Bedlam (23 page)

Chapter Thirty-Eight

McNeil headed out via Bedlam’s decaying centre towards the more leafy suburbs in search of the hospital. He yearned for pollution-free air to clear his senses and reset his chaotic mind. Negotiating the evening traffic with one hand on the wheel, he held the phone at his ear. The streets were busy, the roads slick with ice. He should have pulled over to make the call but necessity won out over good judgment. He had a sense of momentum building exponentially, inevitability, and the sooner he reached it, the better for all concerned.

“Audrey,
it’s Joey. I need to speak to George.” Silence greeted him, and as seconds ticked by without a response, he opened his mouth to repeat the request, impatient now, driven by urgency, fuelled by anxiety.

“The service went very well, Joey. Thank you for asking.” The reproving tone in Audrey’s reply stung him to the core. His attention slipped momentarily from the road and the sound of a blaring horn dragged him back with a start. While he’d spent the afternoon uncovering dirty secrets in Bales’ back yard, Kit’s family and friends had been gathered together at the church.

“I’m sorry, Audrey,” he sighed. “I’ve got a lot on my mind. I’m glad the service helped you, I really am, but it wouldn’t have helped me … I can’t change that. It’s just the way I feel.”  He braked hard at a red light. The seat belt tightened and his ribs protested. He would have taken his chances and skipped the light if there hadn’t been a car in front of him. He cursed the car and the traffic and everything else that seemed to be conspiring against him.

“I’m sorry, too, Joey,” replied Audrey. He felt her virtual embrace as she continued. “I shouldn’t have scolded. It’s been an emotional day for us all. I know how much you loved her. I know how hard this is for you.”

Not loved,
love
- present tense. He wanted to say it out loud but was weary of having to continually justify his belief, his commitment. He took out his frustration instead by banging a hand on the steering wheel.

“Is George, there?” he asked again, a little more insistent, impatience colouring his tone.

“He’s not, Joey. He’s at a meeting and won’t be back until late. To be honest, I think he needed some time … away from me. I’ve been a little tearful today.”

McNeil cursed under his breath both at his own insensitivity and the fact that George was unavailable. “Maybe you can help me instead. Kit had a charm on her bracelet, a snake. Do you remember it? Do you recall where she got it?”

“A charm?”

“I realise this isn’t the best time but it’s important, Audrey.”

“She had a number of charms. I don’t quite remember where they all came from. Some were birthday gifts. Some signified a special event like her graduation or passing her driving test. The snake may have been one of those …”

“An enamelled silver two-headed snake, Audrey.
It was quite distinctive. One black and one white.”

He got through the lights and turned right onto a wide road where it seemed some redevelopment was underway. Cars and builders’ vans lined the
kerb, double-parked between mounds of ploughed snow. Behind a mesh security fence, construction workers were closing down for the evening, switching off the arc lights one by one. An illuminated sign on a large wooden hoarding announced the future ‘Serenity House Assisted Living Complex’, a home for the elderly and infirm that was duly illustrated with smiling grey-haired residents and imaginative sun-drenched landscaping.

He pulled the car into a gap at the kerb and wound down the window. Placing his hand over the phone, he leaned out and yelled to an elderly man who’d stopped while his aged dog cocked its leg against the fence.

“Excuse me. I’m looking for Serenity House Hospital.”

The man gestured over his shoulder. "That’s it.”

“Huh?”

“The new old folks’ home is being built on the site of the old hospital.” He accompanied his words with a toothless smile.  “I’m hoping for a place when it opens. That’s if Barney here has passed on by the time they finish building. They don’t accept
dogs, you see. None of these places do. What they expect you to do with a lifelong friend, I’ve no idea. It’s a bloody disgrace, if you ask me, but what can we do when our brains turn to cabbage?  We forget where we live, leave the pan on the stove and our own families don’t have time for us anymore.”

