Burn Out (Dr. Anne Vernon Book 1)

by Alan Scholefield

  ‘I didn’t expect you back from court today.’

  ‘We finished early. It seems you’re going to be busy for some time longer. I’ve had a call from Jack Symes. He’s having what he calls a domestic problem. His marriage has been rocky for some time. He’s taking some leave to try and sort things out. Robbins will help out and so will his partner. Even so you’re going to be kept on your toes.’

  ‘Baptism of fire.’

  ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘Coffee, if you have any. I need my caffeine. I could hardly keep awake in court.’

  She was feeling tired herself. Although it had been little more than a week since her arrival it seemed much longer. Kingstown gaol had become part of her world, and her domestic life had fallen into a routine. She had always said to Paul that she never wanted to get into a rut, but she was in one now.

  Faithfully, as though trained by Watch, her father brought her a cup of strong tea at six o’clock in the morning – he had already been up for an hour and was full of energy.

  Then breakfast. Fortunately he no longer gave them a cooked breakfast – it had taken large-scale wastage to make him change his mind about that – and Anne and Hilly now approached the table less apprehensively.

  Then there was Hilly to get ready for school and the domestic rituals to be planned with her father; reminders to be written down and arguments to be settled about a host of things with both of them.

  There had been one or two mornings recently when she had stepped through the great prison doors with a sense of relief.

  She gave Tom a mug of coffee and said, ‘How’s Beanie?’

  ‘She’s all right. I’ll get her walking again.’

  ‘What happens to her when you’re at work?’

  ‘Joyce looks after her.’ He walked over to the window and stood sipping his coffee. There was a brooding expression on his face. ‘You want to say to her try. You want her to want it so much that she uses those back legs to force herself up.’ She heard real distress in his voice. ‘But all you can do is try for her.’ He swung round. ‘How’s the great tennis player getting on?’

  She told him what her father had discovered. He began his regular pacing and Anne had a quick look around the room to see that nothing was in his way or in danger of being knocked over.

  ‘Did she offer any evidence at all that he was abusing his baby?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘So there’s no need to rush to the social services?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so for a moment.’

  ‘Thank God. That’s all we need. After the Cleveland and Orkneys debacles the social services are the last people I want paddling about in this.’

  Les Foley put his dimpled face round the door. ‘Excuse me, Dr Vernon, but you asked about Mrs Tribe. She’s been visiting her grandson; she’s just leaving now.’

  Anne excused herself and hurried to the front gate, but she was too late; Mrs Tribe had just left. She asked the officer at the traffic barrier and he pointed down the hill. ‘Is that her, doc?’

  Anne recognised the long coat and the scarf round her head.

  ‘Mrs Tribe!’

  She caught up with her halfway down the hill that led into the city.

  ‘Do you remember me?’

  ‘’Course I do, doctor.’

  ‘I wanted to ask you some questions about your grandson.’

  ‘Well, you see, I—’

  ‘It’s just that I need some information to help him.’

  ‘Trouble is, doctor, I got to get back. Old Mr Gillis, he has his – Stop! Stop!’ She waved her arm wildly. There was a whoosh of air, and a large bus passed them and disappeared down the hill.

  ‘Rotten sod! And me practically at the stop.’

  ‘That’s my fault,’ Anne said. ‘I made you miss it. When is the next one?’

  ‘The next one? To Sheepwalk? There ain’t a next one till tomorrow.’ Her face was registering panic and distress.

  ‘I really am very sorry.’

  ‘He wants his supper, see. He likes to eat early. Always has done.’

  ‘How far is Sheepwalk?’

  ‘Far enough. I ain’t got the money for a taxi.’

  ‘Let me drive you. We can talk on the way.’

  But they had no opportunity for talking. Sheepwalk was ten miles from Kingstown and reached mainly by winding lanes. Their talk consisted of Mrs Tribe saying, ‘Go left here, doctor. And left again. Now right, and across the junction. And a left here. And then right . . .’

