An Empty Death (57 page)
Authors: Laura Wilson
The florid orderly who opened the door to him explained that the gunfire was from the automatic weapon testing range at the Austin works across the valley. ‘Very soothing,’ muttered Stratton. The man led them through a maze of echoing stone corridors floored in cracked mosaic tiles, past enormous, barely furnished wards with rows of iron-framed beds.
‘Here we are,’ he said, halting in front of some imposing double doors. ‘Harley Street. The psychiatrists’ rooms, sir. Dr Reinhardt’s at the end.’
When Dr Reinhardt, a mop of silver hair and a zealot’s gleam behind glittering pince-nez, greeted him in a strong German accent, Stratton had to try very hard not to think of the mad scientists that he’d seen at the pictures. The iron bed covered by a grey blanket beside the desk - ‘Sometimes we hypnotise a patient’ - did nothing to help this impression. Stratton deliberately hadn’t informed him of his visit, and his manner was intensely suspicious - not that he could be blamed for that. The man had probably been interned for Christ knew how long in some hell-hole or other. Stratton had visited a few aliens’ camps in the early years of the war, and they weren’t exactly the Ritz, with draughty wooden huts, straw bedding, and no stoves in winter.
He did his best to calm the psychiatrist down, showing the warrant and explaining about the stolen documents and fraudulent references, but before he could get very far, Reinhardt intervened. ‘There must be a mistake. Dr Rice impressed me greatly. We are developing a therapeutic community here, Inspector, and he has been helping to pioneer our group analysis, encouraging self-expression. It is at a critical stage and I cannot have it disturbed.’
Stratton didn’t have the foggiest idea what he was talking about, although he didn’t think that ‘self-expression’ sounded much like the army. ‘We have very good reason to believe that Dr Rice may not be genuine,’ he said.
‘Nonsense, Inspector. I would know.’
‘He’s fooled people before, Dr Reinhardt. And,’ Stratton placed both hands on the psychiatrist’s desk and leant forward for emphasis, ‘we have good reason to believe that he may have done worse.’
‘Worse?’
‘I’m not at liberty to say, sir. But it’s serious.’
‘His qualifications are impeccable.’
‘They aren’t his, and the reference - the one you have, that is - is false. I have spoken to the professor concerned, and I can assure you that there is no mistake about that. Apparently, it wasn’t checked.’ That, Stratton thought, is one in the eye for you, chum.
‘I did not think it necessary.’
‘That’s a pity. Of course,’ continued Stratton, blandly, ‘we don’t wish to cause embarrassment to you or your institution, but this does - potentially - put the army in rather a difficult position, and, as you say, you wouldn’t wish to jeopardise your operation . . .’ He paused to make sure that Reinhardt had registered the threat.
‘You are telling me that he is not qualified at all ? That he is an imposter?’
‘That’s right. Now, perhaps you could give me a physical description of him.’
‘But surely you know . . .’
‘It’s easy enough to alter one’s appearance, Dr Reinhardt.’
‘Well . . . he’s of medium height . . . the physical build is average . . . he’s clean shaven, the hair is fair . . . I cannot say that there’s anything particular about him.’
‘Any distinguishing marks? Scars?’
‘I have not noticed . . .’ Dr Reinhardt shook his head sadly. ‘He is so good with the patients, Inspector.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Stratton, grimly. ‘Where is he?’
Dr Sturgiss, a younger man with hair as untidy as Reinhardt’s who clearly had no idea of the seriousness of his errand, ushered Stratton back down the corridor and into a dark quadrangle, where a group of blue-suited men were tending to a stunted-looking tree. ‘Is that part of the group therapy?’ he asked.
‘Oh no,’ said Sturgiss. ‘Gardening, and carpentry and so on, are occupational therapies. But we like to encourage groups, because it gives them a common purpose.’
‘I can see how it might,’ said Stratton. ‘How do the men react to Dr Reinhardt?’
‘To be honest, a lot of them aren’t too keen. The foreign accent, you know.’
‘And Dr Rice?’
‘Oh, they like him. Even the dullards. You might say he’s the star of the show. There’s a much more lively atmosphere with him here.’ Sturgiss opened a door and took Stratton into a large room where groups of men, this time in khaki, were sitting about playing cards and smoking, watched by a couple of orderlies. Although the atmosphere appeared, at first sight, to be fairly relaxed, when Stratton looked closer he could see that the faces were strained and the eyes apprehensive.
