The Anagramist

by David W Robinson

  This time the silence was an invitation for Drake to respond. He took his time, finishing off his coffee, and making a fuss of placing the cup precisely in the centre of the coaster on the corner of Iris’s desk.

  “What is it you think I can do? If the medics can’t get through to her, if the psychos are not making any progress, I don’t see what use I can be. You have to understand, Iris, I’m not really a professional counsellor. The college use me as such, so do you, and I advertise my services, so I do know what I’m doing. Even so, in order for me to counsel someone like Mrs Vaughan, she has to relate to me. She has to speak to me so that I can feed back her observations in a more positive light.”

  “I’m aware of all that, but I’d still like you to try. I’ve seen you work… not exactly miracles, but I’ve seen you bring people on before. She needs to move on, Wes, and I’m sure you’re the man who can do it.”

  In the brief hiatus which followed the announcement, Drake murmured his gratitude.

  Iris was not seeking thanks. “Sam Feyer is an excellent officer – note: Feyer, not Vaughan. She’s most insistent upon that. Part of her reward for her work in exposing these crooks was immediate promotion to chief inspector. No matter how bad she feels, this should not be the end of her career. There’s a vacancy for a DCI in Landshaven, out on the coast. I’d like her to take it, but I have to have a decision from her by the end of March. The present DCI retires mid-April. Right now, no one can get anything but verbal abuse from her; not us, not the medics. I’ve tried and I can’t get a yes or no. You’re the expert on motivation. All I’m asking is that you go out there, talk to her, see if you can bring her out of this depression, find the spark that will fire the ignition.”

  The challenge intrigued Drake. It wasn’t exactly a novel situation, but taking on a client so deeply withdrawn was something he could not recall encountering before.

  Like Iris, he was capable of making quick decisions. “Okay. If I go out there now, on my way home, will they let me speak to her?”

  Iris took a pad of post-it notes and began to scribble on the uppermost. “I’ll call them. All you have to do is present your identity when you get there, and they’ll allow you access to her.” She tore off the top note and handed it to him. “That’s the address. Remember, it’s completely confidential. You’ll find the place off the ring road, somewhere in the Seacroft area, I think. Follow the York signs—”

  “Thanks, Iris, but I know my way around Leeds, and if I don’t, the satnav will direct me.” He tagged the note to the back of his smartphone, dropped it in his pocket, and stood up. “No guarantees, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  Chapter Seven

  Iris was wrong. Peace Garden was situated along a lane in the Shadwell area of the city, which was off the ring road between Wetherby Road and Harrogate Road, and a good two miles further west and north than Seacroft.

  A large, rambling, Victorian/Edwardian building, owned and operated by the Police Service, it accommodated anything up to two dozen officers of all ranks, some of them suffering from physical injuries, others, like Sam Feyer, psychological damage.

  His satnav led him straight to it, and when he turned off the road, between the stone pillars of the main entrance, he found himself confronted with a small parking area, and around him, flowerbeds and lawns, all in their winter doldrums, and the area was liberally dotted with wooden benches. Some of the patients were defying the weather, and sat outside, shivering in the afternoon chill. When he climbed out of the car, he could hear no sound other than the muted conversation of the patients.

  He presented his driving licence in reception, and there was a brief delay while the admin clerk checked the list of approved visitors. It made sense. Iris had said Sam’s location was confidential, and some of the patients, Sam included, would have crossed swords with organised crime. It was incumbent upon the staff – and the Police Service in general – to ensure their lives were not put at risk.

  Eventually, Doctor Mary Southam greeted him with a feeble handshake. A tall, slim redhead, he guessed to be about forty-five years of age, there was a hint of suspicion or perhaps professional resentment in her eyes.

  “Mrs Mullins advised us of your arrival, Mr Drake, but I don’t understand what she thinks you can do.”

  “Neither do I, but I did promise I’d speak to Sam, and it’s quite a long journey for me from Howley, so I hope I’m not wasting my time.”

