I knew how unprofessional I must have looked asking for evidence when we both knew that outrageous claims were the norm here. But I justified it to myself. After all, I’d heard about these ‘dreamed up’ stabbings before.
Daren’t sleep in case she killed me, just like the others.
‘And you want me to see if I can get past the abreaction?’ I asked.
He regarded me steadily for a moment, as though debating whether or not to go further. Finally he sighed, his eyes looking weary again. ‘You are, without doubt, the expert in this field.’ He flicked ash onto my once pristine carpet. ‘Your work with current life regression to treat trauma in patients is well documented, and well respected.’
‘Thank you.’ I meant it.
‘So naturally, with you living here in Fordley, you were the first person I thought of. I know it was a liberty, calling you out of the blue. You must be very busy…’
He was hedging around a subject I was by now familiar with. I decided to put him out of his misery.
‘But there is no budget for calling in external specialists? It has been mentioned to me already today.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Never mind. I’m happy to help out… free of charge.’ I looked at him with sympathy. ‘I do remember what it’s like, you know, trying to manage on a budget.’
He actually managed a smile as he gave me the case file and smoked another cigarette while I read through it. Finally, he got up from the desk. ‘If you’re happy to start today, I’ll take you to meet Martha?’
3 August
late afternoon
Carpet gave way again to hard vinyl and my heels clattered loudly behind Doctor Lister’s sensible rubber-soled shoes. Posters on the walls reminded staff and visitors that certain items were prohibited: weapons, alcohol, glass bottles.
It was the smell that hooked my memories. Leading me back by the olfactory senses to an era when I’d get in the car after my shift and open all the windows even on the coldest nights, to blow away the institutional stench of carbolic, urine and sweat that no amount of disinfectant could cover up or wash away.
Doctor Lister used a swipe card, opening metal doors that led ever deeper into the maze. As we neared the end of the block, I became aware of the feeling here. Not a positive energy but rather something to be careful of.
The patients’ rooms were not locked here. These patients were a danger to themselves but to no one else. I knew from experience that there were no doors on the showers or the toilets. Nowhere a patient could lock themselves away from sight or help, but that meant no privacy either.
Martha was sitting on the edge of the bed with her back to the door. Her stiff, off-white hospital gown almost swamping her slight frame. I stayed by the door as Lister walked quietly around the bed and squatted down beside Martha so he could look up into her downturned face.
‘I’ve brought someone to see you, Martha,’ he said, in a gentle tone that for some reason surprised me.
He gestured with his right hand for me to come closer, like a nature warden beckoning me to approach some timid animal.
‘This is Doctor McCready. She’s here to help you remember.’
I hunkered down beside the bed, getting my first look at Martha. She had the complexion of someone who’d abused substances. The white skin across her sharp cheekbones was papery thin, almost translucent.
‘Hello, Martha,’ I said, quietly.
She was nervously plucking at some unseen thread on her hospital gown.
I glanced at Lister. ‘Okay to leave us for a while?’
‘I’ll be just outside if you need anything.’
I waited until he left the room, the door softly closing behind him.
Behind me was a high-backed hospital chair. I moved it closer to the edge of the bed, controlling and owning the space. I sat silently watching her. Waiting for her to speak.
I absently noticed the bright red strip of metal that ran around the room at waist height. The panic button that I felt sure I wouldn’t need. Noises from the ward outside were muted and soft as nurses began the routine of settling patients down for the evening. The rumble of the drugs trolley made Martha look up. Her eyes met mine. I held her gaze, still waiting, allowing my sensory acuity to notice the rise and fall of her chest as I calibrated her breathing rate. She was nervous but not afraid. She took a shaky breath, still watching me from beneath her long brown fringe.
‘I know you,’ she said, quietly. ‘Don’t I know you?’ She had a local accent, blunt and uneducated. ‘I’ve seen you… could I have seen pictures of you?’
‘Possibly.’ I couldn’t help smiling at her childlike way. ‘I’ve been on local TV.’
She put her hands behind her on the bed, palms down, and tilted her head back in thought. ‘It’s Matty.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I don’t like Martha. I like Matty better.’
‘Okay, Matty.’ I watched her for a moment and she managed a slight smile. ‘I watch lots of TV.’ It wasn’t true, but the law of reciprocation was a social interaction we were programmed to respond to from birth. Give some information to receive some.
‘Do you watch TV, Matty?’
‘Sometimes,’ she said, quietly, almost a whisper I had to strain to hear. She was still looking down. ‘I let John pick.’
‘Your boyfriend?’
She looked up then. ‘Do you know him?’
‘Sort of,’ I hedged. ‘We’ve spoken about you.’ I waited, looking for an emotion I could label. Love? Fear? Hate? Her reaction wasn’t clear and I warned myself not to second guess it.
She continued to pluck at her gown, studying her fingers with intense concentration.
‘He’s left me…’ Her words trailed off and a large tear plopped down onto the gown.
‘Only for a while, until you get better.’
