Fall From Grace (37 page)

I woke to the sound of my phone.

Disorientated and chilled, I rolled over and hit my arm on the door. To start with, I wasn’t even sure where I was. The skies were dark, thunderous. The windows had steamed up too, obscuring most of what lay outside.

Hauling myself up, I rolled my shoulder. It was stiff, but felt better. My head was still throbbing, though, a dull, repetitive ache, like a drumbeat. Clearing a patch on the glass, I remembered where I was: the car park at Derriford Hospital. Beyond the roofs of the cars to my left was the functional grey concrete of the main building.

I looked at my watch.

Three-fifty in the afternoon.

I’d been asleep for almost seven hours.

As I played catch-up, filling in everything I’d been too fuzzy to cope with earlier in the day, I felt the phone again, still buzzing in my jacket pocket.

I took it out.

A south Devon number.

‘David Raker.’

‘Ah,’ a voice said. ‘I was wondering if I was going to get an answer from you.’ It was an old man, his voice a little cracked, a gentle wheeze playing out behind his words. ‘Just woken up from your drunken stupor, have you?’

Suddenly feeling hot, I got out and breathed in the coolness of the day. There was no rain, just the reminders of the night before: puddles everywhere, water sloshing in the drains and the gutters, long-dead leaves scattered across the car park, reduced to piles of bronzed pulp. I scanned the area around me: a family getting out of their car, a woman walking to the pay-and-display meter. No one watching me. No one waiting.

‘Who is this?’

‘It’s Alan Poulter,’ the man said. ‘You don’t remember calling me last night? Three o’clock in the bloody morning. Next time, try calling at a decent hour.’

Poulter
.

The doctor from Bethlehem.

Vaguely, in some distant part of my memory, I remembered calling him. I’d been in a state the night before: rattled from what I’d found out about Craw, woozy from the head injury, crippled by a lack of sleep.

‘I’m sorry, Dr Poulter.’

‘So you should be.’

‘I wasn’t drunk, if that makes it any better.’ I felt around in my pockets with my free hand and removed my notepad. ‘I was in a car accident. A minor head injury.’

‘Oh.’

‘Anyway, apologies.’

‘That’s, uh …’ A pause. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘Thank you for calling me back.’

I laid my pad on the roof of the car, pulling a pen out of the spiral binding. Then I looked around me again.
I’ve been watching you for a while now, and you’ve never had a clue
. The woman was attaching her ticket to the inside of her windscreen now. The family I’d seen were long gone. Otherwise, the car park was empty.

‘I was hoping to talk to you about Bethlehem,’ I said.

‘I see. Who is it you work for?’

‘I find missing people.’

‘For the police?’

I thought about what the best answer would be to that. Poulter came from a time and a profession where confidentiality was paramount. Over the phone, and without the opportunity to get a sense of who he was, I opted for a lie. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘For the police.’

‘I see,’ he said again.

‘So can I ask you about Bethlehem?’

‘I prefer to call it Keel Point Hospital. The worst thing that happened to that place was when that religious nutter decided to rename it. As the years went by, the media, the locals, they loved the fact that it had this holy name on the front of the building, and – as they saw it, anyway – these unholy minds locked inside. They used it as a stick to beat us with. I’m sure they secretly did a little dance of joy when Silas murdered all those people in the kitchens.’

I gave him a moment to calm down, recalling the story of how William Silas had escaped his handcuffs and ended up killing and dismembering four staff, then pushed on. ‘How long did you work there, Dr Poulter?’

‘Twenty-nine years.’

‘Were you there until it closed?’

‘Oh no, no, no,’ he said. ‘I retired back in 2005.’

‘Right. Okay. Well, I’m trying to find a man who may have had some kind of a connection to the hospital. I’m not sure he was a patient there, but – according to my information – you and he were in touch by telephone. His name was Leonard Franks.’

‘Franks?’

‘Yes. Leonard.’

Nothing on the line except the soft sound of wheezing.

‘Dr Poulter?’

‘He was the policeman, right?’

Bingo
. ‘That’s exactly right, yes.’

‘Yes, I remember him. Well, I read about him.’

‘You mean, in the local newspapers?’

