Sanctuary

by Lisa Appignanesi

  At its sound, Leo started to tremble again. Clumsily, she switched off the machine, placed it in her case, began to toss her belongings over it, tucking them round the computer, hiding it.

  Alert to her fear, Daniel called out a loud ‘one moment please’, and helped. His foot crunched a small bottle which had fallen to the floor. He stared at its label. ‘Sodium Amytal’. His hand clenched into a fist. How much had that blasted man pumped into her? It would account for some of her disorientation, her febrile state.

  ‘How many injections were you given, Leonora?’ he asked softly.

  She stared at him, her face blank.

  ‘No, of course, you don’t remember. Why don’t you get changed now and then we’ll go and talk to Frederick Hilton.’

  Her eyes grew wide in panic. Her features blurred. ‘Fre…?’ The name wouldn’t shape itself on her lips. She rubbed her temples. ‘Holes in my mind. Black holes. They suck everything up. I can’t find anything.’

  Daniel took her hand and stroked it softly. ‘It’ll come back Leonora. You were hypnotised. You were also, I imagine, given repeated doses of a hypno-sedative and god knows what else. Just take it easy. Take it step by step.’ He opened the door to William, took the bundle from his arms and told him to communicate to the Director that they would be with him in some ten minutes.

  A woman with a voice as smooth as her sleek blonde hair stopped them at the end of the corridor.

  ‘I’m sorry the Director can’t make time for you now,’ she addressed Daniel. ‘He sends his apologies. I should also personally say that I’m very sorry Leonora suffered an episode. It happens sometimes. You know, the silence, the meditation … it doesn’t suit everybody all of the time.’

  ‘That’s noble of you, Miss…?’

  ‘Heather.’

  ‘Well, Heather, unless you want to see this place closed down by the end of the week, I think you had better take us to the Director right now.’

  Heather stared. ‘I don’t think…’

  ‘I’m not asking you to think, Heather. Just lead the way.’

  Something sparkled in Heather’s eyes. ‘Whatever he’s done, I had no part in it. Leonora can testify to that.’

  ‘At the moment, Leonora can barely see straight.’ Daniel’s tone was acid. ‘This way is it?’

  ‘No, up here.’

  Leo took the steps slowly, as if a great weight had been tied to her feet.

  ‘Perhaps it would be better if you waited, Leo. Heather will get you a cup of tea or coffee.’

  ‘No,’ she clutched at his arm and shook her head adamantly. The fear was there again in her eyes. ‘No. I’m coming with you.’

  When Hilton didn’t open the door to Heather’s second knock, Daniel moved angrily in front of her and turned the knob. A small, oddly triumphant smile, shaped itself on her face. He didn’t pause to interpret it.

  ‘Hilton, we need to talk and I haven’t all day,’ he called loudly into the large room even before he had spied the man.

  He was sitting at his desk, his back to them, swivelling in his chair and looking out at the expansive terrain before him like some General poised to marshal his troops. The telephone was to his ear.

  ‘Pick me up in twenty-five minutes. No more.’ He put the receiver down without a hiatus and turned round to face them.

  ‘I’m busy Daniel. There’s an emergency on. Didn’t Heather explain?’ The smile sat uneasily on his broad face, but it sat there none the less. Daniel wanted to rip it off.

  ‘This is the emergency, Hilton. One emergency at a time.’

  ‘I’m opening a big new centre in Australia and …’ He stopped himself as if the boast had taken him too far. ‘But, if you insist.’ He gestured companionably towards chairs.

  ‘Australia?’ Daniel recalled the frenzied content of Isabel’s journal. She must have threatened him, accused him in some way. Frederick Hilton wasn’t, he guessed, a man who would take to threats kindly.

  Hilton waved the query away. ‘Have a seat. Though I’m not in the habit of conducting case conferences in the presence of a patient.’

  Leo was staring at him with that blind look, as if she needed to touch his face feature by feature to make sense of it. She moved cautiously into the chair furthest from the desk and perched at its edge.

  ‘Did I mention that we were discussing Leonora? I don’t think so. No. I want a word with you about a former patient of mine. A patient of our colleague, Paola Webster’s, too. You know who I mean. Isabel Morgan. Latterly, she sometimes went by the name of Morgenstern.’

  Daniel caught the flare in the man’s face, then saw it settle.

