He still wasn’t sure why he was interested in them either, except that the events of the past few days were somehow echoed in the mythic tales of ancient times. It was fanciful to think that some malevolent spirit, the wandering ghost of an undead Druid from Neolithic times, haunted the woods south of Gladhouse. Madame Rose would maybe think it fascinating, but even she wouldn’t believe that an ancient evil would, every so often, call out to anyone who might hear, lure them into the trees and . . . what? Kill and eat them? And as for an order of monks, executed for their literal interpretation of transubstantiation, their souls shackled to the stones of their ruined monastery, waiting for the last trump, when they would be judged by God for their wicked ways? Well, that was almost as stupid as the rest of it.
Except that there was a ruined monastery, and people had gone missing. He would have to add Sally Wainwright to the list the CCU was preparing. What if it was her bones they had found on the moors? Dumped alongside Abigail Porter and God only knew who else?
And Anya Renfrew was still missing.
He knew as soon as he entered the station that something was up. The usual end-shift bustle of officers milled around, but he could feel an atmosphere about the place, a sense of a storm brewing. Or was he simply letting his imagination get the better of him, fuelled by the scary stories he’d heard?
Reaching into his pocket, McLean pulled out his phone and checked for messages, but the screen showed nothing except the time. He’d successfully spent another entire day away from his desk, more or less. No doubt Robinson would have words to say about that, Jayne McIntyre too. For once they’d be right. He couldn’t really say he’d achieved much.
‘Ah, sir. You’re back.’ He met DC Harrison at the top of the stairs. She had a thick sheaf of papers in her hands that may or may not have been a prop to stop anyone from asking her to do something for them. She also had a worried expression on her face.
‘Yes, I’m back. Did somebody need me?’
‘The detective chief super wanted a word, sir.’ Harrison wasn’t saying something, which worried him. No point in pestering her for information though. McLean nodded his thanks and carried on along the corridor to McIntyre’s office.
The door was open, which meant he could see the DCC, Grumpy Bob and DI Ritchie in there, all standing, all talking over each other. None of them noticed him until he knocked on the doorframe.
‘Anyone in?’ he asked, then saw the looks on their faces as they all turned towards him. Not the time for joking. ‘What’s up?’
‘First thing, Tony. Emma’s safe. There’s a couple of uniformed officers at the house and another squad car patrolling the area.’ Detective Chief Superintendent McIntyre stepped out of the crowd and crossed the room until she was directly in front of him.
‘Emma’s safe? Why wouldn’t she be?’ He looked past her at the others, their faces all identical pictures of horror. ‘Why wouldn’t she be?’
‘It’s Norman Bale,’ McIntyre said, her voice low. ‘He’s escaped from Bestingfield. He’s disappeared.’
The journey to Bestingfield had taken him over an hour the day before. With a police escort and his Alfa unshackled from the speed limit, McLean was standing in the reception area in less than forty minutes. He might have made it there faster, but he didn’t want to leave the squad cars behind. The officers who had come into the building with him looked a little wild-eyed after their high-speed drive, which no doubt added to the alarm on the face of the facility administrator who had been unlucky enough to be on shift when the disappearance was discovered. A small, round-faced and sweaty man, he had introduced himself as Giles Staunton. Of Dr Graham there was as yet no sign.
‘We’ve absolutely no idea how this can have happened, Detective Chief Inspector. I can assure you we maintain the highest security standards here.’ Staunton wrung his hands like a penitent.
McLean could see the high security standards in the large number of burly male nurses milling around the reception area. It had the feel of stable door and bolted horse to him, but he kept that to himself.
‘When was the last time anyone saw him?’ There was no need to say who ‘him’ was.
‘Norman was supposed to be having a therapy session this afternoon, but Doctor Graham had to cancel. She’s not well apparently. Some nasty tummy bug that’s doing the rounds, I’m told.’
‘That’s not an answer to my question, Mr Staunton.’
