Poppet jc-6

by Mo Hayder

  AJ is almost knocked over by the tenderness in her voice. It’s like being touched on the forehead by Mum when he was a kid having a nightmare.

  ‘Yes, I’m … I’m …’ He can’t get the words out. ‘Can I sit down?’

  She gives a gracious nod. ‘But don’t look at my skin. If you look at it The Maude will know.’

  ‘And your skin is … ?’

  ‘Over there, hanging on the bed. Don’t look!’

  AJ turns the chair so his back is to the bed, where her skin is hanging. His hands and feet are jittery with adrenalin. Like having air pumped around his arteries and veins.

  ‘Gabriella, things are happening. Out there – in the world – things are happening.’

  ‘I know, AJ, I know. It’s coming back.’

  ‘What’s coming back?’

  ‘You know what I mean. I mean the one who sits.’

  AJ stares at her. She’s insane, he repeats to himself. She is completely insane. She doesn’t know anything. She’s picked up on his tension about Isaac and what he’s done with Melanie and has converted it into a fantasy.

  ‘Gabriella, do you remember the man who used to teach art in the unit? His name was Jonathan Keay? He left about a month ago.’

  Monster Mother’s face twists. She rubs her non-existent arm convulsively.

  ‘Jonathan. Yes – Jonathan. I remember you all, you see, AJ. Each one of you – whatever you’ve done – whatever’s been done to you … Jonathan is one of my children, but he’s in pain – he isn’t the person he should be.’

  ‘What sort of person should he be?’

  Monster Mother shakes her head. ‘It’s coming now, AJ – it’s getting nearer.’ She raises her hand to the door. ‘It’s so near it’s going to come through there – this minute – it’s going to come through the—’

  Before she can finish the sentence, the panic alarm starts to wail. It’s not the usual ward alarm – that has a different cadence. This is the unit-wide alarm – it means a serious incident.

  ‘See?’ Monster Mother says. ‘I told you – it’s coming back.’

  AJ checks his pager. There’s a message: AJ – security central please. He stares at it.

  He doesn’t want to, but he gets to his feet.

  ‘Gabriella,’ he says, in that weary monotone all the staff adopt when they have to instruct the patients. ‘This is a lockdown – you’ll have to stay in here for now, OK?’

  Monster Mother nods solemnly. ‘Good luck, AJ. Good luck.’

  He opens the door. Looks from side to side. There are one or two patients with their heads out of their doors, wondering what’s happening. Others are being herded from the day room into the corridor. The Big Lurch is there, helping get patients into their rooms, quickly locking doors. He sees AJ and waves frantically.

  ‘AJ – AJ! Unit-wide alert, mate. Get to the security pod – the supervisor wants to talk to you now.’

  Berrington Manor

  CAFFERY IS NOT enjoying the phone calls and organization required now this case has gone cross-border. The task of checking on Melanie’s welfare has been passed to his oppo in the Gloucestershire force. The message that comes back isn’t a happy one. The front door of her house stands wide open – there are signs of a struggle. The house has been ransacked and her car is missing. AJ – who must have known just from Caffery’s tone that Melanie was in danger – has appeared at the house. According to the Gloucestershire police, he’s filled them in on what he knows. The Serious Crime unit has been mobilized. Panic is mounting.

  Jonathan Keay grew up in Berrington Manor. No house number, no street name. Just the house name, the village and the postcode. There can’t be many psychiatric nurses who were raised in a place like this, Caffery thinks, as he pulls into the property. The driveway, flanked by tall poplars like some grand French avenue, is almost half a mile long. A bank of floodlights comes on with his arrival, illuminating a smartly kept equestrian yard with stalls the size of dining rooms and highly polished finials on the partitions. Beyond he can see the pale expanse and hand-lettered signs of an outdoor ménage – jumping poles stacked in a three-sided barn. The grey stone chimneys of a sprawling mansion rise behind a high brick wall to his left.

