Struggles of Psycho

by Rhyam O'Bryam

  ‘Was Gary still on the scene?’ I wondered aloud.

  ‘She’d given him up too. I rang him, all the same, having looked up his work number.

  ‘“Mrs Patterson?’ he said, surprised, “how can I help?”

  ‘“Ivy’s in danger. There’s a mentally disturbed woman from her school days has made her go to a farm in Ireland. She’s not safe there. Can you go and bring her back?”

  ‘“Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs Patterson, didn’t she tell you? Ivy broke up with me last month. I’m not her boyfriend.”

  ‘“I know. But I also know that Ivy liked you. It was this woman — Amy Philips — who made her break up with you. I’m sure.”

  ‘There was a silence. Then he said, “what do you want me to do?”

  ‘For a moment hope surged up in me. I imagined this big, strong rugby player going to Wexford and bringing my daughter home with him. “I’ll give you her address. And your travel money. Just go and visit Ivy and get her away from Philips.”

  ‘“I really don’t think she’d want to see me.”

  ‘“Do you love her?”

  ‘“Love… ah. No.”

  ‘I realised I had made a mistake and drew a deep breath. “But you’d like to date her again?”

  ‘“It’s too late, Mrs Patterson, I’m sorry.” And he hung up.

  ‘Mike and Amy were in Wexford for some time after this?’

  ‘Yes, Superintendent. In Mike’s case, nearly two years. Then he came back, overweight and bad tempered. He became a self-employed engineer and was doing fairly well for himself before she murdered him.’

  ‘And Ivy?’ asked McCarthy. ‘Did she come back?’

  ‘Not even for Christmas.’ Elizabeth Patterson shook her head. ‘It was after we got this awful card that I was determined to go there.’

  ‘Card?’ I didn’t understand.

  ‘Yes, a Christmas card with angelic choir boys as the picture. Inside, the handwriting was by Amy Philips. She’d crossed out the printed verses and instead had written: Thinking of you, this special time of year, and how you must miss us, but be of good cheer! Then she’d signed it for both herself and Ivy. I couldn’t even see my daughter’s own handwriting.

  ‘Now it probably doesn’t seem a matter of any consequence, does it? Those lines?’ Mrs Patterson looked at me and I nodded. ‘But I felt it was mocking me. Amy was gloating. She thought she’d won. And it galled me so much. I’ve never been so angry, not in a cold, long-lasting sense. So I arranged to fly to Dublin and get the train to Wexford and then a taxi to the farm.

  ‘George, however, totally let me down. He wouldn’t come. “Do you want our daughter to suffer? She’s in hell. And we have to go and get her.” There was no shifting him. “I’m not going anywhere near that psycho,” he would say. And there was something fierce in his voice that made it clear there was no point arguing with him.

  ‘I don’t think he expected me to travel on my own. I did though, and the journey wasn’t so bad. The farm surprised me. It was a proper farm, in the middle of nowhere. You’ve seen it, of course,’ Mrs Patterson shot me a glance, ‘with its big castle. For some reason, I had always imagined Amy Philips living near a town. Anyway, there I was in the big, cobbled yard, with my suitcase and with the taxi-driver’s agreement that he would call back in an hour for me.

  ‘I’m not really sure what I expected, but my stomach hurt with the tension I felt. It was quiet. A bit of noise from the wind, which gusted around the tower, but no vehicles. In the distance, a donkey brayed. I rang the doorbell and Amy answered, she was wearing an apron and her hands were white with flour.

  ‘“Mrs Patterson,” she smiled her sarcastic smile and I wished I had a stick to beat her with. “Do come in. Forgive me if I don’t shake hands with you. I’m in the middle of making bread and scones.”

  ‘As we went inside she shouted up the stairs. “Ivy. Your mum is here.”

  ‘The house was very plain, really. A television, coffee table, worn chairs. Opened onto it was the kitchen, as you know. And saying nothing else to me, Amy put her trays in the oven, then washed her hands. She was looking at me, though. And I was looking back at her.

  ‘Ivy came in, looking somewhat dishevelled. Like she’d only just gotten up, even thought it was around four in the afternoon. She wasn’t wearing makeup and the green cardigan she had on was worn through on one elbow and too big for her. Probably, it was an old item belonging to Amy Philips.

