Mo Hayder - Poppet

Caffery raises his eyebrows. ‘Lying?’

She sees his confusion and sighs. ‘He was gone for nearly twenty years – he went through one of those student things, hating our money. Paying back his debt to society. We didn’t have the chance to cut him off; he cut us off. And then …’ She pushes the hair off her forehead. ‘And then, out of nowhere, he came back.’

‘It doesn’t sound as if that was a good thing.’

‘Well, it would have been, if he wasn’t injured so badly.’

‘Injured?’

‘Didn’t you know? He’s been in hospital – he contracted septicaemia from his wounds.’

‘How did he get wounded?’

She frowns for a moment. ‘I thought that was what you were here to tell me.’

THE ALARMS HAVE stopped now and the sudden silence is like a slap. AJ’s ears are ringing. He is in the security control pod at the very front of the unit with the Big Lurch and the supervisor. They both stand with their arms crossed, hands tucked inside their armpits, sheepishly avoiding each other’s eyes. Neither of them fully understands what has happened. More worrying still, they have no idea who is going to take control of the situation.

They have issued a unit-wide lockdown: all patients are confined to their rooms and each ward has come back with a head count. The supervisor has just finished scribbling notes of his actions in the incident log. Camera feeds have been switched so that the images they want appear on the two monitors closest to the supervisor’s desk. One monitor shows Myrtle Ward. The camera is focused on the closed door of the ground-floor seclusion room. The nurses refer to it as the ‘quiet room’, even though everyone knows that’s a euphemism for a containment cell. Any uncooperative patient is taken to the ‘quiet room’ to have a ‘bounce around’ until they calm themselves down.

Usually the patient’s first action is to take their clothes off and start kicking the walls. Not this time. This time it’s not a current patient in there. It’s an ex-patient: Isaac Handel. And with him is Melanie Arrow.

‘But the door can’t be locked – not from the inside.’

The security supervisor nods gravely. ‘It can if you take in the things he’s taken in.’

‘What things?’

‘I don’t know. He was carrying a holdall. We didn’t get a chance to see, but the door is wedged or locked somehow. We don’t know what he’s used. And as you can see, there’s no picture. He’s sorted the camera too.’

AJ swears under his breath. He’d like to kick the shallow-minded rent-a-gorilla supervisor. This can’t have happened. It just can’t have happened. This is one of the country’s most secure psychiatric units – it should not have been breached in this way. But then, most of their security measures focus on stopping the patients leaving, not preventing them coming in.

A third monitor shows pre-recorded footage. AJ puts his hand on the top of the monitor and peers at it closely. ‘Skip to the beginning – let me see it again.’

The supervisor presses his lips together. He’s trying hard not to lose his cool and his expression doesn’t falter as he flips the remote control at the player, skips the video back. He lets it roll and AJ sits down, his eyes glued to the scene.

This is the footage from the camera here at central security. It starts with an image of the car park, solid pools of white cast by the security lamps. The blinding cones of approaching headlights is the first indication of anything amiss. Melanie’s Beetle shears into the car park, coming to an erratic stop across two marked bays. She is at the wheel, and something is being held to her neck. AJ knows it’s a Stanley knife, even from this distance, because he’s seen what happens next.

The passenger door opens and Isaac gets out. It’s clearly him – he’s small with the distinctive pudding-basin haircut that gives him the appearance of a nervy junior monk. He’s wearing his striped sweater, artificially faded jeans and trainers. His head is held back and up slightly, as if he’s wearing a mask and the only way he can see anything is by squinting down.

The driver’s door opens. Although Melanie is obscured by the windscreen, AJ can tell she’s deciding whether or not she can make a dash for it. But before she can attempt anything, Isaac has scurried round the front of the car and is holding the Stanley knife to her neck again.

AJ has seen the footage three times – but he can’t help watching it again. The next two and a half minutes are played out on three separate cameras. The time code clicks away in the top-left-hand corner as Handel pushes Melanie away from the car. They pass under a light and for a moment AJ can see their features in the fizzing glare, then they go under the lens and disappear off screen.

They are picked up by a second camera, which is mounted inside the reception corridor. A security guard can be seen from behind, slowly rising to his feet, puzzled by what is happening outside. And then Isaac Handel is at the door, banging on it. The security guard seems to freeze – he hits the panic button under the desk, but moments later he opens the door to allow Handel into the airlock.

‘She told him to do what Handel said. That’s why my guard let them through. He’s kicking himself now.’

AJ sighs. ‘OK, let’s see the rest of it.’

The footage jumps to another camera’s perspective. This time it’s the long thin corridor – the ‘stem’ leading to the clinical area. The pair get to the pinch-point doors and this time Melanie can be seen giving clear instructions to the camera. ‘Let us through,’ she mouths. Her face is ghostly and resigned, there are shadows under her cheekbones. ‘Just do what he says.’

The next camera to pick them up is on Myrtle Ward. The time code has this as happening just ten minutes ago. It shows Handel pushing Melanie in front of him. As he passes under the camera, they have a clear view of the blade he’s using to control her. He pushes her into the ward seclusion room. The supervisor switches to the view inside the room just as the two enter, Melanie first, Handel behind her.

It’s a strip cell – completely empty. Handel points to the floor.

‘Sit,’ he says.

She obeys, shakily, sinking to her haunches. Handel turns to the door, fumbling stuff from the holdall. There is the sound of a power tool, but he’s too close to the door for the camera to pick up exactly what he’s doing.

Melanie says something to him. There are microphones in the room, but her voice is too soft – too scared for it to be audible.

Handel doesn’t answer. He sets down the holdall and straightens. He looks immediately at the camera – he knows it’s there, after all he’s been in this room as a patient. In fact, he knows the hospital inside out. From the holdall he pulls a long-handled tool and places a piece of duct tape on the end of it. Carefully, his tongue between his teeth, he uses the tool to fix the tape over the camera lens in the ceiling. The screen goes grey – just the canvas-like weave of the tape visible.

‘What are you doing?’ Melanie asks, quite clearly this time. ‘Why are you doing that?’

‘They don’t need to see.’

‘Why?’ Melanie’s voice is tight. ‘What are you going to do?’

Handel doesn’t answer. There is the sound of people knocking on the door.

‘Fuck off,’ he says in a level voice. ‘Don’t interrupt.’

Melanie begins to weep. And seconds later the sound drops out. Handel must have found a way of covering the microphone, because from that point on the noises are muffled. When the speakers are turned up high vague sounds can be heard, but they are too indistinct to make any sense.