  The lanes with their high hedges became increasingly narrow and more winding as they went deeper and deeper into the Downs. They passed villages with names Anne had never heard of, ancient Saxon names, dating from the time when this part of England was covered by the Great Forest and inhabited only by charcoal burners and criminals. They were not picturesque hamlets of thatched cottages, village greens and duck ponds, but secretive places where, in the autumn dusk, curtains were already drawn and doors barred; smelly places where slurry ran across the road and everything was slippery with mud.

  Sheepwalk was dark and dreary and from there they made for a small valley, not much more than a fold in the Downs, and reached a series of stone farm buildings. An almost illegible sign read, ‘Ridge Farm’.

  The place looked abandoned. The barns were empty and the tiled roofs in ruins. Fences were broken and old tractors and rusting ploughs lay by the side of the track as though they had collapsed there and been abandoned. The farmhouse too seemed derelict. It was double-storeyed, and its walls were made of flint. Behind one of the downstairs windows Anne made out a light.

  She stopped the car. The front door opened instantly and an elderly man in a long brown dust coat came out onto the gravel drive.

  ‘Is that you, Ida?’

  Ida Tribe was already halfway out of the car. ‘Yes, Major.’

  ‘D’you know it’s past six o’clock!’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  He bent down and peered into Anne’s window. She saw a bony face with thick hair above it and black piercing eyes.

  ‘Who the bloody hell are you?’ he said.

  ‘Dr Vernon. From the prison.’ It was said stiffly. ‘I wanted to talk to Mrs Tribe about her grandson.’

  ‘Yes, well, never mind that.’

  ‘It’s all ready, Major. Only needs heating up.’ She turned to Anne. ‘Do you mind waiting, doctor, then we can go to my cottage.’

  Anne sat in the car listening to the six o’clock news, trying not to let the irritation get to her. Fifteen minutes later Mrs Tribe appeared. She was agitated and apologetic. ‘He’s an old man now and he’s used to his little ways. That’s my cottage over there.’

  Anne followed her to a small brick cottage. Two little rooms downstairs and a narrow rickety staircase leading, she imagined, to two more. It was like entering the nineteen thirties. The floor was of red quarry tiles. There was an old black woodburning range at one end and the furniture was fake William Morris with a bakelite radio and a gate-legged table. There was a sink and a wooden draining board on which stood a small mangle, the first she had ever seen.

  ‘I’ll just put the kettle on,’ Mrs Tribe said.

  ‘How long have you lived here?’

  ‘A long time, doctor. I came after my husband died. Before Billy was born.’

  She made the tea and gave Anne a cup.

  ‘And you worked for Major Gillis all these years?’

  ‘That’s right, doctor.’

  ‘I didn’t realise he’d been in the army.’

  ‘Not the real army. Only the territorials. But he likes me to call him Major.’

  ‘I’ve been talking a lot to Billy,’ Anne said. She was finding it more and more difficult to imagine him living in this small house.

  ‘I hope you’re going to keep him. I don’t want him here no more.’

  ‘That’s just the point, Mrs Tribe. He was at Loxton last t
ime but he doesn’t want to go back there. There’s a psychotherapy unit at a small prison called Granton which has been operating for ten or fifteen years with good results. He wants to go there.’

  Mrs Tribe looked up in alarm. ‘How long do they keep them?’

  ‘That depends on individual cases and the length of the sentence.’

  ‘Doctor, you seen what it’s like here. It’s no good him coming back. Where’s he to live? The Major won’t have him in the house. Doesn’t want him on the farm. He says if he was to come back here I can take my notice.’

  It was a kind of chain reaction, Anne thought. Was she going to have to assume responsibility for Ida Tribe’s future as well as her grandson’s?

  ‘It’s possible he won’t go to Granton. He may have to go back to Loxton.’

  ‘Oh, I hope so. You know, doctor, my life isn’t easy. You’ve seen the Major. He’s like that all the time. And he hates Billy.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? ’Cause Billy burnt down half the blessed farm, that’s why.’

