The Madness Underneath: Book 2 (THE SHADES OF LONDON) (16 page)

I know it the minute I approach the turnstiles and buy a ticket, because that’s when you can smell the chlorine. As soon as it hits my nose, my reptile brain wakes up, checks the files, and sends up the warning. And this is why I always end up claiming I have cramps and holding the towels while gleeful children run around me, totally unafraid.

On this particular morning, it wasn’t chlorine I smelled. But as we walked through the front door, I caught the faint bite of antiseptic and the strange and false odor of recycled air that comes from a place with no open windows. Hospital smell.

We started at the front desk. From there, we were taken to a series of stations through a series of doors that had to be opened with swipe cards. Stephen had to show something called a warrant card, which turned out to be his police identification. He signed documents on clipboards.

I could tell, as we progressed through the building, that we were moving to more and more serious levels. In the beginning, there were paintings on the walls, paintings done by the patients. At first, the paintings just hung. Then they were bolted. Then they were gone and the walls were a plain off-white and everything else was a soothing light green. Everything was calm, orderly, and official.

Finally, after some last papers were signed, we were taken to a room with a heavy door, with large, very serious bolts on the outside and a tiny window just big enough to peep in. We were let inside, and the door was locked behind us.

My first impression of the man at the table was that he was big. He had a few days’ scraggly beard, which was blondish-gray. He was dressed in the hospital-issued clothes, which looked like scrubs. His hands were cuffed together on the table, but
this didn’t feel necessary. He slumped in his chair, looking feeble and defeated. There were cuts and bruises on his forehead from where he’d banged it into a wall.

The room was bare except for a few bolted-down chairs and the bolted-down table. There was a CCTV camera in the corner of the room, behind a protective coating of thick plastic, with just a circle cut out to expose the lens. Stephen looked at the camera for a moment. The red light on the side suddenly blinked and went off. No cameras. This was a private interview.

There were two chairs on either side of the table, but I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to sit next to Stephen, or if this was his job and I was supposed to hang back.

“I’m Constable Dene,” Stephen said. “And this is WPC Devon.”

I guess my real last name, Deveaux, was too distinctive, and Devon sounded more English.

Sam raised his head slightly.

“Constable?” he said.

“I realize you’ve probably been talking to a number of people of a much higher rank.”

“Done talking. I’ve told you lot already.”

“And I realize you might not want to tell your story again,” Stephen went on. “I realize you’ve had to tell many people, but we’re going to need you to tell us again.”

“You afraid to sit down?” Sam asked me.

Actually, yes. I was terrified of sitting down. How nice of him to notice.

“PC Devon,” Stephen said, without turning around, “why don’t you sit down?”

Now all the attention was on me, and it was possible that
nothing would go forward if I didn’t peel myself off the wall and sit in the chair. I was, I reminded myself, not a trained police officer or mental health professional or anything like that. I was a high school student, a foreigner, and someone who had gotten into all of this completely by accident, and it was not my responsibility to be big and brave here. But I had demanded to be here.

I unstuck myself from the wall and planted myself in the plastic chair. I put my hands in my lap, where they were safe from germs and whatever else it was I feared in this room.

Now we could continue.

“I know this is difficult for you,” Stephen said, “but it would be helpful, and you’ve been very cooperative. We know that.”

Sam sighed—an all-body sigh that rounded his shoulders.

“I don’t want to. I’m tired.”

Sam’s chin sunk into his chest, and he examined the locks that bound him to the table.

“In your own time,” Stephen said. “We’re not here to bring you any trouble. We’re here to listen.”

Sam turned his attention to me. His eyes had a yellowy cast.

“You’re not police,” he said. “Are you?”

“WPC Devon is an observer from our Care in the Community division,” Stephen said. “I’ll be asking the—”

“You’re not,” Sam said. “I don’t think either of you are police.”

Stephen produced his warrant card, opened it, and slid it across the table. Sam leaned forward to have a look at it.

“And where’s hers?” Sam said.

“She doesn’t carry one in her capacity,” Stephen said smoothly.

“Why doesn’t she talk?”

