Dangerous Minds

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘Friend of yours?’

  Hayley turned her face away, shaking her head. ‘Friend of a friend,’ she muttered, closing her eyes.

  Claire stood for a moment then turned and left. For now there was nothing she could do about this. She must leave the general physicians to deal with her patient’s physical problems. Only then could she deal with this insidious influence and Hayley’s mental state. Only when she was returned to Greatbach. If ever.

  So Barclay was on the high seas plotting God-knew-what and Dexter was still missing. He had vanished into the ether.

  Wednesday, 29 October, 9.30 a.m.

  Even though the outcome for Stan was hopeless and Hayley was still in the general hospital, Claire felt that Greatbach and its patients were doing no worse than usual. But bad news had been hovering in the wings, waiting to make its appearance, flapping in its black cloak towards centre stage.

  It was Rita who told her. ‘I saw something in the Sentinel last night,’ she said, and placed it, carefully flattened, on Claire’s desk.

  It was a small paragraph on page 4.

  The couple who were found dead at their home in Biddulph on Thursday morning have been identified as Maylene and Derek Forsyte. Police are not looking for anyone else in connection with the deaths. Post mortems show that both died of gunshot wounds. A friend has been quoted as saying that the couple were heavily in debt and that Maylene had mental-health problems.

  Rita looked up but didn’t meet her eyes. ‘She won’t be needing that appointment then.’ It was a gauche statement from one who had worked in this job for over twenty years and was a measure of her unease.

  Claire looked at her then shook her head, her eyes drawn back to the brief paragraph.

  That was all. Just a few lines. It hadn’t even warranted a whole paragraph, let alone the front page. So that was it. The expensive butterfly. No more. And as though Claire had been there to witness the drama, she believed she knew exactly what had happened and why. Derek’s desperation at the plight they were in, Maylene’s complete refusal to acknowledge the reality of their debt and resistance to any attempt to alter her extravagance. And so Maylene had fluttered her last. Derek had finally snapped. Claire suddenly froze by the side of Rita’s desk. What had made him finally snap? Claire picked up the phone and connected with the mortuary. She knew the pathologist, Caroline Morton, and had spoken with her on two previous occasions: one a suicide a couple of years ago and the other a patient’s suspicious death at Greatbach, but which had turned out to be a death from natural causes.

  It took a little while to connect with Caroline, but eventually, after a long wait, they spoke.

  First of all Claire wanted to ascertain whether Caroline had performed the post mortem herself.

  ‘Yes,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I had that unenviable task.’

  ‘I just thought I ought to put you in the picture. Maylene, Mrs Forsyte, was a patient of mine.’

  ‘Really.’ From her tone she’d already known this.

  ‘Oh yes – an outpatient. She had a histrionic personality disorder.’

  ‘Well, she didn’t die of that,’ Caroline said baldly. ‘She was shot at point-blank range. Scorch marks on her skin and clothes, wadding in the wound, I’m afraid. The verdict will be murder and suicide. She died of a single gunshot wound to the chest. Took out a lot of lung and extensive damage to the heart and major blood vessels. He put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger with his toe. The pair of them took ten, fifteen minutes to die. Not – quite – clean. A lot of blood loss and some dragging blood markings on the floor in the kitchen. We think she’d been trying to get to the phone. Apparently, they were over a hundred thousand pounds in debt. He earned £18K a year so it was going to take him for ever to pay his debt off. I guess bankruptcy would have loomed and, from what friends and family say, Derek was a proud man. That wouldn’t have been his way out. He’d tried, poor guy. They’d remortgaged the house to well over its market value. They were in deep financial trouble. And I guess that’s that.’

  Claire thanked her; told her she’d make a statement to the coroner.

  ‘We do have evidence for understanding his state of mind,’ Caroline added. ‘There were some articles about bankruptcy together with bank statements and a particularly nasty text message on his mobile phone.’

  Claire half closed her eyes. She could almost smell Barclay’s presence.

  Caroline continued. ‘Basically telling him his wife would soon be off when the money ran dry.’

