The HUM: The complete novel

by Michael Christopher Carter

  He barely finished his sentence before “We’re full,” was barked at him down the phone line.

  “Well, there must be room somewhere she can get help. It might not come to that if the team get here in time. I don’t know. You’re supposed to be the experts.”

  More silence, then she suggested, “Can she come to the phone?”

  Geraint struggled to repress profanities. “Have you been listening to me at all? She can’t come to the phone. She’s locked in the bedroom doing goodness knows what to herself. I need you to help us!”

  “We are very busy,” she began to answer

  “Doing what? We need you, and we have no-one else to ask. What are you going to do?”

  The receptionist, or CPN (Community Psychiatric Nurse) or whatever she was, didn’t seem in the slightest bit phased by Geraint’s angry outburst. She must be used to dealing with the perpetually unreasonable mentally ill, he supposed.

  “I’ll put you on the list. The home-call team are out with patients at the moment. I’ll pass on the message as soon as they get back and they’ll give you a ring. In the meantime you need to know what she’s doing. Get a ladder and look in the bedroom window. If you’re worried, call an ambulance and the police.”

  As annoying as her suggestion was, it made sense. If he saw Diane lopping an arm off with a piece of broken mirror or something, then he didn’t have time to wait for the Crisis Team. If she was sleeping, then perhaps waiting would be okay.

  He checked on Carys, now happily ensconced in front of the television watching Crossroads. Geraint supposed it was a distraction of sorts.

  “I’m just popping into the garden, Cariad. If you want me you’ll need to call outside, okay?”

  Carys nodded without looking away from the thrilling scene on the wobbly set of the long running evening soap opera. An altercation between a man in a wheelchair and a blonde lady were taking Carys’s full attention.

  Geraint made his way to one of the outbuildings that the house boasted. After removing the extension ladder he’d borrowed from his father-in-law when he’d cleaned out the guttering, he walked carefully to the back of the house, carefully managing to avoid tangling in apple trees and clothes lines.

  Propping the ladder as gently as he could against the white rendered wall of ‘Nutters’, he took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. As soon as his foot met the first rung, he realised his careful attention to silence had been wasted. The ladder creaked and groaned in such a startling manner, he was shocked he’d not noticed before.

  There was little point in creeping up now. Diane would definitely have heard him. He was keen to get to the top as fast as he could; reassure her that he was here, that he cared, and perhaps, that help was on its way.

  The house proved surprisingly tall. He hadn’t extended the ladder quite far enough to get a completely clear view into the bedroom window but he could see enough. The reason he’d been unable to gain access to the room through the door was plain to see. The large triple wardrobe, hewn from solid antique oak, which had taken four removal men to move to the bedroom up the stairs (and even then, they’d taken part of it to pieces), was pushed in front of the door. How on earth she had managed to shift it was dumbfounding.

  On tiptoe, he could just glimpse Diane, sitting catatonic on the edge of the bed. She looked haggard. As if she hadn’t slept for a week. How long she’d been trying to cope with the demons of her incessant savage thoughts, Geraint could now begin to imagine—and to blame himself for not having noticed sooner.

  Beside Diane on the bed lay a selection of items she’d selected for the purpose of harming herself. Geraint didn’t recognise all of them and was sickened to realise she must have surreptitiously amassed them over time. Over how much time was unclear. She might always do it. Maybe she’d collected suitable objects over the last few days, or they may have been stashed away, hidden since her last episode.

  As far as Geraint could see, the selection comprised of broken crockery, a letter opener (that was surely too blunt to achieve anything, wasn’t it?) and a packet of razor blades. Fortunately they were the multi blade variety and unlikely to cause much harm.

  Then something else he saw surprised him. Something that demonstrated more planning than he realised she was capable of. She had absconded with a handful of her mother’s replacement needles for her diabetic testing kit. She’d used them to great effect too, as she still had one between the finger and thumb of her right hand while blood dripped profusely to the floor and bedclothes from her left wrist.

