‘I’m not him!’
Behind the door the patient was screaming blue murder, but there was nothing new in that this week, and the orderly kept walking. The clock was on him – they’d been short-staffed since his colleague, Bill, announced he’d come into a bit of money and was taking early retirement. Dropped them all right in it.
Once he’d delivered the meds, there’d be breakfast trays and then the doctor’s round. The orderly hoped Christian would have stopped screaming by then. The doctor didn’t like cry-baby patients and liked the ‘screamers’ even less. The doctor sedated them, or zapped them into quietude.
Christian Rafferty was a certified sociopath with a history of delusions and violence since childhood. The orderly had worked at St Mungo’s for seven years and, during that time, he’d come to consider himself something of an expert in the quirks and ticks of the insane. Call my wife. Call my bloody lawyer. The screams were muffled by the door. As if he had a wife or a lawyer to call. The orderly smirked as he forced the paper cup of pills down the throat of Agnes in the next room along. He gave her titty a squeeze before tipping back her chin so she swallowed them.
Christian had absolutely lost the plot, which was a shocker because generally he was no bother. In fact, his mood had picked up no end since he’d had that big ugly visitor with the little Chinese girl – he’d asked for a haircut, been eating better, even started taking exercise in the gardens. Then all of a sudden, overnight it seemed, he’d started screaming and carrying on that he was going to sue them for every last penny, and that he wasn’t Christian, he was the Home Secretary. That’s where it all unwound for Christian when he was a kid – the orderly knew that much from hospital gossip. As a child, Christian had blamed his brother, Ralph, for all the terrible things he himself had done. The doctors said at the time it was a ‘projection’ – that Christian used his identical twin to excuse his own base behaviour and psychopathic urges. And the twin, Ralph Rafferty, went on to be an MP and Home Secretary. The orderly himself didn’t watch much news, but even he was aware that Rafferty had been on the TV banging on about all those poor souls killed at the museum and what an outrage it was. Christian must have caught something on the TV in the lounge. Yes, that must have been what triggered the confusion.
The shouts got smaller and smaller as the orderly continued down the corridor, pushing his trolley.
*
Within his room, his hands sore and bloodied from hammering on the metal door, Ralph Rafferty curled up in the corner and wept.
He was trapped in a living nightmare. How had it happened? He’d stumbled out of his club into his ministerial car. Big bloke opening the door for him, saying his usual driver was poorly. Who gives a flying toss, he’d thought to himself. We’ll get you home, Minister. Get you where you need to be. Don’t you worry. Unfamiliar eyes watching him in the rear-view mirror. Sure he’d been drunk, but he knew his limits. A bottle and a half of Merlot and two glasses of very fine port. He was entitled after the recent shit show – amazing they’d managed to hush it up. They only had one last piece to complete the puzzle – silence Esme Sullivan Hawke terminally – and he and Kirkham were safe.
And he wasn’t so drunk that he wouldn’t make it back to Flick. He might even wake her up and shag her, he thought. She wouldn’t want to, of course, but then she never did. He’d shag her anyway, and he grinned to himself at the thought, catching sight of his own reflection in the window. Scaring even himself a little at the sight. But he so enjoyed her desperation when she woke up with him doing his business. The instinctive struggle before she gave up and accepted her uxorious fate. It always gave their encounters that extra frisson.
Poor dumb-as-an-ox Flick, so desperate for a divorce. But he’d had to explain in words of one syllable, as he held her by the hair and slammed her repeatedly against the wall, that such a thing couldn’t be allowed to happen till he wanted it to. He needed a dutiful wife to smile and hold his hand for that walk up Downing Street. Maybe afterwards, when he was in the Lords, if he could be bothered to trade her in for a younger, wealthier model.
He’d closed his eyes to doze for a while, and it was the smell that woke him. What looked like smoke coming up from the vents close to the floor. At first he’d thought the car must have caught fire and he’d yelled and banged on the glass partition between him and the driver, but the driver ignored him.
He hadn’t understood what was happening. Just clutched at the door handle, attempting to push it open with brute force, but it didn’t budge. Instead, the spiralling fumes crawled upwards over him – the chemical smell of knockout gas filling his nose and his throat. It got harder to breathe and he coughed, feeling himself retch, desperate for fresh air, his fingers scrabbling at the handle, slipping, pulling, coughing, before the darkness came for him and he surrendered.
When he’d come to, he was lying naked in bed. Underwear and a grey hoodie and sweatpants laid out neatly on the floor next to him. Perhaps that was his first mistake. Pulling them on. The first move towards accepting his fate.
He had screamed with all the power in his lungs and someone, somewhere, heard it because they screamed too, then someone else and someone else. It was a madhouse, he thought.
