Maureen Johnson - The Madness Underneath

He almost smiled.

“Were you and your sister close?” I asked.

“She was three years older. We both went to boarding schools, different ones. I didn’t even see her that often. I mean, we cared for each other, but we weren’t in each other’s pockets. I had no idea about all the things she’d been doing. I think that was partly why I felt so guilty. She was taking massive amounts of drugs, really dangerous amounts, and I had no idea. None of her so-called friends were all that surprised when she overdosed. I was the only one who was shocked. I was fine for three years, and then…” He cut himself off and brushed some imaginary lint off his sleeve. He was drawing a line under this subject.

“These things,” I said. “They keep happening. Murders.”

“It’s not that there are more things happening. It’s that you’re aware of them now.”

“I think more things are actually happening, ” I said.

“It’s still a question of perception. When I did the training to become a police officer, I got to see crime reports. I worked a desk on a Saturday night and saw what came in to the station. I saw people beating each other and stabbing each other. You start to see violence everywhere.”

“I can’t go on like this,” I said. “School’s a joke. I lie to everyone. My friends think I’m pathological.”

“That’s why it’s easier not to say anything at all.”

“How do you not say anything to anyone?”

“When you have no friends, it makes it easier,” he said, with that weird little half smile.

“Not helpful.”

“No…but more to the point, is what Sam told us true?”

Sharing time was over, and we were back to the matter at hand.

“I think I believe him,” I said.

“I’m not sure where I am with it, but it’s worth a trip to the Royal Gunpowder, at least. Callum and Boo should be back from hospital soon. We can go over this evening or tomorrow.”

“Or you can go now,” I said. “With me.”

“Rory.”

“Because if there is something down there, what are you going to do about it?”

“The same thing I’ve been doing for the last few weeks—I’m going to talk to him or her.”

“Yes, but he or she probably killed someone with a hammer, so maybe that’s not a good idea. You need me with you.”

“You need to understand,” he said. “This is our job. I am glad you are back and that you want to help, but—”

“I’ll go by myself, then.”

“You really are difficult, aren’t you?”

“This should not be news.”

“This isn’t a game,” he said.

“When, at any point, has any of this been fun or gamelike to me?” I asked. “Getting stalked for weeks? Getting stabbed? Going into a deserted underground station in the dark to see a man who had murdered about a dozen people? Tell me which part was the game, because I’m missing it.”

I had him there, and he rubbed his nose again.

“Same rules,” he said. “Let me do the talking. And I mean it this time. Promise me, and keep your promise.”

“I promise,” I said. “But, you know, he talked to me—and my talking is the thing that got him to talk.”

“We got away with it in there, but we won’t get away with it in a more public setting. We’ll say you’re a social worker, victim services, just there to observe. Keep your head down and don’t engage. And remember, the owners of this pub just lost a family member.”

“I know.”

“So a certain amount of—”

“I’ll be quiet. You go first. I get it.”

What mattered was that underneath all of this Stephen was saying yes.

The Royal Gunpowder was very crowded. It appeared that some kind of informal memorial gathering was going on. There were flowers on the bar, and the conversation was loud, but respectfully so. We got some looks when we came in—well, Stephen did. I had shed the police accessories and was now playing the part of a person who was not going to say anything. Stephen worked his way to the front in a practiced way. (I’d noticed that most English people knew how to get to the front of a crowded bar, that there was an understood way to shoulder slide to the front without actually cutting anyone else in line.)

There was a woman behind the bar in a plain black dress, deep in conversation with a group of men who were holding their AA chips. She nodded a lot and wiped her eyes a few times. Stephen interrupted as politely as possible and showed his warrant card. I stared into the back of Stephen’s jacket as he introduced himself and made some polite inquiries about how things had gone with the reopening.

“Do you feel comfortable here?” he asked.

“What you mean, comfortable? My father-in-law was beaten to death with a hammer in the basement,” she said. “So, no, I suppose you could say I don’t feel comfortable. ”

“I’m very sorry,” Stephen said quickly. “Let me rephrase that. Has anyone been disturbing you? Any vandals? Anything we need to be aware of? Sometimes crime scenes get hangers-on, so we like to check up.”

I peered around Stephen in what I hoped was a casual manner, to see how this was going.

“Oh,” she said. “Course. I see. No, nothing like that.”

“You don’t seem sure. Really. If there’s something, however small, we’ll look into it.”

“Well…” She considered for a moment. “After what happened, we hired a cleaning crew to come in and clear the place up. You can hire people for this sort of thing, you know. They came and scrubbed everything, even the ceiling. Made it perfectly neat and new down there. Then I went down for the first time. I took some of the flowers people had been leaving and put them on the spot where it happened. When I went down the next day to change the water in the vases, they were all in different places. I asked the staff if they done it, and they say they didn’t. They swore they didn’t. But it’s just flowers. You can’t call the police because someone moves your flowers. Anyway, I’m sure one of the staff did it, but maybe they didn’t want to say when I asked. Maybe they thought I’d be angry.”

“It would be helpful if I could go down and have a look,” Stephen said. “Make sure everything’s secure. It will only take a minute.”

“Who’s she?” the woman said, nodding at me.

“Victim relations,” Stephen answered smoothly. “She does the paperwork to make sure everything’s in order.”

I feigned intense interest in a menu on the wall advertising a five-pound lunch special. The woman started to come down with us, but Stephen held up his hand.

“If you can just stay up here,” he said. “It’s procedure. Health and safety. Stupid, I know, but there you go.”

To my surprise, the woman nodded again and went back up the stairs, shutting the door. This astonished me.

“I can’t believe that worked,” I said when we got downstairs. “Procedure? In my town, no one would just let the law into their basement to have a look around for seemingly no reason at all. They’d either get a lawyer or a gun. If uncertain, they’d get both.”

“This is England,” he explained. “Tell someone it’s a procedure, and they’ll believe you. The pointless procedure is one of our great natural resources.”

There was a shelving unit directly at the bottom of the steps, which was full of toilet paper: rolls and rolls of the stuff. Someone liked buying in bulk. There was an open doorway to the right and the left of this.

“Is there anyone down here?” Stephen asked the dark. “We mean you no harm. Please make yourself known to us if you are here.”

No answer.

“Here’s what we are going to do,” Stephen told me. “We go to the bottom of the stairs. You will look to the left, and I will look to the right.”