  Despite deep scratches on both arms, she had evidently been unfulfilled, or she deemed to try every tool in her collection and now chanced upon the very thing, because whilst she still clutched the sharp little object, she was no longer cutting.

  The sight of her own blood had perhaps stopped her. Maybe that would be it now, Geraint unrealistically hoped. He debated what to do. Despite his certainty she must have heard his approach up the ladder, she seemed wholly unaware. Like a turtle he’d once seen David Attenborough approach whilst she lay her eggs who had been supposedly oblivious to his presence whilst he performed his piece to camera. Diane displayed that same distant look in her eyes, as though she wasn’t really there.

  Whilst Geraint wondered whether he should tap the glass, she suddenly stared at him. Like meeting a sleepwalker on the landing, she looked but didn’t see. Geraint smiled but no reaction came from his poor wife.

  He had to get her out of the room. The ladder wasn’t extended enough for him to try to get in through the window. The double glazing was supposed to be very secure, but Geraint knew a trick or two. He could remove the glazing bars from the outside with a chisel, and then he would lever the double glazed unit from its glazing tape to remove it. The resulting gap would be easily big enough for him to enter and get to his wife.

  Unable to reach well enough without adjusting the ladder, he hurtled back down. After fiddling with it a bit, he soon realised the reason he hadn’t adjusted it in the first place was the ill-remembered fact of the ladders extreme stiffness in operation.

  With a grimace, he remembered his plan to oil it when he’d finished cleaning the front gutters, which were, because of the slope of the garden, much lower than the back ones. He knew there was oil in the small barn he’d fetched the ladder from, as well as the tools required for removing the glass from the window!

  Leaving the ladder, he scurried back to the shed. It got called all sorts of things apart from shed, like barn, or outbuilding or garage, and sometimes even ‘Tim’s Room,’ due to that being scrawled in messy paint on a door within the barn leading to another room containing old model railway pieces. They presumed these belonged to a previous owner called Tim and had left them as they’d found them. It was one of the jobs they planned to do, and had done for all the time they’d lived there. But it wasn’t priority.

  What was priority, urgent priority for Geraint now, was finding oil and tools. Struggling in the only light escaping from the small kitchen window nearby, Geraint cursed himself. When they did finally get round to clearing out Tim’s room they were planning to use it as a pottery—a useful hobby for Diane. As he stumbled in the dimness, Geraint wished they’d pressed on with their refurbishment plans sooner. That way he’d surely have electric lighting, and not be attempting the near impossible task of finding what he needed in the dark disarray he floundered in now.

  Lurching forward, his shin struck something hard. The gloop, gloop noise denoted he’d kicked over engine oil he’d topped up the squad car with earlier in the week. Apparently he’d neglected to replace the lid properly, as it now slopped profusely over the floor.

  He bent down to right the can. Not what he was looking for, but oil was oil and would surely suffice in this emergency. Now he only needed to find a chisel, and he was fairly sure he knew where one was. How good a state it was in he’d soon discover. Creasing his brow, he could picture it near Carys’s Wendy house. Having adjusted the door which had been sticking, he wa
s sure he could remember leaving it in the nook of the old apple tree.

  Stumbling down the garden through slimy fallen leaves and steadily forming ice, he slipped and slid to his destination a few feet from the edge of the garden and the Wendy house. Thrusting his hand where he remembered leaving the chisel, he was relieved when sure enough, there it was.

  Scuttling back up the garden with his trophy, he paused at the barn to collect the Castrol GTX and arrived, without falling, back to the ladder beneath his bedroom window.

  Making quick work of removing the ladder to the ground, he poured more than sufficient oil into the rectangular openings where the tubular aluminium slid (when oiled properly.) But even with oil dribbling bountifully over the struts, it refused to budge. Geraint was too dismayed even to utter profanities. Instead, he offered a silent prayer.

