A Plea of Insanity

by Priscilla Masters

  Heidi would have managed it.

  For a moment she was filled with self-doubt. Perhaps she was not up to such a complicated and difficult subject as personality disorder. Maybe she should switch her specialist interest to the link between paranoia and soft drugs.

  But Barclay’s notes were heavy in her hands, waiting to be explored like a video-nasty, the finger ready to press play on the remote control.

  You must choose a research subject which interests you – invigorates you – obsesses you, even.

  It was a dull dusk. Except for that last half hour the sun had hardly shone all day. Now the greyness of the city was further dampened by a thick swathe of mist which had wrapped itself around the buildings, muffling their shapes. The hospital was on an elevated site, peering down on rows and rows of slate-roofed terraced houses and two tall tower blocks, most displaying a friendly, yellow light. But they were outside the perimeter of the hospital and seemed remote. By the time she reached her office the windows peered out on a blank, mysterious world, full of shape but with no detail. The quadrangle was deserted and black except for pools of light which spilled out from the long ward windows and the fuzzy lamps shining from the main entrance. A harsh shriek came from somewhere, maybe an urban fox, more likely a patient experiencing the horrors that sat on the shoulders of mental disturbance. The sound echoed and died. And then all was still again except for the distant sounds of a city night, traffic, the thump thump of a car stereo, intermittent claps of noise as a hundred doors opened and closed again.

  It all seemed very far away and her office very near and claustrophobic, Heidi’s death closer than anything out there.

  She must get used to being in here.

  Claire left the window, switched the small reading lamp on and began to scan through Barclay’s notes.

  He had first come to the attention of Greatbach as a teenage outpatient, referred to Professor Cray because of repeated petty thieving, break-ins, helping himself, basically, to anything he wanted. Initially the crimes seemed innocuous but Claire knew the words concealed something more. Her eyes were drawn to the edge of her ring of light, into the darker corners of the room.

  Imagination was a strange thing. She could have sworn something moved.

  Gulio?

  How had Heidi first known he was intending her harm? Something in his manner? A word? Or had her first intimation been …

  She must not think of it.

  Return to Jerome Barclay.

  She bent back over the notes. It was typical sociopathic behaviour which had quickly been diagnosed as such and appropriate treatment – cognitive therapy – commenced, turning the psychopath around to face himself in the clearest of mirrors.

  You cannot treat personality disorder by medication but age does wither it. People grow out of their nastier behaviour. When Heidi had joined the Professor’s team she had taken over Barclay’s care. Quickly she had unearthed tendencies which had pointed the way to a darker conclusion. Barclay had expressed no remorse, displayed no conscience. He had scored high on all the sociopathic assessment lists and had eventually confessed to sadistic tendencies when a child, mainly towards animals. Without making any real issue of it he had told Heidi when he was six he had cut his rabbit’s ears off to see what he’d look like without them. At the age of ten he’d put a sparrow in the oven to see how long it would take to die, carefully timing its death throes.

  In Heidi’s handwriting:

  ‘And how long did it take to die?’

  Answer ‘Six and a half minutes. Much longer than I’d thought. But then I didn’t preheat the oven but let it slowly come up to temperature. I thought it would be more interesting.’

  By sixteen he had strung up a boy who had crossed him at school. The boy had been cut down by his friends, no harm had resulted. It had been put down to boyish high jinks.

  He had admitted attending football matches armed with an eight-inch blade – just in case.

  Barclay was a danger to people. Had his mother or his erstwhile girlfriend pressed charges Heidi Faro would have been asked to give an opinion on Barclay’s mental state and capability of inflicting harm. Without a doubt she would have used this knowledge to recommend that he be given a custodial sentence.

  But both women had retracted their statements, possibly because of Barclay’s threats. So neither case had come to court.

  And Heidi Faro had been denied her chance to put Barclay away. The only option she had been left with had been a close supervision order.

  Claire continued reading Heidi’s most recent assessment. It was not all bad news. As far as sexual matters were concerned Heidi had believed he was safe. Promiscuous but not a rapist, she had written.

  Claire doubted it. Barclay was turned on by cruelty, inflicting pain. But Heidi’s notes were detailed.

  Months had gone by during which she had explored the relationship between Barclay and his parents. It had quickly become clear that his father had been the less indulgent of the two while his mother was prone to giving in to every whim.

  The father had died when the son had been ten years old. Heidi had written that there were no siblings.

  So she had done what she could – and should – warned the police and the courts when asked for an opinion whether he was a potential danger to society but the minor crimes had not warranted a frank psychiatric analysis or a custodial sentence; the animal cruelty had been too long ago, there was only his word for it and certainly no proof, committed when Barclay had still been a minor; and each time a cheque fraud was committed Barclay’s mother refused to press charges. And the big chance of charging him with two major assaults had been thwarted.

  So had begun the dance of death between them, the psychiatrist obsessed with learning more about the dark nature of the psychopath and the patient himself who craved an audience even though it had led both of them to dangerous places. They were locked together by their mutual needs.

