Burn Out (Dr. Anne Vernon Book 1)

by Alan Scholefield

  ‘Yeah.’

  A thought pieced itself together in her mind.

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve mistaken you, Billy, but do you mean an ejaculation? That sort of coming?’

  He looked down at the cigarette.

  ‘That sort?’ she repeated.

  ‘Yeah. That sort.’

  ‘You mean the fire caused you to become so excited you had an ejaculation?’

  ‘I did it to myself.’

  ‘You masturbated?’

  ‘Yeah. Like I said.’

  ‘Was that the same with all the other fires? You lit them and then masturbated? Is that why you set fire to your cell?’

  He did not respond for a moment and she thought she’d gone too far. Then he said, ‘I didn’t set fire to the cell. I wasn’t even in it.’

  He pinched the glowing tip of his cigarette with his fingers and put the butt into his tin.

  ‘Let’s go back a bit, Billy.’

  ‘I didn’t set fire to no cell.’

  ‘Okay, I believe you.’

  ‘Well, why accuse me then? It’s a serious thing accusing a bloke of setting alight his cell.’

  ‘I didn’t accuse you. I asked a question.’

  ‘Yeah, but you don’t believe me. I can tell.’

  ‘I do, Billy. I believe you.’

  He was wrong-footing her and she knew it.

  ‘You believed me, you wouldn’t ask a question like that.’

  ‘Billy, I’ve only got your best interest in mind. If I upset you then I’m sorry but if you went to Granton you’d get a lot worse than that. They really put you through it. I mean the others in the unit. They make you face up to what you’ve done and why you did it. Do you understand that?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s just that you was trying to trap me and that’s a liberty.’

  ‘I wasn’t trying to trap you. You can believe that or not as you like. Now let’s get back. You went to Loxton Special Hospital last time for lighting fires. But you never said anything about the reason for lighting them.’

  ‘’Cause nobody asked. Nobody cared. All they wanted was to get rid of me. Let someone else take the responsibility.’

  ‘So now you’re talking about it because—’

  ‘Because I don’t want to go back to Loxton.’

  ‘You’re giving us reasons for your behaviour?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So you’ll be sent to Granton?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Right.’ She made a note. ‘Last time you were here you told us you didn’t have any school friends. Were you a solitary child?’

  ‘Suppose so.’

  ‘And on the farm, the only company you had was your grannie and Mr Gillis?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Have you ever had sex with a woman?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘With a man?’

  ‘You mean am I a bender? No. They had sex with me but I had no choice, see?’

  ‘Ever had a girlfriend?’

  ‘No.’

  She closed the file. ‘If you had your choice of how things would go, how would you choose?’

  ‘About the future?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Go to Granton for a couple of years. Get better. Then get a job.’

  ‘What kind of job?’

  ‘Any kind.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Buy a cottage. And—’ he paused dreamily.

  ‘And what?’

  ‘Not be bothered.’

  She smiled. ‘A cottage in the country and not be bothered. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?’

  *

  The house was freezing.

  ‘The stove’s gone out,’ Margaret said. ‘It’s always going out.’

  These were almost the first words she had spoken to Henry since he had watched her come through the big wooden doors of the prison after her visit to Jason. Clutching the baby in her arms she had looked like some waif in a painting by Holman Hunt. She was lost and bewildered and sad and her eyes were swollen from crying. On the drive back to Leckington he had waited for her to tell him about the visit, but she hadn’t.

  ‘Have you got any other form of heating?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you usually do when the stove goes out?’

  ‘Get into bed and take Julie with me.’

  ‘Good God. Well, we can’t have that. How do you start the bloody thing?’

  ‘With wood. When that’s alight you put on coke.’

  He looked at his watch. ‘I’m supposed to be picking up my granddaughter in half an hour. Where’s the phone?’

  ‘In the hall. It’s unplugged.’

