by R. N. Morris
‘Inchball!’ objected Macadam. ‘You can’t …’
But Quinn was already doing as Inchball had directed. His hand shook wildly.
Inchball opened the drawer to his desk and took out his Webley service revolver. He broke the revolver open and checked the cylinder, before snapping it together again and rising from his desk.
The trembling in Quinn’s hand intensified. ‘Is it loaded?’
Inchball nodded grimly.
‘It doesn’t need to be loaded,’ objected Macadam.
‘If we’re going to do this, we do it properly,’ said Inchball.
Quinn did not comment.
Inchball strode decisively around his own desk and across to Quinn. He gripped the gun by the barrel and held the butt out for Quinn to take. The closer the gun got, the worse Quinn’s shakes became.
‘Take it. And point it at me.’
‘Point it at you?’
‘That’s the idea, guv.’
‘But I don’t know whether it’s a good idea, Inchball.’
‘It’s all right, guv. I won’t hold it against you if you shoot me.’
‘But this is ridiculous!’ objected Macadam.
‘I want to prove to him that he’s all right,’ explained Inchball, with patient emphasis.
Macadam was having none of it. ‘Madness. Sheer madness.’
Quinn’s hand flew up and snatched the gun. At the same moment, Inchball withdrew his hand and stepped back.
The effect on Quinn’s trembling was startling. His hand steadied instantly. He held the gun up in front of him and took aim at Inchball’s head.
‘There! See!’ cried Inchball triumphantly. ‘Steady as a statue.’
Quinn had to admit, it felt good to have the gun in his hand.
He stood up, keeping the gun held out at the end of a rigidly locked arm. He moved out from his desk and stalked the room, taking aim at imaginary targets with crisp, decisive movements. At one point, he looked down the sights at Macadam, who held up his hands in mock surrender. Then Quinn swivelled his arm towards the window and pointed the barrel at the bleary sky.
After a moment, he turned to Inchball. His gun arm relaxed and he threw the gun across the room.
There was a shriek of panic from Macadam. But Inchball caught the spinning weapon by the butt, without much trouble.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Quinn. ‘It wasn’t loaded. I could tell by the weight.’
‘He’s right,’ admitted Inchball delightedly. ‘He’s only bloody right!’
Quinn looked down at both his hands, fingers splayed as if to grasp the air.
‘So … guv?’
Quinn met Inchball’s question with a blank stare. His sergeant was looking directly at the middle of his forehead. It felt like his gaze was drilling into his head with a beam of throbbing pain. Quinn’s fingers probed the spot Inchball was looking at and was surprised to discover that his head came out to meet his fingertips more eagerly than he expected.
‘The suits?’
‘Look into it.’
As he uttered the three simple words, Quinn experienced a welling of emotion that once again threatened to overwhelm him. A moment before, it had been the fear of discovery; now it was a sense of release brought on by the very thing he had feared.
‘You want me to go there? To Colney Hatch?’
Quinn nodded once, so tersely that it might not have been a signal of assent at all, but just an involuntary twitch. ‘Talk to Pottinger. Dr Pottinger. He is the superintendent and chief psychiatrist there.’ Quinn didn’t add that Pottinger had treated him when he had been a patient there. He sensed Inchball watching him with a questioning look. ‘Start with Malcolm Grant-Sissons. Find out if he has been an inmate there. Then, well … you don’t need me to tell you your job.’
‘Shall I telephone ahead?’
‘I often find the element of surprise pays dividends on these occasions, don’t you?’
Inchball gave a satisfied nod and rose from his desk. By now, the shower had passed and sunlight was beginning to warm up the room. A smile flickered across the sergeant’s face as he retrieved his bowler from the hatstand. ‘I’ll keep my eyes open. And my wits about me.’
