“Whatever,” the young man replied, before snaking around her and making his way to the other side of the dining room, ignoring John Gallows who’d knocked over his walking stick and was struggling to reach it.
Pauline watched the orderly making a rude gesture with his fingers before leaving the dining room. She made her way over to the fallen stick and leaned it up against the table. “Idiot,” she said to John, the owner of the silver tipped walking stick. “Not picking he’ll last long, doesn’t have the balls to stick it out,” she said, laughing at her own pun.
“He’s not right that one,” John replied, leveraging himself up with his cane. “Keep an eye on that one, Pauline. He’s got a problem, can tell from a mile off. He’s as rotten as that bully Preston.”
Pauline nodded. John’s words gave her food for thought. Still it wasn’t her battle, better keeping her nose out of things that didn’t concern her. There were bigger things to worry about, like her old Mam and keeping a roof over her head. She’d keep an eye on things but she wouldn’t get involved, she promised herself because it would only end badly, for her.
46
Sulia retrieved the bottle hidden behind the curtain and a waterfall of desiccated moth carcasses fluttered to the floor, disturbed from their resting place.
Taking a sip, she stared out the window. Her cloudy eyes picking out the scurrying people living their lives, rushing off to appointments, pretending to be busy. Correction; imagining they were busy, caught up in the vicious treadmill of a capitalistic life. After school activities, gym memberships, chiropractor appointments, sessions with a counsellor. Being busy was a modern day plague. A vampiric drain on society. She’d been there herself. She’d lost her way, following the crowd, desperate to fit in, changing shape to fit the mould society brainwashed them to believe they needed to be in to win. To win what? Sulia realised life wasn’t a race. They were all racing towards a finish line hidden under a blanket of lies. As she herself now lied to the world, and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could carry on.
The bottle was almost empty, so she took the smallest of sips. In the beginning, she’d craved a never-ending supply of the stuff but now she’d outlived anyone she’d ever loved. There’d been so many funerals, and countless tears, that now she wanted it to end, but still she sipped from the magic bottle. She’d spent years finding her way to the Rose Haven, to Doctor Perry, and now she’d tracked him down, he was going to pay for what he’d done. Retribution would be hers.
Sulia fiddled with the contacts in her eyes. Now and then they bothered her, but she’d nearly finished with them. They made navigating the retirement home difficult but not impossible. They made pretending to be blind a breeze although half the time her depth perception was well off. The blandness of the Rose Haven’s decor made finding her way around nigh on impossible. Twisting the lid on the bottle, she put it back behind the curtain before she took more than one sip. It wouldn’t last forever, but she’d thought that about Doctor Perry too. Yet here he was, still alive after all these years as though time stood still for him, his face untouched by life.
She sat in her armchair waiting for the tonic to kick in. It always made her a little unsteady as her body adjusted to the toxins flowing through her bloodstream. She imagined they were toxins, but really had no idea what Perry’s concoction contained other than she knew it was the work of the devil, or that Doctor Perry was the devil himself. Her skin crawled as tiny lines softened and evened out. Broken surface veins brightened and disappeared. Sulia struggled to keep her mouth shut as the roots of her old teeth burrowed deeper into her jaw, the pain unbearable but she knew for another month at least she’d be able to enjoy the foods she couldn’t chew as she got older and her teeth loosened. Her muscles contracted, regaining the elasticity gravity denied them. She was always careful with how much she drank because if she had even one sip too much the changes in her would be too noticeable, and at the Rose Haven, she couldn’t hide in her room for months, conducting her life through online ordering and a parade of ever-changing couriers.
Sulia waited as the changes slowly altered her body, she’d sleep afterwards, she always did, waking refreshed in a body two or three years younger than it should be. She wouldn’t need to keep doing this now she’d found Doctor Perry. She was going to ensure he took a dose of his own medicine just like he’d dosed her mother, a woman too scared to go to a real doctor with her health complaints. Instead she’d gone to a little clinic in the deepest depths of inner Chicago, a place where no one asked too many questions, where most of the patients couldn’t pay the full bill. She’d been with her mother that day, and Sulia had found a pile of children’s books in the corner, more books than they’d had in their home. She sat silently reading when the receptionist showed her mother, the last patient of the day, through to the doctor’s room, to Doctor Perry’s consulting room. When the preoccupied receptionist left for the evening, she never noticed Sulia asleep in the corner, hidden behind a potted palm. Sulia couldn’t have said how long she’d been there before screaming woke her from an uncomfortable sleep on the floor. She remembered she was waiting for her mother until realising it was her mother screaming. Sulia had crept to the doctor’s door and turning the handle she’d peeked through the crack, too afraid to get any closer.
Sulia’s legs twitched involuntarily, as the tonic made its way down her body and as she dredged up the memories which sustained her along with Doctor Perry’s tonic. Through her childish eyes she’d watched a man in a white coat standing over her mother. She remembered how the deep brown leather of the bed absorbed her mother. But the bed wasn’t absorbing her mother, her mother was shrinking into the bed, screaming as she morphed from being a grown woman to the height of a young teenager, to that of a child, then a toddler, until she was nothing more than a mewling baby. But it hadn’t stopped there. Sulia recalled the doctor leaning over the tiny creature and administering one more drop of liquid. Sulia tried so hard to forget what happened next. The baby folded in on itself, imploding until only a gelatinous goop remained, and a writhing mess of intestinal worms which had caused her mother’s discomfort, the reason for their visit.