  He drags on the handbrake, cuts the engine and opens the car door. The yard is quiet, well swept and cleaned – in fact, there’s no sign of anything actually going on here. No straw bales or farm machinery or buckets or horse rugs draped over doors. No people. There are three high-end BMWs all in the same slate grey in an open car port facing the stables, but aside from that the place could be uninhabited.

  He hasn’t called ahead. He doesn’t want the Keay family getting advance warning of his arrival. No time to dream up excuses. Maybe he should have made contact though, if only to check that someone is actually here.

  The wrought-iron gate in the wall opens on to a knot garden of low boxwood hedges with a large conifer at the centre, its branches sweeping down in a dark tent shape. A stone bench encircles the trunk and a few modest pieces of statuary are dotted around, all uplit by invisible lamps. The house itself is three storeys, with an additional row of dormer windows in the roof. The trunk of an enormous wisteria winds across the entire lower half of the facade, gnarled and grey as the stone itself. The front door is closed and there are no lights on at the windows.

  The heavy iron knocker echoes through the house. There’s a long silence. He’s about to turn and go back to the car when he hears a woman’s voice on the other side of the door.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Police.’

  ‘Police?’

  ‘Nothing to worry about – just a few questions I want to ask.’

  The door opens to reveal a woman in her late fifties – tall and extraordinarily elegant in her lavender-grey pashmina, her tailored jeans. Her angular face is framed with carefully cut greying hair. June Keay, he thinks. Jonathan’s mother.

  ‘DI Caffery.’ He hands her his card. She takes it and inspects it carefully. ‘I’ve driven up from Bristol. Can I come in?’

  She hands it back. ‘My husband’s not here. Is it him you want to speak to?’

  ‘No – I want to talk about Jonathan.’

  Her face falls. ‘Jonathan,’ she repeats woodenly. It’s neither a question nor a statement.

  ‘Yes. Jonathan.’

  ‘My son.’

  ‘You’re June Keay?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I come in?’

  She stands back and opens the door to him. ‘I’m sorry – so rude of me.’

  They go into a flagstoned kitchen where the Aga is turned up high. There is a woollen blanket on a chaise longue next to the window, with a pair of glasses and an iPad on it. Music is playing in an adjoining room, some kind of Gregorian chant. He can make out a deer’s head on the wall in there, and a boxed taxidermy scene mounted above a doorway – stuffed squirrels dressed as Victorian gentlemen gathered around a fireplace, smoking and drinking port. Lots of elegant furniture, lots of furniture polish, but no signs of life.

  Mrs Keay closes the iPad. ‘He’s upstairs. I’ll take you up there in a minute. But first, can you tell me, is this about the fight?’

  ‘Fight?’

  Mrs Keay searches his face for a long time. Then she gives a sad smile. ‘No, of course not. There was no fight, was there? He’s lied to me – I knew he was lying.’ She grips the back of the chaise longue, squeezing it distractedly. Her eyes draw vaguely to her reflection in the dark window. ‘He used to get the same look when he was a little boy. I said to my husband, “He’s lying again”.’

  Caffery raises his eyebrows. ‘Lying?’

  She sees his confusion and sighs. ‘He was gone for nearly twenty years – he went through one of those student things, hating our money. Paying back his debt to society. We didn’t have the chance to cut him off; he cut us off. And then …’ She pushes the hair off her forehead. ‘And then, out of nowhere, he came back.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound
as if that was a good thing.’

  ‘Well, it would have been, if he wasn’t injured so badly.’

  ‘Injured?’

  ‘Didn’t you know? He’s been in hospital – he contracted septicaemia from his wounds.’

  ‘How did he get wounded?’

  She frowns for a moment. ‘I thought that was what you were here to tell me.’

  The Security Pod

  THE ALARMS HAVE stopped now and the sudden silence is like a slap. AJ’s ears are ringing. He is in the security control pod at the very front of the unit with the Big Lurch and the supervisor. They both stand with their arms crossed, hands tucked inside their armpits, sheepishly avoiding each other’s eyes. Neither of them fully understands what has happened. More worrying still, they have no idea who is going to take control of the situation.

