by Adam Hamdy
‘John, you’ve got a visitor.’
Visiting hours were between nine and nine. Wallace couldn’t help but feel upbeat as he followed Keith to the breakout room, where visitors were made to feel comfortable around madness. He’d occasionally pass it in the hurly-burly of his daily routine and had come to recognise the embarrassed look worn by most visitors: please forgive me for not knowing how to handle your grotesque insanity.
Apart from the policeman, nobody knew Wallace was here, and when he entered the breakout room, Wallace was gratified to see the vaguely familiar face of a slim black man in a crumpled suit. Across the room, Rodney sat with his pretty wife, but they didn’t speak. Instead, she wept quietly while Rodney held her hands. Tough to move on from the fact that your partner was unhappy enough to attempt suicide. Where do you go from there? Apart from Rodney and his tormented wife, and Keith, who took up a discreet position near the door, Wallace and the police officer were alone.
‘Seems like a nice place,’ the police officer said, signalling their surroundings. Wallace quickly glanced around and took in the framed posters of hilltops, mountains and other inspirational landscapes. A small bookshelf was lined with bound editions of the classics, no doubt a gift from a worthy benefactor.
‘Don’t be fooled, they put us in chains when visiting hours are over,’ smiled Wallace as he sat on the moulded plastic chair opposite the officer. ‘You’ll have to excuse me, I don’t recall your name.’
‘Detective Sergeant Patrick Bailey.’
‘Nice to meet you, Detective Sergeant Bailey.’ Wallace extended his hand. ‘I don’t remember much about our last encounter.’
Bailey shook his hand. ‘That’s OK. You were pretty messed up. How are you feeling?’
‘Physically, I’m OK. The bones have almost healed. Collarbone will take a little longer. Just means I can’t train,’ Wallace replied.
‘No aikido for a while,’ Bailey observed.
‘No,’ Wallace responded hesitantly, surprised that the policeman had gone through his life in such detail.
‘I’m very thorough,’ Bailey explained. ‘I’ve seen some of your photographs. You’ve got a good eye.’
Something about the man’s demeanour set Wallace on edge. He was skirting the issue. Not a good sign.
‘You didn’t come here to commission me, Detective Bailey. You didn’t find anything, did you?’
Bailey shook his head slowly.
‘So you think I’m crazy?’ Wallace challenged him.
‘You’ve been through a difficult experience,’ Bailey responded.
‘Difficult experience! A guy broke into my place and tried to kill me!’ Wallace replied testily. He realised his voice had dropped in tone and risen sufficiently in volume to catch Keith’s attention. The rotund orderly looked over with an admonishment of caution.
‘We had a forensics team sweep the place, I spoke to all your neighbours. I checked the area. I even spoke to your old agent,’ Bailey reassured Wallace. ‘Nothing.’
Wallace slumped, literally feeling the weight of the ‘truth’ the rest of the world now accepted: he was a suicide gone wrong. Without evidence, Wallace couldn’t convince Taylor he didn’t belong here. Without evidence, he couldn’t be sure why someone tried to kill him. Without evidence, he couldn’t return to his life. He flailed for inspiration.
‘What about cameras?’ he asked hopefully. ‘CCTV. They’re on every corner. One of them must have caught something.’
‘First thing I checked. A power surge fried all the cameras in St John’s Wood. They were out for about two weeks,’ Bailey replied. ‘Nothing in a six-block area.’
‘There was a man inside my flat. He tried to kill me,’ Wallace reiterated. ‘I’m not lying. And I’m not crazy.’
‘You ever seen a film called Contact?’ Bailey asked. ‘Jodie Foster. Matthew McConaughey before he became all cool. She talks about some kind of razor being the simplest explanation for things.’
‘Ockham’s Razor,’ Wallace observed. ‘The simplest answer is the most likely.’
‘Exactly,’ Bailey’s smile withered away. ‘One of your neighbours told me you used to be a war photographer. Your agent said you had a hard time in Afghanistan. You quit. Started working in film.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Wallace glared at Bailey. He could feel his anger rising.
‘Sometimes when people live through a terrible event, it can cause long-term damage,’ Bailey explained. ‘Maybe this was a delayed reaction.’
‘So you think I tried to kill myself?’ Wallace growled, struggling to control his temper.
