Rabbit Hole Read online

  It wouldn’t be doing my investigation any favours, of course. It was one less person to talk to, one less witness who’d been on the ward when Kevin was killed, but the Foot Woman had never been high up on my list of suspects. I just couldn’t see her sneaking into Kevin’s room, giving his feet a quick rub then popping a pillow over his face. Like I said, it wouldn’t have taken much, but she was just too . . . wispy. I doubt she’d have been able to strangle a mouse.

  When she was at the airlock, shaking hands with the nurses, we all took our shoes off and waggled our feet at her. It was Lucy’s idea. Jamilah smiled and nodded, but I don’t think she got the joke.

  ‘I give it two weeks,’ Ilias said. ‘Two weeks and she’ll be back.’

  I went to the toilet and had a little cry after Jamilah left.

  For me though, not for her.

  Yeah, it would have been nice to commandeer the empty MDR and use that as a makeshift interview room like Seddon had done, but with nowhere else even remotely suitable, I had to think on my feet a bit. Use whatever opportunities presented themselves. Also, now the staff were starting to get on my case, I didn’t want to make too much of a song and dance about it anyway.

  I needed to do things quietly, to be subtle.

  Neither of which I’m good at.

  After lunch, I saw that The Thing, the Walker and Big Gay Bob were still sitting in the dining room, so I joined them. Obviously one of the nurses – Mia, as it happened – joined me.

  I sat and listened for a few minutes. Subtle . . .

  ‘How long’s that corridor out there?’ Tony asked Donna.

  Donna shook her head.

  ‘Whatever it is, I reckon you must walk miles every day, right? You must be dead fit.’

  Donna lifted her T-shirt and pinched at her belly, struggling to squeeze as much as a millimetre of fat between her fingers and thumbs. ‘Need to get this off,’ she said, looking away. ‘It’s disgusting.’

  Tony grabbed a handful of his considerably larger belly. ‘Maybe I should join you. I need to start getting in shape. The Thing’s coming for me soon, I can feel it.’

  While Tony started telling Donna all about his shadowy nemesis for the umpteenth time, I slid across to Bob and leaned close.

  ‘How did it go with the police the other day?’ I glanced across, but happily Mia, who was sitting a few tables away, wasn’t paying the slightest attention.

  Bob nodded slowly. ‘The one taking the samples was a little cracker, I know that much. I gave her my phone number.’

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Like, where were you when it happened?’

  ‘When what happened?’

  ‘When Kevin was killed.’ I punched him on the arm. It was meant to be playful, but I saw him wince.

  ‘I can’t remember.’ He winked at me. ‘That’s what I told them.’

  ‘Right . . .’

  ‘Because I was having a bad day and I really couldn’t.’

  ‘Meaning you can remember now?’

  Now the nodding was a little more enthusiastic. ‘Yeah, I was watching the telly.’

  ‘OK.’ He’d certainly been in there when I’d left to go the dining room. Several of them were – Donna, Lucy and Ilias for starters – and I already knew that’s what they were likely to tell me.

  ‘I wanted to change the channel,’ Bob said, ‘but Lauren wasn’t having any of it. There was a film on the other side with Gwyneth Paltrow in it and she’s the one who talks about her fanny all the time so I really wanted to watch it. Lauren said I couldn’t, though. I remember sitting there, staring at the back of her stupid head and thinking how badly I wanted to punch it.’

  ‘Did you hear anyone saying anything about Kevin? Anything bad, I mean . . . before it happened?’

  Bob shrugged. ‘There’s always somebody falling out with someone, isn’t there? I know Lauren didn’t like him very much.’

  ‘Did she say why?’

  ‘He just got on her nerves, I think.’ He lowered his voice. ‘They were arguing by the airlock one time and I heard her call him a two-faced little ponce . . . something like that. Mind you, everyone gets on Lauren’s nerves, don’t they?’

  I saw Tony get up to fetch a glass of water from the jug at the serving hatch. I stood up and went across to get one myself.

