Chapter 9: On the Edge
"That Day"
Sadness. Pessimism. Helplessness.
He remembered Louisa's pleading eyes as she told him, "Well, Martin, you know, for what it's worth… I would like you to stay. So there."
That's when Jonathan barged in, dragging Pauline in with him. He was very agitated, demanding Louisa's attention, right when Martin most needed to talk to her.
The man clearly had not been taking his medication, exhibiting classic signs of bipolar disorder in its full on-manic phase: Irritability. Grandiosity. Narcissism.
"I know what's going on here," he said. "I know you're all just waiting for me to leave town, I know that. And I know that there is somebody else that's behind of all this, so just I need you to just call your dad for me please. Because I really need to talk to him. You see, you don't understand. If, if, if… you need to call him, and then he'll come back, otherwise he… if you could give him a quick tinkle."
Louisa nervously backed away as Jonathan advanced on her with his mobile phone. Martin challenged him to leave but man exploded. He pulled out a knife and grabbed Louisa as she cried out. Fear stabbed at Martin's heart.
She rang the number. "Daddy, uh your friend's here… um, um, he's not in a very good mood and he'd like you to come back here… and he's got a knife." She sounded very scared.
Psychiatry was never Martin's strength, he found it too hard to fathom the illogical workings of other people's minds. So he tried to imagine how his Aunt Ruth would handle this situation.
"All right, Jonathan," he began, trying to placate the man while not betraying his own nervousness. "I want you to take a few deep breaths, and give me the knife. Then I want you to sit down, so that I can sedate you and call the police."
So that last part… probably not what Ruth would say. Jonathan put the knife to Louisa's neck and ordered Pauline, who was ridiculously cooperative, to help him tie them up. She did so, ineptly but effectively. Pauline even played along with his paranoia, claiming she could hear the electronic static he believed was plaguing him.
Once tied to the chair, Martin felt strangely calm, passive… helpless. "Mr. Crozier… why don't you stop and consider the consequences." Jonathan's fiddling with items on Martin's desk was becoming irritating. "Put that clock down!"
"I, I don't want anybody to worry, but I think they've got in here too." Jonathan sounded genuinely worried.
"They'll call the hostage negotiator in soon," Pauline murmured. What hostage negotiator? The stupid girl was delusional too, Martin thought. No one knew what was going on in here, the cavalry was not coming.
Jonathan wandered into the reception area, apparently in search of the source of the static plaguing him.
"He's getting worse, isn't he. Much, much worse," Louisa whispered, very tense. "Martin, I'm just so sorry."
Martin nodded, equally tense. A crash in the reception made them both jump. "You break it you pay for it!" Martin yelled.
"Martin, stop annoying the man with the knife," Louisa pleaded.
Jonathan came back into the office, muttering to himself: "Don't trust Terry, don't trust Terry, he's nothing but a liar."
"He seems to be having a moment of clarity," Martin commented.
"You're talking about my father, actually." Louisa seemed genuinely hurt. "Um, why would you want him to come back here?"
"Why? The boat, the shipment… that's none of your business, OK?"
"What boat?" Martin asked.
"Who told you about the boat? Did Terry tell you, did Terry tell you about the boat? I told you, you can't trust him. You can't trust him." Jonathan was gesturing with the knife, but got distracted as the fax machine began humming
"This is really interesting, see, what goes on in the mind of a mental. I'm thinkin' about becoming a psychiatric nurse, you'd meet all sorts," Pauline commented.
"Shut up," Martin snapped. The girl was just as detached from reality as the mental patient.
Jonathan studied the fax. "Cam-pee-lo-bacter."
"Campylobacter," Martin corrected him.
"This is code."
"No it isn't. It's a strain of bacteria."
"Don't you think it's a bit convenient, this comes in right now?"
"I'm a doctor. I tend to get faxes about medical things."
"This is about me," Jonathan insisted. Of course, Martin thought, the delusional always think everything is about them.
"What does it say?" Jonathan demanded. He held the fax for Martin to read, but put the knife to Martin's throat.
"A local baker has a bacterial infection associated with raw chicken and bird faeces. I don't see your name here anywhere."
Jonathan waved the knife in Martin's face. "You're a liar. I know you're lyin'." He put the knife to Martin's throat. "I want you to tell me what's really goin' on here."
From the front door came a voice. "Hello? Hello?" That was all they needed, the unctuous, platitudinizing eunuch.
"Go on, get rid of him," Jonathan ordered Martin.
"You don't think he might find it suspicious that I'm strapped to a chair."
"Oh right." Jonathan seemed genuinely oblivious to anyone's plight but his own. He untied Martin.
"Um, with a patient! Out in a minute," Martin shouted. He felt a flood of relief to be free again, tempered by guilt that Louisa was still a prisoner. He closed the door behind him as he went out into reception. He uttered words he never thought he would say. "Ah, Mr. Peters. How nice to see you again."
