Struggles of Psycho

by Rhyam O'Bryam

  ‘“What do you mean?” I asked her, genuinely curious.

  ‘“You know. You manipulate people.”

  ‘I laughed. But I was surprised that Ivy had such spirit in her. Slender, pale and trembling a little, she looked very pretty. “Poor little Ivy. Perhaps you’d like to be my slave too?”

  ‘“Never!” She rushed past me and banged the door on the way out. Her footfalls were heavy on the staircase and we could hear the creaking of the boards above us. Knowing that she could hear us, I spoke up loudly.

  ‘“Come here, slave, and get your reward.”

  ‘Soon I had Mike in my hands. “Groan loudly,” I said, “make sure she can hear you.”

  ‘He made some guttural sounds.

  ‘“Louder. Shout out. Say you love me.”

  ‘“I love you Amy! Oh, God! Oh, I’m there!”

  ‘The silence above us was palpable.’

  At this point Amy Philips paused, to measure the effect she was having on us perhaps. I checked my watch. It was after six and I felt hungry.

  ‘Ms Philips. Would you be willing to remain at the station overnight? I’d like to resume this interview in the morning.’

  ‘No. I don’t mind.’ She smiled, somewhat mockingly. ‘What would you do if I tried to leave though?’

  McCarthy looked across at me.

  ‘We’d charge you and detain you.’

  ‘With what, though?’

  And that was the question. ‘We’ll see.’

  I got up and left the interview room, McCarthy right behind. Nodding to the two guards in the corridor, I strode on without speaking. There was something about Amy Philips’ manner that was troubling. Her lively, knowing stares suggested that she was delighted with herself. Instead of expressing contrition and attempting to lessen the consequences of having killed a man, she was enjoying her role. But why?

  Pausing at the desk sergeant, I gave instructions that Amy Philips was to be treated carefully. On no account could she leave, but she could keep her phone and order takeaway if she didn’t like our food. Then I was in the fresh air of a calm twilit evening. It was a relief to be outside.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘She’s a wrong ’un.’ McCarthy shook her head.

  ‘Yeah. I don’t get where she’s going with this life story though. Fancy a working dinner to talk it over? Or have you got plans?’

  She looked at her watch. ‘Coaching at O’Hanrahan’s at seven thirty.’

  ‘Breakfast then?’

  ‘Sure. Eight at Donal’s?’

  I nodded and with a brisk wave she was off, skipping down the steps to her old Skoda. You could tell a lot about a person from the state of his or her car. Like McCarthy’s, which was strewn with rubbish, sports gear and old newspapers. The rubbish included crisp packets and chocolate wrappers, so you knew she had a weakness there, despite the football top, which indicated some sporting activity. Since that top was in the Dublin colours, you could probably guess that she was from there. And the odd thing about her car, which reversed close to me before accelerating away, was that the newspapers were the Irish Times.

  If you under-estimated McCarthy, you’d expect her reading habits to be the tabloids. But not only did she read the weightiest paper she could get her hands on, she kept old copies around until they were well out of date. I’d seen her in the station, finishing off the last article of a week-old paper. It had jarred me for a moment, like having deja-vu. Hadn’t the minister already resigned?

  My own car was a BMW, so that was information from the start. I might suggest I had a decent income and that I liked reliable, fast cars. It’s certainly true that I liked German cars; before becoming Superintendent I owned a VW Passat. I was sorry VW got into so much trouble over cheating on their emissions, because it also damaged my confidence in the car. My windows were smoked grey, hard to see into. And if that suggested a man who valued his privacy, it was correct.

  I turned back to the station.

  ‘Which car belongs to Amy Philips?’

  ‘The Renault. The strange-looking one.’

  Outside, it was easy to spot. A metallic blue Renault Avantime. Odd, I’d never seen such a model before. It was a large car that looked like it should be a people carrier. Like families with three or four kids would have. But it had only two doors. Peering through the window, I saw that there was a huge amount of space between the front and rear seats. No rubbish. No drink in the cup holder. It was all very clean and sparse, except around the boot. There a layer of mud had formed that was grey coloured. I wanted to open the boot and have a look in. Did I have reasonable suspicion? I did.

