Quiver (8 page)

“And the diaries were in the collections? Just sitting there? Nobody else had bothered to check, to report them before?”

“Ah, no, it was not so easy, Danica! The diaries, they were not in the catalogued collections. After some time, the librarian, he began to appreciate my devotion to my subject, my respect for Báthory. He allowed me to search the uncatalogued manuscripts, the material they have not filed or identified, the ones they do not allow the students, the public to view. And,” Maria twirls her wrist in the air again, “she was there.”

“That was lucky for you.” Maria’s story seemed plausible. But she hadn’t told me much that I could fact-check or verify. “And what does this manuscript look like? Where is it now?”

“The librarian, Polanyi, we have made an arrangement. He agreed, he will hold the manuscript, will not catalogue or tell any other researchers it is there, until I have made secure my deal with a publisher. He will be mentioned in the book, of course.” She says this last sentence in a hushed, serious tone, her doll eyes wide. The offer of acknowledgement seems like a very small token of thanks, but I’ve noticed that Maria often gets away with arrangements like this. She could make you feel like your short end of the stick was a bejewelled scepter. “And I have a few photos. I can show you, but you must promise me, you will keep it confidential.”

“Photos?”

“It is not the usual practice for the university to allow photographs of the uncatalogued material. But Polanyi, he said for me, a small exception. He allowed me to take a few, and I will return to take more when I have finished the translations.”

“How far along are you?”

“You have not told me—how did you like the section I sent you?”

“It was...compelling. If it is true, as you say.”

“More compelling than Foster?”

I let the question linger. If she is telling the truth, she’s sharing the diaries, even offering to show me the confidential proof. She’s trusting me. I consider giving her some harmless piece of information, maybe something that could be found on public record. Like the length of his sentence, a detail from the trial. Anyone could check into that, it wouldn’t be confidential.

But before I think of something, she says, “Edward tells me Foster is getting a new lawyer.”

What? “Where did he hear that?” It had to be another empty rumour.

“Oh, it is the talk, a story the newspaper is working on, for next week. Foster, he is a celebrity. Everything connected to him, they write about.”

“Well, I haven’t heard anything about it.” I say this in a way that implies Edward and his supposed sources are speculative hacks. “What else...I mean, are they planning any other articles?”

“It is possible. Foster, he is popular, there is much talk about him. I will keep a watch for you.”

I nod and almost feel for some reason that I should thank her, though I’m unsure why.

“Dani, I wonder if you could do me a favour. For the book.”

She’s going to ask me back on the project. We started looking for the diaries together, and she wants to ask me back, to work together.

“I speak to you as a colleague,” she says. “We have common interests.”

“Yes. I have always valued that connection.” After a month of reports and papers at Stowmoor I’m very ready for her to ask me back in. I want to be involved in something glossy, something more glamorous, more public, than shuffling through the gates of Stowmoor every day.

She smiles, sets down her cutlery, leans back and pushes a few stray tendrils of blonde behind her ears. “I would like a visitor pass. To interview Foster.”

“You’re joking.”

“Dani, I am not. You can get me a pass.”

“Maria,” I say loudly. The man at the next table swivels his head in our direction. “Maria,” I say again, almost in a whisper, “you can’t magically get a pass to someplace like Stowmoor.”

“Dani, I do not mean to offend. I know, it is a difficult thing.” She touches my knee under the table. “That is why I ask for your help.”

“Why do you want to see him?” I think about pushing her hand off my knee. I don’t move.

“It is for an interview, for the book. He can speak to me for research if he agrees, yes?”

“It’s more complicated than that.” Much more complicated. Aside from the legalities of such an interview, I cringe to think of the lecture I would get if I even brought up the idea with Sloane.

“Yes, his visitor list, I imagine it would be restricted. But you could arrange something, for me?”

I move my leg away from her hand. “I can’t help you get a pass. Even if you somehow got one, I’m not sure you could publish any part of a conversation.”

“Dani, not everything has to be official. Besides, I would like to meet him for my personal interest. Is that so odd?”