"Look, Ellingham. You forced my hand. I'm going to recommend your removal."
"Fine. Fine. Um, you'll send me the relevant papers then and I'll be off."
"This could have been avoided if you'd agree to the course."
"I'd love to go on the course." Martin was that desperate.
"Really?" Peters seemed sceptical.
"Yeah. Yeah, uh absolutely, count me in." Martin put his arm around the odious man to usher him out.
"Well, I'll sign you up then," Peters said.
"I'm your man."
"It's two weeks, you know. People skills."
"Sounds super." Martin wasn't sure if he was being cooperative to signal to Peters that something was very, very wrong or simply to get rid of him.
"I will be checking your attendance," Peters said, suspiciously.
"Thank you." Martin opened the front door.
"Well, thank you."
"No, thank you."
The stupid man finally left. Jonathan came out from where he was lurking beside the stairs, ordering Martin to lock the front door. They went back to the office, where Jonathan gestured for him to sit. Martin couldn't bear the thought of being tied up again. So, what would Ruth do in this situation? Reason with the man, try to gain his trust.
"All right, uh, Jonathan, let's put the knife down." Martin knew it was up to him to be the hero but he had no idea how to fill that role. "Things seem muddled for you now but… uh, you're amongst friends." He lunged at Jonathan but only succeeded in ineffectually tossing a lamp at him.
Oh God, he was hopeless as an action man. Resigned, Martin sat down. Jonathan went to tie his ankles. The deluded man suddenly seemed concerned, but naturally only about himself.
"I keep gettin' these headaches and they're burnin' into me right there," he confessed. "I got them checked out but it didn't show anything."
"Headaches or migraine? I read an article last year about the correlation of migraines and, uh, bipolar disorder."
"Yeah, migraines, headaches, I don't know the difference. All I know it really, really hurts."
"With migraine you get blurred vision and nausea, and sensitivity to light."
Being reasonable just made Jonathan impatient. "Yeah, but is it caused by radio waves being beamed into my head?"
Martin suddenly realized Louisa and Pauline were signalling to him that Jonathan had put down his knife. It was now or never. Martin lunged, but his legs were held fast. As they fell together, Jonathan grabbed the knife and pulled back to plunge the blade into him. In the space of a heartbeat, Martin braced himself for the pain… for the end.
And then Terry barged in.
Startled, Jonathan wheeled and plunged the blade into Terry's flesh instead. On the floor, Martin cringed as if he had been stabbed, then went limp with relief. Spared!
Terry groaned in pain at the knife in his arm and Jonathan instantly went from madness to apologies. "I didn't, uh, I didn't do that. They… they made me do that." Jonathan went to pull the knife out.
"Don't do that!" Martin commanded. "You'll sever an artery."
"It really hurts!" Terry gasped.
"You'll bleed to death."
"I'm the worst friend ever," Jonathan whinged. "Just, um… fix him! Fix him! OK?"
"I'm tied to a chair!"
Jonathan bent to free him. Martin went over to Terry, relieved to be free again and able to revert to what he knew best. He hushed Terry, carefully pulled the knife out, and laid gauze on the wound.
"Good, good. It hasn't severed the artery." Even more than the blood, the enormity of what had almost happened overcame him, and he was suddenly sick in the waste bin.
"You all right there, Doc?" asked Terry, much calmer.
"I'm fine, hold that." Martin let him press on the gauze.
"Can I have the knife?" Jonathan asked, as nonchalantly as if he were asking for a pen.
"No, you can't!" As Martin continued to tend to Terry, he became aware that Louisa was distraught for her father. None of them noticed until it was too late that Jonathan went to the cupboard and found the shotgun.
"Martin!" Louisa called out, as the madman checked that the gun was loaded.
"Put that down!" Terry demanded. Jonathan refused, so Terry turned his disapproval to Martin. "Why do you leaving guns lying about? What's the matter with you?"
"How did you get in? The front door's locked," Jonathan demanded.
"I came in through the kitchen," Terry replied.
"Oh. Well, that makes more sense. OK, 12, 12… we need to get to the boat at 12."
"You're on your own," Terry insisted.
"Um… We need to go and get the package."
"Jonathan. I'm not goin' anywhere." With his bandaged arm, Terry was simply stating the obvious.
Jonathan thought for a moment. "OK, all right. I'll go. Yeah, I'll go and you need to tell me where to get the boat, and then I'll go down there."
Martin had a glimmer of hope the madman would finally leave but then Jonathan reconsidered. "Then I'll be out there and you'll be here and you'll just call the police. OK, we need to get someone else to go and get the boat. You won't do it, so um… you!" He pointed at Martin. "You can do it. You're goin'."
"I can't work a boat."
"He's from London," Pauline helpfully commented.
Jonathan proceeded to bicker with the others about who could get the boat when there came at knock at the front door. A slightly tipsy Al could be heard and he wasn't going away.