The ones nearest the door stopped talking when they entered, and a nervous silence spread through the room. When a man sitting alone in front of a jigsaw puzzle looked up, Stratton saw that he was missing an eye and half his face was covered in a graft, thick, shiny and yellowish, like the skin on custard. What had that poor fucker been through? Stratton wondered. Surely no psychiatrist, however learned, could hope to understand his state of mind unless he’d been through something similar. The man next to the jigsaw-puzzler, who had been frantically scribbling when they came in, stared at Stratton with intense hatred for a moment, then bent again to the inky hysteria of his paper. The rest remained as stiff and alert as dogs that sense a threat, and the silence seemed to crackle with hostile electricity.
‘Dr Rice is in there,’ said Sturgiss, indicating a door in the far wall, ‘conducting a session.’ They crossed the room, footsteps echoing on the parquet floor, and Stratton peered through the small glass window in the door. He saw eight men sitting in a circle, and, slightly apart, a man who looked - hair colour aside - remarkably like Dr Dacre. For the first time Dr Sturgiss, who had not asked any questions, looked apprehensive. ‘Could you wait?’ he asked. ‘Dr Rice will be finished in . . .’ he glanced at his wristwatch, ‘five minutes.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Stratton, who thought that, if the patients inside the room were anything like the ones surrounding him, bursting in there would probably be suicidal. ‘I don’t want to interrupt.’
The men continued to stare at them, and Stratton, feeling uncomfortable, gazed down at the floor. The electrical quiver in the room intensified, as if the air itself was unstable. He was, he told himself, in a confined space with around thirty potential murderers, all trained in the art of warfare, and, despite the group therapy and all the rest of it, any one of them might spark off at any moment. A corpulent orderly, sitting on the far side of the room, got heavily to his feet and came towards them. ‘Is there a problem, Dr Sturgiss?’
‘No, no . . .’ Sturgiss’s voice was hearty. ‘This gentleman just needs a quick word with Dr Rice.’
The orderly nodded, then walked about amongst the groups of card-players, bending over tables, clapping a shoulder here, a back there. ‘All right, lads, as you were. Nothing to worry about.’
This reduced the tension in the room somewhat, but the men, although they resumed their card games, remained watchful, glancing round at Stratton every few seconds.
Was Mrs Ingram in a room like this? wondered Stratton. Was she playing cards or doing a jigsaw? When he thought of her, he always imagined her howling in a padded cell, beating at the walls in a blind, insane fury, but perhaps that wasn’t the case. And, separated from him only by a wall, was the man who’d killed Byrne, who’d wanted to kill him, who’d saved his life, and tried to save Jenny’s, who’d encouraged Elsie Ingram in her delusional state by telling her that he was a policeman . . . He felt a black weight of confusion press in on him, as his resolve slipped its moorings and his brain began to spin. He clenched his fists hard, trying to steady himself. Why the hell hadn’t he brought Ballard with him? He’d have given anything for some support, a friendly face . . .
He heard the sound of chairs being pushed back in the next room, and tried to collect himself. After a couple of seconds, the door opened and khaki-clad men began filing past them, casting curious looks in their direction before mingling with the card-players. This is it, thought Stratton. Just do your job, he told himself. Don’t think of anything else.
Sturgiss waited until the last man had exited, then entered the room, Stratton at his heels. Dr Rice, still seated, was writing notes, but looked up as Sturgiss cleared his throat. ‘Mr Stratton to see you,’ he said, and withdrew, leaving Stratton and Rice staring at each other. There was a tiny, almost imperceptible flicker of recognition in Rice’s eyes, and then, as if a shutter had closed behind them, a blandly polite gaze. ‘Excuse me for a moment,’ he said. In one swift movement he rose from his chair and went to the open door. For a split second, he stood ramrod straight in the manner of a sergeant-major, and then, before Stratton - who’d registered, too late, what was about to happen - could act, he bellowed, ‘Attack!’
Seventy-Five
T
he pandemonium was instantaneous. In a fury of shrieking whistles as the attendants tried to summon help, each man, recalled in a flash to the booby-trapped, mined nightmare of his memory, the private bombardment with the long-dead officer jumping like a jack-in-the-box inside his head to bellow commands, leapt into action. Some ran, in a crouch, across the room, zigzagging from side to side and looking wildly around them. Others screamed, and, goggle-eyed with fear and paranoia, began to barricade themselves behind the furniture. Others clambered onto tables and chairs, as if they had been ordered to advance, then stood, bewildered and blank-faced. One man, howling, banged his head repeatedly against the reinforced glass of a window pane and another, a giant, launched himself at Stratton, who collapsed flat on the floor under the weight, painfully winded and fearing that his back was broken. The man lay full length of top of him, scissoring his kicking legs and raining down blows on Stratton’s face with his fists until the two orderlies, armed with leather cuffs, managed to haul him away.
he pandemonium was instantaneous. In a fury of shrieking whistles as the attendants tried to summon help, each man, recalled in a flash to the booby-trapped, mined nightmare of his memory, the private bombardment with the long-dead officer jumping like a jack-in-the-box inside his head to bellow commands, leapt into action. Some ran, in a crouch, across the room, zigzagging from side to side and looking wildly around them. Others screamed, and, goggle-eyed with fear and paranoia, began to barricade themselves behind the furniture. Others clambered onto tables and chairs, as if they had been ordered to advance, then stood, bewildered and blank-faced. One man, howling, banged his head repeatedly against the reinforced glass of a window pane and another, a giant, launched himself at Stratton, who collapsed flat on the floor under the weight, painfully winded and fearing that his back was broken. The man lay full length of top of him, scissoring his kicking legs and raining down blows on Stratton’s face with his fists until the two orderlies, armed with leather cuffs, managed to haul him away.