She shook her head and another tear fell, turning the starched linen gown grey.
‘He’s gone back home for good…’
‘Where’s home?’
‘London.’
‘Did you meet him in London?’
She looked up, her tear-stained cheeks red and drawn in as she pursed her lips, trying not to cry. ‘No. Manchester.’
‘You lived in Manchester?’
She looked at me steadily as though trying to decide whether I could handle her story.
‘I was… I worked… you know?’ She looked embarrassed.
‘Yes,’ I said, gently. ‘Doctor Lister told me all about it. Did John help you in your work?’
‘He wasn’t my pimp or nothing.’ She was suddenly animated, her eyes darting around my face. Her tone stronger as she defended him.
‘I know. He cares about you.’
She nodded vigorously. ‘He met me one night. Down Canal Street, in a bar.’ I nodded, not wanting to disturb this sudden flow with questions. ‘He was nice to me. We met for business, but he weren’t like the others. He just talked to me.’ She suddenly smiled sheepishly and I got a fleeting glimpse of the pretty girl she once was.
‘So how did you come to be in Fordley?’
‘He didn’t like drugs. Didn’t want me on heroin. Said it affected my brain, so he sorted Gerry out and we had to move away.’
‘Gerry?’
‘He was my minder.’
‘John got you away from him?’
‘Yeah. Gerry paid me sometimes with a fix. John didn’t like that. Said he couldn’t talk to me when I was off on one. So we left. John had a job in Fordley so we came here.’
I wanted to take notes, but instinct told me she would stop talking if I began to write this down. I watched her relax. She pulled one leg underneath herself, her other leg dangling off the bed.
‘Sounds like he cares for you a lot.’
Her eyes suddenly welled with tears and she sniffed back a sob. ‘He didn’t like me riding on his bike in case I came off. Wanted to keep me safe. But he wasn’t bothered about me getting on it when we came here, was he? If he cared
so much, how could he leave me?’
‘He left you here so I could see you, Matty, because he thinks if you talk to me you can get better quicker.’
Her head lifted quickly and her tear-filled eyes looked into mine. ‘Really?’
I nodded. ‘That’s why I’m here today.’
She sniffed. ‘You don’t work here?’
I shook my head, offering her a thin smile. ‘No. I used to, but now I only see very special patients. Like you.’
Sudden panic flashed across her face as she rubbed her nose with the sleeve of her gown. ‘I can’t pay you–’
‘That’s okay. It’s taken care of.’
She smiled. ‘That’s John,’ she sighed. ‘He takes care of everything.’ She seemed to suddenly relax, to become calm. ‘He paid someone to see me before. Took me down to London specially to see a lady, like you, to help.’
‘That’s not in your notes. Do you remember the lady’s name?’
She shook her head, sniffing again.
‘Did it help?’
She shrugged, turning her face away from me. She looked worried, as though she’d revealed too much.
I had to tread carefully. Cutting to the heart of the problem too quickly could send her mind fluttering away from me like a startled bird. I shifted so that I could see Martha’s whole face in the glare of the unflattering overhead light.
‘When you were in Manchester, you said John didn’t like you being on drugs. You’re not taking anything now, not even methadone. That’s very good.’
She smiled and looked up at me, like a child being praised for a nice painting at school.
‘John did it. He had to repress me ’n everything, but it worked. He said he could and he did. I don’t take nothin’ no more.’
‘How did he help you to stop, Martha?’
‘He stroked me,’ she said, simply.
3 August
Westwood Park
I’d heard almost every method of getting clean. But stroking. That was a new one to me. I struggled to keep my face expressionless.
‘Tell me about that, Matty.’
‘He would lay me on the bed and pull the covers up so I didn’t shiver. When you’re rattling, you get the shivers.’ She paused with a half-smile. I almost held my breath to preserve the moment. ‘He would kneel down beside the bed and hold my hand under the covers. Then he’d stroke my head and talk to me.’
She closed her eyes, a calmness descending on her. I was concentrating on her so intently, I jumped when, with an audible ‘click’, the harsh overhead light went out, plunging the room into the eerie amber glow of ‘lights out’ on the ward.
Martha didn’t seem to notice. I watched, spellbound as she slowly drew her legs up and, in one fluid movement that reminded me of a cat, laid on the bed. I watched the rise and fall of her chest as her breathing slowed and became rhythmical.
I eased myself out of the chair and went to kneel beside her, hesitantly touching her fingers. Her palm opened and I held her hand, gently applying a little pressure whilst carefully watching her eyes.
I waited for her to exhale and then began a hypnotic induction. Instructing her, with each breath, to relax the muscles in her arms, her legs, her shoulders. Keeping my voice low and even. I saw the imperceptible drop of her shoulders against the pillows as the tension left her neck. Her level of relaxation was already quite deep. After five more minutes of induction, Martha was at a deep level of hypnosis.
‘You can answer my questions and still remain completely relaxed.’ I watched her carefully. ‘If you understand, just nod your head.’
She nodded slowly, her eyes remaining closed, her breathing deep and steady.