Rocking himself backwards and forwards, he tried to dampen down the panic. He had to get out of here. Because he knew exactly what was going on. Only three people in the world knew the truth of what had happened to one of the most powerful men in the country. Himself, his bastard brother, and this Michael North character Kirkham had been so obsessed with. Rafferty always knew he was wrong to leave so much of the operational side of things to Kirkham. He should have handled it himself. Instead, North had been allowed to take the initiative, and look at the mess he was in now.
He screamed again but no other patient picked up on it this time. It was as if they had quietened to hear what he might say next. Or perhaps they’d gone somewhere – some meal, some activity, some therapy? Perhaps that godawful doctor was about to make his rounds?
He scrambled to his feet. This couldn’t go on. The longer it went on, the less chance he would have of being believed. He rapped on the metal door.
‘Excuse me,’ he called out, trying to keep his voice civil but firm. ‘I need to talk to your superior. My name is Ralph Rafferty, MP…’ He spoke slowly, with authority, a voice that commanded the respect of his peers. ‘There’s been a dreadful mistake. Let me out now and we’ll say no more about it. Hello. Hello?’ He couldn’t help it – his voice was rising to a screech.
He kept rapping and calling out for what felt like hours, but no one came. At one point he must have slept, because a plastic cup of cold tea had appeared, and a square of toast covered with margarine spread.
He was starving, he realized. Absolutely starving. He knew he shouldn’t drink anything. Should refuse to eat until someone in authority agreed to see him, but he was too hungry. He drank the tea and licked clean every crumb of toast, before going back to the door.
He started rapping again, with his left hand this time. The knuckles on his right too sore and swollen.
He ran through his whole range, his ability to make a political audience weep and cheer always close to mind. He tried it all – outrage, anger, reason, pleading, pathos. But no one came. No one was listening.
By now, he’d lost track of the days. He thought this was day four, but it might be day five. They were drugging him. Every six hours, two orderlies came in and forced pills down his throat, clamped his jaw together and made him dry-swallow. Doubtless some sort of antipsychotic. Whatever it was, it left him with a raging thirst. His arms jerked away from his body and the fear hit him again. It was the medication, he was sure of it. They would never believe him if he was jerking and spasming like some lunatic. He checked himself. If he behaved like a lunatic, they would treat him like a lunatic. He hugged his arms to his body, wrapping them round himself, but the spasms came anyway.
When he got out, he thought, he would make sure each and every one of them lost their job and never worked again. He would shut the place down. He would appear in front of the TV cameras and touch the heart of a nation with his bravery and sorrow, that anyone had to go through what he went through.
If he got out, he thought.
Desolation took hold of him. The fear that this was it. That he would never escape this terrible place. That there would be no cameras, no public adulation. A fat tear eased its way out of his eye. He was lost. Who would believe him? Believe such a thing was possible – he barely credited it himself. He was the man in the iron mask.
He didn’t know how they’d made the switch.
Someone must have been in here and met with his brother. And money was involved, because it always was. Money for some doctor or orderly. A great deal of it. And how could Christian do this to him? Leave him in this place? But he knew exactly how, because Christian had to hate him with even more passion and more cause than Ralph hated Christian.
Wouldn’t anyone notice? His wife? She’d notice, wouldn’t she? Darling Flick. He surprised himself at the sudden tenderness he felt for her. He thought about the last time he saw her. The tiny smile she’d worn. He had wanted to wipe it from her face with his slipper.
This was why. It came to him, like a building falling on him. She knew exactly what was going on. She’d get her divorce now. Keep the house and probably split the money with his brother.
Or not? He gnawed at the cuticle around his thumb-nail, ripping at it with his teeth. She was such a soft touch. She might want to care for Christian. Even invite Christian into her bed. The thought of Flick and Christian together made him rage again and his head slammed backwards into the wall, making it ring. My God, they might have a baby together!
That hurt. His fingertips touched his skull. There was blood on them. He laughed hysterically at the pain, then clamped his hands over his mouth.
His friends? Surely they’d notice? He thought about it. He didn’t have any friends. Political rivals, yes. Colleagues, yes. He utterly loathed his constituency association and the feeling was mutual.
But General Aeron Kirkham would realize what was going on. Kirkham was an animal, a force of nature. He’d get him out of here.
He felt his breath stop in his throat. If North had gone to this much trouble to revenge himself against Ralph Rafferty, Kirkham was next for the noose. Served him right, thought Rafferty. Kirkham was always so sure he could get the better of North. He deserved everything he had coming. Rafferty shoved his fist in his mouth and chewed at his knuckles. But he needed the General alive. Because Rafferty had no doubt whatsoever he was going to go mad in here otherwise.