A Plea of Insanity

by Priscilla Masters

  The reconstruction with its unsatisfactory ending of the camel coat whisking through the gates cast a dampener over the entire day even more acute than usual. It seemed to put a formality, a finality on Kristyna’s vanishment.

  But now there was work to do. They must address the issue of Mavis Abiloney spending Christmas at home. Her worried daughter had made an appointment to speak to her. She was an interesting woman, in her early forties with a hefty frame, well-applied strong makeup and a confident manner. One would have thought the diametric opposite of her mother. And yet …

  ‘I’m a teacher at the Special School in the Meir,’ she said. ‘I work full-time. My husband and I split up eight years ago. I have a daughter of sixteen.’

  She met Claire’s eyes with a searing boldness. ‘My mother can’t stay in here for the rest of her life,’ she said formally. ‘And I don’t really want her to come and live with me. Much as I’m fond of her I have my own life to lead.’

  Claire supplied the alternative. ‘Which leaves her home.’

  Beatrice Harvey gave a long sigh. ‘And we all know what happens if my mother goes home. Within hours – or at least days – she’s back in here.’

  ‘Well —’

  Beatrice Harvey gave a sigh. ‘I hope you don’t believe her fables about my father being violent.’

  Claire gaped.

  Beatrice Harvey continued. ‘She simply says it to excuse her behaviour. The truth of the matter is that she’s institutionalised. But I don’t know how to cure her.’

  ‘What does your father think?’

  Another sigh. ‘Poor Dad,’ Beatrice said. ‘He always starts off really wanting it to work but within hours he gets frustrated. She can be difficult, you know. Dad’s always had a short fuse. He can’t stand it. He does shout. And then.’ Part of her confidence began to crumble. ‘I do want Mum home for Christmas but I don’t see …’

  ‘You live close by,’ Claire stated. ‘Is there any chance you could stay with your parents – and your daughter of course – for the two days – just to try and keep things on an even keel? It might even be the starting point of rehabilitating your mother. Otherwise she’ll have to be discharged eventually to some sort of halfway house which won’t really help her. It really isn’t in Government Directives for us to keep patients like your mother as an inpatient. She doesn’t fulfil any of the criteria.’

  ‘It’s keeping her alive, ‘Beatrice argued sharply. ‘Surely that fulfils a Government Directive?’

  Claire knew better than to argue.

  Kap Oseo was also fit for discharge. His family were coming to collect him. Wife, son, daughter, son-in-law. Eight people had crammed the tiny interview room as Claire, Rolf and Siôna talked to them about emergency numbers, duty psychiatrists and restraint. As one they nodded their heads solemnly, accepted responsibility and signed the discharge forms. Kap looked dubious as she shook his hand, wished him well and handed him the outpatients’ card for early in the New Year.

  Claire did her final Christmas shopping on December the 20th, Suicide Saturday, with her festive spirit replaced by irritability, and returned from the shops to an empty house. Grant had gone to visit his parents. She went to bed early, tired yet anxious she would not sleep. She woke at 3 am, in a sweat, from a dream which had been so vivid she sat up, convinced it was the truth.

  Christmas morning, waking up with an instinct to destroy. Tiptoeing to Adam’s room and watching him sleep. A sour Christmas Day, she sitting alone in the corner, opening her presents unobserved while they fussed over Adam. An overwhelming feeling of jealousy and hatred that poisoned her.

  She sat up in bed, hugging her knees and remembering.

  She slept again only to find other monsters in her dreams.

  An insubstantial woman who melted through the closed doors of Greatbach. Kristyna in her camel coat, hands thrust into pockets, her shoulderbag swinging, like a pendulum. Tick tock. Making the noise of a metronome set by a strict piano teacher. Claire tried to catch up with the girl in the camel coat, to walk with her and ask her where she had been but Kristyna, as people often are in dreams, was always one or two steps ahead, not even turning around to acknowledge Claire’s calls, as though she was stone deaf.

