A Plea of Insanity

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘But you let Stefan …’

  ‘You don’t understand. None of us here knew anything for sure. The police came barging in. The crime scene was – well – horrific. Stefan was whimpering in the corridor. No one could get any sense out of him. The police just fingered his collar and that was that. None of us knew for sure what had happened.’

  ‘Was Barclay even around that day?’

  ‘We think so.’

  ‘And did you mention that fact to the police?’

  ‘What would have been the point? We didn’t know Barclay had been around. We didn’t know whether he’d challenged Heidi and we didn’t know for sure whether Gulio had suddenly taken it into his head to go for his psychiatrist. Besides …’

  It came to her then. ‘You were worried that the details of the clinical trial would be made public.’

  Rolf nodded. ‘Heidi was dead. The police believed they had the right person. We didn’t know anything for sure.’

  ‘Who was in on this?’

  ‘Only Kristyna and Siôna. We didn’t really talk about it. We just knew. It was a tacit understanding. All we did was allow the police to get on with their investigation, Claire. All we had were ideas.’

  ‘Which you didn’t pass on to the police.’

  ‘I don’t feel guilty about that.’

  ‘Even though Kristyna’s dead.’

  ‘But that can’t have been anything to do with Barclay.’

  So who was it to do with?

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  She found Siôna on the ward, pouring out cups of tea from a huge, aluminium teapot.

  ‘I think we should have a private word,’ she said. ‘Alone.’

  He sensed immediately that she was disturbed, ushered the two care assistants out and closed the door very carefully behind them. There was real deliberation in the act.

  ‘Rolf’s told me about the clinical trial,’ she began.

  He nodded uncomfortably. ‘I thought it was best you knew.’

  ‘I’m not sure where it leaves us.’

  He didn’t look at her. ‘It never was a good idea. Personally I thought she was mad to even consider doing it. If she’d been found out she’d have been in Shit Street.’

  ‘Did you try to dissuade her?’

  Siôna smirked. ‘You knew Heidi. She wasn’t one to listen to criticism. She was always sure she was right. And she wasn’t going to change her mind.’

  There was real dislike in his voice and in his expression.

  Claire went suddenly very slightly dizzy. She had felt like this when she had been on a fairground ride once, when the world had spun around her, leaving her sick and weak, unsure which was sky and which the earth. She was seeing Heidi Faro from a new angle.

  How little we know people. Suddenly her mentor seemed a flawed person, so anxious for accolades, to break new ground, that she was not above behaving like one of her patients, disregarding law, ethics, human consideration even.

  That was when events started hurtling around her mind like loose objects in a poltergeist’s room.

  Such behaviour bordered on the psychopathic.

  She decided then that whatever the consequences the police must be put in the picture. She rang Inspector Frank from her mobile phone while sitting in her car. He listened without comment and she pictured his forehead creased with frown lines.

  It was an unwanted complication.

  ‘Do you seriously believe this has bearing on her murder?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time a psychiatrist abused the position of trust,’ she said flatly. ‘It’s happened before. And our patients are an unforgiving lot.’

  His silence spoke volumes. ‘OK then,’ he said. ‘If you think it’s justified we’ll come in tomorrow and talk to some of your colleagues.’ He paused before asking, ‘And was Kristyna in on this?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said.

  She returned to her office and closed the door behind her. She needed to be in there, alone.

  And so she had turned full circle. She was back at the very beginning, in the cream-painted room, standing in the exact same point – in the centre of the floor – breathing in a recalled smell of paint. But things had changed. More than a year had gone by since Heidi had been murdered; months since she had started her new job. Three more women had died and if anything the situation was worse. It had spun wider out of control. She didn’t believe anyone had been charged appropriately with any of the crimes.

  What she craved was this:

  Order out of disorder. Logic out of chaos. Form out of entropy. Some sense out of it all.

  The words marched through her brain like an invading army. Claire sat down at her desk. From the top right hand drawer she drew out a blank sheet of paper. From the centre drawer she found a pen. And then she started to doodle.

  Most people when they doodle draw the same shape. Hers was always a ballet shoe, a toed ballet shoe, en pointe, ribbons neatly criss-crossed. Always at the same angle. Never two feet. Always just the one, shaded and pointed, the leg sketched in through the swell of the calf to the point just below the knee. It reminded her of a trip to the theatre when she had been six years old to see the ballet, Sleeping Beauty. It had comforted her then through a poorly understood spate of parental quarrels. It had had the same soothing effect through the years and worked again, today. Trips to the ballet and other such treats had stopped completely when Adam had been born.

  Maybe because the form was so obviously feminine her thoughts flew away from Barclay and towards Nancy Gold and the child she had been expecting.

  Or more precisely the father of the child she had been expecting.

  She ringed the word father and shaded in the area around it to denote mystery. No one but dead Nancy knew who that father was.

  But they could find out.

  Something about her liked the vagueness of the generic term so she continued in the same vein.