  ‘“Mum! What are you doing here?”

  ‘“I’ve come to take you back with me,” I replied, but my heart fell right away. Ivy shook her head and I could tell that my daydream was not going to come true. “Try talking to Mike. If he’ll leave with you, I’ll come. Otherwise, I have to stay here with him.”

  ‘“Where is Mike?”

  ‘“He’s gone to Wexford to do some shopping.” Amy was turned away from me, filling the kettle. “Tea or coffee, Mrs Patterson?”

  ‘“Neither. When do you expect him back?”

  ‘“Oh, about an hour.”

  ‘“I don’t understand, Ivy. Why can’t you leave Mike here?”

  ‘“Amy will kill him.”

  ‘I looked at Amy. It was a disturbing moment. If you were to enter the room as a stranger, nothing would seem amiss. Two women, early forties, having tea with one of their mothers. Very ordinary. A kettle beginning to boil, mugs laid out. Yet I’d just heard that the life of one of my children was in danger. And the thing is, I half believed her.

  ‘“No, she won’t.”

  ‘Ivy sighed. Then came close enough to hug me. “You don’t know her well enough, Mum. She’s not like us. Amy has no sense of right or wrong at all. She just does whatever she has to in order to get what she wants.”

  ‘“Mike can deal with her.”

  ‘“Tea?” Amy gave a mug to Ivy, who accepted it and settled down into one of the chairs.

  ‘“Mike is infatuated with Amy. He can’t see her properly. He’ll do whatever she asks, which will make it very easy for her to kill him.”

  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ said McCarthy, ‘but what you are saying is important for the coming trial. We will need to call you as a witness.’

  ‘It’s hearsay, though,’ I pointed out. ‘We should call you to testify to your experience of Amy and your belief she murdered your son. But we’ll have trouble using your account of what Ivy believed. I don’t suppose you heard Amy herself threaten to kill Mike at any point?’

  ‘No, no. She just played the part of the perfect hostess, knowing that her claws were into my children so firmly that I couldn’t tear them away.’

  ‘I see.’ I paused. ‘Please continue.’

  Mrs Patterson shook her head. ‘Well, there isn’t a lot more to say. Mike came back and just laughed at me. He wasn’t in good shape: he had a big stomach on him, from beer perhaps. And I’m sure I detected pain, there, at the back of his eyes. But he wouldn’t hear a bad word about Amy.

  ‘After it was obvious Mike wouldn’t budge, I took my taxi back to Wexford and spent a sleepless night there in the hotel by the station. What could I do? It all seemed normal enough. Mike had encouraged me to stay; he was cooking a stir-fry and thought we could all sit around, drinking wine, acting as if nothing was wrong. But everything was wrong, terribly wrong. It was like my children were in the hands of an evil kidnapper, yet one was too stupid to see the danger and the other was lacking the energy to find a way of escape. It really was like I was living a horror film.

  ‘I had to retreat empty-handed to George, who didn’t show the slightest interest in my trip. Never asked me about it, or our children. In a way, Amy had got my husband away from me too, because there was a gap now. I couldn’t forgive his selfishness. Couldn’t understand it.

  ‘For several years, I was under a cloud. I would try to get on with my life and wait for a new development. And sometimes I would get a burst of energy and phone them. It was nearly always Amy who answered and even if she let me talk to Ivy, I could sense her pr
esence in the restraint of Ivy’s conversation. I remember it was my birthday and nothing came from Ivy. No card. No gift. That was a first. And the cards that I got at Christmas time were like that first one. Always with a sense of mockery.

  ‘At last, Mike came back.’

  ‘When was that?’ asked McCarthy.

  ‘It was June and, let me see, the year must have been 2011.’

  I smiled at Elizabeth Patterson with what I hoped was encouragement. ‘What had happened?’

  ‘Finally, Mike had seen through Amy. Or at least, had seen enough to know she was just using him to get hold of Ivy. Mike didn’t want to talk about it but he was furious. You could see the red colour flush into his face whenever we came close to the subject of Amy.

  ‘Naturally, I wanted Ivy home too and I couldn’t understand why she was still in Wexford, now Mike was back with us. He refused to talk about it: was clearly embarrassed by something. No one, neither Amy or Ivy, ever answered the phone, but Mike did tell me about Facebook. Apparently, Ivy had a secret Facebook account that Amy didn’t know about. This sounded promising, even if I didn’t understand what Facebook was.

