Dark Choir Page 8

  Next to her was a lank-haired social worker called Miriam Draper. Some of the less kinder staff called her Drippy Draper. She might need some convincing. Next to her was Staff Nurse Peter Weston who ran the Blackthorn Ward where Shelly lived. Peter Weston knew about the situation and had, so far, done nothing to address the problem. To the left of him was Valerie Bridgeman, a clinical psychologist. She was an outsider so could swing either way.

  “So,” Dr. Didi opened the meeting looking down at his notes through his half-moon glasses. His thick Indian accent made him pronounce each sentence with knowledge and authority. “Today is a medical review of Shelly Chambers. Thirty-five-year-old lady with a learning disability and kyphotic deformity of the spine. She was also born blind. Yes?”

  Everyone around the table nodded in bored agreement. Everyone except Ann.

  “I think this meeting is a little bit more serious than just a medical review, Doctor,” said Ann. Peter Weston rolled his eyes and lit a cigarette.

  “I’ve not read the whole of your lengthy report, Sister,” said Didi. “Can you summarise for us?”

  “Well, yes. I think Miriam and her social work team are well aware of my complaint.”

  “I think the whole hospital is,” snorted Weston.

  Ann ignored him and carried on. “Shelly has started having unusual vaginal discharges. Discharges that, I think, are a result of some internal injury. These discharges had been found in her incontinence pad by staff on Blackthorn Ward.”

  “I was made aware of this,” said Didi. “I examined her and I did find some internal injuries but Nurse Weston assured me that there were no suspicious reasons for this.”

  “This started when she came back from the general hospital,” grunted Weston. “They catheterized her and that’s what caused the injuries. They haven’t got a clue what they’re doing up there.”

  “Yes, well the vaginal discharges are continuing to occur and they are concurrent with the times she’s stayed with Angela Teal. The care assistant who works on Blackthorn Ward. Dr. Didi, Shelly goes to stay at Angela’s house some weekends.”

  “What are you saying?” asked Weston.

  “That every time Diane comes back from staying with Angela, these discharges happen.” Ann felt the whole room staring at her silently. “Look, when she stays at Angela’s, they share a bed. I think that is quite inappropriate. I wonder what Angela is doing to her to produce these discharges when she gets back to the ward.”

  “You’re saying Angela’s interfering with her? Is that what you’re saying?” Weston fixed her with a gaze of pure hostility.

  “Peter, that’s what half the hospital is saying.”

  “So why isn’t Angela at this meeting?” asked the doctor.

  “Oh, she was invited, Peter, but rang in sick this morning,” Ann spat. Mentally adding surprise surprise.

  “Then you should have cancelled this meeting,” said Weston.

  “And leave Shelly to continue to be abused. I’ve spent two months just trying to arrange this meeting. I propose that these sleepovers stop until we have a chance to thoroughly investigate what’s going on, including interviewing Angela.”

  “Bloody hell.” Weston raised his voice. “If I’d been accused of this sort of thing by senior management, I’d bloody want to go sick. Angie does this out of the goodness of her heart, in her own time, and doesn’t get paid for looking after Shelly. Shelly’s got no family. Angie is her family.”

  Drippy Draper the social worker spoke up. “Okay, it’s all getting a bit heated. Have any of us thought about asking Shelly what she wants?”

  “Do you remember Shelly?” Ann could feel her patience beginning to snap. “She is mentally backward. She can’t speak.”

  “Then use another form of communication. Picture cards or something.”

  “She. Is. Blind!” Ann actually shouted the last word. Everyone around the table looked at her like she was a mad old spinster.

  In the silence that followed, Didi turned to Valerie Bridgeman, the psychologist. “Perhaps you can assess. See how she is when she gets back from these sleepovers. I’ll have a word with this care assistant myself.”

  “Wait!” said Ann. “We can’t just leave it like that.”

  “Well, how would you leave it?”

  “Suspend Angela Teal pending a full investigation. These sleepovers have to stop.”