  I toyed with the idea of just asking Amy Philips for her keys. But the doors had buttons that looked like they would be susceptible to the hangman’s noose trick. I hadn’t done it in years and I was slightly embarrassed when two guards walked past while I was working the thread around the frame of the door and trying to get the noose over the head of the button. Still, in less than five minutes I heard the satisfying click of the door unlocking. I couldn’t help feeling pleased with myself.

  Sitting in the driver’s seat, I inhaled a pine scent from the car freshener. The glove compartment opened easily: the car manual; breakdown leaflet; packet of mints (unopened); black pen. In other words, nothing unusual. Turning around, I was once again struck by how much room there was in the car. You could really stretch out from the back. But if anyone had, they hadn’t left any marks. It was like sitting in a car that had been cleaned before being sold.

  Only the boot showed signs of daily use. There was a thin layer of grey dust on the black, carpeted surface. Rubbing my fingers together, I examined the dust more closely. Cement. There had been a big bag of cement mix in this car recently. I tried to think back to my trip to the farm this morning. Had there been a mixer? Some work in progress? Not that I could recall.

  That night I woke up, having had a terrible nightmare. I had been swimming in my local pool, except that the lights were off and I was the only person there. Not the only person. Someone was walking around the outside. They wore heels and the sound of their footsteps echoed across the water.

  ‘Hello? Who is that?’

  ‘It’s me, Superintendent, Amy Philips.’ Her voice was mocking.

  I swam towards her but all I could see was a dark shadow, where she blocked the orange sheen of a streetlight beyond a window.

  ‘What are you doing here? You should be at the jail.’

  ‘I came to watch you swim. You are good.’

  ‘Go back to the jail.’

  ‘You can’t make me, Superintendent.’ The shadow moved, the heels tapped out her stride. ‘You realize, now, don’t you, where Ivy Patterson is?’

  This spurred me on and I swam to keep up. ‘Where is she?’

  The footsteps halted. The shadow deepened.

  ‘Superintendent. You disappoint me. Think.’

  ‘She’s here, isn’t she?’

  Amy Philips just laughed. With a mounting dread I turned in the dark water and there she was, face up, drifting towards me. An attractive, middle-aged woman in a dark one-piece bathing suit. Her eyes opened and she looked at me in terror.

  At this point I rolled over, awake, startled and glad to be in my bad. I checked my phone for the time. It was two fifteen. I rang the station.

  ‘Wexford Garda Station.’

  ‘Greely here. Is Amy Philips still in her cell?’

  There was a pause, which was uncomfortably long.

  Then, much to my relief the duty sergeant came back. ‘Yes, she is. Orders are to arrest her for the murder of Michael Patterson if she tries to leave.’

  ‘That’s it. Thank you… Do you know, did she ring anyone?’

  ‘No idea. But I could get her phone and check?’

  ‘Thanks, but it can wait.’

  ‘God, you look tired.’ McCarthy strode into the café, cheerful and bright.

  ‘Didn’t sleep well.’

  ‘Full Irish, please.’ This to
the girl behind the counter, who nodded. ‘So, what are we doing today?’

  ‘Going back in there. Spending the day with her. Maybe getting a confession to murder.’

  ‘Oh, God.’ McCarthy stretched out her legs under the table and ran her hands through her hair. ‘Why don’t you get someone else to sit in and I’ll go for another look around her farm?’

  ‘Maybe we both should. I checked out her car and there is a lot of dust in the back, from cement I think. But we didn’t see any building work, did we?’

  ‘I dunno. Wasn’t there a small mixer in the barn?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘How about it, Greely? Let’s take the morning off at least, I just don’t want a day in there listening to her creepy stories. And the way she looks at me—’

  I took a deep draw from my mug of tea. ‘I know, but she’s not going to stay here forever. We’d better try to get what we need today. The farm can wait.’

  ‘I knew you’d say that.’

  ‘Because it’s right.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess so. Feck it though. I feel like I should be putting on a bio-hazard suit before going in there with her.’

