The Man on Hackpen Hill Page 18

  Strover’s phone starts to ring. Silas nods, indicating she should take it. And then his own phone starts to vibrate. It’s Mel again. Maybe the tuberoses have wilted. He picks it up to answer and then puts it down again. Later. He’ll call her later.

  ‘Thanks,’ Strover says, coming off her own call. ‘Appreciate it.’ She hangs up and turns to Silas. ‘That was my friend in Hackney, a beat officer. He went to Bella’s mum’s place of work – a migrant centre in Homerton. Says they were definitely covering up something. As if they were protecting Bella from the police.’

  ‘Maybe your hunch was a good one,’ Silas says. He’s still not convinced but he’s learnt over the years that he’s not always right. ‘Do some digging on her too. Find out where she is now.’

  Strover nods and then looks up at someone behind him. Silas turns to see one of the admin staff walking across the Parade Room. Everyone falls silent.

  ‘Sir, I’ve got your wife on the line. Says it’s urgent.’

  60

  Jim

  Once he’s sure that the Range Rover has gone, Jim packs up his laptop and slips out the back door of the old family home in Swanage. It’s not safe to stay here, even if they didn’t know for sure that he was hiding upstairs. They could return at any time. His plan is to head out of town on foot, take the South-West Coast Path up onto Ballard Down, where he used to walk when he was younger. It will give him space to order his thoughts, get some perspective on things. And it’s safer than driving. If they followed him here, they will have clocked his number plate. At least no one’s been to visit his dad. He rang the carer to check before he left the house.

  He heads through the back streets of Swanage, up beyond the turning to the Grand Hotel, where his dad held his eightieth, and on past Ballard Down Stores, where Jim used to buy sweets as a young boy and cigarettes when he was older. He’s about to take the battery out of his mobile when Bella calls. The news that it was her friend Erin in the second circle shocked him to the core, making it all so much more real. There must be a connection between Erin and Porton Down. Has to be.

  ‘I was going to ring you,’ Jim says, walking up between two houses where the town ends abruptly and the countryside begins. He’s always loved this point on the route, the dramatic change in surroundings, like a border crossing. Its liminality. ‘Are you OK? I’m so sorry about Erin.’

  ‘Jim, I need to ask you something,’ Bella says.

  ‘Sure,’ he replies, leaving behind the houses for open fields, scattered with sheep. ‘Are you close?’ It’s strange talking to Bella as if they’ve known each other for years, but it also feels natural. And he can tell at once that she’s not happy about something. Her voice is faltering, freighted with anxiety. It must have been horrific when she found out about Erin.

  ‘Where exactly do you work?’ she asks.

  ‘Me? You know where I work,’ Jim says, wrong-footed by the direct question. A couple has appeared on the steep footpath up ahead, coming off Ballard Down.

  ‘I’m there now,’ she says. ‘In Porton, the village.’

  ‘Why?’ Jim asks. The MOD Police will challenge her if she’s seen hanging around The Lab’s perimeter fence. ‘You need to be careful,’ he continues. ‘These people don’t muck about, particularly with journos. And they followed me down to Swanage. If they think we’re working together—’

  ‘Jim,’ she says, interrupting him. ‘I’m not at the government site. I’m parked outside the pet shop. I’ve just been inside, talking to one of the staff.’ She pauses. ‘She said you work there – on the tills.’

  Jim lets out a short laugh, thinking of the shop, how much he enjoys its aisles, the range of exotic pets. ‘Were you talking to Becky?’

  ‘I don’t know her bloody name, Jim, but you need to tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘Of course, I’m sorry,’ Jim says, his voice quieter now. ‘I should have explained.’

  The path is steep and Jim has gained height quickly. He stops to look back on Swanage, spread out like a toy town beneath him. In the distance, a plume of smoke as the steam train carves its way through the valley towards Corfe. And then he hears its familiar whistle, carrying across the bay and down the years.

