by Knight, Ali
17
Kamal spooned another sugar into the cup of mint tea he was holding and handed it to Darren, who sat in a chair by Kamal’s desk.
‘Drink, the sugar helps the shock.’
As Darren raised it to his lips he could see the green water trembling as if a minor earthquake was occurring. Darren heard Kamal muttering something in Arabic.
The door opened and Helen McCabe came in. She looked flushed, as if she had been running. ‘Come with me please.’ Darren stood and followed her out of Kamal’s office and up the stairs to a row of offices overlooking a courtyard he’d never seen before, Kamal bringing up the rear. This courtyard had no tree. He blinked away a tear. He’d never be able to see a willow again without hearing that sound of Linda choking.
Helen ushered him into a low armchair by a coffee table, shut the door and sat opposite him. Kamal sat next to her, hands on his knees, his eyes slits of hate.
‘I understand that you’ve been examined by a nurse and you’re not physically injured.’
‘I’m fine,’ Darren managed. He was still holding his mug of mint tea; he took a sip.
‘This must be a very distressing incident for you—’
‘Is Linda going to be OK?’
‘You don’t need to think about that now.’
‘What do you mean? She was attacked right in front of me!’
Helen held up her hand to stop him. ‘I want to concentrate on you.’ She smiled again. ‘Now, I’ve heard something of what happened, but I want to hear it from you, in your own words.’
‘I was just cleaning the floor when Olivia grabbed the mop off me and …’ He didn’t dare say any more in case it got caught on a sob.
‘That’s OK, Darren. Did Linda say anything to Olivia before she was attacked?’
‘Nothing that I remember.’
‘Did she say anything to you?’
Helen’s thick curtain of hair was catching the sun that shone through the window behind her. He took another sip of tea to give him time to think. There would be CCTV showing that they had been talking. The nurses in the room would have seen things too. ‘Just how beautiful the willow tree was. And then she suddenly snapped.’ He was fighting it, but still tears crested on his lower eyelids. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’
‘Yes she is.’ Helen crossed her legs, never taking her eyes off him. ‘Her oesophagus was crushed and partly ripped. She suffered a cardiac arrest from the trauma on the way to A and E.’
‘Jesus.’
‘I am head of psychiatric services at Roehampton. As such the patients here come under my care, as do the staff who interact with them. I want to reassure you that this type of event is extremely rare. In my thirteen years here I have never before seen this happen. The vast majority of all staff and patients never see or experience violence in all the time they are with us. We think of ourselves as a family here, staff and patients, and you are part of that family.’
He didn’t understand what she was trying to say to him, so he sat mutely. Helen and Kamal both stared at him. There was a pause.
‘We will be offering you counselling for what you experienced today, free of charge.’
‘What … what’s going to happen to Olivia?’
Her voice was even calmer. ‘There will be a full investigation, and you will have to give a statement to the police. We can get that over with right after this meeting. We can help you with that. You are not to blame, Darren. There will only be a criminal trial if it’s deemed to be in the public interest. Linda had no family left, so …’ She swallowed, realising she’d steered the conversation in the wrong direction. ‘Olivia will be placed in solitary confinement, she won’t be able to mix socially with other inmates, her classes and outdoor time will be revoked.’
Darren’s world was beginning to cave in on him. A police interview meant who he really was would be revealed. He had lied, which was a criminal act. He thought with horror of his parents, their shock and how they would react, how Orin Bukowski would hijack this incident for his own ends, how his family would be pulled through scandal and press intrusion all over again. His mum was ill; she wouldn’t be able to take it. It could not be allowed to happen.
Olivia had well and truly fucked him over. That’s why she had attacked Linda! Anger began to burn in him. He had been so unbelievably stupid and naïve. Silly sad-sack Darren with his murdered sister and his sick mum, thinking that the monster that had destroyed his family was opening up to him! Orin would demand to know how a victim’s relative could have ever got near a serial killer with a deadly weapon in his hands. He had been able to get close because Kamal had cut corners, had not checked him out thoroughly enough, had not got all the ID that was required. His eyes slid to Kamal, who was sweating.
