Divine Poison: a crime mystery you won't be able to put down

by AB Morgan

  As Ian left, he thanked us for the nice chat. ‘I do look forward to clinic, it’s so good to socialise.’ Steph and I exchanged sad expressions. ‘Living in the community’s not all it’s cracked up to be, is it?’ Steph commented.

  First on my list of home visits to make that day, I had a late-morning appointment after clinic to see Ben Tierney at his parents’ house. Steph took all our larger equipment back to base. We’d had two no-shows, which meant that I would have to follow them up with a home visit sometime later.

  Ben’s injection was due that day but he’d always declined to attend any clinic where he would be seen in a public place with other mental health patients. He was not the type to avoid me when the date for his regular injection came around. ‘Hi, Monica, come on in,’ he welcomed me as always. ‘Sorry if I look a bit of a mess today.’

  Ben’s marriage had floundered, finally sinking because of his alcohol problems, and lately the good-natured family man was showing signs of the damage done by the bottle. Rubbing his hands either side of his ruddy face, shaking slightly, with red eyes and dehydrated skin, he had an air of resignation about him. At the core of his problems was a sick and manipulative abuser who had preyed on him and his friends, as children. Ben had tried to keep the details of his abuse an agonising secret and he partially succeeded for many years. However, his world crumpled around him four years previously as the alcohol took hold and loosened his anger. Ben disclosed details whilst roaring drunk. He staggered the streets of Lensham claiming to have uncovered a conspiracy of silence covering up abuse by the Catholic Church across the world, and he was convinced that the Italian Mafia, US Mafia, and the Freemasons, were involved in funding the Holy Roman Church establishment. Poor man. That was enough to get him arrested and sectioned under the Mental Health Act, twice in two years. It didn’t stop him. The drunken ranting pattern was repeated at least once a month and as a result, Ben’s marriage disintegrated, forcing him to live with his elderly parents.

  When sober, his disclosure of abuse was vague. Mostly, because Ben could hardly bring himself to use the relevant adjectives. What he did manage to reveal, left me with no doubt that he had been sexually abused, and by whom, in terms of gender, circumstances and profession; if you can call being a Catholic priest a profession.

  At my insistence, Ben finally plucked up the courage to report his abuse formally to the police, but no action was taken.

  ‘I told you there was no feckin’ point,’ Ben had said on his return. ‘They looked at me as if I was some sort of sexual deviant. All they asked me was why I’d left it so long before reporting it as a crime. They assumed I was heading for another breakdown or I was attention seeking. Waste of time. Why do you think I’ve never reported it before?’

  Mental health nurse training did not equip me with the skills to deal with sexual abuse disclosures, nor did it enable me to provide active interventions that could help. I had to rely on my instincts and the advice to encourage victims to report the crimes, ‘with a view to preventing further acts of sexual violence from the alleged perpetrator’. What good is that when the police have written the person off as being mentally ill and nothing else? When Ben had returned from the police station angry, abusive, and ferociously bitter, I was at a loss. I could only listen as he explained, through furious tears, how he had tried to ask his parents for help, as a child.

  ‘He promised me that if I kept our little secret, then I could be an altar boy, and “wouldn’t that make your parents the proudest people in the congregation?” he said. I didn’t even realise what he was doing was wrong to begin with. A touch here, a fondle there. I wasn’t the only one. He would take us, both the boys and the girls, one by one into the sacristy or sometimes into his office, if we were at the rectory. He didn’t keep us to himself either, he would arrange for invited guests to watch.’

  ‘He did what?’ I asked, hardly daring to believe what I was hearing.

  ‘Yep. He invited other men, some in smart suits, to watch, and they would listen to us practise our Catechisms while he touched us in the name of God, and they touched themselves. Sick fuckers.’ Ben had tried to tell his parents but they didn’t believe a word. He was punished for blaspheming.

  ‘What exactly did you say to your parents?’ I asked, hoping to understand their lack of action in response to the plea for help from their son.

