Someone To Save you (9 page)

‘It’s Wayne Cartwright, he’s dead. Killed himself.’

Charlie placed a hand on her shoulder as he moved past, heading for the cell. He would need to check on her later, make sure she was okay. A group of guards were milling outside. They straightened as he approached.

‘Let me in.’

They parted and he entered the cell. Wayne Cartwright, aged twenty, was hanging from the light fitting in the centre of the room. Two guards were struggling to get him down, like trainee butcher boys trying to unhook a piece of meat.

Charlie stepped closer, examining the situation, fighting his instinct to just turn around and go home. He’d seen suicides before, many of them hangings, in his thirty year career. It didn’t get any easier. Every act was a tragedy, and a failure of the prison service to protect these often vulnerable young men. Whatever they had done to arrive here, there was no way their departure should be in a box.

He looked at the cord that wrapped itself tightly around Wayne’s neck, cutting into the skin. It was thick. Electrical wire possibly. How the hell had he smuggled that into the cell? The other end was tied around the light fitting. The body twisted around and Charlie looked at the boy’s face. His eyes were wide, his mouth set open, as if he’d been frozen at the point of bone-jarring impact.

Something wasn’t right.

‘Leave him.’

The two guards looked across, confused.

Charlie waved them away. ‘Let go of him.’

Wayne Cartwright was hanging from the centre of the room. You need three things for a successful hanging – a rope or wire, a place to tie it, and something to jump off.

Two out of three meant only one thing.

The security room was located below ground level, in a subterranean world unseen by most hospital employees and patients – at least those still breathing. The level was also home to the morgue, and had an even more pervading clinical smell than the rest of the hospital. Sam rapped on the door, with Louisa silent at his side, trying to shake off his discomfort. With the nearby presence of the recently dead, and the absence of natural light, it was hard not to be spooked, even for a doctor using to staring death in the face.

The door swung open at speed. A moustachioed late to middle age man, wearing the black uniform of the security team eyed him with suspicion. ‘Yes?’ Unlike those around in the hospital above, he didn’t possess the physical bulk needed to carry out their far-to-often duties of dealing with the violent, mostly drunk visitors who graced accident and emergency every day. These days the security guards upstairs resembled nightclub doormen and some had come from that sector.

Sam explained the situation, half expecting the guy to cut him dead with a negative response. But the man seemed genuinely excited at being able to help.

‘Take a seat,’ he directed, gesturing to two threadbare chairs, as he pressed various buttons on the hi-tech unit that was flanked on all sides by television monitors. Sam and Louisa watched live images from the front entrance, the accident and emergency unit, and the grounds at the rear. It showed the bench where he had received the text message directing him to the London Eye. Sam hadn’t known there was a camera there, and he wondered whether the man had been watching him in his moment of weakness. He glanced across at Louisa and smiled hopefully.

‘We’ve just had these new digital cameras fitted,’ the guard explained. ‘They’re great little things, you know. Used to have to search through video-tapes, but now we can jump to the exact time we want.’

Sam nodded as the guard looked at him, impatient to find out whether the images would reveal anything.

‘Unfortunately, we don’t have cameras up on the floor you’re interested in.’

Louisa’s forehead creased. ‘But I’ve seen it. Right opposite the lifts.’

‘Dummy box,’ the guard replied. We’ll be rolling out more working units in the coming months. But we can look at the main entrance.’

Sam nodded, as Louisa pursed her lips. It was disappointing that they had been denied their simple solution.

‘What timeframe would you like to watch?’

Sam looked over at Louisa. ‘I went to my locker just before my last consultation,’ she said. ‘That was about three o’clock.’

‘And you noticed the phone was missing at…’

‘I got the call from her mobile just after three thirty,’ Sam confirmed.

‘So a window of thirty minutes or so, from three till three thirty,’ he said to himself, as he pressed buttons again. ‘Not to say that the person wasn’t already in the hospital before that time, but it’s a good place to start.’

They focussed on a larger TV screen, scrutinising the images of the main entrance. This was the only entrance into the hospital for visitors and the vast majority of staff. The image quality was excellent, giving a clear, side-on picture of each and every person as they entered and left the building. At three twenty, Sam saw himself walk past the camera, heading outside. Louisa spotted his pained expression, throwing a concerned glance in Sam’s direction, before returning to the screen so as not to miss anything or anyone. Sam remained fixed on the screen.

And then, just two minutes after Sam had himself appeared, Louisa spoke. ‘There,’ she said, pointing. ‘Stop it there.’ The images continued. ‘Can you rewind it and pause?’

‘Certainly,’ the man said, scrolling back ten seconds. He kept his hand at the console, over the pause button. ‘Say when.’

‘There,’ she said again. This time the screen froze instantaneously, locking the image of a man in its centre as he entered the hospital.

Sam examined the image. It was Richard Friedman – Louisa’s patient; the man who had approached them in the cafe earlier that day. He was still wearing the fluorescent yellow coat. That matched with the approximate time the phone went missing, but what about later when he’d been called to the Eye? ‘What about just before three thirty.’

The guard nodded, and whizzed forward through the minutes, before letting the tape play on in real time.

‘There he is again,’ Louisa said.

Again the image was locked into place. Richard Friedman was leaving the building just a few minutes before Sam received the call. And he was holding a something in his left hand. It could certainly have been a mobile phone.

Sam turned to Louisa. ‘Is there any other reason that could explain why he was here at that time?’

‘Not that I know of,’ she replied.

‘The phone could be his,’ Sam suggested.

‘No,’ Louisa corrected. ‘He doesn’t have a mobile.’