  ‘Funny sort of time, isn’t it? A strange atmosphere, don’t you reckon?’

  ‘Same old, same old,’ Tony said.

  ‘Yeah, but now, I mean. After what happened to Kevin.’

  He downed half a glassful, then stared at me. ‘I suppose.’

  ‘You must be feeling a bit bad, though.’

  ‘Must I?’

  ‘After that fight and everything. I mean, did you and him get the chance to make up before . . . ’

  ‘That ruck wasn’t my fault,’ he said. ‘The police were giving me grief about this the other day and I told them, it was nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Certainly looked like it from where I was standing.’

  ‘That’s bollocks. It had already kicked off when I got there. I was trying to break it up and someone threw a punch . . . can’t even remember who it was, now . . . I was just defending myself.’

  He was starting to get a bit worked up, so I checked to see if Mia was watching, but she was deep in some conversation with George.

  ‘I’m not going to stand there and let myself get smacked, am I?’

  ‘Right,’ I said. It’s hard to take anything seriously, coming from a bloke who believes a demonic entity can disguise itself as a postcard, but it certainly seemed as though Tony was telling the truth. I felt a twinge of guilt because of what I’d told Seddon a few days before. ‘So, who did start it?’

  ‘Not really sure.’ Tony finished his water and examined the empty glass as though there might be something lurking at the bottom of it. ‘Lucy told me she thought maybe Kevin and Shaun were having a row and it got out of hand.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Lovers’ tiff or something.’

  I’d check with Lucy. I’d never seen Kevin and Shaun exchange a cross word, so if that was what had started the big fight a few days before the murder it would be interesting to find out what the two of them had been arguing about.

  ‘It was well funny, though.’

  ‘What was?’

  He jabbed a finger into my shoulder. ‘You. Standing on that chair and making a big speech.’

  Suddenly I didn’t feel quite so guilty any more. I had half a mind to get on the phone to Seddon, tell him I had more information and drop Tony even further in it. Tell Seddon he’d confessed or something.

  ‘Laying down the law,’ Tony said.

  Because I could, couldn’t I?

  If I felt like it, I could say anything about any of them.

  They’d deny it, but that didn’t matter. Most people in here are too drugged up to remember what they’ve told anyone half the time, never mind what they might have done. Most of them don’t even think they should be here, for Christ’s sake.

  Now Tony was laughing, a deep hurr hurr that was annoying at the best of times, and right then made me want to smash my water glass into his face. He pointed and started to shout, so that everyone else in the room could share the joke. Bob started to laugh, too.

  ‘I am a police officer . . . remember?’ Tony was bellowing and trying to do my voice, high-pitched and stupid. ‘I am a police officer!’

  Now I could see that Mia, along with everyone else, was looking. I decided that I’d got about as much information out of Tony as I was likely to get and headed quickly to the door. Donna was already on her way out, keen to put in some hard yards, so I followed her out into the corridor, fell into step next to her and began to walk.

  SIXTEEN

  ‘What
was all that about?’ Donna asked.

  I still felt angry about it and the speed-walking wasn’t helping to ease the tension. ‘Just Tony taking the piss,’ I said.

  ‘Want me to mess with him a bit? Tell him I’m the Thing?’

  ‘No, you’re all right,’ I said.

  We had already walked the length of the corridor three times as far as the MDR, turned and walked back again.

  ‘I think it’s good that you’re trying to find out what happened,’ Donna said.

  ‘It’s important,’ I said.

  ‘Police are obviously doing sod all.’

  I don’t know why I suddenly felt the need to defend a service that had seen fit to kick me out on my arse. Something deep-seated that hadn’t gone away in spite of everything, I suppose. I couldn’t think of a time when I hadn’t wanted to be a police officer. I still can’t.

  I said, ‘I’m sure they’re doing everything they can. It takes time to build a case, to put a list of likely suspects together and interview them, to process forensic evidence.’

