The Sacrificial Man Read online

  “I’m a vegetarian.”

  “Then leave the sausage.” Shane stares at my top, my breasts loose under the faded cotton, then makes a big show of looking away. “I did knock. You should’ve said you was getting dressed.”

  “What day is it?” I’m totally disorientated.

  “Wednesday. You came in yesterday afternoon.” He places the tray on the bedside table.

  “How long do I have to stay here?”

  “Until the doctors say you can leave. Dr Gregg will be round tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow! What about today?”

  “He’s already been today. You were asleep so you missed him.” He’s turning to go.

  “So what do I do in the meantime? I need clothes and toiletries.”

  “You can make a phone call and get a visitor to bring them in. Do your family live nearby?”

  I shudder, imagining my mum wandering into this place. My dad scanning the bare walls for something to focus on other than his mad daughter. No, I could never inflict that on them. Then I have another thought. “I need to use the phone. Now.”

  The nurse has his hand on the door handle, “This isn’t a five star hotel, you know. Good manners go a long way.” I scowl at his back as I follow Shane into the corridor.

  “Miss Austin? It’s Alice Mariani. I need to see you.”

  “You’re calling from St Therese’s?”

  For a moment I wonder how she knows but obviously the news has reached her. Nothing is private when a court sentence is pending. “Yes. I need a favour. Can you help me?”

  She doesn’t reply immediately. “That depends. What is it you want?”

  I wake to a cold morning.

  I’m alone in this hospital room that is really a cell. Through the small glass window on the door I see the glare of a fluorescent light. I can hear the night staff in the community room watching some chat show, they don’t bother to control their laughter. The staff laugh more here than in other workplaces. I’ve never seen staff laugh so hard that tears course their cheeks in shops or supermarkets, but these nurses and social workers, even the auxiliaries who do nothing more than wipe food off the floor or shit off the walls, find laughter easy. It’s hysterical, almost, and I wonder if this is how they survive their own incarceration, their own institutionalisation.

  I’ve been at St Therese’s for two nights.

  I count in nights, as that’s the hardest time, without the distraction of doctors or activities or mealtimes. And although I managed a nap yesterday afternoon, I can’t sleep at night. Being alone makes me feel angry. It makes me feel ugly.

  I’ve no books. My top is old and stained and I’m eager for this afternoon, when Cate Austin will bring my clothes, the skincare products that I asked for. But I forgot to ask for a book. If I had one now, anything would do, I could transport myself from here. I could feel at peace.

  My headache has returned, and the dizziness forces me to lay down. It must be the environment, pressing down on me until it feels like my skull will crack. If this continues I’ll be forced to ask for stronger painkillers and it was hard enough persuading them to give me two Nurofen. I don’t want to ask for anything. I won’t be beholden to anyone when I’m here against my will.

  I’ll be in Cate Austin’s debt, but who else could I have asked to go to my home and pick up my things? Not my parents. It would be beyond them, to think of their Alice in a madhouse. There’s always Lee, who’ll be confused by my sudden absence. We’d planned to meet today, at my house, and I know that Lee will arrive on time, will wait. I could’ve phoned, I have a mobile number, as well as the number of the barracks in Colchester, but I was afraid. I don’t want to say that I am here. I don’t want to find out if Lee has read anything of the court hearings in the newspapers. There is only one thing I want to know, that I am loved, and Lee tells me over and over again. I know it’s true. Meagre though it is I don’t want to destroy that love, when it may be all I have left.

  So I chose Cate. I believe that she won’t snoop. That she will do nothing more than I have asked.

  I trust her, then. I find the revelation a surprise.

  A single knock and Shane, walks in. “Come on, you,” he says, staring at my body, my bare arms. I wish I had a jumper.

  I follow Shane down the hallway, past other patients, men and women who pace like tigers, prowling around each other in the corridor that serves as their territory, all of them concentrating on not touching, looking down at their feet. One woman is wearing kitten heeled red slippers, but she drags them, and they make a sloppy sound with every step, sipping on a carton of squash as she goes. She stops as I walk past and angles her head like I’m an animal in a zoo and she is the other side of the bars. Her teeth are stained purple.

  I’m taken to another corridor, and led to a door that says Occupational Therapy. My heart twitches as Shane herds me into the room, where a middle-aged man in a smart shirt sits on a high-backed chair. Around him, in a circle, are five other patients.

  One guy is in pyjamas, which hang low on his body. From where I stand I can see his part-naked buttocks. The only other woman in the room has a long flowing skirt and a nervous smile. She must be one of those middle class neurotics who steal compulsively. The man in the smart shirt rises from his chair and comes to me, putting a hand on my shoulder, “Greetings! I’m Frank, and you must be Alice.” I release my shoulder. “Come and sit next to me, Alice.”

  As I sit, I smell nicotine on Frank, who is still smiling at me. The man in pyjamas is now opposite and also staring, his hands thrust into the sagging cotton, cupping his penis. Frank leans over. “Best just ignore him. He’s harmless. He won’t be here long anyway. The staff’ll come and get him in ten minutes to make sure he doesn’t shit on the floor.” I flinch, and Frank leans further my way. “I’ll take care of you, Alice. I always look out for the new ones.”