  Maybe the pause calmed him enough to modify his technique. Maybe it gave the oil time to seep where it was really needed. Or maybe his silent prayer had been answered, but suddenly the ladder rocketed to its extended length and Geraint jumped from his contemplative state into action.

  Replacing it at the window, he noticed almost joyfully that it now reached plenty far enough for him to complete his mission. He scuttled up, narrowly avoiding injury as he slipped on the engine oil covering much of the middle treads. No longer concerned with keeping silent, he was only with reaching his distressed wife.

  Reaching the pinnacle of his journey, his heart stopped. Now the view into the room was unobstructed, he was horrified to see Diane was no longer there! The wardrobe had been moved back into place, away from covering the door which lay wide open.

  His heart caught up with his racing thoughts as he leaped down the full height of the ladder, breaking his fall with only a couple of rungs. He raced round the house to the front, not wasting time bothering to check the back door which was always locked. Beads of sweat peppered his brow, despite the bitter cold. The door slammed back on its hinges as Geraint barged through, stricken for his wife and their daughter.

  With time to think, he would concede he wasn’t worried Diane could hurt Carys, although it would be foolish not to consider it a possibility. He was more concerned that Carys might be upset seeing her mother in such a state.

  Stood in the doorway of the lounge, little hands wringing one another, she cleared her throat and announced, “Mummy’s gone.” Her tone matter of fact, but the dewy glint of her eyes betrayed her distress.

  “Did she say where she was going?” Geraint asked, trying to sound normal. Carys shook her head.

  “She said to tell you to leave her alone. And she had a bag.”

  “Wait there a minute, sweetheart,” Geraint instructed, aware he couldn’t leave Carys for long, but anxious to act fast. Surely Diane with a bag couldn’t have gone very far.

  He raced back through the front door and out of the house. Reaching a little way down the lane leading out of the village, there was no sign of her. Holding his breath, he listened hard. Sound travelled far in this flat little village, but none of a bag being hauled. No sound of heavy strenuous breath. No scuffing shoes, or stones being kicked, or twigs snapping; nothing.

  He retraced his steps and continued past the house toward the woods. It seemed hopeless. There was still no sight or sound of her. And hiding here would be far easier for her, with tree coverage, and Red and little Muntjac deer to disguise the noise of her flight.

  Reluctantly giving in, he realised the futility of continuing his hopeless search, and returned to the house and his daughter. Calmer now, his responsibility was to his little girl. He knew what he had to do for his wife and set about it.

  He didn’t bother calling ‘Crisis Team’. It was too late for that now. Much to his embarrassment he knew exactly who he needed to call: his colleagues at Cambridge constabulary.

  Chapter Five

  Geraint’s Vision

  Geraint elected upon the swiftest way to contact his colleagues and dialled 999. It was an emergency now. She was a danger to herself, and to others; and to antique oak triple wardrobes.

  It was with relief and surprise he greeted the prompt attendance by two of his colleagues from Royston station within quarter of an hour. A tall police constable with short cropped hair, accompanied by a studious and efficient looking woman police constable. He hadn’t met them before but they seemed to know who he was.

  In no way did they suggest he should be embarrassed for needing their help. Relief and pride gave a gratefully accepted reprieve from the enormous anxiety which had dominated his mood for hours. He congratulated them on their rapid response.

  “We find the sooner the better in these situations,” said the tall constable.

  Geraint and the WPC nodded along in grave accord. “Do you have a recent photograph of your wife?” she asked with a raise of her eyebrows. The Ellis family weren’t big on photographs. Compared to most families they had pitifully few on display; a fact Geraint regretted and sometimes sought to remedy. Brief, spasmodic periods of avid photography, typically at the beginning of holidays or special days out, led to discarding many feeble attempts upon their collection from the chemists.

