Resolution

Chapter 6

They were in the square waiting room next to the interview cubicles. Across the room a stocky prison officer nodded slowly to the guard sitting next to Angus Farrell, letting him know that he was watching.

It was an old part of the asylum building, refurbished with soundproof walls and remote-control security doors. The white strip-lights embedded in the ceiling were painfully bright and in each corner of the room red-eyed, whirring cameras watched every movement. Some patients could only be interviewed in the containment rooms, held behind a window while their lawyer shouted reassurance through toughened safety glass. Some were interviewed across a normal table. Whichever Angus got would give him a clue as to whether his lawyer trusted him. He had no other way of knowing. He was waiting for the man to arrive. In the past he'd had to wait here for up to an hour, poring over the events of last autumn.

He thought back to the Northern Psychiatric Hospital, to all those mute girls, provocative, defenseless, and their goading blank eyes. His dick warmed and twitched. He almost hoped the lawyer would talk about them, show him pictures of the cupboard or the girls or something. He blinked and remembered the sluice cupboard, the grimy darkness and stinging air, thick with the smell of urine. The lawyer wouldn't talk about the rapes – they hadn't charged him with the rapes, just the murders. It would be better to go to prison as a murderer. The rapes would give him a shorter sentence but he'd be held in segregation and would be afraid for his life most of the time. Labels matter most on the margins. The ideal outcome would be no conviction at all.

At the far end of the room a door buzzed. An officer pushed through it and the tone rose to an urgent whine until the lock clicked shut behind him. The door was made of yellow pine with small glass windows, like an outside door, sturdier than Maureen O'Donnell's close door.

The door beside Angus opened and Alan Grace looked out, inviting him into the room with a raised eyebrow and a forced smile. Grace was a thin man, bald, his uneven pate glinting under the fluorescent light, the hair too long at the sides. The guard stood up and nodded deferentially, standing Angus up with an authoritative pat to his elbow, guiding him with a hand on his shoulder forward into the room. Angus glanced up just once. It was a small room, painted two shades of gray, dark to shoulder height, lighter above. There was no partition, just a table bolted to the floor and two chairs. In two of the high corners black cameras watched, hungry for action. The officer stopped at the door behind him as if he were waiting for a tip. "Will I come in with yees?"

"I think we'll be fine," said Grace, and the guard left, shutting the door after him. "Perhaps you might like to sit, Mr. Farrell." Grace always maintained a cheery voice. It sounded less like conviviality than egging himself through an unpleasant task. "We can start to go over what happened to you yesterday."

As Angus sat down the legs on the chair splayed beneath him, thin plastic that wouldn't snap or give an edge. Behind Grace's head an air vent hummed softly, wafting the fringe of hair back and forth over his ears. He seemed very young. Young but tired.

"Are you well, Mr. Farrell?" Grace was trying to catch his eye.

"Fine."

"They treating you all right?"

"Fine.

Grace nodded. "I understand you had a visit from the Crown Office yesterday," he said quietly, "at which they charged you with the murders of Mr. Douglas Brady and Mr. Martin Donegan."

Angus stared at the table. "I don't know what they're talking about," he whispered urgently.

Grace looked at his notes. "You know who Mr. Brady is?"

"Of course I know him," said Angus, sitting up and coming alive. His accent was clipped and clear. "I worked with him for years. They interviewed all of us in the clinic about it. He died in Maureen O'Donnell's living room. But the porter, Martin, I didn't even know he was dead until yesterday."

Grace made a consolatory face. "You have been ill for quite some time, I'm afraid."

"Dr. Heikle tells me I was given a massive dose of LSD."

"So it would seem. He's surprised that you recovered. Do you remember anything about the time leading up to your admission here?"

Angus looked at him. "I remember nothing," he breathed, his eyes flickering around the gray tabletop as if he were trying to reassemble the events. "I told the police yesterday that I remember meeting the woman, Maureen O'Donnell. She's an ex-patient of mine. We had coffee together in my office. After that I remember nothing but fire and being scared and being here." He stabbed the table, as if his presence in this room was the only thing he had been sure about for a very long time. "I remember being here. I don't know what happened to me to get me here."