  Weston held his head in his hands. “For God’s sake, will you give it a rest? These accusations are bollocks and you know it.”

  “Don’t speak to me like that, Peter.” Ann almost growled.

  “Or what? You’ll suspend me?”

  “You allowed this. It’s your ward. Pending an investigation, you are ultimately responsible for this being allowed to happen.”

  “You know what I think?” he addressed the room. “Shelly has been doing it to herself. They injure themselves. Nigel Wright is always biting his hand when he gets agitated. Stephen Shell nearly hacked his own eyes out last month. Diane sticks her hand down her pad and injures herself.”

  “No. That kind of discharge only comes out when—”

  Dr. Didi cut Ann off mid-sentence. “Well, I think that concludes this meeting. I will talk to Angela. Valerie will do a full psychological assessment.”

  “And the sleepovers? They’ll stop?” Ann leaned forwards, eager for the outcome she wanted, for the outcome Shelly needed.

  “No,” said Didi. “We need to get to the bottom of these vaginal discharges and Valarie will need to assess when she comes back from spending the night with Angela. The sleepovers will not stop.”

  Twelve

  Alison had been asleep when he’d got in, thank God. He’d staggered around searching for food and managed to eat a lump of cheese. He’d woken with dim memories of the bald guy saying he would come for his sister. Had he really said that or had Dan misremembered?

  He’d woken up, taken some paracetamol and got ready to go with Alison to pick Lindsey up from Willow House.

  The long drive to the far side of Scarsdale was beset by diversions due to more winter flooding. He’d told Alison over breakfast and they’d discussed what to do. As Lindsey would be homeless, she’d need to go to Willow House full-time. Alison, as ever the level headed, capable doer, said she’d contact Social Services as soon as possible. Dan said he was sorry she’d be out of a job. Alison had confidently smiled and told him there was always plenty of work in the care sector.

  As they turned onto the tree-lined lane to Willow House, he got a good look of what was left of St. Brendan’s, at the squat white buildings overgrown and fenced off. His gaze was drawn to the ever present tower of St. Vincent’s looming over the grounds like a vast tombstone.

  “A mate of mine said he went on a ghost hunt at St. Vincent’s,” said Dan, suddenly feeling like a kid before a grown-up as he told Alison.

  “Lucky him,” she replied. “There’s enough misery in that place to have left behind awful impressions.”

  “Have you ever worked there?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “I can show you. We can take Lindsey up there for a walk if you like?”

  Once they’d collected Lindsey from Willow House, having got handover from the tired looking senior caregiver Melody, they left telling her they were going for a walk before they returned. Melody asked them if they could take Nigel for a walk as well.

  Nigel, it appeared, could walk. Melody led him from his room by the hand and Dan’s eyes widened as he got close. One of Nigel’s eyes was nothing but a two-inch cave in his head. Dan wasn’t sure, but he thought he could see a flash of white bone in the depths of the eye-hole. Unfazed, Alison helped him with his coat, assisting him to slide his arms into the coat, then she took his hand and he walked slowly beside her emitting the occasional grunt.

  Between him and the guy on the sofa with the massive head they could have started their own freak show. Dan immediatel
y felt bad about thinking this and wondered what else Nigel had endured in his lifetime. Melody opened the door for them and they set off.

  Once outside, Dan pushed Lindsey’s wheelchair along the narrow road that bordered the abandoned flat-roofed squat buildings of St. Brendan’s. Nigel and Alison walked beside him. Before them, the imposing tower of St. Vincent’s rose up behind the trees.

  “St. Vincent’s was a work house originally. Then they turned them into hospitals for what were known then as ‘imbeciles.’ Behind the main hospital are orchards and gardens where the patients used to work.”

  “They let them out?”

  “Not all of them. Most were capable of working, just not looking after themselves. This was before and after the war. St. Vincent’s was still being used to treat the mentally ill up until 1995. They separated the mentally ill and people with learning disabilities in the sixties.”