  ‘Do you know why he did that?’

  ‘’Cause he’s not all there.’

  ‘Do you know how it started?’

  ‘I used to think about that often. In them days we had the stubble burning. You can’t burn stubble no more. But them days, after you’d brought in the harvest, you burnt off the stubble. I can remember Billy as a little boy saying let me light it, let me light it. Then it was a working farm. Not like now. The Major doesn’t farm no more. Just a few sheep to keep his hand in. But then he had a cowman and a ploughman and Billy used to go with them when they burned the stubble. Always running near the flames. Once he burnt a crop before it was brought in. I’ll never forget that. Whole field of standing corn. You should have seen the Major.’

  ‘He told me he’d burnt an old car. And then he burnt a barn. You say you think he burns things because he’s mentally unstable. I’m trying to find out what that instability is. There’s a reason for his actions. Do you think it could be sexual?’

  Mrs Tribe stared at her. ‘Sexual? How do you mean sexual?’

  ‘There are cases of men who get gratification, sexual gratification, out of lighting fires.’

  ‘You having me on, doctor?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘I never heard of such a thing in all my life!’

  Anne changed tack abruptly. ‘Did he have trouble at school?’

  ‘Billy’s always been in trouble.’

  ‘But any particular trouble?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘He told me there had been some trouble with a teacher.’

  ‘He never told me nothing. The only trouble I remember was him being caught smoking in the lavatories with another boy. Oh, and bullying. First of all, as a little nipper, he was bullied. But then when he grew up he became the bully. And there were the animals. He hurt animals. Killed the Major’s cat with a bow and arrow he made.’

  ‘Did he have any girlfriends?’

  ‘Not that I knew of.’

  ‘What about jobs?’

  ‘Jobs?’ She gave a short laugh. ‘He never had no proper jobs. Worked for a bookie once. And an undertaker. But mostly he just drew his benefit.’

  ‘Getting back to the fires, Mrs Tribe. Did he ever light anything in this cottage?’

  ‘He used to sit in front of that range there and push pieces of paper in. And he used to light that incense stuff. I used to hear his voice muttering and mumbling and carrying on. And he’d play his music very loudly. What he called his juju music, whatever that means. And he’d carry a knife and show it to me and say how sharp it was. Oh God, doctor, I was so afraid.’

  She paused, remembering. Then she said, ‘It got so bad I slept down here. I used to tell him to stop it but he said he was worshipping the old gods; the ones in the trees and the stones. Said they’d lived here when it was all forest. Said they talked to him. I dunno where he got notions like that. Maybe out of all those books. He used to read and read.’

  ‘What sort of books?’

  ‘To tell you the truth, doctor, I never knew. I can’t read very well. But he took them with him. Cleared them out one day. Took them to his secret place.’

  ‘He had a secret place?’

  ‘Just like a child, he was. A grown man with a secret place. In one of the old barns, I think. I never bothered with it. I was just thankful he was out of the house.’

  ‘Did you mention this to the police?’

  She shook her head. ‘Maybe I should’ve. But I was all he had. His mother was dead. His father was gone. What could I do? I mean, they came to take him away for lighting the fires and I thought well, that’s that. I thought, no need to go into the other things.’

  ‘Did the Major know about the secret place in the barn?’

  ‘He never said nothing to me about it.’

  ‘How did he get on with the Major?’

  Mrs Tribe threw up her hands. ‘They hated each other.’

  There was a sudden banging on the door. She gave a start and got to her feet.

  ‘Is that you, Major?’

  ‘You can clear away now. I’ve finished.’

  ‘I’m coming.’

  Anne said, ‘I’ll be on my way.’

  Ida Tribe saw her to the car. ‘Now you can see how things are,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Please don’t send him back here.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Like twelve-note music or quantum mechanics, ironing had always been one of life’s mysteries to Henry Vernon. For most of the time Watch had seen to it on his behalf. Not that he had actually ever ironed anything except the starched white collars Henry had had to wear in court, but he had organised it. There was no Watch to organise it now.

