The Listeners
Page 1
THE LISTENERS
Anthony J. Quinn
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About this Book
About the Author
Table of Contents
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About The Listeners
Not long out of the fast-track training course at Edinburgh’s police college, Detective Sergeant Carla Herron is about to be tested to breaking point.
She’s been called to Deepwell psychiatric hospital in the Scottish borders to interview a patient who has confessed to the murder of one of the hospital’s psychotherapists. The confession is vividly detailed, but for a man locked in a secure ward and under 24-hour surveillance, it is also utterly impossible.
So why can’t the supposedly murdered psychotherapist be contacted? Why are the hospital staff so secretive, so difficult to work with? Why have other Deepwell patients made disturbingly similar confessions over the past year? Against the advice of her superiors, Carla delves deeper into the hospital’s past and is plunged into a labyrinth of jealousies, lies and hallucinations.
Struggling to separate fact from fantasy, Carla embarks on a chilling trail through the bleak uplands and dark forests of the Scottish borders, every step taking her closer to a final – deadly – reckoning.
Contents
Welcome Page
About The Listeners
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
About Anthony J. Quinn
About the Inspector Celcius DalySeries
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright
To two wonderful women, my mother Marie
and mother-in-law Anne.
Be patient with the childish storm
that blows through these pages.
Someday my dumb words will find the land
where your language of love is spoken.
1
Silence hung in the pine forest and in the sky framed by the black sides of the valley leading up to the mountain.
No matter how often she stood on her balcony overlooking the forest, she would never get used to its twilight stillness, the monotony of its noiseless needles and twigs, the uniformity of its shadows, the darkness that seemed to pour itself into the shape of a beast on soft pads drawing closer with the night. Beyond the railings of her home, there were no signs of civilisation, no other houses and no roads, not even a fence, just wave after wave of trees filling the valley to the sky. Somewhere over the mountain lay the border with England and its bright towns and cities, its pavements crammed with chattering strangers.
Long ago, she had convinced herself that all she needed was this valley of trees and its seamless silence.
It was just before eight o’clock, and she had one appointment remaining in her diary. She rose from one of the two large leather armchairs that had kept her company during her years here. Sitting all afternoon and listening to her patients had made her feel stiff and tired. She pulled open the double doors and stepped out into the deep vista of trees and the peace she kept turning to whenever her clients absorbed all her strength. She listened to a silence as heavy as that of a stopped clock, time itself hanging on the brink as the last rays of daylight sank from the sky. So quiet the forest seemed to stretch out and press against her body.
She shivered, feeling the familiar tingle in her stomach, the mixture of fear and excitement that the forest always triggered inside her. She had moved to this valley in the Borders believing that it would help her reach the levels of concentration she required in her work. On nights like these, she wanted to turn the forest into a patient in its own right. The trees could not speak, yet somehow they whispered to her every evening. They did not move, yet somehow they drew closer, communicating to her in a language pitched too deep for the human ear.
She turned back into the room and went over to her desk. She glanced at her diary and considered her next appointment, the man who was due to arrive in five minutes, the weekly visitor who never smiled or laughed, who was fixated on pretending to be ordinary and maintaining an even temperament, but whose silences belonged to the deep end of mental imbalance. She felt unsure of herself. Where did this unfamiliar anxiety come from? She read her brief notes, reviewing in her mind her last meeting with him, and tried to put the unpleasant feelings behind her. He had been visiting her consulting room for more than thirty years now, one of the first people to sit in her leather chair when she had first qualified as a psychotherapist.
Strange to think that she had been listening to patients for all that time, tuning into their innermost secrets, taking her direction from the forest, reading its shapes and shadows on evenings like these. Nothing was as tempting as the territory of the human mind, and in psychoanalysis she had discovered a way of tracing mysterious paths through the uncharted terrain of human desires and fears.
Again, that twinge of fear, like a lone gust of wind passing through the forest, what was its source? She went over to the bookshelf and ran her hand along the row of academic papers and periodicals. She had trained with some of the finest traditional Freudian therapists and become a member of the Scottish Psychoanalytical Foundation before leaving to join a breakaway holistic society – a group of committed practitioners who had held onto controversial models of memory and childhood trauma. During her early years as a therapist, she had felt disorientated by the conflicting theories of psychotherapy, the changing directions and infighting between the various schools, until she found her own path. A patient’s words and pauses provided the most legible route to their secret fears and desires. All she needed was this consulting room at the edge of a forest, a room to trap the silences. It was a field of study that no one had written about before, the intense silences that led you deep into the human heart, and was absent from all the psychiatric publications on her shelves. Unlike her colleagues, she had never been afraid of silence and its intimacy, of inviting it into her consultations and accepting the importance of it in her patients’ lives.
