A Plea of Insanity

by Priscilla Masters

  One by one they shook their heads. But there was a variety of possible explanations. Christmas is a time of heightened awareness about personal relationships. An uncertainty can magnify under the contrast of consumer celebration and private evaluation and thought. This is the time when we ponder whether our lives really are as neat and right as they appear for the rest of the year. These were veins of thoughts that ran through Claire’s mind.

  Nothing sinister. Not then.

  But it was the beginning of the nightmare. Wednesday, December the 10th. A date which would grow in significance. A date they would prefer to erase.

  Coincidentally or not the following morning’s post delivered a handwritten card from Barclay, addressed ‘To all at Greatbach’, postmarked Dijon, with a picture of the mairie on the front and a jaunty message inside.

  ‘Hi, everyone. Back for Christmas. Having a great time, Jerome.’ And in brackets, ‘(Barclay – patient)’ as though it was all part of the joke and a PS ‘Hope you’re not worrying about me.’

  Claire read it through and realised he had begun to fade from her mind.

  During the last month she had, at last, started to concentrate properly on her job without the distraction of Heidi’s murder. She no longer looked around her office with an apprehensive stare, obsessively searching for some residue of the assault. Heidi had been murdered. Gulio, strange man as he was, was in prison, serving a life sentence for the crime. Admittedly her personal life was not quite so neat and tidy. Grant was still at home but she had grown used to him being there. She would not oust him. Privately she admitted he suited her. He, the homemaker, she the career woman. He was happy, humming and decorating the terraced house, planning various projects.

  She had bought him a book on decorating for Christmas and a year’s subscription for a magazine about interior design. She had enrolled him on a day’s course with Jocasta Innes learning about different paint effects.

  Secretly she had even begun to scan estate agents’ windows and look at more ambitious properties in need of renovation. Maybe after Christmas they would move. It would make Grant happy. They should make a healthy profit on this house. They could buy another property, do it up and sell it. It was the one area Grant found fulfilling. Well then – let him do it. The night before she had tousled his hair and dropped a kiss onto the top of his head, stroking his neck until he had turned and kissed her with a gentle, ‘Hey.’

  Her tolerance had turned to affection.

  Yes – things had changed for the better.

  Two days later the police called at Greatbach.

  They had heard nothing from Kristyna despite numerous phone calls to both her mobile and her landline. They had connected with a distraught Roxy twice and, dreading this, none of them had rung her. They had their excuses. They had been busy with seasonal admissions. Christmas may be portrayed as a time of family, harmony and happiness but it is a bad time for depressives and the lonely. And there is a group of people who, happy throughout the entire year, have a terrible tether to the Festive season. They are those who have lost a child, a husband, a mother or son during Christmas and the time of year fills them with remembered dread. Every year when the tinsel is hung and the battery Santas start gyrating and singing their tinny carols these people are tipped into depression, suicide and self-harm and the most isolating type of loneliness. After all – the world merrily closes down and shuts its doors on unhappiness so these people congregate wherever a door is propped open: churches, pubs, hospitals.

  The police arrived at four o’clock on a dull afternoon. It was Friday, the 12th of December, another date to stand out like March the 17th, the date Heidi had died.

  They arrived at an inconvenient time, halfway through Claire’s inpatient ward round. She had called in an obstetrician to examine Nancy Gold and he was with her just as a pair of burly shoulders blocked out the light in the little porthole window in the door.

  You sense when something looms to darken a room – or a day – or an innocent moment you are not entitled to.

  Claire left the obstetrician to attend to the door in an attitude of impatience.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you Doctor Roget?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m a police officer.’ He flashed a card. ‘Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about a colleague of yours, Kristyna Gale?’

  A pointed glance behind her to emphasise that this was not a good moment.

  The policeman was, however, implacable.

  ‘OK,’ she said, ‘if you can wait – just a few minutes.’

  Doctor Crane, the obstetrician, had finished his examination of a very smug Nancy. ‘Everything seems to be fine,’ he said, putting away the Sonic Aid with which he had broadcast the baby’s heartbeat, to the squealing delight of Nancy. ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’

  Claire’s head jerked round. For you to murder, child-woman?

  The obstetrician was calm. ‘I don’t know without doing a scan – and there’s no indication for that.’ He flicked the clasps of his case. ‘We don’t want to harm the infant.’ His blue eyes searched across, found Claire’s with a tired acceptance of the world as it is.

  Only when they were safely outside the door did he voice his concern, speaking for both of them. ‘The baby will have to be made a ward of court,’ he said quietly. ‘Either Nancy is supervised all the time she is in attendance or the baby is taken away from her at birth.’

  Claire felt a flash of sympathy. ‘That’s a cruel …’

  ‘I heard that baby’s heartbeat,’ Doctor Crane said curtly. ‘It is a living thing. It has the right to remain so.’

  ‘When is it due?’

  ‘Middle of March, I should say.’ He glanced around. ‘Best you keep her here until she goes into labour.’

  Claire sensed a movement behind her and knew too late that Nancy’s curious little face was filling the porthole window.

