by Bateman
Andy got a round of applause. The orderlies, relaxing back against the wall, just nodded and smiled. Bertie said Andy hadn’t eaten since Christmas.
Morris, the skinhead, reached across the table with his fork and speared one of Patrick’s sausages. The young writer grabbed it back and swore at him.
I said, ‘I keep hearing snatches of piano, can anyone else?’
‘Sí,’ said Pedro.
‘I keep hearing snatches of piano,’ Malachy the goalkeeper repeated. ‘Can anyone else?’
‘I can hear an oboe,’ said Patrick.
‘I love the sound of breaking glass,’ said Jock, the small fat one who’d been reading a Kindle, ‘especially when I’m lonely.’
‘I had a trial at Leeds,’ said Joe.
I looked at Bertie. ‘Pedo,’ he mouthed.
‘No, really, is anyone hearing a piano?’
At the end of the table, Jock raised his hand.
‘You’ve heard it too?’
‘No. But do you want your sausages? You haven’t touched them.’
I glanced around. The two orderlies had moved to the doorway, and were chatting to each other. I lowered my voice a little. ‘Whoever can tell me most about the piano, and who’s playing it, is welcome to them.’
Immediately every hand but Andy’s went up. I pointed at Pedro. He smiled widely.
‘It’s a Steinway,’ he said, his accent thick. ‘They’ve been making the world’s finest pianos for over a hundred and fifty years.’
‘Yes, okay,’ I said. ‘Not so much the origin of—’
‘Sometimes we used to stand around it and sing,’ he said, ‘But JMJ took it away after Franno got killed.’
‘Who’s Franno?’ I asked innocently.
‘Franno,’ said Bertie, ‘was a disagreeable little oik.’
‘Franno was okay,’ said Scott, ‘and he had a lethal left foot.’
‘What happened to him?’ I asked.
‘He was knifed,’ said Jock, ‘with a knife.’
‘Big fucking knife,’ said Michael, lowering his earphones for the first time. The beats boomed out.
‘Who knifed him?’ I asked. ‘One of you?’
There was an immediate chorus of no’s and denials and excuses and confessions. Joe and Michael raised their knives and began making stabbing motions. They were plastic knives, for good reason. Bertie shouted at them to quieten down. Michael reached across and tried to steal one of Joe’s sausages. Joe slapped his hand away. Patrick, the writer, used the distraction to grab one of Michael’s. The orderlies stepped back into the room and warned everyone to quieten down. There was a chorus of ‘it wasn’t me.’
When the orderlies had returned to their conversation I said, ‘Who then? Who stabbed him? Who really stabbed him?’
Bertie leaned forward. He looked around the table. He said quietly, ‘We never knew his real name, but we called him The Man from Del Monte.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he was a fruit,’ said Pedro.
‘Or looked like one,’ said Michael, ‘in his white suit.’
‘A white suit?’
‘He always wore a white suit,’ said Bertie.
‘They were the only clothes he had,’ said Joe.
‘He was offered others,’ said Patrick. ‘He chose to wear the white suit.’
‘It made him look like a fruit,’ said Michael.
‘And that’s why we called him The Man from Del Monte,’ said Jock.
‘I never knew why we called him that,’ said Patrick. ‘I don’t know where Del Monte is.’
‘It’s in America,’ said Bertie, ‘but it’s not a place, it’s a company, which makes tins of fruit. It’s based in San Fransisco.’
‘Home of the fruit,’ said Jock.
‘Anyway,’ said Bertie, ‘The Man from Del Monte is what we called him, because we didn’t know his name and he never spoke. All he ever did was play that piano. Can I have my sausages now?’
He made a move. I blocked him. ‘Not so fast. Where is he now, The Man from Del Monte?’
‘They dragged him away after he killed Franno,’ said Pedro, ‘and we haven’t seen him since. Day after, the piano went too. But we hear it from time to time.’
