The Anna McColl Mysteries Box Set 1

by Penny Kline

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  She was swinging her dark glasses in her hand, screwing up her eyes against the sun. Just for a moment she looked quite panic-stricken. Was she afraid her husband might want to know what we had been talking about? Or was there something important she hadn’t yet told me? I waited a moment but she seemed miles away.

  ‘Goodbye, then.’ I held out my hand.

  ‘Anna McColl,’ she said, ‘and you’re a psychologist. You work at the hospital, do you?’

  ‘No, I work in Bristol. Look, if you like, I’ll give you my phone number.’

  I found an old credit card receipt and scribbled my number on the back. She hesitated for a moment then took the scrap of paper and pushed it behind the waistband of her skirt.

  I watched her start back up the drive. She didn’t turn to wave goodbye and long before I started the engine she had disappeared into the house. Winding down the window I strained my ears, listening for the sound of raised voices. But there was nothing. Silence except for the noise of a lawn mower in one of the gardens nearer to the centre of the village. The lane was idyllic. Green, peaceful, edged with great swaths of tiny blue flowers. I couldn’t wait to return to the city.

  4

  Ten to four on Monday afternoon and I was finding it difficult to concentrate on my client’s detailed description of his symptoms. In the next street someone was digging up the road. Drains or the gas main, it had been going on all day and would probably continue for the rest of the week. I thought about Luke, then forced him out of my mind.

  Mr Farrell was telling me again about the chest pains that woke him up in the early hours of the morning.

  ‘I know it’s not my heart, but I keep wondering if you can make yourself ill just by thinking about it.’

  ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘You may have psychosomatic symptoms but you won’t give yourself heart disease.’

  He relaxed a little, but next time he would ask me the same question all over again.

  ‘Tell me about your father,’ I said, ‘did you see much of each other in the months before he died?’

  ‘No, that was just it. It was all so sudden. He’d seemed so fit. If I’d known what was going to happen … ’

  Now we were getting somewhere. Almost the end of the session but next week he might agree to stop talking about his symptoms and tell me instead about his relationship with his father, the inevitable regret that they had not been closer, spent more time together. Mr Farrell was in his early fifties and his father had been over eighty, but it was the first time he had experienced a death in the family.

  After he left I went downstairs and sat in Reception talking to Heather while she photocopied Martin’s new hand-out describing the work of the Psychology Service.

  She straightened up, rotating her shoulders to ease the muscles in her back. I noticed a few grey hairs near her temples and it occurred to me that I had no idea how old she was. Divorced with two daughters in their early teens. That made her anything between thirty-five and forty, perhaps a little more. She had the kind of face that must have looked older than she really was in her early twenties but had remained much the same for the next fifteen years or so. As usual her clothes were a hotch-potch of conflicting shades. I liked her. She had a healthy scepticism about many of the psychological theories we discussed during our coffee breaks, but she was kind and considerate to the clients — and to the rest of us come to that.

  I jerked my head in the direction of the hand-outs.

  ‘Who’s going to get a copy?’

  ‘Oh, local doctors,’ she said, ‘social workers, community nurses, psychiatrists.’

  ‘They know about us already.’

  ‘Very true, but Martin and Nick think we should specify which kinds of client are likely to benefit the most.’

  ‘It’s impossible to tell. It depends on the person, not the problem.’

  She sighed. ‘I’m sure you’re right, Anna, but you must tell Martin and Nick not me.’

  ‘Sorry. I wasn’t criticizing.’

  ‘I know you weren’t. Take no notice. The copier’s been on the blink and I’ve wasted nearly an hour fiddling about with the paper-feeder.’

  Martin came through the door, yawning loudly. He was wearing a jacket, which was unusual for him, but the rest of his clothes were as scruffy as ever. Shapeless cords and a grey open-neck shirt with frayed collar and cuffs. Not the typical attire of a principal psychologist but then Martin had a horror of becoming part of the Establishment.

  ‘I’ve just been visiting a hostel for ex-offenders,’ he announced. ‘I’ll tell you something for nothing, the staff are having more difficulty getting on with each other than with the residents.’