  So it had been this which had finally pushed Derek Forsyte over the edge – the thought of losing the wife he adored. ‘Do you know who sent the text message?’

  ‘Pay as you go.’

  Claire thanked her and put the phone down. Was there no end to his evil – to his spite? And where was he getting his information from? It was driving her mad. Was life after life to be ruined by his taunts?

  One consultation with Maylene stuck out in her mind. She’d turned up to her clinic appointment a week late, flamboyantly dressed and apologizing profusely for having mixed the days up. Derek had been taciturn, staying very much in the background, staring at the floor, biting his lips, his forehead puckered with deep frown lines. Claire was thoughtful. Had the clues been there then, lining up like ninepins, ready to topple him into drastic action? Was he already in despair at the miserable dance his wife was leading him? And one final shove – a vision of his beloved wife abandoning him, leaving him with his scarred life of debt. To him bankruptcy equated with shame. As usual Barclay’s rapier had hit home clean. The suggestion that he would lose his beloved Maylene had been all it needed to push him into this horrible double crime. And, as usual, no one would be able to prove anything against him.

  Poor Derek. He had been besotted. Claire smiled. One thing about Maylene, she had brightened up the clinic days with her glamour, her outrageous clothes and her loud, extrovert ways – even if she did knock the appointment system for a six, turning up on the wrong days or at the wrong times. Maylene had always been loquacious, full of stories (these days mainly about recent purchases including a new Smart television set they’d just treated themselves to and didn’t seem able to work).

  She had glanced again at Derek. His face had been a picture of misery. She should have picked up on it, that Maylene’s character would be the destruction of her husband and herself. But the jaunty outfit Maylene had worn that day, looking like a supermodel (a tight, short, faux-leopardskin skirt, a jaunty red-peaked cap, black patent-leather knee-length boots with killer stilettos) had made a change from the usual patients’ garb of jogging pants, sweatshirts and worn, smelly trainers.

  Maylene had babbled on, inconsequential gossip, but Derek had remained silent. Ominously silent, she now realized.

  The call to the coroner was a quick affair. At the moment Claire only needed to give her a sketchy account of her involvement with the couple, describe how Maylene had made life difficult for her husband and give the coroner her contact details. There was no point dragging Barclay’s name into it. She had no proof, only a suspicion. The coroner’s officer thanked her and requested a written report. Much of that would remain confidential and need not ever enter the public domain. But Barclay had already known anyway.

  Claire ate her lunch alone in her office. She had letters to dictate but she felt alienated from her colleagues. Until she knew who had fed Barclay his facts, she did not know who to trust. There was no one with whom she could share her misgivings.

  2 p.m.

  The afternoon began with a phone call from DS Willard. She had a moment’s confusion, wondering who he was. But the minute he said what he was ringing about, she was right there.

  ‘We have a possible sighting of Dexter,’ he said.

  Dexter, who had slipped from her mind with the latest events. ‘Where?’

  ‘Blurton.’

  That was when alarm bells jangled. ‘Is it a definite sighting?’

  ‘It was made by someone who knew
him well,’ he said seriously. ‘Marietta Shaw.’

  Claire recalled the name Marietta Shaw. She was an ex-girlfriend of Dexter’s. A girlfriend who had escaped his more brutal attentions only because he had moved on to her best friend, Sheridan. Marietta would not have been mistaken about Harding. She knew him too well. If she said she had seen Dexter, it was the truth. Claire had never met the girl but it was documented that when Harding had defected to her friend, Marietta was quoted as saying she’d had a ‘lucky escape’.

  ‘Shit,’ Claire muttered under her breath, then: ‘What’s he doing in Blurton, for goodness’ sake?’

  ‘Well …’ He gave an embarrassed little laugh, then. ‘You’re the psychiatrist, Claire.’

  She wished she had a pound for every time that particular phrase was wheeled out, but she managed an answering snigger. ‘I may be but I don’t understand why, if he’s still in the Potteries, he’s felt the need to go underground. He’s behaved himself for two years. Turned up regularly, so what’s happened?’

