The Listeners

by Anthony J. Quinn

  ‘That’s about as far as we got,’ said Rodgers.

  ‘Strange that none of Chisholm’s neighbours have a clue what happened to him,’ said Herron.

  ‘We managed to get a few vague reports,’ said Shaw. ‘An unfamiliar car seen on the day he disappeared, but nothing definite. Most of his fellow residents either drink heavily or are on some sort of medication. Their memories are too blurred to give us a clear lead.’

  ‘What about the neighbour who kept hiding from you?’

  There was a silence, and then Rodgers sniffed loudly. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Perhaps he might open the door to me?’

  ‘You’re welcome to try,’ said Shaw.

  ‘If you think it’s a priority,’ added Rodgers.

  She detected a note of contempt in his voice, which annoyed her. ‘Why would interviewing the neighbour of our prime suspect not be a priority? He might be hiding from police because he knows something or has a guilty conscience.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to offend you,’ said Rodgers.

  ‘No offence taken,’ she said, picking up her keys. ‘I’ll let you know how I get on.’

  *

  Several times, she knocked the door of Murray’s house on the main street of Innerleithen but got no reply. However, she had the impression that Murray was at home. She rapped the windows, unwilling to give up. Eventually, the door opened slowly.

  She introduced herself to Murray as a police detective, and his eyes scanned hers, full of guilty suspicion.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’m trying to find Billy Chisholm.’

  ‘I’m busy right now.’

  ‘This is important, Mr Murray.’

  Again, she saw a look in his eyes, probing and uncertain, almost reproachful. However, he must have realised that now he had opened his door, his caller was not going to be deterred. He looked down at the doorstep and allowed her in. ‘This is to do with the murder of that psychiatrist, isn’t it?’

  ‘Billy was a patient of Dr Pochard’s. Naturally, we want to speak to him.’

  ‘The whole thing sounds so terrible.’ He gave her a submissive glance and led her into a tiny living room. ‘I don’t know Billy that well. The men who stay next door tend to be secretive and lonely. But Billy would stop for a chat now and again.’

  ‘Can you remember your last conversation with him? Anything unusual that he said or did?’

  ‘It was about a week ago. He told me he was going to meet a detective inspector. Someone called Monteath.’

  She froze. Her mind had been focused on the questions she needed to ask but now they were cast into disarray.

  ‘What name did you say?’

  ‘Monteath.’ He had registered her look of surprise. ‘Is the name important?’

  ‘No, not at all. I just wanted to check.’

  ‘It seemed odd at the time that he was meeting a detective, but then I heard he had a troubled past.’

  ‘What about Dr Pochard, did he ever mention her?’

  ‘No, all he wanted to talk about were forest paths and waterfalls. Then he would mention this man Monteath.’

  ‘What exactly did he say?’

  ‘He complained that even though he had left Deepwell, he couldn’t shake off this detective. He said that all the patients there were flies in his web.’

  ‘What else did he say?’

  ‘I can’t remember every conversation that we had.’

  ‘You don’t have to. Just tell me the bits about Monteath.’

  ‘I can’t think of anything else specifically.’ He looked at her with curiosity. ‘I take it you can’t discuss your colleague or his work?’

  ‘My colleague? Who are you talking about?’

  ‘Inspector Monteath.’

  ‘Who said Monteath was a colleague of mine?’

  ‘I just assumed.’ His face reddened. He seemed bothered by the sharpness of her questions.

  ‘All I need to know is did you ever see this Inspector Monteath, or have any reason to believe he might be real, and not a symptom of Billy’s mental illness?’ She tried to keep the tension from rising in her voice.

  His eyes grew disturbed and a grim expression formed on his face. ‘I never doubted Monteath’s existence. Billy sounded so convincing, and I’m not easily fooled.’

  ‘It’s not a crime to believe in someone else’s delusion.’

  ‘I never questioned what Billy told me. He seemed so consistent.’ His eyes looked down and then they came up again. ‘I thought I saw him with Monteath one evening. I was in my car, about to leave, when I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw Billy walking out of his flat with an older man.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘It was twilight and they were both silhouetted. When Billy saw I was in my car, he made to go back into the flat, but the other man made him keep walking. I remember thinking that must be Monteath.’

  ‘Tell me everything you can remember about him.’

  His brow furrowed and there was a look of doubt in his eyes. ‘He was tall, late middle age. The collars of his coat were turned up. He walked in a purposeful way. Definitely, an old school policeman, I thought. He seemed in control.’

  So in control, he could rearrange reality and the thoughts inside Chisholm’s head, thought Herron. It seemed she was unable to follow a lead in this case without hitting some form of delusion or a figment of the imagination. However, she felt that in the spreading expanse of the investigation, it was through these teasing fragments that reality might be revealed. Even lies and fantasies contained little granules of the truth, and she had to investigate each one in order not to miss a valuable clue. She had to keep digging.

