Grave Truths

by Anne Morgellyn

  But Chas had been quite unambiguous regarding my old lady. A quick in and out for the Coroner.

  Cerebral haemorrage resulting from ruptured aneurysm in anterior cerebral artery. Note: superficial scalp wound, sustained by a heavy fall, likely to have been precipitated by the rupturing aneurysm (stroke).

  ‘And that’s it.’ The administrator put the print-out in a folder for me. ‘All done and dusted.’

  All in a day’s work, I thought. A mayfly of a case. The mayfly gestates at eight o’clock in the morning and dies at eight pm. How can it understand the word ‘night’? I took the report and went out. Were it not for this Roy, I could ring the undertakers right away and be done with Edith Woods. I hoped that Bubba would get no joy out of The Nunnery.

  I went over to Chas’s office, ready with effusive thanks, but he had already left. Then I tried to call him on my cellphone on the drive back to the depot. I was imagining the cry of gulls, the beach, staked out with sunbathers, bike oil, oil from fast food outlets on the esplanade, suntan oil, the patchouli oil I had sometimes rubbed on his body. The line was going fuzzy. My battery was running out of charge. I tried the number again but got a series of burps and cackles. ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘Shit.’

  But Bubba had some news for me when I got back. She had posted a little yellow stickie on my screen.

  ‘He was a patient at The Nunnery,’ she shouted over as I read the note. ‘The doctor rang me back himself. He’s gone home now, but he wants you to go and see him. Now, Moonshine, before you clock off. This is his address.’

  ‘Dr Samuel Veil,’ I mused. ‘That rings a bell.’

  ‘Media-friendly psychiatrist,’ said Bubba, pleased with herself. ‘He does a weekly phone-in on Capital Shortwave.’

  I gave her the PM report. ‘It seems pretty conclusive,’ I said. ‘No complications.’

  ‘My, my, Louise. I forgot that you were shagging the professor.’

  ‘Shall I sort out the forms for cremation?’

  ‘That’s for the Coroner to decide,’ Bubba said primly. ‘You just concentrate on getting back to Dr Veil before you finish up. And take the Underground this time. Jack wants the van.’ She turned away from me and started reading the report.

  Gritting my teeth, I set off for the doctor’s address.

  ***

  Chapter 3

  Dr Veil lived near The Angel, a part of London now favoured by high-placed entities, although there was nothing seraphic about the creatures at the exit of the Underground station, sitting mutely in front of their begging bowls. The poor men at the gates. The poor who are always with us. Tossing a coin without aiming, I walked southwards to the patrician square where the doctor resided. The houses were built in the 1700’s, as Charity’s had been, monuments to high ideals of Reason and Good Sense and Moral Rectitude. Dr Veil’s door was freshly painted in a holly colour, the brass plate gleaming with attention.

  The man who opened was in his late fifties, or looked it. He had thick yellow hair, brushed back off his forehead, and yellow teeth bared in an automatic smile. His white cotton shirt had button-down epaulettes and he had tucked it rather carelessly into badly-cut blue slacks, which pouched unhelpfully below his belt. There was something institutional about these clothes, which made him looked less like a doctor than a charge nurse in half mufti. To his credit, perhaps. Maybe he liked being one of the boys.

  He showed me into a room that looked like an armoury, an unexpected sight that made me suck in air that had long gone stale. An array of swords and daggers were fixed on the walls, securely, I hoped, since the doctor directed me to a chair beneath the bright cutting edge of an antique samurai sword. A listless feeling descended on me as I sat down. I opened doors on dead men’s affairs. I trampled on graves.

  Dr Veil lit the first of many coloured Sobranies, which I hadn’t seen anyone smoke since the time I went out with a now dead MP, a man called Eddie Kronenberg. I shuddered, feeling Eddie walk upon my grave.

  ‘Roy Woods,’ the doctor opened, exhaling.

  ‘Do you know where I can find him?’

  The psychiatrist leaned forward, letting me smell his smoke. ‘There was no guarantee that Roy would settle, you see. Bit of a wanderer, an agitated sort. You see them on the streets – that awful psychotic twitching.’

