Friday 11 February 2011

7.39 a.m.

Joel knelt in prayer on the cold floor of his room, as he did every morning before breakfast. A member of staff had woken him at the normal time to unlock the door and restrain him in the handcuffs that he was now required to wear at all times when not confined to his room.

A fortnight earlier he had subjected one of the nursing staff to a vicious and unprovoked attack in a successful attempt to prolong his incarceration. The young woman had always been kind to him and he was genuinely concerned that he might have seriously injured her, but he could not leave. He knew that it was cowardly to hide from his fate.

He was a coward; he had come to terms with that a long time ago.

There was a shout from out in the corridor. Joel paused mid-prayer to listen. A pair of heavy footsteps sprinted past his door and then a wild scream somewhere in the building set his heart racing.

He got up and stepped out into the corridor where several other patients were staring anxiously in the direction of the Rec Room.

‘Back in your rooms!’ bellowed a heavyset man as he ran between them and headed towards the source of the disruption before another terrifying scream of anguish filled the halls.

Joel was swept along by the crowd of curious patients as they disobeyed the man’s order and rushed for the double doors that led to the room where they spent the majority of their days. There was a cry of pain. This time Joel recognised Wolf’s voice. He shoved his way through the pack of brightly coloured scrubs and entered the Rec Room.

Furniture lay splintered and broken everywhere and an unconscious doctor was being tended to on the other side of the room. Three large health workers were failing to restrain the crazed man while a nurse spoke frantically on the phone.

‘No!’ Wolf roared, startling Joel. ‘I told them! I told them he’d do this!’

Joel followed Wolf’s feral gaze to the large television; a reporter was standing on a run-down London high street. Two traumatised police officers held up a makeshift screen to conceal whatever was still smoking behind.

‘I could have stopped this!’ screamed Wolf with tears streaming down his face.

He lashed out like a wild animal as another doctor rushed into the room holding a large syringe, like a vet left with no choice but to put him down.

All became clear when the reporter reiterated what little information she had gathered.

‘For viewers just joining us, eyewitness reports state that Naguib Khalid, the suspect cleared of the Cremation Killings last May, has been arrested by police. There have been unconfirmed reports of a body and, as you can see, there is still smoke pluming into the air behind me …’

Wolf cried out when the doctor jabbed the enormous needle deep into his left arm. As he went limp, the battered hospital staff struggled to support his weight. Just before he passed out, he looked across at Joel, who wore an expression devoid of either pity or surprise. He simply nodded in understanding and then Wolf lost consciousness.

When Wolf woke up, he was back in his room. Darkness had fallen over the grounds outside his window. His vision was blurred, and it took him over a minute to work out why he was unable to raise his hands up to his pounding head; he had been restrained to the bed. He fought futilely against the thick straps, the rage that had exploded out of him earlier still broiling just beneath the surface.

He recalled the news report, the smoke billowing over the tattered white sheet. He turned his head to the side and vomited onto the floor. He did not need to see; Wolf knew better than anybody what had been obscured from the cameras. He knew just how much another young girl had needlessly suffered.

He closed his eyes and tried to focus his anger, to concentrate. It was consuming him, clouding his thoughts. He stared up at the blank ceiling and whispered the names of the people he held responsible, but then he remembered something: a desperate last resort, the nonsensical ramblings of an unstable mind …

‘Nurse!’ he called loudly. ‘Nurse!’

It took an hour to convince the doctors to remove his restraints and a further half-hour to obtain their permission to make a phone call. While awaiting their decision, he had retrieved the scruffy page from underneath the mattress. He had almost forgotten that it was even there.

He could barely stand and was helped out into the corridor to use the phone at the nurses’ station. Once he was alone, he unfolded the creased paper, for the first time noticing the printed words bleeding through the crayon numbers: God. Devil. Soul. Hell.

He steadied himself against the wall and punched in the sequence of numbers with his free hand.

It started to ring.

There was a muffled clicking sound followed by silence.

‘Hello?’ asked Wolf nervously.

Silence.

‘… Hello?’

An automated female voice finally answered him.

‘State. Your. Full. Name. After. The. Tone.’

Wolf waited for his cue.

‘William Oliver Layton-Fawkes.’

Another pause followed that felt as though it lasted forever. Wolf knew that it was irrational, but there was something unsettling about the computerised voice, something about the intonation, the tone. It almost sounded as though it was delighting in his desperation, as though it was laughing at him.

‘In. Exchange. For?’ it eventually asked.

Wolf glanced down the empty corridor. He could hear the gentle hum of voices escaping from one of the side rooms. Instinctively, he cupped his hand over the receiver to whisper into it.

He hesitated.

‘In. Exchange. For?’ the voice prompted again.

‘Naguib Khalid … Mayor Raymond Turnble … Madeline Ayers … The dock security officer … DI Benjamin Chambers – and everybody else with that girl’s blood on their hands,’ spat Wolf.

Silence.

Wolf went to put the receiver down. He paused and listened for a moment longer before hanging up. In his delirium, he laughed at himself. Even in his heavily medicated state he realised how ludicrous it all was; although, he did feel a little better for saying the names out loud, for passing them on to the outside world, even if only to an unmanned answering machine.

He was halfway back down the hushed corridor when a deafeningly shrill ring filled the air around him. He dropped to his knees, holding his hands over his ears, and turned back to face the unremarkable phone, wondering whether it could possibly be that loud or whether the medication had distorted his senses.

One of the overweight health workers rushed past him, saying something indecipherable as he approached the phone. Wolf held his breath as he watched the man grasp the receiver and press it up against his ear, unreservedly afraid of whoever or whatever was occupying the other end of the line.

A broad smile cracked across the man’s face.

‘Hey. I know, sorry. One of the patients was on it,’ he explained apologetically.

Slowly, Wolf got back to his feet and stumbled towards his room, thinking that maybe, just maybe, he might be crazy after all.

Отправить