‘This place always helps me to relax,’ Louisa said, as they entered the vast atrium of the Tate Modern art gallery.

Sam looked around at the current exhibition – a towering series of sculptures that were a twisted, warped representation of the London skyline. Unlike Louisa and Anna, he’d never been that keen on art, but this was pretty impressive, even if he could only guess at the meaning.

‘I want to show you something,’ Louisa explained. ‘Up on the next floor.’

Sam nodded as they made their way up the stairs, emerging into an exhibition entitled “Healing Minds”.

‘They commissioned people across London with a mental illness to create artistic representations that explained their experiences and state of mind,’ Louisa explained. ‘Art therapy. Our hospital was one of the places that took part.’

They stood in front of a disturbing black and white sketch drawing – an image of a screaming face, flanked by what looked like bolds of lightening crossed with daggers.

‘Unnerving, isn’t it?’ Louisa said. Sam nodded.

Sam looked at it some more. There were what looked like tombstones mixed in with overgrown grass, and a pair of animal-like eyes. Then he moved to the information panel next to the canvas.

Richard Friedman - 2010

Louisa watched Sam’s reaction. ‘Richard said he used to draw and paint a lot when his wife was alive – mostly landscapes – but this was the first time he’d produced anything since she died.’

‘When was that?’

‘Eight years ago. She was killed in a road accident – knocked down on a zebra crossing by an uninsured, speeding driver.’

Sam shook his head as he was drawn in to the tortured face. Now he knew the author, he did recognise the features. It was a self-portrait of sorts. ‘He doesn’t look like an artist.’

Louisa smiled. ‘Why, because he hasn’t got a goatee beard and flowing hair?’

‘Point taken,’ Sam said. ‘Have you spoken to him about this?’

‘The sketch? No.’

‘How long have you been seeing him?’

‘Just over eight months.’

‘He’s depressed?’

‘Depressed, lonely, angry. He’s been to see people in the past, for counselling, but he was getting worse again, threatening to kill himself, so he was referred to me.’

‘Do you think he’s capable of doing what we suspect he’s doing?’

Louisa shrugged. ‘If you’d asked me that a couple of weeks ago, I’d have said no way, definitely not.’

‘But now?’

‘Maybe.’

‘What’s changed?’

‘I’ve always been wary of his neediness – like I said, the man’s lonely. But it’s been getting more sinister.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Turning up outside my flat.’

‘What? But, how did he know...’

‘I have no idea,’ Louisa interrupted. ‘I never reveal any personal information to patients.’

‘What happened?’

‘I told him to leave. And he did. But he came back the next night, and then again a week later.’

‘My God, Louisa, you should have told me,’ he said, his protective instinct for her kicking in. ‘I thought something was going on, that you were acting a bit strange recently.’

‘I’m a big girl, Sam, I can handle things. I don’t need to tell you everything.’

Sam thought of the note that he had found in her locker. ‘But you should have told me, or the hospital or police.’

‘He always just left when I asked him too,’ she explained. ‘I thought he was harmless.’

‘But he’s not.’

‘Probably not,’ Louisa corrected. ‘But what I don’t really get, it why he’d be targeting you. What would he have against you?’

‘I haven’t got a clue,’ Sam said, still perturbed that Louisa had kept this serious situation to herself. What if this guy had done something to her?

‘It just makes me wonder whether it is him.’

‘Okay,’ Sam conceded, ‘he might not be responsible. But you’ve got to let the police investigate. When was the last time he came to your flat?’

‘Last night.’

Sam shook his head. This was crazy. ‘Louisa, tell the police, please,’ he said, trying to hide his anger.

‘I will,’ she said. ‘I’m just worried that it might make things worse.’

‘The women that you counsel, whose husbands are beating them up, they say the same thing, don’t they?’

Sam sensed Louisa’s reluctance to answer, knowing where this was going. ‘Yes.’

‘And you tell them to go to the police.’

‘I do.’

‘Then you’ve got to follow your own advice, before things escalate,’ he said, more an order than a request. ‘The guy knows where you live, he’s been to your home after you told him not to, he more than likely broke into your locker and stole your phone, and we think he then made me think you were in danger. This has got to end, now.’

He watched them from a distance as they left the hospital grounds and walked side-by-side along the banks of the river. Using the crowds as cover, he followed them as they entered the Tate Modern, pausing outside for a second as he surveyed the group of youths on skateboards just off to his right. Entering the building, he ignored the sculptures and instead honed in on the couple as they climbed the staircase. He waited until they had disappeared from view before following.

It was risky, but he would be careful.

He spotted them stood by the painting, deep in conversation with their backs to him. He moved behind them in a wide arc, longing to interrupt the conversation with his stunning revelation.

But now wasn’t the time, so he just watched and waited.

11

Sam got home just after seven, mentally drained from the stress of the day. It was good to be back, and even though the place felt strange without Anna, all around there were comforting reminders of his wife. The apartment was filled with gifts from various parts of the world that Anna had worked – often the locals whom she helped would present her with something as a token of their thanks. Anna treasured and displayed each and every present, saying that to do otherwise would cause great offence, as if the gift-givers may find out if she had instead hidden the things away in a box. Sam walked around the flat, examining the items one by one, connecting to Anna through them. There was the traditional Indian jewellery box on the fireplace, encrusted with pink shells, the tribal African mask hung on the kitchen wall, given to her by an Elder in a remote village in Ethiopia, and the Peruvian throw in the bedroom that had been hand woven for her by the daughter of a local leader high up in the Andes. Finally there was the portrait of Anna, sketched in charcoal by a talented young school boy in Gambia, which was hung in the hallway. It captured her beauty and strength better than a photograph ever could.