As he staggered groggily to his feet and looked around at the mayhem Stratton spotted Rice running across the quadrangle. He sidestepped as a man fell in front of him, head hitting the wooden floor with a crack, back arched and eyes rolling up, juddering and twitching, and set off in pursuit.
Rice scattered the blue-suited gardeners, who broke up in confusion, allowing Stratton a clear path behind him, and disappeared through a side door. Following, Stratton found himself pounding down a passage, hearing shouts, banging doors and shrieking whistles behind him as the sound of running feet alerted inmates and staff. Skidding round a corner, he was just in time to see Rice yank open an outside door and take off again across the grass. Stratton could see, about half a mile away, the edge of a wood. Gunfire was issuing from somewhere behind it. Rice, he realised, was heading for the weapon-testing range.
‘Oh no you fucking don’t,’ he muttered. The bastard wasn’t going to cheat him that way - Rice was his. Stratton tried to increase his speed - the distance between them was lengthening - but he was panting now, fighting a stitch . . . Why the fuck wasn’t Ballard there? He was younger, fitter, he’d be able to catch up with him, whereas he, Stratton, was going to lose him, chase him into the path of the guns, and then—
Rice fell, full length in the grass. So abruptly did it happen that, for a moment, Stratton thought that one of the shots must have gone wide. Then he saw that Rice was on his knees, clambering upright, and, in a final, agonising burst of speed, gasping, almost retching, with the effort, he forced himself forward, closing the gap until he was close - closer - close enough to launch himself into a rugby tackle and, catching Rice around the knees, bring him down.
‘You killed her!’ he grunted. One knee in the small of Rice’s back, he grabbed a handful of the man’s hair and slammed his face into the ground, over and over again, harder and harder. ‘You killed her!’ He wasn’t even thinking of Rice as a person, just a punchbag of flesh. He lunged forward and held Rice round the neck in an armlock, yanking him upwards, taking out his anger at himself, at the world, in a serious of vicious jerks, unconsciously taking his rhythm from the stuttering rattle of the guns in the valley. ‘You - killed - her! - I - will - fucking - murder - you!’
He felt Rice thrashing beneath him, heard him grunt as he tried to breathe, and then - and this took a moment to register - his body stilled and went limp. ‘Oh, Jesus, no . . .’ He’d broken his neck. He scrambled off and pushed Rice over, onto his back. The man’s face was a bloody mess, a flattened nose, eyes swollen shut and burst lips. Stratton slapped it, hard, forehand and backhand. ‘Don’t you dare fucking die, you bastard.’
One eye opened a fraction, and the head came up an inch. ‘You . . .’ he croaked, ‘want to . . . kill me.’ The eye closed again.
‘No . . . no.’ Stratton, all rage dispelled, was aghast. He looked down at his hands, which were shaking from his exertions, blood smeared across the knuckles. ‘I’m sorry.’ Kneeling on the grass beside Rice’s ruined head, he began to sob.
After a moment, he felt something touch his leg, and, looking down, saw Rice’s muddy fingers. The single eye flickered again, and Rice murmured, ‘Don’t . . . don’t . . .’ before lapsing into unconsciousness.
Stratton wiped the tears and sweat from his face and looked around him. Standing at a distance, by the building, were a row of white-coated men - doctors, he supposed - all staring in his direction. His turn for the loony bin. For a moment, he wanted to laugh. Then he heard a deep gurgling sound that took him, instantly, back to Jenny in the Rest Centre kitchen, so that Rice’s face and body became hers, and, raising the man up, he cradled him in his arms. ‘It’s all right,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve got you.’
Other books
King Maker: The Knights of Breton Court, Volume 1 by Maurice Broaddus
Murder of the Bride by C. S. Challinor
Saint Jude: Los Angeles Bad Boys by Frankie Love
Summer in the South by Cathy Holton
Taste It by Sommer Marsden
Game Over by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
Temporary Arrangement by Karen Erickson
Dust and Obey by Christy Barritt
Manhunting in Mississippi by Stephanie Bond
Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues by Blaize Clement