‘Yes. He disappeared at the start of the year, didn’t he?’

‘On 3 March, yes.’

‘Ah, right. Either way, I remember reading about it, because I thought to myself, “I’m sure I know that man from somewhere.” ’

‘You knew him from the hospital.’

‘I can see that now, yes.’

‘But I don’t think he was a patient of yours, was he?’

‘Oh no. He lived in London, didn’t he?’

‘Yes. Unfortunately, Mr Franks’s family haven’t been able to locate him.’ I paused and thought of Craw, but then instantly moved on, not wanting to get distracted. ‘However, I believe you may have been in touch with him in or around the year 2000.’

‘That’s a long, long time ago, Mr Raker.’

‘I realize that, yes.’ I stopped, scanning the car park again. ‘I don’t suppose you recall what you and Mr Franks talked about?’

A snort. ‘Absolutely no idea.’

‘None at all?’

‘It was
thirteen years
ago. We used to have conversations with the police all the time. They’d always be checking up on people they’d arrested; people who we were now treating. A lot of police officers don’t like the fact that human beings suffer psychological problems and do unfortunate things because of them. They prefer things in black and white. It helps them sleep at night. So they used to call us a lot, double-checking patients – their arrests – hadn’t taken them for a ride to avoid going to prison.’

‘And Mr Franks?’ I said, prodding him.

‘I only remember him retrospectively.’

‘You mean, from what you read about his disappearance?’

‘Right.’

I decided to change the angle of attack. ‘If I mention some names to you, could you maybe tell me whether you recognize them as patients?’

‘I can’t talk about individual patients, Mr Raker.’

‘All of these people are dead.’

I looked at the list I’d made – Welland, Viljoen, Preston, whoever Kay was – and knew that only two of them were confirmed dead. But I kept going, anyway.

‘It’s unethical,’ Poulter said.

‘I realize I’m asking a big favour here, Dr Poulter. I’m not asking for details of what you discussed with these people …’ I stopped.
Not yet, anyway
. ‘It’s simply a question of narrowing their movements down to Keel Point at the time you were in touch with Mr Franks.’

‘I had a lot of patients in twenty-nine years.’

‘But maybe we can just give it a go anyway?’

A long pause. ‘Okay. If you think it would help.’

‘I do,’ I said. ‘Thank you. Okay, so first: Pamela Welland.’

‘How do you spell that?’

I spelled it out for him. I already knew this one was a dead end. Welland had never left London in her eighteen years, let alone left it for a psychiatric hospital in Devon.

‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Did she live down here?’

‘In Devon? No. She lived in London.’

‘Hmm,’ he repeated. ‘Her name rings a bell, but I’m pretty sure she wasn’t one of my patients. How old is she now?’

‘She was murdered in 1996, aged eighteen.’

‘Oh. Well, she definitely wasn’t one of mine, then. Would I have read about her death in the newspapers, like I read about Franks?’

‘Quite possibly.’

‘That must be it, then.’

‘All right. What about Paul Viljoen?’

Again, I spelled it out for him. Again, he said no.

‘Simon Preston?’

He considered it. ‘No. That doesn’t ring any bells.’

‘Ever treat a patient with the first name Kay?’

‘K-A-Y?’

‘Yes.’

‘In twenty-nine years? I couldn’t say for sure.’

‘You don’t remember?’

‘I’m seventy-eight, Mr Raker. I’ve been retired for eight years. I spent almost half my working life at that hospital. You can’t expect me to remember everyone I treated.’

A few spots of rain began falling, dotting the roof of the car and the pages of my notepad. It seemed to sum up the direction this conversation was heading.

‘You don’t have
any
idea what you were calling Mr Franks about, back in 2000?’ I asked again. ‘Maybe someone he’d arrested had been transferred into your care?’

‘That’s the most likely possibility.’

‘But you don’t know for sure?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

I flipped back through my notes, through the names of everyone connected to this disappearance, and felt a fizz of frustration.

‘Welland,’ Poulter said.

I tuned back in. ‘Pamela Welland?’

‘Yes. You said she was murdered in London?’

‘Correct. In 1996.’