Outside, the valley grew darker and her sense of foreboding intensified. She sighed and returned to the double doors and the balcony. She was under no illusions about the difficult session that lay ahead of her; a man who had grown more restless and irritated during their recent interviews. She had thought about ending their meetings in order to give her more time to write up her groundbreaking experiences as a therapist. Perhaps this will be our last session tonight, she thought. All I need is a little courage. She was approaching retirement and had only so many years left to record her original views on psychoanalysis, to do something permanent with her listening talent. All those years of patient note-keeping, laying down lines of insight and empathy like fine wine, would be lost for ever if she didn’t write a book
that would challenge the psychiatric orthodoxies.
She stared deep into the forest, but all she could see was a dark pit of stillness. Twilight was over. Her heart fluttered and, for a moment, she thought the fear would overcome her. She tried to rationalise her anxiety. Perhaps it was her way of appeasing the monstrous ego of her final visitor, offering him these moments of apprehension beforehand. She thought back through their previous conversations and felt the darkness draw closer.
*
When the knock sounded on the door, she hurried back into the room. She wasn’t above quickly blessing herself before sinking into one of the leather chairs and suppressing the nervous tension in her chest by calling out in a loud clear voice, ‘Come in.’
Immediately, she could tell from the way he walked into the room that he was out of sorts. He settled into the opposing chair, voluble from the start, wayward in his emotions, and the session raced ahead. She concentrated, hanging onto the ebb and flow of his words, nodding and replying, but he seemed to take little notice of her, and soon he was deep into a list of bitter grievances.
She leaned forward, trying to focus. She felt as though she were trying to contain a vortex that had to be fed constantly with her attention, a twisting funnel of imagined betrayals and slights. She attempted to soothe him with the correct words, but they came out garbled, her therapist’s careful phrasing faltering.
The visitor’s gaze was upon her. He had stopped speaking and was waiting for her to say something. The look in his eyes changed, turning cold and glittering. A creeping realisation came upon her. She tried to push it away but the look in his unblinking eyes remained. She could not tell what he was thinking, but she felt that her deduction was correct. Neither she nor any of the staff at the hospital had wanted to believe that this man had committed evil. He had hinted at it often enough, but no one had listened to the truth hidden behind his words and in his eyes. It was partially her fault, of course. She had not wanted to believe the worst. She did her utmost to remain calm as the realisation strengthened, trying to think clearly and say nothing that would give her insight away. The silence of the forest combined with the silence of her visitor. She reminded herself that she was in her leather chair, in this consulting room she had designed herself, a safe place.
He resumed his monologue, but this time his words were overloaded with contempt. The room filled with his hatred. She realised she was checking the clock on the wall behind him more often than usual, willing the consultation to end. For the first time ever in his company, I am truly afraid. With a rising sense of dread, she saw that he had noticed her fear. Does he suspect that I have worked out his past? How much does he think I know? Enough to make me break my oath of confidentiality?
She made a resolution that she would contact Dr Barker as soon as he left. The director of the psychiatric hospital would know how to proceed, whether or not to inform the police about her suspicions. The thought gave her strength as the room reverberated to the sound of his voice complaining about how he had suffered all these years, misunderstood by everyone who knew him. The words floated through her mind. She glanced at the clock again. Only ten minutes to go. The closer she got to the end of the session, the more she relaxed. Perhaps she had nothing to fear from him, after all.
He had stopped speaking. The pauses in between his words were the worst part of the session, but the mood felt different. Had he noticed her anxiously checking the clock?
He resumed speaking. ‘The truth is I haven’t been able to say why I really came here tonight. The suspicions that are gnawing inside me.’
She asked him what his suspicions were about.
‘Not about what. More about whom.’
‘Suspicions about me?’ she asked. His eyes glinted. She had committed her first indiscretion by rushing in too quickly.
‘Yes. I don’t know if I can explain them properly.’
She leaned forward slightly in her chair. ‘Perhaps we should work through this in the next session. We can return to these feelings next week.’
‘Does that mean you want to finish early?’
‘I didn’t say that… although it might be best if we leave it for now, especially if you feel such a block.’ She felt a bitter taste in her mouth. Failure tinged with fear.
‘This isn’t how I wanted our conversation to end,’ he complained.
‘Nor I, but in the circumstances…’
‘I’ve upset you,’ he said, his voice turning raw and husky.
She sank back into her seat. She told him that nothing was upsetting her. However, she wanted to know what was upsetting him. She wanted him to keep talking.
