by Helen Phifer
‘I have to take this call.’ She turned away from Sara.
‘Boss, you have to come down here and see this. It’s really bad.’
‘Come down where, Mattie? You have to be a little more specific.’
‘The Moore – you know, the old county asylum. It’s up for sale, would you believe it? One of the estate agents was showing a potential buyer around when they found him.’
‘Found who?’
‘Well if we knew that, I’d tell you.’
‘I’m on my way.’
‘Thank god for that. Browning said if I couldn’t get hold of you that he would deal. I can’t work with him all day, not on something like this. Please don’t do that to me; you know what a miserable git he’s been lately.’
Lucy laughed and ended the call; she didn’t know about Browning because she hadn’t been in work. She turned around to look at Sara, who was sitting there staring at her with her piercing blue eyes, drumming her fingers against the shiny surface of the desk. She stopped now, and clasped her fingers together.
‘You heard that,’ Lucy said. ‘I’m very sorry, but I really have to go to work.’
‘Lucinda, I know you don’t relish the thought of our sessions, but can I remind you that it was a part of your action plan? As part of your managed return to work, you should attend the counselling sessions offered to you. I’m very busy and had to do my best to squeeze you in; if you leave now, I can’t guarantee another appointment for a while.’
Lucy thought this was the best news she’d heard all day. ‘I’m well aware of that; however, work comes first.’
‘Work is tearing you apart; you need to engage with me. I’m not that bad. If you just opened up a little, I’m sure we could become great friends. There must be someone else in that big police station apart from you who can deal with a crime scene?’
Lucy shook her head.
‘I’m sorry, Sara, no, there isn’t. I’m needed by my team.’
‘Then you leave me no choice and I’m sorry to have to do this. I’ll have to inform your superiors that you’re not engaging with me.’
Lucy shrugged, trying her best not to laugh. Was that supposed to be some kind of threat?
‘That’s your decision and if that’s what you believe, then I’m fine with that.’
She turned and walked out of the door, letting it slam shut behind her. She’d been hauled in front of her boss for far worse. And although she didn’t welcome the thought of being sucked into a murder investigation so soon, there were only so many weeds she could pull and seeds she could plant in her small back garden. As much as she loved pottering around out there, she loved her job more.
She reached her mint green Fiat 500 that was parked across the street and climbed inside. Her phone beeped and she looked down to see another message from Mattie.
Glad you’re back, this is a bad one. Right up your street.
Lucy typed back. Yeah, cheers for that. I wouldn’t have wanted you to go easy with me on my first day back.
Lucy pulled the large pair of Chanel sunglasses out of the glove compartment and slipped them on – a present from George. And the one and only thing from him she’d kept after he’d left her for a girl who worked behind the beauty counter in a department store. The rest of the stuff she’d bagged up and given to the charity shop; they would have had a field day rooting through it. She wondered how much of it had actually reached the shop rails.
As she drove away, she didn’t notice Sara’s tall figure watching her from the upstairs window, shaking her head. Even if she had, she wouldn’t have cared. Counselling was never going to get rid of the memories of that dusky, cold afternoon. They would always be there, tucked away for now ‒ but still there, and liable to sneak out of their corner of her mind when she was least expecting it.
As she started on the fifteen-minute drive to the long-abandoned mental asylum, she pushed the memories back into their corner. She had no time to dwell on her own self-pity. She needed to be focused and ready for whatever horror Mattie had decided was worthy of sharing with her.
As she drove through the run-down seaside town of Brooklyn Bay – her home – she sighed. It had once been a bustling place, full of picture houses and music halls, and the funfair along the south end of the promenade had once been thriving. It was sad that all that was left of the fair now was the huge tower that had once been the main support for the biggest ride. The land was boarded off and overgrown with weeds. It was waiting for the council to secure enough funding to do something with it. Lucy thought they should have just left it as it was. She loved it here, though; she loved walking along the promenade and past the old pier, reminiscing about her teenage years spent in the amusement arcades with the few friends she’d had back then.
She was glad that it wasn’t school finishing time; the roads around here only really got busy between three and five. She left the town and drove along the coast road, which led to the beach and all the small hamlets and villages that ran along it. The asylum had been built far enough away from the town centre that the patients would have quite a walk to reach civilisation. Yet not too far, in case anything should go wrong and need police intervention.
It was a cold morning. The sea had gone out, leaving the sands glistening in the sunlight. There were only a couple of cars parked up along the beachfront. In the summer it would be crowded, as cars full of parents and kids tried to find somewhere to park up and buy an ice cream. Roy’s Ices were famous throughout the area, and as she passed, Lucy thought she could just do a home-made apple crumble ice cream in a waffle cone. She’d had a terrible sweet tooth since she was a kid; now her vices were sugary vanilla lattes, chocolate and ice cream. Luckily, she’d inherited her gran’s genes which meant she could eat and drink whatever she wanted and not gain any weight, unlike her poor sister, Lydia, who had been cursed with their dad’s genes, meaning she only had to think about an ice cream and she’d pile on the pounds. Lucy had always been grateful that she wasn’t Lydia, who the kids at school had teased over her size. Lucy had got into a fair few fights sticking up for her older sister.