  Yesterday, Henry had done the washing – quite successfully, he thought, no floods on the kitchen floor – and then put everything in the tumble dryer – amazing machine. Now the ironing.

  But like all tyros he had come face to face with that most intractable item of domestic furniture, the ironing board. After several vain attempts at getting it to stand upright, during which it had snapped at him and hurt a finger, he had placed it flat on the floor and cautiously studied it.

  It was clearly a potential hazard and he was amazed that the British Safety Council had ever allowed such a thing to be sold to the public.

  Henry was not by nature a technologist. Give him a tort or a criminal libel and he was happy as a sandboy, so he soon realised that he and the ironing board – in its present form – could not co-exist.

  The problem was its instability. He went out and bought several angle brackets and, by the time Anne came home that evening, he was in his right mind and ironing.

  He made a strange picture in his multi-coloured kikoi and his grubby dancing shoes. Exotic wasn’t quite the word, she thought, but didn’t know what was.

  ‘Where’s Hilly?’ she said.

  ‘Birthday party. I’m picking her up at seven.’

  She tried to close the kitchen door. The ironing board moved with it.

  ‘What’s happened?’ There was a note of dismay in her voice.

  ‘Clever, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh my God!’

  ‘Well, the bloody thing wouldn’t stay put.’

  ‘But you’ve—’

  ‘Fixed it permanently.’

  ‘This is ridiculous!’ She examined the screws and steel brackets. ‘And look at the door!’

  ‘I hoped you’d approve.’ He was nettled. ‘It’s much more rigid than it was.’

  ‘It sticks out into the room and I can’t get to the food cupboards.’

  ‘I admit there are some minor snags but—’

  ‘Take it down, please.’

  ‘I think you’re wrong, you know.’

  ‘Please!’

  ‘As you say.’

  ‘And you’ll have to fill those screw holes with something, and repaint the door.’

  ‘I’ll get a carpenter.’

&nbs
p; ‘We can’t afford a carpenter.’

  She went upstairs and lay in a bath. Make your mind a blank, she thought. Relax . . .

  It had been a tough day. Tom had warned her he was throwing her in at the deep end and that was precisely how she felt. He was doing his best to help but his own time was fully taken up with producing a report on prison suicides in England and Wales for the Home Office.

  He had put her on to the twice-yearly hygiene inspection.

  ‘Normally I’d come with you and show you the ropes but I’m up to my eyeballs with these reports. Les knows all about it. Probably more than I do. He and Jeff Jenks taught me when I first came.’

  She was glad to have Les, she felt comfortable with him. In a curious way the natural sexual tension between male and female seemed absent when she was with him and it helped to lower a factor which was becoming more and more obvious: stress. Although the medical staff made jokes about it to try to lower their own tension, a day in which she was constantly harassed by the prisoners (‘Show us your tits, doc!’) left her drained. So Les was the kind of mother-figure she appreciated.

  The hygiene inspection was of the whole prison and, because of lack of time and money, had to be done in one day. She had to inspect every lavatory and detail every broken lavatory seat; she had to look at and under every washbasin, examine every extractor fan, check every water storage tank against legionnaire’s disease; she had to examine the kitchens and food storage rooms for mouse droppings; she had to report every broken window. And to do all this she had to climb and descend hundreds of stairs. And there was always the worry at the back of her mind: what if she missed something?

  And she had.

  It had been while she was checking the lavatories in the education block. She had noticed, on the floor behind one of the lavatory pans, an empty glue pot. For some reason, perhaps by this time she was tired, she had not seen it as anything but an empty glue pot in the education block, a natural place for it. She was turning away when Les bent down, picked it up and handed it to her. Only then did she see the glass tube within.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘For smoking crack.’

  ‘Oh, God, what a thing to miss!’

  He smiled at her, but the dimples didn’t show so obviously and his eyes were harder.