by Jo Bannister
Dan Sale raised a surprised eyebrow. “You’re leaving?”
“Crowd control isn’t a CID matter,” Marsh reminded him. “Chief Inspector Gordon has it in hand; if he needs reinforcements he’ll call for them. My time’ll be better spent on my own case: trying to find out what really happened behind the station. Maybe, right now, that’s the best anyone can do for young Lucas.”
He found Rosie’s message waiting on his desk. He stared at it; then he put his head on one side and stared at it some more. It didn’t help. He called Sergeant Burton. “What’s all this about?”
“Your friend Miss Holland. She was hot under the collar about something – I couldn’t make out what. She wanted Lucas in custody. I don’t know why. Maybe she’s changed her mind, decided he did it after all? But he’s not going anywhere – there are as many locks there as there are here.”
“She must have had something in mind.” Marsh frowned. “Get her on the phone, will you, let’s find out what.”
Sergeant Burton returned shaking his head. He’d had no more luck than Alex. “I’ll try again in ten minutes.”
But Marsh couldn’t shake off the feeling that there was a degree of urgency here. Not just because Rosie Holland was telling him how to do his job again – he was getting used to that. But mostly she paid him the courtesy of doing it face to face. Phone messages via his sergeant were a new departure. Something had happened, and she hadn’t time to get here and discuss it with him, and she hadn’t even time to wait for him to return her call. She wasn’t a stupid woman and, in spite of the schoolboy sense of humour, she wasn’t a frivolous one. If she was worried there was probably good reason.
He hadn’t been at his desk for five minutes before he got up again. He had plenty of work waiting, not only on the Pickering case, but he was too uneasy to settle to it.
“Get your coat,” he decided, “we’re going out there. Fellowes Hall. See if everything’s all right.”
“Are we bringing Lucas back with us?”
But the Superintendent didn’t know. “Depends what we find. And whether we can work out what the hell Rosie Holland thinks she’s found.”
“Only if we do, we’ll need more bodies,” said Burton.
Marsh scowled. “I really don’t know what’s wrong with police officers these days. When I was a young detective we thought nothing of wrestling a suspect into the back of a squad car single-handed and handcuffing him to the seat. We’d have been laughed at for wanting help to arrest one man. You’re all so precious these days. I don’t know when I last saw a constable with a seriously good black eye.”
DS Burton was a quiet, thoughtful man but he wasn’t the pushover people sometimes believed. “How fortunate for me then, sir,” he murmured, “that you’ll be able to show me how to do it.”
When electro-convulsive therapy was first used in the 1940s in the treatment of depression and agitation, it was given without either anaesthetics or muscle relaxants and the resulting convulsions could be violent enough to cause fractures. Although there should be no memory of the shock travelling across the temples, it also managed to frighten many patients. This, together with a comparatively low success rate, relapses in some patients, memory loss and confusion in others, and the development of drug regimes with better results and fewer side effects, led to ECT being demoted from the front line of psychiatric medicine to a treatment of last resort. It still has its uses in obdurate cases: in certain types of schizophrenia, for instance, it can produce improvements.
It is not, however, a useful treatment for amnesia, and never was. But Shad Lucas, despite owning one of the most interesting minds on the planet, knew nothing about psychiatry. He knew about cinerarias. He was given a consent form and a biro, and he signed.
Andrew Cunningham was a belt-and-braces man. He hoped he would never have to produce that form. He was a consultant at a reputable clinic: when he said that a patient being treated for a personality disorder so serious it had led him to commit murder suddenly deteriorated and lapsed into a near vegetative state, he expected to be believed.
The consent form was in case he got the voltage wrong and Lucas died. In that event, his best defence would be that the patient was determined to try anything that might conceivably help and Cunningham, knowing what the price of failure would be, was persuaded to help. That death resulted from what should have been a safe procedure he would attribute to the abnormality of the patient’s brain. He would say that he kept within the clinical recommendations of 70 to 150 volts at very low amperage for up to half a second. There would be no one to contradict. He didn’t need a nurse to prep the patient because preparation would be superfluous and – if he got it right – he didn’t want to be asked what the needle holes were.
