Night Call (Book 2): Demon Dei (25 page)

“No worries. It was nice meeting you.”

“Likewise.” Lila leaned forward and pressed her hand to Erin’s arm. “I hope you recover soon.”

She left swiftly, closing the door gently behind her.

Erin looked from the closed door to her arm, where Lila had touched her. It had been a strange gesture, not a hold and not a pat. And now it felt as if her arm was growing warm.

Before Erin could begin to wonder what it might mean, darkness crept in on the edges of her vision and her body grew heavy. Her eyelids drooped and her head fell back against the pillow. She was suddenly so very tired…

I trained it into Roma Street and from there to Rocklea. My bruised hands and torn face ensured I got plenty of room on the crowded morning commute—about the only good thing to come out of the previous night. I hadn’t slept well, or at all, if you want to be precise about it. Mercy hadn’t stirred but when the sun rose, there had been a little sigh and I’d felt her shift from unconsciousness into sleep. I chose to take it as a good sign.

At the new estate, most of the work crews were congregated around several of the half-finished homes. Seems the hole in the wall warranted little concern, especially after the cops had gone. Crime scene tape crisscrossed the Mercy sized hole and the front yard, but no one remained for me to worry about. I got the Moto Guzzi from the garage next door, wheeled it as far down the road as I dared, then got on and roared away, heading for the Mentis Institute.

Back when Brisbane had been little more than a flourishing colony town, John Spencer had bought a large block of land in the area that would eventually become the suburb of Auchenflower. He built a big house, had a big family and died a poor man. Too many kids and, probably due to the kids, a massive gambling problem. His kids sold the property to the Catholic Church and invested their money, hopefully, wisely. The Catholic Church turned the old house into a convent, stocked it with nuns and sold off the surrounding grounds.

Around the 1940s, for reasons I’m not savvy with, the convent was closed down and remained empty until the seventies, when a psychiatrist, with a dream of a private hospital for difficult cases, leased the building from the Church. Thus the Mentis Institute was born.

It gained a rep for a progressive, occasionally aggressive, treatment scheme for its patients. There were accusations of cruelty, of unorthodox methods, but in the end, they got results. Specialists came from around the world to observe the techniques employed at Mentis.

When I’d arrived to rescue the staff from Mercy, the place had dated itself by its history. It looked like an old house turned into a convert turned into a psychiatric hospital. There was cheesy, checkerboard linoleum, ‘soothing’ institutional-green paint on the walls, an overabundance of fluorescent tubes and an air-conditioning system that left the place too cold in winter and too hot in summer.

Thankfully, since then, things had changed. The Institute had moved from Auchenflower and into a purpose built building in Spring Hill. From a squat, red brick building lost amongst the bigger, newer buildings around it, they’d upgraded to a glass spire that reflected the city in near perfect images.

I parked the bike and trotted up the stairs to the front door, practicing my English accent. Inside, the foyer was mostly empty, with only a small, plump, dark skinned woman at the front desk talking with one of the staff. The checkerboard linoleum was gone, replaced by dove-grey carpet, and the harsh fluorescents had been switched to soft lighting. Gentle, modern artwork decorated the walls and chairs and couches of cream leather were gathered here and there in cosy little groups around coffee tables artfully displaying pamphlets and information sheets.

As I approached the front desk, the woman stepped back, as if her discussion could wait. I nodded my thanks and she gave me a wan, tired smile and began poking around in her bag.

“Can I help you?” the young man behind the desk asked me.

“I hope so.” My pretend accent didn’t sound too convincing to me, but the guy didn’t seem disturbed. “Apparently my brother has been admitted to this institute. I would like to visit him.”

“Of course. Your brother’s name?”

“Karl
Roeben.”

Two sets of eyebrows reached for the sky. The woman beside me stopped in mid rummage and looked between me and the staff member, who looked between me and the woman.

Something was definitely wrong here.

“Is there a problem?” I asked them both.