  “And they lived in these buildings?” Dan gestured to the squat, white ruins.

  “To St. Brendan’s, yes. They built this in the sixties especially for people with learning disabilities. Before that they had a ward in St. Vincent’s itself.”

  “So, if this place was built in the sixties, why was it closed down?”

  “It was very institutionalised. There were thirty people to a ward sharing dormitories. The health authorities decided that people with learning disabilities shouldn’t just be shoved together like cattle. That’s why they built Willow and Rowan house. So that people had their own rooms rather than having to share. The others all went to different homes. Some live in their own flats with caregivers assisting them.”

  Dan tried to imagine Lindsey being stuck with thirty other people like the guys who lived in Willow House, Nigel and Stephen. Packed together in those wards, he imagined it wasn’t at all harmonious. He’d heard Lindsey screaming at night, and he imagined how it would set guys like Stephen and Nigel off.

  As if echoing Dan’s thoughts, Alison said, “Imagine three staff trying to feed thirty people. It was chaos.”

  They approached the trees and Dan found it difficult to push the wheelchair over off-road terrain. Lindsey began laughing. “I’m glad you find it funny, miss,” Dan said.

  They reached a chain-link fence which was bent over at the nearest concrete post. Alison and Nigel passed through it onto the grounds of the asylum.

  “Isn’t this trespassing?” said Dan.

  “Just tell them we got lost.”

  He took Lindsey through the hole in the fence and followed Alison and Nigel until they came to a clearing. Emerging from the trees, Dan took in the huge edifice which he now faced.

  “Fuck me. It’s massive.”

  The red brick almost shone in the autumn sun. The jutting buttresses rose twenty feet above them. Dark windows pitted the carcass of the asylum. Peaked roofs had shed their dark tiles in places but rose and fell at crazy angles under the almighty tower which reached into the sky. The two clock faces Dan could see were stuck at ten past six and three forty, the mechanism that once worked the clock now long dead.

  “Let’s go around to the front,” suggested Alison and they moved off.

  “Where have all the patients gone if they’ve closed this place down?”

  Alison pointed through the trees beyond the asylum. Dan could see a series of newer single storey builds stretching away into the distance. “They built new mental health assessment units through there. Not far from St. Vincent’s Walk, the housing estate. There are open units and medium secure wings there.”

  Maybe the bald guy escaped from there, thought Dan grimly. They emerged onto an ancient, weed-punctured tarmac. As they rounded the building, they fell under the shadow of St. Vincent’, and Dan felt colder out of the sun. Here the tarmac stretched out and he could see faint white lines that had marked out parking spaces. Streetlamps stood, greened by time, the lamps under their rusting metal hats smashed out.

  “This is the main entrance,” she pointed out. A large, square wooden door had been set into the brickwork. Dan was ready to admit this place gave him a queasy feeling. He felt as if he were being watched but couldn’t explain the sensation.

  Alison left Nigel standing, dwarfed by the monstrosity, and she boldly strode up to the door and gave it a push. “It’s open!”

  “Oh shit,” Dan said under his breath. “Listen, are you sure we’re not trespassing?”

  “No, come on.”

  He’d never seen her so excited. Surely, they were breaking some sort of rules taking Lindsey and Nigel inside. Someone must still own this place. The NHS? The Council? Alison came back for Nigel and reluctantly, he followed them in. There was a concrete ramp by the steps to the door which he pushed Lindsey up in her wheelchair.

  “Wow,” she said. “It’s not changed a bit.”

  They stood in a wide reception area, a half-moon wooden reception desk curved to greet them. Ahead, a wide marble-step staircase with thick wooden balustrades bent to the left where faded brown signs pointed the way to different wards with names such as “Taylor Ward,” “Thomas Ward,” and “Franklyn Ward.”

  Under the stairs another wide corridor, at least fifteen meters high from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling, led into the guts of the asylum. Alison followed the broken linoleum down the corridor. On either side, the magnolia paint and distemper had peeled. Above, vast swathes of artex and plaster hung down smothered by black cobwebs.