  Murray gave an apologetic grimace. ‘To tell you the truth, I was wary of Billy’s companion. I’m not that keen on police detectives at the best of times, and Billy had made Monteath seem so sinister.’ He glanced at her and added quickly, ‘Not that I have anything to hide.’

  ‘I’m sure you don’t,’ said Herron. She smiled to reassure him, but Murray appeared to have clammed up. She recovered her gentler tone and began crossing off the questions she had planned to ask.

  ‘Did Billy ever mention any plans or places he was intending to visit?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about people he was in contact with?’

  ‘No one, apart from the detective.’

  ‘Did he mention any grudges? Had anyone upset him badly?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he mention any other doctors at Deepwell?’

  Murray shook his head.

  ‘What about a log cabin in a forest? Near a loch. Did he ever talk about that?’

  ‘Possibly. He talked about forests a lot but I never thought to pay attention. I didn’t think it would be important. Anyway, I’ve told you everything I can remember.’

  Herron thanked him for taking the time to talk to her, and told him he had been very helpful. She got up, preparing to leave.

  ‘There was something else about Billy’s companion,’ said Murray. ‘It’s nothing really, but he kept turning round as though he were checking was anyone else watching him.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That’s helpful too.’

  He walked her out to the front door, and at the last minute said, ‘I take it you don’t know any Inspector Monteath.’

  ‘Not professionally.’

  ‘Does he exist at all?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

  ‘If he doesn’t exist, then how can this conversation be helpful to your investigation? An imaginary detective can’t play any meaningful part in a murder plot, can he?’

  She walked off without answering him.

  *

  The streets of Innerleithen were quiet, and her feet and brain welcomed the walk back to her car. She would have gladly kept walking to the edge of the village, emptying her brain, and pitting her muscles against the hills that formed a backdrop to the rows of houses. Walking was the
best way to tackle a mental block, but she was already late and needed to get back to the station. Her pace slowed as she approached her car, wishing that her feet could ignore what her mind was up to, find the right path and allow her thoughts to sort themselves out.

  Her first thought when she saw the envelope tucked under her windscreen wiper was that she had been given a parking ticket. She looked up sharply, hoping to catch sight of Innerleithen’s only traffic warden. She thought she saw a figure hurrying between the cars at the bottom of the street. She could not determine if it was male or female. All she saw was a shape, a shadow merging and blending with other shadows, the darkness of old beech trees and granite houses.

  She ripped open the envelope and read the handwritten note inside. It wasn’t a ticket, but something quite different. She read the note again, and stared at it. Surely she must be imagining it? But there was no doubt about it. The sinister-sounding words printed in block capitals beginning with the name, Inspector Monteath.

  I am Inspector Monteath, but that is not my real name. My real name is a secret. I am the detective who makes up clues just like those poor patients locked up in the dark. Perhaps I am real and perhaps I am not, sitting here in my log cabin by the loch. It does me good to think up clues in the dark, but sooner or later I will run out of time, and then what will happen to little Miss Dunnock?

  Her breathing grew shallow and her fingers trembled. The bastard has left me a trail. He knows about the photographs and confessions. Perhaps he even selected which ones to leave behind in Pochard’s back garden. She tried ringing Morton, but there was no answer. She sat in her car and read the note again. Something did not feel right. Her breathing grew steadier. Why had the message been left for her and not the investigation team, and how did the writer know she was in Innerleithen? There were two interpretations running through her mind. She sensed the vulnerability of her position as a female detective in a male-dominated police station. She considered the possibility that one of her colleagues was playing a prank upon her. They might even be acting in league to gull her and derail her attempts to prove herself. In which case, she decided to keep the note to herself for the time being. She would have to watch the rest of the team like a hawk from now on. If one of them had written the note as a prank, they would eventually give themselves away. This was her first interpretation; the second was that if the note was genuine, then someone was using her, someone connected to the murder who knew what she was thinking, and also the car she drove.

  She started up the engine and drove off quickly. A false message from a real detective, or a real message from a false detective. How could she tell the one from the other? If the note was a clue, then who exactly was leading her? Perhaps Monteath was a red herring planted to make her lose sight of the real investigation. She should be hunting a killer and a crime scene, not getting lost in the delusions of Deepwell’s patients. This was still her investigation, she reminded herself. It was time to stop letting herself be dragged passively along by the decisions and obstacles posed by others. The staff at Deepwell and its patients, even her colleagues and chief inspector, they all seemed in her imagination to be accomplices to the general confusion.

  The murderer could perform disappearing tricks and cover his tracks, but there was one thing he couldn’t hide. He was as physically real as she.

  *

  When Herron returned to the station, the incident room was empty, and there was still no sign of Morton. At the computer desk next to hers, she saw the pinched profile and hunched shoulders of Shaw. She examined him out of the corner of her eye. Like the other officers based at Peebles, he behaved a little warily around her, and tended to treat his computer screen or his phone as a more rewarding and reassuring form of company. He was somewhere in his forties, with the bearing of a man trying to keep the lid on a troubled personal life. However, work at the station, the mundane details of its paperwork and briefings seemed to provide him with enough comfort to wear a slightly amused smile most of the time. This evening, he was busy at his computer, flicking through files, steering his mouse around its pad like a toy car.

