by Rosie Walker
‘What’s going on with you, Abbie?’ Zoe looks at Dane and shakes her head, trying to communicate an apology for Abbie’s behaviour. He must think they’re so immature.
Dane won’t meet her eyes.
This is awful. Zoe just wants to go home. She doesn’t follow Abbie, and stays sitting at the table, staring into her drink. She’s pissed off with Abbie, and worried about things with Dane, but there’s also a weird niggle in the back of her mind: where has she heard of Mr X before?
Lancaster’s Predator Professor: Uncovering the archives of Leonard McVitie
By Urban Dark Reporter
Second in a series of articles exploring the newly catalogued archives of Lancaster’s most prolific lunatic.
Like many of you, I was intrigued by the recent article about Leonard McVitie, written by one of my anonymous UDR colleagues, so I decided to do some more research into his life. Until now, little was known about McVitie: medical files are destroyed, Lune Hospital records are sealed, and little remains of court documents. As soon as McVitie was determined ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’, he disappears from the legal system and public written records. There was no traditional trial, no determined sentence. They locked him up and threw away the key, for the safety of society.
What does this mean for us scholars of insanity? Until recent months, it meant that McVitie was forgotten by everyone but those who lived or worked in the asylum from the 1950s to the 1980s, most of whom are still bound by patient confidentiality.
But what happened after the trial? After he was caught, charged, and incarcerated, McVitie lived for another 26 years. What was he doing for all of that time?
As far as anyone knew, very little remained of McVitie: his body cremated, the ashes unclaimed; his few belongings destroyed. Until at some point two years ago, a young archivist began work at the John Rylands Library, new to the job and eager to get their teeth stuck into a meaty new project. In a dark, forgotten corner of the stacks, he or she found a collection of dusty boxes, uncatalogued, marked only with the initials ‘LH’ for ‘Lune Hospital’. No one knew what the boxes contained or how they got there.
What the curious librarian found was McVitie’s entire archive, donated to the Library anonymously and promptly forgotten, until now. So, to the question of ‘what was McVitie doing while he was incarcerated?’ we now have the answer:
Creating his legacy. Making himself immortal. And it’s all there in the archives.
More to come soon.
Comments:
DDT: Locking him up -- why not just hang him!
1488-HH: I see the Daily Mail readership have found us.
Phoneguy: Sad about his unclaimed ashes and stuff. Collectors would pay good money for those relics now.
Thomas
There’s another door at the far end of the caravan, jammed shut. Thomas tugs at the handle, leaning with all his weight, but it won’t budge. He wanders around, prodding at cupboards and shelves in the kitchen area, which takes up the wall opposite Maggie’s sofa.
‘Must be locked,’ Maggie looks pointedly at her notebook.
‘Maybe it’s a toilet or a little bedroom or something.’
Maggie shrugs. ‘Or full of treasure.’ She’s sitting cross-legged on a ripped sofa which runs along one wall. ‘I’m calling this meeting to order,’ she says in her most important-sounding voice.
Thomas tugs on a drawer handle and finds it’s not a drawer at all: it’s a big flat block of wood that slides out and creates a table. Then a leg folds out from below to prop it up. Clever.
He pulls it all the way out and props it up from underneath.
‘I said—’
‘I heard you,’ says Thomas. He flattens both hands to the wooden surface and jumps up, pushing himself up onto the table. It creaks a little under his weight but stays sturdy. He shuffles around and sits with his back against the caravan wall. It’s slimy and damp, but that doesn’t matter because his coat is thick.
‘So the first order of business. Our new spy agency needs a codeword,’ says Maggie as soon as Thomas is settled.
He shifts his weight a little and the wood creaks. ‘How about Skywalker?’
‘That’s what I was thinking too,’ says Maggie, writing it down, tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth with concentration. ‘I’ve written it backwards in case the notebook falls into the wrong hands.’
‘Like a proper spy,’ says Thomas. ‘So, what are we actually doing here?’
‘I was hoping you’d ask that,’ Maggie says, in a slow voice. She pauses for a moment, thinking. ‘We need a mission. A mystery to solve.’
Thomas is quiet. The idea of this clubhouse was much better than what they’ve actually found. The damp smell is starting to make his chest hurt, and his bum is getting damp and cold.