  Doctor Southam ushered him along the ground floor corridor, and up a flight of stairs. They reached the landing before she replied to his comment.

  “I’m sorry, but wasting your time is exactly what you’re doing in my opinion. I understand you’re a counsellor?”

  “Yes and no. I act as a counsellor to staff and students at the college where I’m employed, but in reality, I’m a specialist in management and motivation.”

  “However you describe yourself, it’ll make no difference. Sam is angry, deeply depressed and almost totally withdrawn. She doesn’t speak to anyone.”

  “Medication?”

  “We provide it, she refuses to take it. In the early days, we tried forcing her to take it, and she promptly vomited it back up… deliberately.”

  The information produced a flash of annoyance which ran through Drake like an electric shock. “I’m not a doctor. I’m not even a psychologist, but she’s not contagious, she doesn’t have a physical illness. What made you think that force-feeding her drugs would make matters any better?”

  She shrugged. “It was an error of judgement on the part of a younger colleague.”

  “Well, I hope you put her right.”

  The cold eyes stared through him. “I put him right.”

  “Just lead the way, Doctor.”

  She did so, walking towards the end of the landing, and at the final door on the right, she knocked once, and pushed it open.

  “Good afternoon, Samantha. There’s a visitor to see you.”

  Sam Feyer was as Iris Mullins had told him; laid on one side on the bed, staring at the wall adjacent to the room’s only window.

  It was almost impossible for Drake to get any physical impression of her. Clad in a pair of loose-fitting jogging pants and sweatshirt, she could be hiding a shapely figure, or covering up weight problems. He could not see her face, but under a head of short, fair hair, was a slender neck, and the one part of her arm he could see, the left hand resting on her thigh, showed no trace of excess fat.

  When she spoke, her voice brimmed with hostility. “I don’t get visitors. Tell her to go away.”

  “It’s a gentleman from Iris Mullins’s office.”

  “I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to see anyone.”

  “You’ll want to see me,” Drake assured her. “I’m young, fit, incredibly good-looking; what’s known as a babe magnet. Women always want to see me.”

  The fake arrogance, which Drake had picked up from some absurd dating program for wannabe celebrities, at least compelled her to turn sour features upon him. She had a pretty face. A perfect, inverted pear-drop framed in a straggle of hair, a result he guessed, from not bothering to brush it. She had sapphire blue eyes, which would be quite attractive when she was smiling, but they regarded him like ice lances. Her appearance confirmed his earlier opinion, there was no excess flab around her face, and he judged that standing up, properly dressed, she would be an attractive woman.

  None of that showed as she replied to him again. “Your mouth is obviously as big as your head.”

  He chuckled. “I got you to look at me and speak to me, didn’t I?” He turned to Doctor Southam. “I need to speak to Samantha in private. Would you leave us please?”

  The doctor nodded and backed out of the room, closing the door behind her.

  The moment they were alone, Sam unleashed her bile. “Tell me something, Mr I love me, do you understand plain English? Should I use more basic language? Piss off, for example? Now there’s a message you could clean up and pass on to Iris Mullins.”<
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  Drake drew up a chair by the window, and sat at the bedside. As he did so, she turned her back on him.

  He had expected it, but carried on talking to her. “I’m not a policeman. I’m a private consultant to the police, and I promised Iris I’d speak to you. It’s a good earner for me, and frankly, Sam, you don’t have to talk to me, but surely you don’t begrudge me sitting here for an hour so I can make a few quid?”

  “Please yourself.”

  “Good. I will. My name’s Wes, by the way. You don’t know me… well, I don’t think you do. I’ve done a fair bit of work with stressed out cops here and there, but never in your neck of the woods. You might have heard of my father though. He’s the MP for Howley. That’s how I wriggled my way into the police consultancy. It’s a good crack. Not my main source of income, naturally, but I make a fair bit extra from it. And it’s so easy, I sometimes feel guilty about taking the money. But you know what they say about making hay while the sun’s shining.”

