Mo Hayder - Poppet

‘Moses? Hey, hey, mate, come on. What’s up?’

‘AJ, AJ AJ.’ He grips his curled hair tightly. ‘AJ, help me.’

‘That’s why I’m here. Now let’s take deep breaths. You’ve had your meds, haven’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Usual time?’

‘Yes, yes, yes.’

‘Good. So what’s the problem?’

Moses shakes his head. He moans and tightens his hands against his scalp. When he speaks his voice is almost inaudible. ‘I’m scared, Mr AJ. Moses is scared.’

‘Hey, hey.’ AJ gently untangles his fingers from his hair and holds them. ‘Moses, old man,’ he says, keeping his voice well modulated, ‘calmly now. Some more of those deep breaths. That’s the way …’

Moses nods. He takes a long shaky breath, lets it all out.

‘Don’t make me say what’s scary, Mr AJ, or mention that name. I bin told I ain’t supposed to say it so I ain’t even going to whisper it and you’ll excuse me for that, but though you are my deep and most respectful of friends, I am just going to keep my piehole shut at this moment in time.’

He nods to himself, as if to confirm those were the exact words he meant to use. He says nothing more. The doctors spent a long time putting Moses back together, working on his eye implant, but if you know what to look for you can still see his face is misshapen. What actually happened to Moses that night? AJ wonders. They can go on putting The Maude down to hallucinations and fantasy, but something happened that night. And whatever it was was powerful enough to make Moses gouge out his own eye.

WHEN SUKI HAS been dead for so long that she’s cold, Penny starts to move. Outside, everything is ready – she has lived with herself for forty-two years and she knows herself well enough to have already prepared what she’s going to do next. She’s been out already this morning and dug the hole. It’s under the apple tree, the one that Suki as a baby – not much bigger than a guinea pig – used to chew at. Growling and leaping at it. Her own play-monster.

Dressed in the same sweater and skirt and socks she’s been wearing for almost two days, Penny carries the dog out into the main part of the mill – her home for the last sixteen years. The lights are all low, just a faint glow from the big log burner in the centre of the floor. Even wrapped in the old chewed blanket she used to drag around the house, there’s nothing of Suki – she’s no heavier than a feather.

At the back door Penny realizes she needs her boots on. Instead of putting Suki down on the mat – she doesn’t think she can bear that – she leans her shoulder against the door frame and jams her feet into the wellies, wriggling her toes around. It’s sort of comic, this middle-aged woman with all her scarves and her coloured hair and her jingly bracelets, standing there like a drunk in the doorway with a dead pet in her arms. She has to smile. Suki would be laughing. Wherever she is now. Up in the dark slipstreams.

It’s very, very dark. Very cold. Her breath is in the air. Winter is moving in. It has moved in. She gets to the bottom of the garden, in spite of all the slippery terraces. It would be better to be drunk or stoned or high, but there hasn’t been the chance. It would be better to have washed and changed – she’d like to feel cleaner and prettier for something this important, but she’s not young and no one is going to watch.

She crouches and lowers Suki into the hole. She’s lined it with dried flowers and fruit and blankets and Suki’s tennis ball – covered in dog spit and hair. The dog seems to sigh as her body settles, as if this is a relief. Penny moves her hands out from under the blanket – takes a step back, closes her eyes and rests her hands in a light clasp at her waist. She drops her face and tries to be respectful. She tries to wish good things and think about where Suki is going to go, but she can’t do it, so in the end she just takes the shovel and pushes frozen earth into the hole. Quickly, before she can change her mind.

SOMETHING IS BOTHERING AJ, but he can’t quite put his finger on it. Instead of finishing his walk of the wards he goes hunting down the Big Lurch. He has to go into the nurses’ station and out into the admin block and through all the toilets and the kitchens until he finds him in the security guards’ control room – a giant futuristic glass pod in the reception area of the unit. He is sitting on a swivel seat in front of a bank of monitors. His feet are up and his arms are crossed, his head floppy as if he’s sleeping, or on the point of sleeping.

‘Amazing.’ AJ stands in the doorway, arms folded. ‘You’re where you’re meant to be. The last place I’d have looked.’

The Big Lurch lifts his head a little. Frowns.

‘AJ? You look all crazy – like one of those people they lock up in a loony bin. You ought to see a doctor about that – it’s not a good look.’

AJ rubs his eyes. He comes into the room and sits on one of the chairs, running his hands over the soft suede of the armrest. He’s always liked this place – it’s got a comfort to it yet it’s not claustrophobic. You can feel warm in here, and look out on to the world: see the moon or the sun, the city and the trees, the cars and the clouds. It’s like being on the bridge of a ship. The Starship Enterprise maybe. The glass shield between here and the outside world is bulletproof. A lot of money has gone into this operations room. A lot of money and power and wealth. The Trust can find finance for this sort of thing, but they can’t stop people like Moses ripping out their own eyes in the breakfast queue.

‘What do you think?’ he says. ‘Do you think our director knows how unhappy we are? Hmm? Does she think we’re happy, or does she know we’re unhappy? What do you sense?’

The Big Lurch lowers his chin and scrutinizes AJ with hauteur. ‘Honestly?’

‘Honestly.’

‘She’s too unhappy herself to care what’s going on with us. A person can only see suffering when they’re not suffering themselves. Caring? It’s a luxury, if you want the honest truth.’

AJ nods slowly, appreciatively. The Big Lurch doesn’t speak much – but when he does, his words are premium-rate gilded.

‘So? What’s making her unhappy?’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘Am I supposed to?’

The Big Lurch turns and faces AJ full on. Surprised. ‘You really don’t know?’

AJ stares at him, mystified. ‘What? What am I supposed to know?’

‘About Jonathan?’

‘ Jonathan? Jonathan who?’ He fumbles around in his head for a face to connect to the name. A patient? No – no Jonathans in the unit. The only person he can think of is Jonathan Keay – an occupational therapist who left the unit last month. ‘Jonathan Keay, you mean?’

‘Of course Jonathan Keay.’

‘The ocky therapy guy who left? What about him?’

The Big Lurch gives AJ an amused half-smile. He lets a puff of laughter come out of his chest. Aha aha aha . ‘AJ, seriously , my man! For a switched-on person, you occasionally lack perspicacity.’

‘Then tell me, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Melanie and Keay? You didn’t notice?’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Oh please, mate. Please.’

AJ lowers his eyes to the smooth arms of the chair – moves his hands up and down, up and down. Melanie and Jonathan Keay? Seriously? Until now he’s always imagined he was the one who knew the secrets. That he walked around with the knowledge of the world on his shoulders. Apparently not, though. Apparently he is the last to know. OT staff giving it the old jiggety-jig with top-drawer management? If it’s true, that’s fairly scandalous stuff – the biggest taboo, like incest, or staff sleeping with a patient. Montagues and Capulets. Melanie herself said it – the Trust takes a dim view of it.