  Zed Willard spoke, more confident now. ‘Well,’ and she caught hesitance in his voice. ‘We’re hoping it’s coincidence …’

  ‘But,’ she prompted.

  ‘Sheridan Riley is due to get married on Saturday at St Bartholomew’s Church in Blurton.’

  For a moment she couldn’t speak. Then, ‘Shit,’ she said, then, ‘Sheridan?’ She was silent for a moment. It did supply a reason why he might have gone underground, but something pricked her thoughts and she wondered why she didn’t feel right about this. There was something she wasn’t understanding; it felt like it was obvious, something right under her nose, almost too obvious to see. She was tripping over it like a rolled-up carpet, invisible underfoot, and she felt as though she was about to fall flat on her nose. Hard.

  She ran through events in her mind. Sheridan was the girl who had dropped him. It was that that had resulted in the fatal arson attack, which in turn had led to his initial incarceration and current Community Treatment Order. Facts as she knew them, or at least as she understood them.

  Zed Willard’s voice was deadly serious. ‘Are you still there, Claire?’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry.’

  ‘How dangerous do you think he is?’

  ‘Potentially very. Unpredictable and dangerous.’

  ‘Just to Sheridan or the wider public?’ He sounded anxious.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But what are you—’

  DS Willard answered her unfinished question. ‘We’ve put extra police on the streets – and we’re going to have a police presence at the wedding. Claire,’ his voice was strained, ‘what do you think he’s likely to do?’

  ‘I …’ She was at a loss for words. She conjured up the bulky guy, bullet head, tattoos everywhere; that mean, hateful expression which – combined with his bovine stupidity – made him so dangerous and unpredictable. But DS Willard was asking her to predict the impossible – how do you assess unpredictability? You cannot. It’s written into the word. ‘I think,’ she said, feeling cold with the impossibility of this task and remembering his lack of remorse for the family he had slaughtered. ‘He might …’

  Willard took the words out of her mouth. ‘You think he could attack her – or him – or just spoil the day?’

  Spoil the day? It sounded like a child having a temper tantrum at a birthday party. Dexter would do more than simply spoil the day.

  Claire wished she did not have the sort of imagination that supplied missing pictures: Lorna Doone, blood staining the pure white of her wedding dress. Roxanne, the wine spreading across her bodice, a smudge over the spot where her poor, misguided little heart was.

  She shook the images away. She needed to be practical now – not imaginative.

  ‘Have you spoken to Sheridan? Warned her?’

  ‘Umm.’ Now she understood his hesitation – and the tone of the phone call.

  ‘You were hoping I would?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He sounded relieved.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Dexter was my responsibility. Is my responsibility. I will speak to her. In fact I think it might be an idea if I spoke to both her and her fiancé together.’

  ‘Yep,’ Willard said cheerfully. ‘Sounds good to me. He’s in IT, works for one of the local pottery companies. He has a good job. Nice guy. I’ve met him once when I told Sheridan that Dexter was unaccounted for. He’s very protective. I was impressed with him. He works all over the world. Might have to work in another country for a few years.’

  ‘That might be a good thing,’ she said drily. ‘Put distance between him and Sheridan’s past lover.’

  ‘Right – well we’ll keep looking for Harding. I suspect he’s holed up somewhere, either with a friend or sleeping rough.’

  She tried to picture this and failed. Dexter staying with a friend? No way. Sleeping rough. She tried to convey this to DS Willard. ‘I can’t think of any friends he has.’

  ‘So – sleeping rough?’

  ‘It’s more probable.’ DS Willard gave her Sheridan and Richard’s contact details, two mobiles and a landline, wished her luck and replaced the phone.

  So he had firmly planted the ball in her court. She still didn’t understand why Dexter had gone underground. It didn’t make any sense. The two words that kept popping up like targets at a fairground stall were: Why now? Why now?