  I waited.

  ‘Say what you like, Miss Moon, the old asylums were exactly that for many of these mad people, places of peace and rest, where we could keep them all out of harm’s way.’

  I strove to remain inscrutable. I wished he would get to the point so I could head for home. My thoughts were on a cold shower.

  ‘Look, Roy is an itinerant,’ Veil went on, a shade defensively. ‘He comes and goes, though I’ve been trying to keep a quiet eye on him. That’s why I wanted to speak to you here, off the record, as it were.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  The doctor shifted his gaze. ‘I was the one who argued for his discharge, so naturally I feel somewhat responsible. Psychiatry is not some kind of elite police force,’ he bristled. ‘Look, I can assure you I will do my best to track him down for you, but I must say news like this may push him over the edge.’

  ‘You’re saying you don’t have an address for him?’ I felt immense relief at this. Then I thought of Mrs Blank, taking the scarf without a thought for Edith’s son and heir because he was mad, cast out. Or was it because he had hurt her friend? Don’t speculate, I warned myself. Just do the necessary to clear this up.

  ‘The post-mortem report showed natural causes,’ I said. ‘That now leaves the question of disposal. If we wait, you see, there’s the question of storage. That’s why I need to contact her son, if possible. If not, I don’t know what to do.’

  But Dr Veil was clearly thinking of something else. ‘Odd bunch, pathologists,’ he chuckled. ‘A strange branch of medicine – hardly what you’d call the front line.’

  I smiled at this. ‘I’m told pathology is the science of life,’ I returned, wondering if I should acknowledge my source. Chas, for his part, was no respecter of what he called psychoshit. But there was little, I thought, to choose between any of them, medicalising everything, shoving people into boxes, for Veil did his sectioning too, in a different sense. Chas passed his time slicing his way through the brain of a terrorist, while Veil cut into people’s minds in order to put them away at The Nunnery or let them back into the world again, to disappear. I wished that Roy had disappeared, so I could get on with removing his mother without further complication.

  ‘Have you no idea where he could be then?’ I asked.

  Dr Veil was lighting a pale green Sobranie. ‘He’ll be in touch,’ he said. ‘I know Roy. He always gets back to me. As soon as he makes contact, I’ll explain the situation to him.’

  ‘How do you think he will take it? He isn’t violent, is he?’

  ‘What makes you ask that?’

  ‘A friend of his mother.’

  The doctor fixed his gaze on the samurai sword. ‘One view of schizophrenia is that it is not solely the patient’s, er, problem,’ he said airily. ‘It can be viewed as a family thing, the illness existing in a context of different perceptions and projections. You remove the patient from that context, then … Well, I can’t tell you much about Roy, for reasons of confidentiality, you understand, but since his mother is no longer with us I can at least put forward my view of how she related to him. Her perception of Roy was that he was a prodigal son, a naughty boy who needed firm discipline. That’s why she laboured long and hard to have him put away.’ He ran his hands through his hair. ‘No, Roy isn’t violent in my view. He isn’t really all that ill.’ He bit his lip at this, having been the one to pronounce Roy ‘ill’ in the first place, I imagined. ‘But he is sensitive,’ Veil went on. ‘People with his illness can be unpredictable, although most of them are shy little souls at heart. They just want to hide away from the world, which they can perceive in a terrible way, thanks to their distressing symptoms. In another century, we might have said that t
hese were signs of demonic possession. You know the Bible story of Legion, who passed out of the afflicted man into the herd of swine?’

  I nodded wearily.

  ‘Well, that man, assuming he existed, was probably suffering from schizophrenia. He was probably more sinned against than sinning.’

  ‘So much for miracles,’ I said.

  The doctor looked narrowly at me, then back to his yellow fingertips from which the coloured cigarette protruded like a stamen in need of deadheading. ‘Roy has been much better since his discharge,’ he concluded. ‘Much, much better, in spite of …’ He bit his lip.

  ‘About the question of his mother,’ I repeated. ‘Am I to take it we’re to hold the funeral back till you can find him? Can you give me some idea about how long it will be?’

