Dangerous Minds Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Recent Titles From Priscilla Masters

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgement

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  A Selection of Recent Titles from Priscilla Masters

  The Martha Gunn Mystery Series

  RIVER DEEP

  SLIP KNOT

  FROZEN CHARLOTTE *

  SMOKE ALARM *

  THE DEVIL’S CHAIR *

  RECALLED TO DEATH *

  The Joanna Piercy Mysteries

  WINDING UP THE SERPENT

  CATCH THE FALLEN SPARROW

  A WREATH FOR MY SISTER

  AND NONE SHALL SLEEP

  SCARING CROWS

  EMBROIDERING SHROUDS

  ENDANGERING INNOCENTS

  WINGS OVER THE WATCHER

  GRAVE STONES

  A VELVET SCREAM *

  THE FINAL CURTAIN *

  GUILTY WATERS *

  The Claire Roget Mystery Series

  DANGEROUS MINDS *

  * available from Severn House

  DANGEROUS MINDS

  A Claire Roget Mystery

  Priscilla Masters

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2016

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2016 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD

  eBook edition first published in 2016 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2016 by Priscilla Masters.

  The right of Priscilla Masters to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Masters, Priscilla author.

  Dangerous minds.

  1. Forensic psychiatrists–Fiction. 2. Personality

  disorders–Fiction. 3. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title

  823.9’2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8598-2 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-700-5 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-761-5 (e-book)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I thought it would make the reading easier if I outlined the basic detail and terms of detention of the various sections of the 1983 Mental Health Act.

  Section 2:

  Under these terms a patient can be kept in hospital for assessment for up to twenty-eight days. There are certain stringent conditions – the application must be made by two doctors who have to have seen the patient within five days of each other or, alternatively, the nearest relative. One of the doctors must be an Approved Mental Health Professional (AMHP), who must have seen the patient in the last fourteen days.

  A Section 2 order cannot be renewed but may be transferred on to a:

  Section 3:

  Under a Section 3, the patient can be detained for up to six months for reasons of their health, their safety, or for the protection of the general public. This can be renewed for a further six months and thereafter for periods of a year at a time.

  Section 4:

  Is to be used in emergency situations, needs the recommendation of only one doctor, and is designed to detain the patient pending an assessment of their mental health state.

  The patient can be detained for up to seventy-two hours.

  Section 5:

  Is designed to stop the patient from leaving hospital. It is known as the nurse’s holding power. It can also be used if the patient is having treatment in a general hospital for a physical condition. Under this the patient can be detained for up to seventy-two hours.

  A Community Treatment Order (CTO) enables the patient to remain at large in the community but they can be taken back to hospital if they don’t meet the conditions of the CTO.

  There are further stringent conditions for all of these detentions. This is an outline only.

  Hope this helps.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

  ‘I wish I loved the Human Race’, from ‘Wishes of an Elderly Man, Wished at a Garden Party, June 1914’ by Professor Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh (1861–1922).

  ONE

  Wednesday, 3 September, 8.30 a.m.

  The envelope dropped through her letterbox with a dry rattle, landing face up. Square and white, with a decorative silver border, addressed in a neat hand to:

  Dr Claire Roget

  46 Waterloo Road,

  Burslem,

  Stoke-on-Trent, ST6 4UJ

  Even the postcode was right. Curious, she picked it up, fingered it, felt stiff card inside. A party invite? She opened it, pulled the card out and spotted the church bells straight away. So … an invitation to a wedding then. How nice. Her initial emotion was pleasurable curiosity touched with the tiniest tinge of envy. Which of her friends was getting married?