  ‘Mike wouldn’t even help me create an account but I got the hang of it and looked up Ivy Patterson. There she was! One of seven, but instantly recognisable from her picture. Immediately, I offered to be her friend and messaged her: Ivy, can you come home? Can I help? Do you need money? Tickets?

  ‘It took a week and me checking nearly every hour, but then I got a message back. Hi, Mum. Good to see you. I hope you and Dad and Mike are well. I’m afraid I can’t come home just now. I’d like to but there are certain things I have to take care of first. Love, Ivy.

  ‘Well, I wrote back at once, again offering help. I said I’d come and that if she wanted I’d contact the police. But I just got a line in response, something like: Thanks, Mum, but it’s important not to involve the police. Please leave this to me.

  ‘Although I checked several times a day, Ivy never posted anything on Facebook. Nor did she respond to me if I asked her how she was doing. But I noticed something interesting. Ivy had five friends: Mike, myself, two girls from school and a name I didn’t recognise: Seán Mahony.

  ‘Mike wasn’t living with us. He’d already gone to Bristol on a contract. But I rang him to ask about this Mahony. “He’s the owner of a gallery in Wexford. He likes Ivy, I think, and her paintings.”

  ‘“She’s painting?” Well, I thought to myself, that’s good news. “And he likes her?”

  ‘“Probably. But Amy will never let anything happen between them. She wants Ivy all to herself.”

  ‘“I don’t understand. Why does Ivy stay with that awful woman? Especially if she has found a nice man.”

  ‘“Amy is very manipulative. She has Ivy trapped.”

  ‘“How?”

  ‘“Ah… It’s something she wouldn’t want me to talk about, sorry.”

  ‘And our conversation finished in the usual fashion, with Mike becoming taciturn and me becoming frustrated.’

  ‘Seán Mahony,’ McCarthy spoke as she wrote the name down. ‘Could be worth a chat with him.’

  I nodded. ‘Definitely.’

  ‘I sent him a message.’ Elizabeth Patterson looked at me with an unreadable expression. ‘Asking would he mind telling me if he knew Ivy and whether she was doing all right.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He wrote back, politely. Somewhat distant. Yes, he knew Ivy and admired her paintings. He said that she seemed well and he was sorry that I couldn’t ask her directly.’

  McCarthy looked up sharply. ‘What do you think he meant by that?’

  ‘Oh, just that it was odd that I had to ask him such a question about my own daughter.’

  ‘At least you had a means of contacting Ivy, though.’ McCarthy leaned back, a sympathetic smile on her face. ‘Independent of Amy, I mean.’

  Elizabeth Patterson just returned a sour look. ‘It wasn’t much use. Amy was in her head, somehow, stopping Ivy from speaking freely to me. And when she did get chatty, I could tell there was something wrong.

  ‘There was a period when suddenly Ivy was very active on Facebook, posting pictures of her paintings. Or of the sea. And saying how much she was enjoying life in Wexford. I would get messages asking after George and Mike. I’d get silly birthday animations. If I asked about Amy, Ivy would say that she was getting on fine with Amy. If I asked whether Ivy would come visit us, I got positive responses but not just yet. There was always some reason why should couldn’t come right away.

  ‘Eventually, it occurred to me that I was dealing with Amy, not Ivy. It was a horrible feeling. So I tested her. I said that I would come visit. In response I got messages that were apparently welcoming, but contrived to avoid making a definite arrangement.

  ‘So I said that I knew it was Amy I was talking to and I was going to come at the weekend. The Facebook account was closed the next day.’

  McCarthy nodded. ‘It wasn’t just deactivated, it was deleted.’

  ‘I rang Amy and when at last I got through to her, I offered her a deal. If Ivy spoke to me at least once a fortnight, I wouldn’t come over and make a fuss. She agreed and that’s how it was for nearly a year. Then she no longer came on the phone. I was feeling poorly at that time, so I made the mistake of asking Mike to go find out what was happening there.