  He pushed it back into the jack and phoned Anne. When he returned to the kitchen/living-room Margaret, with Julie in her arms, was still standing where he’d left her. It crossed his mind that if he didn’t get things done she would go on standing there until she dropped.

  Thinking that talking might help, he said, ‘I knew someone in Africa who could do this sort of thing. Knew all about cooking too. Could knock you up a three-course dinner on a dung fire in no time.’ He went down on his knees and lit the kindling. Margaret did not respond. ‘Are you just going to stand there?’ He was becoming irritated.

  ‘I’m cold.’

  ‘Go and put some more clothes on. Do something. Make some tea, I’m as dry as the Kalahari.’

  He spent the next few minutes crouched in front of the stove blowing on the coke and cursing.

  ‘How do you like your tea?’

  ‘Strong. Two sugars.’

  ‘That’s how my father took his.’

  The baby was sleeping and Margaret put her down. She and Henry pulled chairs up to the stove until they were almost touching it. Gradually the large cast-iron structure began to heat up.

  ‘Are you going to tell me about your visit or are we going to sit here looking at the stove?’ Henry said.

  He had decided he could not leave her in her present mood; somehow he had to get her brain moving again. She was like one of his cars that needed pushing before it started.

  ‘He cried,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t blame him.’

  ‘So did I. A lot of the visitors cried.’ She sipped her tea. ‘Sad people. A big, sad room. You can feel it in the air. Even the furniture seems sad.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘Money. Julie. The new baby. He was upset that I hadn’t been before.’

  ‘My daughter told me he’d hit you.’

  She touched her cheek. ‘Afterwards he said he was sorry. He said he hadn’t meant it. But he said that every time.’

  ‘I didn’t know there had been other times. Did you tell Anne about them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Often?’

  ‘No, not often. He never used to when we were first married. But since he lost his job he’s . . . you just can’t say anything to him without him losing his temper.’

  ‘When did he lose his job?’

  ‘About six months ago. He’d been taken on by a sports equipment manufacturer after the Lloyds crash. In the marketing department. They were supposed to be supplying gear to clubs and leisure centres. He hated it. When they told him about it it sounded as though he’d be in an advisory capacity. But it was just a salesman’s job. They thought with his name he’d be able to sell heaps of equipment. They even gave him a car. But he hardly used it after the first few weeks. Instead he’d just stay at home watching tv. I used to say, Jason for God’s sake how’re you going to sell anything if you sit in front of the television all day? Sometimes he’d watch a programme in the evening that he’d seen in the morning. He became a kind of zombie. I thought he was doing drugs but he wasn’t. TV was his drug. He’d watch from breakfast time right through the day until long after I’d gone to bed at night.’

  ‘Humiliation can become a kind of illness,’ Henry said. ‘I think I can understand it.’

  ‘I can understand it too, but it’s different i
f you live with someone and you haven’t any money except the handouts from Social Security.’

  ‘So you nagged him to get a job?’

  ‘Why do you say nagged? Of course he had to get a job. We had a baby coming.’

  ‘All right, erase the word nagged. Told him to. Suggested. Is that better? But the point is did you “suggest” often?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Was that when he struck you? When you suggested that he go out and look for a job?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And did it work? Did he go out more often?’

  ‘Yes, after a bit. At first I thought he’d come to his senses. But then I suppose all he was doing was trying to get away from me. So, you see, the village is right. I caused him to go out and rape. Isn’t that what you’d like me to say?’

  ‘Not at all. I’m trying to understand both of you. I don’t subscribe to any form of violence, but there are times when it’s understandable.’

  ‘I thought you’d take his side. Being a man.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake let’s not trot out tired old attitudes. Don’t you think you could have shown him a little more understanding? After all he was looking into the abyss. Famous tennis player five years before. Now a nobody. It’s enough to make anyone subject to aberrant behaviour.’

  ‘Raping a seventeen-year-old is aberrant? Is that the word?’