  Head down, hands deep in pockets, striding like a man, Claire could only see her back view and – occasionally when she turned – her profile and the bag swinging. Tick tock. Tied by invisible rope they walked in tandem through the city, as Claire had on that strange night, a few months ago, passing windows and derelict factories, bottle-kilns, lighted shops, health clubs, the noise punctuated by car doors slamming around them.

  Claire hurried but she never caught up. Was never close enough to touch Kristyna. So finally they were in a car park, the one near the theatre, both walking towards her car, which was parked crookedly, she a few paces behind when she noticed acid bubbling on the bonnet, like a witches’ brew. She drew close enough to feel the bubbled paintwork beneath her fingertips, Kristyna, somehow, now behind her. Then the car door was flung open and Jerome Barclay peered up at the pair of them from the driver’s seat, arms casually wrapped around the steering wheel. ‘Well, hello,’ he said. ‘Hello. You’ve been ages. I’ve been waiting.’

  As she had known he had. She sat up with certain knowledge. Words were needling her mind, puncturing holes into her consciousness.

  Need for stimulation. One of the ten commandments of personality disorder. She knew how Barclay achieved it.

  He had a need to frighten people. So what was he planning next?

  All day Sunday she was distracted, unable to concentrate on the Sunday papers. Feeling she should do something but not knowing what. When Grant returned in the early evening she was hugely glad to see him and stood, in the kitchen, drinking white wine, leaning against the units and for the first time ever she began to confide in him. He listened quietly, cooking a meal of pasta and chicken, fresh basil and a plate of tomatoes and onions drowning in balsamic vinegar. As she spoke she was aware what an irrevocable step this was. She never had shared confidences with Grant before but she had a need to talk to someone she could trust. Someone away from Greatbach.

  Eventually he put the food on the plate, carried it through to the dining room and they ate.

  ‘I think,’ he said, chewing his dinner slowly, ‘that you should speak to the police.’

  ‘But —’ she started to object.

  He put his fork down. ‘If you’re so sure, Claire,’ he said, unsmiling. She was grateful he had recognised the seriousness of what she was saying. ‘After all – you’re the psychiatrist, trained to recognise psychopathic personalities. ‘If you think he’s a danger.’

  ‘It’s just that he mentioned her, in particular.’

  She put her knife and fork down too. ‘It’s no good, Grant. There isn’t anything specific to go on. I’ve no evidence. The police can’t do anything.’

  ‘But I thought …’

  ‘It’s a grey area, Grant.’ She hesitated. ‘If I knew one solid fact I’d act. I really would. But …’

  He carried on eating his meal.

  Chapter Eleven

  But she did nothing.

  Christmas was an anticlimax, the presents not enough of a distraction from the fact that Kristyna had not turned up. And as time went on not one of them believed she ever would – alive. Each one tucked away their conviction and said nothing to each other, which made them isolated and stilted. Their morning meetings had become increasingly strained and the camaraderie had melted away, leaving them uncomfortable colleagues. It was as though a hard lump of ice sat in the middle of the room, chilling them all.

  There was a tangible edge to add to the disappearance. Roxy had been haunting the outside of Greatbach, like the heroine of a tragic Russian novel, a headscarf wrapping her face against the sharp Easterly winds and flurries of snow which rained in on the exposed site. She would catch each of them in turn, by the sleeve, begging them to tell her if they knew anything. Anything …


  At first Claire had not recognised her but Roxy had introduced herself and over the weeks she had become a tragic figure they all avoided, even leaving the hospital through the kitchen exit so they didn’t have to run the gauntlet of that ravaged face with its raw hurt.

  Which reminded them they had no answers to offer her.

  Besides – none of them knew that Kristyna hadn’t simply tired of her commitments.

  All the staff except the ward nurses had had two days off to celebrate the festive period and many of the inpatients had been allowed home but even on Christmas Day Claire could not help wondering where Kristyna was, what had happened to her, and riding on the back of that where Barclay was and what he was doing. Because like locating a shark by its fin in the water he was at his most unnerving when he was invisible.