NINETEEN
Steam from the departing GNR locomotive billowed around him. As it cleared, Inchball found himself alone on the platform. The sign read New Southgate for Colney Hatch, making explicit the connection between the station and the asylum. It served visitors and staff and presumably also patients, although their journeys were necessarily infrequent. For many, a one-way ticket was all they needed.
He stood for a moment to get his bearings. The clamour of birdsong struck his ear as discordant and angry.
Facing him across the track was a high, blank railway embankment, encroached by nettles at the base, fringed at the top by a screen of trees.
The recent rain was a memory now, a trace scent in the air. The sun was in his eyes. It shone through the trees, turning their foliage black. He caught a glimpse of a building, a high corner where the jutting brickwork met a gleaming panel of sky.
Inchball was fond of saying that he was a simple man. There was a lot he didn’t hold with, and more he wasn’t given to. Sentimentality fell into both categories. But even he, at that first vision of innocuous masonry, felt some deep stirring of foreboding.
A secure door was set in the high wall that skirted the grounds. He rang a bell and was admitted by an attendant, who did not seem particularly interested in checking his warrant card. It struck Inchball that getting into Colney Hatch was easier than he had expected. Certainly easier than getting out, for some of those who came here. He thought about turning that into a joke, but something about the man’s humourless expression deterred him.
Inchball asked for directions to Dr Pottinger’s office. The man pointed abruptly to his left. ‘Stick to the path.’ This seemed to be a warning as much as a direction.
He now had his first clear sighting of the main building, but it was so immense that it could only reveal itself to him in pieces. First the shoulder of one wing. Then, as he rounded the corner, the face of a high block that projected forwards. Banks of windows were turned to mirrors by the sun’s rays. Some of the windows were partially opened. All were barred.
The scale of the place did not surprise him. He knew how big these asylums were, how big they had to be. Vast repositories built to house the ever-increasing numbers of the mad. Yes, he felt sorry for them. But his sympathy only went so far. They were a bloody nuisance. Some of them were worse than that, a danger to themselves and others. You had to put them somewhere, he supposed.
And yet …
He must be getting soft in his old age. But he had to admit, it was a terrible thing to happen to anyone.
And here they were, now, all around him. Men in brown corduroy suits, heads cropped, though they were most of them bearded. He supposed the less contact they had with razors, the better.
The women disturbed him more, in their black and white checked dresses. They seemed so defeated, lost, as they shuffled listlessly and purposelessly about.
Some of the men had been trusted with garden tools. Others were occupied in exercise. At his approach, they stopped whatever they were doing and followed him with their gaze, their poses frozen as if they were figures in a photograph.
He felt their gaze burn into the back of his neck. He imagined them rushing at him with their spades and forks. He braced himself for the first blow. But when he glanced back, they hadn’t moved, except to turn their heads to track his progress. It seemed they were waiting until he was safely on his way before they resumed their activities. They were more afraid of him than he was of them.
Vast lawns dotted with buttercups and daisies sloped gently upwards away from the long sprawl of the asylum building. The lawns were interspersed with well-established trees of all varieties. A magnificent weeping willow particularly caught his eye, as did another tree he could not identify whose thick limbs were twisted and
contorted as if in the throes of a fit.
‘Who are you?’ A female nurse in a starched cap and white pinafore dress belted at the waist regarded him with watchful and suspicious eyes, a reflex aggression in her voice. Her face was pinched and exhausted.
Inchball showed his warrant card again. ‘I’ve come to see Dr Pottinger.’
‘Is he expecting you?’
‘Unless he’s clairvoyant, no.’
The nurse led him under the grand portico of the main entrance, which gave this part of the building the appearance of a temple.
The first thing he noticed when he stepped inside was the smell. Either they had a problem with sewer gas, or this was what you got when you confined thousands of distressed and barely functioning human beings, many of whom, he presumed, had a difficult relationship with the waste their bodies produced.
The entrance foyer itself was in good array. The floor had been recently polished, and the waxy smell overlaid the faecal ground notes without obliterating them.