  ‘At first Mike was like George. “I want nothing to do with that woman.” But I was firm. You always had to be firm with Mike. And unlike with George, you could get somewhere. So I prevailed on him in the end. And he came here. And she killed him.’ Mrs Patterson wiped a tear from her eye.

  ‘When did you last hear from Michael?’ I could have offered her a break, but it seemed to me that Elizabeth Patterson was a determined woman and would appreciate our pushing on.

  ‘He called around before driving to the airport. That was the last time I saw or heard from him.’

  ‘So you’ve no indication of what happened. No texts, no emails?’ Evidently, McCarthy felt the same way I did.

  ‘Nothing.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Now, I know you are focused on the murder case. But what matters to me is to find out what she did to Ivy. Can you do that?’

  ‘It’s certainly relevant to this investigation and we have been pursuing enquiries into her whereabouts.’

  ‘But…?’

  ‘There isn’t a “but”,’ I said, ‘other than the fact that we don’t have much information about Ivy. She lived a reclusive life.’

  ‘Thanks to Amy Philips,’ said Mrs Patterson bitterly.

  ‘Speaking of whom, I think we should return to the station and question her in the light of the information you’ve been so helpful with.’ I stood up. She didn’t.

  ‘If you find out about Ivy, you’ll let me know?’

  ‘Right away,’ answered McCarthy, also rising.

  We left Elizabeth Patterson in her room and neither of us spoke the whole way back to the car. For my part, I was mulling everything over. Surely, we had information now that would catch Amy Philips off balance? Could we make a breakthrough?

  Chapter Thirty

  As we drove back to the station, I found that I was consistently accelerating to over the speed limit. Normally, I tried to set a good example in my driving. But obviously a part of my mind was urging me onward. Time was against me.

  McCarthy retied her blonde hair into a bobbin. ‘Here’s what I think happened,’ she said.

  I gave her a glance to indicate she should continue.

  ‘For whatever reason, maybe because she was going to leave, Philips killed Ivy. So Ivy drops off the radar all together. Then Mike comes over and he figures this out. Then Philips kills him. She’s willing to take manslaughter to escape murder.’

  ‘Could be. That sounds like the way she thinks.’ I took a breath and slowed down. ‘Who is in charge of the search for Ivy Patterson?’

  ‘Ahern.’

  ‘Assign him another garda and make sure they get out from behind the
ir desks and go talk to the neighbours.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Back at the station, my parking spot was taken and all of a sudden I felt furious. The last thing I needed was to be delayed.

  ‘I’ll find a place. Jump out, will you, McCarthy, and set up a session with Philips.’

  She just nodded, perhaps sensing from my tone that I was in no mood for chat.

  When I finally entered the station, having had to go down to White’s Hotel for a parking place, I told the duty sergeant to get the clampers in.

  ‘That’s Sheila’s car, sir. She said to apologise to you but it was an emergency.’

  ‘I don’t care. Get it clamped.’

  I was the first in the interview room and impatiently played with the bottle of water and empty glasses, until, at last, McCarthy, Philips and her lawyer, Healy, took their seats.

  ‘How did you get Ivy to stay with you, after Mike left?’ I asked at once.

  ‘Wait a moment now, Superintendent, I’m confused. You mean, after Mike went to Japan? She didn’t stay with me. She ran for home.’

  I shook my head. ‘No, after he came back from Japan. The three of you lived in your farm for some time, then he left you, but Ivy stayed. Why?’

  Amy Philips looked puzzled. Then she smiled her all-knowing smile. ‘I don’t mind talking about that. But you will.’

  McCarthy gave me a look that meant: what now?

  ‘I don’t know if you remember when the internet came to Wexford?’ Philips leaned forward, face dark and heavy-looking. ‘Of course not, you were cycling over the Kerry Mountains back then. Well, at first it wasn’t a big company but a chancer, an American, who ran a company out of a narrow house on Talbot Street. I went there once, it was full of black boxes, buzzing slightly, with green lights on them.’

  I’d learned not to interrupt Philips, even when she set off at a strange angle. So I just held my tongue and let her get on with it.

  ‘Anyway, we had the internet installed over the phone line and after a while I found a few favourite webpages. One in particular was inspiring. It was an American woman who was a dominatrix and if you joined her club, which you had to pay for, you had access to her private pages. These had stories of what she got up to and images. They took a while to load, but they were worth it.