‘No, no. Sorry.’ Staunton wrung his hands some more. The sweat prickled his brow as if he’d run a mile to get here. The air in Reception was cool and fresh compared to the heavy heat outside, so it was more likely nerves. He cleared his throat with a noise like a small dog being choked to death before speaking again.
‘He had his lunch at midday in the refectory on C wing. That’s when we got the news about Doctor Graham, so he was taken back to his room. There were no other scheduled activities, but he said he was happy enough to be left there until it was time for the evening meal.’
‘Who took him there? I’d like to speak to them.’ McLean looked around the room at the collected staff. Who was looking after the patients if they were all here?
‘I’ll have them brought to the conference room. Is that OK?’
He nodded. ‘First I’d like to see Bale’s room.’
‘Of course, sir. This way.’
Accompanied by a pair of male nurses, Staunton led McLean along a bewildering number of corridors, through a collection of locked doors until finally they arrived at what looked more like the door to a hotel bedroom than a prison cell. It took several minutes to get there, and nowhere along the route did they meet any other people.
‘You’ve got the whole place locked down?’ he asked as one of the nurses unlocked the room door and pushed it open.
‘For now, yes. Some of our patients are very sensitive to change, new faces, that sort of thing. It’s for the best if we keep them to their quarters until you’re done.’
McLean thought that a bit presumptuous. If he asked a forensics team to go over the room they might be there for days. He said nothing, but stepped inside.
It wasn’t much of a surprise to him, since he’d seen it on CCTV footage a few days earlier. Instinctively he glanced up at the point above the door and saw the smoked-glass bulb behind which the camera sat. It was perfectly placed to take in the whole room with a wide-angle view.
As prison went, it wasn’t a bad place to be. The window was small, and didn’t open, but it looked out on a view of trees and distant hills, fading as the evening came on. The single bed sat against one wall, a stainless-steel basin and a toilet in the opposite corner. Bale had a desk fitted to the wall, a shelf with a few books on it, a chair to sit on. A narrow wardrobe held a change of clothes, a couple of pairs of slip-on shoes. No television, nor a radio, McLean noticed.
The air smelled mostly of toilet cleaner, a fake-lemon scent that was both sickly and sweet. But underneath it there was something else, a kind of electric tang he couldn’t place.
‘Can you smell that?’ he asked DC Harrison, who had pushed her way past the male nurses to join him in the room. She sniffed a couple of times, brow wrinkled in concentration.
‘The urinal cake, or the burned fuses?’
‘Burned fuses. Electrical fire. That’s what I thought I could smell.’ McLean turned his attention to the door. On the inside there was a handle as you might expect, but no lock. The mechanism could only be operated from the outside, remotely. He crouched down close and sniffed again.
‘Was the door locked when you found him gone?’ he asked of Staunton. The administrator stared helplessly at the nearest male nurse.
‘I think so. I’m not sure. We’ll have to check with Billy. You want to do that now?’
‘In a moment.’ McLean went to the bookshelf and looked at Bale’s collection. Scottish history texts in the main, although he had a couple
of collections of folk tales. Opening one, McLean found the stamp of South Lanarkshire Libraries. It was due back soon. One book had been left on the desk beneath the shelf, alongside an A4 pad and a couple of HB pencils, all arranged as neatly and squarely as if Bale had used a ruler.
The cloth-bound hardback book had long since lost its dust jacket. McLean opened it to see the somewhat unimaginative title: A History of Scottish Myths and Legends. Written by someone called Barnaby Fortnum, it had been published in 1935 by an Edinburgh company he’d never heard of. He flicked through the thick, yellowing pages until he found one with its corner folded over as a place marker, something that would have caused actual physical pain to his grandmother. It didn’t surprise him to find the bibliographic desecration marked the beginning of a chapter, the title almost certainly intended as a message for him. ‘The Legend of Sawney Bean’. Of course Bale was playing games. That was what he did.
