A Cross to Bear: A Jack Sheridan Mystery

by Vogel, Vince

“That’s cool with me. So long as Chloe’s safe.”

  “I am, Dan,” Chloe reassured him, looking at him with soft eyes.

  Danny turned back to Chloe, popping open his second bag, and asked, “So what you gonna do now?”

  “My friend here is—”

  “Nothing, Danny,” Alex interrupted. “Her friend here is going to do nothing.”

  Chloe gave Alex an aggrieved look.

  “He can be trusted, you know,” she complained.

  “I’m sure he can. But I’d rather not give him any information that someone could beat out of him. I trust him. But there’s no reason to give him things that could do him harm. It’s best he knows only that you’re safe and no more.”

  Chloe’s face softened and she turned back to Danny.

  “You got money?” she gently asked.

  The boy held his arms out.

  “Have I ever got money?” he replied with a cheeky grin.

  Chloe smiled and looked back at Alex. He immediately placed his hand in his pocket and took out two hundred pounds in tens. He leaned forward and offered it to Danny. The boy instantly dropped his crisps and snatched the money as though he thought it would disappear any minute. Without even counting it, he shoved it down his trousers, into his underwear.

  “Thanks,” he muttered, picking the crisps back up.

  “I suggest, Danny,” Alex said, “that you find somewhere similar to here for the night. Stay out of trouble and make that money last. You can rest assured I will do everything in my power to keep Chloe safe. But for now you must keep your distance.”

  “You some sort of hard man or somethin’?” Danny asked, sticking his nose into the air as he said it.

  “Don’t ask so many questions,” Chloe gently chided.

  The kid took his eyes off Dorring and continued with the food.

  Two minutes later, Danny had finished and didn’t outstay his welcome. Chloe walked him down to the door after he’d given Alex a cheeky nod and said goodbye. He’d grown bolder since filling his belly and was almost the polar opposite of the quivering boy in the alleyway only moments before.

  Dorring watched out of the window as Chloe walked the kid across the road. There was something motherly in the way she treated him, as if she were about to check behind his ears any minute. When they’d reached the pavement on the other side, Alex had a full view of them. She was saying something to Danny, and he was listening attentively. She made several gestures with her hands, illustrating some point, and the kid looked to be taking in every word. Then she took him in her arms, hugged him tightly, and sent him on his way, watching him the whole time until he dissolved completely into the crowded streets.

  35

  Jack and Lange were seated in front of Dr. Kline’s messy desk at Rampton Psychiatric Facility. In fact, the whole of the closet-sized office was a picture of mess, boxes of files appearing to grow out of everything like mold, the shelves and filing cabinets overflowing with folders and paperwork. In many respects, it reminded Jack of the detectives’ office back at base. As for the doctor, he was a little neater in appearance, though the purple bags under each eye attested to an overworked mind. In general appearance, he was middle-aged, tall, and wiry, with short red hair that had gone bald at the crown. His head was long and coned at the top, and earlier, when Jack had followed him down the corridor to the office, the back of it had given the detective the overwhelming impression of a pink eagle’s egg poking out of a nest of dry grass. On his face, the doctor wore a narrow nose that reached down to a pair of almost imperceptible thin lips.

  “I’d like to say firstly,” Dr. Kline began solemnly, settling himself behind the desk, “that it’s terrible news what happened to Becky. She was a real triumph for this place. Someone I felt confident had really turned a corner in her life and gotten to grips with her mental illness. She’s very much the rare case these days.”

  “Why’d you say that, Doc?”

  “Since all these closures in the last ten years, it’s been real hard. Hard for everyone in the health service. We’ve had very little time to give real one-on-one care to our patients. What with the financial crisis hurting people out there, there’s been a genuine increase in the mentally ill. One leaves, another enters. A swinging door. There’s never any rest for us. Then you’ve got the cuts. We used to cover an area the size of the outer edge of northeast London. Now we take in people from all over London and parts of Essex too. So, you can imagine, we’re under immense pressure to return people onto the streets, often before we’re really confident that they can cope in the world on their own. With Becky it was different. When she was first admitted, she wouldn’t speak and had a habit of self-harming, so was heavily medicated for some time. She took no part in the day to day of Rampton and merely sat in the exercise room all the time. But then she started to open up more. Started to partake in things. Dug her way up out of hell, you could say. Nine months later, she was doing brilliantly. A real triumph. She left Rampton and the last we checked up, she was taking her A-Levels and looking into universities. On her way to being a fully fledged member of society. Now… very sad.”

  “Can you tell me anything about the form of illness Becky was suffering from?” Jack asked. “Why she was here.”

  “Becky Dorring was suffering from severe bipolar disorder. From speaking with her mother, we learned that it had been getting gradually worse until she attempted suicide for the second time and went into an acute manic episode.”

  “And do you know the reasons she went into it?”

  The doctor shrugged. “How many reasons are there for murder, Detective? It’s the same with mental breakdown. There are thousands of reasons people find their way to somewhere like Rampton. Thousands of paths.”

  “But surely you got to find out which path Becky took while she was here. She must have talked about her life.”

