by James Carol
It was a cold, sterile space that made her think of a laboratory. Easy to clean. The thought made her shiver despite the heat. Adam had removed her favourite red dress and replaced it with a pair of shapeless grey jogging bottoms and a matching grey sweatshirt. He’d also removed her underwear, lace replaced with cotton.
Rachel saw all these things without really seeing them, registered them without really registering. She was only vaguely aware of the mattress, and the drying puddle of vomit, of the black plastic bucket in the corner. She’d wished herself out of the dark, and now she could see, she wished she was blind again because all she could see was the dentist’s chair.
The chair was made from brushed steel and had cream upholstery. It was solid and heavy and identical to the sort of chair she sat in every six months when she went for her check-up. Identical except for one big difference: the straps. Padded straps to secure arms, padded straps to secure legs, a padded strap to hold the head in place. For a while she just sat on the mattress and stared at the chair. She didn’t want to, but couldn’t help herself. Just looking at that chair made her feel sick.
Rachel got up and walked over to the chair in a trance. The upholstery on the armrests was stained dark in places. She knew it was blood but didn’t want to admit that to herself because then she’d be opening up the floodgates, and she wasn’t ready to go there yet. She didn’t know if she’d ever be ready.
‘Number Five will walk over to the door.’
Adam’s voice came from all around her. It was distorted and robotic, so loud it was deafening. Rachel spun around in terror. Four speakers were hung high on the walls, one in each corner, all painted white. The cameras fitted next to each speaker were painted white, too, positioned so there were no blind spots.
‘Number Five will walk over to the door,’ Adam repeated.
Rachel walked slowly to the door. She stared at the floor so she wouldn’t have to look at the cameras, watched her feet move one in front of the other. Her legs felt like they belonged to someone else and her whole body was trembling. She was aware of the cameras following her every move. The dog flap swung open and a bucket was pushed through. The bucket was filled to the three-quarter mark with soapy water, a scrubbing brush floating on top. The dog flap swung shut with a clatter.
‘Number Five will clean up her mess.’
Rachel hesitated. She glanced at the speakers, glanced at the cameras, glanced at the pool of vomit next to the mattress. Then she looked at the dentist’s chair. She picked up the bucket and carried it over to the mattress, got down on her hands and knees and scrubbed the floor clean. The smell of bleach got into her nose and made her eyes water. The chemicals burnt into her hands and made her skin itch. When she’d finished cleaning up, she carried the bucket back to the door. The dog flap opened when she was a few steps away.
‘Number Five will put the bucket through the flap.’
Rachel complied immediately. The flap clattered shut and the lights went out. Adam’s footsteps faded into the distance, a door opened then closed. The only sound was the sound of her breathing. Rachel made her way back across the room, slowly, arms outstretched like a sleepwalker. She reached the far wall, followed it around until she found the mattress, then lowered herself down and wrapped a blanket around herself. She was searching for comfort, but all she found was a lonely sadness that gnawed away at what little hope she had left. She closed her eyes to fight off the tears and the backs of her lids burned white and pink in the darkness.
16
The temperature outside the Fizz offices was at least fifty degrees colder than it had been inside. It was like walking into a freezer. Most of the snow had melted, leaving behind grey piles of slush and treacherous patches of pavement ice. I zipped my jacket up to my chin, pulled my hood over my head, and wished I was in California or Hawaii or Rio, anywhere that was sunny and warm. Anywhere but here.
‘Do you want to press charges?’ Templeton asked.
I gave her a look. ‘Why the hell would I do that?’
‘Well, first off, Greg Flight assaulted you. And secondly, he’s an arsehole. There’s two good reasons to get you started.’
‘And thirdly, he told me what I wanted to know, and at the end of the day that’s all that matters. If I press charges I’m just wasting time and energy that could be put to better use. Like tracking down the unsub.’
‘Fair enough, but if you change your mind I’ll be more than happy to play witness.’
I lit a cigarette, offered one to Templeton, then pulled out my cell and thumbed through the list of recent calls.