‘Me? Why should anything be upsetting me? What are you suggesting?’
She did not reply and waited for him to keep speaking. Her eyes hung on his lips. She said she was interested in hearing why he was so suspicious of her.
‘I think you know my secret.’
‘What secret?’ She spoke casually. She hoped he did not detect the catch in her voice.
‘I don’t know if I can trust you with it.’
‘I’m a therapist; it’s my job to be trusted. Who do you think I am?’
‘I’m not sure.’ He leaned towards her. ‘Someone who might betray me.’
‘I think you should come back tomorrow. We can talk some more then.’
‘I hope so. But I don’t know if I can trust you in the meantime. I don’t know if I can leave you with these suspicions.’
She stood up with all the authority she could muster, all the authority that in her decades of practising as a psychotherapist had never deserted her before, and could be counted upon to neutralise even the most objectionable of patients. She walked to the door and opened it. She was about to turn towards him and repeat that their session was over when a sudden blow to her head knocked her to the ground, and she pitched forward, unable to break her fall.
*
When she regained consciousness, everything was black. Something had been tied over her eyes. She could barely hear. A ringing filled her ears, an internal disturbance that pressed upon her eardrums. This bothered her much more than the fact that she could not see or move. She tried to ignore the rushing tide of panic that welled up inside. She strained her ears, and heard the sound of him very close, but poorly transmitted.
She was still in her consulting room; she knew that much. She could feel the cold of the night through the wooden floorboards. Slowly, the noises expanded and filled the darkness. The sounds of him, working on ropes as he tied her hands behind her back; and the sounds of her fear rushing up from inside. He paused and went quiet. She wondered why he had stopped. She searched for the silence in the room, the silence behind her thoughts and his, the silence she had been listening to all her life. She turned her head slightly and felt his breath on her neck as he went back to working on the ropes.
She was unable to move now. Her skills at listening were the only weapon left to her, her one means of working out an escape. She tuned in to his up-close movements, listening more intimately than she had ever done before with a patient. She detected sadness in his breathing, a shivery sense of gloom as he tightened the ropes. She heard his frustration, the damage at the core of his being. If only she had listened as intently in their previous sessions.
‘I so wanted to be good,’ he whispered tensely. ‘I wanted to help you and your colleagues with your theories about memory and trauma. I wanted to help show the rest of the world that the therapies worked.’
His voice had lost its familiar complaining tone. It sounded possessed. She did not have the right word to describe the change in his voice, but she heard it clearly. It was the voice of evil, of barely repressed fury. As a psychotherapist, she had always discounted the existence of evil, believing every personality could be rehabilitated or redeemed, and that human nature was inherently good. She felt regret at her mistake, that she had failed to connect with this human being who now had the power of life and death over her.
He m
ade her aware of his knee, pressing it gently against her neck. He brought his face closer to her ear, as though he were going to share another secret. ‘Your patients will be silent no more,’ he said. ‘They will keep confessing to your murder long after your part in their stories is finished.’
Then there were no sounds at all. She kept listening, hoping for an end to the darkness, that somehow she would find a break in the silence. She kept on hoping, listening with courage and determination, and later, when she felt his hands tighten around her neck, the will to listen and understand still burned brightly within her, distinct and indestructible.
2
Transfixed in the sunlight streaming through the tall windows, the male patients huddled together, looking blind and uncertain, their eyes puffed up by medication and lack of sleep. It was Monday morning in the library of Deepwell Psychiatric Hospital, and the trainee clinical psychologist Laura Dunnock was reading to her therapy group a passage from St Augustine’s The Confessions, Book X.
When I turn to memory, I ask it to bring forth what I want: and some things are produced immediately, some take longer as if they had to be brought out from some more secret place of storage; some pour out in a heap and while we are actually wanting and looking for something quite different, they hurl themselves upon us in masses as though to say, ‘May it not be we that you want?’
No one in the room was a scholar of fifth-century divinity and the words seemed very delicate instruments with which to subdue her criminally insane patients. Yet the men must have recognised a greater power in the saint’s prose for, as they listened to Dunnock’s forthright voice, a transformation took hold.
The features of their faces, normally so blank and sagging in expression, grew deeper and stronger. She saw the light of awareness intensify in their concentrated gazes, the furrows criss-crossing their brows. Even the most resistant patients stopped fidgeting and listened. She read on and felt the charge of energy contained in the words communicate itself to the patients. These men might be branded as dangerous by psychiatric experts, but to Laura they were also the victims of traumatic childhoods, vulnerable individuals who had been too sensitive to survive the early cruelty of selfish and violent parents or other adults entrusted with their care.