‘So you think he’s playing it? That he’s still here?’ I asked.
‘Maybe. Thing is, they’re not supposed to lock us in our rooms at night, ’cos of health and safety.’
‘Damn right,’ said Michael.
‘But they do it all the same. The other night I heard noises and looked through the keyhole and I just had this wee glimpse of the orderlies walking Del Monte past.’
‘They were taking him away?’
‘No. About half an hour later they walked him back.’
‘So what do you think they were doing?’
‘Well, either they had him out in the exercise yard, or he was bound for the shock corridor.’
As if they’d planned it in advance, they all raised their hands, and spread their fingers and touched the tips of them together across the table and made a bzzz bzzz bzzz sound and shuddered.
I looked around them in disbelief. ‘You’re serious? I thought electric shock went out with the Ark.’
‘Nope,’ said Bertie, ‘it’s back in fashion. JMJ swears by it.’
I looked at him. ‘What’s it got to do with her? She’s only a nurse.’
They all had a good laugh at that.
Malachy slowly raised his hand, and I nodded at him.
‘It wasn’t electric shock he was getting,’ he said, ‘not if he walked back. It must have been the exercise yard.’
There was a general agreement and, it seemed to me, a little disappointment with that.
‘If they’d shocked him,’ Patrick observed, ‘maybe we wouldn’t have to put up with that fucking piano. It drove us all up the wall when he was in here, and it’s still doing it even though they have him locked upstairs somewhere.’
‘So you can hear it?’
‘Of course we can,’ said Patrick. ‘We’re mad, not deaf.’
And that got them all laughing again.
When they had quietened a little, Pedro stretched out his hands in front of him. ‘Always the same tune,’ he said, and began to mimic playing it. Beside me, Bertie joined in. Then Michael, and pretty soon the whole table, with the exception of Andy, was following suit. Including me. I have never had any musical talent, but playing the invisible piano proved to be quite easy.
After a bit, I asked if anyone had actually seen him stab Franno.
‘I did,’ said Patrick. ‘Cut him straight across the belly. His guts were spilling out all over the place.’
‘Don’t listen to him,’ said Scott. ‘He makes shit up all the time.’
‘I had a trial for Leeds,’ said Joe.
‘How’d that work out for you?’ Jock asked.
‘I would have made it,’ said Joe, ‘if my knee hadn’t given out.’
‘Pedo,’ whispered Bertie in my ear.
I prodded my fork into my sausage, and raised it, together with my voice. ‘I’m serious,’ I said. ‘Did anyone actually see what happened?’
But they were no longer looking at me. Their attention had been diverted to the doorway, where JMJ was standing, with her hands on her hips and a black banana of a scowl on her lips.
‘I’ve told you all,’ she growled, ‘you’re not to be talking about that stuff. It’s not good for you.’ She clapped her hands together. ‘So no more – no more! Now, if you’ve finished your lunch, get outside and enjoy the fresh air before your activities begin. Come on – out with you, and let’s hear no more about it!’
They all jumped up, with the exception of Andy, and me, and began to file out. Bertie moved around the table and helped Andy to his feet. As he guided him towards the door, Bertie looked longingly at my sausage.
And then it was just me, and Sister Mary.
She said, ‘New fella, you’ve hardly touched your lunch.’
I sai
d, ‘I was distracted.’
‘You’ll get used to it,’ she said.
‘I hope not,’ I replied, and pushed back from the table. ‘When does my assessment begin?’ I asked.
‘It began the moment you were carried through these doors screaming and crying like a little girl.’
She meant it to sting, but it did not. I had lived with Mother for too long.
‘Little girls,’ I said, ‘would certainly be popular around here.’
Her brow furrowed.
As I approached the door, which she was partially blocking, she gave me a long look before stepping to one side. But as I passed her she brought a hand down hard on my shoulder to stop me. Her grip was firm.
‘We all rub along quite nicely here,’ she said. ‘I do hope you’re not going to be a disruptive influence.’