There would be criticism of his judgement but he’d survive it. Every one of those who might review the case would have made mistakes in the past. Honest errors in desperate cases are generally accepted as having been made with the best of intentions. Whatever the Holland woman thought she’d found, it would count for nothing once the only witness to the death of Jackie Pickering was silenced.
“All right, Shad? Are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
But he wasn’t. Nothing could have prepared him for the jolt of pain that went through his head like an ice pick driven by a poleaxe. Pain and terror ripped through him; convulsive spasm threw his body against the restraints with all the power of his strong young muscles. His brain and his body wailed in terrible harmony, and only the leather gag preventing him from biting his tongue kept his agony in the back of his throat.
Chaos took him. A whole new spectrum of colours spun vertiginously about him: the colours you get from splitting darkness with a prism. Sounds as primitive as a scream, sounds wrenched from the birthing of the world, bathed him like fire. Dimensions split apart and coalesced in new, vibrant combinations and he fell through them as a hailstone falls and rises in the convection of a storm, skin and muscle and mind flayed in the turmoil by exquisite crystalline knives.
He felt himself butchered and was helpless to resist. He felt himself ravelled out – sinews stretched, nerves exposed – and folded afresh like origami. The blood in his veins turned to vitriol, burning as it coursed.
The shattered wreckage that had once been Shad Lucas – gardener, unreliable clairvoyant, decent human being – torn apart at a molecular level, waited, breath abated, for the grace of death; and waited in vain.
Chapter Twenty
Harry Marsh preferred driving to being driven. When he was in a rush he compromised by letting DS Burton park the car. He enjoyed driving and saw no reason to give up one of the perks of his job. Today, though, he drove for a different reason. He was haunted by a feeling of urgency and, though he had no reason to order a driver to ignore the speed limits, he could ignore them himself without attracting comment.
Sergeant Burton kept trying Rosie Holland’s number, finally got a reply. Marsh didn’t want to stop so relayed the conversation through Burton. This left him free to concentrate on getting past a grey estate that was blocking the lane ahead.
“Detective Superintendent Marsh says, where are you? He’s been trying to get hold of you for fifteen minutes.”
Prufrock held the phone up so Rosie could snap back for herself. “Fifteen minutes? It’s an hour and a half since I called – I thought you’d have everything under control by now! Do you mean you haven’t been to Fellowes Hall yet?”
“Detective Superintendent Marsh says he’s on his way there now,” reported Sergeant Burton dutifully. “He says your message made no sense.”
“If it didn’t make sense,” snapped Rosie furiously, “it’s because you gave it him wrong! Shad Lucas is in danger. I told you ninety minutes ago that you had to get him out of there. What have you been doing since then – playing Fantasy Felons?”
“Detective Superintendent Marsh says—”
There was a crackle on the line as Marsh lost patience and took the ph
one. He wasn’t getting past the estate anyway: the lane was too narrow and the thing was bucketing from side to side as if it was already going as fast as it could. “Ms Holland, what the hell’s going on? I’m on my way to Fellowes Hall now, I’m five minutes away. Where are you?”
“I’m …” There was a pause. “Are you a navy blue BMW?”
Marsh blinked. “Yes.”
“’Cos I’m the grey Volvo in front of you. OK. It’s Cunningham. Andrew Cunningham killed Jackie Pickering because she was going to expose his methods as dangerous on television. His career was heading down the tubes. He needed a scapegoat for the murder and by God he got one. We have to get Shad out of there while there’s still a chance he can tell us what really happened.”
Too many questions were racing round Marsh’s head looking for answers. With Fellowes Hall – and apparently some kind of confrontation – two miles down the road he hadn’t time to organise them into words. Instead he said baldly, “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to understand,” Rosie shot back impatiently. “I’ll explain later. All you have to do now is get Shad away from Cunningham and into the hands of someone who actually, genuinely wants to help him. If it isn’t too late already.”