  Mother.

  Cynthia Barclay. Three questions sprang to mind. What sort of a person had she been? How much had she known about her son? And how had she really died? Again a dead person knew the answer although it was possible that Cynthia had died in a confused, alcoholic haze without ever knowing the precise circumstances.

  Next the doctor.

  Doctor Heidi Faro, as she had appeared the last time she had seen her, flicking her dyed auburn hair from around her face, stamping heavily around the platform in the clumpy brown shoes.

  Not like the ballerina’s footwear which she was softly shading in.

  Using the words in the abstract helped her to lose her intensity and blur the focus.

  But she had no generic term for Kristyna. Except, maybe, nurse.

  So how had she fitted into all this? What exactly had been her connection with these disjointed, dysfunctional crimes? How exactly had she been spirited away? Why?

  And all of a sudden Barclay seemed a less plausible concept. He was fading as a chief suspect.

  She sat with her middle fingers centred on her temples as though she was a clairvoyant.

  Focus on the child.

  Focus on the father of the child.

  Focus on the doctor.

  Focus on the mother.

  Then separate them out. Spin them apart like a salad spinner.

  Then start again with Heidi Faro. The first to die.

  Why had she died?

  Had it been Gulio after all?

  Claire sat right back in her chair. The police had never needed a reason to put him in prison for the crime. He had been mad. Locked up. Put away. That was enough for them. In their book anyone who was not the norm was capable of any dastardly deed.

  So slowly Claire drew all the facts into focus. Her assumption had been all along that it had been Barclay who had killed his psychiatrist because he was capable of doing it. Barclay didn’t need much of a reason.

  But what if it hadn’t been Barclay?

  She put her head in her hands and peered through her fingers, side to
side.

  Then who else?

  Separate the crimes, Claire. The order came from nowhere.

  At the same time she pressed her fingers hard against her temples, irritated with herself. She needed clues. Not guesswork. Not witchcraft or clairvoyancy.

  She needed reasons. Logic.

  Nancy’s voice sang to her.

  Golden Slumbers Kiss your eyes.

  Smiles awake you when you rise

  Sleep pretty darling do not cry

  For I will sing a lullaby.

  Her voice sounded clear.

  With a message sewn in.

  Claire started to draw a second shoe, foot pointed.

  Unconnected with the first leg.

  The two feet danced independently of each other. Not right and left but two one-legged dancers.

  What did she know about the people who had died?

  Very little.

  Heidi first.

  She dropped the doodles on the floor and drew out another sheet of clean paper.

  Heidi Faro, she wrote.

  Brilliant psychiatrist, ground-breaker on personality disorder, desperate for recognition. Carrying out a successful but unethical clinical trial on a selected group of her patients.

  That would have seriously pissed Jerome Barclay off. Enough to have made him take the ultimate risk. That was her assessment as a psychiatrist. She drew a thick black line underneath this.

  Next name:

  Cynthia Barclay

  Barclay’s mother, benevolent, a bit stupid, taken advantage of.

  She could see no real reason for him to have murdered his mother. But suicide? Would she have done it?

  Claire thought very carefully about the circumstances surrounding Cynthia Barclay’s death. What had happened immediately before Cynthia had swallowed the fatal pills?

  Tablets and alcohol. Not a terribly reliable way to kill yourself – or another.

  Nancy.

  Unhinged. Murdered her child, yet desperate for another one, a woman who acted before thinking. The baby was a nuisance, preventing her from having the partner she wanted, ergo she removes it.

  Only afterwards does she regret the action.

  Claire looked at what she had written.

  It was the word desperate which sprung off the page at her. Two people desperate for different things.

  Next Kristyna.

  Here was the puzzle. There was no desperation here. Kristyna had been happy, well-adjusted, in a stable relationship. And a psychiatric nurse here at Greatbach.

  So. How were they all knotted together?

  And then the phrase entered her brain again. Not boring this time but wafting, like a wispy, insubstantial cloud. Nancy’s desperation for a child. Perhaps that had been the start of it all.

  She picked up the phone.

  Oh yes, personality disorder lay right at the heart of the events here, at Greatbach. But there are various types of personality disorder, subdivisions characterised by various other characteristics.

  Like: Preening conceit.

  Narcissism.

  Lust.

  Dominance.

  Psychopathy.

  Many people display various characteristics of personality disorder to various degrees. Some are able to suppress it so well they never come to the attention of the police or the psychiatrist.

  Some may even work in the profession themselves. Nurses are not immune from pathology.

  What if Kristyna had not been all she had appeared?

  Another idol with feet of clay.

  The knock on the door startled her. Rolf stuck his head round. ‘Couple of us are going for a drink,’ he said. ‘Care to join us?’

  But she knew now she must distance herself from them.

  ‘Not tonight, Rolf,’ she said. ‘Maybe some other time.’

  What a useful phrase it is, ‘Maybe some other time.’