‘Who are you phoning?’ Templeton flicked the Zippo to life and touched the flame to the tip of the cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth.
‘Are you always this nosy?’
She laughed. ‘Of course I am. I’m a cop. It goes with the territory. So, who are you phoning?’
I ignored the question and hit the button to connect the call. Hatcher answered on the second ring.
‘You owe me fifty pounds,’ I said.
‘I’ll need proof before I pay up,’ Hatcher replied.
‘Templeton was there when Greg Flight confessed. She’ll corroborate. Flight was having an affair at the time his wife was kidnapped. That means the pattern holds. All the victims’ husbands were having affairs. Any hits on the victim profile yet?’
‘Nothing so far, but it’s still early days.’
‘As soon as you get anything I want photographs,’ I said.
‘No problem. You were right about what happened in St Albans, by the way. Our man did park in Grove Road. A resident saw him.’
‘Did you get a description?’
‘Get this,’ said Hatcher. ‘We’re looking for a man of average height aged between thirty and fifty. He might have dark hair, then again he might not have. Probably white, but again he might not have been.’
‘What about the vehicle?’
Hatcher was shaking his head on the other end of the line. I could sense the gesture in the tone of the silence that followed my question. A sigh, then, ‘It was dark and he parked away from the streetlamps, so the description of the car is as useful as the description of the bad guy. According to our witness it was a standard four-door saloon. Could have been a Ford, or a Vauxhall, or a Skoda. Might’ve been five years old. Might’ve been ten. As for colour. Pick a shade of grey.’
‘Don’t you just love witnesses?’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘On the plus side, the fact he parked in Grove Road means my theory that he’s trying to mislead the investigation holds up. We might not know what he looks like, or what sort of car he drives, but we have a better idea of how he operates. Remember, Hatcher, I want those photographs ASAP.’
I killed the call and took a drag on my cigarette. Templeton was staring at me with those bright blue eyes.
‘What?’ I said.
‘You made a bet with Hatcher on whether or not Greg Flight was having an affair. I’m sure there are rules and regulations prohibiting that sort of thing.’
‘Probably. But it’s worth keeping in mind what’s important here.’
‘And what would that be?’
‘The fact I’m now fifty pounds richer means the drinks are on me tonight.’
Templeton narrowed her eyes, giving me her cop stare. The difference between this one and the one she’d used on Greg Flight was that this time she was trying hard to keep a straight face. ‘I don’t remember agreeing to meet you for a drink?’
‘Granted,’ I said. ‘But let me put it another way. How many cops do you know who’ll turn down the offer of a free drink?’
Templeton paused like she was giving this some serious thought. ‘What time?’
‘How about eight?’
‘Eight works for me. And just so we’re totally clear here, it’s going to take more than one drink to buy my silence.’
‘Have as many as you want,’ I said.
We reached the BMW and I crushed
my cigarette out under my boot heel. I kicked the butt into a nearby drain, got into the passenger seat and went to work on my cellphone.
‘Who are you calling now?’ Templeton asked.
‘I’m not calling anyone. I’m hoping my good friend Google can tell me who the best brain surgeon in London is.’
17
Professor Alan Blake was the best brain surgeon in London. He was based at UCL’s Institute of Neurology, an imposing red-brick building in Queen Square that was surrounded by other imposing buildings and lots of concrete. According to Blake’s secretary, the professor wasn’t just busy, he was hideously busy. Fortunately, he had a fifteen-minute window just before lunch. The emphasis she put on fifteen left me in no doubt that if we overran we would not live to see another sunrise.
Templeton used the blue lights to carve a course through the traffic and we got there with five minutes to spare. According to Wikipedia, four of the twelve most highly cited authors in neuroscience were based at the institute. Professor Blake was number two on that list. He’d been pipped to the post by a Professor Xi Yeung, who was based at Johns Hopkins in Maryland.