  She remembered her sympathy for the psychiatrist whose patient had gone on the rampage in Cardiff, with an axe. Even at the time she’d thought it could have been worse – far worse. She could well imagine Dexter doing something just like that, wielding an axe, Braveheart style, at the wedding. And this time it was her responsibility. She was the psychiatrist who was in charge. She picked up the phone with an uneasy feeling. She was not looking forward to this conversation one little bit. How do you warn a bride of this?

  She connected on the third try and recognized Sheridan’s voice straight away. It had a husky hesitance that she recalled well from her one previous encounter when she had inherited Dexter’s case.

  ‘It’s Dr Claire Roget,’ Claire said, not sure whether Sheridan would remember her after only the one encounter. ‘I’m from Greatbach, the psychiatric unit.’

  Understandably Sheridan’s response was instant alarm. ‘I remember. What’s happened? Why are you ringing?’ And finally, ‘Not …?’

  ‘Are you OK to talk now, Sheridan?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. Tell me. What’s happened? Why are you ringing?’

  ‘I’m sorry about this. I’m sure you don’t ever want to hear Dexter Harding’s name again.’

  ‘Too right,’ Sheridan said bitterly. ‘I bloody don’t.’

  ‘You know that I’ve been seeing him on a fortnightly basis, that he’s on what we call a Community Treatment Order?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, sarcasm leaking into her voice. ‘I heard.’

  ‘That he’s also under the closer supervision of a community psychiatric nurse.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard that too.’ Now impatience and perhaps concern were sharpening her voice.

  Claire knew what she was thinking. So what’s the phone call about?

  ‘I have to tell you,’ Claire continued, ‘that he didn’t turn up for his last appointment which was a little over a week ago.’

  ‘Oh.’ And even in that high-pitched short expletive, Claire could hear the screaming panic. ‘Sergeant Willard told me that. What’s it to do with me? Why are you ringing?’

  ‘The police are looking for him. He’s left the hostel where he was supervised.’ She was anxious to avoid the phrase, gone underground. It smacked too much of spy thrillers.

  ‘So where is he?’

  ‘He’s been seen in Blurton.’

  ‘Blurton? What? When? Who by?’

  ‘Someone called Marietta?’

  ‘Marietta Shaw? I know her. She’s his old girlfriend. She used to be one of my best friends.’

  ‘So I understand.’

  And Sheridan echoed the conclusion Claire had already made. �
��She knew Dexter well. She wouldn’t make a mistake. If she said it was Dexter, then that’s who it was.’

  ‘Yeah. That’s what I thought.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘I know you are to be married on Saturday.’

  There was a long silence from the other end of the phone and then Sheridan’s voice came back, frightened. ‘You think he …?’

  ‘I think he’s unpredictable.’

  There was a pause and then Sheridan’s anger came out, spilling out, ugly, dark and destructive as a mud-slip. ‘Why did they ever let him out? He’s a fucking psychopath.’ She drew breath to continue. ‘I just want to get on with my life. With my wedding.’ A pause, then more calmly and with some retrieved dignity, ‘Dr Roget, I may not have a medical degree, but I bloody well know that Dexter Harding is a psychopath who should have been locked up for life when he murdered that family. I knew them, you know. When they first arrived we had a little welcome tea for them. We gave them clothes and things, bought the children toys. They were lovely people. He’d been a doctor, you know, in a small town in Northern Iraq. And they died in that horrible way.’ There was a catch in her voice. ‘And all because of me and that psycho. How do you think I felt, Dr Roget?’

  There was no answer to this so Sheridan continued. ‘And now you think he wants to try and ruin my life all over again? After …’ She stopped short, overwhelmed by the horror, ‘what he did?’

  ‘The police are aware,’ Claire said.

  ‘Oh.’ The one syllable reflected the general public’s lack of confidence in the police force.

  She followed that with, ‘What do you think’s going to happen? You think he wants to disrupt the wedding?’ From the rise in her tone, Claire could hear that her fear was escalating.

  She tried to diffuse it. ‘Obviously I don’t know, but the police wanted me to warn you.’

  ‘To be on my guard? It’s my bloody wedding day,’ she exploded. ‘You think he wants to ruin my wedding day?’