  They have issued a unit-wide lockdown: all patients are confined to their rooms and each ward has come back with a head count. The supervisor has just finished scribbling notes of his actions in the incident log. Camera feeds have been switched so that the images they want appear on the two monitors closest to the supervisor’s desk. One monitor shows Myrtle Ward. The camera is focused on the closed door of the ground-floor seclusion room. The nurses refer to it as the ‘quiet room’, even though everyone knows that’s a euphemism for a containment cell. Any uncooperative patient is taken to the ‘quiet room’ to have a ‘bounce around’ until they calm themselves down.

  Usually the patient’s first action is to take their clothes off and start kicking the walls. Not this time. This time it’s not a current patient in there. It’s an ex-patient: Isaac Handel. And with him is Melanie Arrow.

  ‘But the door can’t be locked – not from the inside.’

  The security supervisor nods gravely. ‘It can if you take in the things he’s taken in.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘I don’t know. He was carrying a holdall. We didn’t get a chance to see, but the door is wedged or locked somehow. We don’t know what he’s used. And as you can see, there’s no picture. He’s sorted the camera too.’

  AJ swears under his breath. He’d like to kick the shallow-minded rent-a-gorilla supervisor. This can’t have happened. It just can’t have happened. This is one of the country’s most secure psychiatric units – it should not have been breached in this way. But then, most of their security measures focus on stopping the patients leaving, not preventing them coming in.

  A third monitor shows pre-recorded footage. AJ puts his hand on the top of the monitor and peers at it closely. ‘Skip to the beginning – let me see it again.’

  The supervisor presses his lips together. He’s trying hard not to lose his cool and his expression doesn’t falter as he flips the remote control at the player, skips the video back. He lets it roll and AJ sits down, his eyes glued to the scene.

  This is the footage from the camera here at central security. It starts with an image of the car park, solid pools of white cast by the security lamps. The blinding cones of approaching headlights is the first indication of anything amiss. Melanie’s Beetle shears into the car park, coming to an erratic stop across two marked bays. She is at the wheel, and something is being held to her neck. AJ knows it’s a Stanley knife, even from this distance, because he’s seen what happens next.

  The passenger door opens and Isaac gets out. It’s clearly him – he’s small with the distinctive pudding-basin haircut that gives him the appearance of a nervy junior monk. He’s wearing his striped sweater, artificially faded jeans and trainers. His head is held back and up slightly, as if he’s wearing a mask and the only way he can see anything is by squinting down.

  The driver’s door opens. Although Melanie is obscured by the windscreen, AJ can tell she’s deciding whether or not she can make a dash for it. But before she can attempt anything, Isaac has scurried round the front of the car and is holding the Stanley knife to her neck again.

  AJ has seen the footage three times – but he can’t help watching it again. The next two and a half minutes are played out on three separate cameras. The time code clicks away in the top-left-hand corner as Handel pushes Melanie away from the car. They pass under a light and for a moment AJ can see their features in the fizzing glare, then they go under the lens and disappear off screen.

  They are picked up by a second camera, which is mounted inside the reception corridor. A security guard can be seen from behind, slowly rising to his feet, puzzled by what is happening outside. And then Isaac Handel is at the door, banging on it. The security guard seems to freeze – he hits the panic button under the desk, but moments later he opens the door to allow Handel into the airlock.

  ‘She told him to do what Handel said. That’s why my guard let them through. He’s kicking himself now.’

  AJ sighs. ‘OK, let’s see the rest of it.’

  The footage jumps to another camera’s perspective. This time it’s the long thin corridor – the ‘stem’ leading to the clinical area. The pair get to the pinch-point doors and this time Melanie can be seen giving clear instructions to the camera. ‘Let us through,’ she mouths. Her face is ghostly and resigned, there are shadows under her cheekbones. ‘Just do what he says.’

  The next camera to pick them up is on Myrtle Ward. The time code has this as happening just ten minutes ago. It shows Handel pushing Melanie in front of him. As he passes under the camera, they have a clear view of the blade he’s using to control her. He pushes her into the ward seclusion room. The supervisor switches to the view inside the room just as the two enter, Melanie first, Handel behind her.