“Too late? What are you saying – that Cunningham could harm him? Kill him?”
“Superintendent, he’s already killed once! A girl who threatened his reputation. Shad threatens his freedom. He has nothing to lose. If he can make himself safe by killing again he’ll do it without hesitation. He crossed the Rubicon back at the station. Shad isn’t a patient, he’s a witness. He’ll deal with him any way he has to.”
Marsh thought for a second. “Then will you either drive that hearse a bit quicker or pull over and let me pass?”
But there was no opportunity and soon there was no need. The gates of Fellowes Hall appeared round a bend and the two cars flashed – well, the BMW flashed, the Volvo lurched – down the drive.
They pulled up in a chorus of spitting gravel outside the main door, beside Cunningham’s silver Jaguar. Sergeant Burton, with the benefit of youth, was first up the steps, Superintendent Marsh close in his wake. Rosie lumbered after them like a bulk carrier, Prufrock bobbing behind her like a Clyde puffer.
Inside they split up. Burton engaged the receptionist, Marsh headed for Cunningham’s office. But it was empty. Frustrated, he turned on his heel, looking up and down the corridor as if his quarry might chance into view.
Rosie had headed for Shad’s room. That was empty too. She saved Prufrock the trouble of catching up by heading back to reception.
Burton had fared no better. The receptionist didn’t know where either man was. She offered to bleep Doctor Cunningham on his pager.
Just then the intercom on her desk buzzed. Marsh stayed her hand from answering. “If that’s Cunningham, don’t tell him we’re here.” She stared at him uncomprehendingly but nodded compliance.
It wasn’t Cunningham. It was a nurse who’d found the door of the ECT room unlocked and wanted to know if the facility was supposed to be in use.
“ECT?” mouthed Superintendent Marsh.
All the colour had drained from Rosie’s face. “Oh my God. That’s how he’s dealing with it.”
“ECT?” said Marsh again, aloud this time.
“Electro-convulsive therapy. They pump electricity through your brain. It’s supposed to do you good. Except in certain American states, of course, where they do it because they’re really pissed off with you.” She was talking like that because she was scared, and she wasn’t looking at Marsh, she was looking at the receptionist. “Where is it? Quickly! Where?”
The ECT room was hidden in the bowels of the building like a guilty secret. They’d never have found it without directions. A reeded glass panel in the door was back-lit but it was impossible to see anything through it.
“That’s what caught my attention,” said the nurse who was waiting for them. “They don’t use it very often, and when they do it’s usually me does the prep. But you don’t like to barge in …”
Rosie didn’t wait for the end of his explanation. It was reasonable enough, but Rosie Holland never had trouble barging in anywhere. She shouldered past and threw the door wide.
Marsh was right behind her. He’d have been in front if she’d given him time or – again – if there’d been room to pass. “Be careful. If you’re right, there’s a dangerous man in here.”
She dismissed his concern scornfully. “It’s not him I’m worried about. You can have him. But there’s a young man with a remarkable brain in here too, and either that brain’s about to be connected to the national grid or it already has been. There’s no time left to be careful in.”
Or perhaps there was all the time in the world. As they pushed together through the inner swing doors a faint tangy smell like ozone hung in the air. Marsh didn’t recognise it, simply sniffed, frowned and pressed on. Rosie did, and it stopped her in her tracks. “We’re too late.”
Prufrock finally caught up, breathless and anxious. “Is he here?”
She shook her head wearily. The room’s main piece of furniture – a high couch chiefly remarkable for being equipped with padded straps – was unoccupied. But it had been used: the straps dangled untidily.
Shad Lucas had lain down on that couch, afraid but doggedly determined, believing that the man who told him to was trying to help, and suffered the straps to be secured about his body. Rosie could only guess how frightened he must have been, but he’d done it because it was his last hope. Of preserving his liberty, of saving his soul; of finding an explanation for what happened that he could live with.