  McCarthy’s enthusiasm for her breakfast had visibly waned. Now she let her fork – laden with a piece of hash brown soaked in egg yolk – fall. Just as well, all that fat.

  ‘Done?’ I asked her.

  ‘I guess so.’

  We left for the station. As I opened the door to the interview room, I was struck by exactly the same thought as McCarthy: I wanted some kind of protective suit.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Good morning, Superintendent, Detective Sergeant.’ Amy Philips looked cheerful. The bruise on her cheek had visibly diminished and had she wanted to cover the remaining light yellow hue with makeup, she could have.

  ‘Morning,’ replied McCarthy. I said nothing. We did the preliminaries and started the recording.

  ‘Can we talk about the night of Michael Patterson’s death, please?’ I began.

  ‘Of course, Superintendent, but do you think you have all the pertinent background?’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. Why don’t you tell us about that night and then we can decide that question?’

  ‘All right then. I was in the lounge, having just finished my dinner, when I heard a car coming into the drive and saw the movement of its lights along the roof.’

  ‘This was late, then?’ asked McCarthy, picking up her pen.

  ‘I’d say about eight.’

  ‘Go on.’ I nodded, encouraged that Ms Philips was coming to the point.

  ‘The doorbell rang and, much to my surprise I saw Mike there. I hadn’t met him in maybe five years. Mike had always been thin, so it was striking that he had a paunch now. You know the capital Greek Phi?’ She looked at me as if we were complicit in something, something that excluded McCarthy.

  I shook my head.

  Disappointed, she leaned back in her chair. ‘It’s like a capital O, with a line through it. Well, that’s what he made me think of. A line with a bump. Plus he was going thin around his temples. I could see a lot of his forehead. Then there was a reddish, unhealthy colour to his skin. All in all, I got the impression he was in a bad way. Had, perhaps, been drinking a lot.

  ‘“Well, Mike. What a surprise.” I stood in the door and for some reason, my intuition told me not to let him in. “You should have rung ahead.”

  ‘“I rang you a hundred times, Amy, as you well know.”

  ‘“Oh, really? I must have that phone looked at.”

  ‘“Where is she Amy? What have you done with Ivy?”

  ‘“I haven’t the faintest idea. She left me a month ago.”

  ‘“But she’s disappeared. She’s not on Facebook; not answering emails and she never phones.”

  ‘I just shrugged.

  ‘“Let me in, Amy. I know you. You’ve done something terrible to Ivy. I know it.”

  ‘I stepped aside and at once he was in and looking around like one of those dogs you have, the ones trained to sniff out drugs. He opened cupboard doors, bathroom cabinets and went into every room. I didn’t stop him, other than to cough pointedly when he left an untidy pile of towels on the bathroom chair. Despite his feverish intensity, he paused and did his best to put them back.

  ‘Mike went upstairs and I followed him. Again, he looked in all the rooms and all the cupboards. At mine, he stopped, looking triumphantly at Ivy’s clothes in the wardrobe.

  ‘“See! She’s still here, isn’t she? Where is she?”

  ‘“Sorry, Mike,” I said as gently as I could. “Ivy is long gone. She left those behind.”

  ‘Hurriedly, Mike moved through the garments, but he found nothing. There was nothing to find. Ivy had left after a big row and while at first I expected her to return with a car for her clothes, by now I was used to the idea she had left for good. I said this to Mike.

  ‘“I don’t believe you, Amy. You’d never let her leave.” Suddenly, he got more frantic and, with a triumphant glance in my direction and much to my annoyance, began to throw clothes out of the wardrobe. I felt like kicking him but also, there was something a little frightening about him, he was out of control. Like he’d suffered a breakdown. Or that he’d just crossed some kind of line.

  ‘I went downstairs, intending to make tea or something. And I did boil the kettle, but I was anxious, listening to him thumping around upstairs. What did this intrusion mean? I just wished he were out of my house.

  ‘Eventually, Mike came back down and his footsteps were heavy and ominous. His face was redder than ever and his darting eyes kept meeting mine. Nervously at first but growing in confidence. “You can’t fool me, Amy. I know what you are like and I know what you are capable of.”