He was prepared for all this. He’d been inside Hanwell, which was on a similar scale. He was prepared too for the muted screams, the sounds of blatant distress which came to him from distant rooms. But even though he was prepared, they still shocked him.
The nurse bade him wait while she knocked on a door which bore the sign SUPERINTENDENT. A negotiation took place around the narrowly opened door – she seemed to be at pains to shield whatever was inside from the view of the uninitiated – before he was shown in.
Dr Pottinger did not rise to greet him from behind his substantial desk. He didn’t even look up from the papers he was studying. He was no doubt keen to give the impression of a busy man, burdened by weighty responsibilities. I’ll talk to you, he seemed to be saying, but make it quick. I have other more important matters to attend to.
At last, he laid the papers down and threw a perfunctory nod in Inchball’s direction.
‘Please sit down.’
As it happened, Inchball preferred to remain standing. You could say it was a rule of his: to ignore the commands of those who had no authority over him but thought they did.
It got Pottinger’s attention. ‘What is this about?’
‘It’s about two dead men and one nearly dead.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Name Malcolm Grant-Sissons mean anything to you?’
‘Should it?’
‘We have reason to believe he was a patient here.’
‘My good man, do you have any conception how many patients we have at Colney Hatch at any one time? Over two thousand. I cannot be expected to recall the names of them all.’
‘Young fella. Must have been let out recently. Only stayed for a short time.’
‘Ah yes, now that you mention it. Malcolm, of course. One of our successes. He came to us as the result of a nervous breakdown following the death of his father. In a state of extreme nervous excitement. My colleague Dr Leaming was able to achieve a quite remarkable and rapid improvement. Malcolm isn’t dead, is he?’
‘He ought to be. Threw himself on to a high voltage dynamo at Bankside power station.’
‘That was Malcolm? I read about it in the news. There was no name given of the poor unfortunate man.’
‘We’ve had two others do similar things. Top themselves in the buff. One climbed into the bear pit at London Zoo. The other threw himself off Suicide Bridge. We think they were all here.’
‘But why do you think that? Not all suicides have passed through our doors, you know.’
‘We found their suits. Just like the ones them geezers outside are wearing.’
‘I see.’
‘Now that you have confirmed that Grant-Sissons was here, it makes it more likely that the other two were an’ all. Could you provide me with a list of all male inmates who have been recently released – those aged, say, between nineteen and thirty years of age?’
‘Of course.’
‘In particular, I would be interested in any inmates who had the same treatment as Grant-Sissons. Any who were treated by this colleague of yours, Dr Leaming, was it?’
‘Anything else?’
‘Have you lost any patients recently?’
‘Lost?’
‘Had any escape.’
‘This is not a prison. However, our patients are kept securely enclosed for their own protection. By virtue of the mental disarrangement that has brought them here in the first place, they are unable to function in the world outside our perimeter. Indeed, it is not until we professionally adjudge them to be capable of that adjustment that we release them.’
‘Is that a yes or a no?’
‘No. No one has escaped from here.’
‘Ever?’
‘Recently.’
‘Maybe one or two could slip away without anyone noticing?’
‘We would know. Now then, if you would be so good as to provide me with an address, I shall see to it that the information you require is sent to you.’
‘Not so quick. I ain’t finished with you yet.’ Inchball produced his wallet and took out a photograph of one of the cards found in the men’s suits. ‘Ever seen anything like this before?’
Pottinger was quick with his answer. ‘No.’
‘Sure about that?’
‘Yes.’
‘How about these letters? F.J.S.U?’
This time he was more hesitant. But the denial was just as emphatic when it came. ‘No.’
Inchball pocketed the photographs. ‘What exactly is it your Dr Leaming did to Malcolm Grant-Sissons?’
