Dance With the Dead

by James Nally

  I rang Mick Lowry, local locksmith, and set out the problem – a lost key – and the deadline – tonight’s flight. When I stressed that Michael needed something out of this room – ‘a bit of an emergency, like’ – he practically dropped the phone to make time.

  ‘I see you had a bit of a go yourself,’ said Mick, surveying the lock.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You made a few scratch marks around the lock here, look.’

  I squinted hard at the metal. He was right; fresh, hairline scrapes showed that the lock had been recently nibbled. Not by me, I didn’t mention.

  Spooks, IRA recruits and grunts are taught the basics in lock-picking and it’s easy to see why. Lowry finagled the door open in less than thirty seconds. He waived the outrageous call-out fee of £50, out of fear or respect for Michael, I couldn’t tell.

  ‘Just mention I did this for him,’ he practically begged.

  ‘I can’t do that, Mick,’ I said. ‘If he finds out I mislaid the key he’ll go mental.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mick, wishing now he’d charged me full whack and maybe more.

  He stood there, waiting for me to open the door. I didn’t.

  ‘Thanks a million then, Mick. I’ll stand you a pint next time I see you.’

  ‘Grand,’ said Mick, but he didn’t budge.

  ‘I’d better get on then,’ I said, pointing to the door.

  ‘Right so,’ he said, backing away, the nosy bastard.

  I waited until the back door slammed shut, then pushed open that study door. My hands felt clammy against the cold groaning oak, and had to call on a shoulder for backup. My eyes squinted into the gloom. I palmed the wall for a light switch, hit it and recoiled.

  ‘What the fuck …?’

  Back down in the sitting room, a red light flashed on the new-fangled home phone and I wondered if that might offer up a clue. I dialled into the answer machine, but heard only my missed calls from earlier.

  I then saw a redial button so gave that a whirl.

  ‘Hello, Dr Harnett’s surgery,’ came a nasal female voice.

  ‘Hi, it’s Donal Lynch here, son of Michael and Dolores. I’m at home now and there’s no sign of Mam. I just wonder if you know anything.’

  ‘Hi, Donal. Hang on there for a second, I’ll check with Dr Harnett.’

  This is the same Dr Harnett who golfed with Da and took a three wood to his Hippocratic Oath a few years’ back by letting him know I’d joined the Met Police.

  ‘Donal, how are you?’ gushed Harnett, the oily snake.

  No doctor in Ireland set such store in being called doctor, so I said: ‘Fine, Pat. Where’s Mam?’

  He cleared his throat, I sensed to summon his most comforting bedside manner: ‘She’s above in Mullingar, Donal.’

  ‘Above in Mullingar?’

  ‘At the hospital. St Loman’s. It’s what she wanted, Donal.’

  ‘What do you mean, it’s what she wanted?’

  ‘She’s been in a really bad way, Donal. Some of the things she was saying … it’s for her own safety.’

  I felt my temple throbbing against the phone.

  ‘Let me guess, Pat: Michael wanted her out of the way, and you signed the necessary papers. I dare say you’ll have a good laugh about it soon, over your cosy game of golf. What I want to know is why he wanted her out of the way?’

  I didn’t know at which point Harnett had hung up. They really should add a tone, like they do in the movies.

  Chapter 25

  Mullingar, Co. Westmeath

  Thursday, April 08, 2003; 15.30

  I bombed it to Mullingar where the notorious St Loman’s psychiatric hospital loomed ominous, Gothic and grey against the storm-ripe afternoon sky. As I turned into the drive, only a bolt of lightning and the sound of Norman Bates’ raving mother could’ve added to the sense of foreboding.

  I knew that, historically, Ireland locked away more people in mental institutions than any other nation in the world, boasting multiples of even the old Soviet Union. At its peak, we confined 20,000 of our own behind fortified walls like these, almost one per cent of the population. Of course, it had little to do with mental illness. These institutions were yet another way for the State and families to discard their ‘undesirables’, becoming lifelong prisons to perfectly sane disabled, deaf, blind, dumb, epileptic and even gay people.

