by Dan Waddell
As a result, he'd spent most of the night awake, primed to react, listening to the wind in the leaves and the clank of the central heating system shutting down slowly and then later, much later, shuddering to life.
He rose groggily to a sitting position, a dull ache behind his eyes.
'Brian Harris,' he thought to himself for the hundredth time. 'Of all the bloody blokes in the world.'
After a few more moments summoning the will, he stood, wincing with discomfort. All told, it wasn't too bad.
He made his way gingerly upstairs to the bathroom and splashed some cold water on his face. He dried off and went to the spare bedroom. The door was closed. He knocked. No answer. He knocked again. Silence. That meant nothing. When he was a kid that age, he could sleep through a marching band passing his bed. He eased the door open and popped his head round.
The bed was empty.
The window was open, the curtain billowing in the breeze. Foster went over and looked out. It was a sheer drop into the garden. That wouldn't have fazed Gary. He remembered one of his previous convictions for escaping from police custody. He'd scaled the high, flat wall of a magistrates' court and got out through a ceiling window, down the side of the building and away. A miniSpider-Man.
Looks like I slept more than I realized, he thought.
He went downstairs and filled the kettle. His mobile phone, charging on the sideboard, showed a missed call.
Nigel Barnes.
Foster struggled to understand. Barnes was babbling about a breakthrough, so he agreed to meet him in Farringdon near the London Metropolitan Archives, in the same cafe where he and Heather had approached him about the Hogg case earlier that year. First he phoned in a missing persons report for Gary, giving a description and asking anyone who found the boy to call him immediately.
He phoned the care home. No sign of him there. Please stay out of trouble, he thought. If he starts robbing after I signed him out of the home then my arse will be toast, he thought.
Barnes was waiting, hair mussed and wild, running his hands frantically through it. He was wired on coffee and adrenaline. It turned out he'd barely slept. That makes two of us, Foster thought. He ordered a black coffee, sat down and emptied two sachets of sugar into it. Barnes must have spent most of his night smoking, because he reeked of tobacco. His experience with Karl Hogg made him very sensitive to the smell, plunging him right back into the box-filled room, the pain, the sickly sweet nicotine breath of his tormentor . . .
'Come on then, what's the news?' he asked, snapping himself out of his brief, unpleasant reverie. 'Barely understood a word of what you said on the phone.'
Barnes drew a deep breath, pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. He told him about Anthony Chapman, how his mother gave him away shortly after his birth because she believed that his life was in danger if he remained in the family bosom. The Church privately arranged the adoption and all details of it were erased.
After her husband died she had confessed to the new vicar of her parish that it was the word of an aunt that convinced her to take such drastic action. That aunt had been locked up for most of her life in a notorious mental hospital, Colney Hatch. It had retained the old moniker informally despite changing its name to Friern Hospital in the 1930s. The hospital was long gone, demolished to make way for luxury flats, though the old facade had been retained. Princess Park Manor. Foster knew it as a haven for city boys, football players and minor glitterati. He chuckled inwardly. Did they know their pads were built on the drool of tens of thousands of raving nutters?
'All very interesting, but how does it help us?' he asked.
'The records for Colney Hatch are in the London Metropolitan Archives. Case notes, admittance registers, that sort of thing. This aunt may well have told the doctors about her fears. Who these people were that sought some sort of revenge. In which case, they may have made a record of it.'
'Back up,' Foster said, holding up his hands. You're telling me there might be something in the delusional rantings of a woman so mad that she spent her life in the nuthouse, the same woman who was ignored by her entire family bar one for being completely doolally?'
Barnes shrugged. Well, I'd put it in slightly more sympathetic terms, but yes, I am. What this woman said so spooked Edith Chapman that she gave away her child.
From what I know, Edith Chapman was a decent, upstanding member of the community --'
'She gave away her child,' Foster interrupted. 'Hardly a decent and upstanding act, is it?'
'No. But we know that someone appears to be tracking down and killing the descendants of Horton and Sarah Rowley. We don't know why. This aunt prophesied all this.
OK, she was a few decades out, but what's to say she wasn't right? From where I'm sitting, it certainly looks like she might have been.'
Foster sipped at his coffee. He knew Barnes was on to something -- this was a lead worth pursuing. If they could work out why this was happening, finding out who was behind it would become a damn sight easier. He could only imagine what Harris might say when he went to him claiming the words of a long-deceased mental patient marked a breakthrough.
Were Harris and Susie going out? Was it a one-off? Did he stay the night? No, stop it, he thought. Don't think about Harris.
'OK,' he said eventually. What do we do?'
Nigel flicked open his notebook. 'The patient's name was Margaret Howell. She was born in 1909, first child of Emma Howell, nee Rowley, the elder daughter of Horton and Sarah Rowley, the couple who moved here in 1891
from regions unknown. She died in 1964, aged 55, in Friern Mental Hospital from a "seizure", though what sort it doesn't say. Epilepsy, perhaps.'
'Doesn't tell us much,' Foster said.