  “In group therapy and in private one-on-one sessions, we encourage our patients to discuss their lives, but we don’t force them to. Some are more forthcoming than others. Becky Dorring preferred to speak only vaguely about her life.”

  “Did she ever mention the Beast?”

  “The what?”

  “The Beast.”

  Dr. Kline narrowed his eyes at Jack. “No, I’ve never heard of the Beast. Where did you hear about this?”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” Jack replied, instinctively glancing sideways at Lange, who merely rolled his eyes.

  “Well, can you tell me in what context this Beast is used?”

  “Someone who may have done Becky harm.”

  “You think it could be the killer?”

  “Again, Dr. Kline, as much as I appreciate your seeing us, I can’t discuss individual points of the case.”

  “Of course, of course.”

  “Is there any chance Becky could have mentioned this Beast to any other members of your staff?”

  “I don’t think so. During all sessions, staff record any details that are of interest. I then go through these notes with the staff at a later time to discuss any cognitive therapies that may help. I’m sure if one of our patients starts barking about beasts, it would be recorded.”

  “How about Dr. Holby?”

  “A who?”

  “Dr. Holby. Doesn’t he work here?”

  “I’ve never heard such a name even connected to Rampton. There was a Dr. Hartley, but he retired six years ago.”

  “I must have gotten something wrong,” Jack said, looking down at his notepad and underlining the name Dr. Holby. “Sorry.” He then scrolled down his notes and stopped on another name. “How about another patient of yours who roomed with Becky. Her name was Gemma.”

  “You mean Gemma Doe?”

  “Gemma Doe?” Jack muttered, his face taking on a look of confusion. “That’s an odd name.”

  “It’s the only one we could give her. She only ever told us her first name. If that even was her first name.”

  “Is she still here?”
r />   “I’m afraid not. Gemma left around six months after Becky.”

  “Another success, huh?”

  “Not entirely. I wasn’t overly confident in Gemma. For one, she still showed signs of trauma and indulged in fantasies.”

  “What type of fantasies?”

  “She believed that an angel with a flaming sword would one day come and destroy all the men that had sinned against her. She would draw pictures of this angel over and over. Nothing else. Just this giant man surrounded by skulls and fire. Her other doctors thought it showed creative outlet.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “If it had been the odd picture and she’d have drawn other things alongside it, then I wouldn’t have minded. But it was compulsive. She’d talk to the other patients about this angel too. Especially after Becky left. But the other doctors weren’t as concerned about it as I was, and she was cut loose. It was more about costs and figures than anything else.”

  “What else made you wary of sending Gemma Doe back out into the world?”

  “The simple fact that she never revealed her second name or who she was. Not once in the year and a half she spent at Rampton. She’s still down on all the records, including the original arrest sheet she was brought in on, as Gemma Doe.”

  “Her arrest sheet?”

  “Yes. Gemma made her way to Rampton after cutting a man’s testicles off.”

  Lange unintentionally coughed. Jack, of course, had heard much worse over the years and didn’t bat an eyelid. So this had been what Gemma had meant when she’d told Becky she’d cut someone.

  “And she only stayed a year and a half?” Jack enquired.

  “Yes. She was never convicted of the crime, only interred here. The man she did it to wouldn’t prosecute for one reason or another. So she was committed to Rampton, where she lived for eighteen months.”

  “And she was close to Becky?”

  “Very. They called themselves sisters. They forged a connection almost the moment they first met. They both appeared to bring the other out of their shell. That’s why I personally permitted them to share a room.”

  “Do you have any idea where Gemma is now?”

  “No idea. She was supposed to check in every month with her local NHS Trust, but she never has.”

  “You have an address for her?”

  “I’m afraid not. She walked out the door, and that was it.”

  “So you’re saying,” Lange piped in, “that you just let her go back on the streets?”

  The sharp head of Kline swiveled toward Lange. “She had no fixed abode, Detective,” the shrink said to him. “There was nowhere else to send her. She was determined by a panel of my colleagues to be well enough for reentry into society. She wanted to leave. You have seen it here, haven’t you? Seen the amount of ill women we have climbing the walls? You’ve read the newspapers? Seen the news? Heard about austerity? Well, this is the face of it. A system that half cares for people, churning the damaged back out onto the streets only half-fixed. We do what we can. I don’t run a care home for all the city. I do my best.”

  “That’s okay, Doc,” Jack said, giving Lange the eye. “It’s a bloody ball ache for all of us on the frontline.”

  “Some days you feel like simply giving up,” Kline said with an element of dejection in his voice.

  “So you have no idea where Gemma Doe could be?”

  “None.”

  “Well, then,” Jack said, rising from his chair and offering his hand, “thank you for your time, Doc.”

  36

  When Chloe came back through the door after seeing off Danny, Alex was sitting in a chipped wooden chair in the center of the stained blue carpet. He observed that her face was slightly puffy, giving him the impression that she’d been crying, as if saying goodbye to the kid had been really hard for her.

  “So how do you know the boy?” Alex asked the second she came through the door.

  “What, Danny?” she said, sniffing and taking a seat at the end of the bed, facing Alex, her legs dangling off the edge.

