Cold Steel (13 page)

18

4.17 pm

'Have you been here before?' Moss Kavanagh sounded uneasy. He was driving along the two-mile stretch of pine-tree-lined roadway to Rockdale Hospital for the Criminally Insane in County Meath. County Meath was north of Dublin, the hospital an hour's drive from the city centre. The heat outside had reached twenty-six degrees. Inside it was over thirty and both Clarke and Kavanagh were perspiring heavily. They had shed jackets, revealing heavy sweat stains on both shirts. Clarke sat with his back against one door. His hair was matted down with wetness. All windows were open to catch the breeze and he gazed idly at the green countryside and rolling plains. April had been a wet month, late May warm and sunny, the combination producing a rush of growth in grass and hedgerows.

'I have two other arrests,' said Clarke.

'What are they in for?' Kavanagh sounded anxious to keep the conversation flowing and Clarke grinned as he sensed the younger man's discomfort.

'Murder. Both went to trial but they were as mad as hatters.'

Kavanagh slowed more than seemed possible as he negotiated a large pothole. He gently pressed the accelerator, skewering wheels onto the grass verge. 'What'd they do?' He flicked the windscreen wipers and pressed screen fluid into action to clear away collecting midges.

'Funnily enough,' said Clarke, now taking an interest as he spied the walls of the institution in the distance, 'both were family homicides. One fella slit his father's throat because he said someone on the radio told him to do it.'

Kavanagh gulped and spun the steering wheel sharply to avoid a sheep standing defiantly in the middle of the driveway. He blared the horn and the sheep bounded into a patch of long grass to the side. 'What about the other?'

The granite walls of the main buildings loomed ahead. Clarke craned forward and leaned against the passenger seat, chin resting on folded arms. 'You wouldn't want to know about her, Mossy, it'd put you off women for life.'

Kavanagh almost drove off the road as he spun around to look. 'Her?' he said incredulously. 'A woman?'

'Of sorts,' grinned Clarke, 'a woman of sorts. She smothered her four children in the middle of the night after she'd discovered her husband was having it off with some young thing.'

Kavanagh slid the car into neutral, keeping the engine idling. 'This isn't one of your sick jokes, is it?'

Clarke shook his head. His gaze was directed at the last yards of driveway ahead. 'Certainly not, Mossy. When the husband came home she smashed his skull in with a hammer and sat in the house for three days, surrounded by the corpses.'

Kavanagh shifted into first gear and let the car drift forward. 'Jesus,' he complained, shielding his eyes from the sun. 'What a way to spend a lovely afternoon.' He braked gently in front of large steel-barred gates. 'How do we get in?'

Rockdale Hospital for the Criminally Insane was located on a fifteen-acre plot along flat plains of valuable farming land. The institution was surrounded on all sides by a thirty-foot high, six-foot thick concrete wall. There was only one entrance, a thirty-foot gap in the wall across which a twenty-foot high steel-barred gate was pulled. The
gate was operated by a two-man unit located in a tiny stone cottage barely visible from outside.

The original building had been a poorhouse in the 1880s, then an 'asylum for the demented'. The government of 1906 had bought over the buildings and an extra ten acres to create a secure institution for the violent but insane. The buildings were upgraded in 1956 and recreational facilities added in 1983. However Rockdale, more or less, was still the same institution built at the beginning of the century. Most of the stonework was original, some of the attitudes of the locals in the nearest village five miles away no different. 'The Rock', as they called it, would always be the 'serious madhouse'.

Kavanagh beeped the car horn and within minutes a tall, heavily built security guard appeared. He stopped inside the bars and noted the car registration and occupants. Then he shouted for identification before going back inside the cottage. Clarke and Kavanagh waited and sweated. The distant sounds of farm animals broke the eerie silence, the buzzing of bees as they bounced along wild flowers the only distraction. The guard came back and began pulling at the gate. With a deceptive ease it opened in the middle and was drawn wide enough to allow the car through. The guard motioned to stop while he double-checked identities and registration.

