A Plea of Insanity (26 page)

And rejected.

In the end Rolf Fairweather was deemed responsible for his actions, found guilty of the murders of Heidi Faro and Kristyna Gale and sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he serve not less than thirty years.

It was a more satisfactory end.

Stefan Gulio was given an unconditional discharge and compensation paid to the tune of a few hundred thousand. He was reunited with his mother and, briefly, became the target for young, female fortune hunters.

He dealt with them with equanimity and a certain amount of puzzlement.

Months later. And it had all come out. The whole story. Long after the newspapers had finished gorging on the stories of psychologists who lacked principle, psychiatrists who took advantage of their patients’ minds and psychologists who took sexual favours from their patients’ bodies.

Because it all came out in court. Oh yes. Fairweather had pulled out all the organ stops. Pointed the finger at everyone. Typical behaviour this, to fail to take responsibility for his own sins, shifting the blame onto others. And with such rich feedings it is not surprising that it takes the tabloids a long time to abandon the trough of salacious headlines.

Claire had become a mini-celebrity, being challenged once or twice in the street by people demanding why she was ill-treating people with mental disorders, or what she could do for a son with a temper, a daughter with learning difficulties. She had even had an offer from the local TV channel to host a chat show and discuss various current issues concerning mental health.

The fame had become part of her life. She continued working at Greatbach, while moving round the lecture circuit. At the point when she had been closest to death she had known that if she lived her life never would be the same again. Like a scar after an operation the site still sometimes ached. She still had flashbacks. Rolf stroking Kristyna’s arm, that morning in the meeting, Heidi, strutting from one side of the stage to another, pushing back the shining hair while her heels clumped loudly on the boards, Nancy Gold, singing to a wrapped pillow case.

To preserve her sanity and sense of proportion she and Grant distracted themselves by working their way steadily through the house, making it good, forming a small planet from which they could remain untouched by the outside world. She often sat underneath the gnarled apple tree and thought how easily it could all have been so different.

She could have been a celebrity by being another murder victim.

But it was another incident which brought about completion.

It was a Saturday morning, a free weekend for both of them and they were looking at sofas in the Potteries shopping centre, on the top floor of Lewis’s department store. She favoured ivory leather, Grant red, ethnic wool.

A man was standing in the centre of a crowd, shouting that the beers were all on him, that
everyone
was invited to his house for a party tonight. The man was not young. He was dressed in a scarlet Santa suit which looks odd in late springtime.

He must have hired it.

As she watched two police arrived and good naturedly they hustled the man away.

Harry Sowerby, ready for yet another Section.

Then she noticed someone else.

Standing in front of her, watching the small act being played out in front of them was a black man, standing with his wife and a tall, skinny son. Now the drama had finished he too was looking at the sofas and like Grant his taste was for the ethnic red wool, set out with two armchairs. He looked familiar. As they drew nearer the black man gave her a broad, knowing wink. ‘Why Doctor,’ he said.

It was the voice that told her. She stared at the man, at his smiling wife, at his tall, skinny son.

‘Kap,’ she said softly. ‘Kap. It is you, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right, Doctor. Quite famous lady now.’

‘Still just a doctor.’

Doctors often ask their patients how they are when they meet them, accidentally, in the street. It is only polite. But there was no need to ask Kap anything. His wide smile, the casual way he was linking arms with his wife, the glance of pure affection and admiration his son gave him. Even the acceptance that she was a doctor he had once needed but was now able to discard.

It was a story with a happy end.

Most times psychiatrists get it wrong. Just occasionally, once in a while they get it right
.

She knew now why Kap had failed to keep his appointments. Praise be. He had no more need for a psychiatrist. He was better.

She shook his hand, that of his wife and of his tall son, resisted the temptation to pat just one of his thick,
Rastafarian dreadlocks.

‘It is so good to see you,’ she said warmly and genuinely.

So they passed by each other, to buy furniture for their homes. She put her hand in her pocket.

Her fingers closed around a scrap of paper. Nothing much, just the top sheet of a stickup pad. She knew instantly what it was.

She linked her arm through Grant’s.

‘When I thought I was going to die,’ she said, ‘I wrote you a note. Telling you things I probably wouldn’t have said.’

He grinned.

‘Do you want to see it?’

In a sudden, husky show of affection, he pulled her head onto his shoulder, his lips brushing her hair, as he drew in a deep suck of air. ‘I don’t need to see it, Claire,’ he said. ‘The fact that you wrote to me is enough. I think I can guess what it says.’

She nodded.

‘No need for words,’ he said, ‘except to say that life will be different because of this experience. We’ll be different. Our relationship will be different. Every time you or I stop valuing life itself we’ll remember.’

‘We’ll remember,’ she echoed. They linked arms and continued walking.

And Jerome Barclay?

He is out there – somewhere, free to continue. With what?

We shall have to wait and see
.

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Born in Yorkshire and brought up in South Wales, P
RISCILLA
M
ASTERS
is the author of the popular series set in the Staffordshire moorlands featuring Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy. She has also written several medical standalone mysteries. Priscilla has two sons and lives in Staffordshire. She works part time as a nurse.

Joanna Piercy series

Winding up the Serpent

Catch the Fallen Sparrow

A Wreath for My Sister

And None Shall Sleep

Scaring Crows

Embroidering Shrouds

Endangering Innocents

Wings Over the Watcher

Grave Stones

Martha Gunn series

River Deep

Slipknot

Other

Night Visit

Disturbing Ground

A Plea of Insanity

The Watchful Eye

Buried in Clay