  ‘Everyone who works at Porton Down must have a plausible cover story,’ he says, turning to continue his ascent. ‘In case someone approaches us, starts asking awkward questions about what we do. It’s the first thing we’re told when we get there. Get your cover story cleared with security. And it has to be something that’s connected to our everyday lives, the closer to reality the better. My team leader’s “legend”, as it’s called, is that he works as a barman at the nearby Porton Hotel. Which suits him down to the ground as he spends more time at the bar than he does in The Lab.’

  ‘And yours is that you work at the pet shop in Porton?’ Bella asks.

  ‘I have been known to spend longer than my lunch break in there,’ Jim says, his tone light and playful. He feels rejuvenated up here on the down, where kestrels hover on the sea winds. Invincible. ‘Yemen chameleons are quite particular about their food. Nothing but gut-ready fresh locusts for Rocky! And I like the other animals they keep in the shop. It makes for a nice break from work. I find them very calming, they help me to switch off. Apart from the spiders. I’m terrified of spiders.’

  It’s a long time before Bella speaks. ‘OK,’ she says, hesitating. ‘It’s just that the woman said she was wondering where you were today,’ she continues, ‘why you weren’t on the tills.’

  ‘Well, now you know,’ Jim says, stepping aside as a couple walk past him on the path.

  ‘She also left a message on your answerphone,’ she continues, ‘when I was at the house, getting Rocky.’

  Becky is nothing if not thorough – and unaware of the star role that she plays in Jim’s cover story. She never will know. There’s no need to tell her as his legend is sufficiently convincing, given how much time he spends at the shop in real life, how often he calls through with orders.

  ‘And?’ he asks. ‘What did Becky want?’

  ‘She was just asking where you were.’

  It sounds as if Bella has lost momentum, abandoned her suspicions. She’s not from a hostile foreign country, at least Jim hopes she’s not, but it’s gratifying that his cover story performed so well when challenged. Too well, perhaps. For a while, Bella genuinely seems to have doubted that he works at Porton Down.

  ‘I’d ordered some locusts for Rocky and was meant to pop in and collect them today,’ he says. ‘Except that I was followed to work again by a Range Rover and came here, as you know.’

  ‘OK,’ she says tearfully. ‘Should I still come? To Swanage?’

  ‘Of course. But it’s no longer safe in the town. We need to meet somewhere else, nearby.’ He pauses, thinking through the best options. ‘How about Studland Bay?’

  It’s in the direction he’s heading anyway. Studland is an hour’s brisk walk on the coast path that goes up and over the down rather than round past Old Harry Rocks, where he was thinking of going. As safe a place as any for them to meet. Busy, plenty of people. Jim and his dad used to walk there often. And the sooner he sees Bella the better.

  ‘We could meet in one of the car parks,’ Jim adds, worried by her silence. ‘Maybe Knoll Beach.’

  Once he’s told her his story, shared his secrets about Porton Down, he will go to ground, take a ferry to the continent. He was intending to drive himself to Poole and ditch the car near the port, but she could drop him off after they’ve talked and she’s seen the files.

  ‘OK,’ she says, her voice faint and weary.

  ‘Call me when you’re near,’ Jim says, still troubled by her tone. ‘You sure that’s alright with you?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Bella says. ‘Just that I haven’t been to Studland Bay since my sister Helen left for Australia.’ She pauses. ‘It’s time I went back.’

  61

  Silas

  ‘How is he?’ Silas asks, sitting down next to Mel.<
br />
  ‘Not great,’ Mel says. She’s been crying and her eyes are bloodshot.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ Silas says, looking around at the bare white walls. They are in a consultation room at an acute mental health facility in Swindon. He puts a hand on Mel’s thigh and she flinches, moves her leg away. It’s taken him over an hour to get here since she rang the station. ‘How was the wedding?’

  ‘If you’d bothered to read your texts or answer your phone, you’d know it was a disaster,’ she says. ‘I had to leave early – to look after our son.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Silas repeats, full of remorse. Their son, Conor, is currently sedated in an adjacent ward, having had a psychotic episode in the middle of Swindon Old Town. They’d both thought he had turned his life around, after being diagnosed with schizophrenia two years ago, but it seems he’s slipped.