  ‘On the contrary, I think you should go right ahead with any arrangements. In any case, Roy would certainly be in no position to defray any funeral expenses.’

  ‘Don’t you think he’d want to go to it?’

  Veil frowned. ‘It’s more a question of what would be appropriate for Roy at this time. Look, Miss Moon, my feeling, speaking frankly, is that this news could set him back some way in terms of another psychosis. It’s hard to tell with Roy, it’s … Well.’ He drew in smoke. ‘When the time is right he should certainly be told, and I will undertake to tell him, in your presence if you wish. It would be wrong to lay this sort of responsibility on him, about his mother’s funeral I mean. Can’t you just go ahead with it? He doesn’t need to sign anything, does he?’

  ‘Legally, we’re obliged to treat him as next of kin,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t look as though she left much, but there’s still the question of expenses. Anything his mother left of value we’d need to set against the removal – the funeral, you know.’

  ‘Surely not her personal things? Letters, picture albums? I’d be happy to store small items on Roy’s behalf if you wish.’ He grinned. ‘I’d give you a receipt for them, naturally. I’ve never met a coroner’s investigator. You must tell me about it sometime.’

  I blinked at this. Was he hitting on me? ‘To clarify,’ I said, ‘you think we should press on with the funeral arrangements, but in the meantime you will try to find Roy Woods and break the news to him?’ This left me well and truly floundering, unable to give closure to the case, to send the file to the archive. I felt annoyed with Dr Veil, but did my best not to show it.

  ‘Please don’t wait on me to arrange the funeral,’ he smiled. ‘Look, perhaps I could attend, as Roy’s representative, and then, when he does make contact, and the time is right, I can tell him all about it. I take it you yourself will be attending?’

  ‘It will be a very small occasion,’ I said. ‘We contract a firm of local undertakers. They give us something of a discount.’

  ‘A pauper’s funeral? Yes, I understand.’

  ‘Cremation is standard, unless we hear of a contrary wish.’

  The doctor looked at his watch. ‘Have you eaten yet?’ he asked softly. ‘This must be out of hours for you already.’

  ‘I’m used to it,’ I told him, wondering if this new hairstyle suited me as well as Chas had said it did. Chas did not pay compliments lightly. ‘So I’m to press ahead,’ I said firmly. ‘You’ll break the news to your patient when he gets in touch and we’ll leave it at that. I’m sure the Coroner won’t quibble with your opinion.’

  He got up when I did, patting my shoulder as I passed before him. ‘Look, there’s a pleasant little Turkish restaurant just the other end of Upper Street,’ he said. ‘If you’d like to join me, we could go over these arrangements in more detail. To tell you the truth,’ he smirked, ‘I’m starving hungry. I had an out patient clinic all afternoon, it just went on and on.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t,’ I said. ‘My day isn’t nearly over yet. Got to press on.’

  ‘What a shame.’ I felt him searching for my eye. ‘Some other time then, perhaps?’

  What kind of doctor would he make, I wondered? What was with the epaulettes and the samurai sword? Latent aggression? The sign of the warrior? I could have asked him about these decorations over dinner, I supposed, just making conversation, but I was chary of crossing boundaries. I was too mindful of what might lie couched behind the most vapid of words, the most ordinary of gestures, like an invitation to eat at a Turkish restaurant (belly dancers, delights?), a simple pat on the shoulder (a desire to crush and dominate me?). I was scared of ending up like the little pig who built her house from straw and waited to let in the wolf.

  On the other hand, I thought, it could be that I simply didn’t like him.

  ***

  Chapter 4

  Back in the confines of my basement home, I brooded on the question of proceeding, of removing Edith quickly to a place where she would leave no traces for her son to weep over. I let the shower run down on me for far too long as I speculated on how Veil would break the news to Roy Woods, on what might be the feelings of a person sick in his mind on learning that his mother had passed on, with him not there to attend her. What would I say to a client who brought these feelings to me, relieving himself in the dark, and filling me in turn with all that darkness? The bell rang loud above the sound of running water, which threw me right out of kilter. Chas was at the door. He had not come to my flat since we broke up, not since I took the job with the City.

