Weirdo (3 page)

Dr Radcliffe had peered at Sean over half-moon spectacles, across the desk that, like everything else in the room, was bolted to the floor. “And what are you expecting to achieve by coming here today?” he enquired, in a rich baritone with a hint of Scots burr.

“I’m not entirely sure,” Sean replied, opening his palms as if to assure the doctor of his honesty. “I’ve never worked a case like this before. I just wanted to meet Corrine before I hear what anyone involved in the original investigation has to say about her.”

The doctor nodded, explained to him how Corrine was not regarded by anyone who worked here as a security risk, nor a potential danger to anyone other than herself. She was only on very mild medication now and had been responding well to courses of cognitive behavioural and art therapy. She had at last started to get something out of life again, discovering a talent she had abandoned long ago.

“Until the blessed Janice Mathers descended again.” Dr Radcliffe fixed Sean with a granite stare. “I’m sure you are aware this is the second time Ms Mathers has made an attempt to have Corrine released, so I’ll repeat to you what I said to her. This is a misguided cause and no good will come of it. Not for Corrine.”

Sean kept his tone neutral. “Why do you say that?” he asked.

“It’s all very well being liberal in theory,” Dr Radcliffe closed the file that had been resting open on his desk. “But in practice, if these doors were to shut behind her, what do you think would become of Corrine? She has no friends, no family,
no means of support. How long do you think she’d survive?”

“I was thinking just the same thing as I was driving here,” Sean admitted.

“Well, then,” the doctor raised his thick black eyebrows quizzically.

Sean offered him his blandest smile. “I’m sorry if by coming here I’ve caused you or Corrine any anguish. But I’m afraid I …”

“Have a job to do,” Dr Radcliffe finished his sentence for him and stood up. “And there’s nothing I can do about that. Very well, Mr Ward, if you would like to follow me.”

Their footsteps echoed down grey-green corridors, past unadorned walls and the rows of windowless doors six inches thick. Sean’s skin prickled as he followed the doctor, sensing myriad SOS signals emanating from inside the padded walls.

How long would it take before their madness infected you?

The wing where Corrine was kept was not as austere as the solitary blocks. Beyond the security checkpoint, inmates were allowed to move about unshackled; there were classrooms and common rooms where the art and craftwork they were encouraged to make was displayed on the walls, as if they were in a sixth-form college rather than a prison. Except for the omnipresent hum of CCTV cameras watching from every corner.

Dr Radcliffe stopped before one wall of paintings, pointed to a watercolour. A long blue wash of sky meeting sea, four figures in black with their backs turned, gazing out at the horizon where a flock of gulls took flight. Sean was no expert, but he could see how well the subdued palette had been employed to reflect the pale yellow of the sand and the gradually darkening blue of the sea. He rapidly assessed the other offerings on the wall, took in blacks and greys, violent splashes of red and green, cruder images that distinctly lacked
the three dimensions of the maritime panorama.

“That’s hers,” the doctor said. “She probably doesn’t realise, but this is in the best traditions of East Anglian watercolour painting. It takes real skill to get the light on the water like that.”

There was pride in his voice as he said it, and if the comment had been designed to make Sean feel more uncomfortable, then it worked.

“Now then,” Dr Radcliffe turned briskly, “this way, please. I’ve arranged for you to speak with Corrine in one of our quiet rooms.”

Sean grimaced as he thought about it now, approaching the ring road around Norwich and spotting the first sign for Ernemouth.

That shy, shuffling figure, bloated from two decades on meds and little physical activity, hiding behind a long, dark brown fringe, threaded with grey. The pathologist’s report from the autopsy running through his mind as she lowered herself into her seat.

Blunt force trauma to the rear of the cranium, blow forceful enough to leave a crater …

“Hello, Corrine.”

Corrine sitting on a grey plastic chair, looking at the floor.

Multiple cigarette burns to the arms and face …

“I’m just here to ask you a few questions. I won’t take long.”

Corrine slowly shaking her head, her fingers twisting round each other in her lap.

Sixteen separate stab wounds to the chest and abdomen, patterns indicating wounds inflicted in a frenzy …

“Corrine, do you think you have been a victim of injustice?”

Corrine continuing to shake her head while rocking backwards and forwards in her seat. Sean facing her with his throat
drying up, the words coming out all wrong.