  ‘That figures,’ said Heather, smiling at me, then busying herself with a pile of envelopes.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Martin, ‘I reckon we make a pretty good team.’ He lifted the edge of his eyelid, searching for a piece of grit. ‘Something for every taste, wouldn’t you say, Anna?’

  Sitting down heavily he swung his mud-stained shoes on to Heather’s desk and turned to face me. ‘Well, then. Luke Jesty, what’s the latest? Been back to the hospital, have you?’

  I should have been grateful to him for taking an interest. Instead I assumed that he had picked up on my anxiety and felt it his duty to check up, just in case. Martin knew quite a bit about Luke. So did Heather, since she was the one who had told me about her neighbours, Doug and Elaine, and how they’d been looking for a lodger.

  ‘I’m going later on,’ I said, ‘after I’ve called on the Hargreaves. Stringer’s sure to think I should’ve referred Luke weeks ago.’ I was trying to pre-empt a telephone call behind my back between Martin and the chief consultant psychiatrist. ‘He won’t say straight out but I’ll know what he’s thinking.’

  ‘Stringer’s all right.’ Martin closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall. ‘He’s just a bit world-weary like the rest of us.’

  ‘Speak for yourself!’ I snapped.

  ‘OK, OK.’ He stood up and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘What is it about this boy?’

  ‘Luke’s twenty-two. Hardly a boy.’

  ‘All right, but what’s so special about him?’

  Heather laughed. ‘He’s the most beautiful looking young man I’ve ever seen.’

  *

  Doug answered the door. From the crumpled look I guessed he had been asleep. What hair he still had left, after the barber had been at it with an electric razor, stood up in a tuft on the top of his head. He was dressed in his usual trousers but with a thick ribbed sweater over his shirt. No wonder he was sweating.

  ‘Come in, Anna.’ He stepped into the porch and held the door open for me to pass in front of him.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ I said. ‘I just called round to thank you for — ’

  ‘No need. Put it this way, we just did what we could, which wasn’t a great deal in the circumstances. How is the lad?’

  ‘I shall be going to visit him later on.’ He led me into the kitchen but didn’t offer tea or coffee. He looked ill at ease, as though he was making an effort to appear nonchalant, relaxed.

  ‘Elaine’s out, doing an extra shift. I worry in case she overdoes things, not that she takes a blind bit of notice of anything I say. Put it in a nutshell, we can do with the extra cash.’

  He laughed, then took a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and blew his nose hard.

  ‘I shouldn’t worry,’ I said, ‘I think she enjoys her work. Anyway, she seemed pleased about the promotion.’

  It was the wrong thing to say. When he squirmed on his chair I pretended not to notice. Now was not the time for a counselling session, with Doug breaking down and admitting that Elaine’s extra hours — and extra money — only served to make him feel even more of a failure.

  ‘I was wondering, Doug,’ I said cautiously, ‘when the police brought Luke back — Elaine said you’d just returned from your class.’

  ‘Been home about te
n minutes., I’d say.’ His eyes met mine, then flicked away.

  ‘You go every Saturday, do you?’

  ‘That’s about it. Framing’s a tricky business. If you don’t get the corners exactly right there’s hell to pay. Need a special saw for the mitred edges.’

  He stood up and went into the next room, returning with a large portfolio under his arm.

  ‘Been getting these together specially. Thought they might cheer up the lad when he comes home.’ He undid the strings of the portfolio and lifted out a set of black and white photos. ‘Pictures I took when the fun fair was up on the Downs. Luke was helping me develop them. Some of them have come out rather well.’

  I lifted up the first photo and studied it carefully. It seemed to be part of the big wheel. A queue of people were waiting underneath and because the shot had been taken at an angle they looked as though they were in danger of falling on their faces.

  ‘It’s good,’ I said.

  He nodded enthusiastically. ‘If you want the real effect you can’t beat black and white. That way you can control the tones. With colour you have to rely on the chemicals.’

  ‘Yes, I see. And Luke’s been helping in your darkroom.’