  Suddenly the compulsive shoplifter claps her hands weakly. “Right then!” she says, falsely bright, “Shall we make a start?”

  I look from her to Frank and back again. Are the lunatics running the asylum? I see then that he has slippers on his feet and the woman wears a name badge. She is the occupational therapist.

  “We’ll warm up with a game of Murder Wink. Alice, have you played before?”

  You’ve got to be kidding. “Yes, when I was about six.”

  “Ha ha,” she says, good-naturedly. “We play it to create a sense of teamwork. And to have a bit of fun!” She says ‘fun’ with a leap, trying to believe it. The man in the pyjamas moves his hands more violently, rocking in his chair.

  “Now, Frank, you be the detective. Go on! Stand outside the circle!” Like a trained monkey he does, nodding at me, as if to say that it’s wise to indulge this madwoman.

  “Okay then, everyone close their eyes and if I touch you on the shoulder you’re the killer. Your job is to murder wink everyone before Frank detects you. Ha Ha!”

  I keep my eyes on the guy in the pyjamas. The therapist touches the other man’s shoulder. He has glasses and a moustache and strikes me as rather military in an old-fashioned, fifties film kind of way. Watching him straighten his shirt where she has touched it makes me sad. Then I notice that although his clothes are perfect, his hands are red raw. He doesn’t touch the chair, or himself. His hands are suspended above his lap, awkwardly. He winks at me. I look at Frank, who is also watching me, as is the man in the pyjamas. Then I fall off my chair and die slowly on the floor.

  “Oh excellent!” says the woman, “Wonderful dying, Alice. I can see we’re going to have fun with you.”

  The game doesn’t take long. It’s fairly obvious who the murderer is when a nurse removes the pyjamas guy and the therapist has a noisy heart attack in her chair. I take my seat, wondering how much the state pays her to play party games with nutters. I want to yell, do you have any idea how many qualifications I have? Do you know how long it took me to train as a lecturer? Have you even heard of Keats, you miserable creature? I pity her, wit
h her desperate need for approval. She wants us to laugh and clap like eager children. Frank and I exchange a look, and then she makes us play, What time is it, Mr Wolf?

  I can’t do it.

  I can’t stand with my back to Frank and the therapist and the obsessive. I hate having my back to anybody, so I don’t turn around properly and after a few failed attempts she says that she will be grandmother instead. But she’s too trusting, turns her back for too long, and Frank has touched her shoulder before she has a chance to call, ‘Dinnertime.’

  After the lesson, Frank walks me back to the ward. I see the woman with red sloppy slippers coming out of a door. “She’s in my room!” I say, beginning to speed up. But Frank touches my arm. “Best ignore it. She only goes for the new ones. She’ll stop snooping in your room once someone else arrives.”

  “Why are you here, Frank?” He’s saner than the staff. Nothing mad about him.

  “No reason,” he says.

  I linger with him in the corridor, watching the obsessive man attempt to open the doors with elbows alone, and avoid the eyes of the sloppy slippered woman with blackcurrant-stained teeth. She brushes against me as she skims by.

  Shane pokes his head from the patient’s lounge, where the staff go to smoke their fags. “Don’t go in the television room until the cleaners have been in,” he announces, as if it is of little interest. “Pete’s done a crap behind the sofa.”

  “Jesus.” I say, disgusted, but Frank just shrugs and crumples his cigarette under his slipper.

  “Worse things than shit.”

  Fourteen

  Cate lifted the large plant pot in the back garden, just as Alice had instructed her, and found the back door key settled in the soil among woodlice and worms. She opened the lock with a twist and a pull, wondering why Alice had no friends she could have called on for this errand. It was strange being in the house alone. She imagined Alice’s eyes upon her and had no urge to linger. The door opened into a utility area with a washing machine and freezer. She walked through, thinking how tidy it was, how white the walls, not a grubby mark anywhere; so clearly a house without children. Cate thought grimly of the sticky prints on her own walls, the unwashed cereal bowls on the kitchen worktop. The utility room led into the large kitchen area, where she had first interviewed Alice. But it was different from before.

  The kitchen table was stained with water and as she approached her heels crunched on glass. There was water on the floor, sprigs of green with orange and red. Snapdragons, in full bloom when she first saw them, now wilted and dead. The glass was mostly in large pieces, but smaller slithers crunched under her feet. That beautiful vase! The stunning blue and white glass vase of snapdragons that had been here on her first visit. It’s very valuable, Alice had said, irreplaceable. Dr Gregg had told her that Alice had been hysterical, holding a piece of glass to her own neck. Had she broken her lovely vase? Carefully, she bent, lifting a large broken piece from the floor. But the glass was not thin or fine. It was not Alice’s beautiful blue and white vase, but a chunky yellow vase. Oddly, the vase was different but the flowers were the same.

  She climbed upstairs, holding onto the mahogany banister. The noise of her shoes on the wood jarred, and Cate thought of Alice’s Moroccan slippers, barely making a sound as she moved around, and she wished she’d taken her shoes off downstairs. She didn’t want to mark the grain.