He doesn’t know why, but he’s got the same feeling that he gets when he’s in the waiting room at the doctor’s surgery: a gnawing dread, like something horrible is about to happen. And he doesn’t want to touch anything because it all looks greasy and germy.
There is something he really wants to suggest, and still might. But first he needs to work out whether Maggie will laugh at him or not.
‘Well, Agent Maggie—’
‘Special Agent.’
Thomas tries not to roll his eyes. ‘Special Agent Maggie.’
‘Thank you.’
He does roll his eyes this time. ‘Anywayyyyyy,’ he says. ‘I have a real mission for us.’
Maggie’s mouth twitches and she looks a little excited, even though she’s trying to hide it. ‘Oh yeah?’
‘I want us to find out where my Dad went.’ He reaches up to push his glasses up his nose, before he realises he’s not wearing them. He scratches his eyebrow instead.
Maggie purses her lips. ‘Okayyyyy.’
‘What?’ Thomas asks. ‘That’s a mystery I actually want to solve.’ She’s really annoying. He pauses. Maybe he just needs to change it around a bit. ‘The proper mission could be to get him to come back. He’s been gone for ages now, and Mum won’t tell me where he is.’
‘I don’t know,’ Maggie says, in a quiet voice. ‘Can he just come back like that? What if he’s stuck somewhere, with no trains or something?’
Thomas folds his arms. He’s spoken with Dad on the phone a couple of times, once on Thomas’s birthday and once on a Saturday afternoon when Dad was somewhere very noisy; it sounded like he was watching a football game and not really in the right mood to talk on the phone.
After that particular phone call, Thomas ran up to his room and broke off the left arm of his old Transformers toy. Breaking it felt good in that moment but as soon as the arm crunched in his hand, Thomas was flooded with a terrible feeling of regret and guilt, which was worse than the original sad feeling he was trying to make go away in the first place.
Maggie folds her arms too. ‘That’s not a mystery. I think we should think bigger.’
‘Think bigger,’ he repeats quietly, frowning.
‘Yeah, I think we need to get into that asylum. See what’s hiding in there.’
Thomas swallows as acid rises up in the back of his throat. ‘See what’s hiding in there,’ he repeats, as the hair on his arms stands up in the cold. Maggie’s weird choice of words repeats in his head. ‘What do you mean, “that’s not a mystery”? Why is it not a mystery, where my Dad went? It’s a mystery to me.’
Maggie looks up from her notebook, eyes wide. She doesn’t move, and looks like she’s been caught by a teacher, passing notes at school.
He jumps down from the table, his boots crashing onto the floor of the caravan with a big thump. ‘Maggie,’ he says, in a firm voice. ‘You know something about where Dad is.’
She shakes her head. ‘No, I don’t know anything, Tom, I promise.’
He walks over to her and stands over her where she’s sitting on the sofa. She looks up at him, her eyes shining in the amber torchlight. He can’t tell if there are tears gathering or not. He mak
es a fist. ‘Tell me what you know, or I’ll never talk to you ever again.’
Zoe
At the bar, Abbie’s giggling and tossing her hair. The guy in the baseball cap seems to enjoy the flirting. A new drink has appeared in front of Abbie and she’s sipping from it while maintaining eye contact, a flirting trick she taught Zoe last year.
The guy looks up, over at the table where Zoe’s sitting with Dane and Max.
The boys are talking about comics and superheroes. Zoe had no idea Dane knew anything about comics, but they’re pretty engrossed in whether Christian Bale’s Batman would beat Ben Affleck’s Batman in a fight. They’re ignoring Abbie’s behaviour, which is probably the best approach.
At least they’ve stopped talking about murderers. She hopes Dane doesn’t think Max is too geeky or boring. Or weird.
‘And Squirrel Girl would beat everyone!’ shouts Max, and a laugh explodes from Dane, a loud, happy laugh Zoe’s never heard him make before.
Zoe’s keeping an eye on Abbie. Even though she wants to get away from this situation as fast as possible, she knows it’s not safe to leave her friend. Plus, it’s great that Dane and Max are getting on so well.