  ‘Yes, another delusional. You seem to specialise in them, Daniel. She left here a few weeks ago. I didn’t see her in personal sessions. Or perhaps only once.’

  ‘No, no, more than that,’ Heather intervened. ‘You remember…’ She was staring at a small suitcase, which stood by the side of the desk.

  Hilton cut her off, his voice razor-sharp. ‘I believe you’re needed elsewhere, Heather. You can leave us now.’

  ‘It would be better if —’

  ‘Go, Heather. Now.’

  With a nod at Daniel, Heather strode from the room. Her head was high.

  ‘Impertinent woman,’ Hilton muttered.

  ‘But not delusional.’

  Hilton met Daniel’s eyes. ‘No, perhaps not. It comes back to me now. I may have seen this Morgan or Morgenstern woman more than once. So many patients come through here. Sometimes I think you’re lucky Daniel. Working on your own. All those one-to-ones. Nothing as complicated as this to run.’ He swept a lazy arm round the vista.

  Daniel grunted. ‘So. Your diagnosis after two or three or four meetings is that Ms Morgenstern was delusional. Because she recognized you as her father. Because her aunt, her aunt in Australia, identified you as the father she had long believed dead.’

  Hilton rose abruptly from his chair. He walked towards the window and looked out at the grounds. ‘Is that what she told you?’ he murmured. ‘You know better than to trust your patient’s fantasies.’

  ‘I know better, but her aunt is hardly my patient. We can always go for the hard proof. Run a DNA test. You. And Isabel, or Iris as she chose to call herself for her researches.’

  Leo’s voice cracked into the sudden silence. ‘Isabel’s dead.’ The words came out as a moan.

  ‘Dead?’ Daniel stared at her.

  Leo nodded.

  ‘Didn’t you know?’ Hilton was suddenly back in his chair. ‘Daniel. Daniel.’ He shook his head, grief etched in his features. ‘A tragedy. Suicide, it was. Terrible. I remember now that Paola warned me. She had tendencies in that direction.’

  ‘Dead,’ Daniel repeated, as if he couldn’t take in the reality the word signified. ‘Suicide. When? Just after she left this place?’

  ‘Now, now Daniel, we’re not going to run a competition between our respective therapies to see which one is responsible.’

  ‘What did you pump into her? In this country you know, it’s illegal for a non-medical practitioner to prescribe, let alone inject drugs.’

  Hilton’s eyes landed on Leo. She stirred nervously beneath his gaze. Something was there, floating just at the edge of her eyelids. If only she could see it. She closed her eyes.

  ‘Leave it alone, Daniel. I told you before. We have doctors here. And the woman’s dead. Finished. It’s over. It’s the past. She couldn’t make the grade. Couldn’t reinvent herself . All over. Finished. Let me get you a drink.’

  ‘And that’s what you think, isn’t it? That’s what your work is about. Re-invention. Killing off the past. A little injection. A little hypnosis. Another injection. Wipe it all out. Wipe out problems. Wipe out family, lovers, attachments. Eradicate the past. Rewrite it any old which way as long as it helps you grab onto the next thing. Forget the trail of bodies left behind.’ Daniel heard his voice rising and he suddenly had a distinct image of Isabel. Isabel trying to come to terms with the pain of abandonment.
Isabel remembering the years of her muteness.

  ‘Is that what you did? Reinvent yourself. Australia.’ He clapped his hands together, as if he were squashing a fly. ‘Gone. India. Gone. Seattle. Gone. How many other selves in between on the rise to these heights of power? How many women and children left behind? Buried. Denied.’

  Daniel hadn’t realized he was standing until Hilton was fixed in front of him, his feet spread on the ground, like a boxer’s, his cold blue eyes at the height of his own, the threat in them manifest.

  ‘Careful, Daniel. Careful. Let’s not quarrel over a deluded hysteric. All right. You want to caricature me like that. I can do one of you, too. All those years of careful probing, wallowing one might call it, just to find and accept the poor week-kneed creature that you are. All those old-fangled oedipal universals. Blighted families. Jealousy. Unattainable desire. Guilt. Shame. Conflict. Pah.’ He slammed his fist on the desk. ‘Power. That’s what counts. Power over the world. Shaping things. Making things. Shaping people.’