  Heidi had believed that by letting Barclay know she was aware how deep he could sink she might prevent him from committing a major offence.

  But on Barclay’s part the dance had merely been a mime. A year ago, six months before Heidi’s murder, Barclay’s mother had had ‘another accident’. And this time Heidi had told Barclay quite clearly that she did not believe a word of it. She had tried to contact Mrs Barclay only to have her flatly refuse to speak to her.

  Claire tried to put herself in Heidi’s shoes.

  As she had written these notes she must have exulted. She had foreseen this crime. Known Barclay would reoffend. And yet at the same time she would have felt guilty.

  She should have prevented this, protected her patient’s mother. Or else what was the point of studying these people so closely, pinning them to a board with a supervision order, if only to observe without being empowered to intervene and prevent further criminal activity?

  Claire was inside her mentor’s mind, reasoning alongside her. By knowing these people intimately we are party to their crimes, future, past and present, part of them, involved in them, because we know while they speak to us they are plotting and we are listening.

  The assault on Mrs Barclay should have led to co-operation between the psychiatrist who has her crystal ball to predict and police who can only act afterwards.

  But frustratingly for the police Barclay’s mother, Cynthia, having got so close, backed off yet again and refused to press charges and without her statement the police case collapsed for the second time.

  Reading the notes Claire could sense Heidi’s frustration as she documented the change of heart. So near. And yet we cannot step across the line of conjecture and what is provable in a court of law.

  She looked around the room again, decided now that she didn’t like the dark corners where these moving demons lurked, pushed the chair away from the desk and impatiently flicked the central light on so she could read the notes even closer.

  Heidi was here, peering over her shoulder, cheering her on, encouraging her
to take up where she had left off.

  She read through the full account ot the assault on Sadie Whittaker and realised it had been worse than she had initially thought. Barclay’s girlfriend had actually been pregnant at the time and must have felt so strongly she did not want to spawn Barclay’s child that she had subsequently had a termination even though a scan had proved that the child had not been harmed. Claire read the notes right through and agreed that this time Barclay should have been put behind bars. It bore the hallmarks of a psycho. He had confessed to Heidi that he had deliberately driven at her. But yet again Barclay had slipped through the net. To the police Sadie Whittaker had insisted she had thrown herself in front of the car and that Jerome had swerved to try and avoid her.

  The police had tried their best. They had argued that the tyre tracks did not bear out this version of events but Sadie Whittaker had been adamant. She would not change her story and with their main witness denying events they could not press charges.

  They had pushed Sadie as hard as they could but cleverly she had used the baby to underline her case.

  ‘What man,’ she had demanded, ‘would wilfully destroy his own child?’

  Barclay would.

  But the news had not been all bad. From this case Heidi had been able to insist that Barclay underwent therapy and was closely watched. She had tightened her grip on him.

  And waited for him to act again.

  Claire could read her mind. She had been steadily working towards putting him away again under the Section of the Mental Health Act designed to protect the public from evil.

  As always knowledge brings negatives in its wake. There were a few things which she would have preferred not to know. Heidi Faro had been her idol, a pioneer in the diagnosis and treatment of psychopathic behaviour, but to gather her data she must have spent a great deal of time interviewing people like Barclay. Many of the interviews had been repetitious. Yet nothing had been achieved by the hours of work. Barclay had been all too aware that he was being used as a guinea pig and had played accordingly. Heidi had lost her objectivity and Barclay was still a psycho. At loose. While Heidi was dead, having misjudged the danger potential of another patient.

  Her idol had had feet of clay.

  Was it the feet of clay, this loss of objectivity, which had led to her vulnerability? And subsequent death?

  Claire focused on a dark spot to the right of the door. Probably where a grubby hand had fumbled for the switch and the painters had not masked it. She liked it. It helped her to concentrate. It was the inkblot of psychology.

  She leaned back in her chair. So – it was now up to her to decide what to do next with Barclay.

  She had the same interest in sociopaths but unlike Heidi she felt she needed to achieve results. She couldn’t afford to clog up her clinics with manipulates. Maybe it was time to let Barclay go – back out into the community, unsupervised – and see what happened. She sat for a while, tapping the notes with her fingernail, hearing Heidi’s arguments for close supervision but inserting her own. She re-opened the file and read the most recent letters, almost changing her mind. Objectively it wasn’t strictly true that Heidi’s efforts had been wasted. Barclay hadn’t re-offended. He’d been clean for more than a year. He might have skipped around the periphery of re-offending but there were no documented cheque frauds, no petty thefts, no cruelty. Nothing since the attacks on his mother and girlfriend.

  Had they both been so afraid?

  Maybe a good way to find out the truth would be to speak to Mrs Barclay. Alone. If she would.

  She picked up the phone and dialled the number in the notes.

  It rang and rang and she began to wonder whether anyone was in until he picked it up.