  As I killed the car engine, I vowed that Mam would not be contributing to this shameful statistic. Not so long as I was alive.

  Within minutes, I had an audience with one of those rakish middle-aged men who can carry off shoulder-length white hair. Dr ‘just call me Lorcan’ Kavanagh seemed almost disturbingly well-prepared for my questions, as if visitors coming in search of snatched relatives was a daily occurrence.

  Lorcan explained that Mam had been admitted under an Initial Section Order, which had to be signed by a patient’s GP and a member of the family. My eyes shot down to the bottom of the sheet where, sure enough, Dr P.J. Harnett and Martin Lynch had scrawled their signatures. The grounds for Harnett’s concerns had been listed in the body of the Order, which Lorcan happily translated into layman’s terms.

  ‘She seems to have stopped taking her anti-anxiety medication, so our first job here is to get her back on an even keel,’ he said cheerfully.

  ‘She’d never skip her medication, doctor. She might forget for a day or two but …’

  ‘We took a blood sample. She hasn’t been taking it for a lot longer than that, I’m afraid. She wasn’t able to give a reason. In fact, she flatly denied not taking it, which really doesn’t help. The blood doesn’t lie.’

  ‘Okay, so her anxiety levels are up. How quickly can you get them back down again so we can bring her home?’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s a bit more to it than that.’ He sighed. ‘She’s showing signs of paranoia. She talks about men watching your home, following your father, making threatening phone calls and breaking in.’

  He tilted his head and rubbed his chin sagely. I could imagine him rehearsing such learned moves in the mirror.

  ‘The most worrying aspect of her behaviour is that she has these visions of your father being shot on the doorstep. She dreams this scenario frequently and fully expects it to happen at any moment during the day, which has led to some unusual actions on her behalf, as you may appreciate.’

  ‘Such as …’

  He allowed himself a little smile. ‘Let’s just say the postman won’t be calling again for a while.’

  ‘But surely this is just an extension of her anxiety, which her medication was treating really well.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right, Donal, but when a patient visualises death, we must consider them a potential suicide risk. We’ve got to play it completely safe.’

  Suicide risk? Mam?

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘She’s going to be here for at least a couple of weeks. We’ve got a lot to sort out. She’s currently on Diazepam and Citalopram for her anxiety and Zopiclone for her insomnia. These are powerful drugs and they need time to settle in her system so that we can get her back on the level.’

  ‘Are powerful chemicals really the only way to sort this?’

  ‘If you want her home sooner rather than later, then yes.’

  I sighed. ‘My brother and I live in London. Dad’s away. I worry that no one’s here for her.’

  ‘Dr Harnett says he’ll pop in regularly.’

  That’s what worries me, I thought.

  ‘You’re free to go see her now. Then you should call her closest friends. It is important that she gets regular visitors. You’ve got to get her fighting, then we can keep her fighting, okay?’

  ‘Dr Kavanagh … Lorcan, you’ve got to trust me on this, what you’re seeing is not my mam. She’s the toughest person I know. She’ll pull through this.’

  ‘I look forward to meeting the real Dolores,’ he said, pointing to a seat. ‘I’ll get one of the nurses to take you through.’

  I expected a nurse t
o come for me after five, maybe ten minutes. Big mistake. Welcome to the alternative GMT – ‘God only knows when’ Medical Time. I sat there for half an hour watching nurse after nurse pad past at a universal pace that barely topped stationary. Some emphasised their torpor by dragging flip-flops along the hard floor, giving me an overwhelming urge to boot them up the arse.

  I checked the time and winced: work had paid for my return flight. I’d struggle to justify missing the second leg.

  Finally, a lumpen male nurse came to the door and grunted: ‘Donal Lynch?’ I almost leapt into his arms.

  He punched in a door code, pushed it open and led me through to the life-sucking fluorescent glare of the main ward. Behind me, the door self-locked and I almost self-combusted from the airless heat. No wonder nurses shuffled about like zombies … I couldn’t help wondering why every hospital I’d ever set foot in had been roasting hot. Surely germs and madness only thrived in such overbearing conditions?

