A Plea of Insanity (8 page)

The blue eye-shadowed lids flickered. Open and shut. Open and shut. Quick, nervous blinks.

Tiny sticks of mascara’d eyelashes.

‘You had Jerome a little late in life.’

‘We didn’t get married till late,’ Cynthia said in defence.

‘Jerome is an only child.’

Cynthia looked uncomfortable. ‘No.’

Claire’s pen had been poised. This had not even been a question. Merely an opener to a conversation. ‘No?’ she echoed.

‘He had a brother. I’m sure I told someone.’

‘Older or younger?’

When the real question was the verb. Had?

‘Younger.’

‘How much younger?’

Still skirting around the issue
.

‘Eight years younger. Peter died when he was two months old. A cot death. And then his father died. So you see Jerome is extra specially precious. He’s all I’ve got.’ Her eyes were wide with appeal – not to judge her or her son harshly.

But Claire was remembering what it felt like, to hate a baby in a cot. And coincidentally Adam had been eight years younger than she. She clenched her fists and wondered. Had Barclay hated his brother as she had hated her half-brother? Had he wished him dead – and acted when she had not?

She must ask the question. Calmly. ‘How did Jerome feel about his baby brother when he’d been an only child for so long?’

‘Adored him,’ Cynthia said comfortably, her double chin agreeing with her words. ‘Adored him.’

Claire stared deep into the woman’s eyes.

Did they see nothing?

She couldn’t imagine the Jerome Barclay she knew adoring anyone – particularly a baby brother who threatened to upstage him. She hardly dared delve into the circumstances surrounding the cot death for fear of what she might find
out.

But why hadn’t Heidi picked up on this, recorded it in the notes? This was important, significant.

Answer – Barclay must have elected not to tell her. And Heidi never had interviewed Barclay’s mother.

A mistake
.

She must tread carefully.

Masquerade as a friend of her son’s. An ally? ‘And how was Jerome in the days following his little brother’s death?’

Cynthia dabbed a little of the blue eye shadow onto a flowered tissue she’d hidden up her sleeve. ‘Wonderful,’ she sniffed. ‘Wonderful.’ Her mouth trembled. ‘Quiet as a mouse. No trouble at all. Even helped us choose a wreath and the coffin, helped us write the death notice and choose the hymns for the service. “Abide with Me”. He said what we were to put on the headstone. He followed the little white coffin into the church. Looked so sweet in his little grey suit, laid some of his own flowers. He was wonderful. A little saint. And hardly shed a tear.’

Claire’s toes began to curl. Instinct. A child who would snip the ears off a pet rabbit – or watch a bird slowly cook in an oven and boast about it? Helping to choose a wreath and a coffin? She didn’t think so somehow
.

She felt suddenly exasperated by this woman with the blue eyelids.

‘Jerome told me some rather –’ She chose her adjective carefully – ‘unpleasant things he’d done when he was a young boy.’

Cynthia smiled. ‘Oh yes? He did tell me you might want to know a little bit about them. Just boyhood pranks, you know, Doctor Roget.’

Torturing dumb animals?

She stared at her in amazement and knew her lips must
remain sealed. She was not allowed to leak this information to Barclay’s mother without his express permission.

The image of Barclay walking solemnly behind his brother’s tiny white coffin slowly melted back into a question. What had Barclay gained by his brother’s death?

Oh, plenty. No one to share the parental affection with. Or money.

She rolled her pen in her fingertips.

There had been another death. ‘Tell me about Jerome’s relationship with his father.’

Cynthia nursed her large handbag on her lap and looked away. ‘Kenny didn’t always understand Jerome,’ she said uncomfortably.

I’ll bet
.

‘He used to say he was using us, that I was too soft with him, that I’d swallow any story.’ The eyes flicked open in a plea to be believed. ‘Not true, Doctor Roget. Not true.’

‘What did your husband die of?’ The question was idly asked, more for further images of Barclay’s responses to bereavement than any real suspicion. Jerome Barclay had been a boy of ten when his father had died.