  ‘There you go again. He isn’t even charged with rape but with—’

  ‘What if he had done something worse than rape?’

  The question dropped into the still air of the gloomy room like a primed bomb waiting for acknowledgement before exploding.

  ‘What is that supposed to mean?’

  She did not respond.

  ‘What did you mean by that, Margaret?’ He spoke carefully. For a moment he felt himself back in a courtroom questioning a witness. ‘If you mean you really know something else that Jason’s done then you’d better tell me. I haven’t practised in this country but I know enough about criminal law to advise you on the next step.’

  She shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’

  ‘But you have, and you can’t leave it there. A crime worse than attempted rape, you said. You’ve got to tell someone. The police preferably. Or his lawyer. Or me.’

  She lit her umpteenth cigarette. ‘It’s difficult.’

  ‘Of course it’s difficult. No one said life was easy. Try.’

  ‘I tell myself it was because . . . because I’m pregnant. Look . . . I’m not very good at this.’

  ‘That’s because I remind you of your father. I’m flattered, but young women can’t talk to their fathers about intimate details. So don’t think of me like that. Think of me as a lawyer; which I am.’

  ‘Well . . . some women when they’re pregnant . . . they can still make love to their husbands and some can’t. I couldn’t.’

  ‘My ex-wife was like you. Not only when she was pregnant, but most of the time.’

  ‘Really?’ there was a flash of interest and mutual understanding.

  ‘And it finally led to divorce. You’re not unique, you see.’

  ‘I knew that Jason was unhappy about that side of things and one evening I found him in the bath with Julie.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well . . . he’d never done that before . . .’

  ‘AND?’

  ‘Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘Good God, no.’

  ‘I mean he was naked and he was rubbing her and she was using the soap on him and—’ she broke off.

  ‘He’s her father. Why shouldn’t he take her into his bath? Out in the bush I often took Anne into my bath. It was a canvas affair and there was usually only enough warm water for one bath. Doesn’t mean to say I molested her.’

  ‘But you’ve read the papers! There’s child abuse all over the place.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I’ve read them. And so has everyone else. Let me tell you something. Not long ago I was in Oxford Street and I found a little girl lost near Selfridges. She was about the same age as Hilly, my granddaughter. Crying her eyes out. And people were just walking past. Forty years ago I would have taken her by the hand and walked her along the street and gone into shops looking for her parents. But not now. Now, I stopped the first middle-aged woman who passed and told her what had happened and asked her to come with me to the manager of Selfridges and we handed the child over and God knows if she ever found her mother and father. That’s what the hysteria has done. It’s made all men feel apprehensive about being seen with small children not their own.’

  ‘But you don’t understand.’

  ‘I’m trying to.’

  ‘It was just about the time the two little kids went missing.’

  *

  ‘What missing children?’ Anne said.

  Henry drew on his pipe, thought about dropping the match on the floor next to his chair, caught Anne’s eye and stuffed it back into the matchbox.

  ‘What did she mean?’

  ‘Apparently two little girls have gone missing.’

  ‘Here? In Kingstown?’

  ‘One in the city, one in the countryside.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘In the past few months. At least that’s what she says. The baby started yelling for its feed about then so I wasn’t able to get the whole thing sorted out.’

  It was evening and they were in Henry’s flat.

  ‘Excuse me a moment.’ Anne went upstairs, looked in on Hilly’s sleeping form, then checked that the windows and doors were locked. When she returned, she said, ‘Just disappeared?’

  ‘That’s as I understand it.’

  ‘And Jason? Why . . . I mean, what does she think he has to do with it?’

  ‘Both times Jason had left home without explanation. The first time he had come back very late. The second he’d been away the whole night and come home the following day.’

  ‘My God, what a thing to have in your mind! I mean about your husband.’

  ‘I should think it’s certainly nonsense. She looks ill to me. Thin as a snake. She’s probably a neurotic at the best of times but now with this business of Newman’s . . . well, it might have tipped her over the edge.’

