Sophie stirred and gave a restless moan. Without taking my eyes off Monk I put my hand on her shoulder, willing her to keep still. She subsided, too exhausted to fully wake as Monk's manic laughter began to die down. At any moment I expected those dead eyes to turn to us, but it was as though we weren't even there.
The last bubble of laughter escaped from his chest, and his breathing slowed back into the raw wheeze of before. He sat quiescent, blood dripping from the hand he'd been slamming into the wall, mouth hanging slack as though he were drugged.
Christ! I'd no idea what had just happened. I knew Monk was unstable, but this… this was something else. It had seemed involuntary, as though he hadn't even been aware of it himself. Or even really conscious. From nowhere, something Roper had said all those years ago suddenly came back to me: He kicked off on one last night… One of his party pieces, apparently, having a tantrum after lights out. That's why the guards call him laughing boy.
Monk was starting to stir, blinking slowly as though he were waking up. Another coughing fit racked him. When it passed he cleared his throat and spat on to the floor. It seemed to exhaust him. He rubbed a hand over his face, the same one he'd punched the wall with. He frowned when he saw the blood on it, then realized I was watching.
'The fuck you looking at?'
I quickly looked away. Trying to sound unconcerned, I picked up one of the foil packs of antibiotics that lay on the floor nearby. 'These won't do your chest infection any good.'
'How would you know?'
'I used to be a doctor.'
'Fuck off.'
I dropped the tablets back into the mess. 'OK, don't believe me. But they're for bladder infections, not respiratory tract.'
Monk's dark eyes glittered. He looked down at where Sophie's head lay on my lap.
'What this?' I asked quickly, nudging the soil-filled bag with my foot. It was the first thing that came to mind.
He seemed to debate whether to answer, but at least it shifted his attention from Sophie. 'Fox piss.'
'Fox…?'
He raised a booted foot. 'For the dogs.'
That explained some of his stink, at least. Foxes used their pungent urine to mark their territory: Monk must have been smearing himself with soil from a den, hoping to mask his own scent. Once again I felt there was something I should remember, but I was too distracted to worry about it.
'Does it fool them?' I knew it wouldn't, but I wasn't about to tell him that.
'Not the dogs. The handler.'
I'd underestimated him. Police dogs would be able to track him regardless of what he used. But if an inexperienced handler caught the distinctive smell of a fox they might think the dog was on the wrong trail.
'What is this place?' I asked. 'I didn't think there were any caves round here.'
'Nobody does.'
Including the police. 'Is this where you hid last time?'
His head snapped up. 'I don't fucking hide! I've always come down here.'
'Why?'
'To get away from people like you. Now shut the fuck up.'
He rummaged in the rubbish on the floor and produced a bar of chocolate. Ripping it open, he tore into it as though he were famished. When it was gone he twisted the top from a bottle of water and tilted his head back to drink. I was aware of my own parched throat as I watched his Adam's apple bob up and down.
Monk tossed the empty bottle aside. He nodded down at Sophie. 'Wake her up.'
'She needs to sleep.'
'You want me to do it?'
He reached his bloodied hand towards Sophie. I acted instinctively, knocking it away. Monk became very still, his eyes burning into me.
'She's hurt,' I said. 'If you want her to help you she needs to rest. She's just been in a car crash, for God's sake.'
'I didn't know it'd roll like that.' He sounded sullen. He looked down at Sophie again, this time taking in the fading bruise on her cheek. 'What happened to her face?'
'Don't you know? Someone broke into her house and attacked her.'
Something seemed to flicker in those dark eyes. The broad forehead creased into deep lines. 'It was all smashed up. She wasn't there. I didn't… I can't…'
He folded his hands over his shaved head, his voice dropping to an inaudible mumble.
'Can't what?' I pushed, forgetting myself.
'I can't fucking remember!’ His shout reverberated inside the small chamber. He banged the heels of his hands against the sides of his head, as though trying to drive them through. 'I try and try, but there's nothing! You're supposed to be a doctor, what's wrong with me?'
I couldn't begin to answer that. 'I was only a GP, but there are specialists-'
'Fuck 'em!' Spittle sprayed from his mouth. 'Pricks in white coats, what do they know?'
This time I had enough sense to stay quiet. Some of the heat seemed to go from him. The big hands opened and closed as he looked at Sophie. She hadn't woken, even now.
'You and her… She's your girlfriend.'
I was about to say no, but something stopped me. Monk didn't seem to expect an answer anyway.
'I had a girlfriend.' He clasped both hands round the back of his head. His mouth worked. 'I killed her.'
Chapter 27
By the time he was fifteen, Monk's life was set in stone. Orphaned since birth, he'd grown up doubly excluded, shunned for his physical defects and feared for his abnormal strength. The few families that fostered the surly, freakish boy soon sent him back, shaken by the experience. By the time he reached puberty he was stronger than most grown men, and violence and intimidation had become second nature.
Then the blackouts started.
To begin with he didn't realize. Most came at night, so his only awareness of them was a feeling of haziness and lethargy next day, of inexplicable bruises or bloodied hands. The problem only came to light in a young offenders' institution, when his nocturnal behaviour terrified the other inmates. Monk would throw tantrums, laughing like a lunatic and reacting to any attempts to subdue him with devastating, frenzied violence. Next morning he wouldn't recall any of it.
At first he believed the accusations and subsequent punishments were just new forms of victimization. He reacted by becoming more insular and aggressive than ever. It never occurred to him to ask for help, and he would have rejected any had it been offered. Not that it was. Prison psychologists spoke of anti-social behaviour, of impulse- control disorders and sociopathic tendencies. One look was enough to confirm anyone's worst suspicions. He was a freak, a monster.
He was Monk.
As he grew older he took to wandering on the moor. The ancient landscape, with its rocky tors and thorny gorse, had a calming effect. More importantly, it allowed him to be on his own. One day he came across an overgrown hole in a hillside. It was an old mine adit, although he didn't know that at the time. It opened, quite literally, a new world for him. He began seeking out the old mines and caves that lay below the surface of Dartmoor, exploring and even sleeping in them whenever he could. He spent as much time down in the cold, dark tunnels as he did in the run-down caravan he called home. They were a reassuring constant, indifferent to day or night and untouched by weather or seasons. They made him feel secure. Stilled.
Even the blackouts seemed less frequent.
He was on his way to the moor one night when he saw the gang. He'd been away from it for almost a week, labouring on a building site for cash in hand. Now, with money in his pocket, the need to get back made his skin prickle and itch. He felt as if nails were being scratched on blackboards inside him, and there was a muzziness in his head that often presaged an impending blackout.
At first he ignored the hooded youths huddled under a broken streetlight. They had something down on the floor, trapping it like a pack of animals. Monk wasn't interested, and would have gone on by if it hadn't been for their laughter. Vicious and cruel, it throbbed behind his eyes like an echo of childhood. The gang had scattered after he'd knocked two or three of them away, leaving a lone figure on the floor. The tendons in Monk's hands had ached with the need to hit something else, but the girl on the ground had looked up without fear. She gave him a shy smile.