'No, but her case notes might. There's one problem: patient records are usually subject to a hundred-year closure rule. Unless.'
'Unless what?'
'Unless the police make an application.'
'That could take days, even weeks,' Foster replied. He rubbed his chin. It had been a few days since he'd last shaved. You said the archives have the records for the mental hospital?'
Barnes nodded.
'They have them even though they're not available to the general public'
Nigel nodded again.
Foster drained his coffee cup. 'In that case, follow me.'
Nigel sat at the desk waiting for Foster. He'd been invited into the back office where he'd been sitting patiently for the best part of an hour. The archive was sparsely populated, just a few dedicated researchers, most of them students, he guessed, going quietly about their task, alongside the occasional amateur. Foster returned clutching a faded brown packet.
'Here you go,' Foster said, dropping the bundle on the desk in front of him.
'I'm impressed. Thought they'd want a written application.'
'They
did. But I made it clear there was little time to waste. They want one sent retrospectively'
Nigel picked the packet up. Closed documents. It was rare that a researcher like him got his hands on them, and he couldn't deny the thrill. The front bore Margaret Howell's name, date of birth and patient number. It was, to his disappointment, surprisingly thin.
He pulled out the records, a sense of rising excitement.
Foster sat down opposite, watching him closely.
The first document was Margaret Howell's admittance papers. The date was 29 May 1924. She was just fifteen years old. 'Looks like she spent her whole life in an asylum,' Nigel murmured to Foster as he scanned down the document, which covered two pages.
The first part was biographical information. Age, occupation, religion, address, none of which seemed remarkable.
Then it mentioned 'Age on first attack ... 11' before going on to state that she had had several more attacks.
In legible hand, under the heading 'Facts Specified in Medical Certificate upon which Insanity was Founded', the reasons for her being deemed insane were listed.
She says
that she and her family are cursed by a past event. She believes they will be hunted down and killed for the deaths of others. She exhibits strong symptoms of paranoid behaviour which often degenerate into seizures and fits. Her next of kin dismiss the idea that they are in any way in danger and deny any knowledge of her misdemeanours that may explain Miss behaviour.
Nigel read it out to Foster, together with another paragraph under 'Other Facts Indicating Insanity' in which the doctor, presumably the one who committed her, noted that her family were frightened by her frequent mood swings, her delusions and her constant reiteration that they would all die for their sins. In their view she had become a danger to herself and a nuisance to them.
The second page carried a black and white photograph of a terrified and bewildered-looking girl. Her eyes were hollow, her cheekbones sharp and her face devoid of any discernible tone. He showed it to Foster.
'Jesus, that's a kid. How many people were in this place?'
'Back then? Around three thousand people.'
What exactly was wrong with her?'
Nigel scoured the page. Alongside the photo was a line stating 'Form of Disorder'. Next to it were written the words 'Paranoid Schizophrenia'.
There followed a more detailed physical description.
Her physical condition was 'feeble'. Her temperament 'volatile'. Her skin also showed bruises from her latest 'attack'. There were more details of the history of her condition -- a series of attacks between the age of eleven and her admittance, of increasing severity and duration.
No mention was made of any paranoid behaviour. She was admitted to Ward 4.
The next set of case notes was dated little more than a year later. It noted the effects of treatment on Margaret.
The handwriting was, even for a physician, almost impossible to decipher despite Nigel's years of practice in the art. There was one phrase he could make out and it made his stomach turn. Electroconvulsive therapy.
'They gave her electroshock treatment,' he told Foster.
'When?'
'It had started by the time these case notes were written, just over a year after she was admitted. The handwriting is difficult to make out. But there's a sentence here that says she was responding well to the treatment and her delusional episodes were getting more infrequent.'
'Let's hope someone made a note of what those episodes were before they shocked her into becoming a zombie.'
'She must have retained some lucidity if she was able to scare Edith Chapman.'
'Do we know when Edith Chapman visited her?'
"I presumed it was over a period of time, and sometime near the birth of her son. But we have no way of knowing.
I suppose she could have come to see her aunt when she was younger and whatever she heard and saw stayed with her.'
'That would make sense to me,' Foster said. 'I can see why a kid would be scared by the rantings of a mad woman, particularly if she visited her in some Gothic madhouse where people screamed and climbed the walls.
But as she grew up, got older, why would she believe the words of a schizophrenic?'
'There's a long history of people who suffer from mental illness being viewed as possessed, either by spirits but more often the Devil. Edith Chapman was a religious woman. Perhaps she believed God was sending her a message. I don't know. Maybe her aunt was so convincing she couldn't believe it was anything other than true.'
He ploughed on through the file. Nothing for several years, until 1947, more than two decades after she was admitted. A different doctor this time, thankfully one with decipherable handwriting. Nigel scanned it first, but as he realized its importance he began to read out loud to Foster.
