Peter Corris - Heroin Annie

I parked up the street a little and did a slow reconnoitre. The place was enclosed by a brick fence, head high. The front, back and one side abutted streets; on the other side the fence was shared with a house that stood on a deep, narrow lot and a block of flats. The land on which the hospital stood sloped so that it had three storeys in the back and two in front; around two sides ran a balcony which gave the paying patients a good view of the ocean. There was a trellis covered with a vine of some sort on a section of the back wall; otherwise the walls were notable for an abundance of big windows.

I went through the gates and ambled up the drive towards the impressive marble steps in front of the building. For a plan I had the idea to engage an underling in conversation, and maybe hand over a little of what underlings don’t have enough of. There were patients and attendants taking the afternoon air on the balcony above me as I walked up the steps; the doors swung open automatically and then I was being watched from the reception desk by a woman in a smart blue uniform. I looked around at the spit and polish as I fronted the desk.

‘Yes, sir?’ She was a thirtyish brunette with good teeth. She looked as if she could head up a cabinet meeting or a commando platoon pretty effectively.

‘I… ah, wanted to know if you have a Mrs Hardy here?’

‘I couldn’t say, sir.’

‘No, well my mother is going to have an operation, nothing too serious you understand, but she’ll need some care while she’s recovering, and Mrs Hardy writes such good things about the place she’s in. She’s an old friend of mum’s and…’

The phone on her desk rang; she said ‘Just a minute’ to me and ‘Reception’ into the mouthpiece. I looked around the lobby which had a spotless parquet floor and a staircase made of the right sort of wood. A set of glass doors swung open and a white-coated man came through talking to a nurse. He was carrying a clipboard and she was listening hard. A woman in a dressing gown was talking on a telephone beside the stairs; a nurse ran in through the front door and bolted up the stairs where she almost collided with Mrs Matthews, who was descending with a stately tread. She checked the nurse and sent her on her way, came down the stairs, looked over or under me, and went out through the glass doors.

I drifted off after her while the receptionist was still occupied; I was hoping to find a cleaning person to charm or an orderly to yarn with but I never got the chance; two big men in white coats appeared at the end of the passage to bar my way. I turned and saw the receptionist making gestures from the other end of the hall. I didn’t wait, I marched back and nodded to her as I passed.

‘I don’t think mum would like it here’, I said.

At the foot of the outside steps I nearly tripped over a parked wheelchair and then the hospital building seemed to lean down and hit me behind the ear. I opened my mouth to yell and got hit again, in the stomach; and I was slammed down into the wheelchair and was moving. I struggled for wind to yell and move with but a hard arm pinned me back. I heard the wheels of the chair grinding on the gravel and we made a turn; a man said something in a language I didn’t understand and then my shirt sleeve was ripped and I felt a prick and a voice started counting: I went with it-one, two, three, four…

I came out of it in a room; it was a very atmospheric room; I mean it had stark white walls that ran down to the floor from a stark white ceiling. It had character that room, even purpose. I was lying on a bed watching a light above me swing just a little, fascinating. I got bored with it after a while and looked around; the room had no furniture to speak of, a metal cabinet by the bed and a metal chair by the window. I stared at the window wondering why it interested me so; I wasn’t usually interested in windows, fenetres, so what? Then it came through to me slowly; I hadn’t got here by myself and the door to the room had an uncomfortably tight look to it. I got off the bed and fell flat on the floor so I clawed my way back up on to the bed again. It was like climbing Mont Blanc, west face.

I lay on the bed again, but somehow everything was less interesting. I pushed experimentally at the cabinet, bolted down. The chair would be the same. I’d been right about the window though, it did have something to say-the light coming through it was broken up into eight inch squares by the bars. My throat was dry and my eyes felt gritty, love of mankind was not in me.

The door opened and Mrs Matthews and two big men came quietly in. They stood and looked at me and I lay and looked at them. Then I sat up and waited for the feeling of treading water to stop. One of the men spoke in that foreign language again so I concluded that they were the wheelchair kids. The woman was carrying something which she threw on the bed-my wallet; I hadn’t missed it because it isn’t very heavy.

‘Hardy’, she said. ‘Private investigator, it says. What does that mean in this day and age?’

‘What it says, Mrs Matthews.’

She looked at one of the men who said something I didn’t catch; the other man wandered across to the window. I put the odds on my leaping from the bed and knocking them both unconscious at about ten thousand to one.

‘How do you know me and why are you following me?’ Her voice was nicely modulated with a roughness to it, like a radio announcer who was a drill sergeant at weekends.

‘Who said I was following you?’

‘I saw you last night and here you are today. That’s why you’re in the trouble you’re in.’

It sounded like a pop song but I didn’t feel like humming along; the trouble was the truth sounded ridiculous-this Amazon needing protection from plump little Charles Herbert? I couldn’t think of a good lie, so I told her the truth.

‘Ridiculous’, she said. ‘Charles would never do such a thing. You’re lying.’

I shrugged. She said: ‘Dennis’ and the guy by the window moved across and hit me with a backhander behind the ear where it doesn’t show. I fell back on the bed and felt him use that hard arm on me again. He pinned me down and forced my head back to one side; it hurt.

‘Tell me’, Dennis said. His breath stank and a drop of sweat from his shiny, red forehead fell into my mouth. I gagged and the pain got worse; I swore at him and he increased the pressure.

‘Stop it!’ She’d moved forward and pulled at his arm. Dennis fell back, breathing heavily. The foreigner watched the show with a pleasant smile. Mrs Matthews said: ‘Inject him again, we can’t do anything now.’ The foreigner took a syringe and glass bottle from his pocket and mated them. I faked a collapse and let my breathing go ragged. She came close, smelling nice, and lifted my right eyelid roughly.

‘He’s all right.’ She shoved her hand inside my shirt. ‘He’s thin though, not too much.’ I was pricked again and went to sleep.

They didn’t give me enough, I’m bigger than I look. Coming out of it this time I knew what to expect an didn’t make any rash moves. When everything was working properly I went across to the barred window which was now letting in the last few rays of the day’s light. The bars were in the form of a one piece grill bolted into the window frame-the worst way to do it. This gives you something heavy to lever against something fragile if you can get any leverage. This depends on the bolts, sometimes they’re anchored deep into the wood, sometimes they’ve worked loose, rusted or are held firm only by an accretion of paint. Here at St Mark’s we had the latter kind. I took a few breaths and applied some pressure to the grill, it moved. I applied some more and it moved a lot. It was hard work for one in my condition but I stuck at it; eventually I’d jiggled and lifted the grill loose on one side. It was heavy but that helped; I peeled it back off the frame like unwrapping a slice of cheese.