Last night, unable to sleep, Erin had gone online to ferret out whatever details she could about this man who claimed to know her. Not a fan of surprises, she wanted to arm herself with as much information as possible. In the pre-dawn darkness, she had dressed with care. Grey trousers and a plain navy jumper. Bright colours and patterns could be disturbing for some patients. No jewellery, except for her quetzal pendant, hidden underneath her clothes. Anything that could be grabbed was just asking for trouble.
The attendant led her through a rat cage of tunnels that must have been added to the original nineteenth-century building. Each time they passed through a locked door, an ear-splitting buzzer shattered the air and rattled her teeth. Erin’s heart beat faster and her palms prickled with sweat. Patches of mould bloomed on the plaster walls. Moisture from a ceiling pipe dripped onto the back of her neck. Two right turns and then a left. Where was he taking her? An unearthly shriek split the air, followed by shouts and the drumbeat of running feet.
At last, they entered what looked like a ward. A large dayroom, opposite a Perspex-enclosed nursing station, was filled with a dozen men, clad in the motley cast-offs of the asylum. A few were positioned round a television like potted plants. Others had staked out various sites around the room. Crouched in a corner, a man with dirty blond hair and glittering eyes gabbled wildly, snapping and flicking his fingers before his eyes. On the far side, near the windows, a skeletal man, naked but for a grubby tunic, stood on one leg, shrieking like an enraged ibis.
As Erin passed in front of the nurses’ station, a woman with cat-eye glasses glanced at her through the partition. She was led through another locked door and into a narrow corridor, this one with better lighting and a fresh coat of paint. The attendant rapped on a half-closed door. He had yet to say a word.
‘Dr Cartwright, do come in.’ A tall man with a long thin nose and a halo of grey hair dashed from behind the desk to remove a stack of files from a worn leather chair. At the sound of his voice, Erin stopped short. He was an older version of the man she’d found online, but the Oxbridge accent was a surprise. Her sleuthing had revealed a medical degree from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. But nothing about being British. Her cheeks flushed. Would her Home Counties accent be good enough to fool him? It was one thing to fob herself off as English in a city like London, with its cauldron of accents and ethnicities, but quite another to fool a native Englishman on foreign ground. If she slipped up, she could always blame it on the corrupting effect of four months in America.
Over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses, he gazed at her with an air of confusion. Perhaps he’d realised his mistake and didn’t know her after all. On the wall behind the desk, three framed photos of snowy Alpine peaks, dazzling in the winter sunshine, provided a personal touch to the otherwise austere room.
He gestured to the leather chair facing the desk. ‘Thank you for coming. I realise I’m taking you away from your regular duties, but it’s our policy to convene a panel that includes outside experts.’ He tapped a file on his desk. ‘And you come highly recommended.’
She hesitated before taking a seat. Recommended by whom? Had she met Harrison at a conference and simply forgotten? Though it was unlikely. Names sometimes slipped her mind, but never faces.
‘You look puzzled, Dr Cartwright, so I won’t keep you in suspense. You trained in forensic psychiatry under Gordon Hobart, am I correct?’
Alert now, she tightened her grip on the arms of the chair.
‘Wonderful fellow, Gordon. We were students at Imperial College together but lost touch after I moved to America. A couple of months ago, I had the pleasure of meeting up with him at a medical conference in Boston. While chatting over coffee, your name came up. The way he sang your praises had me convinced you’d be the best person to evaluate Tim.’
Surprised by the connection to her former mentor, Erin tried to keep her face impassive. Harrison might simply be conveying his awareness of her role in the Leonard Whidby case as a junior doctor under Hobart’s supervision. Or perhaps it was a ploy and, right from the start, Harrison was counting on her skittishness to deliver his preferred outcome: that Tim Stern remain in an institution for the rest of his life.
‘He’s doing wonderful work at Sheffield, as I’m sure you know,’ Harrison continued. ‘Thirty-three years I’ve lived over here, but I still get bouts of homesickness.’ He looked at her keenly. ‘By the sound of it, I’d say you aren’t from Sheffield, though, not originally.’ His unspoken question hung in the air.
She met his eyes. ‘I grew up in Reading.’
He flipped open the file in front of him. ‘Well, it takes some getting used to, America. But it’s not a bad place to live.’ He smiled. ‘I, for one, am very glad you’re here. As Tim’s treating psychiatrist, I’m too close to the patient, so I’m just as anxious as our review board to have an unbiased opinion of his readiness to rejoin the world.’
Erin struggled to sit properly on the slippery leather, wishing she’d worn her fake glasses, so she would appear less like an awkward teenager and more like a bona fide psychiatrist. ‘I can certainly understand that,’ she said, ‘though, I’d like to mention up front that I might not be able to take the case.’
His eyebrows rose slightly, though he didn’t take the bait. ‘Understood. But