‘What did John say to you, Matty?’
‘He said he was taking me back. We went back together, to my safe place…’
‘To your safe place… that’s right. Are you there now?’ She nodded slowly.
‘Describe it to me.’
She let her breath out in a gentle sigh. ‘It’s my bed… when I was little. I’ve got a big duvet and I can crawl inside. It’s dark and safe as long as I’m on my own… it’s safe.’
Still watching her, I reached inside my bag and pulled out the digital recorder. I didn’t want the distraction of taking notes.
Her ‘safe place’ was going to be our escape plan in the event of my tripping the abreaction. At my instruction, she could leave whatever scene she was experiencing and go there.
I focused on her breathing, matching my instructions with each of her out breaths. I glanced at the wall clock above the bed, slowly counting backward, instructing her to go back at each count to where we needed to be.
‘And when you get to the place in time when you were afraid, I want you to nod your head.’ I waited, listening to the sound of her breathing. After half a minute, she nodded.
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty.’
‘Where are you?’
‘In Manchester.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m… I’m…’ She began to roll her head slowly from side to side. Her brow furrowed and her breathing quickened. I knew she was slipping into the trauma. This was the beginning of her abreaction.
‘Okay, Matty. Listen to me. I’m going to touch your forehead and when I do, you’ll go back to your safe place… now.’
I stroked her forehead, mimicking the action John had used. She relaxed into the pillows immediately, her brow smoothing out. She looked like a sleeping child.
I needed a different approach.
‘From your safe place, you can see over the top of your warm, snugly duvet. Can you see the scene in Manchester that used to scare you?’
She nodded slowly.
‘But you’re looking at it like it’s on TV.’
The act of seeing herself on screen would disassociate her from the trauma, so she wouldn’t relive it through her own eyes and drop into it again.
‘Now, tell me what you can see.’
‘I’m standing over a whore… she’s…’ Her eyes squeezed tighter and her jaw clenched. She was struggling with what she saw, but she wasn’t going into abreaction, so I let it run.
‘She’s DYING!’ I jumped as she screamed.
She was panting as beads of perspiration glistened on her forehead.
Her voice was eerily calm now. Almost too calm.
‘I’m holding a knife so she can see it as she’s dying…’ A thin smile played at the corner of her mouth.
‘Did you find her like that?’
I sensed a change. Gone was the childlike ten-year-old. Even her speech was different.
A deeper voice tore from her. ‘I DID IT!’
I wasn’t even sure where my next question came from, but I felt I was seeing another person emerging from this gentle, damaged child/woman, so I asked it anyway.
‘Who are you?’ I could feel a thin trickle of sweat run down my neck. The room suddenly felt oppressively hot.
‘Everyone knows me…’
‘Who?’
‘Jack the Ripper!’
3 August
evening
Westwood Park Hospital
I hadn’t seen that one coming.
Somehow I had to find a handhold in her psyche to pull her back to me. If this was the cause of her fractured state, I needed to explore it. But I’d lost the road map I thought I had through Martha’s mind – my route blocked by a sudden encounter with another personality.
I had to see where this would go, but that meant relinquishing control and just holding on for the ride.
I heard my words as if someone else was speaking them.
‘Does Matty know you’re there?’
Matty’s lips curled back from her teeth in a feral snarl. ‘She tries to keep me out, but she’s not strong enough. At night, when she sleeps, I come and she remembers…’
I swallowed, feeling the roof of my mouth go dry. ‘Remembers what?’
‘Remembers when I killed them�
�� the whores. They didn’t catch me then and they can’t catch me now. I kill through her…’
‘Did you try to kill John?’ I could hear myself asking the questions, but I couldn’t believe where this was going. I thanked God for the digital recorder.
‘She wouldn’t let me. Then I got stronger than her, I almost HAD HIM! But he woke up and saw me… He left us here, but I can get out… I can leave her behind now and kill again, thanks to you…’
I’d had enough. I was losing my detachment and needed to regain control. I reached out to touch her forehead and send her back to her safe place.
She shot bolt upright. The shock threw me back from the bed, my heart hammering out of my chest.
‘JESUS!’
She turned slowly to look at me. ‘You can’t send me back… not now!’
‘Jack…’
I never got to finish.
Matty launched herself off the bed, almost seeming to defy gravity. I was thrown onto the floor and scrabbled backward, trying to create space between us.
The emergency alarm clattered as I pushed my fingers against the metal strip above my head, as though pushing it harder would make it ring louder.
The door crashed open, sending up a puff of plaster dust as it bounced off the wall, and my line of vision was blocked by a flurry of green as ward staff piled into the room. Legs stood over me and around me and I heard Matty’s high-pitched scream as they hauled her unceremoniously back onto the bed.
I tried to push myself up, but my arms were shaking. I gave in and slumped back against the wall, willing my breathing to return to normal, keeping my eyes closed. Part of me not wanting to witness the restraint and sedation I knew were happening over my head.
The Murder Mile Page 4