Darren had to fight back; it was all that was left to him. ‘Counselling? I’ve just seen someone die. I’m just a cleaner. It can’t be right that I’m allowed in there with serial killers and psychos – she could have ripped my throat out! If I went to a union or a lawyer I could—’
Helen held her hand up to stop him. ‘Let’s talk this through.’ She glanced down at a piece of paper in her hand. ‘You’ve not worked here long, just a matter of weeks.’ She was reading his CV. ‘I see that you’ve got a degree from the London Institute. That level of qualification is unusual among our cleaning staff.’ She looked at Kamal, indicating that he should agree. Kamal gave a pinched smile and went back to staring at Darren. ‘Darren has been a good employee, punctual and hardworking?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘So even though he’s new to the team, he’s made a valuable contribution.’
‘He’s one of the best we have.’ Kamal smiled. It looked to Darren like he’d slit his throat if Helen wasn’t here.
They were trying to cover their arses. There had probably been a contravention of health and safety and if he took it any further they would all be tied up in paperwork for months, at huge expense. He looked at Kamal again. He could sense the panic in the system and he had to use that.
‘With your skillset we can promote you to a Level Two,’ Helen continued. ‘It’s a pay rise, and you’ll get paid holiday. You would be employed by the hospital itself, not on a contract, so you effectively work for the NHS. This gives you pension rights, parental leave rights, benefits that are not available on lower levels. You are of course free to pursue whatever option you think is in your best interests. Facilities such as these do house challenging individuals and no job in this sector is risk-free.’ She smiled. ‘Have a think about it tonight and then we can proceed from there.’ She stood. ‘Do you require a taxi to take you home?’
Darren stood. ‘I want to see her.’
He saw a look of panic cross Helen’s face. ‘Linda’s body has been taken—’
‘I want to see Olivia.’
Kamal stood now, the two of them facing him, but Darren wasn’t going to back down. He had nothing to lose. He stared Kamal full in the face.
Helen turned to Kamal. ‘I can take it from here, thank you.’ Kamal grimaced and left the room.
‘I want to talk to her. Alone.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘Otherwise there’s no deal.’
Helen crossed her arms. ‘I’m not here to bargain with.’
‘Yes you are. I want a meeting with her, alone. If I don’t get it, I walk out of here and call every paper I know. Bring the whole thing down on your head.’
Helen’s lips became a narrow line but she remained calm. ‘Why do you want to talk to her, Darren?’
‘She killed a defenceless woman right in front of me. I want to ask her why.’
‘That is a question you won’t get an answer to. You need to know that. The families of the five people she killed never got an answer to that.’
‘We’ll see.’ Darren took a step towards her. ‘And I don’t want to talk to the police.’
Helen opened her mouth and then closed it again. She moved the curtain of black hair slowly
off her face and it settled down again, like a duvet deflating gently on a bed.
‘I know you can do it, you can pull strings for your “family”, so do it,’ he said firmly.
18
Helen left Darren in the locker room while she went to sort things out. He had sunk down on a bench to try to collect his thoughts when the door opened and Kamal came in, advancing across the room towards him.
Darren got up and backed away, tensing for the balled fists that he thought were coming his way, but Kamal walked right by him to the toilet cubicles and checked to make sure they were really alone. Only then did he turn his attention to Darren.
‘You, little fucker, are not going to lose me my job.’ His finger was held high and pointing right at Darren’s face. ‘I’ve been here eight years. You know how many people I’ve employed in eight years? Thousands, too many for an idiot like you to count. You think I could do this job, stay in this country, pay that fortune for my visa, if I had to do the proper forms for all those idiots?’ He was shouting, his voice reverberating off the metal lockers and the floor. Darren could see an artery pumping in his neck as the red in his face deepened.