  Every word was designed to annoy her. Every lie was intended to paint the picture of a man who considered himself supremely important, and everything that happened around him was meant for his comfort. Even the mention of his father, and the fictionalised means by which he had secured his contract with the police service should (if he had calculated correctly) annoy her to the point where she would eventually respond.

  Without warning she rolled over, and sat up, glowering at him. “I’ve already told you to piss off. Shall I put it in stronger terms? Fuck off. Go make your easy money from some other poor cow, and leave me alone.”

  She flopped back to the mattress, but did not turn way. Instead she remained flat on her back.

  To Drake, it was progress. All he needed to do now was find some means of calming her.

  “Sure. When the hour’s up.” He deliberately turned away from her and gazed through the window, consciously mimicking Iris’s actions earlier in the day. Without looking at her, he carried on speaking. “I’ve been where you are, you know. I know what you’re going through.”

  “No you don’t.” Her voice was the virulent hiss of an angry cat. “You have no idea.”

  “Oh but I do. There was this woman, you see. She was everything to me. Everything. And then, one day, she was gone. No word, no warning, just gone. I know that’s not on quite the same level as the betrayal you feel, but is the same principle, and when she went, my world just crumbled. I couldn’t see any future, no way forward. Everything I did, I did for her. Every move I made, every step I took, was done to please her. And then she was gone. I was staring down a black hole with no sign of life or light.”

  Sam did not reply. Had she turned her back on him again? When he turned to face her, he discovered that she had not. She was listening. Another step forward.

  “What I know, Sam, is what you haven’t learned yet. I know that there is more, there is a way forward. They talk about the light at the end of the tunnel, but as it is, you haven’t found the cables which leads to the switch to turn the light on. And the trouble is, I can’t show you where it is, I can’t even show you what it looks like, I can’t point you to the gate that will let you through to follow that road.”

  “No one can.”

  The anger was gone, and yet, there was no trace of self-pity in her voice. Iris had called it right. This was a capable, professional woman, one who would eventually find a way ahead.

  “I know that. It’s up to you. But I’ll tell you what, if you try to do it alone, it’ll take months, maybe years, just like it did with me. Whereas, if you talk to people – not necessarily me, not necessarily the idiot doctor who tried to force drugs into you – but talk to someone who’s willing to listen, you might find that gate a bit quicker.” He deliberately glanced at his watch. He had been with her less than a quarter of an hour, but he got to his feet. “Ah, well, no point hanging around here. You won’t say anything to Iris if I cut away early, will you?”

  Salespeople called it a takeaway. Build up the dream, enhance the proposition, and then take it away.

  She was calmer than when he first came in the room, less introverted, and suddenly floundering. “I thought you were here for an hour.”

  “Yes. I’m supposed to be. But we’re not getting on very well, are we?”

  Hers was a blank face, eyes darting this way and that. Indecision. In a situation of which she was uncertain, and struggling to decide which way to jump.

  “Are you really as shallow as you make yourself out to be? Really so concentrated on money and your supposed physical attraction?”

  He laughed aloud this time. “Some people think so, yes. A distant colleague of yours, DCI Charlie Adamson is convinced of it, but his 2IC, DI Kirsty Pollack thinks I’m the best thing since sliced bread, and it’s not because I’m jumping her. I’m not.”

  Her pretty features screwed up, and she ran her eyes over him. “Yes, well, knowing Charlie Adamson, I’m not surprised. But what are you doing hobnobbing with them?”

  “My partner’s a police officer. Sergeant Rebecca Teale. She’s based in Howley, and as of last night, they’re beating their heads against the wall looking for a killer.”

  Sam pursed her lips and nodded. “I caught it on the lunchtime news. Are you profiling for them?”

  “No. At the risk of repeating myself for the umpteenth time since forever, I’m not a psychologist, let alone a profiler. I teach business management, and I’m considered an expert in motivation.”

  “Ah.”

  It was obvious from the simple response that his calling accounted for Iris Mullins sending him to her.

  “Iris thinks you can motivate me back to work?”

  “Do you want an honest answer, or should I bullshit you?”

  Her scowl was answer enough.