‘He helped him. He cured him. Malcolm came in here a wreck. Quaking, weeping, flailing … He could not speak, could hardly stand up. Couldn’t walk. Had to be stretchered in. A kind of paralysis had gripped him, which had no physiological basis. In an extraordinarily short space of time, after little more than two weeks of treatment, Dr Leaming was able to restore him not only to his former self, but to a stronger, braver, more confident Malcolm than he had ever been. He left here at the beginning of June, smiling, shaking hands with the staff, embracing Dr Leaming in gratitude for his help.’
‘And then, a few days later, he strips off and tries to top himself.’
‘In our profession, we must accept that there will be setbacks as well as breakthroughs.’
‘What was it he did, exactly?’
‘The therapy is complex but effective.’ It was Pottinger’s way of saying Inchball wouldn’t understand.
‘Does it involve whipping out their tonsils?’
‘That isn’t part of Dr Leaming’s treatment.’
‘But it’s something you like to do?’
‘It is a pioneering treatment based on the latest ideas. It is now understood that all mental illness has a single underlying cause – a toxin caused by a germ infection that enters the brain from certain other parts of the body, including the colon, stomach, sinuses, teeth and tonsils. In an ideal world, we would remove all these offending body parts. But we find that we can achieve moderate results simply by extracting the tonsils and teeth.’
‘Why do you still have loonies in here, then? If you know the cure?’
Pottinger gave Inchball a long, silent look that suggested that he would like to remove more than his tonsils. ‘We can’t operate on everyone. We don’t have the resources.’ At last he looked away and the interview was over.
Inchball hurried back along the path towards the station.
The place was beginning to give him the cold creeps. If he was honest, it was the staff he was worried about more than the patients, most of whom seemed harmlessly wrapped up in their own worlds of misery and confusion.
The nurses and attendants, on the other hand, had a cold watchfulness about them that was one provocation away from sadistic. Inchball himself had used techniques that some might consider brutal, but always against villains who would do far worse to him given half the chance. The same could not be said for the listless, cowering wretches he saw around him now.
The sight of them brought to mind the guv’nor’s recent unfortunate episode. So, old Quinn had been a patient here. Poor fucker. Well, at least it showed there was hope for some of them. The guv’nor was a model citizen these days.
The thought was pleasantly diverting. Inchball chuckled silently to himself.
‘Something funny?’
It was one of the loonies, hoeing a flowerbed. He looked at Inchball with a bold, challenging stare, so unlike the shrinking evasiveness of his fellows. Inchball had the definite feeling that he had met this man before. ‘Do I know you?’
‘If you have opened your heart to the Lord, then verily, you know me. For I am your God.’
‘Timon Medway!’
‘I do not acknowledge that nomenclature. You may address me as the Lord God Our Saviour, the One God, the True God, the Only God. Though I will also answer to Jesus of Nazareth or Sir Isaac Newton, as these were the identities I assumed in my most notable earthly incarnations.’
‘Still keeping up the act, are you? You never fooled me, Medway. I know you’re not mad. You’re just fucking evil.’
‘In nomine Patris et Filii at Spiritus sancti. That is to say, in my name, for I am the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘I forgive you that blasphemy, for I am the God of forgiveness.’
‘Fuck you.’ Inchball waved a hand dismissively and walked on, shaking his head.
‘Give my regards to Silas Quinn,’ shouted Medway after him. ‘I hope to see him soon.’
Inchball continued walking. He was aware of his heart beating forcefully and fast. His fists were clenched tightly. It was the response that genuine danger always provoked in him.
TWENTY
Malcolm had been in hospital for just over a week now. He had still not regained consciousness. His surgeon seemed dubious that he ever would. ‘Frankly, I don’t understand how he’s still alive.’
‘He’s my brother.’
The surgeon’s expression softened. ‘I’m sorry. I thought you were here on police duty.’
Quinn kept up a vigil at Malcolm’s bedside. He brought with him the library book, A Furious Energy. Macadam had been reluctant to hand it back, but when Quinn explained why he needed it, he relented.