‘I’m going on the evidence, John.’ Bailey’s response was infuriating.
‘A man tried to kill me,’ Wallace protested loudly. He hit the table between them, drawing a harsh look from Keith.
‘What do the docs say?’ Bailey asked in a clear attempt at deflection.
‘They think I’m nuts,’ Wallace replied. ‘And without any evidence, there’s no way to convince them otherwise.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Wallace, there isn’t anything I can do,’ Bailey said as he stood.
‘That’s it?’ Wallace’s anger bubbled into incomprehension. ‘I’m stuck here?’
‘Until they believe you no longer pose a danger to yourself,’ Bailey offered. He held out his hand. ‘If you can think of anything else that might help me, I’m based at Paddington Green.’
Wallace refused Bailey’s empty hand and stared at the man. How did he know this smiling fool had actually done his job? Forensics? Interviews with neighbours? Talking to his agent? This guy was full of shit. How dare he bring up Afghanistan?
‘I’d like to see your notes,’ Wallace said coldly.
‘What?’ Bailey’s hand dropped to his side.
‘I’d like to see your notes.’
The policeman bristled, and Wallace knew he was on to something.
‘Not going to happen, Mr Wallace,’ Bailey replied flatly.
‘How do I know you’ve done your job?’ Wallace challenged.
Bailey shook his head as a tight smile stretched across his lips. He leaned down, drawing his face close to Wallace. ‘Because I told you so,’ he said harshly. ‘Move on with your life, Mr Wallace. Nobody’s buying your story.’
Wallace brimmed with rage as the turbulent kaleidoscope of emotions he’d suppressed over the past few weeks spiralled through his body. He felt the humiliation of defeat, shame at having let go of the rope, frustration at not being believed, anger at the unfairness, but, most of all, the rage of impotence.
Wallace reacted instinctively, cocking his head like a pistol hammer before firing it forward. Bailey’s nose broke with a noise that sounded like a gunshot, and the policeman went down, dazed. Out of control, Wallace jumped on the prone man and started pounding him with his heavy fists. Bailey put up scant resistance as Wallace gave vent to his anger. A klaxon sounded, but Wallace hardly heard it. Moments later, Wallace registered a heavy blow to the back of his neck, but such was his fury, it did nothing to slow down his frenzied assault. Another blow, this one harder, and everything went black.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Bailey cursed his stupidity. The guy could have killed him. The orderly had smacked him over the head with a cosh and now the prone, unconscious form of John Wallace pressed down on his chest. With the orderly’s assistance, Bailey rolled out from underneath his attacker. Other orderlies soon arrived, along with a couple of nurses and a doctor.
‘What happened?’ the doctor asked.
‘The patient attacked the detective,’ the orderly who rescued Bailey answered. ‘I was forced to subdue him.’
The doctor turned to his team. ‘Get him to isolation.’
The orderlies grabbed Wallace and dragged him from the room.
‘I’m so sorry,’ the doctor said as he approached Bailey. ‘I never expected him to be violent. You need treatment.’
Bailey tried to find something to take his mind off his humiliation, but none of
the books or abstract prints of gentle shapes engaged him. He gingerly touched his newly set nose. A short length of plaster concealed the wound, which unleashed nausea-inducing waves of pain as soon as he put his finger to it. The rest of his injuries were superficial, the most serious being to his pride. He was a professional with years of experience and should never have put himself in danger like that. A lucky strike was all it had taken to put him down, and if it hadn’t been for the orderly, things could have been a lot worse. Bailey had received treatment at the Maybury’s sister hospital, Southold General, and, after a barrage of tests that had given him the all clear, was returned to the Maybury to complete incident reports and give a witness statement to the local police. After almost an entire day, he was finally ready to go home. The doctor, who Bailey now knew was called Taylor, had informed Superintendent Cross of the incident. Bailey was certain he’d get his knuckles rapped for not exercising better judgement, and so carelessly exposing himself to danger.
The door opened and Taylor entered.
‘We’re all done here, Detective,’ Taylor beamed. ‘I hear your X-rays and MRI came back clear. No lasting damage. Other than the nose, of course.’
‘How’s the patient?’ Bailey asked.
‘Remorseful. When he came round, the first thing he wanted to know was whether you were OK,’ Taylor responded. ‘I’m going to have to take a very different approach with him.’