  “Yes, she thinks I can motivate you into going back to work, I told her she was talking out of her backside. In order to motivate you, I need to know far more about you than I do already, and that would depend upon you giving me the information, and you will only do that if you really want to go back to work.”

  She sat up, swung her legs from the bed, and stared him in the eye. “All right, Mr motivator, let me tell you how it is. I’m thirty-eight years old, a successful detective, married for eight years to an even more successful detective. Then I found out what a real, class one shit he was. The kind of scum, who not content with lining his own pocket and shagging every willing whore and tramp who crossed his path, tried to blame it all on me. My so-called colleagues think I’m the worst kind of cow, a bitch of the first order. Did Iris tell you that when they learned my maiden name, they called me Feyer the Fifth, as in fifth columnist? I put fifteen years of solid, hard work into my career, and it was destroyed in a matter of weeks. Oh sure, the top brass recognised my efforts. They gave me an extra pip on my shoulder, another five or six grand a year, and offered me a cushy little number in Landshaven, nicking the tarts and drug dealers working the pubs, harbour, and amusement arcades. But that nickname, Feyer the Fifth, will follow me everywhere. I’m an outcast, and it doesn’t matter whether I work in Bradford, Leeds, Landshaven, the Outer Hebrides, it’ll be with me. Well, they can stick it. I’ll take my compensation, such as it is, and get a job manning the checkouts at Sainsbury’s.”

  Drake gave her a round of applause. “Great stuff. Brilliant. That’s what I like to hear.”

  His approval puzzled her.

  “May I tell you a little tale? True this time. My father sent me to a fancy private school, and I hated every minute of it. He was determined that I would follow the family footsteps into law, and become a solicitor. I told him to shove it, just like you want to tell Iris. I went my own way. I always have done. And I am as successful as the fake front I put on earlier. I even had my own spot on TV for a while. I don’t give a toss for convention, I don’t care about other people’s expectations or opinions. I’m responsible to me – and my partner, obviously – and no one else. Would you like me to have a word with Sainsbury�
�s for you?”

  “I… er…” She pulled herself together. “You’re very erratic, aren’t you?”

  “Not really. It’s mostly a front, but I do employ unconventional techniques. There’s method in the madness. According to what I’ve been told, this is the longest conversation you’ve had since you collapsed after your husband’s trial.”

  “Ex-husband’s trial.” Her reply was a means of filling a verbal hiatus. “I suppose, yes, this is the most I’ve spoken to anyone, but that’s because you’re weird.”

  “Not weird. Disjointed, perhaps, but it works for me. It’s a method of opening someone up. Don’t tell me you’ve never used it as a police officer.”

  Once more she was at a loss to deliver a convincing answer. “I don’t think so.”

  “You probably have without realising it. We’re having a nice little chat here, Sam, but I have to go soon. This lunatic in Howley is writing to me not the cops, and I promised the principal of the college where I work that I’d be back before knocking-off time. But before I go, would you listen to me for a minute?”

  “As a courtesy, yes. It doesn’t mean I’ll take on board what you say.”

  “Fair enough. Your personnel file is a confidential record, and I don’t have access to it, but Iris Mullins told me, and you just confirmed that you are an excellent detective. Take that job on the checkout at Sainsbury’s and you’ll feel compelled to search every customer’s bags to make sure they’re not nicking anything. Consider your future carefully. You still have a lot to offer the police, and always remember that if you decide to take the DCI’s post in Landshaven, you still have the option of telling them to shove it at any time. One more thing. If you do decide to go back to work, back to the police, I’m more than happy to hold your hand until you feel confident enough to stand on your own two feet. There are no strings attached to this. I’m not looking for favours with parking tickets and I’m not looking to get your knickers off. The police pay me, and I’m free to progress as I see fit within the constraints of privacy, confidentiality and the professional standards under which I work. All I’m saying, Sam, and you don’t have to agree, is I am there to support you if you need it. On the other hand, if you don’t want me, then talk to Iris. She has plenty of other people on her books who would be willing to help you.”