A Justifiable Madness

by AB Morgan

‘I never knew you could keep a secret!’

  Carol was astounded that I had carried out such a risky strategy, even if it was to help a patient. She had always seen me as a rule keeper, not a rule breaker.

  ‘I had to. Mark could have ended up dead, and the senior managers weren’t listening to us, so I was left with my conscience to deal with, and I’ve never regretted it.’

  ‘And I have never forgotten what you did. Even though I wasn’t a real patient,’ Mark added, lightening the mood once again by ordering another round of drinks.

  ‘That’s two Hop Heads, one Betty Stogs, a pint of Weston’s Family Reserve, a large Pinot Grigio and a glass of water for Carol please.’

  39

  Pub Battleships

  There we were in the Queen’s Head, Burnham on Crouch, relative strangers recounting from two different perspectives, the same outrageous and almost unbelievable story, that we had been a part of.

  Dave and Max continued to behave like naughty schoolboys throughout the evening, asking endlessly for more details of Dr Sharman’s smutty sexual exploits. They were given short shrift, mostly from me. ‘It wasn’t a Carry On film, you nellies!’

  I had given them a game to play, a mistake on my part.

  ‘Oh, Carry on Bonkers … Carry On Nut Crackers … Carry On Basket Case,’ they offered, ‘and my personal favourite, Carry on Round the Bend,’ added Dave.

  ‘No, that’s rubbish, it sounds as if it’s about plumbers.’

  ‘Oh yeah …’

  ‘Shut up the pair of you!’ Carol took charge of the playground as usual, and then turned to Julia to help quench her thirst for more information.

  ‘Now, Julia, tell me how you met Mark. Did you know him when he was locked up in the mental hospital, or did you meet later?’

  Julia generously filled in a few years’ worth of information for Carol and me. Mark had decided to continue his interest in the mental health injustices that had been exposed by the research project, and he had also recognised his personal requirement to take a break from war zones. He moved back to the UK, and in that time encountered Julia who happened to be a researcher for the BBC. They had met, by happy accident, through an assignment.

  Our reunion was not serendipity; Mark had managed to find me and had emailed asking me to consider participating in the documentary Julia was making. I had read his articles in the papers over the years and seen him on the news a couple of times. I wasn’t too keen on the idea of a documentary appearance, but how could I resist seeing Mark again in person?

  Being wary of what I was letting myself in for, I agreed to consider his proposal, only if he met with Carol, Max, and me. As much as I loved Dave, he wasn’t much use in this situation. If you needed a survey of your sewers doing, he was your man.

  Mark’s wife, Julia, was lovely, and she was enthralled at the tales we told. She had never heard the specifics of my involvement in helping her husband to escape from hospital. Taking their cue, Mark and Julia outlined what they had in mind as my contribution to the documentary. I expressed my reservations, requiring all Julia’s powers of persuasion to convince me that I would not be committing career suicide. After several minutes of debate and uncertainty I eventually acquiesced.

  ‘Good,’ Max said, giving my shoulders a squeeze. ‘Now can we get on and enjoy the rest of the evening?’

  At about eight pm, we ordered snacks in a sensible effort to soak up some of the alcohol. While we nibbled, we talked.

  Mark wanted to know what had happened to Welsh Phil, which lifted the mood again, because we had to tell the tale of the Chocolate Wars bringing those times flooding back to both of us. Dave and Max decided that chocolate sounded good, and they purchased four walnut whips. Then, after a huddled discussion, they rapidly returned to the bar to buy a selection of alcoholic drinks.

  With permission from Diane the tolerant landlady, they commandeered a decent-sized scrubbed top table. Taking a couple of large bar menus, they created a barrier across the middle of the table. Diane allowed them use of her dartboard chalk with which to draw out a grid either side of the central menu barrier, and they labelled each axis with letters and numbers. In doing so they invented their own version of “Pub Battleships”.

  This was highly entertaining, and a small crowd gathered behind each player. When a successful hit was achieved, the winner ate the chocolate or drank the drink contained in that square of the board. By the time Max succeeded in sinking Dave’s last Walnut Whip they were both slurring their words.

  I didn’t have any update on Welsh Phil to give to Mark, other than to say how thrilled he had been when he’d received the box of expensive chocolates that Mark had sent as a thank you. Phil was never admitted again to Pargiter Ward, as far as I was aware, and I had to assume that he had moved out of the area, as I never came across him again.

  I was able to assure Mark that I was still in touch with Emma after all these years, despite our career paths veering in different directions. Mark was pleased to hear that she had been a bridesmaid at our wedding, when Max and I married years earlier, and that she had made it her business to outdo the best man by performing her own unforgettable speech; as only Emma could. After all it was her fault that Max and I met, and his fault for pestering me to the point of submission. Even though he behaved like an overgrown child, I couldn’t imagine life without him.

  Once Pub Battleships had finished, we returned to the subject of Dr Sharman’s comeuppance.

  I skirted neatly around my involvement in supplying confidential Section papers, as I didn’t have to confess my offence in that regard: the secret had remained firmly with Richard Huntley.

  Carol asked a string of questions about Section papers and types of Section, fascinated by the whole legal tangle. Mark and I had to confess that we were still not experts in mental health law, so Mark suggested that if she wanted to know more, then his great pal Lewis James was still alive and kicking. Mark was certain that he would like nothing better than to join us for a drink one evening.

  He then glanced approvingly across at Max and Dave who were suffering from a fit of the giggles. They had been unable to resist checking Max’s smartphone for the Giles Sharman kinky sex story.