  Claire introduced herself. ‘Jerome,’ she said, hardly giving him a chance to wonder why she was ringing him. ‘I’m considering reducing your supervision order but I thought you should keep your appointment next month. Also I could do with talking to your mother.’

  Barclay laughed. ‘My mother,’ he drawled, ‘is almost seventy years old and not in the best of health. She would find it a trial and an embarrassment to come up to the hospital.’

  ‘Your future depends on it,’ Claire said coolly. ‘It’s up to you, really.’

  ‘You don’t have the same … interests as Doctor Faro?’

  ‘I do but you know in the Health Service these days we are measured by outcomes. I can’t see what Doctor Faro really achieved by her intense interest in you.’

  ‘I’ve kept out of trouble.’

  He was sparring.

  She couldn’t voice her theory that maybe the lack of complaint from Barclay’s mother was due to another reason – fear.

  But Barclay was smart. And quick. ‘Oh I get it,’ he drawled. ‘You think my old mum doesn’t complain because she’s frightened of me.’

  How easy is it to stand over an old lady and get her to sign the cheques?

  ‘Well,’ she said again quite coolly. ‘It’s up to you, really.’

  ‘So it is. Well. I shall talk to Mummy and let you know. Is that all right, Doctor Roget?’

  ‘Fine.’

  She put the phone down with a smug feeling. She had anticipated his responses correctly.

  It was up to her now. Not Heidi. For unlike the Health Service the police did not have the time to show ongoing interest in a non-case. No prosecution. No case. No witnesses (prepared to testify). No case. No certainty of conviction (according to the Crown Prosecution Service). No case.

  Unlike her. She could work through the shadowy realms. The Land of Possibility. Not for her this black and white certainty. What Barclay might do was not necessarily what Barclay would do.

  Criminal law depends on both evil mind and evil act.

  Mens rea; actus reus. One without the other collapses the case.

  Psychiatry is so different. So much more subtle and clever. An evil mind is recognised as potential. The question that interested her was what was Barclay capable of? Ultimately?

  Claire cupped her chin in her hand and drifted off into a dream of Heidi, remembering her many encounters with her, the animated way she had talked, hands tensely to her side, voice enthuiastically high, the way she had flicked her shining hair away from her face. Clever, with an Honours degree in medicine, swiftly gaining her MRC Psych before she was thirty. Unmarried, with a succession of partners of both sexes, no children. All this had been in the newspapers both at the time of the murder and the subsequent trial of Gulio. Heidi’s life had been subjected to the full glare of publicity, leaving no shadows.

  She bent her head again, saddened by the sudden, vivid presence and an unexpected waft of Chanel Number 19, recognisable through the smell of paint. A stiff, strange scent for a psychiatrist to wear but over dinner one evening she had confessed to Claire that to her, Chanel was the epitomy of luxury, of Western wealth, of complete indulgent hedonism.

  Claire felt a hot shaft of anger. Why did it have to be Heidi who had died in so cruel and pointless a crime? They could have worked here, together, as colleagues. Together they might have uncovered the secretive nature of a remorseless mind. Now she was left to struggle on alone. Without her.

  And all because Stefan Gulio had suffered brain damage at the hand of a bunch of hooligans.

  She felt angry because Heidi’s death had been so futile, so pointless as to be almost banal.

  She leafed through the rest of Barclay’s notes.

  Most of the interviews held nothing. Time after time Barclay had refused to talk, been silent in response to questions. But he did not default on his appointments. Heidi had set out quite clearly that if he did not turn up the police would be empowered to bring him in.

  Once or twice Barclay had become annoyed with her but he had not threatened her – not overtly.

  One interview, however, stood out.

  J asked me whether I was ever frightened of any of my patients. I told him no, I was not. He then asked me whether I was frightened of what they
could do to me. Of humiliation or pain?

  I said I didn’t think about it, that I had a job to do, that I must assess and protect my patients and the public and it was a job like any other.

  He seemed dissatisfied by this and asked me what I was frightened of.

  I answered – being wrong. Letting someone out of their section and them committing a crime. I said I would feel responsible and that frightened me.

  I then asked him whether he was ever afraid of what he might do.

  He just gave me a long stare then said no.

  He was trying the old trick of trying to frighten me.

  I asked him how he was getting on, living at home. He said OK.

  I asked him whether he went out much?

  He said sometimes.

  I asked him who with?

  He said, girls. Stupid, stupid girls.

  I said, were they stupid because they were going out with him and he said, stupid to trust him. He named Kristyna Gale, saying she was typical of that type. That he would enjoy feeling her underneath him. He said she had nice ears. I did talk to her about him and warned her to be careful. To be very very careful.

  A week later Barclay had again lost his temper with her probing and had threatened to cut her throat.

  ‘I asked him why he considered using that particular method of murder.’

  He stared back at me. ‘Lots of blood,’ he said. ‘Nice and quick. No hanging around, waiting for someone to die.’ He thought again. ‘Completely certain,’ he said. ‘No paramedical intervention. The deed is done. And there is something ritualistic – almost religious about it, don’t you think?’