You don’t seem sure. Really. If there’s something, however small, we’ll look into it.”

  “Well…” She considered for a moment. “After what happened, we hired a cleaning crew to come in and clear the place up. You can hire people for this sort of thing, you know. They came and scrubbed everything, even the ceiling. Made it perfectly neat and new down there. Then I went down for the first time. I took some of the flowers people had been leaving and put them on the spot where it happened. When I went down the next day to change the water in the vases, they were all in different places. I asked the staff if they done it, and they say they didn’t. They swore they didn’t. But it’s just flowers. You can’t call the police because someone moves your flowers. Anyway, I’m sure one of the staff did it, but maybe they didn’t want to say when I asked. Maybe they thought I’d be angry.”

  “It would be helpful if I could go down and have a look,” Stephen said. “Make sure everything’s secure. It will only take a minute.”

  “Who’s she?” the woman said, nodding at me.

 
; “Victim relations,” Stephen answered smoothly. “She does the paperwork to make sure everything’s in order.”

  I feigned intense interest in a menu on the wall advertising a five-pound lunch special. The woman started to come down with us, but Stephen held up his hand.

  “If you can just stay up here,” he said. “It’s procedure. Health and safety. Stupid, I know, but there you go.”

  To my surprise, the woman nodded again and went back up the stairs, shutting the door. This astonished me.

  “I can’t believe that worked,” I said when we got downstairs. “Procedure? In my town, no one would just let the law into their basement to have a look around for seemingly no reason at all. They’d either get a lawyer or a gun. If uncertain, they’d get both.”

  “This is England,” he explained. “Tell someone it’s a procedure, and they’ll believe you. The pointless procedure is one of our great natural resources.”

  There was a shelving unit directly at the bottom of the steps, which was full of toilet paper: rolls and rolls of the stuff. Someone liked buying in bulk. There was an open doorway to the right and the left of this.

  “Is there anyone down here?” Stephen asked the dark. “We mean you no harm. Please make yourself known to us if you are here.”

  No answer.

  “Here’s what we are going to do,” Stephen told me. “We go to the bottom of the stairs. You will look to the left, and I will look to the right.”

  This was real police stuff—going to the door, one person covering one direction, another covering the opposite. So we did that. I faced a room full of pipes and kegs with no hiding spaces and no ghosts.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Can’t see anything this way,” Stephen said. “But this side goes on a bit and has another room beyond.”

  We proceeded cautiously to a narrow room that mostly housed broken-down boxes, then entered a much larger room, which seemed to be the main basement room. This had shelves all around and the barrels that led to the taps upstairs. The lingering scent of some strong chemical hung in the air. But there were no ghosts.