  ‘I thought it might give him a new interest. Used to stay up in his room most evenings, reading. I felt he needed taking out of himself.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right. How’s he been the last few weeks? I mean, you haven’t noticed anything in particular, have you?’

  I wanted him to convince me that Luke was sane, normal apart from his usual anxiety which I was certain must be connected with events in the past rather than any psychiatric disorder.

  He took off his glasses, breathed on each lens, then rubbed them with a corner of his handkerchief.

  ‘Would you say a nervous disposition’s something you’re born with, or is it a question of upbringing?’

  ‘Could be a combination of the two.’

  He thought about this for a moment. ‘I had an uncle with nerves. The War. Never got over it. Mind you, he’d been timid as a boy. Put it this way, he should never have gone into the navy.’

  I nodded sympathetically. ‘Luke’s told you he’ll be starting at the university in October?’

  ‘But he’ll carry on living here with us.’

  ‘If that’s all right with you both.’

  ‘Course it is. Elaine thought he might be better off in one of those halls of residence but I told her what he needs is the security of a real home. Tell me if I’m wrong but I see myself as a kind of substitute father. Oh, I know he’s got a real father, but reading between the lines I’d say they’ve never really hit it off that well.’

  ‘He’s told you about his family?’

  ‘Had to drag it out of him. Even then I wasn’t much the wiser. Strange lad, but Elaine and I have grown quite fond of him. Like a son to us, I suppose.’

  ‘Did he tell you much about Paula Redfern?’

  It was a harmless enough question but I sensed his discomfort.

  ‘Sorry? Paula — no, not really. Just that she’d been married but it hadn’t worked out.’

  ‘Married? She was older than Luke, then?’

  ‘Oh, I imagine so. Looked in her early thirties.’ He broke off, pushing his photographs back in the portfolio. Slowly, carefully, he tied the black ribbons that held it together, then lined up its edge against the end of the table. His hands shook a little and he kept touching his upper lip with the tip of his tongue.

  ‘I didn’t realize you’d met her,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ Sweat was streaming down his face. ‘Saw her once — in the shop. Best not to mention it to Elaine. She’d call it interfering. It’s just that I feel the lad likes us to take a friendly interest.’ He was breathing hard, in through his nose and out through his mouth. ‘Elaine thinks he’s been mollycoddled, needs to grow up, stand on his own two feet.’ He had gained control of himself. His hands were still, his face wiped dry. ‘You never met Paula yourself. No, I don’t suppose you would. But he’d have told you about her.’

  ‘Not very much.’

  He smiled. ‘There you are, then, can’t have been very important to him, can she?’ And then, in case I thought he was being disrespectful to the dead, ‘Poor woman. Terrible thing to happen, God rest her soul.’

  *

  The first time I met Luke he had been lying on the floor beside his unmade bed. Janos, the caretaker of the house opposite my own that had been divided into bed-sits, had run across the road to fetch me. Why he hadn’t phoned for an ambulance straight away I can’t imagine. Maybe he thought Luke was play-acting. Maybe he thought I was a doctor. An empty bottle of paracetamol on a bedside cabinet had been enough for me to decide to drive Luke to Casualty myself. Together, Janos and I had lifted him to his feet and forced him to stumble down the stairs between us. Janos had pushed him into the back seat of the car, then climbed in beside me.

  ‘When you reach the hospital I come in too, Anna.’

  But once inside the hospital a nurse and a porter had taken over. Janos and I had waited half an hour or so to make sure Luke was going to be all right, then driven back home.

  ‘Silly boy.’ Janos had been quite calm but I knew he felt guilty. It had never occurred to him that Luke was unhappy. Quiet, a little withdrawn, but he had gone to work each day — a store in Queen’s Road where he packed china and glassware — and come home each evening at five forty-five. He paid his rent on Fridays, remembered to put out his rubbish every Wednesday evening.

