One For Sorrow Read online

  “No, the rest of what you said… about being an animal in the zoo.”

  She frowned at me, confused. “I never said anything like that. I was drawing this jackdaw, see?” She held up the illustration for me to look at.

  My headache returned almost instantaneously. I could have sworn I’d heard her speak, but it hadn’t sounded exactly like her—the voice had been raspier, harsher. I rubbed the back of my neck and tried to make sense of it. She had said it, I was sure. Why would I imagine such a thing? I needed to keep a closer eye on Isabel. She wasn’t as stable as she’d first seemed.

  Chapter Eight

  What goes into making a sociopath? Was the Monster of York born that way, or was he created? And if he actually believed his delusions, at what point did his mind break? I’m no psychologist, but I’ve been around many. Work Christmas parties are pretty interesting when you’re sitting around a table with a bunch of psychologists talking shop. The human mind is fragile, built upon tiny impulses of electricity sending signals to the rest of the body. Our thoughts, our feelings, our language, it all comes from the brain, so when one of those little electric impulses goes haywire, we follow suit.

  But that’s the point where you need to be a psychologist to understand it all. Studying to be a nurse hadn’t equipped me for understanding every part of the human mind, especially not fully understanding a sociopath. Yet, even though I knew I couldn’t comprehend every part of this complex phenomenon, I couldn’t stop thinking about what it took to break a mind.

  The next day I encouraged Isabel to spend more time outside her room, deciding to use the same tricks I used to try on Tom before he got bored of it. I convinced her that there was more to drawing than just birds. That she should try drawing people.

  “In that case, I’ll draw you,” she announced.

  It was agreed that I would be brought out into the communal area and placed on a stool next to an open window. The April sunlight warmed my skin as I sat there, self-conscious and on display, but at least Isabel was out of her room and around others.

  It was the first time I’d seen the way other patients reacted to Isabel’s presence. Of course, the vast majority were aware of the crime Isabel had been convicted of, and child murderers were viewed with contempt and suspicion. The room carried on around us—Emily and Debbie played draughts, Tracy spread out across the sofa watching one of her soaps, some of the others sipped tea and coffee, pretending to have a conversation—but all the while they kept one eye on Isabel. A couple of the less aware simply sat and gawked at her. One of the tougher girls said, loud enough to hear: “The child killer’s out.”

  I immediately felt ashamed for forcing Isabel to come into the communal room, but she somehow managed to block out everything around her, slowly placing her pencils down on the table in front of her, and spreading out a large sheet of paper. She began to work, moving methodically, barely speaking, except to tell me to keep still, or to ask me to lift my chin, uncross my legs, stare out of the window. I felt like an exhibit at the zoo, sitting there with so many eyes watching me. In a way, it bonded us, going through the same experience, each being stared at as though we were in a fish tank.

  A few of the other nurses broke the tension by coming over and making conversation, asking Isabel about her drawing, and praising the likeness. Most of the nurses were shy of Isabel, aware of her past and unwilling to get too close to her. They treated me in a similar manner in the break room, never asking me direct questions about Isabel, skirting around the Isabel-shaped elephant in the room. Some even considered me with some sort of awe, telling me over and over again that they couldn’t do my particular job. They avoided Isabel because they didn’t feel they could be around her. One even said the words “as a mother,” as if those without children might find the crime less abhorrent.

  After what felt like hours, Isabel finally allowed me to see the finished piece.

  “Wait, stay there,” she said, as I was about to get up and go to her. “I want you to see it in the sunshine.”

  Isabel lifted her drawing and walked across to me, staring all the while at the paper between her fingers. She hesitated before handing it to me.

  “It’s still a little rough,” she said. “I might work on it some more later.”

  “I’m sure it’s wonderful.” I held out my hands to receive the drawing, my insides twisting with nerves and butterflies fluttering in my stomach. A convicted murder was offering me a portrait of myself. Sometimes my job was bizarre.

