Weirdo Read Online Free

misguided cause and no good will come of it. Not for Corrine.”
    Sean kept his tone neutral. “Why do you say that?” he asked.
    “It’s all very well being liberal in theory,” Dr Radcliffe closed the file that had been resting open on his desk. “But in practice, if these doors were to shut behind her, what do you think would become of Corrine? She has no friends, no family,no means of support. How long do you think she’d survive?”
    “I was thinking just the same thing as I was driving here,” Sean admitted.
    “Well, then,” the doctor raised his thick black eyebrows quizzically.
    Sean offered him his blandest smile. “I’m sorry if by coming here I’ve caused you or Corrine any anguish. But I’m afraid I …”
    “Have a job to do,” Dr Radcliffe finished his sentence for him and stood up. “And there’s nothing I can do about that. Very well, Mr Ward, if you would like to follow me.”
    Their footsteps echoed down grey-green corridors, past unadorned walls and the rows of windowless doors six inches thick. Sean’s skin prickled as he followed the doctor, sensing myriad SOS signals emanating from inside the padded walls.
    How long would it take before their madness infected you?
    The wing where Corrine was kept was not as austere as the solitary blocks. Beyond the security checkpoint, inmates were allowed to move about unshackled; there were classrooms and common rooms where the art and craftwork they were encouraged to make was displayed on the walls, as if they were in a sixth-form college rather than a prison. Except for the omnipresent hum of CCTV cameras watching from every corner.
    Dr Radcliffe stopped before one wall of paintings, pointed to a watercolour. A long blue wash of sky meeting sea, four figures in black with their backs turned, gazing out at the horizon where a flock of gulls took flight. Sean was no expert, but he could see how well the subdued palette had been employed to reflect the pale yellow of the sand and the gradually darkening blue of the sea. He rapidly assessed the other offerings on the wall, took in blacks and greys, violent splashes of red and green, cruder images that distinctly lackedthe three dimensions of the maritime panorama.
    “That’s hers,” the doctor said. “She probably doesn’t realise, but this is in the best traditions of East Anglian watercolour painting. It takes real skill to get the light on the water like that.”
    There was pride in his voice as he said it, and if the comment had been designed to make Sean feel more uncomfortable, then it worked.
    “Now then,” Dr Radcliffe turned briskly, “this way, please. I’ve arranged for you to speak with Corrine in one of our quiet rooms.”
    Sean grimaced as he thought about it now, approaching the ring road around Norwich and spotting the first sign for Ernemouth.
    That shy, shuffling figure, bloated from two decades on meds and little physical activity, hiding behind a long, dark brown fringe, threaded with grey. The pathologist’s report from the autopsy running through his mind as she lowered herself into her seat.
    Blunt force trauma to the rear of the cranium, blow forceful enough to leave a crater …
    “Hello, Corrine.”
    Corrine sitting on a grey plastic chair, looking at the floor.
    Multiple cigarette burns to the arms and face …
    “I’m just here to ask you a few questions. I won’t take long.”
    Corrine slowly shaking her head, her fingers twisting round each other in her lap.
    Sixteen separate stab wounds to the chest and abdomen, patterns indicating wounds inflicted in a frenzy …
    “Corrine, do you think you have been a victim of injustice?”
    Corrine continuing to shake her head while rocking backwards and forwards in her seat. Sean facing her with his throatdrying up, the words coming out all wrong.
    The sign of a pentagram drawn in the victim’s blood on the floor around the body …
    “I mean, do you think it’s fair that you should have been sent here? Or is