  The last thing she wanted to mention was the message from Monteath, in case he thought she had fallen for a prank. Still, she felt the need to probe his thoughts. She said hello, and he replied with a sigh, without looking away from his screen. When she lingered at her desk without sitting down, he looked up.

  ‘Have you ever come across confessions as strange as the Deepwell ones before?’ she asked him. ‘Confessions made before the crime occurs?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ he said blankly, and then he gave the question some more consideration. ‘I mean, the person would have to convince their confidant that the confession was genuine in order to have it reported to the police in the first place. People make all sorts of mad claims, especially in places like Deepwell, but they convince no one.’

  ‘What about cases where the listener, say a psychiatrist, is told the confession but only informs the police when the crime or something unusual comes to light afterwards.’

  ‘I’m sure you could find cases like that.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The best place would be the patient files at Deepwell.’

  ‘But they keep erecting barriers, and Barker is avoiding me. What am I supposed to do?’

  Shaw leaned forward and rubbed his nose. ‘I think you should be pushing Morton harder. If you’re searching for a way into Deepwell, he’s the one to show you the way. He should know it by now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He opened a file on his computer and began tapping away on his keyboard. He seemed reluctant to say anything more.

  Herron pushed further. ‘Any time I ask Morton about what he knows about Deepwell, he goes quiet.’

  Shaw smiled sympathetically. ‘His silences do get monotonous.’

  ‘I spend a lot of time listening to the coffee pot and the air conditioning whenever he’s around.’

  He laughed. ‘Sometimes, I think Harry’s silence is greater than God’s.’

  ‘But you think he knows more about Deepwell than he’s letting on?’

  He rubbed his nose again. ‘I’m not in a position to comment on rumours. I’m not leading this investigation, so it’s not up to me.’

  What investigation? she wanted to say. And what rumours?

  ‘So what’s he keeping from me? How do I get him to talk to me?’

  Shaw flinched. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘If Harry won’t help you then I suppose it’s up to our dear leader.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If you need a door kicked open at Deepwell, Bates is the one to ask. As far as I can see no one has ever dared to do that at the hospital before.’

  She walked towards the door, glancing at his computer screen. He was scanning through the duty inspector reports from the night before, a dull litany of road traffic offences and vandalism. An officer who knew his place, and didn’t push against the boundaries. She stepped into the corridor and began to pace up and down. The silence of an institution and the silence of her colleague. Were the two somehow linked? Or was she getting too hung up on these matters?

  *

  The door to the chief inspector’s office lay slightly ajar, and she knocked a couple of times, before poking her head into the room. However, there was no sign of the DCI, apart from his jacket, which had been slung over his chair.

  She stepped back into the corridor, and bumped into his secretary.

  The woman smiled at her. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘The chief inspector, where is he?’

  The secretary went to get his appointment diary and after a minute came back with Constable Rodgers in tow. He smiled at her, too. ‘The boss had to go to an emergency meeting in Galashiels,’ said Rodgers. ‘He won’t be back till late evening.’

  ‘But he’s left his jacket behind.’

  ‘Must have been in a hurry. Is it something urgent?’

  ‘I need to talk to
him about Deepwell. Is there any way I can contact him?’

  ‘Other than barging in on his meeting, no. Can anyone else help?’

  ‘No thanks.’ She walked back down the corridor with leaden steps.

  *

  That evening, the sound of Bates’s voice echoing down the corridor roused her from the confusion of her notes. The DCI could not avoid her for ever, she thought, as she knocked on his door.

  Bates asked her what was up, and she said straight out, ‘I need complete access to all the patient files on Ward G.’

  ‘Barker has already made concessions. He’s given you the relevant notes on McCrea and Chisholm. If you ask for anything more, I really am going to lose my temper.’

  It was a warning, however, she had no choice but to ignore it. She wasn’t going to be put off any more and her voice rose. ‘Maybe the murderer is Chisholm but that doesn’t let Deepwell off the hook, especially if they’re covering up some sort of malpractice. They must think we’re a bunch of plodding idiots.’

  ‘As will the public, if we don’t pin down Chisholm.’

  ‘I believe Deepwell are covering up something more sinister—’

  He interrupted before she could mention her suspicions about the figure of Inspector Monteath. ‘Listen, Herron, you were sent to Deepwell in the first place to check out a crazy confession that didn’t seem to have any bearing on reality, let alone a proper police investigation.’ Seeing that she was about to speak again, he leaned forward, his eyes bulging. ‘You might think you’re a golden girl in some people’s eyes, but the only reason Morton dragged you into this investigation was because he couldn’t face up to his demons at Deepwell.’

  ‘What demons?’ she said. Was Morton somehow compromised by a past connection to the hospital?

  ‘If Morton hasn’t mentioned them, then clearly he doesn’t think you need to know his private details, and I respect his judgement.’