  ‘I thought you’d want to know about your DOA,’ he told me shortly. ‘The traffic’s bad. I thought I’d make a pit stop before Brighton.’ He had ridden all of a mile to reach my place. He set the keys to the bike on the kitchen table, where they glistened like forbidden fruit.

  I went into the bedroom, discarded the bathrobe, and pulled on a T shirt and shorts. My legs were parboiled from the shower; red and blotchy like corpse legs, like the legs of Edith Mary Woods. ‘Is there anything more to tell?’ I shouted, tugging a brush through my hair.

  ‘She had a forked tongue.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I said, going back into the kitchen. ‘I thought you said she had a forked tongue.’

  ‘That’s right, a fissure just under five centimetres long, about a millimetre deep. Old scar tissue – she didn’t do it in the fall, nothing suspicious there. The aneurysm was at the base of the brain. A straightforward stroke like your GP said.’ He took a pill jar out of his pocket. ‘It was probably congenital, an accident waiting to happen. But she was a funny looking woman.’ He swallowed a capsule of something.

  ‘What are you taking?’

  ‘Smart drugs, magic bullets.’ He shook out a batch of parti-coloured pills and lined them up on the table. ‘The first one’s piracetam, which boosts the levels of a brain chemical called acetylcholine. The second is deprenyl, a drug they used for Parkinson’s Disease. This one acts on dopamine.’

  ‘Are you sick or something?’

  ‘Call it an experiment, a tip from an old colleague in the States. He’s fifty-seven going on thirty, thanks to these, he says. Dopamine is connected to achievement and also to the sex drive. Acetylcholine works on verbal performance, which can be blocked by testosterone levels. Don’t sneer at me, Louise. I’m complementing the prescription with a daily dose of B vitamins, co-enzymes and amino acids.’

  ‘You’ve given up the black then?’ I asked, thinking of the stash inside my bookcase.

  ‘All of these act on the neurotransmitters. You might call them brain food. Dope has the opposite effect.’

  ‘What’s wrong with the brain you’ve got?’

  ‘There’s always room for improvement,’ he said modestly.

  ‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’

  ‘Shrinks have been prescribing drugs to alter mental processes for decades, but now that proper neuroscientists have mapped the human genome, we have about ten thousand new brain molecules to work on. It’s called behavioural genetics.’

  ‘That’s not your research, is it?’

  ‘It’s linked to it. Why wait for God to hand out cognitive competency? We could all use a little hel
p in remembering things.’ He glanced up at the clock. ‘These should help me dance the night away.’

  ‘I met a famous shrink just now,’ I said. ‘Maybe you know him. Dr Samuel Veil of The Nunnery Clinic. Not exactly my type.’

  Chas’s face turned sour. ‘What the hell were you doing with him?’

  ‘The old woman’s son is a patient of his, well, ex-patient. Dr Veil couldn’t tell me where to find him now. In fact, he told me to go ahead with the funeral.’

  ‘That’s expedient.’

  ‘You don’t seem too impressed.’ I picked up the Harley keys, turning them over in my hand. I wished the eagle wings would take me out of myself, take me higher and higher, like the swans on the Sussex lagoons that mate for life.

  ‘Veil likes to clamber on the bandwagon,’ Chas said. ‘He wanted to muscle in on some of our research, until I put a stop to it when I took over the project. For years he’s been dispensing all kinds of psychotropic drugs to patients he’d had sectioned under Mental Health Act legislation, just to see how they’d react to the dosage. And then he wanted us to look at the ones who had croaked, to trace the changes in brain chemistry. He’d have been ejected from my college long ago. You see, Louise,’ he tapped his box of pills, ‘when I pop these, I am making an informed choice. I know what I am doing, unlike some psychotic guinea pig from an institution. And when I section up a brain, like that old woman of yours this afternoon, I can be pretty certain that I won’t be altering its state of mind. You see the difference, I hope. That’s your famous shrink for you.’

  ‘But didn’t you …’ I bit my tongue.

  ‘Didn’t I what?’

  ‘Those brains you worked on when you were a student, didn’t they come from psychiatric patients?’