  ‘Oh, I said that I didn’t like the way the holy father touched me on my private parts. I couldn’t have been any clearer. I had nightmares, wet the bed, and attached myself like a limpet to my mother. I was a little boy who didn’t know what sex was.’ When he tried to avoid attending for confirmation classes, Ben’s father beat him and dragged him along, instructing the priest to ensure he was morally punished. Which he was.

  Once married, Ben had two young children of his own and a few years previously, as reports were coming in over the TV news about stories of alleged abuse in a children’s home run by the Catholic Church, Ben began to lose control. ‘I couldn’t believe my own fucking eyes and ears. The Vatican denied it.

  ‘I had a life, a job, a wife, and my girls. I’d done my best to get on and not be a victim, but I was right all along, so there was no way in hell the church was getting its hands on my children. I stopped them. I wouldn’t let them go to church. Of course, I never went, ever. But Marie and the kids did, they used to go every Sunday, with Marie’s mother, so I put a stop to that immediately. Marie argued with me for days and weeks. We were screaming and shouting at each other, and I took to drinking even more. On top of that the police kept locking me up, saying I was deluded, and social services became involved because they said my behaviour was abusive. I fucking died when they said that.’ Ben was no longer allowed to see his own children, unless supervised, and the emotional pain of losing them was killing him.

  Ben hovered a tad above rock bottom in terms of his mental health. Alcohol abuse and depression had veered into the psychotic, and he was prescribed injectable medication for his paranoia, as well as an antidepressant for his mood. He openly admitted that he liked the effect of the antipsychotic injections, although he was sure he didn’t warrant having them. They allowed him to function in a fug of sedation where emotional pain couldn’t break through so often or as acutely. It topped up the effects of the alcohol.

  He had determinedly refused psychological therapy, but his avoidance was understandable. The past abuse, which was too agonising to put properly into spoken words, was equalled by the blame he laid at the feet of his parents, and yet without them he would have been consigned to the streets as a homeless, hopeless alcoholic. Drink was Ben’s refuge, but the more he drank, the more the psychological damage and anger became apparent.

  Somehow, I had managed to persuade Ben to begin attending Len-DAS, as an attempt at rescue from the brink of self-destruction. He had been to the first session but was contemplating whether or not to make a return visit. Ben was always willing to please, and was charming and kind-hearted when he was sober, but his lack of motivation to change his coping strategies was frustrating. He drank copious amounts of spirits, beer, and cheap wine. Consequentially his liver was showing signs of damage in recent blood tests.

  In short, he was on a slow road to nowhere.

  ‘Ah, now then, Nurse Monica, can I ask you a question today, if you don’t mind?’ Ben’s parents, Sean and Manuela Tierney, were often at home when I visited and they were keen to talk to me that day. It was obvious how incredibly despairing they felt, watching as their son slowly slipped over the edge of a steep precipice, and they were desperately seeking more than divine intervention.

  ‘I’ve been told by Father Joseph Kavanagh at St Francis’, of a project running at St David’s Church Hall, which helps people like Ben, and we want to know your opinion of the work they do there, and whether Ben would be suitable.’

  Ben, real name Benito, had inherited the best features of both his parents. He had a Spanish mother, Manuela, and his father, Sean, was a gentle giant of an Iris
hman, which meant trouble for me because I always found myself sliding accidentally into mimicking his father’s soft brogue whenever we spoke. Sean Tierney was reassured that I had recently been invited to visit the project at St David’s. ‘I promise I’ll give you my honest opinion as soon as I see for myself what’s on offer,’ I said, tempering this with a reminder that Ben might choose not to attend, even if the project offered a magic cure-all therapy. Ben had listened in to the conversation, and shook his despondent head at hearing his parents’ insistence. He walked away.

  It was a heart-breaking scene.

  Before returning to the office to write up notes, send letters, and make phone calls, I had two patients to track down. Harvey often forgot what day he was on, so it was no great surprise that he had failed to attend his clinic appointment that morning. I made my way to the romantically named Heights, an area containing several high-rise blocks of flats. Apart from nuisance pigeons, drug dealers lurked on every corner, either in a blacked-out car or holding a bulldog on a hideous leather lead, collars studded with spikes. The dealers peddled their wares and mental health services picked up the pieces of the psychosis that arose in their customers. I hated them for it.