  So for them all there was a terrible unfinished feeling to the entire festive season. Not helped by the fact that privately Claire wondered whether they would ever know what had happened.

  They returned to work on Monday the 29th of December.

  Nature, we are told, abhors a vacuum.

  Therefore one imagines that a void must always be filled.

  Not true.

  Emotional voids spread to form uncrossable chasms, growing deeper, wider, darker, by the day.

  After the Christmas break a new trend developed. Starting with Dawn, staff began to avoid the morning meetings. The numbers dwindled from eight to seven – to six – to five and finally to Claire, Siôna and Rolf. People made excuses but the real reason was the awkwardness that stifled conversation. You cannot constantly skirt round the main topic occupying your mind. It is not possible. By Freudian slips, accidental words and unconscious gestures everyone knows what everyone else is thinking. You are united but you cannot mention what unites you.

  No one sat on Kristyna’s chair. So it was left, empty as a grave plot, silently protesting while each time Claire even glanced at it she was distracted with the last sighting she had had of the psychiatric nurse, perched on the arm of the chair, leaning across and grooming Rolf’s hair.

  So she waited.

  Although he had no follow-up appointment she knew Barclay would be in touch. He had to keep the attention on himself. If her assumptions about him were correct he must have some contact to keep her under his influence.

  She was right.

  But in the meantime there were endless visits from the police and during one of those she caught the name Young, Sergeant Young, the police officer she had spoken to briefly after Cynthia Barclay’s death.

  Two days later she met him.

  He turned out to be a stolid, slightly plump, Stoke man of around thirty. His questions were routine, predictable, unimaginative, almost irrelevant, dealing with Kristyna’s last few days at work, lists of patients she had seen. The name Jerome Barclay didn’t crop up. Sergeant Young had no original ideas, no answers. She eyed the policeman across the staff room and decided not to mention Barclay – yet. The time would come. But it confirmed her suspicions that Cynthia Barclay’s death could have been suspicious, the police naively unsuspecting. Barclay could still be getting away with murder.

  She sat and puzzled over this. She had always assumed the police were naturally suspicious beings, questioning seemingly innocent statements and delving into people’s past. Instead the opposite seemed the case. They accepted alibis and statements, failed to investigate properly. She was disappointed.

  Barclay loved to do the unexpected, to appear like Houdini. He caught her unawares by not making an appointment. He simply turned up at one of her outpatient clinics and demanded from the receptionist that he see her. She heard his voice outside, unusually raised. (Was he losing control?) She moved towards the door, pulled it open a fraction and caught part of the conversation.

  ‘It’ll be on your head …’

  ‘I shall make a complaint …’

  The high-pitched voice of the receptionist protested weakly and Barclay pressed home his point.

  ‘Look. I have a mental condition. You go in there and ask Doctor Roget if she wants to risk not seeing me. Go on. You go in there and ask her.’

  Claire opened the door wide. ‘It’s OK, Sophie,’ she said. ‘I’ll see him.’

  And to Barclay, ‘You have ten minutes, Jerome, to explain just what is so urgent. Then I shall have to get on with my clinic.’

  Firm control. That was the key. That and to be unemotional. Don’t waver or let them manipulate you, rattle you, or get you on the hop.

  Stay in control.

  Heidi’s words.

  She closed the door behind him, waited for him to sit down, settled into her chair, dated a fresh sheet of paper for his notes, gripped a pen – and waited, her gaze square on him.

  ‘I read in the paper,’ he began carelessly, ‘about Kristyna Gale.’

  She offered him nothing.

  He licked his lips, smiled just a little. ‘You don’t like me much, do you, Doctor Roget?’

  She leaned forward then, across the desk, her elbow on his folder, her hand lightly on her cheek. ‘Get this straight, Barclay,’ she said. ‘I’m a doctor. A psychiatrist. I have a job to do – to treat the problems you have merging with society. It isn’t part of my remit to either like you or dislike you. In actual fact I feel neither emotion.’