  She was no nearer knowing when she read the names: ‘Mr and Mrs Kenneth Trigg …’ She scratched her head. The name was sparking no recognition. She read on … ‘are delighted to invite you to the marriage of their daughter, Roxanne, to Mr Jerome Barclay’. Then she felt it. Fear. Sour and corrosive as battery acid in her mouth. Jerome Barclay, one of her more worrying patien
ts, diagnosed with a severe narcissistic psychopathic personality disorder. Unpredictable as a pit bull on steroids. Subtly lethal as a virus, deadly as an asp. And he was getting married? She had always believed he was dangerous. He had dropped sketchy hints of torture, deceit, murder even, but she had never been able to prove anything. All she knew was that he had a talent to unnerve, frighten, terrify – even her, who was trained to float over these emotions like a helium balloon; to look down and get an overview of her patients without feeling threatened by them. Fear? That was not part of the job. But somehow, out of all her patients, many of whom had histories of extreme violence, Jerome Barclay alone had needled her; crawled right under her skin like a parasitic worm. During consultations she had sensed the cruelty and malice that peered out from behind his blandly delivered statements and descriptions.

  People around him seemed to have ‘accidents’ – his mother a serious injury to her face, his girlfriend ‘accidentally run over’.

  ‘I just didn’t see her, Claire,’ he had said, while his face displayed the underlying story. ‘I wanted to know what it would feel like to crush her.’ She knew. Oh yes, she knew all right.

  Years before his father had died from the wrong dose of insulin. And again it was a story he had related, laced with underlying menace. ‘Such a tragedy for my poor mother. He must have got his phials mixed up.’ Spoken with a bland smile which hadn’t fooled her for a minute.

  His brother had died young: diagnosis, a cot death. ‘Poor little Peter. Just unlucky, I guess.’

  She agreed with that statement at least. Unlucky to have had you as his older brother.

  And the final nail in the coffins of his family members, his poor mother‘s ‘suicide’.

  ‘She must have been more depressed than I’d realized and her tablets just … available.’

  He had all his stories off pat. But he didn’t deceive her. Not for a minute.

  It had seemed that with the assault on Sadie Whittaker, his ex-girlfriend, Barclay had finally come unstuck. Sadie had initially pressed charges against him, stating that she had seen his face through the windscreen quite clearly as he had borne down on her. But once out of hospital she had retracted this version, substituting it for the story that she had run out in front of him and he had had no opportunity to avoid her. As the incident had taken place on a remote road just south of Macclesfield, there were no independent witnesses. No witnesses at all. Without Sadie’s clear allegation, the police had had no choice but to reduce charges from ‘manslaughter’ to ‘driving without due care and attention’. The forensic car-crash team stated that there was no evidence he had been driving at more than ten miles an hour. He had had a fine and three points on his licence. Hardly a just punishment for what Claire believed had been a serious attempt at murder. But proof is all in English justice and, without a statement from Sadie, there was none. It wasn’t exactly difficult to deduce that Barclay had threatened her – again. The game of ‘Tease the Psychiatrist’ had continued during his monthly sessions as an outpatient. To her he had hinted that the deaths of all around him – mother, father, brother; almost his girlfriend – were all his own work. True or false? She had left every consultation frustrated, uncertain and worried.

  And at the back of her mind she had to remember: his attention-seeking personality meant that he would do anything to retain her attention. His hints could be all about that. She couldn’t know. Not for certain. It could be the truth. Equally it could all be a lie. But her gut feeling was that he was allowing his psychiatrist a dangerous glimpse of the truth. For no other reason than his own gratification, he was wafting aside the curtain for just long enough for her to peep on to the lit stage and see that the sad saga of Barclay’s bereavements was really a story of serial crime.

  But she could never be certain.

  Two years ago, Claire had decided enough was enough, that he was just playing with her, that she was actually achieving nothing by seeing him every month. In a quiet moment she admitted to herself that he was, perhaps, too clever and too devious for her. And so she had stepped off the merry-go-round and discharged him from her clinic. She hadn’t thought he was a danger to wider society, only to those close to him, and she did believe he would, at some point in the future, reoffend. She couldn’t see how checking up on him on a monthly basis could anticipate, possibly prevent this.

  But now he was to be married. She looked back at the card in her hand. Why? What earthly (or hellish) reason could have made Jerome Barclay decide to get married?

  Not love – that was for sure. That was outside his repertoire of emotions.