  Doctor Crane walked briskly away up the corridor and Claire turned reluctantly to her side. The policeman was hovering. He flashed the card again at her and this time she read it. Detective Constable Peter Martin. An ordinary looking guy, tall, brown hair, brown eyes, smart jeans, sweat shirt. Nothing remarkable about him except an inherent honesty about his face.

  ‘So – what can I do for you?’

  ‘We’re looking into the disappearance of Kristyna Gale.’

  ‘Disappearance?’ It seemed too strong a word. ‘Has she disappeared?’

  ‘Well, we don’t know where she is. I understand she hasn’t been seen at work for more than a week and her partner reports her as missing, which is out of character. How would you put it?’

  Claire felt her face tighten into a frown. ‘Surely there’s some other explanation.’

  DC Martin looked around anxiously. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk, a bit more private than a corridor?’

  She felt an odd reluctance to admit this policeman to her private office. The taint had only recently been cleansed, the ghost laid to rest. She didn’t want him there to resurrect spectres.

  There were plenty of visitors’ interview rooms spare. She led him to one, small, square, soulless. He didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘There are a few pointers,’ he said when he had settled into a saggy, vinyl covered armchair, ‘which give us cause for concern.’

  Claire raised her eyebrows politely. ‘Such as?’

  ‘Kristyna’s mother has ME,’ DC Martin said. ‘Kristyna was in the habit of ringing her every day to check how she was. For her not to ring for two nights is most unusual.’

  Claire waited.

  ‘Her sister is going through a divorce. She has two small children who are a bit of a handful. Kristyna usually babysits once or twice a week to let her have a night out with friends. Only up the pub. Nothing special. She was due to babysit last night and didn’t turn up.’

  How little we know about people.

  ‘Roxy, her partner, says she’s never ever done this before, gone AWOL. They hadn’t h
ad a row or anything. All her clothes except the ones she was wearing – her work clothes – are hanging in the wardrobe. No money has been taken out of her account and her passport’s in the drawer. There’s been no word from her since Tuesday evening when she left here. You see my point, Doctor Roget. I take it there’s been no trouble at work?’

  ‘No – no trouble at all.’

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘I can’t remember. Sometime on the Tuesday, I suppose. The first I knew she was missing was when she failed to turn up for the Wednesday morning meeting.’

  ‘And how did she seem on the Tuesday?’

  ‘Normal.’

  The policeman looked bored, as though he’d expected something better from her.

  She tried. ‘She was talking about her Christmas presents, sending off for something for her mum, I think. I can’t remember. Have you no clues?’

  ‘Not really. There is one thing that strikes me,’ DC Martin said. ‘I don’t know if you remember but Tuesday started off very cold but dry. Later in the day clouds came over and it poured with rain.’

  Claire was puzzled. ‘So what’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘She worked here all day, last seen in the afternoon. Her car was in for service so she’d walked to work, a distance of over two miles. That morning she’d worn a heavy winter coat – not a mac. If she had walked all the way home her coat would have been soaked.’

  ‘So why didn’t she ask someone for a lift – or call a taxi?’

  ‘Maybe she did,’ DC Martin said meaningfully.

  Claire worked it out. The police would have contacted local taxi firms. So – a lift.

  ‘Thousands of people go missing every year, don’t they,’ she said anxiously, searching for some explanation. ‘Most of those have not come to a bad end, have they?’

  The policeman shook his head. ‘Quite the contrary. Most of those people want to disappear, are anxious, in fact, not to be found.’

  ‘Well maybe she found the job, her partner, her mother, her sister … maybe she found it all a bit much.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said the policeman.

  But she knew what she was doing, struggling to convince herself that Kristyna Gale was somewhere, safe and sound and perfectly well. The obstacle was that she wasn’t even sure she believed it herself.

  DC Martin cleared his throat, a sure sign he was about to say something unpalatable. ‘You get a feel for these disappearances, Doctor Roget, and I have a bad feeling about this one.’ Another scraping of the throat. ‘Some very odd people are inpatients here. Outpatients too.’

  She believed he was about to mention Barclay and his mother. ‘Are you suggesting a patient?’

  But he skated away.

  ‘We’re exploring all avenues, Doctor,’ the policeman said flatly. ‘There was a murder here earlier this year and that did turn out to be a patient. Patients and their families frequent this area.’

  She felt bound to defend. ‘You can’t extend the illness of our patients to their families.’

  The policeman blinked. ‘I can only suggest that you all take extreme care.’

  It was on her tongue to mention Barclay. But implicating him in his mother’s death was one thing – dragging him forward when a member of staff had gone missing was another. Besides – he was out of the country.

  A few hours away.

  She said nothing.

  DC Martin gave her a cue of silence then stood up. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’d better be off. Plenty to do. If you do think of anything I’d be grateful if you’d get in touch.’ He handed her a card.

  ‘I suppose I ought to warn you. If she doesn’t turn up we may decide to stage a reconstruction.’

  She bowed her head.