She reached the small, tree-lined lane which signalled the turn-off for the asylum, and began to indicate. Turning the corner, she could see the imposing one-hundred-foot clock tower of the hospital peeking through the bare branches of the trees. It was built in the same limestone as most of the other grand buildings in the area. As she drove nearer, it struck her how scary and desolate it looked. It was the kind of place that you would want to go ghost hunting in, if you liked that kind of thing. The huge ‘for sale’ sign filled a large chunk of the metal gates, which were wide open. She hadn’t realised it was being sold – not that she’d had any reason to. Who in their right mind would want to buy it? It was far too creepy; the number of people who’d died here didn’t bear thinking about.
As she drove through the gates, she tried to push down the butterflies that had begun to fill her stomach and make her heart race. She could do this; she lived to do this. Since coming out of her probationary period, she had worked hard to climb the ranks as fast as she could, making detective inspector by the age of thirty-four. They’d promised that when she came back from her time out – gardening leave; whatever they wanted to call it – she could have the chance to take on the role of detective chief inspector. She’d declined. She didn’t want to be the one who spent all her time worrying about how much money an investigation was costing. She much preferred to be the one out there, catching the criminals.
The assortment of police vans and the single Ford Focus looked out of place against the backdrop of the hospital. There was also a vile green car which had to belong to the estate agent – this was parked next to a very nice Porsche. Lucy nodded at the paramedics leaning against the side of the ambulance. She parked her car alongside them and took her sunglasses off, inhaling through her nose and breathing out. You can do this, Lucy; you’re good at this. It’s what you were born to do, so pull yourself together and go ins
ide.
There was a copper who looked even younger than Mattie standing at the bottom of the steps, with a scene-guard booklet in his hands and a pen. Striding across towards him, she smiled.
‘Morning. DI Lucy Harwin. Where is everyone?’
His cheeks flared red as he nodded towards the open doorway.
‘Inside.’
He began to squirm and stutter as he forced the next question out. ‘Can I see your warrant card? Sorry. It’s just, I don’t know you, and for all I know you could be a reporter.’
Lucy watched as he looked her up and down. She supposed she didn’t exactly look like a DI in her tight faded jeans, Nike hooded sweatshirt and bright yellow Converse. Her pillar-box red hair was pulled up into a tight ponytail, and her sweatshirt sleeve had rolled up to expose some of the almost-finished intricate black and grey tattoos on her left arm. She hastily tugged the sleeve down.
‘Ah, you have me there; I’m not due to start work until two and I’ve been called out to come and take a look at the scene. So I haven’t got my ID with me. You’re going to have to take my word for it.’
To give him his due, the poor lad looked as if he wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
‘I can’t, I’m sorry. I’ll get in trouble.’
‘Boss, what took you so long?’
The officer turned to see Mattie standing in the open doorway, and the look of relief on his face was one that Lucy would remember for the rest of her life. He’d just been saved from looking like a complete arse.
‘I was busy, Matthew; some of us have a life outside of work.’
Mattie blushed; Lucy only used his full name if she was reprimanding him. ‘Yeah, I am sorry about that. You need to see this, though. There’s some protective gear in the boot of the Focus.’ He lifted his hand to point in the direction of the car he’d arrived in, and a loud ripping noise filled the air as his white paper crime scene suit tore underneath his armpit.
Lucy walked across to the car and opened the boot. ‘Have you been hitting the gym again?’ She winked at him. An expert at getting dressed in the strangest of places, she ripped open the packet and deftly climbed into the suit, then added shoe covers and latex gloves. Catching sight of her reflection in the car window, she nodded: now she looked like a detective inspector. Walking over, she ducked under the blue and white tape the officer had just finished tying across the front door.
‘Nice hair,’ Mattie said. ‘Get fed up of being blonde, did you?’
‘Yes, thank you. I did. I wanted to go pink, but I thought that might be pushing it a bit.’
‘Nah, red suits you. I like it.’
‘Oh good, I’m so glad you approve.’
She turned away so he couldn’t see the grin which had spread across her face. She’d known that dying her hair this particular shade of red might get a reaction from her superiors and she didn’t care. They were all pussyfooting around her because they knew that if they’d done what she’d told them to that afternoon, things wouldn’t have ended the way they had.
She had waved away the face mask Mattie had offered her, but now that she’d stepped inside the damp, draughty building and inhaled she wished she had accepted it graciously. The smell of decomposition was bad: the body had been here some time. Mattie passed her a torch, which she did accept. He pointed ahead of them towards the open doors, and she walked on in that direction. She shone the torch on the body strapped to the metal gurney, and took a sharp intake of breath. Whoever it was had been fastened down with thick, cracked leather restraints so that they couldn’t move.
Mattie was talking to Detective Constable Colin Davey behind her and she blocked out the sound of their voices. She needed to think. She stepped closer to take a look at the bloated, mottled black and purple face staring at her.
‘Is Dr Maxwell on her way?’
‘Yes, boss, she said she’d be here as soon as.’
