Peter Robinson: A Necessary End

"You might try a DDU."

"DDU?"

"Yes. A Drug-Dependency Unit, for the treatment of addicts. Elizabeth had been in and out of one a couple of times before she came to us."

"So she hadn't been cured?"

"How many are? Oh, some, I agree. But with Elizabeth it was on and off, on and off. The cure worked for a while — Methadone hydrochloride in gradually decreasing doses. It's rather like chewing nicotine gum when you're trying to stop smoking. Helps with some of the severe physical symptoms, but—"

"That's not enough?"

"Not really. Many addicts get hooked again as soon as the opportunity for a fix arises. Unfortunately, given the network of friends they have, that can be very soon."

"So you think this DDU might have Liz as a patient, or might know where she is?"

"It's likely."

"Where is it?" Banks slipped out his notebook.

"The only local one is just outside Halifax, not too far away." Preston continued to give directions. "I hope she's not in any trouble," he said finally.

"I don't think so. Just need her to help us with our inquiry."

Preston adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. "You do have a way with words, you policemen, don't you?"

"I'm glad we've got something in common with doctors." Banks smiled and stood up to leave. "You've been a great help."

"Have I?"

Banks beat a hasty retreat from the hospital back onto the rainswept roads and headed for Halifax. He soon found the DDU, using the Wainhouse Tower as a landmark, as Dr Preston had suggested. Originally built as a factory chimney, the tall, black tower was never used as one and now stands as a folly and a lookout point, its top ornamented in a very unchimneylike pointed Gothic style.

Banks found the DDU up a steep side street. It was set back from the road at the top of a long sloping lawn and looked like a Victorian mansion. It also had an eerie quality to it, Banks felt. He shivered as he made his approach. Not the kind of place I'd want to find myself in after dark, he thought.

There were no walls or men at the gate here. Banks walked straight inside and found himself standing in a spacious common room with a high ceiling. On the walls hung a number of paintings, clearly the work of patients, dominated by an enormous canvas depicting an angel plummetting to earth, wings ablaze and neck contorted so that it looked straight at the viewer, eyes red and wild, raw muscles stretched like knotted ropes. It could have been Satan on his way to hell. Certainly the destination, impressionistically rendered in the lower half of the painting, was a dark and murky place. He shuddered and looked away.

"Can I help you?" A young woman came up to him. It wasn't clear from her appearance whether she was a member of staff or a patient. She was in her early thirties, perhaps, and wore jeans and a dark-brown jacket over a neck-high white blouse. Her long black hair was plaited into wide braids and pinned at the back.

"Yes," Banks said. "I'm looking for Elizabeth Dale. Is she here, or do you know where I can find her?"

"Who are you?"

Banks showed her his identification.

The woman raised her eyebrows. "Police? What do you want?"

"I want to talk to Elizabeth Dale," he repeated. "Is she here or isn't she?"

"What's it about?"

"I'm the one who asks the questions," Banks said, irritated by her brusque, haughty manner. Suddenly, he realized who she must be. "Look, doctor," he went on, "it's nothing to do with drugs. It's about an old friend of hers. I need some information to help solve a murder case, that's all."

"Elizabeth's been here for the past month. She can't be involved."

"I'm not saying she is. Will you just let me talk to her?"

The doctor frowned. Banks could see her brain working fast behind her eyes. "All right," she said finally. "But treat her gently. She's very fragile. And I insist on being present."

"I'd rather talk to her alone." The last thing Banks wanted was this woman watching over the conversation like a lawyer.

"I'm afraid that's not possible."

"How about if you remained within calling distance? Say, the other end of this room?" The room was certainly large enough to accommodate more than one conversation.

The doctor smiled out of the side of her mouth. "A compromise? All right. Stay here while I fetch Elizabeth. Take a seat."

But Banks felt restless after being in the car. Instead, he walked around the room looking at the paintings, almost all of which illustrated some intense level of terror: mad eyes staring through a letter-box; a naked man being dragged away from a woman, his features creased in a desperate plea; a forest in which every carefully painted leaf looked like a needle of fire. They sent shivers up his spine. Noticing plenty of pedestal ashtrays around, he lit up. It was warm in the room, so he took off his car-coat and laid it on a chair.

About five minutes later, the doctor returned with another woman. "This is Elizabeth Dale," she said, introducing them formally, then walked off to the far end of the room, where she sat facing Banks and pretended to read a magazine. Liz took a chair on his left, angled so they could face one another comfortably. The chairs were well-padded, with strong armrests.

"I saw you looking at the paintings," Elizabeth said. "Quite something, aren't they?" She had a melodic, hypnotic voice. Banks could easily imagine its persuasive powers. He had a feeling, however, that it would probably become tiresome after a while: whining and wheedling rather than beautiful and soft.

Elizabeth Dale smoothed her long powder-blue skirt over her knees. Her slight frame was lost inside a baggy mauve sweater with two broad white hoops around the middle. If she was Seth's contemporary, that made her about forty, but her gaunt, waxy face was lined like that of a much older woman, and her black hair, hacked, rather than cut, short was liberally streaked with grey. It was a face that screamed of suffering; eyes that had looked deep inside and seen the horror there. Yet her voice was beautiful. So gentle, so soothing, like a breeze through woods in spring.

"They're very powerful," Banks said, feeling his words pathetically inadequate in describing the paintings.

"People see those things here," Elizabeth said. "Do you know what this place used to be?"

"No."

"It was a hospital, a fever-hospital, during the typhoid epidemics in the last century. I can hear the patients screaming every night."

"You mean the place is haunted?"

Elizabeth shrugged. "Maybe it's me who's haunted. People go crazy here sometimes. Break windows and try to cut themselves with broken glass. I can hear the typhoid victims screaming every night as they're burning up and snapping bones in convulsions. I can hear the bones snap." She clapped her hands. "Crack. Just like that."

Then she put her hand over her mouth and laughed.

Banks noticed the first and second fingers of her right hand were stained yellow with nicotine. She rummaged inside her sweater and pulled out a packet of Embassy Regal and a tarnished silver lighter. Banks took out a cigarette of his own, and she leaned forward to give him a light. The flame was high and he caught a whiff of petrol fumes as he inhaled.

"You know," Elizabeth went on, "for all that — the ghosts, the screaming, the cold — I'd rather be here than… than out there." She nodded her head towards the door. "That's where the real horror is, Mr Banks, out there."

"I take it you don't keep up with the world, then. No newspapers, no television?"

Elizabeth shook her head. "No. There is a television here, next door. But I don't watch it. I read books. Old books. Charles Dickens, that's who I'm reading now. There's opium-taking in Edwin Drood, did you know that?"