Max checks his phone. ‘Phil and Freya are at the Mousetrap; they’ve got a good table near the arcade machines.’ He drains his pint and puts the glass back on the table. ‘Fancy getting trounced on Street Fighter 2?’ he asks Dane.
Dane grins. ‘Absolutely.’
‘Mousetrap has all the good ones: Galaga, Punch-Out!!, and even Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker.’
‘That sounds awesome,’ says Dane. ‘Let’s do it.’ He turns to Zoe. ‘Zo? Fancy that?’
‘Zoe! Get over here!’ Abbie shrieks across the pub.
Zoe looks up. Abbie’s grinning and the guy has a wide smile on his face. Abbie’s beckoning her over. Zoe looks at Dane. ‘I’ll just go and see if she’s okay.’
Max just shrugs, but Dane nods and carries on the comic book chat. ‘So what about Cavill’s Superman versus pre-Crisis Superman?’
Zoe pats Dane on the shoulder. ‘I’ll leave you to it. We can see you guys at Mousetrap once I’ve tamed Abbie, okay?’
Dane nods. ‘See you in ten minutes?’
***
Up close, the bar guy is definitely older, but does have a slightly handsome look about him, a bit like Paul Rudd.
‘Hey Abs,’ she says, glancing at the guy, who is smiling in her direction. ‘The guys have gone to meet Phil and Freya.’
He holds a drink out to her. ‘Your friend says you’re a taboo and lemonade girl,’ he says. His voice is soft, with long Lancashire vowels.
‘Thanks,’ she takes the drink. ‘We’re actually just about to go somewhere else.’
‘We’ll go find them after this drink.’ Abbie raises her glass to toast.
Zoe resigns herself to an extra few minutes before they can join the boys. She raises her glass and takes a sip.
‘I’m Paul,’ he says, making eye contact with her from under the brim of the hat, which Zoe can now read the slogan on: ‘F.B.I. female body inspector.’
‘Nice hat,’ she says with a grimace.
The guy laughs. ‘It’s not mine. I’m wearing it to win a bet with a friend.’
‘It’s totally disgusting,’ sneers Abbie. ‘I can’t believe you’d walk around wearing something so misogynistic.’
Paul laughs and agrees with her. ‘He said I couldn’t pull it off. But you two are talking to me, so I guess it’s not as repulsive as my friend thought.’
‘Pretty repulsive though’, says Abbie, giggling into her drink. ‘I don’t even know why someone would make that. And then you paid money for it.’ She mimes gagging on her fingers. She’s leaving the mischievous, flirty stage of drunk and is rapidly entering the insulting stage. This is a familiar pattern to observe with Abbie: the escalation of hostility to men she’s enticed earlier in the night. Almost as if she eventually detests any man who is interested in her. Especially poor Max.
It’s happened before: Abbie flirts her way into the sights of a guy, drags Zoe along with her and then a couple of drinks later, she’s rude to the guy and Zoe has to apologise, make up for it and restore the bruised egos Abbie leaves in her wake. It’s an annoying pattern. Zoe plans to talk to Abbie about it in the morning when Abbie’s sober.
For now, though, in the harsh glare of Abbie’s snark, the man’s attentions turn to Zoe.
‘Well, it was nice to meet you, er …’
‘Paul,’ he says, a sparkle in his eye as if she said something funny.
‘Paul,’ she repeats. ‘But we’re having a night out with our friends, so we should go.’
‘Don’t escape so quickly, Zoe.’
She flinches at his use of her name. It’s too familiar from a stranger, like he’s taking something from her.
He continues: ‘I’m only just getting to know you both.’
‘Yeah, Zo,’ says Abbie. ‘The conversation’s barely getting started.’ She wiggles her eyebrows at Zoe, clearly referring back to her earlier challenge.
‘Tell me about you, Zoe. Where are you from, what do your parents do, what do you want to be when you grow up?’ He rests his elbow on the bar and cups his chin in his hand. The muscles on his bicep pop out, veins threading under the skin.
She gulps the drink, trying to finish it so they can leave.
Abbie takes over, her eyes twinkling with mischief as she knows how annoyed Zoe will be. ‘She’s from around here, her dad’s a policeman and her mum’s rebuilding that creepy old mental asylum in Flagstone Woods. And she wants to be a kept woman.’