Professor Blake’s office on the top floor was dusty and well lived in. It was the polar opposite to Greg Flight’s office. There was no ego wall, partly because the professor’s credentials spoke for themselves and he didn’t need to shout about his achievements, but mostly because there was no space for one.
Floor-to-ceiling bookcases lined the walls and every single inch of space was taken up with books, hundreds of them, thousands. Paperwork was strewn across the desk and a tall stack of folders tottered precariously on the edge. Professor Blake greeted us at the door with handshakes and hellos. He had a pot belly, a wide, friendly face, grey hair and a neat beard. Delicate, precise hands. He cleared books and paperwork from a couple of chairs and waved us into them.
‘So, you’re working on that case where those girls were lobotomised.’ Blake’s Scottish accent had been softened by years of living in England.
I nodded. ‘That’s right.’
Blake shook his head. ‘A terrible business. I’ve been following the story in the news.’
‘What can you tell me about lobotomies?’
‘What do you want to know?’
I glanced at my watch. ‘Give me the thirteen-minute crash course.’
‘Don’t worry about Glenda, her bark really is worse than her bite.’ Blake paused to compose himself. His face turned serious and his voice went into lecture mode. ‘Okay, a lobotomy involves cutting the connections that lead to and from the prefrontal cortex. That’s the part of the brain that deals with personality and decision-making. The prefrontal cortex is crucial in that it enables us, amongst other things, to differentiate between conflicting thoughts, to determine what is good or bad, better or best, what is same and what is different. It’s responsible for our ability to determine the consequences of our actions, and it enables us to envisage our expectations. It also deals with our social control, that is, our ability to suppress urges that, if not controlled, could lead to socially unacceptable behaviour. When you perform a lobotomy you are basically destroying someone’s personality. Stealing their soul, if you like.’
I thought about Sarah Flight staring blankly out the window at Dunscombe House, seeing but not seeing. That was exactly what had happened. She’d had her soul stolen.
‘By present-day standards, the procedure is butchery rather than surgery,’ Blake went on. ‘It’s on a par with using leeches. That said, the first thing you need to understand is that the technique was born out of desperation. Go back in time to the turn of the last century and you had asylums that were filled to bursting point with patients, and no real way of treating them. Along comes this miracle procedure which, on the surface, appears to help the patients. Of course, it’s going to be welcomed with open arms. It’s estimated that a total of forty thousand lobotomies were performed in America and seventeen thousand were performed here. Most were carried out between the early forties and the mid-fifties.’
‘That many,’ I said.
‘That’s the problem with so-called miracle cures. People get carried away, and by the time sanity prevails, the damage has been done. The Russians were the first to abandon the technique, in 1950. They concluded that it turned an insane person into an idiot, and they were right. The Americans were much slower to reach this conclusion. Lobotomies were still being performed in the US in the eighties.’
‘What does the procedure involve?’
‘Your victims, did they have holes drilled into their skulls?’
I shook my head. ‘No.’
‘In that case, what you’re dealing with is a transorbital lobotomy, or, as it is more commonly referred to, an ice-pick lobotomy. This procedure was developed by Walter Freeman in the mid-forties using an ice-pick and a grapefruit, hence the name. Freeman moved from grapefruits to cadavers before he started on real patients. With this sort of lobotomy, the upper eyelid is lifted up and a thin surgical instrument called an orbitoclast is pushed in until it touches the eye socket. A mallet is then used to drive the orbitoclast through the thin layer of bone and into the brain, where it is moved from side to side at various depths, destroying brain tissue. The orbitoclast is then inserted into the other eye and the procedure is repeated.’
‘I take it you’d need medical training.’
‘Not necessarily. Freeman is believed to have carried out almost three and a half thousand lobotomies despite having no surgical training whatsoever. He charged twenty-five dollars for each procedure.’ Blake shook his head. ‘Twenty-five dollars to destroy a life. It’s impossible to imagine it happening, completely unreal, but it did happen. It was like something out of the Middle Ages. Freeman was completely evangelical about the procedure and travelled across the States in a van he nicknamed the Lobotomobile, visiting mental institutions to educate and train staff. More than anyone else, Freeman was responsible for the popularity of the procedure.’