He’d lain there, helpless, and watched while Doctor Cunningham coated a pair of electrodes in saline and probably jumped, his nerves screwed tight as guitar strings, at the cold, clammy touch of them to his temples. He’d gritted his teeth to silence them and watched Cunningham turn his attention to the machine beside the couch. It was just a box with buttons and dials, but it was connected to his head now with wires. He couldn’t read the dials, and it would have made no difference if he could. He had no way in the world of knowing they were turned up way above therapeutic levels.
“He did it,” she whispered. “The animal. He said to Shad, ‘Trust me, I’m a doctor.’ Then he tied him down and pumped raw electricity through his brain.” Her head rocked back on a moan of pure grief and a slow tear formed in her eye. “That marvellous brain, that we were only beginning to see what it was capable of. Now we’ll be lucky if it still knows which hole in your face your dinner goes in.”
Prufrock was as white as a sheet, his eyes the colour of daybreak on icicles. His voice was a mere breath, but a breath straight from Siberia. “Deliberately? You mean, he’s destroyed Shad’s mind in order to cover his tracks?”
“Yes,” whispered Rosie.
Harry Marsh had ducked down behind the high couch; now he reappeared. “Well, maybe,” he said tersely. “Ms Holland, look at this.”
There was a body on the floor, limbs sprawled and tangled with the equipment, long and narrow and clad in what had been a white coat until it got bled on. It groaned as she bent over it. It wasn’t dead; and it wasn’t Shad.
“And tell me,” continued Harry Marsh, a thread of hope just audible in his voice, “how someone whose brain was burnt to a crisp managed to deck the bastard who did it when he came to untie him afterwards?”
He ran. Running felt good. His bare feet were cut and blistered, lactic acid burned in his muscles, but that just meant he had a body again and after where he’d been any body, even one that hurt, was welcome. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t remember why he was running. He didn’t know where he was or where he’d been. He recognised the sensations of pain, of fear and, increasingly, of exhaustion, and for a spell he had no way to measure that was all the universe he knew. He didn’t know his own name.
He stayed off the road. He knew that was important although he didn’t know why. Bramble hedges tore at his
shirt and at his skin; crossing a stubble field was like running on nails. But he had a body again, and as long as he could feel it he could hold on to it. That was all that mattered: not the blood trails across his arms and chest, not the tattered soles of his feet, not even the violent beat – like pain but not pain exactly; like stroboscopic lights but not exactly that either – pulsing across his temples. He was alive, and he was putting distance between him and whatever had hurt him. That was what mattered.
An unconscious man can be neither cautioned nor questioned so no dilemma arises. As regards a suspect in the process of regaining consciousness, rules of procedure codified in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act specify that he cannot be questioned until he is capable of understanding the caution. Responsible police officers abide by the rules: partly because they’re fair and partly because failure to do so gets good cases slung out of court.
There is nothing in PACE relating specifically to the role in these circumstances of newspaper columnists who used to be doctors. Rosie hauled Andrew Cunningham out from under the couch, gave his bloody head a cursory examination and said, “He’ll live”. Then she filled a kidney dish from the tap.
Doctor Cunningham had been grabbed from behind and had his forehead bounced off the wall. It was a nasty injury rather than a dangerous one and he wasn’t far away. Voices and the touch of hands were already recalling him when the shock of cold water in his face pulled him back like an over-stretched elastic band. He blinked and put up a belated hand to defend himself. When his eyes cleared he was nose to nose with a plump face red with anger in which burned the eyes of Genghis Khan.
“I know what you did,” she said in her teeth. “I know why. I need to know how much damage you did and how long ago he left here.”
Concussion is a funny thing. It’s possible to regain consciousness, immediately remember everything up to the moment of the injury, and be able to pick up the threads more or less where they were dropped. Or you can be away on Planet Weird for hours, and sometimes much longer than that. Andrew Cunningham came round shaky and woolly but still with a pretty fair grasp of what had happened, who these people were, and why he had to be very careful what he said next.