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– an agency nurse on a midnight shift swore she heard the scratches of fingernails on a windowpane and refused ever to set foot inside the unit again. One of the more highly strung social workers claimed she’d once looked out of a window and seen a dwarf sitting on the lawn, wearing a white Victorian gown. The dwarf was doing nothing. Just watching the unit. Its face was smooth and shining in the moonlight.
    AJ was one of those who found it little more than entertaining – a bit of a diversion. Then The Maude paid another visit. And this time it wiped the smile off everyone’s face.
    Moses Jackson was a long-stay patient – a grizzled grey guy with thin limbs and a nasty attitude. A downright, whole-enchilada, nasty little shit. He was vicious and deceitful and rude. He would call the female staff ‘Splits’ and was always pulling down his pants to show them his penis. Female staff couldn’t be alone with him, which complicated his care and made him even more time-consuming. Of course if any of this was pointed out to Moses he’d scream racism and demand that the Trust’s top brass came and met him to explain what they were going to do about it.
    AJ was still a nurse in those days. He’d arrived for the early shift that morning to find the place in chaos: nurses were rushing around from ward to ward, grabbing notes, grabbing phones, council workers traipsed in and out carrying toolkits, and an unearthly screaming was coming from Buttercup Ward. The allocated ‘Control and Restraint’ nurses were in another ward – so eventually, when AJ couldn’t stand the noise any more, he decided to go and attend to it himself. Moses was standing in the middle of his room. He was stripped naked from the waist down, and was hugging himself and crying – staring at the walls. Every inch had been scribbled on in red felt-tip. Hundreds and hundreds of words – on the walls, the skirting boards, even the ceiling.
    AJ had seen the worst and the weirdest in various institutions before Beechway, but this was a different level of bizarre. He was silent for a moment, gawping at the sheer extent of the damage.
    ‘Moses.’ He shook his head, half wanting to laugh, half to cry. ‘Moses, mate, what did you do this for?’
    ‘I didn’t.’
    ‘Have the doctors changed your meds?’ AJ studied Moses carefully. He couldn’t recall seeing a note in the care file – usually the nursing staff were given clear instructions if anything changed. Especially with medication. ‘Did you have something different last night? Yesterday?’
    ‘I didn’t do it!’
    ‘OK,’ AJ said patiently. The room smelled, the vaguest undertone of something like burning fish, so he cracked one of the window vents. He glanced down at the old guy’s genitalia, which dangled in front of his scrawny, grey-haired legs. ‘How about putting your drawers back on, mate? The doctors will need to check you over – you don’t want them seeing all your man stuff hanging out.’
    ‘I never took them off.’
    ‘Well, how about you just put them on anyway?’ He handed over the pyjama bottoms. ‘There you go.’
    While Moses was putting them on, AJ wandered around the room, his head canted on one side, reading the words:
    Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery in his heart .
    On other sections: If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away .
    The lines were repeated dozens and dozens of times. They’d have to be scrubbed out, or painted over.
    ‘Moses,’ AJ said calmly, not drawing attention to the writing, ‘shall we go to breakfast?’ There was nothing in AJ’s long experience of psychiatric nursing more effective at changing the subject or distracting a patient than the mention of food. ‘They’re doing waffles and syrup for dessert.’
    Moses went along willingly to the dining room, though he had the appearance of someone moving further and further away from reality. The drugs, which he usually