The sign of a pentagram drawn in the victim’s blood on the floor around the body …

“I mean, do you think it’s fair that you should have been sent here? Or is there somebody else who should be here instead?”

Corrine finally speaking, wrenching out the words in a faint, childlike voice: “No … please … go …”

Sean leaning forwards in his seat, trying to make eye contact. “Corrine, was there somebody else there? Somebody else there with you?”

Looking up at him at last, repeating the words with rising hysteria. “Please … go … Please … go!”

And all he saw in her eyes was naked fear.

The rush-hour traffic was kicking in now and Sean was glad to shift his concentration to navigating his way through the system of flyovers and bypasses. The Ernemouth signs were getting bigger, adorned with jolly symbols of a racecourse, a funfair and caravan parks. One right turn and the road to his destination lay before him.

A long, straight ribbon cut through wide, flat marshland, dotted with white blobs of sheep, and the wingless remains of crumbling windmills. On the skyline, a row of wind turbines soared above these remnants of an earlier age, propellers cutting swathes through the darkening sky. But even they seemed like dwarves against the vastness above them.

The town crouched on the horizon, an illuminated clocktower staring out like one baleful eye. To his right, a vast expanse of water opened up a dramatic view of the estuary. Only the water could compete with the sky. Streetlights coming on as the road drew level with the train station and the sign that read
Welcome to Ernemouth.

In the long hours since they’d had their lunch, Eric and Edna had been sitting in the lounge, straining to hear above the ticking of the clock, the rustling of Eric’s papers and the clack of Edna’s knitting needles, the sound of a car pulling into their drive. But when Noodles sprang from Edna’s feet to stand on top of the sofa, yapping a staccato warning, they both looked up with a start, as if it was the last thing they had been expecting.

A Morris Minor, spray-painted purple, had stopped in the driveway. Edna tried to ignore the sinking feeling in her chest as she looked from the car to her husband, his expression propelling her towards the front door.

Amanda was the first to emerge from the ridiculous motor, in a cloud of honey-blonde hair and a pair of huge, brown, oval sunglasses. She hadn’t lost her figure, Edna noted bitterly. Tight blue jeans and a denim jacket were worn casually over her slim hips and bulging chest, a pair of brown leather boots giving her height, gold glinting around her neck. The smile Amanda had plastered on with red lipstick was a mirror of her mother’s and Edna could smell the Youth Dew from her doorstep.

“Mum,” Amanda said, walking towards Edna with painted talons outstretched. The two women touched palms for the
briefest of seconds as they strained to avoid closer contact, kissing the air around each other’s faces. Edna’s nose wrinkled as her daughter’s perfume settled around them, a vaporous outrider encroaching on her territory.

“You’re looking well,” Amanda said as she stood back to take in the figure of her mother, regulation perm, pastel twinset and theatrically pained facial expression all present and correct. Silly little dog standing at her feet with its top lip drawn back, body shaking indignantly as it growled at her.

For the past fifteen years, their contact had consisted mainly of phone calls arranging Samantha’s summer visits and an exchange of gifts each Christmas that neither looked forward to unwrapping. Yet Edna seemed to Amanda to have been untouched by time. She stood on the doorstep exactly as she had left her.

“Thank you,” Edna touched her hair self-consciously, wondering what had happened to her daughter’s voice, why she sounded so different in the flesh to on the phone. There was not a trace of Ernemouth in it any more, Edna realised. You would have believed Amanda had been born within the sound of Bow Bells if you didn’t know better.

Behind the brown lenses of her shades, Amanda’s eyes flicked nervously to the space behind Edna’s head that still hadn’t been filled by her father and then back towards the Morris Minor. Slouching out of the passenger seat, as reluctantly as one would expect from someone his age, came the reason for all of this.

“This is Wayne,” she said, the bonhomie in her voice as phoney as the accent.

He didn’t look like much to Edna – a scrawny lad with a bumfluff moustache, a head of unkempt brown, curly hair, a
bomber jacket and bovver boots. Nineteen years old, a painter and decorator: that was all he was.