“Well, for starters,” the little woman said, “your accent is atrocious.” She was qualified to judge, since her words came out on a cultured British accent. “And secondly, my husband doesn’t have any brothers.” Her frank, once over of myself added that if he did have brothers, they wouldn’t be pale and or tall and skinny.

Oops. I suppose I should have known this ruse would have little chance of working the second time around.

“Mrs Roeben, I presume,” I said to the woman.

She merely cocked one brow and pursed her lips.

“Just why are you here?” the man behind the counter asked, tone very close to hostile. Couldn’t blame him for that.

“Perhaps I should talk privately with Mrs
Roeben regarding that.”

“Perhaps we could talk right here.” Mrs
Roeben’s tone wasn’t hostile, but it was suspicious. “If you’re another bastard come sniffing after Karl’s research, then there’s nothing to hide. I’ll tell you what I’ve told all the others. That you can fu–”

“I’m not after his research,” I blurted out.

She clamped her mouth shut and eyed me all over again. “Then why are you trying to see my husband?”

The guy stood and crossed his arms, silently letting me know that he too was very, very interested.

There was nothing else for it. “I’ve been hired to look into Geraldine Davis’ death.”

Mrs
Roeben’s eyes narrowed. “Mr…?”

“Hawkins, Matt.”

“Mr Hawkins, as much as I am sorry that Gerry Davis is dead, my husband is not in a fit state to answer anyone’s questions. He’s…” She trailed off and waved her hand about.

“He’s here,” I finished for her.

“And you know what that means,” Mrs Roeben said pointedly.

Meaning he was in such a state he was only allowed family members as visitors.

I glanced at the guy. His arms were still crossed but he seemed more intrigued than incensed.

“I was informed of your husband’s situation by Dr Long Jones,” I said to her.

“Long told you he was here?”

“Yes. Dr Jones is helping me with my investigation.”

“Then you won’t mind if I call him to confirm that.”

“Of course not.”

There were two things I learned very quickly about Mrs Roeben. One, she was very thorough. She interrogated Dr Jones to the point of almost making him bend over and cough. Two, you didn’t want to get on the wrong side of her. She might look like a meek housewife, but I was willing to bet even her physicist husband couldn’t win an argument with her. Dr Jones definitely couldn’t and the guy behind the desk winced several times in sympathy as Mrs Roeben conducted her phone interview.

In the end, she had a description of me from Dr Jones good enough to give to a composite artist and ensure I’d be picked up like that (finger snap), an almost word for word repetition of the discussion Dr Jones and I’d had and a detailed accounting of Tobias
Waldbridge’s credentials.

I’d like to say I weathered the wait while she confirmed my identity with all sorts of grace, but I’d be lying. I sweated buckets. Hey, I knew I was telling the truth but the way Mrs
Roeben was digging, I wasn’t too sure she wouldn’t have my pants size and primary school grade average before she was done.

Luckily, everything fell down in my favour and with an impatient nod, Mrs
Roeben led me toward a cluster of chairs against the far wall under a series of pictures showing a broken landscape in sepia tones. Once seated, she took a moment longer to think, then turned to me.

“Gerry’s husband hired you,” she began, stating a fact Dr Jones had spilled like a man undergoing Chinese water torture. “I thought he did it.”

From the sounds of it, if it were up to her, Chris would be sentenced without benefit of a trial in the presence of his peers. There was something more going on here and I started to get an inkling Chris hadn’t told me everything. I decided to proceed with caution.

“There’s… complications. He didn’t do anything to Gerry. Do you know Chris well?”

“I met him briefly. It was enough. When I was told Gerry was murdered I immediately thought he did it.”

That inkling pulled its shirt over its head and did a victory run through my head.

“I’m sorry, Mrs Roeben, but Chris never mentioned you or your husband when I spoke to him. What happened that you would think he would kill his wife?”

“I’m not surprised he didn’t tell you how we met. He shouldn’t be too proud of what he said and did.”

Trying to imagine Chris Davis doing anything to leave this impression on Mrs Roeben did my head in. I needed it spelt out for me.