  He chewed his lip at that. ‘Liar,’ he muttered.

  She let it pass.

  ‘What if I told you I think something’s happened to Kristyna? Something awful.’

  ‘I would ask you what evidence you had.’

  She tried to forget that in her estimation he was responsible.

  She tried to forget what had happened to Heidi.

  It would not help her.

  He met her eyes boldly, his mouth open, his tongue dry and rasping over his lips. She caught his scent, a cigarette, Lynx deodorant, toothpaste and chewing gum mixed with something chemical. Maybe the acid he marked her car with. There was a stain on his thumb.

  ‘If I said a feeling – a strong feeling.’

  ‘I would suggest you stop playing games with me, Jerome, and tell me what you know. If anything. Tell me if you do know something why you’ve come to me and not to the police. We have limited time so don’t waste it.’

  Now wait for it. He would want to puncture her adult control, impress her, catch and keep her attention. But how far would he go?

  ‘You were a bit suspicious about my mum’s death, weren’t you?’

  So this was how he would play it, prick her with a tiny lance, the picador of the bullring and she the bull, meant to become fierce and careless. To the death.

  Well she wasn’t playing.

  ‘I did speak to the police,’ she admitted. ‘They told me your mother’s death was not being treated as suspicious.’

  ‘Oooh,’ he sneered, mocking her admission.

  She retained her role as doctor/patient. ‘So stop playing around with me and tell me whether you know anything about Kristyna’s disappearance or not.’

  He leaned back, folded his arms, crossed his ankles, stared at his shoes. ‘Do you know why I keep coming here?’

  I think I do.

  ‘You – and Heidi – and Kristyna. You are all a challenge. Difficult to break.’ His voice was quiet, but she was not scared. All of this could have been anticipated.

  Barclay observed her for a moment, his face perfectly impassive.

  What lay beneath that bland exterior, that smooth skin, those pale, odd eyes, that pink mouth?

  Suddenly her overwhelming emotion was that she was glad that she was in the outpatient department and not in her own office. She knew her eyes would have betrayed her by wandering around the room, that she would have searched out and stuck to the spots where they both knew Heidi’s blood had spilt. And she knew her fingers would have grazed the underside of her desk, felt the tiny patches of dried blood.

  And he would have known.

  Instead she was here.

  Chloe was on the outside with a row
of waiting patients, the psychiatric nurses, a couple of porters. All within shouting distance.

  He knew that too.

  As he studied his fingernails. ‘A shame about poor old Heidi.’

  He looked up at her.

  ‘What are you saying, Jerome?’

  ‘And as for Kristyna …’ He left the sentence dangling dangerously like a live cable which has been severed, sparking and jerking.

  ‘Have you ever thought,’ he said next, ‘how much destruction a body can take?’ He stood up, splayed his hands across the desk. ‘What fire can do?’

  For her to stand up too would be to acknowledge she found this disparity uncomfortable.

  He whispered his next sentence. ‘Bones splinter. Jewellery melts. Nothing left but the underwires of her bra.’ His eyes dropped deliberately to her bust-line. As though he had X-ray sight the underwires of her bra seemed to grow hot.

  He sauntered out then and she knew he had won this first round while she had learned nothing except that she was in his sights now.

  Should she tell the police?

  Yes. This was the point at which she was justified.

  She did ring the defence union, explain the facts surrounding Heidi’s death and that Barclay’s mother too had died, also that one of the nurses had vanished just before Christmas and now one of the most disturbing patients was dropping hints.

  ‘They may help the police,’ she pointed out and the lawyer employed by the defence union could not help but agree.

  Rolf was in clinic in the next room. She waited until his patient had left the room, knocked and walked in. He gave her a warm smile. One of the warmest she had seen on his face for days.

  ‘You look worried,’ he said. ‘What’s up?’