Struggles of Psycho

by Rhyam O'Bryam

  ‘Fucking, fucking Philips!’ McCarthy’s head swayed from side to side in disbelief. ‘This is why she was filling us with crap for so long.’

  At the mention of Philips, Ivy’s eyes rolled back into her head and her body twitched.

  ‘Later,’ I said, relieved that Ivy was still moving her lips to receive the water.

  ‘Fuck!’ mouthed McCarthy silently. My partner’s normally pale face was flushed, with a glow that rose all the way from her neck to her cheeks. She was furious. With Philips? Or with us for being so manipulated as to nearly allow Ivy to die?

  If McCarthy was angry at me, she had every right to be. I’d been slow and clumsy. I should have confronted Philips as soon as I’d noticed the grey powder in the back of her car. And what had I been thinking, the other two times I’d been searching the castle? We must have come through here while Ivy was in a much better state than she was now. And even though I’d noted the brick wall was a lining and even though I’d smelled urine, I hadn’t thought to check.

  After a while, Ivy stopped drinking the water. She had fainted, fallen asleep, or was she dead? With my heart working desperately, I leaned over, ready to try CPR on her frail body. Ivy drew a raspy, uneven breath. She was still alive. I looked up to see McCarthy as relieved as me.

  It took the helicopter thirty-five minutes to arrive. Thirty-five long minutes, during which I was hunched over, concentrating on Ivy’s every breath. Willing her to keep going. Spreading water on her lips with my fingertip. Urging her to stay alive. She had to stay alive. To put Amy Philips behind bars and to save my conscience from a guilt that would otherwise last the rest of my life.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  It was a long drive to the hospital, even with my siren on. There was no one to talk to either, as McCarthy had gone with Ivy Patterson on the helicopter. Alone with my thoughts, my past failures came back to mind. The worst was a farmer, John O’Driscoll. Eighty-one years old, robbers had tied him to a chair in his kitchen and tortured him. For information about his savings, probably, but perhaps with a sadistic streak too. They’d cut his ear off before beating him to death.

  There had been few sights in my career to match the scene in that kitchen. Swollen, discoloured, shattered, in a wide pool of blood, it was impossible to recognise John, even though I had known him well enough. Of course I had done all I could to catch the killers, but we never did. What was galling was that I was sure somebody local knew all about it. Perhaps I walked past the killers now and again on the streets of Wexford?

  It seemed to me that I was close to failure in this case too. When I left her, Ivy Patterson was near to death. Her breathing was shallow and ragged, her pulse almost impossible to detect. The shock of being transported through the air might be too much for a body weakened by thirst to the point of death. And if she died, well, there would be some comfort in the prosecution of Amy Philips, but the grim truth was that I should have found her days ago.

  I rang McCarthy and when she picked up, shouted towards the phone. ‘How is she?’

  ‘Still alive.’ I could just about hear my partner over the powerful cycles of sound produced by the helicopter’s rotors.

  ‘Are you close?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘Keep me updated.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Not long after I had hung up, the phone rang and I felt sick. It could only mean that McCarthy was calling me back with bad news. But it wasn’t her at all. It was the photo lab with the results of our aerial survey. There were a few spots worth checking, but overall, nothing likely to be a shallow grave. It didn’t matter, I told them, we had found the missing person.

  I cut the call in the middle of being congratulated.

  Do most people recall their failings when left alone? Is it a human trait not to find your mind turn to success and challenges overcome but to moments that make you wince, or even groan aloud? In my case, they were moments that went all the way back to school. Like the time I was punched by a boy from St Malachy’s.

  Theirs was the rival school to ours. I went to the Christian Brothers, of course. And after school one day – I was about fourteen – along with two friends I was walking down the path with two bigger Malachy boys coming our way. Just as we drew level, woomph! I was punched hard in the stomach. The blow completely took the breath out of my body. And it was so neatly done my two friends carried on walking. They didn’t notice I was curled up on the pavement. It wasn’t the pain that caused me to keep this moment in my memory, but the shame and anger.