  ‘Apologies for keeping you,’ a cheerful man in glasses says, as he walks into the room and shakes their hands. Young enough to be fresh out of medical school, he introduces himself as Jonathan, a consultant psychiatrist, before running through Conor’s current condition and medication with empathy and understanding.

  ‘I dislike the umbrella term “schizophrenia”,’ Jonathan says, sitting back, hands clasped behind his head. His face is long, with a misshapen smile that suggests a state of permanent curiosity. ‘It means “split mind” in Greek, which has led to all sorts of misconceptions and stigmas over the years – about the condition and its treatment. Your son – Conor – isn’t suffering from a split or multiple personality. A shattered one, perhaps. And he may well have experienced psychosis, hearing voices – auditory hallucinations – as well as suffering from delusions. These are what, oddly, we call “positive” symptoms and typically they are controlled with drugs. More tricky to sort are the negative symptoms – the apathy, social withdrawal, poverty of speech, a general blunting of the emotions.’

  ‘But he’s been so much better recently, since coming off his medication,’ Mel says, glancing at Silas for reassurance.

  ‘Even got a girlfriend,’ Silas adds. They both like Emma, how she’s brought Conor out of his shell.

  ‘Relapses are not uncommon after withdrawal,’ Jonathan says, sitting forward to check his notes. ‘Even if it’s done slowly and carefully, as in Conor’s case. It would be easy to put him straight back on the medication he was on, but there’s a real opportunity here. I think it’s important we consider carefully what medication we give him, and for how long.’

  ‘What are our choices?’ Silas asks. He likes this man, his take on mental health. The faint whiff of theatricality that a lot of medics seem to have.

  ‘Conor’s choices,’ Jonathan says, correcting him gently. ‘One of the problems with long-term medication is that it can exacerbate certain symptoms, particularly the negative ones, as well as causing the brain to atrophy and shrink over time. And we can’t dismiss what’s known as tardive dyskinesia – uncontrollable, jerky movements of the face and body. Not such a risk with the newer meds, but we still see it. There’s also the issue of weight gain to consider, a common side effect of many neuroleptics.’

  ‘That’s why we weaned him off his previous medication,’ Mel says, turning to Silas, who nods. Conor had ballooned in size when he was being treated before. ‘He’s been getting into talking treatments, CBT and so on. We thought he was doing so well. Recovering. And now he’s relapsed and we’re back where he started.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Silas says, putting an arm around Mel, who has started to sob. This time she doesn’t recoil from the physical contact.

  ‘He is doing well,’ Jonathan says. ‘And a relapse following withdrawal of medication shouldn’t be seen as a failure. He’s on the long road to recovery. As I often tell my patients, it sometimes snows in May but summer always comes. In acute cases, medication is essential, of course, but my opinion is that Conor can make a full recovery without relying on them long term, once we’ve stabilised his condition.’

  He glances at his notes, putting them down on the table as he sits back again. ‘I’m a firm believer that schizophrenia, for want of a better word, is just one of many weird and wonderful ways of being human. And there’s a responsibility on all of us to enable people like Conor to live as full and rich an existence as possible. I’ve certainly got no intention of wrapping him up in a chemical straitjacket for the rest of his life.’

  Chemical straitjacket.

  Time seems to stand still. Silas looks at Jonathan, studying his face in the silence as he plays back the words in his head.

  ‘Sorry, what did you just say?’ Silas asks.

  He’s conscious of Mel turning to look at him. Jonathan seems surprised and intrigued in equal measure, creasing his eyes as he scrutinises Silas.

  ‘Just now,’ Silas adds, one finger raised in the air as if he’s trying to point to the exact moment in time.

  ‘I think I said I’ve no intention of subjecting your son to a treatment that’s akin to a medical straitjacket, as Thomas Szasz famously put it. Why?’

  Silas doesn’t know what to say or think.

  ‘Szasz was a well-known Hungarian-born American psychiatrist,’ Jonathan adds. ‘Infamous for being anti-psychiatry when in fact he was simply opposed to coercive treatments.’