  I gently lifted the paper from her hands, forcing myself to remember that I was a nurse, and this was helping Isabel improve as a patient. I smiled at her before daring to view the drawing.

  The surprise, no doubt, registered on my face. She hadn’t drawn a true likeness of me seated on the stool; instead she had drawn me out in a flourishing garden, standing and looking up at a sky filled with sunshine. All around me there were small garden birds, sparrows and tits and robins, all fluttering their wings, some on my shoulder or my outstretched hand. In Isabel’s eyes I was some sort of Disney princess, an ethereal member of the animal kingdom.

  “Well, do you like it?” she asked.

  A few of the other patients began to crowd around the chair where Isabel sat. Some leaned closer in to get a peek of the portrait. Others merely glanced in our direction.

  Emily was one of the first to get a good look. “It looks like you,” she remarked. “Got your hair just right.”

  I lifted my hand to my face, feeling the tight bun at the back of my head and the fringe across my forehead.

  “Yes, you have captured me, I think,” I said. And I wasn’t lying, because although the experience of looking at myself on paper was odd, almost disconcerting, I felt as though Isabel had captured some sort of essence of me. No, I don’t think I’m a Disney princess, but what she’d drawn had my features, had the way I believed I looked in the mirror, and felt very true to the way I thought of myself.

  “But do you like it?” she asked.

  “I like it very much,” I said. “It’s a beautiful drawing.” I went to hand it back to Isabel, but she refused to take it from me.

  “It’s yours,” she said. “Hang it on the wall of your crumbling cottage that needs cheering up. I can’t stand white walls, and I can’t stand the thought of you staring at white walls. You need colour, Leah. A lovely nurse like you should always be in colour.”

  I looked down at my black blouse in dismay. Perhaps she was right.

  After assessing my lack of fashion sense, I attempted to give her the drawing. “No, take it. You’re going to need your best work to enter when I put you up for the Koestler Award.”

  The Koestler Award is run by the Koestler Trust, set up for prison and high-security hospital inmates. Any incarcerated person can enter with their original art, and cash prizes are awarded to some of the participants. I’d helped a few patients apply in the past, most notably an ex-gang member who loved to paint delicate portraits of Disney princesses lost within long stretches of enchanted forests. He would stand proudly behind his portraits of dainty Cinderellas and Snow Whites, with his pot belly poking the back of the canvas, his large sausage-like fingers gripping the borders of the painting, and his shaved head bent solemnly over his work. I thought Isabel could benefit from the potential art sales that often came with entering the award. It was a good way for people who were incarcerated to earn some honest money.

  Isabel’s eyes widened. She pulled her knees up onto the chair seat. “No.”

  For once, Isabel stopped smiling. She gripped her knees tightly, slumping down into the chair and withdrawing into the folds of her top.

  “But…” My mouth gaped open in surprise. “I thought you would be pleased.”

  Sensing the change in tone, some of the others slipped away, giving us room. Isabel shook her head before staring out the window into the garden.

  “I don’t want people to see them.”

  “But it’s a great way to earn some income. P
eople buy pieces. It’s a good, honest way to make money while you’re here at Crowmont.” I placed the drawing down on the table between us.

  “I don’t want people to know I’ve drawn them. I don’t want sickos collecting my art because…” She angled her chin down and her voice fell to a whisper. “Because of what happened.”

  “Isabel, it’s all right. It’s all anonymous. People don’t know whose work they’re purchasing. All they know is that it’s someone from a high-security hospital or a prison.”

  “Really?” she asked.

  “Yes, so keep hold of this so you can apply.”

  I had to admit that watching Isabel’s face brighten made me smile, and I was smiling for the rest of the day, even as I walked a tearful Tracy back from her therapy session, and even as Pye the cat hissed and scratched my ankles as I walked back up the drive to the rundown cottage.

