The day is
ending and the light coming down, with a blue clarity the cars and the shop
windows only seem to intensify. We’ve been given one last job – male, suicidal – which, given the hour,
the proximity to the hospital and everything else, should finish us off.
I’m absolutely
and completely ready to finish. It’s the end of the fourth day and I’m as
glassy and flat as any of the puddles we step across.
I haven’t been
to this address before. A single, weathered pine door set back between two shop
fronts on the high street, diminished by the neon vibrancy of the kebab
restaurant on the right and the spot-lit sports shop on the left. The intercom is
as battered as the door, the paper strips behind each plastic button written
over so many times or so blurred with damp you can’t read the names. I take a
guess that the top button is the top flat, and push.
After a moment,
a voice crackles on. Instead of simply buzzing the door open when I say ambulance, the voice chats on in a voice
as unreadable as the name plate.
‘Can you let us
in, please?’ I say, leaning in to the grille. ‘Just for a chat. Only I can’t
hear you very well.’
The voice carries
on.
‘I’m sorry but I
really can’t hear you,’ I say. ‘Can we come in and say hello? Just for a
moment? It’s starting to rain.’
The door buzzes;
we go through.
Into a
surprisingly high-ceilinged hallway, lino-clad stairs leading up, a row of
letter boxes on the left hand wall, every one twisted and bent apart with a
crowbar.
There are only
two flats per level, so we guess the flat we want is four floors up. I can’t
figure spatially how the whole thing works. I guess the building must go back
a-ways, then branch out over the shops left and right in a T-shape. But the
atmosphere is so deep with shadow, you could tell me this building exists in a
dimensional plane of its own and I’d believe you.
The stairs are
about as steep as you can get without actually being ladders. The light
switches work on the next two storeys, but cut out too soon, so we have to use
our torches.
Eventually we
make it to the top.
A hatch in the
ceiling with a pull-down ladder.
Graffiti on the
wall, names and numbers, Jeremy:
Neighbour, July 11. Where ARE you? A list of light bulbs – when they went
in, how long they lasted; the scrawled face of a smiling devil.
I knock.
Hello. Ambulance.
‘You can go away
now. I don’t want you. I’m suicidally depressed and I’m going to kill myself. I
don’t need anyone’s help.’
‘I’m sorry to
hear that. Richard, is it? Richard – I’m Spence and this is my partner Rae.
We’d just like you to open the door so we can talk to you. No-one’s going to
force you to do anything you don’t want to do. No strong-arm tactics. We just
want to see if there’s anything we can do to help. Is that all right?’
The door opens,
and Richard looks round the edge of it, just half of his face and the fingers
of one hand visible.
‘There. You’ve
seen me. Now you can go,’ he says.
‘Hi, Richard.
I’m sorry you’re not feeling well. Can we come in and have a chat?’
‘I’m fine.
Honestly. Well – I’m just about to throw myself out of the window, so only fine
in that sense, but I really don’t need any interventions or clever talk or
powerful drugs because I’ve done all that and quite honestly it’s all bullshit.
Okay? Does that compute? I’m a worthless piece of shit and I really think I
should just be culled. Which I’m perfectly able to do myself. So thank you for
your time but honestly there’s nothing to be done.’
‘Can we come in
and chat, Richard? Just for a moment.’
‘Be my guest’ he
says, but doesn’t move away from the door.
‘We can’t really
come in until we can see you properly. I’m sorry to sound a bit suspicious, but
you know what it’s like...’
I shrug and
smile as if people concealing machetes was one of those regrettable social slips
one just had to live with.
‘I know what you
mean,’ he says, letting go of the door and moving further inside the flat.
He lifts his
t-shirt up and does a turn on the spot.
‘Nothing to
hide, officer,’ he says, then puts his hands on the top of his head and
retreats into the bedroom.
‘Sorry to be
such a pain,’ I tell him.
‘No, no. It’s
fine. You don’t live with a bunch of psychopaths for neighbours like I do’ he
says. ‘I’ve been broken into five times. They knock on your door at four in the
morning and whisper through the keyhole. I know exactly what it’s like.’
The flat is as
crapped up as any I’ve seen. Scatterings of dirty laundry, crates of crushed
beer cans, curling stacks of paperbacks, lank yellow curtains, abstract
pictures sellotaped to the wall – crude, fractal paintings, vividly coloured
swirls of pastel.
The homeward
bound traffic surges below us in the street like waves against the beach.
Richard sits on
the edge of his unmade bed and starts puffing away on a hefty electronic
cigarette that looks more like a cook’s blowtorch.
‘I just can’t
decide how to do it,’ he says, blowing smoke off to the side. ‘I mean, I spent
weeks trying to figure out how to tie a noose properly. It’s more difficult
than you might think. Because that’s the best way to do it. Quick. Hypoxic. End
of story.’
‘I don’t know
about that,’ I say, sitting next to him.
‘Do you want a
seat?’ he says to Rae.
‘No, I’m fine,
thanks,’ she says, leaning in the doorway. ‘I’ve been sitting all day.’
‘Maybe you can
swap over after a while,’ says Richard, and puffs pleasantly on his e-cigarette.
I ask him about
his medical history. He says he’s not been taking his meds because they don’t
work. No-one’s interested, he says. He doesn’t have a support worker. What’s
the point?
‘What we’d like
to do is take you down the hospital to chat to someone there.’
‘Why? What are
they going to do? Make me wait around for hours then send me home again? Or
call the police and have me thrown in a cell, naked, under a blanket?’
‘The thing is,
there’ll be someone there at the hospital – one of the mental health team – someone
much more expert in these things than me. They’ll be able to talk to you in
depth about how you feel and your whole situation.’
‘Why? I know
what my whole situation is. My whole situation is I’m a fucking waste of space.
A Waste of Space. That’s it. That’s
all there is. I’ve thought about it a lot. It’s no biggie. I’m high up here.
It’d be quick.’
‘I think you
should give yourself a chance to get better, Richard. Obviously we’re limited
what we can do for you here. I’d love to have a magic wand and fix all your
problems, but if they’ve got them they’re not handing them out. Why not come
down the hospital and talk to someone there?’
‘What do you
care? This is just another job for you. You don’t know me.’
‘We do care,
though, Richard. If we didn’t we wouldn’t be in the job we’re in.’
‘We wouldn’t
have climbed all those stairs,’ says Rae.
‘What do you
need to take with you?’ I ask him, hoping the practical question might tempt
him towards the door. But Richard just laughs and looks at me. He reaches
behind him, finds an army surplus cap with a low brim, pulls it down on his
head, then puts on a pair of rectangular sunglasses. He stares at me a moment.
‘Why don’t I
just throw myself out of the window and save everyone a lot of trouble?’ he
says.
‘You could do
that. But you might land on someone and kill them. I know you don’t want to
hurt anyone.’
‘You think
hanging’s the thing, then?’ he says. Then he laughs, a strange and dry thing,
as sparse as his beard. He reaches over and pats me on the knee.
‘Don’t worry,
mate. I’m not expecting a leaflet.’