What came next was a blur. She couldn’t unlock the surgery door to escape, so had hidden behind the receptionist’s desk until the doctor left. Her mother’s cavernous handbag remained unnoticed, wedged under the doctor’s desk. She couldn’t have said why she’d taken the bottles lining on a shelf in the doctor’s office, but she’d stuffed them into her mother’s bag, and had kept them with her all these years until she was old enough to work out the potency of the contents.
Too traumatised to do anything else, Sulia had slept curled up in a chair, scarpering as fast as a rabbit when the receptionist unlocked the door the next morning. The startled receptionist hadn’t chased her, leaving Sulia to find her way home to an empty apartment and a lifetime of foster homes, burdened by her mother’s handbag. She’d told no one what had happened to her mother, who would have believed her?
And like that moment so many years ago, Sulia slept. The sweet dreamless sleep of someone who’d spent her life with only one goal, a goal she was about to see come true.
47
Ricky Donovan pushed the trolley through the long corridors of the Rose Haven, stopping periodically to dispense the teeny tiny medicine cups to the oldies. Normally there had to be two staff. There were always two staff on the dispensing cart. Can’t trust the staff with the drugs, oh no, the staff absolutely categorically cannot be trusted to be alone with the drugs. Who knows what might happen? Stuff might go missing? Or the residents might be given the wrong medications and they might die, or worse, they might get sick and then people might find out they were given the wrong pills instead of just dying as old crinkly wastes of oxygen.
But tonight he, Ricky Donovan, was in charge of the medicine cart all by himself. Too many people had called in sick. And being Tracey’s nephew, her very special favourite only nephew, he was trustworthy. Oh yes, trustwor
thy.
Pushing the cart off on its own down the hall, Ricky patted his trouser pockets affectionately. He was operating under a ‘one for you and one for me’ rule tonight and had amassed a huge number of pills. Party time at Ricky’s house tonight. Some pills were enormous, and different colours. He was thinking of keeping the pretty ones, and trading the others for more stuff to fill his special pipe. Hadn’t quite decided.
The medicine cart crashed into the wall, scattering the dozen remaining pill cups onto the floor. Paralysed momentarily, Ricky rushed forward and scooped them up off the floor.
“Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.
Catch an old fart by the toe.
One pill for Ricky and one pill to go.
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.”
Singing to himself, he randomly refilled the medicine cups until they looked about the same, and shoved another handful of pills into his already bulging pockets.
“Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.
Ricky is a chipmunk don’t you know.
All the pills for Ricky and no more pills for you.
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.”
Satisfied with his work reallocating the tablets, he handed out the last of the medicine cups and left the trolley outside the room of his last delivery. Someone else would put it away. He, Ricky, was far too important, Besides, thinking about the pills in his pockets had given him an exceptionally important idea. A stupendously excellent idea involving the laboratory downstairs, the one where he’d seen the doctor magicking up… well, he didn’t know what, but he could probably sell it, whatever it was, but that was a plan for another day. Tonight though, tonight he had all these pills, and he would keep them, or trade them, or keep them, he still wasn’t sure, but now he was certain that his newest idea was the best one. He could use the doctor’s laboratory — such a big word that, such an important place. A place where magic happened. Laboratories made pills, and if pills were made, they could be unmade. He could turn them into liquid and then he could put that in his special pipe, and he wouldn’t have to worry about anything going wrong, because he was going to do it in a proper lab. He just needed his special pipe.
Ricky fair skipped down the corridor to grab his pipe from his car. Finishing his shift never crossed his mind. Nor did the consequences of what he’d just done. Someone else would deal with that.
48
When the detectives reconvened, the atmosphere in the briefing room far removed from the heavy sense of nowhere from the last time they’d met. Half the officers looked like they’d won the lottery such was their eagerness to share their intel.
“Settle down, everyone. It’s obvious you’ve made headway with our missing octogenarians. Whilst it’d be nice to hear you’d found our two wandering souls, I’m not getting the sense we’re there yet? Am I right?” asked Clive.
A flurry of nods greeted his words. Pulling the lid off the marker pen he waited for one of his team to talk.
“I met Doctor Perry,” Gary announced, and every eye in the room swivelled round to face him.
“You didn’t want to give us a heads up straight away?” Clive asked.
“It was complicated. I had a few things going on,” Gary mumbled. The team knew about his on/off relationship so he didn’t need to go into any further details.
Clive shook his head at the front of the briefing room. He thought the doctor would be a dead end, but at this point in the investigation he was prepared to follow any lead, even the most ridiculous ones.
“Did your brief encounter with the doctor deliver any insights into our two missing persons?”
This time Gary shook his head.
“Moving on then, you can fill me in later. Right, anyone else got something more tangible to add?”