  Harvey lived on the third floor of Green Heights with his elderly, German mother, who was marginally less bonkers than he was. I rang the bell outside the ground floor entrance and waited for a response. As I loitered impatiently, I looked around at my vehicle, gauging the likelihood of it being damaged by the time I emerged from the flats. A silver Audi was pulling in next to my car but the man inside didn’t get out, he just sat there. I rang the entrance buzzer three times before obtaining an answer. ‘Ja?’

  ‘It’s Monica the nurse, Mrs Fields, I’ve come to see Harvey.’ I was buzzed in, and decided to walk up the stairs rather than take the vertical toilet of a lift.

  ‘Hello!’ said Harvey brightly. ‘Sorry I couldn’t come to clinic, Mother was holding me hostage against my will and I had a meeting with the brigands from upstairs because the price of my blood has gone up on the black market.’

  ‘Has it indeed.’ I checked the drug chart and realised that Harvey had now declined three consecutive injections. ‘Who decides on the market value of your blood these days, Harvey?’ I asked.

  ‘They do, the Australians. A pint each night they have from me, look here.’ Harvey undid his belt and dropped his oversized trousers to reveal baggy underpants and a pair of skinny white legs. ‘See the marks there, and there.’ He pointed at the skin on his legs, which appeared perfectly intact. This confirmed my suspicions. Harvey was slipping back into his internal paranoid world.

  ‘It must be scary having those people taking your blood every night. Shall we go ahead with trying to see if your injection will help you to feel less afraid?’

  ‘No. No. I don’t need it.’

  I tried another tactic. ‘I expect you must be fed up with these Australian brigands coming into your room at night. You must be losing a lot of sleep.’

  ‘He hasn’t slept for weeks now. I told Toni and she knows all about it,’ Mrs Fields interjected. Toni, Harvey’s social worker and my office mate, had mentioned the difficulties she was having with Harvey and that signs of relapse were becoming more prominent. But despite my usual tricks, Harvey would not be convinced that an injection was helpful. His mother supported his decision, mostly because she didn’t want to upset him and make him irritable, but also because she sometimes became so convinced by his stories that she joined in the fantasies. Tricky.

  ‘Would you take some tablets, instead?’ I offered. That was a mistake. Harvey asked me to leave, in no uncertain terms, and I beat a hasty retreat to the door, promising Mrs Fields to return with Toni to negotiate a way of avoiding another trip to hospital for Harvey before matters became too risky to manage.

  As I stepped from their flat door onto the landing, I looked out of the window and down to where my car was parked. The man in the silver Audi was standing, resting against the side of the Audi’s bonnet, between my car and his.

  I phoned Kelly, wanting advice from Eddie. There was something about the situation that made the marker on my crapometer twitch. ‘The crapometer’, like a milometer, or the clapometer as used on Opportunity Knocks to rate audience response, is a standard form of measurement. In this case, it’s used by mental health practitioners only, and it rates the level of risk of soiling your own underwear in extreme or violent situations.

  ‘Do you want me to call the police?’

  ‘No. There’s no point. He hasn’t done anything. Tell Eddie, I’ll keep my mobile phone in my hand and I’ll phone the police if I have to.’

  ‘Keep this call going and I’ll listen in. If it gets heated I’ll call the police,’ Kelly insisted.

  I approached my car, trying to look confident and professional. ‘Can I help you?’

  There was a pause, during which I unlocked my car and put my clinical bag into the boot. I couldn’t get to the driver’s door without passing within touching distance of the stranger. The man had eyes like a shark and he said nothing, but he did at least move so that I could get into my car. Saying a very curt ‘thank you’ I drove away without further delay. I couldn’t find the other patient who had failed to turn up for clinic, so by the time I returned to the office I was in need of a rant.