  ‘As long as you do the shaping. And quickly. An instant refashioning. You’re even worse than Paola. She wants to find victims so that she can induce them to take revenge on the masters. And you, you want to create a bunch of white-clad history-free sheep who follow you passively along the path to the brilliant new age. And Isabel wasn’t a follower.’

  Daniel held the man’s eyes forcibly, as if they were engaged in a duel. Frederick Hilton lowered his first.

  ‘She was your daughter, wasn’t she? I can see it. What did you do to her?’

  In the distance Leo heard a whirring. A helicopter. It was coming. Coming towards them. She put her hands over her ears.

  Hilton rushed towards the windows. ‘There’s my ambulance service. Bringing in a very important patient. I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Dr. Lukas.’ He smiled cynically as he emphasized the doctor.

  The noise of the copter had grown deafening. The machine was now directly above them casting its shadow through the window. There must be a landing pad on the roof of the place. Daniel looked at Leo. She was huddled over, gazing at the rotors which whirled across the floor. He put a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t stir.

  Leo was watching the furious patterns the blades made, splintering over her feet, slicing across the desk, slashing across that man. That man. Isabel’s father. Isabel dead. She clutched at Daniel’s arm.

  ‘He killed her.’ The words lacerated her throat, cut through the fog in her mind. Like blades. ‘Isabel. Killed Jill Reid, too. He told me. Yes. Jill Reid. Take a blood sample from me, Daniel.’

  Daniel clasped her hand and looked towards Hilton. The man had vanished. Against the noise of the copter, he hadn’t heard him move. He raced from the room. Leo was right behind him. On the right of the hall a door stood slightly ajar, wavering in a gust of wind. They ran towards it. At the top of a steep, ironwork staircase, they saw Hilton, case in hand, a coat thrown over his arm.

  ‘He’s going to get away,’ Leo mumbled.

  ‘No, he won’t.’ Daniel was already halfway up the stairs.

  ‘Be careful,’ Leo shouted after him, forcing herself towards the noise. One step at a time.

  By the time she reached the roof-top, the whirring had slowed. Two men were leaping out of the copter, followed by a third.

  ‘Norfolk,’ Leo shouted. ‘Norfolk. Inspector Faraday. Hold on to him. Don’t let him go. It’s him. Stop him. Morgenstern.’

  Hilton was already back at the door, running down the stairs. Norfolk and Faraday caught up with him at the landing. Leo saw Norfolk frisk him with surprising expertise. Faraday had a grip on his arm and was showing his ID, as was a second man. She suddenly recognised the ruddy-faced officer from Barnstaple. Rawlence, she remembered. The holes in her mind were filling up.

  It was Rawlence who spoke. ‘F. F. Hilton. We’re taking you in for questioning. In the case of the murder of Jill Reid, an employee at Plantagen.’

  ‘Really, Inspector!’ Hilton brushed the hand from his arm as if it were a niggling speck and adjusted the lapel of his suit.

  Rawlence continued bullishy. ‘John Stapleton, the head of Jill Reid’s lab has now returned from the US and tells us that Jill Reid spent her last days here at your Foundation. The car she was found in belonged to one of your former employees and had been left here in his absence. A sample of Jill Reid’s blood shows traces of the same compound as we found in the body of one Isabel Morgan. We want to question you about that death as well. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

  Rawlence took a deep breath. ‘You’ll go quietly.’

  The scowl on Frederick Hilton’s face settled itself into an oily smile. ‘Of course, I’ll go quietly, Officer. I’ll help you all I can. But you’re barking up the wrong tree. I’ll just make the requisite call to my solicitor.’

  ‘Go right ahead.’ Faraday drew a folded document from his jacket pocket and flashed it in front of him. ‘Search warrant. All in order. The boys from the squad should be here soon.’

  Hilton glared. ‘And just what do you think you’ll find here, Inspector, as you upset our patients?’

  ‘I imagine we’ll find quite a few things of interest, Hilton,’ Norfolk growled with marked insolence. ‘There are a few little additional matters we need to look into as well. If I were you I’d ring your charitable benefactors. And I mean Newman in Australia, as well. I think Ritter Pharmaceuticals will not be altogether pleased at our presence here.’

  Frederick Hilton took a threatening step towards Norfolk. ‘And who are you?’

  ‘Christopher Norfolk at your service.’