But enough for Amanda to leave the artist husband she’d run off with all those years ago, Sammy’s dad, Malcolm Lamb who, despite his unpromising beginnings, had ended up owning a large advertising agency in London. Employed to do up the family house in Chelsea, Wayne had ended up wrecking their marriage instead. Amanda had tried to convince Edna that some harebrained scheme about property development would keep them in riches once she got here. That a bit of sea air would be better for Sammy than any thoughts of staying with her dad, her public school and all her friends in London …

Edna thought that her face would crack with the effort of keeping her smile in place.

“Wayne,” she nodded curtly.

Wayne dragged his gaze up from the crazy paving to grunt a greeting, then dropped it down again. No one made a move to shake hands. The three of them were trapped, suspended until the car’s rear door slammed loudly behind them.

Sammy stood with her arms folded, head cocked to one side. Since the last time Edna had seen her, she’d had a fringe cut which sloped over her eyes, hiding their expression. The hair wasn’t the only thing that had changed. Sammy’s body had started to develop swells and curves, the way her mother’s had at that age. And though she wasn’t flaunting it – the pink-and-grey-striped T-shirt top, matching ra-ra skirt and pink plimsolls were exactly the sort of thing Shirl’s girls wore – there was something about the sullen tilt of her posture that sent a tremor through Edna’s heart. A voice whispering through her mind:
History is starting to repeat …

Then Sammy raised her hand to push the thick wedge of
blonde hair out of her eyes, revealing fingernails with chipped pink polish that were bitten to the quick. With that one gesture, she suddenly became a child again, Edna’s little Sammy.

“Nana,” Sammy whispered.

“Come here, my darling,” Edna opened her arms, “give Nana a hug.”

With a sideways glance at Amanda that Edna didn’t catch, Sammy ran to her grandma, burying her head on Edna’s shoulder, her arms around her waist.

“Nana,” she repeated. “Oh, Nana, I’m so pleased to see you.”

Edna brushed the fringe out of Sammy’s eyes as a fat teardrop fell from her lashes. A snakebite of love and rage bit deep within the grandmaternal gut. “There, there, Sammy,” she whispered. “Nana’s here now. Nana’s here.”

Amanda pushed her sunglasses up to the top of her head, eyeing the spectacle with pursed lips. Noodles, still growling and with every hair on his body standing on end, started to retreat backwards down the hallway, until his hind leg made contact with an advancing leather shoe. Noodles and Amanda looked up at the same time. The dog gave a yelp and ran to the sanctuary of his basket in the kitchen.

“What’s all this then?” Eric’s voice was gentle as he placed a hand on Edna’s shoulder, but the eyes that stared over at Amanda were anything but. “How’s my little girl?” he said.

For one second, Amanda thought he was talking to her.

“Granddad!” Sammy’s head came up and her tear-streaked face broke into a tentative smile, exposing the wonky front tooth that she refused to have put in a brace.

“She’s had a long journey, haven’t you, love, feeling a bit tired out?” Edna suggested.

“Well, that’s a shame,” said Eric, “because I was just about
to ask if she fancied coming in to work with me.”

“I don’t really think …” Amanda began. But the rest of the sentence stuck in her throat.

“Can I really, Granddad?” Sammy’s face was radiant now, while the eyes of Eric and Edna had fallen upon their daughter like a Siberian wind coming up off the North Sea.

“Of course you can,” Eric took hold of Sammy’s hand, a smile twitching at his mouth.

“Dad,” Amanda tried to start again. She waved her hand feebly towards Wayne, but his expression remained on the crack in the path it had been glued to since he’d got out of the car. “She’s got to unpack and have her tea …” she tried to appeal to Edna instead.

“She can do all that later,” said Eric, smiling broadly. “Now she’s here, she’ll want to enjoy herself, won’t you, Sammy?”

Sammy nodded, flashing her mother a triumphant smirk.

“Don’t worry,” Eric went on. “I’ll make sure she get her tea,” the words dripped like acid from his lips. “That in’t me who want to short-change her now, is it?”

* * *

“Debs!” Corrine’s voice, more insistent now it had asked the same question three times, finally cut through her friend’s reverie. The music that had been playing in Debbie’s head, the record that Alex had brought home for her from his wanderings, a man with a low baritone intoning mysterious words about asking crystals, spreading tarots … “I said, what d’you reckon?” Corrine was holding up a folded page of
Smash Hits
, a photograph of a woman with mounds of eyeliner and a curly perm.