  “Who else?”

  “From the streets. He’s been on them since he was eleven.”

  “Hasn’t the state picked him up?”

  “Yeah. He’s been in more foster homes and care homes than me and you have had hot dinners. But he prefers the streets. He can survive on the streets. At least out here ain’t no one telling him what to do. When to go to bed. To go to school. To do as he’s told. Out here he’s free to roam.”

  “He’s gone feral,” Alex remarked with a funny look.

  She couldn’t help grinning. It was the first time he’d attempted some type of humor in her presence, and, even though it wasn’t that funny, it appeared funny coming from him.

  “Yeah. He is a bit feral. He grew up out in the countryside. He was put in foster care, but he hated it. He ran away to London because that’s all he could think about. It seemed to him that if you were gonna run away, you’d come to London. Every now and then he gets picked up by the cops or the social, but he always gets away.”

  “Why were you on the streets, Chloe?”

  She bit her lip, and her eyes misted over.

  “It was after my parents died,” she eventually told him. “I had nowhere to go. Like Danny, I hopped on a train and came to London.”

  “And the authorities did nothing for you either?”

  “I didn’t let them.”

  “How did you survive?”

  “Like I said before, by sellin’ myself. At first, I stole stuff and slept underneath railway bridges. I’ve always been petite, so I was able to crawl into recesses and stuff, hide away. I did that for a year, and then the police started arrestin’ everyone at the bridges. They’d round you up, put you in the local nick for the night, and then let you go with a warnin’ next day. It was so dumb. I used to hear from all the old-timers that London used to be full of spikes—that’s what they call shelters—but they shut most of them down. Now you’ve got to be on some sort of scheme to get a bed.”

  “Sounds a rather pointless dance,” Alex commented.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean shutting down all the places they can go and then arresting them all for sleeping in the only places they can.”

  “It is.” She paused for a moment and gazed into his blue eyes. There was such intensity in them, and she felt herself tremble a little. “Anyway,” she began without really knowing what she’d say, “have you ever been homeless?”

  “I’ve been without a home, but not homeless. If that makes any sense.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  He grinned at her.

  “What I mean to say is that I’ve only ever experienced a home twice in my life.”

  “When?”

  “The first time was when I was a boy. It was my family home. Myself. My mother. Father. And baby sister. We were very happy.” He paused for a moment, and Chloe noticed his eyes shimmer. “I can almost touch that happiness now,” he continued in a half-whisper, “but never quite reach it.” His hand drifted forward through the dusty air, and he appeared to grab at something, as though illustrating his point. “It’s like that time was nothing but a fleeting glimpse,” he added in the same disconsolate voice.

  “What happened to that happiness?”

  “My father was killed.”

  “That’s terrible, Alex,” she said softly. “Who killed him?”

  “The same men I’m hunting now. The Doyles.”

  “That’s why you were at the studio yesterday,” she suddenly exclaimed. “That’s why you suspect them. Because they killed your dad.”

  “Other things brought me there too,” he said without mentioning the pornographic video of his sister.

  “Why did they kill your dad?”

  “He was a police officer investigating them. He must have had something on them that was very sensitive, so they got him, nailed him to a cross while he was still alive, and slit his throat. And as if my father hadn’t faced
enough humiliation already, they drove him to the police station he worked at and threw him out the back of a van, still nailed to the cross.”

  “Just like those girls,” Chloe muttered.

  “Just like them. So you can see why I’m concentrating my energies on that particular family.”

  “Yeah. I can. It’s a shame they did that to your dad.”

  Dorring gazed sadly into her eyes, and she smiled softly at him.

  “After my father died,” he went on, “my mother went a bit manic for a couple of years. She was taking a lot of medication just to get through the day, so me and my sister didn’t really have much of a childhood after that.”

  “Your mum must’ve really loved him,” Chloe remarked innocently.

  Alex was struck with the vision of his mother throwing her arms around his father one glorious summer on Brighton Beach, grabbing ahold of him round the neck and kicking her feet up, his father twirling her in the air, their lips meeting within the glint of sunshine.

  “She did,” he answered. “The night they threw him out of that van, it was Christmas Eve. Myself, mum, and Becky—she was only four then—had arranged to meet him after work and do some last-minute night shopping. So we were sat in the station waiting when they started screaming outside. We were looking forward to seeing him so much.”

  “So you saw what they did to your dad?”

  “Yeah,” he muttered, his eyes going blank. “We wanted to know what was going on outside. So we went out there and pushed through the crowd. The first thing I knew something was wrong was when my mum went absolutely crazy. She threw herself down at him as he lay there. It was only when she had her arms around him that I saw his face and realized it was Dad. I just stood there holding Becky, not sure what to do.”

  He went silent and gazed into space, his face suffusing with sadness. Chloe got up from the bed and came over to him. He observed that same motherly look she’d had for Danny on her face. She knelt in front of him and took his hands. He flinched slightly but didn’t pull away.

  “You’ve been hurt so much, Alex,” she said gently. “I could see it in your eyes that first time when you pulled me out of the canal. I knew you’d been hurt. Do you know the hurt have a way of finding each other?”