  ‘Christopher Norfolk?’ Hilton spluttered. ‘You’re that warped journalist who sent me that blackmailing letter. I’ll have you done for slander if you print a single word.’

  ‘What letter?’ Norfolk was all innocence.

  ‘I was sure that accusing bitch had written it,’ he muttered, then broke off abruptly and reached for the phone.

  Norfolk stopped his hand. ‘Exactly which Sheila you talking about Hilton?’

  ‘Get your grimy paws off me.’ The man shook him off.

  ‘He means Isabel,’ Leo said softly. ‘I think you’ll probably find it all on her computer.’

  Hilton stared at her. He made a sudden menacing move in her direction. ‘Where did you get…?’

  ‘That’s enough, Hilton.’ Faraday stepped in front of him. ‘Get on with your call.’ He gestured towards Rawlence, then turned to look at Leo, as if for the first time. ‘Are you all right, Ms Holland?’

  ‘I am now,’ she smiled at him.

  ‘You got one clever daughter there, Holland.’ Norfolk put a proprietary arm across her shoulder and gave her a squeeze. ‘I sure am glad to see you in one piece. I was at last getting the full grisly lowdown on The Morgenstern Foundation and its little alias here when she rang. Luckily Faraday decided to believe my story.’ He winked at her. ‘But then he had some new evidence to go on.’

  ‘You omitted to tell me, Ms Holland that Mr Norfolk had a double…’

  Norfolk coughed. Faraday stumbled through his sentence. ‘That Mr Norfolk also worked for the Australian government.’

  Norfolk grinned at Leo’s visible astonishment. ‘It’s OK, Holland. Just a little part-time job. Couldn’t tell it all. Heh, who’s the bloke? Part of the establishment?’

  Leo introduced Daniel who had been standing by with a bemused expression on his face. He took Faraday aside for a moment. ‘There’s something else you should look into, Inspector. I found sodium amytal in Leo’s room. It’s hardly an unusual hypno-sedative, but I strongly suspect this establishment may be administering it and I don’t know what else, in undue doses. Probably, too, with insufficient medical supervision and without the patient’s consent.’

  ‘That’s only the beginning of what’s going on here, I imagine,’ Norfolk grumbled.
‘In Seattle there was a trial and a rumour storm, both somehow quashed, that they were carrying out trials on a new morphine compound, something in that grey area where legit pharmaceuticals meet street drugs. Trying out varying doses on their patients - without their knowledge, needless to say - to see how they responded. To see what levels proved toxic. I imagine they’re trying out some other bits of experimentation here. Captive guinea pigs. Rich clients as a front. Or maybe just a little diversification.’

  Leo stared at him. She was feeling dizzy again. There was too much to take in.

  ‘Experiment. Diversification. That’s the name of the future.’ Hilton stated, his head high, his voice cold.

  ‘Inspector, Leonora needs to rest. With your permission, I’ll take her home.’ Daniel intervened.

  Faraday nodded. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Not so fast.’ Frederick Hilton stepped in front of Leo, towering over her. ‘Not so fast.’ His face was glistening. He was gazing into her eyes. He spoke very slowly. ‘You’ve taken something of mine, Leonora.’

  Leo backed away, her knees trembling, but she couldn’t avert the dazzle of his eyes. Words tumbled into her mind, a lost quotation: ‘His count’nance as the Morning Star that guides/The starry flock, allur’d them, and with lies.’ Lucifer. She didn’t know whether she said it aloud. He was speaking.

  ‘You will give it to William before you leave.’

  ‘That’s enough, Hilton.’ Daniel snapped and placed himself between them. ‘Quite enough. And it’s too late. I’ve been into Isabel’s computer, too. Your daughter’s computer. Though you’re hardly worthy of her. It’s going to be placed firmly in Inspector Faraday’s care, together with a sample of Leo’s blood. The past’s catching up to you. I don’t think you’re going to be able to deny this bit of your life with quite your usual alacrity. Hold onto him, officer.’

  Rawlence’s fingers bit into Hilton’s shoulder.

  The man veered round and shook him off. For a moment his gaze, like that of a cornered animal, passed from one to the other of them in turn. And then a piercing laugh burst from him. ‘We’ll see about that, Dr. Lukas.’ He spat out the name. ‘We’ll see about that.’