‘Could I carry out a lobotomy?’ I asked.
‘Easily. Like I said earlier, what we’re talking about here is butchery rather than anything that resembles surgery.’
‘That wasn’t what I meant.’ I grinned. ‘What I’d like is for you to teach me how to perform a lobotomy.’
18
A shrouded cadaver lay on the stainless-steel table in the middle of the dissection lab. It was the first thing you noticed when you stepped through the door. You couldn’t help noticing it because it shouted out to be noticed. Even hidden beneath a green sheet, it still managed to command your complete attention. Templeton was staring, too. She was wearing blue medical scrubs and latex gloves. I was kitted out the same. The big difference was that she made the outfit look good. She looked like the main character in a TV medical drama, whereas I looked like an extra. My scrubs fitted badly and the latex gloves were tight and dry on my hands.
Fluorescent strip lights embedded in the suspended ceiling flooded the lab with light, while more focused lighting was provided by the movable surgery lamps on extendable arms that hung above the table. White was the dominant colour. Walls, floor tiles, roof tiles. It was the right colour for the environment. Sterile, fresh, practical. The long whiteboard that stretched the length of one wall was filled with notes written in black marker pen, and a powerful air-conditioning system worked hard to keep the air clean and cool.
‘I appreciate you doing this,’ I said.
‘Don’t thank me,’ said Blake. ‘You’ve done me a favour. I’m supposed to be in a budget meeting right now.’
The professor pulled the green sheet back from the cadaver’s head and Templeton took a sharp intake of breath, all the colour draining from her face. I took a step closer to get a better look. I’d seen plenty of dead bodies in all sorts of states of decay and dismemberment, but I’d never seen anything quite like this. It was both gross and fascinating.
The cadaver had already been used by the students, probably more than once. The skin h
ad been removed from the right-hand side of the neck and face to reveal the muscles and tendons. In places the skull was showing through. The hair and eyebrows had been shaved off and preservative chemicals had turned skin, tissue and bone a dirty, unhealthy orange colour. The left side of the face was still intact and the shape of the nose and chin suggested this had once been a male. I could have been looking at a wax model, except there was no way wax would smell this bad.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked Templeton.
‘I’ll be fine in a second. It’s not what I was expecting, that’s all. I assumed the body would be in one piece.’
‘Sorry,’ said Blake. ‘I should have warned you.’
The professor pulled the surgery lights down, angled them so they lit up the face, then tilted the head back.
‘Freeman used an ECT machine to render the patient unconscious,’ he said. ‘With older patients one shock was usually enough‚ however, younger, fitter patients sometimes required as many as six shocks. The patient would only be unconscious for a few minutes, but that’s all the time he needed.’
Blake picked up an eight-inch-long steel instrument that had a flat head at one end and tapered to a sharp point at the other. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have an actual orbitoclast but this will do the job.’
The professor lifted the cadaver’s left eyelid and slid the sharp point into the socket above the eyeball. He hit the end of his makeshift orbitoclast with a small rubber mallet and there was a soft cracking sound as it punctured the thin bone at the back of the eye socket. The professor gave a running commentary while he worked. He was a good teacher, enthusiastic and informative. When he’d finished, he turned to me and held out the makeshift orbitoclast.
‘Okay, your turn,’ he said.
I took the instrument from him. The steel was still warm from his hand. I looked at the cadaver for a moment, then shut my eyes and imagined myself in a place of torture and screams.
*
I work underground because of the noise, a basement or a cellar. There are brick walls on four sides, tons of dirt beyond the brickwork. Perfect noise insulation. The only place sound can get out is through the ceiling. Maybe I’ve used a false ceiling and rockwool to stop the screams escaping, or maybe I’m living somewhere remote enough for noise not to be a big deal. The woman strapped to my table has Sarah Flight’s face.