  ‘Like on CSI?’

  I bit my tongue. That stupid show is the bane of a detective’s life, making shit up and presenting it as gospel. I’d seen any number of trials go down the toilet because jurors thought they knew things once they’d seen them on the TV. Because they were too stupid to know the difference between forensic fact and fiction.

  ‘They’ll be able to find out exactly who’d been in Kevin’s room, won’t they?’ Donna nodded.

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘Because these days you just need a sample of the air.’

  Like I said . . .

  We walked past the examination rooms again, the occupational therapy room and the meds hatch. Again. Mia, who was clearly taking her WEO duties seriously but had drawn the line at following the pair of us up and down like an idiot, had staked out an observation post in the doorway of the nurses’ station. We walked past the music room and the 136 Suite, turned right at the dining room and headed for the airlock.

  Lauren stuck two fingers up from the toilet doorway.

  Ilias said, ‘Idiots,’ as we marched past him.

  ‘Did you hear anything about Kevin and Shaun having an argument?’

  Donna shook her head.

  ‘You know, the big fight?’

  She shook her head again, eyes wide and fixed. With these athletes it’s all about focus. ‘What about drugs?’ I asked. ‘You know anything about drugs going missing?’ She nodded as we turned at the airlock and began another lap. I quickened my pace to keep up with her. ‘What?’

  ‘My drugs,’ she said. ‘They go missing all the time.’

  ‘That’s not what I—’

  ‘Well, they get taken at any rate. Soon as I get them brought in, they confiscate them. My Hydroxycut and my caffeine pills. That bitch Debbie even took my laxatives, for pity’s sake. They take everything I really need off me, then give me anti-depressants and Kwells to stop me drooling, like they know what’s best. I know what I need, Al, because it’s my body.’ She glanced at me and shook her head, tears in her eyes. ‘My laxatives . . .’

  As we walked past the nurses’ station again, I saw Mia writing something down. Behind her, Marcus pointed at me and something snapped. I felt it, you know? Like a tiny bomb going off inside.

  I turned to Donna. ‘Why do you do this?’

  Donna swallowed and began walking even faster.

  ‘Seriously, what is the point? Marching up and down this corridor like a clockwork lunatic, trying to lose the weight you haven’t put on because you don’t eat anything. Literally, nothing. Staring at yourself in the mirror all the time and thinking you look fat, which is what ordinary idiots like me do because most of us probably are . . . while you actually look like a jogger in fucking Auschwitz or something. I mean, seriously. All that rubbish you were coming out with the other night about Kevin killing himself. You don’t even see the irony of that, do you . . . ?’

  I stopped to get my breath back. Donna had moved ahead of me anyway now and I could hear her crying. Ilias was watching me, sitting backwards on a chair outside the 136. He said, ‘You tell her. Skinny bitch.’

  Suddenly I felt terrible for upsetting Donna and I knew I needed to knock it on the head for a bit.

  Have some time to think.

  My meds were beginning to wear off. I’d become well used to the sensation, like bathwater draining away, and to tell you the truth I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. Was I better at all this, at doing my job, with or without the anti-psychotics and the Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, whatever the hell they are? I wasn’t sure what ‘clear-headed’ even meant any more. I stood in the corridor staring at the sickly-yellow wall, panting like some knackered old dog and wondering what Johnno would think about it.

  Knowing exactly what he would say.

  Take a fucking break . . .

  I could see that, as per usual, Tony was standing at the exit with his bags packed, as I walked across to the meds hatch. There was, equally predictably, one person ahead of me, waiting for his mid-afternoon prescription. That was fine though, because the Waiter was exactly the person I was looking for.

  ‘Sounds like you had fun with those cameras,’ I said. ‘Last Saturday, after dinner.’

  Graham spoke without turning round because he did not want to miss that hatch opening. He was staring at it all the way through our conversation. ‘I always have fun.’

  ‘Just random, is it?’