  It’s a strip cell – completely empty. Handel points to the floor.

  ‘Sit,’ he says.

  She obeys, shakily, sinking to her haunches. Handel turns to the door, fumbling stuff from the holdall. There is the sound of a power tool, but he’s too close to the door for the camera to pick up exactly what he’s doing.

  Melanie says something to him. There are microphones in the room, but her voice is too soft – too scared for it to be audible.

  Handel doesn’t answer. He sets down the holdall and straightens. He looks immediately at the camera – he knows it’s there, after all he’s been in this room as a patient. In fact, he knows the hospital inside out. From the holdall he pulls a long-handled tool and places a piece of duct tape on the end of it. Carefully, his tongue between his teeth, he uses the tool to fix the tape over the camera lens in the ceiling. The screen goes grey – just the canvas-like weave of the tape visible.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Melanie asks, quite clearly this time. ‘Why are you doing that?’

  ‘They don’t need to see.’

  ‘Why?’ Melanie’s voice is tight. ‘What are you going to do?’

  Handel doesn’t answer. There is the sound of people knocking on the door.

  ‘Fuck off,’ he says in a level voice. ‘Don’t interrupt.’

  Melanie begins to weep. And seconds later the sound drops out. Handel must have found a way of covering the microphone, because from that point on the noises are muffled. When the speakers are turned up high vague sounds can be heard, but they are too indistinct to make any sense.

  ‘That was all happening, I dunno—’ The Big Lurch checks his watch. ‘Five minutes ago? We were wondering whether to isolate the services inside the room.’

  ‘Not yet. We want to be able to see if he takes that tape off. What does he want?’

  ‘He hasn’t said.’

  ‘And when are the police getting here?’

  The Big Lurch doesn’t answer. AJ turns and glares at him. Then at the supervisor. ‘Please tell me you’ve called the police?’

  ‘We weren’t sure if we …’ He trails off. Lowers his eyes. Even the Big Lurch finds something else in the room to stare at rather than connect with AJ.

  AJ shakes his head. This must be punishment for the way he was earlier. He gave Melanie such a hard time over helping Isaac to get his discharge. She needed his support, he didn’t give it, and now she�
�s in deep shit and there’s nothing he can do about it.

  ‘OK,’ he says. ‘I’m the senior staff member on the floor at the moment, so I am in control here. I want’ – he taps orders off on his fingers – ‘one, top priority: call the police. Two, we need to establish that our audio link into the room is live – I want to know if they can still hear us. If not, we have to figure out a way of communicating with them. And three …’

  He hesitates. Doesn’t know what three is. What he hasn’t voiced to himself, and what he will never voice to anyone, is that he wants to see that footage again. He wants to watch it again and again and again. Because looking at the closed door of the containment cell, with the unearthly muffled crying coming from the mounted Bose speakers on the security-pod wall, he is afraid this footage may be the last time he sees Melanie alive.

  ‘Three? Mr LeGrande?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I want this footage copied on to a separate drive – on the Trust’s central server, not downstairs. Now.’

  Jonathan Keay

  BERRINGTON MANOR IS turning out to be the creepiest place Caffery has ever been. Jonathan, according to his mother, is on the top storey of the house. ‘He wants shelter in our home, but he doesn’t want to see us or speak to us. So you’ll understand if I don’t come into the room with you.’

  She leads Caffery up narrow wood-panelled stairwells, not saying a word. The only noise is the creaking of the steps. Her back is rigid – it’s like following a prison warden, or a starchy matron in a boarding school. It crosses his mind that he won’t come out of here alive, that Mrs Keay is going to open a door and push him through it – and he’s going to find himself on a roller-coaster ride into the bowels of hell.

  They get to the top floor – a narrow, low-ceilinged corridor with lamps set in the dormer windows. A slightly medicinal smell, mixed with the scent of saddle soap, hangs in the air. Mrs Keay stops at a door, her fingers on the handle. She turns to Caffery, giving him that sad smile again.