  We all know the time may never arrive.

  Already feeling a traitor she spoke to Inspector Frank for less than a minute. He didn’t ask why or look for justification. Serious crime is justification in itself.

  Afterwards she would be humbled by the faith he had in her. Embarrassed, humiliated. But on that night she felt only the triumph of being listened to.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  How the tables turn. What is up is soon down – and vice versa. A position of superiority reversed into one of vulnerability. On the following day Jerome Barclay rang her up and asked, quite politely, for an appointment.

  She acceded and arranged to spend half an hour with him on the following day.

  That night she hardly slept. It was walking into the lion’s jaws. She was frightened, yet excited. She could not reconcile herself to rethinking. To her Barclay was evil, someone whose only remit was to cause harm.

  So why did he want to see her?

  She tossed and turned all night, trying to enter his mind and work out what it was he wanted from her.

  She arrived at work half an hour early and spent the time looking out of the window, watching the front door.

  He turned up at the agreed time, ten o’clock on the dot, and deliberately, to lay ghosts to rest, she saw him in her room.

  Heidi’s room.

  He lolled in front of her, sitting low in the chair, almost challenging her to use the phrase, wasting my time, and came straight to the point.

  ‘I think you have suspicions of me,’ he said.

  She could not deny it.

  ‘I haven’t been in any trouble for a long time now. Nothing serious has ever been proved against me. It’s not as if you’re carrying out an undercover illegal clinical trial. I’m no good to you. I’m not a danger to society and never have been. Let me go, Doctor Roget.’

  ‘But it’s you who have come in to see me.’ she reminded him delicately.

  He blinked.

  Then leaned forward. ‘I’ll make a deal with you. If I reoffend I’ll come back. You can study me like an ant in a Bug-Box. But for now I just want to get on with my life.’

  She eyeballed him. ‘When will you start telling the truth, Jerome? What happened to your father?’

  Barclay looked surprised. ‘My father?’

  She nodded.

  ‘But that was years ago. I was just a kid.’

  ‘I need the truth, Jerome. It’s a good place to start.’

  He thought about that and then sneered, his top lip retracting like a horse’s to show his teeth – and his disdain. Slowly he shook his head. ‘Wouldn’t be wise, Doctor Roget.’ His eyes worked their way around the room, his brain obviously flashing through possibilities before he added, ‘I might have tinkered with some of my father’s stuff. He was a diabetic, you know.’

  ‘Your mother told me.’

  A sudden flash of anger. ‘I thought she would.’ Followed by a gleam of appreciation. ‘You are thorough, Doctor Roget. I will give you that. You’re a worthy match for me.’

  She dipped her head. ‘And your mother?’

  Barclay looked bored. ‘My mother was a miserable old soak,’ he said coldly. ‘The best thing she ever did was to swallow enough booze and drugs to make sure she didn’t wake up. She died happy.’

  His eyes challenged her so hard she knew he had killed her. She also knew she would never be able to prove it. He would get away with it again.

  Fear a clever killer.

  She leaned across the desk. ‘I know you’re guilty, Barclay,’ she said, feeling flames light her eyes. ‘I think you possibly killed your brother and your father. I also know the only reason you’ve never been inside for a good long stretch is because you threatened both your mother and Sadie Whittaker. One day you’ll pay for your crimes. It’ll all catch up with you.’

  ‘A moralist,’ he said, mocking. ‘How refreshing. Maybe one day it will catch up with me. In the meantime you don’t have a stick to beat me with. It’s time to say goodbye. I want you to sign a statement releasing me and stating that I am no longer a danger to society.’

&n
bsp; She experienced what she knew Heidi had then, real hatred for a patient, for the blatant way he was mocking the system, destroying it and cocking a snook from the sidelines.

  But for now she could do nothing but let him go. He was right. She had nothing against him.

  ‘OK then,’ she said finally, ‘but I warn you now. If you come before the courts again I will give evidence, Jerome. I will say that in my opinion you are a dangerous criminal capable of acts of unprovoked violence.’

  Barclay treated her to a penetrating stare. ‘You’re threatening me?’

  ‘I’m simply stating a fact.’

  ‘I don’t care about you,’ he said in a measured voice. ‘But I will tell you one thing. I didn’t kill Heidi Faro. I didn’t string her up. I didn’t cut her throat. I didn’t butcher her. Take my advice. Look a bit closer to home.’

  He stood up. ‘And now, goodbye.’

  Paul Frank arrived at one o’clock, with a team of officers. They commandeered a room in the main building, along the corridor from her office. For more than an hour she heard the sounds of people’s footsteps walking there and back, past her room. She knew what they were doing. The detective did not call on her.

  He was concentrating on the men.

  At four came the knock on her door that she had been half expecting. Rolf’s face appeared round the edge. ‘Care for …?’

  ‘I’d love to,’ she said. ‘Really love to.’

  He waited until they were outside before suggesting, ‘I’ll give you a lift.’