Grace paused, writing a note to himself in his pad. "Did you know," he said eventually, "that Miss O'Donnell was having an affair with Mr. Brady?"

"The police told me. I was disappointed in Douglas for that."

"Did you know that O'Donnell's brother is a drug dealer?"

Angus sat forward, and the broken veins on his nose came into focus. "No, I didn't know that. She could have given me the LSD. Can you do that with coffee?"

"I don't know, we'll find out. But it does suggest a knowledge of drugs and a potential source. Incidentally, you were writing threatening letters to Miss O'Donnell while you were still… under the influence. Do you remember that?"

Angus cringed and sat back, sliding his flat palms back across the table, his fingers leaving snail trails of sweat on the scarred gray plastic. "Vaguely." He shrugged apologetically. "She's my last memory before I went under. Maybe I got stuck…"

Grace sat forward, tapping the table with his pen. "Can you pinpoint the date on which Miss O'Donnell came to see you with the coffee?"

Angus shook his head. "I was at the clinic in the morning, briefly. She came in to see me after Douglas's death."

"Would that be the last day you went into the clinic before disappearing?"

Angus sat back as if startled by his acumen. "I expect it was. I honestly have no idea."

Grace scribbled something on his pad. "We can check that out." He looked up. "The evidence they have links you to the murder of Mr. Donegan. They have only circumstantial evidence linking you to the murder of Douglas Brady. Realistically they would have to prove the second case to get a conviction on the first."

"What evidence do they have?"

"Your bloody fingerprints on the back of Mr. Donegan's neck." Grace dropped his voice in embarrassment. "He was stabbed… in the face."

Angus shrank. "Could I have done that?" he muttered urgently.

"The evidence suggests that you did, Mr. Farrell."

"How could I?" he whispered, and let his head drop to his chest. "Why would I do such a thing?"

"I really don't know," said Grace, and turned back to his notes. He seemed uncomfortable.

"Is there any hope at all?" whispered Angus, wondering as he did so whether he was overplaying it. He was suddenly overcome by the desire to smile. He covered his face with his hands, and slipped his fingers under the lenses of his glasses, rubbing his eyes roughly with his fingertips. His specs jiggled up and down.

Grace cleared his throat. "I don't want you to get too excited about this," he said seriously, "but we have a potential defense. It's speculative at the moment." He spoke slowly. "It would be very difficult for the prosecution to get a conviction on the Brady charges without a guilty on the Donegan charge. Let's just say that you were under the influence of LSD at the time of the Donegan murder, yes?" Grace waited, and Angus looked at him and nodded that he understood.

"Yes," he said.

"And if we can show that someone else gave you the LSD, yes?"

Grace waited again. Angus considered bludgeoning him with the chair but nodded instead.

"Yes?" said Grace. "Well, we can plead that while you physically did the act you were not mentally responsible for it."

Angus decided that he had shown enough interest in the plea. He crumpled his chin at the table. "Did I do it?" he asked.

"It would seem so. But we may be able to argue that you didn't have the mental intent to do it, if you were given the drugs without your knowledge."

"What does mental intent mean?"

"Well, if you didn't mean to do it," said Grace patiently, slipping into Ladybird law-book language, "even if you did the physical actions, then the law says you're not guilty. We'll have to check the sightings of you, make sure the dates match and so on. If the plea is successful – there are a lot of conditions on that, I should stress-well, you'll be going home, Mr. Farrell."

"But did I do it?" muttered Angus.

"It would seem so, Mr. Farrell," repeated Grace.

Angus Farrell rubbed his eyes hard again and his mouth dropped open. The crooked lower teeth were worn down to dark, ringed stubs from the months he had spent grinding them when he first came here. His head ached all the time. He rubbed his eyes harder. "God almighty," he whispered. "I did it, didn't I?"