‘His name’s John Wallace,’ Bailey said. Crazy fuck broke our confidentiality agreement when he cracked my nose, he thought. ‘I wanted to make sure you got his name. Flat four, sixty-one Hamilton Terrace, St John’s Wood. I’ve written it down for you.’
He produced a scrap of paper from his pocket and handed it to Taylor. ‘Thanks,’ the doctor replied. ‘I’m very sorry about what happened.’
‘Don’t sweat it,’ Bailey replied on his way to the door. ‘Just make sure you fix him.’
6
Regret had dredged his mind for the past week, tormenting him relentlessly, dragging him further and further down. As he lay in his cell, Wallace felt the now familiar dank hollowness of depression. Regret gripped him the moment he regained consciousness. Regret held him as Doctor Taylor outlined his new treatment regimen. Regret consumed him the instant Taylor used his full name. The detective had told them. Wallace had attacked his only ally and had paid the price of his fury.
Alongside regret was a new feeling: doubt. Taylor had taken a very active interest in Wallace’s treatment ever since his violent outburst, and Wallace now had daily one-to-one sessions as well as group therapy. He was also forced to participate in the mind-improving morning activities. In this hive of instability, he was deemed too unstable to be left to his own devices. In their private sessions, Taylor had been chipping away at him, forcing Wallace to open up about his childhood, about his life. Wallace knew what the doctor was doing; picking at the past until he created a wound that needed healing, but Wallace felt powerless to resist. Shame and regret created a debt that could only be repaid by satisfying Taylor’s desire to fix him. Earlier that day, Taylor had finally struck home.
‘What if you created the memory of this attacker to mask the fact you had attempted something you were profoundly ashamed of?’ Taylor suggested from the comfort of his armchair.
‘He was as real as you,’ Wallace protested, but, as he looked away from Taylor and gazed around the doctor’s IKEA-inspired private therapy room, the seed of that evil thought took root.
Now, in the early hours of the morning, when the effects of the evening’s sedation had worn off, the seed had flourished into a terrible, hideous tree of doubt with branches that shaded every aspect of his life. What if Bailey and Taylor were right? What if he’d had a delayed reaction to what had happened in Kandahar? What the soldiers did to those children – he’d raged against it. Righteous fury had consumed him, but he hadn’t been able to do anything to stop the violence, and then, when he had found out that the Masterson Inquiry had ruled his testimony insufficient to bring the killers to justice, well, that was the day Connie left. She’d had enough of the desperate misery that fuelled his incessant anger. Wallace knew the children’s deaths had disturbed him, but perhaps he hadn’t realised just how much. Was it possible he’d conjured his masked assailant to rationalise a suicide attempt? In some ways the growing tree of doubt was attractive. If Wallace admitted the truth of Taylor’s theory, he could give himself over to the good doctor and embark on a course of treatment that would ultimately cure him. But accepting the fact that his assailant had been a phantom filled him with fear. If something that seemed so real, something that assaulted his every sense, something that had filled him with such terror, could be a figment of his damaged mind, how could he trust anything? Certainty involved destroying doubt. But if he clung to the certainty that the man who tried to murder him was real, Wallace could not see a way out of the Maybury. If he accepted doubt, he had a path to freedom, but would be forced to recognise that his mind could not be trusted. He felt a familiar tightness in his chest and recognised the shallow breathing of a panic attack. The stress of his situation was becoming too intense. Wallace had to concede that he wasn’t well. He had to reach out for help. He had to . . .
The sound of the door buzzer cut through the still night. Wallace looked up uncertainly. There was no light between the tiny gaps in the closed blinds, so it was still dark outside. And yet the door was open. The emergency exit sign in the corridor beyond cast just enough green light to circumscribe the frame. Wallace lay still for a moment. Was this a test? Was he imagining this? Was his mind trying to trick him into trusting it? He waited, straining his ears, searching for a clue. Could this be real? The only answer was silence. There was safety in routine, and this was most definitely not routine. A dark thought swelled in the paranoid recesses of Wallace’s mind. With his cloak of anonymity lifted, the killer had located him. He felt an urgent need to find someone. He rolled upright and got to his feet. His collarbone, which had fractured anew during his outburst, ached with reassuringly real pain. This didn’t feel like a dream. He tentatively approached the door and put his fingertips around the outside edge, into the gap. He pulled slowly, and the door opened. Beyond it was the corridor, dimly lit by the green glow that came from the illuminated image of a man escaping through a door. Escape. Wallace remembered when the idea had dominated his thoughts.