  The walls were dotted with curious brown smears and gouges where hunks of paint had dropped off like scabs.

  Patients roamed about at will. Some looked empty, others hummed with agitation, bad energy and woeful hygiene. The Starers and the Swearers. I hadn’t expected this, and couldn’t imagine Mam ever braving a communal area where the clearly unhinged prowl free. The thought of her cowering in some side room angered me. Why the fuck should the law of the jungle apply here, in what is supposedly a place of care?

  ‘Why are most people in here?’ I asked my escort.

  ‘The whole range,’ he said, ‘from the mildly depressed right through to paranoid schizophrenic.’

  ‘And they just get thrown in together?’

  He stopped and turned in bored annoyance.

  ‘I get asked that a lot,’ he said, ‘especially from people who think their relatives are too grand to be here.’

  ‘I’m not saying that. It’s just that I find some of the more extreme cases here pretty intimidating.’

  ‘Schizophrenics are people too,’ he stated.

  ‘Try telling that to someone who’s had a loved one murdered by a schizophrenic,’ I snapped.

  He looked at me in disgust.

  ‘I’m a cop in London. You’ve heard about Care in the Community?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Well, trust me, it doesn’t fucking work.’

  He fixed me with a stare. ‘Mental illness doesn’t discriminate, and neither do we. What were you expecting? Butlins? If it’s not to your taste, maybe you should consider going private.’

  Off he flounced into an office, fortified floor-to-ceiling by Perspex, as if to prove my point.

  I planted my back firmly against a wall and watched intently. I realised that the only decoration in the entire place was a hand-written poster listing banned items: nail clippers, razors, tweezers, lighters, belts, shoelaces, spiral-bound notebooks, medicine, jewellery and underwired bras. Below it, typed for clarity, a legal note stated: Full body searches will be carried out on all patients on admission. Subsequent body and property searches at the discretion of the on-duty Matron.

  I couldn’t block out the indignity Mam must have felt being spread-eagled naked against a wall and failed to quell another surge of guilt-fuelled rage. Yes, I did think she was too grand for this shithole and its prison-like dehumanising brutality. You got a problem with that, nursey?

  He’d clearly tired of my schizo-baiting prejudice and sent out an older female colleague.

  ‘How has she been?’

  She looked at me out of the corner of her eye, a little guarded.

  ‘She’s not eating and she’s not associating, so we’re a little worried about her.’

  I didn’t blame her on either front, but decided not to say that out loud. I’d antagonised enough mental health professionals for one day.

  She knocked on a door, opened it without waiting for a response and called, ‘Visitor for you, Dolores.’

  The nurse took a step back, turned to me and nodded. I looked at the door then back to her. I didn’t feel like I should just barge in on Mam’s private torment, demanding explanations and answers.

  ‘Go on,’ urged the nurse gently.

  My reluctant feet made meek baby steps into that harsh and Spartan room. I had a sudden flashback to my granny’s parlour, being ushered in to see her laid out in a coffin, death draped upon the air like morning dew on a cobweb.

  Mam lay sideways on the narrow bed, facing away from me towards the plain cream wall, her head wobbling slightly on a crooked arm. Her white pyjamas clung to her emaciated body. The side of her face looked yellow, her wrinkles deep, entrenched and intersecting, like endless fork marks in butter. Her eyes seemed unfocussed, glazed.

  ‘Mam,’ I said gently.

  ‘Mam?’ I repeated, a little too sternly.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she said, finally.

  ‘I was gonna ask you the same question.’

  I reached down and squeezed the top of her arm. It felt bony and cold.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘I’m not feeling anything. Sure isn’t that the whole point of pharmaceuticals?’

  I sighed.

  ‘Don’t do that sigh, Donal, like you’re disappointed in me. I can’t stand it.’

