Mo Hayder - Poppet

‘No – no. This is all—’

‘This is all what?’

‘Wrong. Isaac might have stitched his parents’ eyes closed before he killed them, I don’t know. But with Pauline it was different – he only stitched her doll’s eyes closed after she was found in the grounds. He was extremely upset about it. That’s why she’s at rest in all this pink satin. Like a coffin. And is that meant to be Zelda? See, he’s closed her eyes too. That will be after she’s died, not before.’

Caffery puts his phone away. ‘OK,’ he says calmly. ‘We’re talking at cross purposes, aren’t we?’

Jonathan nods at him incredulously. ‘Yes. I mean, you have got this so wrong.’

‘Have I? Then tell me.’

Jonathan traps his hands between his knees, as if he is afraid they might do something independent of him that he will regret. ‘OK,’ he says eventually. ‘OK. Tell me – how much do you know about domestic violence?’

Caffery did a one-day course back in the Met, years ago – he remembers the phrases: cycles of abuse; Stockholming; justification; self-blame. He remembers because he once hit a girlfriend himself and he still hasn’t quite levelled that in his head.

‘You do at least know the psychology of abuser and victim?’ Jonathan prompts. ‘And when you think “domestic abuse”, you automatically think man on woman, right?’

‘Or man on man.’

Jonathan gets up and lifts the hem of his T-shirt. Caffery stares at his naked stomach. Under the pink Kinesio tape his ribs and abdomen are covered in bruises, faded to yellow or green, some merging into larger blocks of colour. He has deep scratches in several places – some at least ten inches long. One appears to have been infected at some point. He tries to lift the T-shirt above his head, but can’t. ‘Sorry. You’ll have to help me with this.’

Caffery stands. Carefully, conscious of the intimacy of this, he raises the T-shirt from Jonathan’s waist. As he lifts he sees instantly – Jonathan’s chest, from armpit to armpit, has deep scratches etched across it. A patchwork of blackened scabs cling to newly growing scar tissue. Caffery squints at the scars. They’re difficult to see in the low light from the computer screen.

‘ Thou shalt not commit adultery .’ Jonathan sits back with a wince. ‘You need a mirror to read it. My partner thought I was leaving. I was meant to see this every time I looked in the mirror. I told my parents I was in a fight – in a pub. They want me to press charges. I’ve said no.’ He turns his head painfully so he can see Caffery’s face. ‘I suppose all along I’ve been waiting for you to turn up.’

‘Your partner?’

‘You’re wrong when you think domestic violence is only man on woman, or man on man. A woman did this.’ He sees Caffery’s face and gives a dry laugh. ‘I know – no one believes it when you say it. But it does happen that way, trust me. She got hold of some benzodiazepine – I never did drugs myself, so the benzos poleaxed me. Woke up ten hours later. I thought it was a bad dream until I noticed she’d dressed my wounds and bandaged me. She was crying on the floor next to the bed. Begging me to forgive her. I was so in love I think I’d have done anything rather than believe she could … could do some of the things she was doing.’

‘Does “she” have a name?’

He hesitates. Then he says in a low voice that is almost a whisper, ‘Melanie Arrow.’

‘Melanie Arrow?’ Caffery lowers his chin, frowns at Jonathan. ‘The unit’s director?’

Jonathan nods. He presses two fingers on either side of his Adam’s apple, as if he’s trying to control something in his throat. ‘Nearly twenty years we worked together. She couldn’t keep a relationship together – not with anyone. I sat and watched them come and go. Watched her tear herself apart over each one. Waited my turn. I’d have followed her to the ends of the earth. She was everything I wasn’t. There was softy public-schoolboy me, with my Latin A levels and rich mummy and daddy, while she was born on a sink estate in Gloucester. You’d never guess it from the way she talks, would you? She dragged herself all the way up the tree – to the place she is now. I met her when I left the whole money system and become Citizen Keay and … well, shit – I mean, you’ve seen her. She was pretty and sweet and above all she was a fighter. Can you imagine how I felt about her?’

He trails off, looking again at his hands, which clench and unclench on the bed.

‘Except I was a fail at supporting her – keeping her sane. It was like keeping a drowning victim’s head above the water. When I worked out exactly who she was – what she was – I told her I was leaving. Leaving her, the hospital, the profession.’ His mouth twists into an ironic smile. ‘That’s when I got my brand. Adultery.’

‘What are you telling me, Jonathan?’

‘Don’t you know?’

He holds Jonathan’s eyes steadily. ‘I’d like to hear it from you.’

‘A childhood like Mel had? It leaves scars. Her dad had cancer when she was a child. He survived, but she used to tell everyone he was dead. She’d cry about it to anyone who’d listen – and all the while he was alive and well. She just didn’t want anything to do with them. He was a council worker – basically, he was a dustbin man – and she was too proud to admit it.’

‘I repeat – what are you telling me, Jonathan?’

He clears his throat, embarrassed. ‘When patients at Beechway started talking about The Maude, exactly the same as they had at Hartwool, I thought …’ He waves his hand in front of his face, as if to say he was blinded. ‘I don’t know what I thought. I was in denial, I suppose. Have you ever been so in love with someone you’d close your eyes to almost anything ? Even something like this?’

Caffery can’t answer that. Not to himself, and certainly not to Jonathan.

‘Even when Pauline died I tried to pretend she’d just wandered off of her own volition. Melanie is absolutely lovely, so charming to everyone around her, you’d never think for a moment she was capable of …’ He breaks off to wipe his eyes again. ‘It was her pattern when her relationships ended, her way of releasing her anger, frustration. You can time every appearance of The Maude by her break-ups. Pauline was attacked in her room a week after Melanie’s husband filed for divorce. A couple of weeks later Moses gouged out his eye. And now you’re telling me Zelda? After I left?’

Caffery folds his arms. He puts his feet out and tips his head back, eyes closed. It’s the attitude of someone having a five-minute afternoon nap, but he’s not relaxing. He’s slotting everything into place. He’s thinking about the power cuts – effectively blocking the CCTV recordings. It’s bothered him from the start, how Isaac could time his strikes so easily – as if he was ready for the blackouts. But if Melanie Arrow is AJ’s Scooby ghost … it all fits. As clinical director, she would have access to all areas, she could come and go at will, interfere with security settings and fuses and locks. And the victims were always the patients that weren’t well liked by the staff. Did Arrow think they’d be missed less? Or were they the ones who irritated her the most?

Caffery opens one eye. Jonathan is staring at him. ‘What?’ Caffery says. ‘What?’

‘You have to believe me when I tell you this. She is more insane, more dangerous, than any of the patients in that place.’

‘WHAT’S GOING ON?’ In the containment cell, Melanie is puzzled by the delay AJ is causing. ‘Shall we just get on with it?’

Isaac’s eyes flicker to and fro in confusion – trying to understand this change of mood. Because, intelligent as he is, he isn’t a liar. He may be manipulative and capable of violence, but he can’t lie. He said he didn’t poison Stewart and AJ believes him. Scales have fallen from his eyes and he can see more clearly, as if he’s been granted X-ray vision. Earlier, when he told Melanie that Stewart was ill, she immediately assumed it was something he’d eaten. He’d never said Stewart was poisoned, just that he’d been ill. And the mask – the radiation mask – it is the one her father used in treatment.