Emily Jesmond put her hand up, filling the team in about other reported crime which might be of interest. A mundane list most suburban cops knew well — disputes over tree branches, spousal abuse, weed smoking teens, excessive noise, car accidents. Nothing stood out until Emily mentioned an accident where a mother and her baby had died across the road from the Rose Haven Retirement Resort in an avalanche of bad luck.
“She was walking to school, along her usual route, but it was just bad timing all round. God knows why no one picked the pushchair up. Poor baby.”
“What about the child walking with her?” Clive asked.
“What child?” Emily replied, head cocked to one side.
“You said she was walking a child to school, what happened to the child?”
Flustered, Emily flicked back and forward through her notes, coming up with nothing. She shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
“You know what your next job is don’t you?” Clive said, making a note on the board. The missing child wasn’t a complication he needed, it was the worst development. He’d rather have a gunman on the loose than a missing child. Not for the first time did he think how much easier his life would have been if he’d just followed his father into the printing business instead of joining the police. Too late now.
He glanced towards Emily, burrowing into her jacket and studying her notepad mortified she’d missed something so clear. If the woman run over by the car was on her way to school, then where was the school aged child?
It wasn’t till everyone had left the briefing room that Clive realised Emily hadn’t mentioned the Cavalletto link, so he still didn’t know who’d picked the baby up from Doctor Perry’s house. Of all the things he’d asked her to do, it was the simplest of tasks. Even a monkey could do it. And now she’d complicated his life a thousand times more than it needed to be by running traffic accident statistics into his investigation into two missing people. At this rate he’d need to see a doctor because he swore his arteries were hardening or he had the beginnings of an aneurism bubbling away, all because of the stress caused by idiots who didn’t do their jobs.
Emily couldn’t help thinking she was the naughty one, sitting in a stern high backed chair outside the principal’s office. She hadn’t made an appointment and the school principal was in a very important meeting according to his receptionist. Why were school receptionists cut from the same cloth? For the main part, childless, stern, bedecked in the most sensible of clothes and lacking in personality. Nothing had changed since she was at school. It was as if the universe had a production line allocating the most child unfriendly employees to every school the world over. She thanked her lucky stars she’d chosen a child-free life, missing the hypocrisy of her sweeping judgement.
“Principal Griffin is available now,” the receptionist advised Emily, opening the faux mahogany door and ushering her through.
The principal was far from the typical principal mould and Emily paused, confused about whether she was meeting with the principal or with someone who’d climbed in through the office window of a school principal and was doing a poor impression of one.
“Good morning, Detective Jesmond, sorry for the wait but I was on a conference call regarding the recent funding changes will affect us here. Sudden funding changes can be catastrophic for schools like ours, I’m sure you understand,” said Trivelle Griffin, the principal of Crystal Lakes Elementary.
Emily was still coming to terms with the sight of a full head of dreadlocks and basketball boots, mixed in with khaki pants and an open neck shirt and had no words to answer him.
Trivelle Griffin waited, hands steepled on his desk as Emily flipped through her notepad open, and cleared her throat, preparing her questions.
“You will have heard about the unfortunate accident down the road earlier this week and, well, and I understand she was a mother from this school and I’m here to check on the welfare of her child, who I presume is still away from school…” she tapered off.
Griffin seemed to weigh his words carefully before answering. “I’d heard about the accident. That intersection has concerned us for some time. You need to understand that we have a transient roll Detective Jesmond. Families come and families go, often with little or
no notice. My team can’t always follow up on truants. Do you have the name of the mother?”
“There’s a small problem with that, she didn’t have any ID, hence my question about children who have been absent from school. We haven’t been able to contact any next of kin and a bystander said she was a mother from your school, so…”
Griffin’s fingers flew across his keyboard, his dreads bobbing in time with his energetic typing. “Can you tell me her ethnicity?” he asked, before stabbing the enter button. A printer whirled into life behind his desk. He ignored the piece of paper the printer spat out, instead casting his eyes over Emily’s pen poised above her notebook.
“Will you be requisitioning this information officially?” he asked.
“Eh?”
“I’m not new at this, Ms. Jesmond. I like my paperwork to be correct in every way and I have the information you need, but my main priority is the welfare of the children at this school, you need to understand that.”
Emily nodded, confusion clouding her face.
“I have twenty three children absent all week and I’m sure you understand when I need to see a request in writing before I can give you those names?”
Emily swallowed her frustration. What an idiot, she was trying to help his kids.
“Fine,” she said through clenched teeth. “I’ll email something through, does that work for you?”
Griffin passed over the sheet of paper.
Emily’s eyes absorbed the scant information, names marching down the page one after the other.
“Which one do you think is most likely to be the child of our deceased woman and her baby?”
“Her baby?” Griffin asked.
“Oh, yes, her baby suffocated on the plastic of his pushchair. By the time they found him it was too late. One of the cars from the accident hid the pushchair. The worst sort of luck,” Emily rambled, her brain calculating how long it would take her to work through this list. So much for putting his kids first, he couldn’t even chase up the truants missing from his school.
Doctor Perry Page 19