  The consultant’s words drift around Silas like wisps of smoke, twisting and turning in the claustrophobic room.

  ‘You OK?’ Mel asks, looking at him.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Silas says. He can’t ring Strover now, not in the middle of a consultation about the welfare of his own bloody son. Not that Conor’s condition will come as a surprise to the station. Conor was sectioned this afternoon by two of his colleagues in uniform after announcing that he was going to kill himself. Everyone will know by now. ‘How else do people describe being on antipsychotics?’ he asks.

  Mel turns away, shaking her head in disbelief. The penny’s dropped. She’s realised that he’s thinking about work rather than their son. He’s there, at his wife’s side in a time of crisis, but he’s not there. A common refrain during the past year of counselling. And it’s a valid complaint. His mind is already back in the Parade Room, making calls, pushing Strover, trying to progress the crop circle case and stop all the deaths.

  ‘I’m not sure how else one would describe the appalling negative symptoms that can be induced by medication,’ Jonathan says, still clearly puzzled by the detective. ‘As I say, a general flattening of feelings and thoughts. Anhedonia, to give it its proper name. The inability to experience pleasure, or any emotional ups and downs for that matter.’

  ‘Like a zombie, in effect?’ Silas offers.

  ‘Absolutely. In fact, I’ve heard that very word used by patients in the past.’

  Silas nods, barely able to continue in the same vein. ‘Almost as if they’ve had a lobotomy?’

  Jonathan stares back at Silas, for the first time sensing another agenda. ‘Yes,’ he says. The penny’s dropped with him as well. ‘That too. Awful really, when you think about it.’

  62

  Bella

  It’s been three years since Bella was last at Studland Bay but it feels like yesterday. The place is crowded, even though it’s late afternoon, but she manages to find a space in Knoll Beach car park. Why hasn’t she been back here before now? Where has time gone? She thought she would be more nervous, frightened, but she feels calm as she turns off the engine.

  She looks around the sandy car park, the bright orange pedalos lined up down by the shore, the sailing dinghies, the signpost saying it’s 7,301 miles to Hawaii, 16 miles to the Isle of Wight. It feels like only yesterday that she was last here.

  No sign of Jim yet. She’d called him fifteen minutes earlier, as she drove through Wareham. He said he’d be waiting for her here. The trip to the pet shop rattled her but Jim’s explanation has made her feel better. She believes him, has no reason not to. He’s clearly obsessed with Rocky, admits that he spends too long at the shop during his lunch breaks. What better cov
er story? The woman at the shop was certainly convincing. Did she think Bella was a foreign spy?

  She opens the car door to cool down. Passing through Wareham had brought back happy memories of her dad. It was there that he’d boarded the steam train to Swanage with his two little girls, Bella and Helen, on one of their rare trips back to the UK from Mombasa. Her mum had driven over and picked them all up at the other end of the line in Swanage, meeting them with ice creams. A happy little family unit – until a year later, when he was shot in the head in Bakaara Market in Mogadishu. She wishes she knew where her mum was, why she’d left the house in such a hurry.

  ‘Bella!’ Jim calls out, jogging across the car park towards her.

  She sits there, watching him approach with his big looping feet and childlike smile. For a second, she wonders if this is all a mistake, but then she smiles too. It’s good to see him. Very good. Fate has thrown them together and she’s not complaining. They’re both loners, in their different ways. She gets out as he reaches her car and they hesitate awkwardly for a moment before hugging each other. Closing her eyes, she resists a sudden urge to cry. It feels nice to be held.

  When she pulls back to look at him, maybe to kiss him too, she notices a nasty cut on his forehead. She’d forgotten about the night before, what she saw in his bedroom window, hoped she might have imagined it.

  ‘What happened?’ she asks, falling quiet, feeling a little dishonest.

  ‘I knocked it, back at Dad’s old house,’ he says, trying to make light of the injury. ‘Forgot how low the ceilings were. Not the first time.’

  She doesn’t believe him, knows he’s lying. Was he lying about the shop too? Jim raises a hand, feels the broken skin. ‘I’m so sorry about your friend Erin.’