“Please, start at the beginning,” I said to her. “Anything you know might help me get this mess sorted out.”

Mrs Roeben shifted on her chair. “First, Long said you claimed to be a psychic. Is that true?”

I knew she wasn’t doubting what Dr Jones had told her. This woman could get a job with any intelligence agency in the world on the merit of the single phone interview I’d witnessed her conduct. Her question was wholly pointed at me. Was I or wasn’t I a psychic?

“I’m psychic,” I said in what I hoped was my firmest, most confident manner. Anything less and she would probably grab my ear and rush me out of the building, all the while telling me it wasn’t nice to tell lies.

Mrs
Roeben studied me for a long time. I returned her regard with all the honesty I’d been preaching about lately. At last, she sighed and looked away.

“Psychic,” she whispered. “Have you discovered anything the police haven’t?”

Seems I’d passed her test. “I can’t tell you that. It’s an ongoing investigation.” Okay, I’ll admit to a little bit of smugness in that comment. It was nice for once to be holding more cards than someone else.

“If I tell you about Chris Davis, will you promise to do one thing for me?”

“Sure.” It was out before I could think otherwise.

“My husband will not be able to tell you anything,” she said, hands clutched so tightly together in her lap her fingernails made little dints in her flesh and I swallowed every wise-arse thought I’d had about this woman. She was hurting. She hid it well but like Erin, she had the grim chore of sitting back and watching someone she loved go through something horrific.

“He’s in a stupor,” she continued. “The doctors tell me his brain functions are all fine. It’s just that he doesn’t respond to stimulus.”

“I’m sorry. It must be hard on you.”

“Once I’ve told you what happened with Chris, will you go to my husband and see if you can reach him?”

For once, my mouth waited patiently for my brain to tell it what to do. Because my brain was stunned into immobility, all my mouth could do was hang open.

This was the last thing I’d been expecting, but when you go about sprouting how you’re psychic, I guess this shouldn’t have been such a shock. A, because being a ‘psychic’ I should have seen it coming, and B, because this, I suppose, is what people think psychics do. Personally, I was never that keen on the label myself. It was convenient for folk like Courey who needed to put people in a box in order to deal with them, but in general, I didn’t think of myself as an actual psychic. Yet, here I was. Best policy and all that stuff.

“Ma’am, I don’t know what I would be able to do for your husband,” I said. “I will certainly try, though.”

“That’s all I can ask. Now, to Chris. I liked Gerry.”

I suppose I looked a bit sceptical, because Mrs
Roeben nodded firmly.

“I did. It’s not hard to see how she could alienate people, though. She was very smart, but clever as well. I’ve come across a lot of supposedly smart people in my life, most through my husband’s work, and I can tell you this, Mr Hawkins. There is a big difference between being able to remember things so you appear smart and actually being able to apply that knowledge and use it. Gerry was one of the latter. Her mind never stopped working and she was never satisfied with what anyone else could tell her. She had to go back to basics and work it out for herself. When Karl met her I could tell that she was like him. He was simply that excited to find someone he could understand and who could understand him. They became very, very close.”

“Can you define close?”

Mrs
Roeben chuckled, though it was a dry, brittle thing. “They weren’t having an affair. Though to outsiders, it could seem that way. They spent more hours together in a day than they did apart and when Karl came home, all he could do was talk about her in awe. As soon as he’d eaten and slept he’d be off again to see her and continue what they were doing.”

“You must be very understanding of your husband to put up with that sort of devotion to another woman.”

“Oh, it wasn’t devotion to Gerry. Far from it. It was devotion to the work they were doing. She had started this project and when she met Karl, she showed it to him and he too became obsessed with it.”

“Still, this other woman had taken your husband away from you. How could you like a person who did that, for whatever reason?”

Sighing, Mrs Roeben relaxed her hands. “Because it made Karl happy. He loved nothing more than being challenged. Even I don’t rate that high on his priorities. Oh, I’m up there in the top three, but I’ve long since known my place.”