Placing the book back down at an unruly angle, McLean concentrated on the pad. He ran his fingers over the top, and felt where words had been written on the sheet above before it had been torn out, along with several others by the look of it. Forensics could try and work out what Bale had written, but it was almost certainly not important, most likely gibberish. There was nothing here; that was the whole problem.
‘OK. Let’s go and talk to this Billy. Maybe he can tell us how someone can just up and walk out of a maximum-security hospital without anyone noticing.’
56
Billy turned out to be she, not he. She stood up from where she had been sitting at the conference table when McLean, Harrison and Staunton entered the room. In a poor light, McLean reckoned you could be excused for the gender confusion, as she stood as tall as the two male nurses who’d escorted them back from Bale’s room. Her short-cropped hair probably made sense in a profession where it might be grabbed at any moment by an unstable patient, but combined with her square-set jaw and broad shoulders, it made her look more William than Wilhelmina. At least until you saw her in profile.
‘The door was definitely locked, sir. Both when I took Bale back to his room and when I went to check on him later.’
McLean had barely been introduced before Billy was stating her position, but far from it coming over as needlessly defensive, he found himself believing her all the more for it. She had a certainty about her that was probably her way of coping with difficult patients, and maybe the male nurses too. It couldn’t have been easy, dealing with the likes of Bale and some of the other high-security patients he knew were here. Something as fundamental as making sure a door was locked would be drummed in so deep that forgetting was unthinkable.
‘So you’re sure you had to unlock it to get back in then?’ Staunton asked, before McLean could tell him to go away. Billy’s gaze flicked from her boss to the scary detective and back again, but she held her nerve and her certainty.
‘Aye. I’m sure.’
‘Mr Staunton, could you give us a minute?’ McLean asked. The administrator looked at him for a moment as if he didn’t understand what the request meant. Then he nodded once, turned and left the room. McLean waited until the door had clicked closed before turning back to Billy the psychiatric nurse.
‘First off, I’m not here looking for someone to blame,’ he said as he settled into one of the other chairs at the conference table. DC Harrison did likewise, taking out her notepad and a pen. Billy started to speak almost immediately.
‘I did everything by the book, sir. I –’
McLean raised a hand to stop her. ‘I’m sure you did. Like I said, not here looking for blame. What I’m trying to do is find out what state of mind Bale was in, who he’d spoken to, whether anything might have set him off. Anything that might give me some insight to where he’s gone. We can worry about how he escaped later.’
That seemed to mollify the nurse, at least she kept her mouth shut, merely nodding her understanding.
‘So. You last saw Bale when you escorted him from the refectory back to his room after lunch. Is that right?’
‘Aye, sir.’ Another nod.
‘Did he speak to you over the course of that? Ask any questions, make any observations?’
Billy shook her head this time. ‘No’ really, sir. Bale’s no’ like that. He hardly ever speaks to any of us unless he has to.’
‘What about the other patients? Does he speak to them? Does he have any regular contacts, acquaintances?’ McLean hesitated a moment before adding: ‘Friends?’
The answer was clear before the nurse even spoke. ‘He eats alone, sir. Never mixes with the others unless he has to, same as speaking to us. I know Doctor Graham’s been working with him on that, trying to get him to interact with others. He does too. When she’s there and watching. But soon as she’s away, he’s back to his old self again.’
McLean couldn’t help noticing that Billy referred to Bale in the present tense, as if he was still sitting in his room a short distance away. Not out in the wilds, free to do as he pleased.
‘His old self?’ he asked.
‘Aye. Silent. Withdrawn. Always watching you though. Like he can see right through your skull and read the thoughts in your head. Fair creepy bastard, so he is.’ Billy seemed to remember herself then. ‘Begging your pardon, sir.’
‘No, I’m with you there. Fair creepy bastard sums him up well enough. I always thought he was playing with the doctor too. And I don’t think she’s stupid, but I don’t think she knows what she’s dealing with in Bale either.’
‘If he spoke to anyone regularly, it’d be the librarian,’ Billy said.
‘This place has a library?’