‘I hope so too,’ I replied.
25
Dr Richardson was wearing the same suit as the day before but a different tie. There was some sort of crest on it, and a tiny figure of a golfer. He asked me what he thought were pertinent questions about my childhood, my parents, my friends, relationships with girls and women, my arrests, my probations and why I liked to look in people’s windows at night. I gave him the truth, variations of the truth, and lies. He took a list of the medications I had been officially prescribed, and then those I had picked up by nefarious means, mostly the internet or from little Chinese men in herbal shops who were both inscrutable and unscrupulous. He asked about the various diagnoses I’d been saddled with over the years, which included me being a manic depressive, having a personality disorder, having multiple personality disorders, being schizophrenic, paranoid, having delusions of grandeur, delusions of inadequacy and just generally being delusional. He noted that one doctor had accused me of suffering from hypochondria and I said the important word there was suffering.
He said, ‘Do you think you’re dying?’
I said, ‘We’re all dying.’
He made a note. I yawned. He said that the treatment of mental illness had come on in leaps and bounds in recent years.
‘Like Tigger,’ I said.
He made another note and said, ‘And the medications have improved vastly. I might want to try you on something new.’
‘Really,’ I said.
‘You appear dismissive.’
‘Different circus, same old clown.’
He made another note. ‘You think I’m a clown?’
‘Am I laughing?’
‘Tell me about the attraction to crime fiction.’
‘I’m not attracted to it. It’s what I enjoy reading, and turning other people on to.’
‘Turning them on to it?’
I sighed. ‘Do you read it?’ I asked.
‘A little. If I was to ask you for your favourite authors, who would you say?’
‘How long have you got?’ He smiled, and opened his hands to me. I smiled too, and nodded at them. ‘Knights of the Open Palm.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Knights of the Open Palm is thought to have been the first hard-boiled detective story. Carroll John Daly wrote it for Black Mask magazine in 1923.’
‘I see. And he or she would be your favourite writer?’
‘No, but your hands made me think of it. He’s kind of obscure, but he certainly kick-started it. Hard-boiled would be my preferred style of crime fiction. You’d probably be more familiar with Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler or James M. Cain or Cornell Woolrich, or Dorothy Hughes, or Jim Thompson or Dave Goodis or Charles Williams or Elmore Leonard or—’
The palms were up again. I stopped.
Dr Richardson said, ‘Explain to me what you mean by hard-boiled.’
‘It has to do with the writing style – lean, direct, gritty. The unsentimental portrayal of violence and sex.’
‘And what then is noir fiction?’
‘That’s like a sub-section of hard-boiled. The main character isn’t usually a detective, but may be a suspect or the criminal himself. Usually he’s involved in the crime in some way, so he’s not someone who’s called in to solve it.’
‘Is there much sex in noir?’
‘Yes, usually. It’s used to advance the plot and highlight the self-destructive qualities of the characters.’
He began to read out some of the notes he had made. ‘So, let me see, we have . . . unsentimental violence and sex, self-destructive characters . . .’
‘It would be a mistake,’ I said, ‘to read me into what I read.’
‘Really? And why would that be?’
‘Your profession is mental illness. Does that make you someone with a mental illness?’
He pursed his lips. ‘Okay. Fair point. Yet, I understand that you have taken this fascination with the darker side of life one step further than reading about it, since you’ve set yourself up as some kind of private detective. You investigate crimes. You get involved in them. You expose yourself to danger.’
‘Not if I can help it,’ I said.
‘Nevertheless. What do you think that says about you?’
‘I don’t think it says anything other than I like to help humans, and I like a good mystery.’
‘Humans? You like to help humans?’
‘Yes.’
‘It makes it sound almost as if you didn’t consider yourself human.’ I looked at him. ‘Are you human?’
‘As opposed to . . .?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Like a giraffe?’
‘You’re not a giraffe.’