  ‘What’s that mean . . . random?’

  ‘Which camera you shut down. Just an accident, was it, that on Saturday night it happened to be the camera covering the men’s corridor? Kevin’s room.’

  ‘Yeah, an accident,’ Graham said.

  ‘You sure nobody suggested it? Nobody asked you if . . . maybe you fancied doing what you do to that particular camera?’

  ‘I just picked that one.’ He shuddered and shook his head. ‘I didn’t like the look of it.’

  ‘Do people ever ask you?’

  He took so long to answer that I wasn’t sure he’d heard me. ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Like when?’

  Another long pause. Graham looked at his watch. He thrust his hands into his pockets, took them out again. ‘Once someone asked me to put food on the camera in the music room because someone else had been playing the guitar and she didn’t like it, so she wanted to go in there and smash it. Smash the guitar. Don’t ask me who it was, though, because I’m never going to tell you her name.’

  I didn’t bother, because it wasn’t important. Lauren, obviously . . .

  ‘Did you tell the police about that?’

  ‘Yes, I had to, didn’t I?’ He tapped at the hatch window. ‘Someone obviously told them that sometimes I mess about with the cameras, because they asked me all sorts of questions about it. It wasn’t very nice, actually. It was like they were accusing me of something.’

  ‘That must have been upsetting,’ I said.

  ‘Are you accusing me of something?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ I said.

  He tapped at the hatch again. ‘Good, because I wouldn’t like that.’

  The window opened to reveal George, who said, ‘Hello, Graham. Fancy seeing you here.’

  Graham laughed and leaned on the counter, so I knew the interview was finished. He took his meds like a child collecting a prize. He said, ‘Thank you, George,’ and marched away without looking at me.

  I stepped forward to take mine, then moved quickly away.

  ‘No, thank you,’ George said.

  L-Plate was next in line, so I lingered while she picked up her pills. Just your basic anti-depressants and stuff to combat the withdrawal. Methadone or whatever. I knew that, because she had an injection once a month for the heebie-jeebies.

  I can’t stan
d needles, so I’ve always opted for the tablets. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I’ll get oral dispersibles, which are basically just these wafer-thin squares that melt on your tongue. Yum!

  I collared her as soon as she stepped away from the hatch.

  She raised her hands. ‘Too close . . .’

  ‘Sorry, L.’ I raised my own hands in apology and moved back a little. ‘I just wanted to ask you . . . I heard that you know what started the big fight a couple of days before Kevin was killed.’

  ‘Heard from who?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, honestly. Something about a row between Kevin and Shaun?’

  ‘Oh, that, yeah.’ Lucy leaned back against a wall and began doing weird stretches, like she was practising some kind of psych-ward t’ai chi. She was wearing a Calvin Klein T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms same as me, only I was damn sure she hadn’t bought her trackies at JD Sports. ‘Well, to be honest I didn’t hear very much, babe. They were shouting at each other after the last occupational therapy session. I was only in there because I wasn’t very happy with what I’d painted that day and I was trying to tidy it up a bit.’

  ‘What were they arguing about?’

  ‘I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop or anything. I mean I really wasn’t, so I just caught snippets of it. There was something Shaun wanted Kevin to do and Kevin wasn’t keen. Shaun was telling him he had to, that he was being stupid . . . that was about it.’

  ‘So that was what the fight was all about?’

  ‘Who knows what started that,’ Lucy said. She stopped the stupid stretching and leaned as close to me as I ever saw her get to anyone. ‘You think it had something to do with why Kevin was murdered? A grudge or whatever?’

  ‘I’m trying to piece it together,’ I said.

  She put her arms up, stretching her fingers towards the ceiling tiles, then cocked her head to whisper, ‘I’d heard it was a drugs thing, and I have to say that wouldn’t surprise me. Obviously, you know my history, right? Well, the fact is, one does learn to recognise it in other people.’

  I knew what she meant. Like coppers knowing when someone was iffy.