Kavanagh watched every move, eyes darting as he took in the scene. 'They're very tight on security, aren't they?'

On the inside of the outer walls and stretching as far as the eye could see, razor wire was attached to the top ten feet of concrete. The afternoon sun glinted off the steel. Inside again a separate steel and barbed-wire fence encircled the outer perimeter wall, separated from it by a distance of about thirty feet. At one hundred-feet intervals flood lights and security cameras were trained on the inner grounds.

'When that electronic gate opens fully,' the guard pointed towards a second gate in the inner security fence,
'you can drive in. Go to the blue door at the front entrance of the grey building on your left.' He leaned in through the passenger window, scrutinising the occupants closely. 'I've rung ahead to let them know you're coming.'

Kavanagh mumbled his thanks and started forward.

'Better wait a minute,' cautioned the other man, following on foot. 'Don't go through until it engages fully.' He rested a hand on the open driver's window, waiting for the gate to settle, then leaned in again. He was grinning broadly. 'Otherwise you might start off a security alert. We wouldn't want that, would we?' His voice had a lilting country accent. 'Not after the fun we've had already with Jack the Ripper.' He laughed at his own joke, watching as the car edged past onto newish tarmac.

The heat was stifling, the air still with midges gathering in clusters around the open windows. In the rear-view mirror Kavanagh watched the outer and inner gates close over. He shifted into second gear. The new tarmac ran for three hundred yards, the tiny strip broken only by signs directing to smaller slip roads. DELIVERIES… RESIDENCE… GYMNASIUM… LIBRARY… MAIN HOSPITAL.

'Do you know there's a fifteen-foot swimming pool, a fully equipped gymnasium and a good library here?' Clarke amazed himself as he remembered the facilities.

'Really?' said Kavanagh.

Clarke sensed his partner was still uneasy. 'Yeah, and they're hardly ever used from what I hear,' he continued. 'The doctors told me the inmates spend all day staring at the television. It doesn't matter what's on.
The Simpsons, Sesame Street,
news, ice hockey. If it moves and makes a noise they'll watch it.'

The main grey building came into view and the car was parked in a bay marked for staff.

'Let's go.' Clarke eased himself gingerly out of the back seat. They left their jackets and walked to the blue front door. From a distance it looked like a standard door to any
building except for the scratch marks around an overly large keyhole. The marks extended almost eighteen inches in a semicircle around the lock. Both men stepped back to take in the Victorian splendour. The institution had grey granite walls and narrow windows with high-pointed roofs and slate tiles.

Kavanagh located an old-fashioned press bell and pushed. Nothing happened. They wiped sweat from their faces and swatted at the clustering flies. Kavanagh made to press again when the door was pulled open and a young, fresh-faced girl stood in the entrance.

'Are you the policemen?' Two heads nodded. 'Come in, Dr Dillon will be with you in a minute.' She pulled the door wide enough to permit one entrance at a time, then produced a bundle of heavy-duty keys and locked it. There was a similar pattern of scratch marks on the inside. 'Sit there.'

The policemen were directed to a wooden bench immediately inside the entrance hall. Without another word the girl walked inside a clear-glass office and picked up a phone. Clarke noticed Kavanagh grinning at him.

'Sure it'll be something to tell the wife,' he said.

Kavanagh's eyes wandered along the cool white-tiled floor. 'Not in her condition,' he growled. His gaze stopped at the next door on the level. There were scratch marks around its lock. 'The baby's due soon. I don't want her going into early labour from fright.'

The gloom of the entrance with its narrow barred windows added to the oppressive atmosphere. Keys turned in a lock and a door opened. Forensic psychiatrist Patrick Dillon walked into the hallway. He was dressed in navy slacks and a white, open-neck, short-sleeved shirt. A pair of glasses peeked out of his breast pocket. He closed the door behind and locked it.

