Читать книгу Scared to Death: A gripping crime thriller you won’t be able to put down - Kate Medina, Kate Medina - Страница 19

From her office window, Jessie watched the opaque curtain of another spring storm barrel across the lake at the bottom of the wide sweep of Bradley Court’s lawn, turning the glassy water to froth. The leaves on the copper beech trees lining the pathway by the manor house twisted and bowed before they were engulfed, flattened under the weight of the downpour, and suddenly her view was misted, the glass opaque.

A knock on the door. The blond teenager standing in the corridor was barely taller than Jessie’s five foot six, narrow-shouldered and thin. His soft hazel eyes looked huge in a pale face, framed as they were by the dark rings of insomnia. He looked very young.

‘Private Jones, I’m Doctor Jessie Flynn.’ She held out her hand. ‘Please come in.’

Ryan Jones slid through the door, glancing sideways at her, a look of suspicion etched on his face. He didn’t move to take her proffered hand. Jessie recognized that reaction, had come across it before with young soldiers a few months in who spent every day being drilled: woken up at first light and run for miles in their platoons, publicly belittled for every minor misdemeanour, their rooms swept with eagle eyes for dust specks, clothes checked for razor-sharp creases, even the shine on their boots studied forensically for signs that they weren’t measuring up. And even if they were, imaginary holes picked in order to break down their confidence. Everything about Army basic training was designed to remove individuality and mould a team in its place. These recruits often found their initial visit to Bradley Court a destabilizing experience, no longer accustomed to being treated as an equal, a unique individual.

Closing the door behind him, Jessie indicated one of the two leather bucket chairs, separated only by a low coffee table that she used for her sessions. The chairs were deliberately placed underneath one of her office’s two sash windows so that patients could relieve the pressure, if only momentarily, by looking at the view of nature beyond the glass. Ryan sat down, crossing his legs and folding his arms across his chest, nothing open or accommodating about his posture.

‘Would you like a drink? Tea, coffee, water?’

Without making eye contact, he shook his head. Jessie grabbed his file and a pen from her desk and took the seat opposite. She had re-read the single typed sheet the file contained shortly before he arrived.

Ryan Thomas Jones

Sixteen and five months

Joined the Army on 2 November last year, the day of his sixteenth birthday

Phase 2 trainee, Royal Logistic Corps

Referred by Blackdown’s commanding officer, Colonel Philip Wallace, because of concerns about his mental health

Nothing more than that: a vague, unspecific brief. She looked up from the file. It felt strange to be back in her consulting room, facing another patient who, from his body language and the shuttered look on his face, would give a lot to be somewhere else.

‘Can I call you Ryan?’

A tiny lift of his shoulders, which Jessie translated as a teenager’s ‘Yes.’

‘Thank you for coming in to see me.’

Another weary shrug. ‘I wasn’t given a choice.’ A soft regional accent that Jessie couldn’t place. She ploughed on. ‘You’ve been in the Army five months?’

‘Yes.’

‘With the Royal Logistic Corps?’

‘Yes.’

‘How is it going?’

‘OK.’

‘Are you enjoying it?’

‘It’s not an exciting choice, is it, logistics? Not brave.’ There was sneer in his voice.

‘Don’t knock it. An Army runs on good logistics.’ Jessie racked her brains for the famous quote – something about wars being won or lost on the contents of soldiers’ stomachs – but try as she might she couldn’t summon it, or its author, to mind. She still felt vague and headachy, half her brain mid-flight somewhere over the Persian Gulf, the other half in that small, depressing hospital room, hoping with all her heart that Joan Lawson was right when she said her son would never commit suicide, all her professional knowledge, her gut feeling, telling her that the old lady was wrong, the parallels with her own past deeply unsettling.

‘An Army marches on its stomach, Napoleon Bonaparte.’

Ryan’s face remained impassive.

‘Logistics. The importance of logistics. Napoleon Bonaparte?’ Logistics, catering, near enough. ‘Military general, the first Emperor of France, Battle of Waterloo?’

Still no reaction.

‘Never mind. So why did you choose the Logistic Corps then?’

He shrugged, a careless movement that brought to Jessie’s mind a teenaged schoolboy sitting at the back of the class, thinking about smoking behind the bike shed and sticking his hand up girls’ skirts rather than whatever subject the teacher was wittering on about at the front of the classroom.

‘Do you want to be brave, Ryan?’ Jessie asked softly, tilting forward, trying, and failing, to catch his eye.

Kids of this age should be still at school. She didn’t believe that they had the emotional maturity, the mental robustness to handle rigid institutions like the Army, even in relatively soft options like logistics. The Army could be tough and isolating, the necessity of fitting in, of being accepted as one of the lads, stressful, particularly for people who were not natural team players. She suspected that Ryan was not a natural team player.

‘Ryan.’

He had started to fidget, fingers picking at a thread that had come loose from the stitching of his navy-blue beret. His nails had been bitten to the quick, the cuticles raw, Jessie noticed.

‘No.’ His voice so low that it was almost inaudible. ‘Not particularly.’

‘So why the Army? Why did you join?’

He sighed, like a teenager whose mother was hassling him. ‘Because people like me don’t have choices. The Army seemed like a good way of getting out.’

‘Getting out from where? Where did you grow up?’

‘Birmingham.’ The soft accent. Midlands – of course. She should have recognized it.

‘Do you have family?’

‘A mother.’

‘Father?’

‘He died when I was three.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It didn’t affect me. I never really knew him.’

Jessie knew that wasn’t true. Abandonment always affected children, however it happened. She knew that well enough from her own childhood.