‘No’ really. Not unless you count a wee trolley wi’ all the latest Val McDermids an’ Ian Rankins on it. No. We’ve an arrangement with the local library up in the town. The patients, well, those that’re well enough behaved, get to make requests. No’ many do, aye? But Bale always has a list when the librarian comes.’
Out of the corner of his eye, McLean saw Harrison making plenty of notes. He recalled the book on the desk in Bale’s room. It had been close to its due back date. ‘When was the last time they were here?’
‘They come once a week. Think they’re due tomorrow, but I could check.’
‘And it’s always the same librarian?’
Billy frowned. ‘I’m not really sure. Think so, aye. It’s the same mobile library as goes round the villages.’
‘Get on to that, can you, Constable?’ McLean asked Harrison, but she already had her Airwave set out and was putting the call in to Control. A quick glance at his watch confirmed that library hours were over. He wasn’t sure that the connection was anything more than a red herring, but it needed to be checked. Bale’s MO was taking on the identities of his victims, after all. No real hope that he’d mended his ways.
He turned his attention back to Billy, tuning out Harrison’s softly spoken words behind him. ‘Apart from the librarian, was there anyone else Bale spoke to except when he absolutely had to?’
‘Can’t think of anybody, no.’ Billy shook her head slowly. Then she brought her hands up to her face, covered her mouth. ‘Oh God. What if he does it again? What if he kills somebody?’
McLean and Harrison left the psychiatric nurse to her despair and went in search of the administrator. The local police were already combing the area, the circumference of their search growing by the hour. He had a horrible feeling it was all in vain. If Bale could walk out of a cell, an entire secure hospital, without being seen or indeed bothered by such insubstantial things as locks and three-metre-high, razor-wire-topped fences, then a few bobbies in squad cars weren’t going to slow him down, wherever he was going.
‘Control’s chasing down a list of names and addresses for all the library staff, sir. Should have a lead on whoever it is supplies Bale with his books soon enough.’
‘I want them brought into protective custody. Anyone
outside of this place who’s had contact with him in the past month, for that matter.’
Harrison nodded and took out her Airwave again. McLean disliked the chunky handsets, but they had their uses. Especially out here in the sticks, where mobile coverage was patchy at best.
‘All done, sir. I’ve had word back from the officers going round to Doctor Graham’s too. Seems she’s been at home all day in her bed. When she’s not been throwing up. Reckons she caught the flu from a colleague.’
‘We’ll still need to speak to her soon as she’s feeling up to it.’ McLean didn’t much fancy the interview though. ‘Let’s have a look at this CCTV footage first.’
They found Staunton’s office after a couple of wrong turns and locked doors. The man himself was on the phone, shrunken in on himself as some superior gave him a bollocking McLean could hear even from the other side of the room. He looked up with an expression of deepest relief as he noticed the two of them waiting, muttered, ‘Sorry, ma’am. Have to go. It’s the police.’ The silence that fell as he cut the call was like closing a door on a noisy crowd.
‘My boss,’ he said by way of explanation, then shrugged. ‘Though who knows for how much longer, eh?’
‘Is the CCTV footage ready for viewing?’ McLean asked. He didn’t enjoy a bollocking any more than the next man, but so far Staunton had done little to gain his sympathy.
‘CCTV?’ A moment’s confusion, then understanding bloomed across the administrator’s face. ‘Yes, of course. This way.’
He led them back out into the corridor and down to a room full of screens. McLean tried to suppress his impatience as the controller, a young lad called Steve, fussed with buttons and some form of custom-built scroll wheel. Images flickered on the main screen, disappearing before McLean could make any sense of them. Rooms, corridors, the front gates, the car park, where a small group of uniformed officers had clustered around his Alfa Romeo for a gawp. Finally it settled on a familiar view of Bale’s room. It was obviously earlier in the day, as sunlight flooded in through the window and Norman Bale sat at his desk, pencil poised over his pad.
Bury Them Deep Page 31