  Isabel was right about the white walls of the cottage, and she was right about colour. The first thing I did when I got home was run upstairs, change out of that boring black shirt and put on a bright red t-shirt with yellow flowers on the sleeves. I even thought about applying lipstick, but was too hungry to wait for tea. My change of outfit earned the barest eyebrow rise from my little brother, but I didn’t care because I felt brighter.

  As I set the kitchen table for that night’s feast of tuna pasta bake, I wondered if a sociopath could have the empathic abilities of an artist. Could someone truly capture a subject’s inner beauty if they themselves were a true sociopath? Was Isabel even capable of murder?

  True Crime Junkie

  Who is David Fielding?

  By James Gorden

  Can we all agree on one thing? Yes, I know we’ll get into it in the comments, insults will be thrown around and someone will ultimately be called Hitler, but let’s pretend this isn’t the internet and agree on one thing: The person who murdered Maisie Earnshaw is a deranged psychopath. But I’m not convinced that the right psychopath is currently behind bars, or in a straitjacket, or whatever happens within the walls of Crowmont Hospital.

  So, let’s take a moment and look into another potential suspect: Isabel’s father, David Fielding. A self-made millionaire with a property business that erects tower blocks and apartments in Sheffield, Leeds, and the surrounding areas. He has his hands in many pies, from restaurants to private gyms, but it’s his property business that he’s most well-known for.

  How did David become the richest man in Rotherham? Well, there’s a good story involved, of course. I decided to contact David’s old business partner and university housemate, Lee Brown. Both being northern lads, David and Lee hit it off at Leeds University, both studying business degrees. In their second year they moved into a shared house together and first started up the company Field-Brown (see what they did there?). Lee and David were best mates. They worked hard and played hard. They saved money to fund their business and even managed to snag some outside investment. They were motivated young men who were going places together.

  But where is Lee Brown? And why is David Fielding’s business now called Fielding Enterprises?

  Let me tell you, it took a while to loosen Lee Brown’s tongue. It certainly took more than a few Peronis when we met up in Leeds for a conversation. But once the sun went down, he began to spill the beans.

  Lee told me that David was his best friend and the person he trusted most in the world. Lee thought they were brothers in business and in friendship, but it soon became clear David didn’t feel the same way. There was a risky business venture the two of them decided to invest in. Lee tells me it was a mutual decision to invest, but David was the driving force behind the investment and the one who suggested it. Lee was busy with another project, but he signed everything David put in front of him, distracted and not particularly bothered about checking through the contracts.

  “I trusted him completely,” Lee said. “Why would I need to read through every insignificant piece of paperwork? I was an idiot, basically. The company was up and coming. They were building apartments in and around Leeds and wanted investors from the ground up. None of those apartments even got made. The housing market imploded, the company went bust, and that was the moment I realised David had put everything in my name, not the company’s name, and not his own. He bankrupted me within months, cut me out of the business and carried on without me. I was so shocked and so hurt that I never even sued. I went home and I drank, and I never spoke to him again.”

  Lee has since picked himself up again and owns his own restaurant in Wakefield. I’m glad for him, but I wanted to know more about David.

  “Do you think he’s a sociopath?” I asked. We were into our fourth round by now, and I may have slurred a bit at this point, but don’t worry, the recorder was on, everything was captured. I’m not pulling this from hazy drunken memories.

  Lee ran a finger around the rim of his pint glass and stared down at the table. “I’m no psychologist, so I dunno what he is, but I do know he didn’t care about me one iota. He’s all for himself and always has been. I just didn’t see it. I thought it was all bravado, you know? I thought he put on a show, but it was real.”

  “What was real?”

  “The women,” he went on, “the girls. He liked them a lot, and he was engaged at the time so it wasn’t right. I thought it was all exaggeration, but now I’m not sure. I think he was sticking it in whatever he could find.”

  “Can I quote you on that?”

  Lee looked up at me sharply. “I dunno, mate. Maybe I should go.”