Already cooking live birds and lopping the ears off his pet rabbit, she reminded herself
.

But there were more reasons for a man of fifty plus to die of natural causes than a baby of two months old. And so much easier to destroy the vulnerable one. Much harder to kill the other. There had been almost two years between the two incidents.

But even here there was room for the sliver of suspicion.

‘Well – it was odd really.’ Cynthia’s tone was confiding, sharing a tiny doubt that had seeded years ago and never quite been allayed. ‘Kenny was a diabetic. On insulin. And
for the last year or two he had had real trouble controlling it. His sugars kept going high. And then too low. They were all over the place. They kept having to change his insulin to different strengths. Different types. Pig stuff, human stuff. He found it hard to cope.’

‘Had he always had trouble controlling his diabetes?’

‘No. That was what I meant when I said it was odd. It was as though Peter’s death had upset him more than he showed. It was only a month or two after little Peter died that the trouble first started. Before that he’d been fine. A model patient.’

There are some questions it is too painful to ask. Claire had no right to ask them, no grounds to suspect Barclay of murdering his own father except that Barclay’s character was rotten to the core. What was he capable of? Already in her mind, as in Heidi’s before her, Barclay’s personality was attaining monstrous capabilities. She had a vision of a little boy, eight years old, understanding that to his father sugar was poisonous, playing with his father’s food, tipping the forbidden substance on the special foods, even playing with the insulin, the syringes. Easy when they all lay, unguarded, around the house
.

‘How did Jerome respond when his father died?’

‘Again he was wonderful. So protective. An absolute saint, that boy. He sat and held my hand. “Don’t you worry, Mum,” he said. “I’ll look after you now.”’

‘And did he?’

Her pupils were pin-pricks. ‘Of course.’

So – ask the question again. Could Barclay as an eight year old have been responsible for smothering his baby brother?

Yes. Oh yes.

Claire closed her eyes against a surge of hatred, the
sugary lullaby tinkling still in her brain. Felt the familiar battle against it.

Would she?

The difference was that she was not a psychopath. Jealousy in her had not translated to murder. Adam was alive – somewhere. A student in Birmingham, she believed.

She must move on – not waste the time. ‘Your son’s always lived with you?’

‘Oh yes. I spoil him really.’ More confidences. ‘Give in to him a bit. But then,’ the blue eyes opened wide, ‘he’s all I’ve got, Doctor. If I didn’t have Jerome I would have nobody. No one to care.’

Claire found the statement vaguely alarming. She pursued it.

‘You have no brothers or sisters?’

Cynthia shook her head.

‘Your husband’s family?’

‘He’s got one sister but she’s very peculiar. She lives in the north of Scotland in a remote cottage. I don’t hear from her very much.’

‘What about nephews and nieces?’

‘One nephew but I haven’t seen him in years. I could pass him in the street, doctor, and not know him.’

Her son’s eyes found Claire’s. ‘I only have Jerome.’

It was a troubling situation. Cynthia Barclay had no one to look out for her, no one to care if she was missing or ill. Claire heartily wished it were otherwise.

Pushing it to one side she pursued a different tack.

‘I want to go back to the time when …’

Cynthia was there before her, hooding her eyes with hostility and jumping in with her words. ‘If you want to know what happened when I fell down the stairs I gave my statement to the police. I’ve nothing to add.’

Claire still gave her a chance. She leaned forward and spoke slowly to give her words some added weight. ‘Has your son ever offered violence towards you?’

She was hotly defensive. ‘You’re reading him wrong, Doctor Roget. He isn’t the violent type. A bit misguided sometimes.’

‘Misguided? How?’

‘Well – he’s had a problem in the past – taking things, you know. He was a bit naughty once or twice, forging cheques. But not now, Doctor. Not now. He’s the model son.’

