“Given your hostile attitude, I don’t know that I care to answer that.”
Banks sighed and reached for a cigarette. “Oh, come on doctor, don’t sulk. Was she cured or wasn’t she?”
Preston passed an ashtray as Banks lit up. “That’ll kill you, you know.” He seemed to take great pleasure in the observation.
“Not before I get an answer from you, I hope.”
Preston pursed his lips. “I imagine you know about Elizabeth Dale’s drug problem?”
“Yes.”
“That was part of the cause of her mental illness. When she came to us she said she’d been off heroin for about a month. Naturally, we’re not equipped to deal with addicts here, and if Miss Dale had been still using drugs we would have had to send her elsewhere. However, she stayed, on medication I prescribed, and she made some progress. At the end of two months, I felt she was ready to leave.”
“What did she feel?”
297
Preston stared out of his window at the landscaped garden. A row of topiary shrubs stood close to the building, cut in the shapes of birds and animals.
“Miss Dale,” Preston started slowly, “was afraid of life and afraid of her addiction. The one led to the other, an apparently endless circle.”
“What you’re saying is that once she’d got used to the idea she’d have been happy to stay here forever. Am I right?”
“Not just here. Any institution, anywhere she didn’t have to make her own decisions and face the world.”
“And that’s the kind of place I’m likely to find her in?”
“I’d say so, yes.”
“Can you be any more specific?”
“You might try a DDU.”
“DDU?”
“Yes. A Drug-Dependency Unit, for the treatment of addicts. Elizabeth had been in and out of one a couple of times before she came to us.”
“So she hadn’t been cured?”
“How many are? Oh, some, I agree. But with Elizabeth it was on and off, on and off. The cure worked for a while-Methadone hydrochloride in gradually decreasing doses. It’s rather like chewing nicotine gum when you’re trying to stop smoking. Helps with some of the severe physical symptoms, but-“
“That’s not enough?”
“Not really. Many addicts get hooked again as soon as the opportunity for a fix arises. Unfortunately, given the network of friends they have, that can be very soon.”
“So you think this DDU might have Liz as a patient, or might know where she is?”
“It’s likely.”
“Where is it?” Banks slipped out his notebook.
“The only local one is just outside Halifax, not too far away.” Preston continued to give directions. “I hope she’s not in any trouble,” he said finally.
“I don’t think so. Just need her to help us with our inquiry.”
298
Preston adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “You do have a way with words, you policemen, don’t you?”
“I’m glad we’ve got something in common with doctors.” Banks smiled and stood up to leave. “You’ve been a great help.”
“Have I?”
Banks beat a hasty retreat from the hospital back onto the rainswept roads and headed for Halifax. He soon found the DDU, using the Wainhouse Tower as a landmark, as Dr Preston had suggested. Originally built as a factory chimney, the tall, black tower was never used as one and now stands as a folly and a lookout point, its top ornamented in a very unchimneylike pointed Gothic style.
Banks found the DDU up a steep side street. It was set back from the road at the top of a long sloping lawn and looked like a Victorian mansion. It also had an eerie quality to it, Banks felt. He shivered as he made his approach. Not the kind of place I’d want to find myself in after dark, he thought.
There were no walls or men at the gate here. Banks walked straight inside and found himself standing in a spacious common room with a high ceiling. On the walls hung a number of paintings, clearly the work of patients, dominated by an enormous canvas depicting an angel plummetting to earth, wings ablaze and neck contorted so that it looked straight at the viewer, eyes red and wild, raw muscles stretched like knotted ropes. It could have been Satan on his way to hell. Certainly the destination, impressionistically rendered in the lower half of the painting, was a dark and murky place. He shuddered and looked away.
“Can I help you?” A young woman came up to him. It wasn’t clear from her appearance whether she was a member of staff or a patient. She was in her early thirties, perhaps, and wore jeans and a dark-brown jacket over a neck-high white blouse. Her long black hair was plaited into wide braids and pinned at the back.