‘Are you sure about that? I might be a giraffe in disguise.’
I raised my head, and stretched out my neck. He made another note.
‘I’m interested – why did you choose giraffe?’
‘I chose it at random. I might as easily have chosen a barn owl.’
‘A barn owl. Interesting.’
‘Why?’
‘Both a barn owl and a giraffe could look through your windows at night. You like to look through windows at night.’
‘I have an insatiable curiosity.’
‘Insatiable. You know, your reading and your language is littered with sex words.’
‘So you think this is all about sex?’
‘Most things are. Repression of, depression about, resistance to, no resistance to, premature, immature, ligature. It all comes back.’
‘I do believe you’re the only one bringing everything back to sex. In crime-fiction terms, you’ve been leading the witness, and swaying the jury, and you’re also the judge, who’ll be delivering the verdict. It doesn’t really matter what I say, you’ll interpret it your own way, and I’ll swing for it.’
‘Do you see everything in terms of punishment?’
‘No, just sex, apparently.’
‘And do you really think you’re on trial here?’
‘Am I not?’
‘We’re just having a friendly chat, getting to know each other.’
‘Are you married?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Do you have a wife?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Tell me about her.’
‘That’s not really—’
‘I thought we were getting to know each other?’
‘Well, there have to be boundaries, otherwise—’
‘Do you have a lot of sex?’
‘I’m not—’
‘Do you play golf?’
‘What? Yes, yes I do.’
‘Often?’
‘Twice a week. Why, do you?’
‘This isn’t about me.’
‘I . . .’
‘Are you good at putting?’
‘As it happens, I’m not bad at—’
‘Do you like to see balls going into a hole?’
‘I’m not sure I—’
‘Do you use those big golf sticks with the heavy bits on the end?’
‘You mean drivers?’
‘Yes. Drivers. Do you like to get a good firm grip of the shaft?’
‘I’m not sure I—’
‘What do you call that when you bring the stick back?’
‘You mean when I swing the club?’
‘Yes. Do you do that?’
‘Do I swing? Yes, I swing, of course I—’
‘You swing. Interesting.’ I made a note. An imaginary one. He watched me write it. He almost leaned across the table to see what I was writing. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I like to think we’ve gotten to know each other a little better. I’m going to write you a prescription here for the latest – and I mean latest – drug on the market that I really think will work wonders for you.’
I peeled off the script and set it on the desk and pushed it across to him. He pretended to pick it up and read it. He nodded. Then he mimed balling it and throwing it across the room towards a metal bin in the corner. I studied the trajectory.
‘Missed,’ I said.
He clasped his hands and nodded slowly. ‘When you get started, you’re very good. Attack as a form of defence. You know, I’ve made quite a lot of notes, but do you know what I’m going to do?’
He showed me his notebook, and then tore the top sheet off. He repeated the process for three more sheets before aligning all four neatly together. Then he crumpled them into a single ball and threw it across the room. It landed perfectly in the bin.
‘Why would you do that?’ I asked.
‘Because I think they’re worthless. I think you’ve been flim-flamming me. I don’t think I’m going to get anything that is at all useful until either you let your guard down, or I find a way to climb over this wall you’ve put up. You know, I’m not your enemy.’
‘I’m being kept here against my will.’
‘No. Well, yes. But for your own good. I’m trying to help you, and I’m trying to be your friend.’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘Okay, not your friend friend, but I do have your best interests at heart. We all do. All we’re doing is assessing you. It’s like getting you ready for an MOT. If a car’s not running properly, you get it checked out; you think it might take an hour, but the mechanic discovers the problem’s bigger than you thought it was, and he has to keep it a few days and you have to make alternative transport arrangements. It’s a bit of a pain, but it won’t last for ever and you’ll get your car back all shiny and running efficiently. And you know, compared to how you were when you first came in and the first morning we spoke, there really has been a remarkable improvement. It’s amazing what can be achieved in a week.’