  The three of us could have taken the two of them, but I had been caught off guard and couldn’t draw breath to alert my friends. I had to suffer a silent rage and desire for revenge. And when I did get some air into my lungs, there was a surprisingly large distance between my friends and my new enemies.

  It wasn’t a big incident, nor a significant one, in the greater story. Yet the narrative of my life seemed to be filled with small incidents like this, rather than memories of hurling glory or, even better, cracking a tough case.

  At last, I reached the hospital and was encouraged by the thought McCarthy hadn’t seen fit to ring me. Almost certainly that meant that Ivy Patterson was still alive.

  The security guard-cum-receptionist was ready for me and came from behind his desk to show the way. And sure enough, there was McCarthy, standing outside two blue double-doors, reading hospital notices. She looked up as I approached.

  ‘Well, Boss, you made good time.’

  ‘How is she?’

  McCarthy gave a little shrug. ‘I’m not the expert. But she has fluids and oxygen now and a bed. Hopefully, she’ll pull through.’

  ‘We should have found her last time.’

  ‘I know. But—’ McCarthy, looking a bit pale, just shrugged. There was no point making up excuses.

  ‘Was she talking?’

  ‘No, she had a mask on. Even if she was alert, I wouldn’t have been able to speak to her.’

  ‘I guess we wait then.’

  ‘Got any change?’

  ‘What?’

  McCarthy gestured to the coffee machine. ‘I’m out.’

  Two black coffees later, a young doctor came through the double doors. He did not inspire confidence. I prefer sombre-looking medical staff to someone with a gelled-up hairstyle that would have looked right for a member of a boy band.

  ‘Are you the police?’ he asked.

  I showed him my ID badge. ‘How is she?’

  ‘Stable; she’ll live.’

  ‘When can I speak to her?’

  An on-again, off-again smile on the doctor’s face disappeared. ‘She needs a lot of rest.’

  ‘I understand,’ I answered, ‘but she’s a witness to a murder.’

  ‘Well, she is awake and can speak in a whisper. But if I let you talk to her now, promise me you’ll leave when I ask you to and that however the interview goes, you won’t be more than thirty minutes.’

  ‘I promise.’ I felt a surge of excitement and a desire to shake the doctor’s hand.

  As we walked through to a room in Intensive Care, McCarthy was looking at her phone.

  ‘Ready to record,’ she said, in answer to my look.

  Lying propped up on the bed, drip in her arm and mask on her face, our key witness looked like an old and very frail woman. Probably, this was an effect of the dust in her hair that had turned it to grey. Her dark eyes met mine and I was delighted to sense that there was a strong intelligence behind her look.

  ‘Ivy,’ said the doctor, ‘these are the police. Do you want to talk to them?’

  Much to my relief, Ivy nodded and there was an urgency in her motion.

  Stepping across, the doctor carefully lifted and lowered her mask, then moved back out of the way and gestured for me to approach.

  ‘Ivy Patterson?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was a whisper.

  ‘Did Amy Philips murder your brother, Michael Patterson?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her eyes, already ringed
red, now filled with tears.

  I glanced at McCarthy, who nodded. That one word was powerful. Even up to this point, at this very late stage, I wasn’t completely sure that the case was murder. My intuition had said so and I had made that call. And now it was confirmed, it seemed obvious. But Philips had always seemed one step ahead of me and I couldn’t help but entertain the awful possibility that she had been playing some kind of game.

  ‘What happened?’

  Rolling her head to the side, into the pillow, I saw a tear roll down Ivy’s grey cheek. ‘It’s a long story,’ she said at last.

  ‘She stabbed him?’ I offered.

  ‘It was just like when she killed the dog.’

  ‘Bonnie?’ offered McCarthy.

  Surprised, Ivy rallied herself to look over at my partner. ‘Yes. Yes, just like that. You know about that?’

  ‘We’ve been interviewing Philips for hours. But she claims it was manslaughter.’

  ‘No. No. It was cold-blooded murder. Even for her, it was so cruel.’

  ‘Tell us, please.’ McCarthy came close to the bed and rested a hand on Ivy’s leg.