Claire sat back, thinking. One of them was wrong. They could not both be right. Barclay could not be both model son and cold psychopath who had assaulted his mother, maybe killed his father and brother. Was she the one who was chasing shadows, suspecting Barclay merely because it fitted in with her assessment of him. She had no proof.

‘What about Sadie Whittaker? What can you tell me about her?’

Cynthia’s lip curled. ‘That – that tart,’ she said. ‘Nothing but trouble. When my boy made it clear she’d have to try another means of hooking him than a fake pregnancy she invented that.’

But it hadn’t been a fake. Sadie Whittaker really had been pregnant. She had had a termination
.

Confidentially.

‘There never was a baby, was there?’ Cynthia insisted.

Confidentiality.

‘She was just manipulating him. Trying to lure him into marrying her. Then she threw herself in front of the car.’

Claire stared at the woman. So Cynthia believed the accepted version.

What was the truth?

Some people believe that psychiatrists have amazing powers, like stage hypnotism and mind transference. They believe psychiatrists know what a person is thinking. But psychiatrists have none of these powers. Their divination comes from watching people closely, observing, interpreting flickering eye movements, the movement of their hands, the muscles that bind their necks. If you think that ‘shrinks’ are infallible listen to two psychiatrists argue.

On opposite sides of the coin.

Then ask yourself this question. What do they really know?

Nothing.

Psychiatry is an inexact science, saturated in opinion.

‘Mrs Barclay, the time has come for us to decide whether we need to continue to see your son on such a regular basis.’

She left the sentence unfinished.

Cynthia Barclay stared at her, saying nothing, simply staring, her eyes a little wider than before as though mere words were not enough, could not encompass what she wanted to say. What words are there anyway, to express doubt, fear, imaginary threats. Yet they were all expressed in Cynthia Barclay’s shrivelled pale eyes.

It struck Claire dumb. That Barclay’s mother was too frightened to say anything?

Was this all learned?

She stood up too quickly. It startled Mrs Barclay. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Maybe I should have another word with Jerome.’

Cynthia scuttled out, not even asking what this new doctor’s decision was. She had said her piece.

Moments later Jerome sauntered back into the room, face and manner as cocky as ever. He dropped into the chair, his
face smooth and impassive. ‘So,’ he said, ‘did you find anything out from the old dear?’

‘I think so.’

She didn’t want to mention the fact that she now knew Barclay had had a brother.

Which for some reason reminded her of Nancy Gold, humming Brahms’ lullaby. Threads run through events as finely woven as the most intricate tapestry.

And somewhere, at some time, what seemed mere threads would be plainly seen as a whole picture.

She stared hard into the back of his eyes, struggling to read the machinations of his mind. Everything she knew about him flashed through her thoughts at the speed of light.
He had displayed classic signs of psychopathy. Tortured animals, used and abused people, treated them with disdain
. He stared innocently back, directing her own thoughts, telling her they were pure. He had never been convicted and found guilty of any crime. His slate was clean.

She made up her mind.

‘It’s time to let you get on with your life, Jerome,’ she said steadily. ‘Nothing will be achieved by your continuing to attend here, at Greatbach.’ She stood up, meaning to shake his hand, to wish him well for the future, to advise him to keep on the right side of the law.

But something stopped her so she actually said nothing, simply said goodbye. And watched him turn around and walk away, knowing she would worry later whether she had made the right decision.

As he opened the door he paused to give her a friendly smile which robbed his subsequent words of malice but echoed her own thoughts with the knell of a funeral bell. ‘So you’re discharging me,’ he said. ‘Well – let’s hope you don’t come to regret your decision. Goodbye, Doctor Roget,’ he said. ‘For now.’

As she had anticipated during her drive home, she fretted she had not seen or heard the last of Barclay. That he would play with her – as a cat will play with a mouse. Not for food but because it amuses.

But she must continue with her work.