  ‘You collect the rents, do you, Janos?’ We had never talked much before. Just a few words when we met in the street. All he knew about me was that I was a psychologist. All I knew about him was that he had come to England during the Hungarian Revolution. I liked his face with its deep lines and scattering of small dark moles. His eyes were dark too, his hair thin and grey. We both liked dogs and Janos had an eight-year-old golden retriever which leaned its head on my thigh whenever we met.

  ‘I collect the money for Mrs Bonamy,’ he said. ‘She lives up the other side of the Downs in a big house overlooking the Gorge. I keep an eye on things, clean the stairs and passages, do a few repairs. In return I pay a reduced amount. It suits me quite well.’

  ‘And Luke moved in a few months ago?’

  ‘Only five weeks. I invited him to the basement for a chat but he didn’t enjoy it so I leave him alone except when he brings the rent.’

  ‘And he seemed all right last Friday?’

  ‘As far as I can tell. People who take all their tablets, they don’t give warning.’

  ‘Sometimes they do. Sometimes not. Didn’t anyone come to visit him?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘And he didn’t make friends with any of the other tenants?’

  ‘No. Once a man came to the door but when I went to fetch Luke he said to say he was out.’

  I remembered our conversation, almost word for word. It had taken place less than three months ago but it seemed like more.

  Now, from the window of the day room at the hospital, I could see Luke walking across the lawn. When he reached a row of chestnut trees he touched each in turn, then stood up very straight with his arms stretched above his head. After a moment’s pause he set off again, back across the grass.

  He had no idea I was watching him. I turned away, confused by the conflicting feelings he aroused. Compassion, anger, alarm — and something else. Martin would have called it frustrated maternal instinct. He would have been wrong. I didn’t feel in the least maternal towards Luke and in any case the relatively small gap between our ages rendered the whole notion ridiculous.

  When I opened the French windows to let in some much needed air the distant whine of a chain saw was just audible above the golf commentary coming from the television. An old man seated near the window raised his head, feeling the breeze on his face. I smiled at him, then realized that he was blind.

  ‘Hallo. You’re not in a draught, are you?’

  The old
man turned towards me. ‘Is there any bacon?’

  ‘You want some bacon?’

  ‘Is there any bacon?’ He started to rise from his seat, then sat down again heavily, knocking his stick to the ground.

  I picked it up and leaned it against the chair.

  ‘Is there any bacon?’ he asked. ‘I want some bacon.’

  ‘Not now, Arthur.’ A young nurse, with a tissue pressed to her nose, came into the room, winked at me, then asked if I was looking for someone.

  ‘I’ve come to see Luke Jesty.’

  ‘Oh, Luke.’ She sneezed several times, then peered through the window. ‘He was out there earlier. I should have a look.’

  ‘Is Dr Stringer here today?’

  ‘In his room.’

  Arthur was still asking for bacon but she was taking no notice. Most likely the old man made the same request a hundred times a day.

  A door on the other side of the corridor opened and William Stringer came out of his office. He glanced into the day room, stared at me for a moment, then realized who I was.

  ‘Anna, I was hoping to see you.’ He turned back and held open the door to his room. ‘Come along in.’

  I followed him into the small carpeted room with its book-shelves, mahogany desk, and row of filing cabinets. On the lefthand wall was a reproduction of a Matisse. Clear blues and yellows. The figure of a woman, a bowl of pears on a tall, spindly table. Stringer’s desk was bare apart from a photograph of a woman aged about nineteen or twenty. He followed my eyes.

  ‘My daughter Miranda. Taken a few years back. She’s a trainee GP in Newcastle now, very keen on your line of country. Thinks nothing of psychotropic drugs. Prefers a counselling approach.’

  I smiled but made no comment.

  ‘Sit yourself down.’ He lowered himself into his chair and smiled encouragingly. He was a big man, well over six foot, with thick white hair, a long, amused-looking face, and a large paunch hidden behind his loose-fitting double-breasted suit. We knew each other a little and I had always found him tolerant, broad-minded. Already in his sixties he had seen it all before, but still managed to keep an open mind about the causes and treatment of the mentally ill. He was even prepared to discuss Thomas Szasz’s thesis that there is no such thing as mental illness.