  I tried to persuade Lee to have another drink. I offered him a bourbon, and he agreed to stay for a while, but he barely spoke any more about David Fielding. Then, when he left, he didn’t let me walk him to the door. That was the moment when I realised Lee Brown was afraid of his own business partner.

  He left me at the bar with half a glass of bourbon left, thinking about David Fielding and his past antics. Were they the antics of an arrogant young man believing the world was at his feet and all he had to do was take it? Had he subscribed to the method of business that involves survival at any cost? Or was his ruthlessness in business indicative of a deeper flaw, one that went past the womanising and the screwing over of his friends, and cut down deep to a rotten core?

  Was David a sociopath?

  And if he was, did he have the opportunity to murder Maisie Earnshaw and frame his own daughter in the process?

  COMMENTS:

  RedRose: How can we believe anything the adults say? They could all be lying. Even the Earnshaws.

  James Gorden: Why would the Earnshaws be lying?

  RedRose: Because they’re sick fucks.

  IHeartHannibal: RedRose, you’re the sick fuck.

  TrueCrimeLover: David went into the kitchen for twenty minutes, right? Is that long enough to kill a little girl? According to the police reports and the building plan, he could’ve gone out the front door, round the front of the house and down the hill.

  James Gorden: I think so too. Time is tight, though.

  TrueCrimeLover: He’s a fit man though, right? Used to run the Great North Run. Don’t see why he couldn’t sprint there and back, wash his bloody hands in the sink and serve up a mojito.

  James Gorden: But why wouldn’t Isabel say something about her dad?

  TrueCrimeLover: She’s too afraid. She’s safe inside Crowmont. If she ever got out, she could be his next victim.

  James Gorden: Which begs the question, if David Fielding did it, why aren’t there any more victims?

  Chapter Nine

  I mentioned to Isabel one day that I woke to the sound of blackbirds outside my bedroom every morning, and the next day she told me she was going to draw me a picture of them singing to me. She got me to sit just outside her room and give her extra details so she could picture the image in her mind.

  “Describe your cottage to me,” she said.

  “It’s an old farm outbuilding, very small, red brick, old,” I replied. It suited me to sit outside the ro
om, because I liked to give her space. The tiny room felt claustrophobic enough without my presence in there as well. “Probably once a house for a gamekeeper or tenant farmer, I guess.” I shrugged, not exactly an expert on rural matters.

  “Is it next to other houses?”

  “No, it’s on its own, surrounded by fields.”

  She bent over her notepad and went to work. Her brother Owen had brought her some new art supplies to use during his last visit.

  Isabel had been through a rough patch, so I was spending a little more time with her than usual. After her few hours in the communal area with the other patients, her presence had whipped everyone into frenetic excitement, and Isabel found herself targeted by bullies. I hadn’t realised, but Chi had previously been through a similar situation after encouraging Isabel to socialise more. Isabel was more than willing to leave her room, but the other patients were never happy to see her. Since she had drawn me in the communal area, the patients had been whispering behind her back, talking about the fact she’d been there with them. They wrote unpleasant messages and slipped them under her door. There was an incident where an egg was thrown into her room, ruining some of her favourite artworks.

  I’d come to work to find Isabel even quieter than usual. She’d handed me her morning picture, which had been a pigeon that day.

  “They’re gossips,” she’d said, about the pigeon. “Mean little gossips.” Then she turned her head away so that I wouldn’t see the red around her eyes.

  “Have you been crying, Isabel?” I’d asked.

  “At least it got Katy moved back to Grafton Ward.” She’d tugged at her sleeve as though hiding her hands from me.

  “What is it? Did someone hurt you?”

  It took a while, but I’d finally managed to get her to tell me about how Katy, one of the older and larger patients, in Crowmont for violence against others as well as learning difficulties, had grabbed her by the wrists, spat in her face, and called her a kiddie killer.