Zoe glares at Abbie, not caring what the guy thinks of them anymore. ‘Shut up, Abbie. None of that is right, anyway.’
The guy’s staring at Zoe, as if Abbie just told him she was next in line to a throne or something. ‘Flagstone Woods, eh? Your mum’s, what, a builder?’
Zoe gives a non-committal shake of her head. ‘An architect. Come on, Abbie.’
‘An architect. Working on the hospital redevelopment, I guess?’
‘Mmhm.’ Zoe taps Abbie on the arm. ‘Let’s go meet the guys.’
Abbie shakes her head. ‘They ditched us. Fuck them.’ She turns back to her drink.
‘They didn’t ditch us; we’re going to meet them.’
Abbie shrugs. ‘Probably both jealous because we’re talking to other guys. I can’t be doing with that kind of negativity.’
Zoe purses her mouth. Might Dane be angry? It’s not like she was flirting or anything.
He shrugs and slides another drink to Zoe and one to Abbie. ‘One more for the road, girls. Then you can go find your Prince Charming.’
Abbie grins. ‘I never say no to a free drink. Let’s pick some more songs on the jukebox! Wanna dance?’ she asks the guy.
***
One drink later, Zoe’s legs are wobbly, and she holds onto the bar for support, closing her eyes for a second. ‘I feel a bit weird,’ she says, trying to enunciate her words.
The guy slides a bar stool over to her and she climbs onto it. ‘Sounds like you can’t take your drink, young lady.’ The room around her shifts and spins, like she’s on a boat.
She does a quick calculation in her head; she’s had about four drinks. One from Dane and one, or two – she’s not sure now – at the bar with this guy and Abbie. Not enough to feel like this. She’s so tired.
But there are empty glasses in front of her. More than she remembers drinking. She looks at Abbie, who’s half-swaying, half-leaning against the FBI-hat guy, her eyes almost closed. Abbie looks just as tired as Zoe feels.
Zoe rests her elbows on the bar and puts her head in her hands. She could close her eyes for just a minute, try to stop the spinning and the tiredness. The jukebox music sounds weird in her ears, like she’s under water or it’s slowed down.
Where’s Dane? Mousetrap. Not far.
‘I need to go,’ she slurs, and slides from the barstool. She grabs her handbag and chucks her phone inside. She
feels like she’s floating. Holding her head up is difficult, like it weighs a hundred pounds.
She walks carefully towards the back door of the pub, struggling to walk straight and stay upright. ‘Need to find Dane.’
‘Let me help.’
She feels an arm around her shoulders, propping her up and walking her towards the exit. Then everything goes black.
Helen
‘You wouldn’t believe what your daughter’s done,’ Tony says, when Helen picks up her mobile.
‘Our daughter,’ says Helen. She’s in the bath, trying to make the most of her night at home alone, but not managing it. The idea of the evening was more idyllic than the reality: her bath water is cold, and her fingertips are beginning to crinkle.
‘Yep. But she’s just as obstinate as you were at this age, so I’m giving you full ownership today.’ His tone is light-hearted, so Helen can tell it’s fixable.
‘Hang on a sec.’
She switches the phone to speaker, sets it on the side of the bath and dips her head underwater, running her hands through her thick hair and feeling it float around her face. The water dulls her hearing and her heartbeat thuds in her ears. As she stands up from the bath, water pours from her hair and runs rivulets down her back.
Wrapped in a towel, she picks up her phone and trails damp footprints along the corridor to her bedroom. She props up pillows onto the headboard and settles onto the bed.
‘Okay, what’s the little rebel up to?’
Tony’s exaggerated sigh tells Helen that whatever he is about to moan about isn’t an emergency. Zoe’s being Zoe, winding up her Dad and doing what she wants to do.
She knows her ex-husband well, and he’s about to launch into a long-winded explanation of his frustration with Zoe. And he’ll expect Helen’s sympathy, even though she deals with their daughter’s teenage tantrums and drama every single day. It was worse a couple of years ago; seventeen-year-old Zoe is much easier to deal with than fifteen-year-old Zoe, but Tony won’t know that because he was immersed in baby twins back then and had very little time for his oldest child.
