Doctor Who_ The Sleep of Reason - Martin Day [72]
Laska remembered her earlier conversation with the man. A new wave of visceral guilt and anguish flooded over her. She wasn’t sure now what made her tell Oldfield about Joe Bartholomew and Susannah – or why she continued to refuse to open up to Dr Smith.
Trix leaned back as Fitz returned with three mugs of coffee, his brow furrowed in concentration as he tried not to spill them. Trix’s face relaxed, colour flooding into her cheeks and eyes. Laska wasn’t sure which face was really her, and which was the mask.
‘You girls getting on OK?’ asked Fitz as he settled down and pushed two of the cups away from him.
Trix and Laska exchanged an exasperated look of momentary honesty.
‘Like a house on fire,’ said Laska.
Susannah Harvey was having a terrible day. It wasn’t the guard’s fault that he should die – or get killed – on the last day of her block, but it was a monu-mental pain. Normally she’d be looking forward to going home, throwing off her shoes, and slobbing about the flat for a few days, but today she’d been warned not to leave the Retreat until given clearance to do so by the police.
She didn’t even know if they’d arrived yet, still less how quickly they’d deal with staff members who were impatient to get away.
Still, rumour pointed to a cold-blooded stabbing, which meant it had to be one of the patients, didn’t it? Especially in the local papers, the Retreat had an unfortunate reputation for dealing with rich in-breds with largely imaginary neuroses and zonked-out, has-been rock stars who no longer knew what day of the week it was (she’d heard stories of one who smuggled in some acid and had spent the best part of a week believing that he was the entire Jackson Five, namely Michael, Marlon, Jermaine, Tito and the other one she could never remember). The truth was rather different, and there were one or two in the Retreat with serious problems, people who’d been prevented from becoming front-page news only by the timely intervention of an observant GP or family member. That’s where she’d start her questions – not that she wanted to tell the police how to do their job.
Susannah put down her pen. With her colleagues flapping about like head-less chickens she’d taken the opportunity to get to grips with some overdue 127
paperwork. The other nurses considered her a bit of a gossip, but even Susannah had her limits – and murder was well beyond them. She was usually days behind on her form-filling; now she was almost up to date. She reckoned she deserved a celebratory fag.
She made her way to the back of the house. The corridors there were largely in darkness. She expected to be on her own: she supposed that everyone else would be busy exchanging conspiracy theories and checking up on each other.
No matter, a bit of peace and quiet suited her. More time to think about what colour she was going to paint the spare room – and what the hell she was going to do about her relationship with Joe.
For all her reputation as a bimbo, Susannah knew which subject was the more important.
Joe was never far from her thoughts, though early on she had recognised that this was less to do with love – or even affection – and frankly a damn sight more to do with fear and guilt. She enjoyed spending time with him – they seemed very much on the same wavelength when they were fooling around or just bonking – but attempts by either of them to get serious always resulted in awkward disaster. What was there to be serious about? Both knew the relationship was a bit of fun, an exciting development at the fringes of their lives – but it was never going to go anywhere, was it?
And that was fine – a victimless crime – were it not for the fact that she had to work with Joe’s wife. She’d never set out to be an adulteress – she had never got up one morning and said, ‘Today I think I’ll lead a married man astray’. In fact, she’d always prided herself, when she was growing up, that she wasn’t an easy lay, and as an adult married men had always been a no-no.
But, when it was clear that Joe was interested in her, all her resolve crumbled.