  ‘Mike had come to visit and I warned him. I told him he had no idea how dangerous Amy was. She has no soul; no remorse; no concept of right and wrong. It’s all about her and she’ll kill without a second’s hesitation.’ Ivy paused and took a sip from the plastic cup of water beside her. ‘I urged him to escape with me. To escape and not just get away from Wexford, go to America, or somewhere where we could lose ourselves. Because I knew that if I ever ran, Amy would come after me and after Mike.

  ‘I thought I’d gotten through to him and my hopes ran high. For the first time in years, I felt happy. I felt that freedom was close. I could be myself at long last. Find someone to love. But it was all a deception. Mike was reporting everything to Amy and following her instructions. She wanted to see how desperate I was to get away.

  ‘Unknown to me, they had gone back to their old mistress-slave relationship. Over in the castle, the X-frame was out again and while Mike squirmed on it in delight, she rewarded his betrayal by fulfilling his fantasies. I should have guessed, sometimes they’d be gone for hours. But Mike was so convincing when he was with me.

  ‘We’d take a stroll, well away from the buildings, and make our plans. What a fool I was.’

  For a while, Ivy stopped talking and I looked at the doctor anxiously. He remained impassive and then Ivy resumed.

  ‘On the night we were due to escape, I got up out of bed and went to the toilet. Then, instead of coming back, I went downstairs, listening all the while in case Amy woke up. The plan was to change into my clothes in the castle and for the two of us to set off, even though it was dark, to walk to a certain crossroads and call for a taxi on Mike’s mobile.

  ‘As expected, Mike was in the castle and appeared ready, his bag on the floor and another holdall with some things of mine. Hurriedly, I got dressed and did not really pay attention to Mike, not until I tried the door and it was locked. When I looked over to him, he waved the key at me.

  ‘“What are you doing? We have to go. Stop playing around. This is too serious. It’s life and death.”

  ‘“Oh, Ivy. Amy is my mistress. She’s not going to hurt me. Not more than I want, anyway.”

  ‘“Oh, God, no, Mike. No, don’t do this.”

  ‘And then came the most awful sound I’ve ever heard. A slow series of knocks on the door. Immediately, I looked around. I was tempted to run up to the top of the tower and threaten to jump. I really would have. But that wouldn’t save Mike. She’d just kill him in any case. To prove true her threats. I’d often thought of jumping from the castle or drowning myself in the sea. But Amy had promised, with that heartless determination of hers, that she’d kill Mike if I did that.

  ‘While I panicked and looked for a weapon, Mike unlocked the door and there she was, fully dressed, fully in command of the situation. Resting her hand on Mike’s shoulder, Amy said, “Well done, slave. You’ll get a nice reward for this.” Then she looked over at me, shining a torch on my face, so I could hardly see anything. “As for you, Ivy, you’ll be punished for this betrayal. You should have known better. You should not have broken your promises.”

  ‘Her torch moved to shine on a hole in the wall I hadn’t noticed before. It was new, there were loose bricks around it. “In you go.”

  I felt a shudder go right through me. What did she have planned? Something terrible, I was sure. There was a tone in her voice I hadn’t heard before. Truly cold and vicious.

  ‘“Never.” But I didn’t really believe I had the strength to resist her.

  ‘“Don’t make us tie you up and drag you there.”

  ‘“Mike!” I screamed. “Mike. It’s not too late. Get her out of your head. Help me. Help yourself!”

  ‘For a moment he looked troubled and my hopes rose.

  ‘“Drag her in, slave, then mount the X-frame.”

  ‘That’s all it took to win him back. There was a weakness in Mike that Amy had spotted right from the start, from when we were teenagers. There was also a complicated sexuality and I suspect Amy was the only woman who ever really tapped into his desire to be dominated during sex and the only woman who had fulfilled him that way. Mike was addicted to Amy and could not see that she had changed in the last few hours. That this was not a game any more.