The patient continues to make slow yet gradual progress. Discussion was taken about whether to carry out a surgical operation, but rejected in favour of continued elelectrocompulsive therapy. The patient last experienced a seizure more than a year ago an encouraging sign. A possible discharge has been discussed, but the patient herself states that she would rather stay where she feels safe. It is her delusion that she and members of her family are at risk from persons unnamed for acts perpetrated towards the end of the last century. The patient swears that on her death bed, her Grandmother informed her of a horrible family secret. According to the patient, her grandfather was eventually found and killed by people seaking revenge for the deaths of the inocent, and that they would not stop until every descendant of the family has been dispatched in a similar manner. She is convinced that if she were to return to the outside world she would fall victim, so asks to stay. She can provide no proof of this wild story. She says her Grandmother took the secret to the grave with her.
Very few of the family, apart from her young niece, who comes once or twice a year call in to visit her. When I approach them to test out the veracity of Miss Howell's claims they insisted there was no truth in them whatsoever. No matter how well she responds to the ECT treatment, her paranoia shows no sign of subsiding. I fear Miss Howell will be in our care for most of her life, unless she dissists in making these wild claims and seaks to live a life in the outside world. Alas, she is showing every sign of becoming institutionalized.
Nigel felt like punching the air. A breakthrough. Here was the first mention of a past crime, the 'deaths of the innocent', that could provide a motive for the present-day murders. But what was the horrible crime that left so many dead, if indeed it did exist? Foster was more concerned with a different unsolved crime.
'What did Horton Rowley's death certificate say?'
'Killed beneath an omnibus.'
'There was no indication of foul play?'
'None mentioned on the death certificate. They held an inquest but the coroner must have deemed it was an accident.
I would get the records from the inquest but I know for a fact that no records exist from 1909. They tended to destroy them when a coroner stood down, or kept many of them for fifteen years afterwards. Not much help to us.
There might be a few newspaper accounts, but omnibus accidents were not rare occurrences and we'd be lucky to find more than a news item in brief. Might be worth a try, though.'
Foster didn't respond. He took the records from Nigel and read the entry again. He put it down. 'Then we have absolutely no proof this woman was telling the truth. This isn't enough. Her words alone won't help us. We need to corroborate her story if we can. If not, it's just a mad woman ranting. What else is in here?'
In 1950 Margaret was admitted to the infirmary with a fractured pelvis incurred when she was being pinned down during her ECT treatment. Her treatment was altered in 1952, when a medical note stated that she had been given a leucotomy. Nigel took off his glasses and rubbed his brow wearily.
'What's that? Foster asked.
Nigel knew exactly what it was. He remembered tracing the family history of one client, which had led him to the asylum and the depredations that took place there in the name of treatment. 'A lobotomy,' he said.
'Jesus.'
'They went into the brain under the eyelid with an instrument shaped like a small ice pick. Then they cut the nerves at the front. It was very quick. Some surgeons prided themselves on how many they could do in one shift.'
'But what good could it possibly do?' Foster asked.
Who knows? I suppose you might be less inclined to have a fit or a bout of hysteria with half your frontal lobe severed. It was quite popular for a time. Particularly on women.'
A short note from 1954 described the earlier operation as a success. Both her anxiety and obsession had been brought under control. The same doctor mentioned that from then on she would be prescribed thorazine. Her discharge had been discussed but as there were no family members wishing to take her in, and there were fears about how she would cope in the outside world after so long in an institution, it was decided she should stay.
From that point on the notes were infrequent and terse. In 1959 she was hospitalized with a bout of pneumonia.
No one revisited her case, or c
ommented on her treatment. She existed until 1964 when a small paragraph noted matter-of-factly that she experienced a seizure, fell and as a result of her injuries was taken to an infirmary where, Nigel knew from her death certificate, she later died.
They sat in silence for a few seconds, each lost in their own thoughts. Nigel pictured a frail young woman, terrified by life, scared of what lurked round every corner, strapped down, electrodes attached to her body, in an attempt to divest her of a mania that may have had a grounding in truth, before severing the nerves in the brain that connected her cortex to her thalamus and then anaesthetizing her further with strong medication. Little wonder her condition 'improved'. In his mind's eye she sat, childlike and silent in the corner of a crowded ward, ignorant of the wailing and gibbering, a numb, muted life. He only hoped the treatment she'd endured rendered her oblivious to the horror of her situation.
At the same time, he wondered if he would ever be able to discover where Horton and Sarah Rowley came from and the truth behind the cataclysmic event that their granddaughter spoke of, the distant echoes of which were still being felt.
Nigel remembered a programme he once caught on the radio, about the effects of nuclear fallout. The fusion products from an air burst are sucked up into the stratosphere, dispersed by the winds, eventually settling across the wide earth in rainfall for years to come, with unpredictable effects that would only later be known.
Much like the past.
The problem appeared insurmountable. As Margaret Howell told the doctors, her ancestor seemed to have taken the secret with her when she died.
Then he remembered. He grabbed Foster's arm, causing the detective to stiffen.
What?'
'I think I know where we might find out more about what Sarah and Horton were running away from.'
Where?'