In the Company of Ghosts Read Free Page B

dispensary in the room’s corner. ‘The code for her room and the keys to her nut-shirt, or I’ll take that syringe and find a new home for it up your hairy dark porcelain-pincher.’
    ‘If I can’t find anybody in the ministry willing to rescind her release from the unit, I’ll telephone the Israeli Embassy and have their lawyers slap an injunction against all of you,’ warned the doctor.
    ‘Thank you for your concern, doctor,’ said Thorson. ‘We will be handling her case from here.’
     
    When Doyle and Thorson entered the secure unit, Agatha was no longer spinning around in the middle of the carpet. The old lady was waiting for them, sitting calmly on her sofa. She was pouring three cups of tea with her feet, using her toes to hold the teapot as if an Indian faker had trained her in his arts.
    ‘Hello Witchley. I’m Gary Doyle, I believe you know my colleague here, Helen Thorson.’
    ‘Sit down, dearie.’ She indicated the two armchairs opposite. There was a huskiness to her voice, deep and sensual, a tone that looked to have taken Doyle by surprise. ‘Hello, Helen. If you’ve got the keys to my little fashion accessory here, you might do me the favour of releasing me now.’ She nodded down towards her straitjacket and added, ‘Then I might be able to pass you a chocolate hobnob, without the delicate scent of my toes intruding.’
    Doyle gazed appraisingly at her. He appeared to be in his early fifties, the slightly brutish features of a boxer with acne-scarred cheeks and black hair turning to silver at the sides – a man who filled his Crombie coat with six brutal feet of well-aged muscle. It wasn’t a kind face, but it might have been a just one. ‘What makes you think I’ve come to release you from this nut-house, love?’
    ‘I don’t receive many visitors here. You have the whiff of the office about you, also, Mister Doyle. And you appear far too sane to be a psychiatrist.’
    Thorson looked at the table. ‘Three cups laid out ready. Lucky guess?’
    Agatha lent back in the sofa, pale blue eyes switching between her visitors. She passed Doyle his cup clutched between the toes of her foot. ‘You, I would say, are a quarter Chinese, on your grandmother’s side. Born in Essex. Service with the Royal Hong Kong police force. Repatriated after the island was handed back to the communist party. Returned to the UK and joined the police, probably at too junior a position for your experience. Later offered a position in the office by a superior who felt threatened by you and only too glad to see you transferred out from under his or her feet.’
    ‘Thank you, Michel-de-bloody-Nostradamus,’ said Doyle.
    ‘Don’t mind me, dearie,’ said Agatha. ‘I’m just a little miffed that Margaret didn’t come here personally to spring me out of the unit.’
    ‘The old girl retired,’ said Doyle.’ Last year. She’s sitting in the House of Lords now as Baroness Rosalinda of Trumpton or some old bollocks. I’m the new head of section.’
    ‘She must’ve done something right, then,’ said Agatha. Shittysticks, I do hope it wasn’t leaving me here to rot.
    ‘All right then,’ said Doyle. ‘Good enough. Get Miss Marple here out of her nut jacket.’
    Agatha shook her head as Thorson produced the key, twisting and writhing for the minute it took the straitjacket to fall off.
    Doyle kicked the jacket into the corner. ‘If you could do that, why not take it off before we arrived?’
    ‘They would have only sent orderlies in to try to put it back on again,’ explained Agatha. ‘I don’t enjoy hospitalising the staff here. Some of them are nice enough. They’ve got a job to do, after all. Quite a few of the patients on the premises actually do have mental health issues.’
    ‘More than a bloody few,’ said Doyle. He passed Agatha a bag containing the exact same clothes she had been admitted with.
    ‘It’ll be nice to be able to put something on that doesn’t need to be tied at the back,’