  ‘That was one of my other sighs actually, Mother, from my vast repertoire of non-verbal disapprovals. It was the confused one. The one that’s wondering why you stopped taking your medication.’

  She shrugged. ‘I must have got mixed up. I always take my pills. You know that.’

  ‘They say you’re not eating or talking to anyone. Mind you, when I see who’s on the loose out there, I can’t say I blame you.’

  ‘They stole my cigarettes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Some of the scruffy ones. They cornered me in the TV room and started pawing at me. I had to give them my cigarettes and make a run for it.’

  ‘You don’t smoke, Mam.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it? Still doesn’t make it okay for them to steal off me.’

  Christ, I thought, she’s in a bad way. I remembered the doc’s words – get her fighting and we’ll keep her fighting.

  ‘Mam, you can’t just lie here all day. They’ll never let you out.’

  ‘I’ve made a friend. They call him Flash Lamp.’

  ‘And why do they call him that?’

  ‘Him and his brother used to take turns on Mary Curley while the other held the flash lamp. One day his brother wouldn’t let him have his go, so he shot both of them. And now they call him Flash Lamp.’

  A harsh alien laugh spewed out of her. I couldn’t work out if this was her old piss-taking self, or a glimpse of a new and burgeoning madness.

  ‘I spoke to your doctor,’ I said brightly, ever the chipper corner man. ‘He sounds confident that once they get your levels right, you’ll be out of here in no time and back to normal …’

  ‘Why won’t any of you listen to me?’

  ‘What do you mean, Mam?’

  ‘I keep telling your dad, I keep telling Dr Harnett, I told the guards and now I’m telling them here … there are men watching the house. Busy little men in suits. They do a rota in three different cars. I’ve made a note of the registration plates.’

  She pushed herself up with her arms and spun around on the bed, her eyes re-ignited and focussed.

  ‘I know they’ve been in the house, Donal. I left little traps, like Sellotape on the doors. They’re after your father. I haven’t been able to figure out why, but he’s in danger, I know it.’

  ‘Did you tell Da?’

  ‘Of course. He just laughed at me. But when I called the Guards he was raging. He told me to keep my nose out. I’m only trying to look out for him.’

  ‘What the hell is going on, Ma?’

  She indicated that I should shut the door, so I did.

  ‘Your father has been very uptight these last couple of months. And even more secretive than usual. He has a new mobile phone
which he keeps getting messages on, by text, but he never uses it. He’s always leaving the house at strange times, day and night. I don’t know where he’s going but there’s something very serious up. Those men watching the house either know about it or they want to know about it.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Police or government agents of some sort, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘This is not the place to spout off about this, Mam.’

  ‘You believe me though, don’t you, Donal?’

  ‘Had I come here first today, Mam, frankly I wouldn’t have believed a word. But now, yes I do.’

  She frowned at me, confused.

  ‘Does the name Bob Conlon mean anything to you, Mam?’

  She froze.

  ‘No,’ she said, flatly.

  ‘I can tell it does. You’re a worse liar than me.’

  She looked at the floor.

  ‘I remember him in the house, Ma, when I was younger. They had an in-joke, about being away visiting some relations. What did they mean by that?’

  ‘He was such a creep. I didn’t want to know. I barred him from the house in the end. I said to your father it’s Bob or me. You should ask Fintan what’s going on.’

  ‘What would he know?’

  ‘Your father won’t leave the house these days without calling Fintan. Every single time. He must be telling him where he’s going and who he’s meeting. That’s all I can tell you.’

  ‘As a sort of security maybe, as if, one day, he’s expecting not to come back.’

  I immediately regretted saying it. Her watery eyes blinked into mine as she grasped my hand hard.

  ‘Help him, Donal, please. I know he’s been hard on you, but he is your father. Will you promise me that you’ll help him any way you can?’

  ‘Mam, I can’t make a promise like that until I know what he’s up to. He could be planning to shoot Princess Di for all I know.’

  ‘For me, Donal, please.’

  ‘Of course, Mam, of course I’ll help him.’