‘I’ve had to take care of little shits like you before, and I’ve taken care of you. You think I could get these corridors cleaned, get those shitters white, reach my targets if I had to wait for the Disclosure and Barring Service to pull their fingers out of their lazy arses? It’s easier to rubber-stamp the form myself. And, against my better judgement, I’ve done that for you. And this is how it’s going to work. You keep your gob shut, I’ll do the same.’
Darren got it loud and clear. ‘Mutual destruction.’
Kamal frowned and shook his head. ‘No. Your head on a spike, not mine. You know why I know you’re not going to be a problem for me? You know why I know you’re going to put your head down and clean and keep your gob shut, even if really you’re a fantasist who wants to meet Duvall so you can lick her cunt and say sorry, sorry sorry, for locking her up, for making her angry? You ride a fucking pushbike.’ He opened the door, then turned back. ‘Cut your fucking hair.’
He walked out, the door banging behind him, and Darren was left alone. He began to take off his cleaning uniform and noticed something stuck on the cuff. He recoiled when he realised it was blood. He was still washing his hands when Helen came to get him.
19
‘We do it my way or no way.’ Helen was standing close to Darren in a long white corridor outside a closed door. Her voice was low and calm, but there was an edge to it. He had pushed her as far as she was prepared to go. ‘Olivia will be handcuffed, you will not touch her. I will be one of several people watching through the window. Anything we don’t like, we come in. You get three minutes.’ She walked away.
Darren took a deep breath and opened the door.
Olivia was sitting with her back to him, so he walked past her and sat down on the chair opposite her. Her hands were on the table in handcuffs, a chain running between her wrists to the floor.
‘Are they recording in here?’ Darren asked. He was amazed that his voice sounded normal.
‘I meet my lawyer here. No tapes allowed.’
‘You just beat an old woman to death. Why did you do that?’
‘I’ll tell you something about Linda.’ Her face was contemptuous. ‘Little, pathetic old Linda in her wheelchair sold her own daughter as a sex object to multiple men over the years, then when she was all used up forced her to drink drain cleaner.’
‘People do terrible things, but Linda was judged insane, that’s why—’
‘I’ll tell you about Linda’s sentence.’ Olivia spat the words out. ‘She was judged insane for the drain cleaner, for pouring that acid down her daughter’s throat, not what she made her child do before that. Not what she made her little girl do over and over again with many different men. She deserved to die.’
‘Many would say the same about you.’
‘I never asked for anyone’s pity – or to meet you.’
‘You have no remorse, do you?’
She didn’t hesitate. ‘No. And even if I could change what happened, I wouldn’t.’
He put his hands in his lap and pushed his nails deep into his palms, trying to get the pain to distract him from the image of a thrashing Linda in the wheelchair, how Olivia had turned a mop into a deadly weapon in a second. Play along, he thought, play along and see where it leads. ‘Where’s my sister?’ Her focus was gone; she was like a TV from the 1970s, picking up a signal and then fading away. She didn’t respond. ‘Tell me where Carly is.’
She yawned and a spike of defiance and anger shot through him. ‘You don’t like me being in here, do you? I remind you of Carly, of what happened. I don’t think you like to be confronted with it.’
The focus was back, her voice low and quiet. ‘I learned young and hard how a person suffers when power is held by another. It was a long journey to overcome my demons, to wrest that power back. Your sister, those other women, they helped me do that.’
‘So if they helped you, help me. Give Carly back to me now. I demand it. Tell me where she is.’
‘Never.’
‘I’m going to find her – and those other girls.’
She almost smiled. ‘You young men are so sure about the world and how it is. You are desperate to know what happened. But are you strong enough to cope with the truth? Strong enough to look into the darkness? You want to be a hero, but heroes have to suffer.’
‘You have no idea how much I’ve suffered. No idea at all.’