  ‘Carol, have we got a whip at home anywhere, or a ping pong bat?’

  Carol shook her head, and sighed.

  Mark and I eventually reached the end of our story, as far as I could remember it. At least I had thought so, but rather surprisingly, Mark had more up-to-date information about Dr Sharman. Of course he had been found guilty of the fraud, but not of the manslaughter charge, that sadly did not stick. But Giles Sharman was found grossly negligent, and the NHS had to pay a vast sum of money to Rodney Wells’ family.

  The six of us, including Jesus, sitting drinking in a pub with Che Guevara and Phil Lynott in the same room, explored the biggest mystery:

  The poisoning of Dr Sharman.

  Mark had not been privy to the events of the ward round when Dr Sharman had been taken ill, and had missed the on-the-spot drama at the time. He was hoping for new information to present as part of the documentary.

  I had managed to piece together important chronological detail from Charlotte, who had been in the large meeting room for the duration that day. I had only seen the aftermath.

  According to her, Dr Sharman had gradually become more lethargic throughout the morning of that fateful ward round, which is why he had consumed the greater part of a pot of coffee and was demanding a second.

  He had apparently commented that he was exhausted by the weekend’s events at the National Psychopharmacology Conference, and was regretting the fact that he had not taken an extra day or two to recuperate. He was seen shaking his head, and then stretching his neck from left to right before eventually it became obvious that something was wrong, and he shouted that he was having a stroke.

  Subsequently, Dr Sharman’s secretary, Lucy, had told me that it was she who had first opened the note from the culprit, announcing the poisonin
g of Dr Sharman. This had been in a plain envelope with a simple typed instruction: For the Attention of Dr Giles Sharman. She had not even read it properly before adding the letter to a pile of post that she then delivered by hand to the main hospital, where Dr Sharman was recovering from his heart attack. He had demanded to see his correspondence that day, as he was expecting to receive a special invitation to appear at a week-long conference in the Costa Brava, Spain: all expenses paid.

  ‘She threw the envelope away, so there were no fingerprints for the police to find.’

  ‘Were there any fingerprints on the letter itself?’ Carol asked.

  Then everyone joined in. Apart from Carol, we were all a little inebriated.

  ‘How was the poison given to him without him noticing?’

  ‘It has got to have been in his coffee, for sure.’

  ‘Too obvious, and why didn’t anyone else get sick?’

  ‘Who were the main suspects?’

  ‘Was it Dr Siddiqui?’

  ‘Was it Rodney whatsit’s sister?’

  ‘Was it you?’ Max joked, looking at me.

  If Dr Giles Sharman had died when he had that heart attack, the police would have explored, in more depth, the events leading up to his collapse. They would have undertaken a full murder enquiry. Instead, they had as good as ignored the poisoning.

  If they had examined the evidence in detail, then I would have been the prime suspect.

  I had a motive, I had the means, and I gave Dr Giles Sharman a double dose of his own favourite medicine, Droperidol, in his coffee to make certain that he suffered. This was not difficult. I had drawn up a syringe-full of Droperidol liquid and put each dose in the bottom of his cup. Twice. The liquid was in the cup before I even entered the ward round, so no one ever saw me. Dozens of eyes watched me pour out the drinks. Those witnesses were adamant I could not have possibly poisoned Dr Sharman. The gutter press stuck with the story that he had pretended to be poisoned in an attempt to avoid arrest and gain sympathy. Rubbish. It was only a matter of luck that he didn’t die. Who knew he had a heart condition? I’m not a doctor.

  His comeuppance, courtesy of the press, was as big a surprise to me as it was to anyone. But I had meant to poison him, and I had meant for him to know he had been poisoned.

  My secret could never be revealed. I could so easily have unintentionally killed him.

  ‘Monica, you should write a book. This is a fascinating whodunit!’ Carol said. She was right.

  ‘Yes, but Jesus, tell me, what happened to Dr Sharman in the end, do you know?’ Dave asked, staring intently and drunkenly at Mark.

  Mark did know. He had saved the best for last. Apparently the fact that he was not allowed to practice, as a medical doctor, did not stop Dr Giles Sharman from being called a doctor. Mark’s information, via Jock, was that Giles Sharman had moved to Australia and worked for a small manufacturer of health products, which although harmless, were not the panacea for all ills that he professed them to be via numerous television adverts as ‘clinical expert’ Dr Sharman.

  ‘He spent years deceiving innocent people, by selling them drugs they did not need. There’s a theme here you’ll notice. He still basked in notoriety, which once again fed his narcissistic soul. He retired and lived alone until his death.’

  ‘Yes. But how did he die?’ begged Dave, who was perched so precariously on a bar stool that he was in danger of falling.

  ‘Well … it’s not pleasant. Jock Mackenzie sent me the gory photos, although needless to say, I haven’t brought them with me. We’re saving those for the documentary. To cut a disgusting story short, no one had complained about a nasty smell, but Dr Sharman was found, by Australian police, in a decomposed state. He’d been at home for about six weeks after his death with a large dildo wedged in his rectum, a plastic bag over his head, and a bottle of amyl nitrate close by. No one, it seemed, could bear to live with him, and he had resorted to playing dangerous sex games all alone.’

  For a man who had loved himself so intensely, this was poetic justice.

  THE END.

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  Acknowledgments

  This book was inspired by true events.

  The Rosenhan Experiment took place in the 1970s in the US,

  and only partial details of that research are outlined in this story.