McNeil raised a brow. He didn’t have time for the ramblings of an old man either.
“Right. So, when did it close down?”

“Bloody hell, now you’re asking.” The man dropped his gaze to the dog at his feet. “That was in Barney’s dad’s mother’s time. Trixie, now she was a lovely old girl. She would only eat fish. Can you believe that? Parky madam! She had a beautiful shiny coat though.”

“How long?”

“Oh, mid-length, like a collie.”

McNeil hid his frustration. “No, how long since the hospital closed down.”

“Must be thirty years or more.
They moved the nutters over to the other place, and then I think that closed down as well. Not sure what happened after that. There’s no room in the modern world for crazy people, eh?” He gestured to the site. “Care in the community. What bloody community? This is Bedlam, after all.”

Once again another wild goose chase, courtesy of Dennis. McNeil scowled. “What other place? You said the residents were moved to another place.”

“I forget the name. The place where that psycho feller killed all his wives. You know, when I was a nipper we used to dare each other to climb over the wall and run through the garden. Always been a creepy place, that. The dogs, they won’t go anywhere near. Dogs know about these things. Trixie, now she was particularly clever. I reckon it was the fish. Brain food, they call it.”

The old man shuffled off with a backward wave, muttering to the dog as it laboured along behind him. McNeil turned back to the phone. He’d forgotten about Audrey. She was still speaking and he caught the tail end of it.

“… she cried so hard for little Nell. She just wouldn’t be pacified …”

“Nell?”

“They were barely two years old when they parted, babies really. Kit couldn’t get her tongue around the name Elizabeth, so she called her ‘Nell’.”

Of course.

He closed his eyes and drew a breath as the image drifted in. Two little girls. One red balloon, one yellow. One hand held tight, the other not quite.  Fingers slipping from a father’s grasp. Red balloon flying free, caught by the breeze, bobbing and teasing as it led the chase. Excited clumsy running, white leather sandals stained green with fresh-mown grass, laughing, squealing, crying -
Stop!
He was yanked back with a painful jerk. His stomach churned with unimaginable, sickening dread.

I told you.

I warned you.

Now see what you’ve done.

“And the charm?” He gasped, shaking his head to dispel the imagery. Heat flushed his face, his hand instantly clammy where he gripped the steering wheel.

“I just told you, Joey. You weren’t listening. She may have got it from Leonard. He was so kind to her, arranging her sessions. In fact, I’m almost sure he gave it to her. He was so supportive after we lost Elizabeth. He came to the service this afternoon. We hadn’t seen him for years. I wish you’d had the chance to meet him.”

“Leonard? Kit never mentioned him.”

“No. She stopped going for therapy after we came to Eden and she met you. I suppose all she really needed was a friend, and you were that, and more, Joey.”

“Therapy?” McNeil’s stomach tightened a further notch.

“Yes, she had dreadful nightmares, poor child. She would insist that she’d seen Elizabeth long after the accident. Wishful thinking, Leonard said. He explained it was quite normal for her to experience visions after such a tragic loss. Maybe if we’d found Elizabeth and put her to rest properly, things would have been different. George wasn’t comfortable with talk of visions. I
think he was relieved when the therapy ended and things got back to normal … well, as normal as they could ever be under the circumstances.”

Back to normal?
Back to the beginning?
McNeil couldn’t believe he had been so blind. “Where’s the meeting, Audrey?” He was making small talk now while his mind raced back and forth, picking things up and discarding them just as quickly.

“Why, at the church.”

“How long do you think George will be there?”

“Some time yet. I don’t expect him back before nine p.m. It’s the fundraising committee for the church picnic. We’re holding one here in Eden next summer. Since … Elizabeth
… we haven’t held a picnic. It just didn’t seem right. But we have to move on, all of us do, you included, Joey, and next year, as it’s the double-centenary of this wonderful little church, we decided we should celebrate the occasion with a picnic here on the village green in memory of both our girls.”