  ‘Who was he?’ asked Kelly, about the man with shark’s eyes.

  ‘No, I’ve no idea who he is, probably the drug dealers’ evil mastermind. He gave me the bloody willies, though.’ I shivered.

  After writing up my notes of the morning’s work, and talking through with Toni what the options were for Harvey Fields, I made a quick call to St David’s Church Hall to gather details about the Pathways Project groups run by Father Raymond. Once this was clarified, I checked my message book, but as nothing required my urgent attention, I had the luxury of a short lunch break. Stuffing a couple of sad sandwiches into my mouth, washed down with a cup of tea, I started to feel more human again, until Eddie nabbed me.

  ‘Are you free for our trip to the nick?’

  We arrived at the front desk in Hollberry Police Station and duly announced the reason for our attendance to the elderly desk sergeant. There was a short wait until a grey-suited DS Adams, who was of indeterminate age, eventually greeted us. I hadn’t come across him in my travels before, as I tended to have more regular dealings with the local beat officer for Lensham. There was a lot of crossover between our two professions. This, however, was the first time that my personal data had been taken for the record: name, professional details, home address, and my fingerprints.

  Eddie tried to make light of the situation, ‘It’s a fair cop, guv, it was me wot dun it …’ I humoured him with a small titter, but DS Adams wore a deadpan expression throughout. Eddie screwed up his face in acknowledgement of his own poor taste. ‘Not really the time for levity, is it. Sorry.’

  DS Adams expressed regret for the inconvenience of having to ask us for fingerprints, but implied that their use may not be necessary.

  ‘I’m waiting on confirmation from the DI. Mrs Collins’s house was in order, apart from the kitchen, of course, and there are no indicators for this being a suspicious death. However, Mrs Collins’s brother has been insistent that his sister’s death was not suicide, and he’s demanding investigation into her recent boyfriend. If you can fill in any of the blanks for us that would be greatly appreciated.’

  Eddie and I mentioned what we knew about Jan Collins, her family, her background, and anything else we could furnish DS Adams with regarding Jan’s relationship with Liam, the conman boyfriend.

  ‘Do you have any idea where they met? Who else Mrs Collins may have introduced him to, anything at all?’ asked DS Adams, who was obviously clueless regarding Liam, other than the fact they had a surname for him: Brookes. ‘I’m quite new to the area, but my colleagues know their patch well, and I’m reliably informed that Liam Brookes isn’t known to the local police here. Nothing is showing as outstanding in terms
of warrants or traffic violations.’ DS Adams most certainly wasn’t local; I had determined a background accent when he spoke, with the unmistakable vowel sounds of the Midlands giving him away.

  Eddie and I were of little help as informants. We were in the dark about Liam Brookes. ‘Jan had mentioned him to me in passing and as part of our general chit chat, although she hadn’t been particularly expansive on the subject. She always seemed to have one or two man-friends on the go at any one time. They tended to float into her life and usually it was six months or so before they finally drifted away again, no damage done. Liam was assumed to be one of these transient boyfriends until Jan announced he was taking her on a romantic holiday to France,’ I said.

  ‘Do we know anything about his past misdemeanours?’ asked DS Adams.

  ‘No, we didn’t know anything untoward had happened until our team was contacted by Jan’s best friend, Lily. She was worried because Jan had stopped phoning her as regularly as she normally would.’

  According to Lily, Jan and Liam had stayed in France longer than they were originally booked for, cancelling the return flights, and therefore Jan could have run out of medication; if she was taking it. After several days of silence, Lily had managed to contact Jan’s mobile phone but had spoken to Liam. He gave her the news that Jan had been arrested for indecent exposure and taken to Hôpital Corbet, a French mental hospital, and he provided Lily with the contact details. That was the last time Liam was heard from.

  Recounting these facts to DS Adams, I recalled in painful detail the hard work required in achieving repatriation of my patient from a French hospital. What a dreadful pickle that had been to sort out, especially as my French was not up to discussing relapse signatures, medication, and care transfer planning.