  ‘She didn’t strike me as neurotic, but I didn’t have as long with her as you.’

  ‘It started with Newman taking the baby into the bath with him.’ He repeated what Margaret had told him.

  ‘Is that all she has to go on?’

  ‘You don’t need much if you’re like her. In her mind she’s already got the whole village hating her. I told her it was nonsense. You remember the canvas bath in the bush don’t you? Watch pouring water over us?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I suppose you were too tiny. But lots of fathers take their babies into—’

  ‘The little old man!’

  ‘What little old man?’

  ‘The one at the tennis courts. The one with the dog. That’s what he must have meant.’

  ‘Stop being opaque.’

  ‘It was when you and Hilly were flying the kite. He said I should be careful of her. Something like that. Then he said, specially after what’s happened. I didn’t register it at the time but that’s what he must have meant: that I should be careful of Hilly because of the two kids who had disappeared. And the school! No wonder they were worried when you arrived to fetch her.’

  He saw that her eyes were filled with unease.

  ‘Bosh and piffle.’ He sucked noisily at his pipe. ‘You’re getting yourself into a state for nothing.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  The lane ended in mud, but deep tracks filled with rainwater continued through an open gate. Anne guided her small car across this morass. The tracks disappeared into a hanger of beech trees all now in glowing autumn colours. On either side of her was a jungle of blackberry bushes. She crossed a small stream on a rickety wooden bridge and almost immediately saw the house.

  It was a strange place to find hidden away in the Sussex
Downs. There was no formal garden just rough lawn with half a dozen apple trees, heavy with fruit.

  The house was a beautiful wooden chalet, clearly built a long time ago, and Anne thought it would have looked more natural in Austria or Bavaria. Outside was parked an elderly Land Rover. She stopped on the weed-covered drive and went up the steps to the wide verandah. The front door was half open and she heard a voice shouting from within.

  ‘Up! Up! Come on, get up!’

  It was Tom’s voice.

  ‘Come on darling, GET UP!’

  She was about to knock on the door but this last order caused her to drop her hand. She had turned away when a voice behind her said, ‘What d’you want?’ A man was regarding her with frankly hostile eyes. He was middle-aged with thick grey hair that stuck out from under a deerstalker. He wore a waxed coat, carried a game bag over one shoulder and in his right hand held a shotgun. His accent was rich and rural.

  ‘I came to see Dr Melville.’

  ‘Is he expecting you?’

  ‘Yes he is.’ Her voice was brisk.

  He passed her and went into the house. ‘Tommy!’ he shouted. ‘There’s someone come to see you.’

  There was a shouted colloquy between the two men and the grey-haired man came back to the door and said, ‘Are you Dr Vernon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tommy says go up.’

  The ground floor was one huge room, its walls faced with tongue-and-groove pine panelling which had become honey-coloured with age. She stopped at the foot of a wooden staircase.

  ‘I’m up here,’ Tom’s voice called.

  She went up and found a bathroom at the top of the stairs. It was a large square room. A long old-fashioned cast-iron bath on ball-and-claw feet stood against one wall. Tom, a towel round his waist, was on his knees beside the bath. In the bath itself, in six inches of warm water, was a small black-and-tan dachshund. She was looking up with huge appealing eyes.

  ‘Come on! Up! Up!’

  It was only then Anne saw that the back legs were paralysed.

  He said, ‘You go down to the other end of the bath.’ He handed her several pieces of Ryvita. ‘Give her a piece when she gets to your end. I hope Joyce didn’t frighten you.’

  ‘Joyce?’ She was bewildered. ‘I thought she was a he.’

  He laughed. ‘Harry Joyce.’

  He took the dog to the opposite end of the bath and raised her onto her back legs. ‘Come on. Up! She can if she wants to, she just finds it easier to drag her legs behind her. Show her a biscuit.’