  She was still holding the invitation tightly between her fingers while she tried to work it out. Maybe it was simply that a wife would be another person to torture, to tease. Would some ‘accident’ befall her, like Sadie’s? Next time would he be successful – again? Not simply major injury but death – again? But she knew. Whatever his plan was in inviting her to his wedding, it was a dangerous game to play. Because she was the one person of all who would see through his games. Read his intentions. Anticipate his moves. And, the trump card here, she was the one who had the authority to incarcerate him. Barclay was astutely slippery enough to have resisted admission to Greatbach so far. So why was he taking this risk? Why had he suddenly surfaced, broken cover? Like the shark in Jaws rearing up to expose bloodied teeth before disappearing back into the deep. But … she held it in her hand. This time he was inviting her to follow him.

  She was well aware of the significance of the small white square of card she held between her fingers. He had thrown down the gauntlet. Whatever he planned, he was inviting her to observe events from a ringside seat. The question was: should she go?

  She thought back to the last time she had seen him. Almost two years ago when she had told him, quite calmly, that his condition was unlikely to respond to treatment. The consultations were achieving nothing and so she was discharging him from her care. He had taken the decision without any visible reaction. His features had remained as impassive as the Sphinx’s. Not a twitch of his shoulders, not an alteration in the size of his pupils, a flicker of his cold grey eyes or an involuntary jerk of his slim fingers. He’d simply stood up. Polite. ‘OK, Claire,’ he’d said very slowly and deliberately, so she could not mistake his meaning. His tone had been so heavy with implied threat. ‘If that’s what you think.’

  And then he’d just walked out.

  Was that why this invitation had been sent? Out of pique because she had dismissed him? She thought for a moment, her curiosity pricked.

  If she went to the wedding she might find out. Learn some answers. She read the card through again, this time noting that the invitation included ‘and partner’. Well, she didn’t have one any more. If she went she would have to go alone. At the bottom was the obligatory R.S.V.P.

  Response. It was what psychopaths fed on, like vampires on blood. Psychopaths are both the conductor and first violinist of the orchestra. The attention focuses on them. And to have their psychiatrist in the audience for their show was a coup, a feather in their cap as big as an ostrich’s, waving hurrah to everyone.

  So would she go?

  She sensed that he already knew. And so did she.

  TWO

  8.45 a.m. the same day

  She propped the wedding invitation up on the mantelpiece, feeding herself the pointless fable that she would decide later whether to accept or decline. For now she distracted herself. She had to get to work.

  Greatbach Psychiatric Unit was a large red-brick building in the centre of Stoke-on-Trent, close to Hanley. Claire was a consultant psychiatrist at the unit, with a special interest in forensic psychiatry, in particular severe psychopathic personality disorder. Together with two other consultants, between them they had eight wards under their care. Two of them were locked – one male, one female. Inmates could be detained, under a Section of the Mental Health Act, for periods ranging from three days to a year, after which they would be reviewed. All thes
e patients were deemed to be a danger either to themselves or to the wider community, so they were under close supervision, the staff specially trained to spot signs of worsening conditions.

  The other patients had a variety of other conditions: depression, anxiety, eating disorders, drug or alcohol addiction, bipolar affective disorder, and so on, and some who defied any classification, which even Claire privately classed as ‘nuts’. These she treated with a mixture of confusion and affection. It had proved an interesting, varied and unpredictable career choice. Claire loved the challenge while acknowledging that, unlike many other medical specialities, a cure was frequently out of reach. One had to use other phrases in psychiatry: management, safety, minimizing harm, protecting the public.

  She dressed quickly in a corduroy skirt and light sweater and locked the house up.

  Although she only lived a few miles from the hospital, the journey seemed to get slower week by week, the roads more congested and hampered by roadworks and a lane closed on the A500 – the ‘D’ road link between junctions 15 and 16 of the M6. She looked out of her car window at what looked like half the population of Stoke, sitting in traffic, just like her, fuming at the delay. Probably their thoughts were reflecting hers. She simply couldn’t work out why a lane closure during rush hour was so necessary. Apart from a line of traffic cones there appeared to be no activity: no holes in the road or raised drain covers; no workmen and certainly no accident. No reason at all for the delay.