Grant was watching television when she let herself in. She could hear the boxed voices, chattering, gruff replies, cheap, wallpaper drama-music. A soap opera, full of fake and frothy romance and set-up dramatic situations. She could see the changing light reflected on the glass of the kitchen door, moving blues and purples, yellows and reds, bright green. He called out to her without turning around. ‘Put the kettle on, Claire, will you.’

She pushed the door open, wandered into the kitchen – peppermint green with black granite surfaces, a window sporting a plain yellow blind. She took two mugs out of the cupboard and half-filled the kettle. A couple of bills were scattered across the work surface. Addressed to her and unopened. Grant did not ‘do’ utilities, not mortgage, heating, electricity, water or anything else for that matter. He was content to live within her means – cycle to work and live here for nothing. Claire slit open the bills and looked at them without emotion. Not even anger at the way her money was eroded by such boring mundanities as the services on which our comforts depend.

She took the coffee into the sitting room.

He wasn’t even watching. Not really. He couldn’t be enjoying such tripe. Stretched out on the sofa, shoes off. But his eyes didn’t leave the screen as he reached out for the mug.

He practically ignored her existence except for, ‘Don’t
suppose you noticed whether there were any choccie biccies in the tin, did you?’

Men do this, revert to the nursery when they want something
.

She didn’t answer and he didn’t notice she hadn’t answered, but smiled in empathy with the passionate snog the teenage hero was giving the crop-topped heroine.

Claire sunk into the leather chair, legs fully extended.

‘Thought I’d paint the bathroom next,’ Grant said, watching the TV through a wisp of steam. ‘There’s a whole new range of colours I saw at the DIY store near the school. What do you think of purple?’

At last he looked up and wrinkled his brow. ‘Bad day at work?’

‘No.’

Bad evening at home. She wished he wasn’t here
.

The evening passed, her in a fidget of boredom hardly relieved by an evening of reality TV. She flicked the pages of a medical journal and tried to concentrate on ‘Responses to Hypnotherapy’ and ignore the irritation she felt at Grant’s presence. Halfway through the article she found her mind wandering towards how to tell him to go without causing an inevitable row – or even hurting him. She didn’t dislike him – it was worse. Every day she felt more and more indifferent until a week, a month from now, she could sense she would not mind about hurting his feelings and she didn’t want to be that cruel to him – ever.

They had had some good times together.

The evening ended with a theatrical yawn from her and a reluctant flick to off of the TV remote from him.

At the next morning’s meeting she turned the subject back to Jerome and confessed that she had discharged him. The news was greeted with a sort of shocked silence – which
felt like an accusation. But she was a new doctor here. She need not continue in Heidi’s footsteps. She needed to carve out her own identity and way of running Greatbach. It turned out that only Kristyna Gale had had much to do with him in recent months because for a brief period after Heidi’s death she had carried out the supervision order and seen Barclay herself.

‘Strictly inside the hospital,’ she said. ‘He isn’t the sort of person you’d want to meet on a dark night across the car park.’

‘Did you know he had a baby brother?’

Kristyna shook her head. ‘No I didn’t.’ A pause then, ‘Do you think it’s important?’

‘I don’t know.’ Claire smiled at her. ‘Or the circumstances of his father’s death?’

Rolf was watching from across the room, frowning and fiddling with the gold signet ring he wore on his left little finger.

‘Give me
your
opinion,’ Claire prompted.

‘He’s … well …’ She flushed faintly, must have felt the warmth on her cheek and tried to conceal it with her hands. It only emphasised some embarrassment. ‘He’s cold. And when he does show an emotion …’ Her voice petered out into nothing. But her face had changed again. Frozen into a memory that hurt somewhere privately.

Claire simply waited.

‘Such a silly thing,’ Kristyna confessed finally. ‘You’d think I’d be immune from these punks. That I wouldn’t care but he got right under my skin. He really needled me.’

It was bordering on a confession.

Claire still said nothing but waited.