  ‘“Mike, I’d like you to leave now. Come back another day, by arrangement.”

  ‘“I’m not leaving until I find out what has happened to Ivy. You’ve killed her, haven’t you?”

  ‘I laughed at this unexpected accusation and he looked somewhat taken aback. “Don’t be silly Mike.”

  ‘“I… she’d have been in touch by now.”

  ‘“Why?”

  ‘“Because she’s my sister. We’ve never been out of touch this long.”

  ‘“Sit down Mike, I’ve got some explaining to do.”

  ‘He didn’t move. “What?”

  ‘“Ivy was fed up with everything. With me but also with you and the family. When we used to talk about you — which wasn’t often — we used to just call you W. Do you know why?”

  ‘Mike shook his head.’

  ‘“She described you as ‘the weasel’, or, ‘the worm’, so often, she started just saying W and I caught on to it too. She hated you, Mike. And once she was fed up with me, she had no one in her life.”

  ‘“What are you saying? Are you saying she has killed herself?”

  ‘“Maybe. But I think it more likely she’s off travelling through Africa. She always wanted to do that, remember? Despite your mockery and, frankly, your racism.”

  ‘“I don’t believe you, Amy. Ivy has always cared for me. It’s you she hated. She sometimes wrote to me, you know…” He raised his hand, which was trembling slightly.

  “She used to wonder how we had let such an evil scorpion into our lives and she used to write to me about how to get rid of you. You know, she once wrote that if something happened to you, a car accident or a boat accident, she would be so relieved.

  ‘“Ivy was too nice to mean that she wanted me to arrange the accident. But ever since then, I’ve been thinking about it. Thinking about how much happier we’d both be if you were gone.”

  ‘“And yet, Mike, she was my lover. She shared my bed here for years. We have stronger bonds between us than you ever did.”

  ‘My words, as I intended, bit into Mike, and he visibly paled.

  ‘“Where is she, Amy?”

  ‘“We’re done here, Mike. Get out of my house and don’t come back.”

  ‘I had hoped that I’d
sufficiently cut him down that he’d leave with his tail between his legs. Whimpering perhaps. But the new Mike was stronger than the old. Or more insane.’

  ‘“Amy. I told myself this morning that I wasn’t going to leave here without knowing where Ivy was. I knew you’d try all the tricks you had not to tell me. If you won’t talk, I’m going to make you.” His eyes, which had been jumping around, as though he were looking for something on the floor, suddenly fixed on mine. “I’m going to make you Amy, and I’ll enjoy hurting you.”

  ‘“Don’t be such a foolish boy… I don’t know…”

  ‘Astonishingly, Mike didn’t let me finish. He took a step forward and bang! I’d been struck on the cheek. Staggered, I had to grasp the counter to avoid falling.’

  ‘“I’ve changed, Amy. I’m free of you. You didn’t think I could do that, did you, Amy? Well, I can and a lot more. I’m just sorry I left it so long to come here and show you. So you’d better start speaking. Where’s Ivy? What have you done to her?”

  ‘My hand on my throbbing cheek, I took a step backwards, then another. On the windowsill behind me was a bowl with my knitting. I picked up one of the needles.

  ‘Mike laughed. “You know, Amy, I was afraid of you all these years. Afraid to come here, even to help Ivy. But not any longer. I’m free of you, Amy. You’re out of my head.”

  ‘His eyes were wide and staring now as if to make up for years of ducking away from mine. There was a force in that stare, a deliberate violence.

  ‘“Stop it, Mike. You’re scaring me. I want you to leave.”

  ‘As a matter of fact, I wasn’t at all scared. Perhaps I shouldn’t say this. Perhaps it would be better for my defence if I pretended I was terrified.’

  Amy Philips looked at me, then McCarthy, with a slight smile. I hoped I was as impassive-looking as my partner.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t. But I thought that this was what Mike wanted to hear and if I played along with his frail ego, I’d get rid of him more quickly. Only it didn’t work. It was like I’d triggered a deluge. I hadn’t realised just how bad a state he was in. And that he was insane.