“So this is all about satisfying curiosity?” I try to sound authoritative, but I come off as sarcastic.

“Isn’t everything?” She shrugs her shoulders, as if we’d been talking about trying a new nail colour.

She’s potentially found the diaries and now she wants me to risk my job to satisfy her whim of getting an interview with

Foster. No invitation to work with her, to be involved on the project we’d originally thought of together. But she insists:
We’re colleagues.
I don’t think so.

I stand, bump the lopsided table, jostle my glass. Water slops onto the plywood, soaks the
Honey, Torture
flyer Maria had pushed towards me earlier. “Sorry, Maria, I have to go.” I give a few curt excuses and stomp up the rickety steps to the congested street.

“Dani,” she calls after me, “I’ll be in touch.”

Her suggestion that I help get her a visitor’s pass is ridiculous. Though I can’t say part of me wouldn’t love to see those two in a room together. She thinks she can just flit into a forensic hospital, charm Foster, and he’ll be her docile pet, tell her everything, and she can write it down in a perfect little story.

She’s delusional. I’ve never assessed Maria, clinically. But it’s possible she could be diagnosed with some disordered tendencies, histrionic, narcissistic. She needs to be constantly at the centre of attention, to create drama. Everything is a game to her, entertainment, even the idea of hearing about a murder right from the killer. But she would be in over her head with Foster. I would love to see her flounder.

He pulled the silver Audi sedan into the dockside parking lot. “They’re unloading already,” he said, and pointed to a large freighter at the end of the wharf. Workers ferreted among the orange and black cargo containers. Some held clipboards and Styrofoam cups of coffee. A forklift driver scooped three stacked boxes, taxied them to the other side of the dock, went back for more. Lifted, carried, set, lifted.

For a moment they sat and watched. His passenger opened her red alligator clutch, pulled out a brush and ran it through her long, dark hair. She turned the rear-view mirror towards herself and dabbed on some lip gloss. “Shall we?”

He turned the mirror back to its original position and checked his dark hair before he stepped out of the car. He pulled his brown leather gloves over his manicured hands and surveyed the wharf. “There.” He pointed at a man with beige coveralls and a brown hat. Steel grey beard, late forties. They started towards him. She buttoned her long dress coat and effortlessly dodged rubble, though she wore heels. He put his sleeve over his nose and tried not to breathe in the docklands stink, to remain untainted by the grime. They stood at the bow of the boat.

Finally the worker saw them and asked, “You two here for that delivery? You don’t waste time. Just came in an hour ago.”

They didn’t say hello. The younger man drew his sleeve away from his face, reached in his coat pocket and handed the older man a plain white envelope. ‘‘Where is it?” he asked.

“This the entire payment?” The worker riffled through the bills in the envelope.

“It’s all there. Where is it?”

The worker looked at the man, then the woman. She was beautiful. Young, not even twenty-five, he thought. She was taller than both the men and kicked impatiently at the ground with one of her high-heeled feet.

He tucked the envelope inside his coveralls. “Must be quite important, then?”

Neither of them even smiled. They stared at him until he said, “All right, no small talk.” He adjusted his hat. “This way.”

They walked to a small office shack. The walls were corrugated steel, the floor plywood. The small windows were fogged with grease and condensation. Mouse droppings lined the window ledge.

“And how long has it been in here?” the woman said. “It shouldn’t be in humidity like this.”

“I told you,” said the worker, “it just got in an hour ago.”

The flat rectangular parcel leaned against the wall, underneath the ledge with the droppings. The young man put a hand on his companion’s arm. “I know,” he whispered to her. “Conditions of transport are variable.” He plucked the package from the mess.

“Right, if you need to use my services again, just give me a bell.” The older man patted the envelope in his pocket. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

They drove towards her flat in the East End and unloaded the parcel from the car.

“We can’t keep moving it, not with conditions like that,” she said as she opened her door. “It’s four hundred years old. You can’t have it tossed in a dirty old shed.”

“I know,” he said. “It’s becoming dangerous. But it’s tradition. Ritual.”