Kit and Nell sitting in a tree

Which will JoJo choose to free?

McNeil checked his watch. It was just gone five. He’d delayed long enough. “That sounds like a good idea, Audrey. We all need things to celebrate.” He smiled sadly. He was guilty of wishful thinking, too.

Gilmour House was exactly as Dennis had described it - padlocked gates and shuttered windows. It didn’t look as if it were in the middle of redevelopment, and when he thought about it, he hadn’t actually seen any evidence of work in progress when he’d attended his appointment. Richardson had merely told him work was on-going, but then again, according to Dennis, Richardson didn’t exist.

He rattled the gates, testing their security, their ability to keep folk out, or in, depending upon point of view. The padlock and chain were new, which was interesting, given Dennis’ insistence that the place had lain empty for the last twenty-five years. The ornate wrought iron gates were rusted in places and much taller than him, an insurmountable barrier in his current condition, so he sought an alternative method of entry. Regardless of what Dennis might believe, or common sense dictated, McNeil now knew that Gilmour House held secrets.

The building was enclosed by a high brick wall where it fronted the street. One side abutted the grounds of a now-derelict residence that showed signs of stalled building work, with a skip on the drive, a digger dusted with fresh snow and a half-hearted attempt at a mesh security fence. He placed his hand on the 'hard hats
Must be Worn
' safety sign and pushed the flimsy barrier aside.

Somewhere off to his left a dog sounded out his presence, but McNeil was satisfied that it was at least two gardens away,
and he trusted the old man who’d maintained that all dogs, if they had any sense, stayed clear of Gilmour House.

Halfway down the darkened rear garden, on an icy path that canted perilously to one side, he found what he was looking for. The boundary wall connecting the two properties had succumbed to the thrusting roots of an adjacent tree and had subsequently been reduced to a rough pile of fallen masonry. As he looked through the gap he could just make out the rear of Gilmour House through an overgrown, snow-shrouded orchard. He was sure he could see a dim light from a second floor window.

Sharp stone scraped his palms, sutures tugged and ribs complained as he clambered stiffly over the wall. He took a moment on the other side to catch his breath and control the pain.

The property was vast, far bigger than he’d realised from the front elevation or the interior briefly glimpsed when he’d met with Richardson. The garden ran to an acre or more, the far boundary unclear as it disappeared out of sight in a tangle of overgrown hedges, trees and gathering dusk. Extending back from the elegant façade was a series of extensions and additional wings, each one cobbled onto the other as successive owners had executed their own ideas for its use. The Grade II listing had frozen not only those bits of architectural merit but
also the ugly carbuncles, leaving the once graceful building deformed and asymmetric.

McNeil had empathy with the scarred bricks and mortar. His own building blocks were precariously stacked.

The boy was with him as he crossed the virgin snow, small feet lost in his larger footprints, arms outstretched, cart-wheeling for balance as he leapt the longer strides from one impression to the next. Together they approached the short flight of stone steps that led down to the basement entrance. McNeil felt the child’s warm candy floss breath at his ear as he stooped to check the lock. The door swung open with the merest of invitation, and the boy’s hand slipped into his and squeezed gently.
Yes
, he acknowledged silently, he would be careful
this time
.

The smell slammed into him before he had taken a full step into the narrow passageway. A thick, pungent odour of morgue-like disinfectant, underpinned by a cloying cocktail of sweet, damp soil and rotten vegetation, it caught the roof of his mouth and seared the back of his throat. The urge to spit it out was overpowering but his mouth was so dry he could barely swallow, let alone summon the required saliva. His eyes stung, nausea threatened.

The boy hesitated at the door, one hand on the frame, one leg raised ready for flight. The percussion in McNeil’s chest began a steadily increasing beat as he absorbed the child’s fears and made them his own. He took a shallow breath and held it while he listened for any sounds that might help to confirm that he was not alone in the building.