  Alice had told her what to collect, and Cate had made a list. Now she took it from her pocket, a sheet of jotter paper that looked like a packing list for a weekend away. As the bathroom was across the hall facing her, its door open, she went in.

  It was beautiful, straight out of a boutique hotel, with black and white tiles underfoot and a massive bathtub set on silver balls. Georgian, Cate guessed, and original, not some reproduction number, it had probably been here since the house was built, or Alice had made it look that way. The sink too, looked antique, with its square bowl and large gleaming taps. She must have a cleaner to keep it this perfect, Cate thought, as she noted the Chanel bath oil and body lotion, also black and white, lined up on the windowsill. She wondered if Alice had chosen them for their contents or for the packaging. It all looked so artificial, like a show home rather than a place someone actually lived in. Cate thought briefly of her own bathroom with the grainy tub and sticky shower gels from Superdrug, the mismatched face care products and splayed toothbrushes that needed replacing.

  In a mirrored cupboard was an electrical toothbrush with a plug-in stand. Did they have shaver sockets at St Therese’s? Also in the cupboard was a toiletries bag, which she filled with the toothbrush and toothpaste, skin cleanser and moisturiser, a Clarins deodorant and some paracetamol, before she thought better of it, and returned it to the shelf alongside an extravagance of other products: Crème de la Mer, La Prairie, names she knew from magazine adverts but could never afford. How Alice bought them on a lecturer’s salary Cate couldn’t guess. Maybe they were gifts.

  Curious, she dabbed some of the Chanel No.5 on her wrist and threw that in the bag too. Closing the toiletries bag she struggled with the zip. She couldn’t fit anything else in, so she went to collect the weekend bag that Alice had told her was in the bedroom.

  The bedroom was neat and light, a bland canvas of white walls and chalk-coloured bedding. The bed was made, scatter cushions in contrasting shades of pale were placed at contrived angles against the headboard. An image came to her, unbidden, of David Jenkins naked and bloody. Dead. Poor PC Flynn. She would have been sick too, if she’d seen what he did. But the body was long gone, the splatter of blood from the walls whitewashed away.

  The only vivid colour was the mahogany chest of drawers, with a makeup bag on top, which Alice had been emphatic she shouldn’t forget. She picked it up. Through the fabric she could feel the bulk of lipsticks and brushes, the sharp corner of a compact mirror. On the dressing table was a grey eye shadow, open, with a brush next to it. A purple eye shadow was also out, as was a yellowish face powder. Cate wondered why they’d not been put away, when every other surface was so neat. It looked like Alice had left off doing her makeup in a hurry. And the colours were so dark, so unlike anything she could imagine Alice wearing. She felt there was something she was missing.

  Trying to organise her thoughts, Cate went to the large bay window to look out. It was a picture postcard view, across the road to a striking church on a slope, an ornate iron gate at the start of a yellow brick path. Craning her neck, she saw further down the street a butcher’s, an old-fashioned teashop, a delicatessen. No doubt about it, this was a pretty place. What the neighbours must think about what had happened in this house, heaven only knew.

  Bringing her gaze back to the churchyard, she suddenly became aware of someone sitting on a bench by the side wall of the church, looking up at the window, watching her. Cate could just make out dark, spiky hair and a leather coat, an upturned face, eyes fixed on the very window where Cate stood. When she looked straight down, the person quickly got up from the bench, hands in pockets, and sauntered away.

  Turning back to the room, Cate spied the weekend bag on top of the wardrobe and managed to lift it down with the aid of a chair. She began to pack another woman’s clothes for another kind of life. Alice could never have imagined she would one day be staying at St Therese’s when she bought her Chanel toiletries and face creams.

  The wardrobe, built into the wall in painted white pine, was closed. She opened it with both hands and saw things that most women would covet, an ordered selection of smart trousers and dresses, some clothes with labels still attached, all designer brands. They were hung in a regimented pattern: tops first, then skirts, trousers, finally dresses. Colours were put together, revealing a large number of white or beige clothes with fewer items in black or red. The effect was striking but formal. Like Alice’s bookshelves, the clothes were aesthetically correct rather than inviting. The most casual item was a new-looking pair of dark jeans, which Cate lifted out, along with a pale blue jumper. Alice could hardly w
ear linen suits or silk shirts in a psychiatric hospital.

  On the floor of the wardrobe, perspex boxes were stacked in neat rows, each holding a pair of shoes. My God, thought Cate, how the other half live. It’s all I can do to find a pair of socks to match and this woman has her whole boudoir in order. Imagine having control of your surroundings like that. Remembering that Alice would need underwear she went to the mahogany chest, and opened the top drawer. It held just one item: a child’s cardigan.

  Curious, Cate lifted it out.

  It was woollen, and knitted by someone who wasn’t very adept. The wool was the colour of lavender, with pearly white buttons. There was a hole where a stitch had been dropped, and the wool was bobbled as if from much wash and wear, but was soft and well loved. The cardigan was old and Cate guessed that it must have been Alice’s when she was a child. Folding it back carefully, she closed the drawer, still troubled that something was not as it should be.