“Which is why it should be shipped by a professional company,” she said as they walked inside. The walls were dusty pink, and a bouquet of lilies filled a crystal vase on the small table beside the doorway. She threw her keys on the table and they clattered against the vase.

“You know we can’t. Suggest it if you like, but it won’t work. You know it’s crucial we arrange...less obvious modes of transport.”

“It’s just, what if something happened to it?” She pointed to a spot against the wall, across from the day bed. “Put it there.”

He set down the painting and freed it of its dirty cardboard outer casing and the bubble wrap inside. She hovered as he removed each layer. “It would be safer to leave it in storage,” she said. But after he opened a final layer of paper and she saw it again, she understood why it was worth the risk, the impracticality.

It was the physical connection. They needed to see it, to touch it. Báthory was once in the same room as this canvas. Looked at it, breathed on it with a pant of anticipation or of indulgence, with thoughts of a servant just killed or about to be. The wet paint covering pale canvas like a girl’s blood on her skin.

He touched the heavy gilded frame, the wood cool against his tanned skin. He knew each brushstroke of her square, lace-trimmed collar, the turquoise cuffs tight against her wrists at the end of gossamer bell sleeves. Hair pulled back from her face with a tight cap of jewels. Báthory’s lips and eyes relaxed, not a smile, not a frown.

They would hang it later. For now, it commanded the space in the small, lily-scented flat.

From her wine rack she pulled a bottle of Egri Bikavér. She unwrapped the foil at the neck, dug in the screw. Turned, turned, pulled. She poured them each a glass of the deep red wine. They sipped and attended on the Countess.

Every morning on my way to work, I pass by an angel outside the front gate of Stowmoor. The statue sits a hundred yards in front of the regal-looking archway and high brick walls of the institution. She probably used to be white stone; now, dirty grey veins run down her dress and through her wings, which she holds over her head, half-spread. She is mottled and worn. But beautiful in spite of, maybe because of, this decay. I wonder whom she’s there for; the patients walled inside never see her. Maybe she’s there for us, the people who pass in and out of the gates every day.

This Monday morning, I hustle past the angel and give her only a cursory glance. I’m scheduled to do the second interview with Foster this afternoon. But first I have a meeting with Abbas and Sloane, to consult with them about my initial report. I dig through my purse for my ID and string it around my neck. I say hi to Trudi, who works the main entrance most mornings. She buzzes me through the first gate. It clangs shut behind me and I hurry down the dark grey hallway, the heels of my boots slipping on the concrete epoxy floor. I pass through another set of gates, get my mail from Kelly and make it to my office two minutes early.

We must be on time on Mondays. Mondays, they test the alarm at ten o’clock. Any early morning interviews or sessions must finish before nine forty-five. Then all patients are taken back to their rooms and accounted for. Guards and orderlies stand by the doors, and we all wait for the alarm to start. The sound is similar to a WWII air-raid siren. But it’s not as loud inside as you might think. It’s meant to project outside, to let the three towns surrounding Stowmoor know that someone has escaped. All of the schools have lockdown plans in case of a security breach.

As substantial as the security seems, there have been problems inside the hospital. Throughout my grad school training I interned and volunteered at several hospitals and forensic facilities. I thought that horror movies exaggerated the bleakness of prisons, the unsettling atmosphere of an insane asylum. But they aren’t that far off. Stowmoor is every cliché you can imagine. Bleak, cold, colossal. The facility was built in 1863, part of the boom of asylums that sprang up in Victorian England. Since then, modern wiring and updates in plumbing have been graphed onto the place. But there are holes. The buildings are too old and large to be fitted with an automatic lock system that connects with the fire alarm. So Health and Safety decreed that to avoid loss of life in the case of a fire, guards must manually lock and unlock the gates. Nothing has happened since I’ve been here, but I’ve heard about past incidents. Patients have gotten through the gates and onto the grounds or the sports fields. A group of male sex offenders assaulted two female patients on the football field last year. After the press picked up the story and started reporting on the archaic security at the hospital, the administration decided to stop housing women at Stowmoor. But they didn’t change the security system.