"Pauline! I know you're in there. I just want to talk!" More knocking. "I don't care how long I gotta wait, you're gonna have to talk to me."
Jonathan went to the door and marched a startled Al back to the office at gunpoint. "What's goin' on?" the plumber asked.
"I know, you can go," Jonathan said.
"Go where?"
"You need to get a boat and pick something up at 12."
"I can't get a boat, I'm just a plumber."
"Al, Mr. Crozier is suffering a psychotic breakdown," Martin said.
"What does that mean?"
"It means he's mad. Just do as he says."
"Either you do it," Jonathan said, "or I make a colander out of Reception Chickie." Clearly the madman had picked up on Al's interest in Pauline.
"What's a colander?" Al asked, still bewildered by what he had walked into.
"It's a type of sieve, Al," Martin replied.
"It's bigger than a sieve," Pauline weighed in.
Martin was putting a sling on Terry's arm as Jonathan began to gesture wildly with the shotgun.
Bang!It went off, whether by accident or on purpose Martin couldn't tell, but it blasted the clock off the desk. Louisa shrieked.
"Uh, me Dad's got a boat," Al conceded.
Pauline finally grasped the gravity of the situation. "I want to go home," she whimpered. Al moved behind her protectively and patted her on the shoulder.
Jonathan directed Terry to explain the plot. "Three miles up the coast. Nelson's Point, do you know it?" Terry said.
"Yeah."
"A Spanish trawler about 'alf a mile from Nelson's Point. Tell them 'Terry sent me.' Say 'Terry mi mando a por el paquete.' Say it."
Somehow that triggered an argument about the correct phrasing of the Spanish words. This is descending into farce, Martin thought.
Jonathan got angry. "Seriously! Tick tock! Tick tock, tick tock!"
Al departed and Jonathan planted himself in a corner, gun on his lap, to wait.
"He'll be all right, won't he." Pauline was concerned.
"Course, he will," Terry assured her, but he hesitated before he said it.
An eternity of waiting. Martin felt for Louisa as she shifted uncomfortably, still tied up.
"What is all this about, Dad?" she asked, finally.
"Jonathan, will you please take a couple of your pills!" Terry seemed to want to avoid the subject.
"What's in the package?" Louisa insisted.
"Drugs," Pauline guessed.
"Oh Dad!" Louisa was dismayed.
Jonathan smirked. "You wouldn't wanna be puttin' any of this stuff up your nose."
"It isn't drugs," Terry said.
"It's explosives," Jonathan admitted.
"Oh, that's much better." Martin couldn't stop his normal sarcasm from showing through.
"We're bank robbers." Jonathan seemed giddy at the prospect.
"It isn't a bank," Terry said. "It's a warehouse."
"It has a safe in it."
"Doesn't make it a bank."
"Wait," Pauline was really dismayed. "You sent Al to pick up explosives?"
Martin's desk phone rang. Jonathan answered it. "You got the package?" Pause. "Pauline is fine. Pauline's great," Jonathan said, then mouthed to the others "who's Pauline?"
"Al, careful with the package!" Pauline shouted.
"OK, bring it back here," Jonathan said. "No, no, no, you need to bring it back here. Now." Al seemed to be arguing with him.
"Al, for God's sake bring the bloody package!" Pauline shouted again.
Jonathan listened some more. "All right." He looked at Martin and held the phone toward him. "It's for you. No funny stuff. OK? No code! All right, hold on. He said someone's fallen off a cliff."
"And?" Martin demanded.
"He says 'and," Jonathan said into the phone.
"He can hear me," Martin said, leaning into the phone. "Al?"
"I think he's hurt badly, Doc. I can't see him moving," Al said.
"Call the Coast Guard."
"No Coast Guard," Terry warned. "No Coast Guard!" Jonathan repeated, then to Terry, "Why not?"
"They'll see the explosives," Terry whispered. He raised his voice. "The Doc can go down there." Jonathan seemed reluctant, but Terry insisted. "The doctor can treat his patient. We can get a hold of the package."
"Um, OK. Plumber Boy?" Jonathan said into the phone. "We're coming there. All right everybody, come on, we're leaving now." He shouted at the women. "I said we're leaving, come on are you deaf?"
Somehow the madman had forgotten that Louisa and Pauline were still tied up. "Oh," he said, as if it were a simple oversight. He freed them.
The five of them went out the door and piled into the Lexus, with Martin in the driver's seat.
oOo
"You saved the day," Penhale was saying, as they drove home from Wenn Manor. "You must feel like a hero."
It was like the ridiculous constable was describing some other person, Martin thought. He seriously didn't want to talk about this.
"Er… it wasn't conspiracy to commit bank robbery, it was conspiracy to commit warehouse robbery," Martin replied. "Really, there's nothing to tell. It's all in the police report. I have nothing to say about it."
To be continued…