The soft sound of his wheezing came down the line again. I waited him out, looking off at the car park. A husband and pregnant wife were moving towards me from the direction of the main building. A blue Ford was entering the lot, a man at the wheel, a teenaged girl in the seat beside him. I watched them all the way into a space just down from me, and then returned my attention to the call.

‘Dr Poulter?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘You don’t know what, sir?’

‘I don’t know if this is really …’

‘Really what?’

Another long pause. ‘Really ethical.’

It took me a moment to catch up. ‘You recognize her name?’

No response.

‘Dr Poulter?’

‘I shouldn’t be talking about these things.’

‘I understand that. But these are old cases, old crimes. All I’d appreciate knowing is, if you recognize Pamela Welland’s name, maybe an indication of why.’

Silence.

Come on
.

‘Dr Poulter?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Perhaps you recognize her name?’

‘Yes.’

‘From somewhere other than the newspapers?’

‘Yes.’

My grip tightened on the pen. ‘Where from, Dr Poulter?’

‘I used to have a …’ He stopped.
Come on. Come on, don’t hold out on me now
. He cleared his throat. ‘I used to have a patient. This lovely girl. Troubled, but lovely. She came to the hospital in a very bad way: she’d lost her two-year-old son in an accident, and then she and the father divorced, and she just got into a spiral she couldn’t control. By the time I began treating her, she’d already tried to kill herself three times. The third time, she was in ICU for two weeks. She’d been so far gone, her vital organs had shut down.’

I wrote down what he said. ‘Who was she?’

‘You mentioned a Kay earlier.’

‘This woman was Kay?’

‘I don’t know if it’s
your
Kay,’ Poulter said. ‘It certainly seems too coincidental that you would mention Pamela Welland and then someone called Kay.’

‘Kay knew Pamela Welland?’ I asked.

‘She used to talk about being very affected by a murder,’ he said, as if he hadn’t heard me. ‘One that had taken place near to where she’d lived. Before she had her son, before her divorce, she’d been based somewhere in London. Greenwich, I think. She was originally from this part of the world, returned here after her son tragically died, but she was in London for a number of years. Anyway, when we talked about her time there, she always talked about being upset about this girl’s death. She’d never talk about the reasons
why
, only that it had affected her. I always assumed it was the girl’s age.’

I paused, pen hovering about my pad, not inter-rupting.

‘I think maybe she was talking about this Welland girl.’

‘Was that why you called Franks?’

He sounded confused.

‘I really need you to think hard about this, Dr Poulter. Because Franks was the lead on the Pamela Welland case. Did Kay say something to you about the case?’

‘No. No, it wasn’t that.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Positive. I think I might have been calling him to let him know how she was. I think he might have asked me to update him. It’s so hazy, such a long time ago …’

‘Why would Franks want to know how she was?’

‘Honestly? I can’t remember.’

I looked down at my notes.

‘One thing you
could
do,’ Poulter said, ‘is speak to my successor at Keel Point. A man named John Garrick. I have his number here somewhere.’

‘Okay. I’ll take that. Thanks.’

He told me to give him a moment. Once he’d put the phone down, I minimized the call and went to the browser on my mobile, googling ‘Bethlehem’ and ‘Dr Poulter’. I found a picture of him, at some kind of conference. He looked old, even then. Backing up, I did the same search for the name he’d given me: John Garrick. The picture I found of him was nothing to do with the hospital. Instead he was part of a local newspaper story, fronting a campaign to prevent the destruction of south Devon’s nature trails. He was in his early fifties at the time the picture was taken, had shaved hair and a hint of grey stubble, with a sticker on his lapel that said,
Hello! My name is John
.

Poulter came back on the line. ‘I have it here. John came in when they were already scaling back the kind of services we offered. They weren’t hiring for full-time roles any more, they were hiring contractors. Dreadful shame. I mean, seriously, you can’t run a hospital by filling it with part-timers.’ He paused, a bitterness in his voice that echoed his comments about the media and the locals earlier. ‘But none of that was John’s fault. He was a very good psychiatrist. From what I heard, Casey liked him very much.’

‘Wait, her name was Casey?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Kay for short.’

I flicked back through my pad until I found what I wanted: something Franks had written down in his diary that I’d never been able to fully put together.