  There was, however, one very recent photo of the family. It was after being accosted exiting the local Fine Fare supermarket for a photo opportunity with a certain Father Christmas. Carys had been a little unsure, but the shot had been taken and duly paid for. The Polaroid instant now displayed proudly on the door of the fridge. It depicted Geraint to the left, Father Christmas in the middle with Carys on his knee while Diane stood beaming on the right of the photograph.

  Geraint fetched the snapshot and handed it to his colleague who stared at it, taking it all in.

  “She looks so happy here,” he commented. “How could someone go from this,” he pointed at the photo, “to being so ‘unwell’ and depressed?”

  “She is the one on the right, you know!” Geraint teased the grinning Santa in the middle might be causing confusion. After a shared look of shock at the inappropriate humour, what began as a polite chuckle turned into a full belly laugh. Geraint surprised himself with his flippancy, but more that the show of good humour had helped relief tension, briefly.

  “We’ll take this, if we may?” the WPC said, pocketing the photo. “We can bring it back, but if we have a search now we may find her before the dogs get here.”

  “Dogs?” Geraint shrilled, surprised but heartened Diane’s disappearance was being taken so seriously.

  “Yes. We do consider that she’s at risk and a danger to others. We want to find her urgently.” Scathing yet always professional comments were exchanged about the unhelpfulness of the Crisis Team.

  “They wouldn’t have had time to do anything, to be fair. It’s all happened so quickly,” Geraint excused. The two officers looked at one another.

  “I’m sure there must’ve been clues to Diane’s mental state if the right people had been involved. Anyway,” he said, changing direction, “Let’s just get her found. Has she taken anything from the house she could use to harm anyone? Any type of weapon?”

  Usually Geraint would be asking these sorts of questions. Being so close to the situation meant it hadn’t even occurred to him. A quick perusal of the kitchen revealed a very conspicuous gap in the knife rack where a large carving knife should have been. Geraint’s colour drained. This was worse than he thought. His fear was of her harming herself more than harming anyone else. He’d witnessed that. Believing she’d hurt someone was harder.

  “If while we’re out looking, you could keep the doors locked. We wouldn’t want her to return while you’re unprepared. It would be so easy for her to knock you over the head with something. You’d be unconscious and we’d worry for your daughter.”

  “Diane would never...”

  “I’m sure you're right sir,” the constable interrupted, “But let’s be on the safe side, eh?”

  As the pair of police officers left to begin their search, they waited to make sure the door was secured behind them
. They obviously did believe Diane was a danger.

  Carys walked calmly up to her father as he entered the lounge in a daze.

  “It will be okay Daddy,” she reassured. “Mummy will be okay. She’s just scared at the moment, that’s all.”

  Carys’s calmness had a comforting effect. The pair of them sat, watching nothing in particular on the television, cuddling together, they were soon both in a peaceful sleep.

  They weren’t sure how long they’d rested, but it can’t have been long before they were roused by the rapping of knuckles on the door, and the sound of the police officers’ voices.

  “Mr Ellis? It’s the police again.”

  Geraint let them in and waited expectantly. Carys sat on the couch stifling a yawn.

  “We’ve looked everywhere we can in the vicinity, sir. There’s no sign of her, I’m afraid. Clearly, she doesn’t want to be found.”

  Seeing the distraught look on Geraint’s face the officer looked to reassure. “I’m sure the dogs will find her. The unit is already on its way.”

  Once the dog unit arrived and they’d been introduced, the original officers bid farewell and left the situation in the capable hands of their newly-arrived colleague.

  “I’ll need something with your wife’s smell. A pillow would be ideal, or an item of her clothing. Do you have anything, sir?”

  “She was in the bedroom before she left. I suppose her spoor would be strongest there. I’ll fetch something.”

  “You’re Welsh, aren’t you?” the gruff voice of the dog handler asked. Upon Geraint nodding he said, “I go to Wales sometimes, for holidays. Barry Island?” he said, arching his eyebrows.

  “Not too far from where I’m from,” Geraint exaggerated. He wasn’t in the mood for chit-chat about his homeland, particularly the jibes that often went with it.