Sam had clearly figured me out. Of course I wasn’t a cop. A small child or a dog could have figured that out. I guess I thought that since Stephen came up with the idea, it might actually work.

“She’s an observer,” Stephen said again. “If her presence upsets you, she can go into the hallway and we can talk alone.”

“I want to know who she is,” Sam said.

There didn’t seem any point in playing this game any more.

“I’m Rory,” I said.

“You’re American,” Sam replied.

Stephen didn’t make a noise, but I could see the sigh shrugging through his frame.

“Who are you?” Sam asked. “How did you get in here?”

“I’m here because bad things have happened to me.”

That got his interest.

“What kind of bad things?”

Stephen cleared his throat loudly. “I don’t think this is—”

“What kind of bad things?” Sam said again. His eyes were locked on me. This man was supposed to have murdered someone with a hammer. Being here, talking…these were possibly not the best ideas I’d ever had. But talking is still my thing, and talking was better than not talking.

“I was stabbed,” I said. “At Wexford.”

“You’re that Ripper girl,” Sam said. “They said it was an American girl. She’s the Ripper girl.”

That last one was to Stephen, who was forced to nod.

“Why did you bring the Ripper girl here?”

We were so far off track now that Stephen had no immediate reply to this quite reasonable question.

“You saw the news reports,” Stephen said, after a moment.
“Do you remember how the suspect was never caught on CCTV?”

These words had an immediate effect on Sam. His arms went slack, and the restraints clanked against the table. The rest of his body became more alert.

“I think something in that cellar wasn’t quite right,” Stephen said.

Sam shook his head, as if he had water in his ear that he needed to dislodge. “No,” he said.

“Sam, I don’t think you wanted to hurt Charlie. Did you hurt Charlie?”

“I already said I did!”

“But
did
you?”

Sam began to cry. Tears dribbled down his face, getting stuck in the stubble. He turned his head back and forth as if trying to shake his face dry.

“What was in that cellar, Sam?” Stephen pressed on. “Why did you call Charlie down there?”

“I did it…”

“Sam.” Stephen’s voice had taken on a deep, steady tone that was kind of hypnotic. “Sam, you called him downstairs. Why?”

“The floor. I just wanted to show him the floor…”

“What about the floor?”

“The cross,” he said.

“What cross?”

“When I went down for the tonic water, there was no cross on the floor. But then when I went back down again for the crisps, there it was.”

“The cross?”

“It was drawn in chalk,” Sam said. “I thought there was something wrong with my head. And I got near it, and suddenly this glass came out of nowhere, like it had been thrown at me. I yelled for Charlie…”

I realized my nails were digging into my thighs.

“Charlie thought I was on something, but I wasn’t. I didn’t take nothing, I promise. And I was trying to tell him that…”

Sam had started to shake, an all-over quiver that rattled his arms and pulled on the restraints that bound him to the table. Tears trickled freely from his eyes.

“What happened next, Sam?” Stephen asked quietly.

Sam shook his head.

“Sam,” he said, “we will
believe
you.”

“I don’t want you to believe me.”

It was horrible to watch, this tormented man, chained into place.

“Charlie started to wipe the cross away,” he said. “He was down on his knees and saying, ‘We’ll just clean this up and have a cup of tea and we’ll talk…’ He thought I was high and things were going bad in my head. And then, the hammer…It did it on its own. I promise you, it went right for him, on its own. Right through the air. I didn’t believe what I was seeing. I would have stopped it, but I didn’t understand what was going on…but that didn’t happen, did it? The hammer didn’t move by itself. I must’ve done it. It was just me and him, and I picked up the hammer when it fell to the floor, and…it must have been me. I must’ve killed him. I must have—”

He broke down entirely, his body shuddering. He was chained to the table and weeping in agony.

Stephen stood and indicated that I should as well.

“You’ve done the right thing, telling us. This is a good place. They’ll look after you here.”

Sam turned away from us to face the wall, and the tears streamed hard and fast again. His sobs filled the room, and the air got thick and humid. The horror of it all was in this room, in sweat and tears and adrenaline—the pain of a mind rejecting something that seemed unnatural, something that had no place in this world. Something violent that had no face or body.