  ‘My resistance to Mike was half-hearted. As he pushed me towards that scary hole in the wall, I did lean back but I should have kicked and bitten. Even I didn’t really think, deep down, this was the end. I did talk to him as he grunted and pushed me. I warned him that Amy was out of control. That she was using him to get at me.

  ‘Of course, it did no good. And when I was in a dark, narrow space between the brick wall and the castle wall, Mike even laughed. What especially frightened me about the situation was that clearly this brick closet had been well prepared in advance. Either side of me, at arm’s length, were new walls of brick and cavity filler. Above me, too, so that my head nearly touched it, were new stone blocks that must have been laid across with some effort to seal in a prison, about six foot high, four feet across and barely two feet wide.

  ‘“Wait,” commanded Amy, as Mike turned away. “Help me brick her up to her eyes.”

  ‘Surprisingly quickly, the two of them had all the bricks back in, saving one, which left a wide enough rectangular space that I could see through and view most of the room. I wasn’t sure this was better than being fully blocked off from what was about to happen next.

  ‘Mike stripped down to a tight black vest and Y-fronts, then fastened his ankles to the X-frame via the large metal clasps that were there for the purpose. He could get his left wrist into a clasp, after which he waited patiently, with a stupid grin on his face, for Amy to fasten his last free limb tight to the old wood of the homemade BDSM toy.

  ‘I thought Amy would now reveal her real intentions and the true depths of her anger. But she played out a scene with Mike that the two of them had probably staged fifty times before. I didn’t watch, but I could hear them. Her, abusing him and swapping between pleasure and pain. Him, trying to defy her but ultimately collapsing into self-abnegation and pleading for greater pleasure. In the end, after perhaps an hour of this, Amy gave him oral sex, making sure to say in a loud voice that I could hear that she was doing so for the help he’d given her in managing his wayward sister.

  ‘After Mike had his orgasm, Amy left us. When I heard her footsteps pass me and the door open, I stood up to look at the limp figure on the X-frame under a cold, uncovered light bulb. I tested the wall. There was some give in it. I could knock out the highest of the loose bricks and continue until there was room to wriggle out.

  ‘“Mike!” I called over. “We have to escape before she comes back.” But no matter how often I called his name, he didn’t answer. In the end, I began to bang on the bricks and push hard on the loose ones. The problem was, I dare not run from the farm unless Mike was with me, or Amy would kill him
. I had to somehow persuade him. And how could I do that when he was basking in pleasure?

  ‘I’d made about half of the space I needed when Amy returned, pulling in a small cement mixer, the kind that trundle on two wheels. A cord ran out from it across the yard.

  ‘“Thank you, Ivy,” Amy said, when she saw the bricks I’d pushed out. “I’ll need to slap some cement on those.”

  ‘Then she walked over to Mike and held up a knitting needle for me to see, shining in the stark light and suddenly looking like a cruel and vicious tool for an assassin. “Look at me, Ivy. If you touch one more brick, I shall not hesitate to stab your brother through the heart.”

  ‘These words were impossible and I felt a black curtain of cold run through my body. If I did nothing, she’d probably kill him. If I tried to get out of my new prison, she definitely would. What should I do? It was an agonising choice, but I stopped working at the bricks. As she went about filling the mixer, Amy was giving me a lecture. I should not have betrayed her. She should have thought more carefully about the meaning of her mother’s advice. Trust no one was right, especially those you love.

  ‘Even when Amy left the room, I did not stir. I was trapped. And I clung to the hope that Amy’s intention was to teach me a lesson by bricking me up for a time and then letting me go. It would be a new form of torture, but ultimately, Amy really did need me in her life. She’d be empty without me. That’s what I told myself, instead of screaming and fighting for my life.’

  Ivy shook her head ruefully and took a sip of water. Again, I checked with the doctor. He made no sign at all, but I sensed he was as interested in Ivy’s story as were McCarthy and I. Hopefully, he would not be too strict about the thirty minutes. It would be unbearable not to immediately record the testimony that would surely convict Philips. Yet I didn’t want to hurry Ivy. She was doing well. And despite her frail physical condition, there was a determination evident in her husky words.