He approached the door beneath the green sign. Large letters informed him that it was alarmed. Cause and effect; push the door and orderlies would come. Taylor would add an escape attempt to Wallace’s ledger and extract an even higher price from his wayward patient. Such limited privileges as he had would be withdrawn. There’s a killer on the loose. The words rose unbidden, but Wallace fought back the panic that accompanied them and resisted the temptation of the fire exit. He drifted away from the door and moved towards a small pool of light that emanated from the nurses’ station. He would earn credit with the doctor by informing the duty nurse of the malfunction with his door. His feet slapped against the cold floor, and he made no attempt to conceal his presence. He didn’t want the nurse accusing him of scaring her.
‘Excuse me,’ he said as he came into sight of the hatch that opened on to the corridor. ‘I think there’s . . .’
Wallace fell silent when he saw that the nurses’ station was deserted. When unmanned, the station was normally sealed off by a window that covered the hatch. The window was open. Beyond it, Wallace could see files, folders, a prescription pad and a set of keys. He recognised them. The orderlies all carried them. They were access keys that opened the secure doors throughout the entire wing. Eight of them, and a key card that granted entry to some as yet unvisited section of the hospital. He looked around the deserted ward. He glanced up at one of the hospital’s many security cameras, which was pointed directly at him, and saw that the red operating light was dead. The dark corridor was deserted in both directions and all the other cell doors were locked. The place felt wrong; empty and eerie. H
e fought back dark thoughts of imminent danger and reverted to the keys. Eight steps to freedom on a small metal ring. No. I’ll find the nurse and return them, Wallace told himself, even though he was starting to think it was a lie. Keys in hand, he moved down the corridor towards the first security door. This time he crept silently across the thick rubber floor. You’re not trying to hide, he told himself. You’re just being careful.
The hospital was deathly quiet. No troubled patients screaming in the night. No pounding on cell doors. No orderlies running their truncheons along radiators. Instead, through the thin strips of reinforced glass that were cut into each and every one of the cell doors, Wallace could see the slumbering shapes of his fellow inmates in sedative-induced sleep. He padded quickly and quietly until he was at the first security door. He tried the keys, carefully inserting each one into the recessed lock, until number five opened the door. He pulled it slowly, thankful that it did not squeal. He stepped through and carefully shut the door behind him. The click the latch made as it tumbled into place seemed to echo along the corridor, and Wallace tensed, waiting for a reaction, but none came, and so he moved on.
He was in another ward, similar to his own. His pace quickened, aware that each step further was another to justify to his captors. Best to avoid the whole mess of explanation by not getting caught. That would be neater, he thought, dispensing with the subterfuge that he was on a mission to find the duty nurse. He swiftly covered the ground to the next security door. Freed of self-deception and alive with hope, Wallace’s mind raced. He’d need shoes, clothes, money and a plan. He’d been sectioned, which meant they thought he posed a danger to himself or others. After the attack on the policeman, they’d almost certainly regard him as a threat in both categories, so police and public health agencies would be instructed to find him. He’d have to avoid capture and figure out a way to reclaim his life. Small steps, Wallace told himself. Get out first.
He cycled through the keys until he found the one that fitted the second heavy, reinforced door. He opened it and quickly stepped through to find himself in the day section. His beloved television room lay to his right, the showers were directly ahead and the canteen was to his left. Beyond that was the administration block with the therapy rooms and offices. Wallace could not recall how he’d been brought into the building, but he thought the administration block represented his best chance for escape, so he moved to his left, quietly heading along the corridor that led to the canteen. Intermittent lamps broke the darkness, casting just enough light to make the hospital seem eerie rather than menacing. Wallace tried to ignore the growing sensation that he was being watched and that, at Doctor Taylor’s command, a heavy orderly would suddenly spring out and drag him back to his cell. There was also the creeping fear that there was someone far more dangerous in the building, and his overactive mind started to see figures lurking in every shadow. He felt his heart rise into his throat, and his pace quickened.