“Sam.” Stephen’s voice had gone very soft, softer than I had imagined it could go. “You’ll be looked after. You don’t need to be afraid.”

“I did it,” Sam moaned. “I did it. I must have. Please tell me. Please. Please tell me what’s happening…”

“What’s happening…” Stephen paused and looked for something to say. But how did you explain a thing like this to a man who’d seen his boss die right in front of him? A man who believed he committed a murder, and was now in a hospital chained to a table?

“I’ll speak to someone outside,” Stephen said. “They’ll give you something. It will be all right. You will get all the help you need. Thank you for talking to us.”

He nodded to me, and I stood up slowly and we left the room.

14

I
DIDN’T EXACTLY RUN OUT OF THE HOSPITAL WHEN WE finished, but I came pretty close. Once we were outside, I tipped back my head. The drizzle went up my nose, along with the smell of wet leaves in a parking lot. I loved everything about this wet parking lot. I loved the fog that smothered the landscape. It wasn’t the hospital itself that was bad. It was a perfectly nice and modern hospital—it was that it made me feel like I couldn’t breathe.

“I told you it wouldn’t be pleasant,” Stephen said.

“I’m fine,” I replied.

Stephen took me at my word. We returned to the car, but he didn’t start the engine right away.

“There are two possibilities here,” Stephen said. “One, Sam beat his employer to death with a hammer. Or, two—”

“He saw an actual flying hammer beat his boss to death, and now he’s in a hospital for the criminally insane.”

“That’s the other one.”

“Which one do you think it is?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” He rubbed at his hairline. “The forensics fit. The blood splatter on his clothes and body indicated that he had been standing about two feet away from the victim at the time of the attack. The pattern on the hammer was a bit more confusing. His fingerprints were on it, but they seemed to be old prints—the blood was over the top of them. The way the blood ran down the handle, someone’s fingers should have interrupted the stream, but they didn’t. The best guess was that he held the handle very low, and possibly with something like a cloth, but that was never recovered. The oddities about the grip patterns on the weapon could be overlooked because he
said
he did it.”

“So it could have been a flying hammer?” I said.

“So it could have been a flying hammer. Or it could have been a weird way of holding the hammer. And if you’re bashing people’s brains in with a hammer, you might hold said hammer in a strange way, because it’s a strange activity…Are you sure you’re all right?”

As far as I knew, I was being completely normal. I wasn’t screaming or crying or twitching uncontrollably. And I was feeling increasingly better every second we were out of the hospital. Clearly, though, I was giving off a vibe that indicated I wasn’t okay.

“Just, you know, being in there makes me feel like it might be me, you know? Weird in the head.”

“You’re not weird in the head.”

“There’s a giant talking chicken next to me that would say otherwise.”

“You are not weird in the head,” he said, more firmly. “You
went through something horrible, and you survived, and you’ve done amazingly well. You’re strong. Stop making jokes about it. There is nothing wrong with you.”

I wasn’t expecting this little outburst, or the anger that edged his voice.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be sorry. Just don’t do it. It’s important. Because of what we do, it’s important to always remember that there is nothing wrong with you. Don’t make jokes about your own sanity. You didn’t like being in there. Neither did I. It’s scary because when you have the sight, you wonder if you’re going to end up in one of these places.”

“Who knows?” I said. “If I’d told Julia what really happened, maybe I would have. Maybe I would have liked it in there. I think you get to do a lot of crafts. I like crafts. Crafts are good. I can make a mean God’s eye. And I bet you get to eat a lot of pudding. Give me pudding and give me crafts and I’m going to be content for a while…”

“They’re not bad places. I liked my time in one better than school in many ways.”

It’s not a good feeling when you realize you’ve been making jokes about something that the person you’re talking to has actually been through.

“I didn’t mean…”

“I know you didn’t. I’m just telling you. If someone needs mental health care, they belong in a facility like this. But what you have is not a mental illness. I didn’t go into hospital because I saw ghosts; I went because I attempted suicide. And that suicide attempt had nothing to do with the sight.”