‘I trapped my finger in the drawer,’ Kristyna admitted. ‘He’d rattled me and I was slamming it shut really hard. My
finger caught.’ She held out her index finger, deformed by a stunted and rippled nail. ‘It was painful. I’d caught the nail and it tore off taking half the finger with it.’ She smiled around the room, inviting sympathy. ‘I can well believe it was a Nazi torture.’

‘And?’ Siôna was watching her curiously. Obviously he’d never heard this story before.

Kristyna didn’t even look at him, but into an unfocused distance. ‘Nothing really. He just looked pleased. You know? His eyes were practically dancing with pleasure. He was really enjoying it – the fact that I was in pain.’

‘What had he said to you that got you so rattled in the first place?’

‘Oh – the usual. It was about rape. He was goading me. How I allowed myself to get dragged into making a comment in the first place I don’t know. It was the way he was staring at me. Just waiting for me to snap, so sure I would. Confidently. And – sort of insolently …’ Her face was pink again. She was twisting one of her gold bangles round and round.

Claire could have completed the sentence.

‘
Undressing me.’ But Kristyna was right. Patients did this, challenged you. She shouldn’t have been so upset unless there was something deeper
.

‘I felt so – defiled, Claire. The way he was talking. I should have ended the interview, set out some parameters, refused to be drawn, done the right thing. I wasn’t very pleased with myself. That’s why I was so angry. More with myself than with him.’

‘What sort of things was he saying?’

‘That’s it. Just the usual. About girls who asked for it, the smells, the sounds, the invitation.’ She looked around the room. ‘We’ve heard it all before. A hundred times. That
he saw no wrong in taking what he wanted, about women who bleated.’ She stopped. ‘I think it was that. The word bleated. For some reason it reminded me of Heidi and I don’t know why.’

But Claire did. It was the phrase, Lamb to the slaughter. The throat cutting. Ritualistic
.

Kristyna was unconsciously fiddling with her finger. ‘Then the painful finger made me feel vulnerable, I suppose. I think I sort of connected the two situations – thought of Heidi’s actual pain for the first time – and that made me think that he felt she’d deserved it, that he was glad and that I’d deserved it too. That he was making this mocking judgement. About both of us. I could see in his eyes he was lumping us together. So I had been determined not to let him see that he was needling me and the finger let it out. All the pain. It was throbbing and it was like he could feel each pulse. I could see it in his eyes, that he was enjoying my pain. It was horrible.’

Claire shifted uncomfortably in her chair. She felt that Kristyna was being a little over dramatic. But the nurse hadn’t finished.

‘I said he was wrong and finished the consultation. I just wanted him out of the room. It was the only weapon I had, the only way to assert my authority – and he didn’t like it. He turned around as he reached the door and stared at me with a sort of cold hatred, then sauntered out – at his own pace. A bit like a rebellious kid from the headmaster’s office. Oh no, he didn’t like being dismissed.

‘I grew to dread the encounters. He defaulted on one but turned up for the following one. It was just as strained.’ Again she searched out the room for sympathy. ‘You know how it is – once you’ve lost it you’ve really lost it with a patient. Once they know they can get to you it’s hard to be
professional. He’d make these sinister comments, like I had nice ears. We all knew about the rabbit incident. He’d pretend he knew where I lived by saying my house needed painting.’

‘And does it?’

Kristyna nodded.

‘I remember one evening the papers were full of a story about an arson attack where a woman and her three children all died. It was headlines for a whole week. The paper was on my desk and he said something about fire being a useful destroyer. I queried the word
useful
. I thought it odd and he said for the arsonist because it left no trace except the indestructible – things like bra wires and teeth and splintered bones. He was always trying to frighten me.’

‘And did he succeed?’

Kristyna nodded. ‘It got to me all right – and he knew it. The trouble was, Claire, he was free. Not like one of our patients – locked up at night. He was on the loose.’

She was rubbing her forearms. Agitated now.

‘Then one night, about a month later, my car had acid poured over it.’

‘Are you sure it was Barclay?’