She snorted. There was a pause as they stared at each other, then a strange expression flicked across her face just for a moment. She leaned forward and he could see the wetness on her tongue. ‘Rollo is six foot two.’
‘What?’ Darren didn’t understand. ‘What did you say?’
She opened her mouth to say something, but it died on her lips. The door opened and a guard stood there.
‘Time’s up.’
‘Just a minute – I need—’ Darren began.
‘Time’s up. No extensions.’ Darren stared at Olivia, but it was as if she had turned off every sense and her face was as blank and stony as an Easter Island statue. He stood and walked out of the room on shaking legs.
Helen watched the two of them closely through the one-way mirror. Watched as the serial killer and the cleaner talked, their lips moving too fast to interpret the words. Olivia was talking much more than she did in her therapy sessions. Helen felt outmanoeuvered. She didn’t like to be proved wrong; her latest reports had reiterated that she felt the patient was making good progress and yet now Olivia had shown she was still exceptionally violent. It didn’t fit with what she had observed.
She felt a headache beginning to drill through her frontal lobe. The routine here would be subject to press attention, victims’ rights groups would be up in arms, there would be parliamentary scrutiny. She began to wonder about Darren Smith, the degree-educated cleaner, the laid-back hippy. He had proved pretty masterful in parlaying a cosy one-on-one with a serial killer. She’d met enough liars in her life to have her naïveté banished years ago – she had married a liar, after all.
She kept a strict watch on the time and sent a guard in after three minutes to take Olivia to solitary confinement. When Darren had left the premises Helen walked to security control and asked Sonny to replay the video of the attack in the rec room. She played it several times at normal speed and then in slow motion. She cursed silently. Darren was standing at such an angle that his dreadlocked hair hid Olivia’s face. It was impossible to decipher anything more from their interaction here than it had been when she’d viewed them through the glass in the meeting room earlier.
But it was clear from his body language that Olivia’s attack had taken him by surprise. Helen froze the camera on his face as he shrank back, fear clearly etched there.
She had felt earlier that she had handled a catastrophic incident with finesse. Darren was in shock but seemed to respond positiv
ely to offers of counselling. Numerous research studies showed that people who were willing to help themselves recovered more quickly from setbacks than others. Darren was showing all the signs of being a useful, reliable member of the team, too.
She picked up the phone. ‘Kamal, Helen here. I need you to confirm that the paperwork for Darren’s employment here is all in order.’ She nodded at his reply. ‘OK, good, thanks.’ She put the phone down and walked out of security.
20
Darren cycled home, the heat shimmering off south London tarmac, pedestrians sweating in the sun, buses spewing fumes, drivers aggressive and bad-tempered.
He couldn’t get Olivia’s words out of his head. Who was Rollo? Why did how tall he was matter? Was Rollo even a person? He didn’t understand why Olivia had said this to him. It could just have been distracting gibberish from a disordered mind.
He was also badly shaken, images of Linda helplessly thrashing in her wheelchair flashing through his mind, and Olivia’s relating what Linda had done a lifetime ago. Was she even right? It was as if she had him in a vice from which he couldn’t be released.
As he approached a junction he was badly cut up by an open-topped BMW. He had to brake hard and half tumbled off his bike into the gutter. The guy in sunglasses behind the wheel didn’t even flinch. His girlfriend was chewing gum in the passenger seat. Darren rode up alongside. ‘Look out, you made me come off the bike.’
The driver didn’t even turn to look at him.
‘Oi, I’m talking to you!’
The guy revved his engine, waiting for the lights to turn green. His girlfriend leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes.
A rage Darren had never felt before consumed him and he thumped the BMW’s bonnet.
The effect was like an electrical shock on a stopped heart. ‘What the fuck!’ exploded the driver. The guy was barrelling out of his car door a moment later, big shoulders squared in a tight white T-shirt, dark blue jeans straining against heavy thighs. ‘Don’t you dare touch my wheels, man!’