He smiled and the gesture lightened the moment. 'I'm sorry to have kept you waiting but it takes a bit of time to come down through the wards, locking and unlocking each door.' In his right hand there was a circular steel-band
cluster of heavy-duty keys. The group shook hands briefly. 'You've come to see your Mr Kelly.'

'I've come to take him back,' said Clarke.

'There might be a problem with that.' Dillon sounded as if he was describing some mechanical complication.

'Why?'

'I could spend all day trying to explain this in medical terms,' Dillon warned. 'It's better you see for yourself.' He walked to the office and began conferring with the girl, their heads locking momentarily as they flicked over paperwork. Finally he came back to the entrance hall. 'Before we go upstairs I'd like to make a few things clear.' Dillon was slightly smaller than Kavanagh and his head bobbed as he talked. 'This,' he explained, 'is a hospital, not a prison. My job is predominantly to help my patients regain their sanity or control the distress of their insanity.' Kavanagh glanced briefly at Clarke but the other man ignored him.

'The rooms here may look like cells but the doors are open most of the time to allow patients to wander freely along the corridors.' Kavanagh's mouth dropped. 'Within certain limits, of course,' Dillon added hastily. 'The inmates are delighted with anything that breaks up the daily routine and may become intensely interested in you.'

He turned the key in the first door. The three walked silently along a narrow corridor towards yet another door with large lock and scratched surface.

'Visitors often comment on the rather strange, staring expressions they find here.' Click, twist, turn. Another door was opened. Click, twist, turn. It was locked again. 'The patients look but you get the uneasy impression their gaze is about six-inches distant. When they talk their minds could be miles away. This may be due to their psychiatric condition or the drugs we use.' They stopped at another door. A large key was selected. 'Any questions?'

Clarke rested his back against the corridor wall. Kavanagh shook his head.

'This is a very quiet institution,' continued Dillon. 'There are rarely any violent incidents. We do not use batons, straitjackets or any restraining device. Our staff are trained to deal with any unpleasant incidents with minimum force.'

Kavanagh watched the key turn in the lock. 'Thank God for that,' he said.

Dillon grinned. 'I'm afraid Kelly was the exception to that rule.' The door opened and a heavy barred steel gate confronted. Dillon waited for a four-minute security lock to activate. A small TV camera beamed down. 'This is the maximum security ward.'

The first thing Clarke noticed was scuff marks on the walls. The corridors they had walked were clean and bright with good natural light through the heavily barred windows. The paintwork was unscratched. Inside the maximum security ward the paintwork was of a similar texture and colour, but at about waist level here and there distinct scuff marks could be seen.

Dillon noticed Clarke's uneasy inspection. 'Kelly's handiwork,' he explained. 'And we've only had the place painted recently,' he added glumly.

At the sound of their voices a head appeared out from one of a strip of open doors along the corridor. The head was followed by the body of a small, red-haired man.

'Dr Dillon?' The voice was loud and strident. He waddled closer. 'Are you going to let me out in the sun at all? I'd like to get outside.' He noticed Clarke and Kavanagh. 'Are you here to talk to me?' he barked. 'Are you from the newspapers?' He confronted Clarke aggressively. His voice was slightly slurred, making his country accent indistinct.

Dillon intervened and lead his patient back to the main nurses' station where a white-coated male attendant waited. The small red-haired man was then talked back into his room where he lay on the bed and restored his gaze to the ceiling.

'Strangled his sister, his mother and the family dog,' said Dillon.

As they passed each cell Moss Kavanagh squinted inside. Most of the inmates sat or lay staring at the walls or ceiling, some muttering to themselves. The rooms were clean and reasonably spacious. Many had pin-up photos while others carried popular football stars. In one cell religious posters covered all available space, on the window sill there was a cluster of religious statues. From the far end of the corridor a baying roar erupted. The howl came from behind a closed door above which a green light glowed. Two attendants waited outside. The scuff marks on the walls here were at head level. Slivers of broken glass lay on the floor. The glass was of the wire-reinforced variety.

Dillon flicked at a shard with the tip of a shoe. 'Look at the TV monitor.'