‘It was done late in the day,’ Kristyna reasoned, sensible now. Logical even. ‘I’d gone out to the car to fetch some notes in at four o clock and it wasn’t done then. He was the last patient of the afternoon. The car park was almost empty when I finally left.’

Siôna made as though to speak again but shut his mouth instead.

‘Even then I might not have made the connection,’ Kristyna said, ‘but a week later he mentioned something about cars – about them being their owners’ pride and joy.’ She was frowning. ‘I looked at him and I knew.’ Her eyes
moved around the room, landing on everyone in turn defiantly, begging their support. ‘I just knew.’

Claire moved her head in the slowest of nods. Having had contact with Barclay she understood exactly what Kristyna was saying. More worryingly perhaps she and Kristyna shared something with Heidi. They were all women in control of his welfare and freedom.

Rolf crossed his long, thin, stork’s legs, tugged at his earlobe, the age-old gesture of disliking what you hear. ‘You’re very troubled by Barclay.’ It was a trite observation – rather than a question.

Kristyna nodded. So did Claire.

‘So was Heidi. Very bothered by him.’

He was inching towards something
.

Rolf continued, unaware that Claire perceived his words as momentous.

‘It’s true,’ he mused. ‘She did really fret about that guy. She was quite convinced he was going to commit some ghastly crime one day. I argued with her a couple of times that there was nothing in his past that justified such a close supervision order but she wouldn’t have it.’

Claire disagreed
. ‘I feel the same way,’ she said quietly. ‘But I’m not convinced that a supervision order will prevent him re-offending.’ She wanted to say more – that according to all of them present it hadn’t been Barclay who had butchered Heidi Faro. It had been Gulio.

And the more she toyed with this idea the less she liked it or believed it.

Out loud she said. ‘In the end it was Gulio, wasn’t it, who was the greater threat.’

That was when she realised that everyone in the room – Rolf, Kristyna, Siôna, the others – were all watching her with the same alert and wary expression.

They nodded their heads but in no one’s eyes was there any hint of finality.

The case was over, she wanted to protest. Gulio was in a secure mental unit, one up from Greatbach. He had confessed.

But something clanged like a bell at the back of her head. That was just what Gulio, the brain-damaged, would do. To acquiesce was in character. Even to lash out against a perceived tormentor could be in character. But there was no indication that Heidi would have been seen as his tormentor. Claire searched the room, wanting someone to tell her why they had all been so sure Gulio was guilty. But how can a psychiatrist who inhabits a shadowy never-never land argue against the black and white evidence of the English copper? How can you say that person A is unlikely to have committed the crime and person B is therefore much more likely when the evidence points the other way?

What exactly
was
the evidence?

Probabilities are not enough to convict one man and let another go free.

They cannot point the finger away from evidence and say:
Consider this man. He could do it and feel no remorse, no guilt. Even watch another pay the price for his crime and gloat
.’

Claire stood up. It was almost ten. The meeting was at an end but the issue was only beginning.

Not long now and she would ask all the right questions.

In the meantime it was for her to fumble – clumsily.

She was aware that Siôna’s eyes were on her until she had left the room.

Greatbach was at times crowded with curios of the human race. Peer into any room and you will find them, the
deluded, the psychotic, the insane, the … the descriptions go on and on, each one an aberration of that elusive concept a – normal – person.

And what is that? In fact the inmates of Greatbach reminded her of the bottle kilns that peppered the Potteries, stunted oddities.

Marcus Bourne was her first port of call that morning, the young potter who had murdered his girlfriend, now understanding the consequences of what he had done, depressed with the knowledge. Dispassionately Claire registered the traditional signs of remorse, the wringing of the hands, the ready tears, the eyes which dropped away from the human face, and still wondered whether it was all an act.

What could she say except that he was young and would survive when privately she knew he must live his life carrying this burden from which he could never be relieved however skilled a counsellor she referred him to. People would know. He killed someone. He’s a murderer, you know.