  ‘One of the outstanding features of patients manifesting severe personality disorder is a pathological degree of attention-seeking behaviour. They will do anything to draw attention to themselves or their deeds – sometimes – whatever the consequences. In fact the conviction itself can be part of the necessary gratification bringing with it public recognition and revulsion.’ One of Heidi’s lectures.

  That evening Claire searched her car and found it, Barclay’s little mark. A small splash of acid on the front of her car. Dead centre of the bonnet. It had not been there when she had driven into work.

  The nightmare had returned from his holiday.

  Chapter Ten

  The temptation was to involve DC Martin in her suspicions but Barclay was clever enough to cover his tracks. Besides – what if she was wrong? About everything? What if Kristyna was still alive? And Gulio, Heidi’s killer? What if Barclay had nothing to do with Kristyna’s disappearance and that she really had tired of her commitments and deliberately vanished? What if her own instincts, that Barclay was hovering in the background, were misleading her?

  What if this was obsession?

  But she couldn’t silence the quiet voice that warned her insistently that Jerome’s danger was that he was both elusive and clever. He was capable of outsmarting her, leaving her with nothing concrete, only these vague shadows which disappeared when you turned on the light. She was annoyed with herself. She – of all people – should know how dangerous were these formless suspicions. She only had to talk to Kap Oseo to know that they could chain you into a corner and leave you there without the power ever to come out. They could form a barrier between you and the rest of the world. The mind is all powerful. There is only one way out – to turn around and face these suspicions. Say Boo to the bogeyman. Otherwise like Mavis Abiloney her fears not faced and dealt with firmly would grow bigger and bigger until they swallowed her up.

  If anything did lie behind her suspicions it was up to her alone to turn them into hard evidence if Jerome was guilty in the first place.

  And if he was not – if all in the happy valley of Greatbach was as it should be – she should preserve her sanity and disengage from his game.

  So she bided her time.

  But Kristyna did not turn up so the week before Christmas, on one of the busiest shopping Fridays of the year, when damp snow sat in the clouds and threatened to tumble right into the bright warmth of the festive shops, the police staged their reconstruction.

  They all hung out of the window and watched the girl who was pretending to be Kristyna, their friend and colleague, stride across the quadrangle, in a long camel coat, chased by cameramen pushing cameras on wheels, technicians dangling huge, fluffy microphones and a cluster of local press.

  It was unnerving, Claire thought, how convincing these reconstructions were. By squeezing her eyes almost shut she could convince herself it really was Kristyna crossing the quad. The missing nurse had come back. Flanked by Siôna and Rolf she pressed against the glass and watched the Kristyna lookalike in the long coat, hands thrust deep into pockets, bag slung across her shoulder, walking briskly, with the measured wide steps and firm conviction of someone who knew exactly where she was going as she had passed through the hospital gates.

  Had she? Claire leaned forward eagerly, wanting to find the answer.

  Kristyna Gale had stepped out of Greatbach into oblivion. The question was: had she known where she was going or was this scene being played out in front of her eyes merely illusion, a blind guess by her doppelgänger?

  Was the truth something else? Had there been another, secret, Kristyna, a life behind her life, a clandestine lover, friend or admirer waiting for her to step into some new existence, one without all the encumbrances, lover, mother, sister all with their demands?

  Claire watched and guessed again. Had she stepped outside the gates and entered a completely different scenario – a dangerous one – kidnapper, malicious patient, sadistic killer or rapist waiting to snatch her?

  Jerome?

  Was she dead or alive? Claire found that her fists were clenched, her head hard against the window frame.

  Was Kristyna free or a prisoner?

  Happy or sad?

  Reflective or relieved or beyo
nd feelings altogether?

  Claire turned from the window restlessly.

  Why did she continue to sense Jerome Barclay behind this? Why did she feel the same cold fright that she had felt when she had first entered the room where Heidi Faro had been butchered months before?

  Obsession, whispered the voice.

  What was going on here with Greatbach at its epicentre? Faces rolled past her eyes, staff and patients alike. All strange.

  Rolf was watching the Kristyna-girl too, his hand poised beneath his chin, almost touching his pointed little beard, his eyes heavy and unreadable. Sad. The word slid into her mind as she looked at him then slid straight out again as though it should not have been there in the first place.

  She continued to watch him. Did he know something? Any more than she did? Or did he think he understood? He had known Kristyna for years longer than she had.

  A vignette formed in her mind: Kristyna, legs astride, cargo-pants, bangles jangling, tiny gold stud in her nose catching the light with a cool, yellow glow, the skin as smooth as the surface of a pebble, polished by the sea. Her gaze moved around the room.

  They all knew Kristyna better than she did as they had known Heidi Faro too. Not as an adoring pupil in the front row of the lecture theatre but as a colleague – a friend – an intimate. In this new light she studied everyone in the room in turn and sensed that they all had something they were happy to conceal.

  Siôna spoke for them all. Angrily. ‘Where the bloody hell is she? Where’s she got to?’

  He spoke as though it was all Kristyna’s fault.

  No one responded to his outburst. Each person merely looked embarrassed, as though it was something they might all have thought but no one would have spoken aloud.