  “This place is messed up,” he said.

  “They want to turn it into flats,” Alison said brightly.

  “I wouldn’t live here.” After encountering the bald guy twice, Dan’s ability to believe in the ghostly had increased, his cynicism dented. He was reminded about what Karl had said; even the security guys don’t come here at night. He tried to imagine Karl and his mates here at night on their ghost hunt.

  They passed more wards on the ground floor. Functional and very lockable doors made from heavy wood stood open revealing empty day rooms, dining rooms and, through doorways, Dan glimpsed rows of beds.

  “Bloody hell,” said Dan.

  “What?”

  “Imagine ending up here, having to share with all these paranoid schizophrenics and murderers.”

  “People like Nigel would have been on one of the children wards until he was sixteen, then he would have been moved up to one of these wards.”

  “What, with the lunatics and murderers?”

  “Yes.”

  “But he’s blind. Anything could have happened to him. The guards…”

  “…orderlies…”

  “The orderlies would have made sure he was okay. Right?”

  “Not necessarily. A couple of orderlies to look after thirty people. They were so vulnerable. I knew a nurse who worked on the children’s wards here. She’d fake their ages so they’d not have to come into one of these wards, so they’d be spared. The orderlies weren’t saints. Far from it. Remember the Broadmoor scandal in the seventies?”

  “Nigel wasn’t here, was he?”

  “No. He was too young. One of the other guys who lived at Willow was. Patrick. You’ve not met him.”

  Dan felt slightly sick. The idea of such unfettered abuse happening was beyond his comprehension.

  At the end of the corridor they passed through a vast arched door. Sunlight from outside shone through the smashed tall windows to illuminate the concert hall’s faded glory.

  Overturned metal and fabric chairs from a past age lay at abandoned angles across the floor of bent and bucked wooden boards. Ornate, curling bronze-effect cornices framed a stage. All around the high ceilings boasted more cornices with faded gold leaf quavers. This was the saddest room of the whole asylum.

  “Beautiful,” said Alison. “They used to hold concerts in here. Bands, brass bands, magicians.”

  “Who? The patients?”

  “Sometimes. It wasn’t all lobotomies and buggery, you know.” She looked around the hall in awe. Even Lindsey seeme
d to be taking in the architecture. The peeling murals on the walls, the ornate art deco lamps emerging from the walls. Dan stopped and stared when he spotted crude writing on the wall.

  Maybe it was his heightened senses, his hangover, being upset with Widdowson’s victory, or another encounter with the bald ghost.

  “Let’s look in the orchard.”

  “No,” said Dan reading the one word on the wall. “I want to get out of here.”

  Karl’s ghost hunting story was still strong in his mind. Written upon the wall next to the door in unidentifiable brown substance—perhaps excrement, perhaps blood—were the same words Karl had found written in the talcum powder in this very building.

  CHOIR

  “I’ve seen enough, Alison. I want to leave.”

  Thirteen

  Widdowson parked his Daimler in the car park situated before the maze of modern, single storey buildings and got out. The entrance sign announced this place was called BERRYMORE HOSPITAL. He knew his way around, he’d been here dozens of times before. He took a zig-zag route through the units until he came to the medium secure ward. A sign read ROWLETT HOUSE in black across a white background underlined in blue.

  The receptionist saw him approach from her window and a soft buzz indicated the heavy PVC and glass door was unlocked.

  Widdowson stepped into an airlock of sorts. A similar set of doors allowed access into to the unit proper, but the front door had to be closed before the second set of doors were unlocked. In the airlock, behind a Perspex screen, the receptionist waited. Widdowson dimly remembered him and thought his name was Max, but he wasn’t sure. The man was thin and wore spectacles. Widdowson thought this guy looked like he should be working in a library, not a mental hospital.

  “Not seen you in a while,” said the man whose name may or not have been Max. Widdowson noticed his name badge was turned away on its lanyard.