Crime in the Community

Chapter 9 Monopoly money

Once in Amaryllis's car, permitted to sit in the front seat as a special treat, as well as a treat for Christopher, who no longer flinched as they went round corners but was still in danger of embarrassing himself and everybody else by throwing up, Marina miraculously turned into a young girl again, apparently impressed by the sleek lines of the car's exterior, the dashboard resembling that of a jumbo jet, or just by Amaryllis's turn of speed.

Christopher felt his world had been turned on its head - almost literally as they cornered at sixty on the coast road between Kinghorn and Burntisland - by the day's events. Who would have thought Amaryllis would be so supportive in an emergency? From being some sort of ice woman she had turned into a model childminder, a perfect aunt.

He had been able to look in on Caroline briefly as she lay there, sedated, in one of these hospital gowns that drained all the colour from people's faces as well as robbing their bodies of all shape. There was a drip, and her hand was bandaged. Now that she was quiet and calm, he had a brief resurgence of brotherly affection.

'It's nice to see her so peaceful,' he commented to the nurse who came along to see if he wanted to ask anything.

'Yes, isn't it?' said the nurse grimly. 'It only took enough sedation to knock out an elephant, too.'

'Oh, dear,' he said.

She put a hand on his arm.

'This is for the best, Mr Wilson. I expect you've been through the mill with her.'

'Sort of,' he admitted. 'Will they keep her in?'

'She could get transferred tomorrow,' said the nurse. 'To ERI or Ninewells maybe. We'll let you know.'

'Thank you.'

Christopher wasn't sure how much to tell the children - how much they might have worked out for themselves - but as they went in the front door at home Marina said, 'They're sending her to another hospital, aren't they? A special one.'

'I hope they keep her there,' said Faisal.

'No!' said Marina. 'I hope they make her better and send her home.'

'I think that's what they're hoping too,' said Christopher. He was willing Amaryllis to stay and not to feel she should leave them alone to get on with it. Fortunately she didn't seem to be the kind of person who used sensitivity as an excuse for inaction, and she organised and played two more games of Monopoly before Marina and Faisal went to bed. After that she left, pleading tiredness - so why did he picture her prowling about in the night like a sleek pale cat, playing games with the darkness?

He didn't sleep much that night. The events of the day replayed themselves on a repeating loop, sometimes in slow motion, sometimes on fast forward, mostly in black and white and occasionally in colour. Even when he played chess with Faisal he had a limited amount of control over the pieces, but in real life he was a pawn in a bigger game played on a larger board by someone as yet unseen, for he didn't think either Simon Fairfax or Amaryllis was actually controlling him, although it had seemed like that at times over the past few days.

During Sunday morning, as he read the paper with very little attention to any of the stories, a nurse phoned him from Kirkcaldy and asked him to come into the hospital. It would be a hellish journey on a Sunday, but the request was peremptory, more of an order really. He didn't know what to do about Marina and Faisal. He knew if he took them with him, they would be completely impossible en route, whether the small party travelled by train or bus - they would complain about the journey, they would want to go to the toilet when there was no toilet, they would want to gorge themselves on luminous sweets until they were physically ill, and want Diet Coke when there was only Pepsi, and Pepsi Max when there was only Coca Cola. Anyway, he didn't know what sort of situation was waiting at the hospital. It was possible - though it didn't seem very likely, in view of what had been said about psychiatric assessment - that they were about to discharge Caroline. It was equally possible that she had become very much worse and not fit for the children to see. He couldn't leave them at home on their own. There were no friends he could call on. Mr Browning was completely out of the question as a babysitter. He couldn't ask Amaryllis to step in again - in spite of the events of the previous day, he hardly knew her, after all. She could still be a serial killer, even though he and the children got on well with her.