‘Not that we need her to tell us the cause of death.’ Lucy looked at the eight centimetre steel spike, which was attached to a wooden handle and protruding from the man’s left eye socket. It appeared to go straight up into his brain. His other eye was the cloudy, milky colour which only happened some hours after death. The man’s entire body was bloated, due to the bacteria from the intestines and bowel having escaped into the other body tissues after death. Lucy knew that it was these bacteria starting to grow that had produced the gases causing the foul smell which was now permeating the air.
‘Nope, I’d say cause of death was quite obvious.’
3
Lucy walked around the gurney, shining her torch over the body. She couldn’t help feel sad for whoever this was. What a scary place to die, and left here all alone afterwards. She couldn’t see any other injuries, although that didn’t mean that there weren’t any. Despite what she’d said, it wasn’t her place to say or to assume the cause of death. If Dr Maxwell heard her surmising, she’d give her a proper telling-off.
The torch light reflected off the metal band on the corpse’s swollen, blackened wedding finger, and she sighed.
‘Bollocks, he’s married – and what a horrible way to die.’
Mattie took a step closer. ‘That’s what I thought; I’ve never seen anything like this before. What do you think that is sticking out of his face?’
Lucy shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It looks like some kind of ice pick, or maybe a chisel.’
Footsteps began to echo throughout the building behind them and Lucy straightened up.
‘Ah, Lucinda and Matthew. If it isn’t my two favourite detectives! What have we here then?’
Lucy and Mattie smiled at each other in the darkness, then moved away, giving Dr Catherine Maxwell room to take a closer look. ‘You tell me; you’re the doctor.’
‘Gosh, are you feeling OK? Usually you’re the first to tell me what’s happened. You know, a little bird told me you were the DI in charge of this case, so soon after you’ve returned to work. I do worry about you, Lucy. Are you ready for such responsibility and all the bullshit that goes with it?’
‘Ready as I’ll ever be. How are you, Catherine? It’s been a while.’
‘I’m not too bad; still slicing and dicing for a living.’
Catherine walked around the body, her torch examining every inch of it. ‘Well, well, well. This is a turn-up for the books. I can’t say I’ve ever dealt with anything of this nature before. It’s really quite brutal, isn’t it?’
‘So you know what it is, then?’
‘Off the record, I think I have a pretty good idea.’
‘And?’
‘Don’t quote me; this is strictly between us. But on first impressions I think that our victim has approximately been dead for around six to eight days. I also think that he might have been lobotomised – probably the first such procedure to be carried out in this country for a very long time.’
Mattie looked at the body, then back at Catherine. ‘What’s “lobotomised” when it’s at home?’
She turned to stare at him. ‘Seriously, you’ve never heard of a lobotomy? Have you never watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?’
He shook his head.
‘You youngsters. I guess I’m showing my age now. Basically, it’s quite a simple procedure, not too complicated at all. It was hailed as a miracle cure for all sorts of mental illnesses back in the forties. I think it was first carried out by a Portuguese neurologist who thought that mentally ill patients were suffering from fixed circuits in the brain. It was then picked up by the US and then us Brits.’
‘What exactly was it used to treat?’ Lucy asked. ‘I can’t imagine doing that to someone would cure anything.’
Mattie, unable to speak, was listening to the conversation with his mouth open and a grimace on his face.
‘It became a common part of psychiatric medicine,’ Catherine said. ‘They used it to treat depression, compulsive disorders and schizophrenia. The whole procedure only took around five minutes and was generally performed under a loca
l anaesthetic.’
‘So they were awake?’
‘Yes. They would force a pick-like instrument – very much like the one protruding from our victim – through the back of the eye socket, to pierce the thin bone that separates the eye socket from the frontal lobes. Then they would give it a good old jiggle around until the frontal lobes were severed from the rest of the brain.’
Mattie groaned. ‘Oh fuck, I can feel my eyeballs squelching just thinking about it. That’s horrific. Thank god for Valium.’
Lucy smiled, but Mattie was right. It was barbaric, and it must have been agonising. There was a lot to be said for modern medicine.
She looked back at the corpse. So, who in their right mind would want to perform a lobotomy in a long-abandoned mental hospital?
‘Do you think they meant to kill him? Or could it have been an experiment gone wrong?’
Catherine was leaning directly over the man’s face, shining her torch around the entry wound. ‘Judging by how far this has been pushed in, I think it’s safe to say that they meant business. I’ll know more when I complete the post-mortem. Oh, and none of this is official. You know that, right?’
‘Yes, we know. Thank you, it just gives us something to go on for now.’
Catherine stood up and snapped off her blue latex gloves. ‘I’ll look forward to this one; I’m intrigued as to why anyone would use a lobotomy as the cause of death.’
‘You and me both. Do you know when the post-mortem will be?’
Catherine looked at her phone. ‘Not today; I’m finishing early to spend the day with my dearly beloved. It’s our wedding anniversary and I’m not working any later than I have to. He made me promise that I’d be home early – he’s offered to take me out, and he’s paying, which is a very rare occasion. I have no intention of letting him get away with it.’