‘Does your mother still live in Birmingham?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you close to her?’

The first sign of warmth and light that Jessie had seen in his soft hazel eyes, but the words thrown out insouciantly, entirely at odds with his expression. ‘What’s that got to do with you?’

She felt as if she was butting her head up against a wall. A smooth, featureless, wall, plain white, no finger-holds, nothing to get a grip on. Her office felt oppressive suddenly, a room shut up for too long over winter, which it had been. The shower had passed, sunlight breaking through the bank of grey clouds outside. Standing, Jessie unlocked the window and hauled up the lower sash. Cool, damp air eddied through the gap.

‘Can I go now?’ Ryan asked, narrowing his gaze against the sunlight.

‘Not yet.’

‘Why not?’ he hissed.

The sudden flare of aggression surprised Jessie, gone almost as soon as she’d registered it. He had seemed too distant, too closed down for aggression. She made a mental note.

‘Don’t I get a choice?’ he finished.

‘Unfortunately you gave up your right to choose when you joined the Army.’

His mouth tightened as if she had unwittingly put her finger on a nerve.

‘Ryan, Blackdown’s commanding officer, Colonel Philip Wallace, referred you to the Defence Psychology Service. As you can see, there’s not much information in your file.’ She held up the single page. ‘So why don’t you tell me why you think he sent you.’

Jaw muscles clenched under his skin.

‘I’ve never even talked to him.’ He stretched his arm straight above his head. ‘He’s God isn’t he? And I’m down here somewhere.’ The hand moved to graze the carpet. ‘Pond life.’

If he’d had no verbal contact with Wallace, had he talked to someone else about his feelings, or had his behaviour been noticed? ‘Did you talk to someone else at Blackdown about how you’re feeling?’

‘I’m not feeling anything.’

‘There must be a reason that you’re here, that you were referred.’

Ryan’s arms tightened around his torso, but he didn’t reply. Everything about his posture telegraphed intense feelings of discomfort at Jessie’s questions.

‘Who did you talk to, Ryan?’

‘No one.’ His gaze found the window. Jessie let him stare. After a moment, his gaze still fixed on the outside, he murmured, ‘He approached me.’

‘Who approached you?’

‘The chaplain.’

That wasn’t in the file. She made a mental note.

‘What did he say?’

‘He said that it’s his job.’

‘To keep an eye on new recruits?’

‘Yeah. Their spiritual health, mental health, all that crap.’

‘What did you talk to him about?’

Another shrug. ‘Stuff.’

‘Can you tell me?’

He shook his head. ‘They’re supposed to be confidential, aren’t they? My discussions with him? I should have known not to talk to him.’ Ryan slumped in the bucket chair, started kicking at the carpet with one of his combat boots, muttered under his breath. ‘Fuckin’ kiddie fiddler.’

Catholic. Kiddie fiddler. The chaplain must get that all the time – an occupational hazard. Jessie continued to look at Ryan, but he didn’t add anything else. She waited, the silence growing heavier.

‘Do you believe in God, Doctor Flynn?’ he asked suddenly.

Jessie took a beat before answering. She had been raised a Catholic, sent to a convent school, but she had never seen any evidence that the people around her lived by God’s word. Had seen no evidence at all of the existence of a just and gentle God. The only God she had experienced persecuted and destroyed.

And God will use this persecution to show his justice and to make you worthy of his kingdom, for which you are suffering.

Persecution without justice.

‘No, Ryan, I don’t believe in God.’

Ryan looked up and their gazes met for a fraction of a second before he looked away again. Minute progress, but progress all the same.

‘My mum spent time in a mental home, you know, when I was younger. Perhaps madness runs in the family.’

‘No one is saying that you’re mad.’

‘But it does run in families, doesn’t it?’ he murmured. ‘Madness?’

‘There is no such thing as madness,’ Jessie said quietly, her gaze finding the window. ‘There are disorders, some caused by physical factors, chemical imbalances in people’s brains, some caused by psychological factors, such as bad experiences in childhood.’ She fought to keep her voice even, feeling the tension rise, the electric suit tingle against her skin. Madness. ‘They can all be treated, but the patient needs to be willing.’

She thought that Ryan would have switched off, be picking at his beret or kicking at the carpet again, but when she looked back from the window, she saw that he was watching her intently.

‘Well, perhaps I am.’

‘Willing?’

‘Mad.’

‘Perhaps we all are.’ Jessie smiled, a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. ‘We’re all individuals, Ryan. Don’t feel that you need to be the same as the others to fit in.’

A chill shook Jessie as she closed the door behind Ryan, and she realized that the window was still open. The cloud canopy was back, draping itself over Bradley Court, the leaves on the copper beeches outside lifting and twisting in the wind, rain speckling through the open window. Hauling down the sash, she stood looking out, awed by the ability of the weather to change so suddenly from darkness to light and back to darkness again.

What had she been doing when she was Ryan’s age? She would have been back at school then, trying to get a grip on normality, work for her GCSEs, make up for the time that she had missed, prove to herself – to them – that she could, would, carve a normal life for herself. Closing her eyes, she tilted her head and rested it against the cool glass. The hiss and snap of the electric suit was intensifying with the memories.

She could feel the box of matches in her shaking hand, the rough strip on the side as her fingers felt to slide it open in the dark. It was important that she was quiet, vital that she didn’t wake them. She just needed to show them. Show her.

Her eyes snapped open. The electric suit was tight around her throat.

She had been fourteen, younger even than Ryan. Old enough to face the consequences though. Old enough to pay.