The Anagramist

by David W Robinson

  He checked the dashboard clock. “It’ll take me an hour to get there. Is she likely to be at lunch or anything?”

  “I haven’t a clue, but I’ll let the staff know to expect you.”

  He cut the call, started the engine, and pulled out of the car park. As he drove away along Mill Street, he noticed a couple of reporters detach themselves from the gaggle still cluttering the police station entrance. They rushed to their cars and hurried in pursuit of him. He was not worried. Once through the town centre, he would turn not for the college but Leeds, and at that point, they would lose interest.

  As he rolled along, following the twists and turns of the river, a weak, January sun flickered with almost stroboscopic regularity between the barren branches of trees lining both sides of the road. The weather in the closing days of the month had been variable; thick fog, usually burned off by the mid-morning, light rain, heavy rain, but not a trace of snow, which was unusual for Howley. His memory stretched back a long way, and during his lifetime he could remember few winters when the town did not see heavy snowfalls. Not that he was complaining. When it did come, such weather invariably brought Howley to a grinding halt, especially in the higher areas, like Moor Heights Lane.

  Ice, usually following bitterly cold nights, was just as restrictive. He had seen days when the steep hill passing his house into the town, was covered in a sheet of ice, and impassable. Even at low speeds, trying to follow the bends was to show total disregard for the welfare of your car, and at slightly higher speeds, the welfare of drivers and passengers was in the lap of the gods. On such days, he routinely cancelled all appointments, and rang the college to tell them he would be working from home.

  Thinking of the college reminded him that Quentin was unaware of his plans. As he approached the major junction, leading right to Leeds and Bradford airport, left to the moorland road which was a main route to Harrogate, he rang the college, and explained the situation to the principal. Unlike the last time Iris had called, Quentin was quite amicable. Obviously, he was still basking in his (and the college’s) brief minutes of fame on the morning news.

  He pulled into Peace Garden’s visitor car park at quarter to twelve, and five minutes later, having been assured by the staff that lunch would not be served until one o’clock, he joined Sam in her room.

  She appeared no brighter, no happier to see him than she was on his first visit, and he mentally prepared for a troublesome time ahead.

  “Your call surprised me.”

  It was a simple statement of fact, and Sam responded equally candidly.

  “It surprised Iris Mullins, too. If you didn’t want to come, you didn’t have to.”

  He shrugged easily. “It’s no problem. I’ve been here a couple of minutes, and you haven’t told me to eff off yet.”

  Was that a hint of a cynical smile shooting across her lips? It was so fleeting, that Drake believed it might have been his imagination.

  “So, how are you?” he asked.

  “No different. I still don’t want to talk to anyone, including you.”

  The emotion this time was Drake’s. A flash of annoyance, which he quelled instantly. It was a situation he had been in many times before, and he was more than capable of handling it. Many of his clients, private, police referrals, and the staff and students of Howley College, came to him not knowing what to say, and in some cases not wanting to speak to him, preferring instead to sit in his company and wallow in silent despondency.

  He met her head on. “Then why call me?”

  “I said I don’t want to talk to you, but something inside me tells me that I need to. You’re preferable to the sick, lame and lazy in this place or the simpering idiots who run the show.”

  “Semantics.” He disregarded much of her opinion. “I’m supposed to be the word merchant.”

  “Which is why you should appreciate the difference between ‘want’ and ‘need’.”

  She was sitting on the edge of the bed, just a couple of feet from him, but she did not look him in the eye. Instead, her gaze was concentrated on the narrow view through the window.

  Still without looking at him, she went on. “You said something two weeks ago. The conversation we had was the first of any significance since the day I came to Peace Garden. Don’t go chalking up any points for that. All you did was point out the obvious, and it didn’t take a genius to pick up on it.”

  She stood up and walked past him, deliberately keeping a distance between her and the reach of his hands, or the stretch of his long legs. She stood at the window, and stared morosely at the somnolent scene outside, where some of her fellow patients were strolling around the grounds, some alone, others in pairs.

  “Look at them. Reliving their past glories, yearning to get back into uniform, get out there, tackle the bad guys. Idiots. Each and every one of them.”

  For Drake, it was important to let her ramble, dig out whatever troubled her, but she would not get down to the innermost layers until she brought up and spat out the bile eating away at her.

  “Some of them have given years to the police, and what do they get for it? Look at that moron over there.”

  She pointed a slender finger across the gardens. Drake made no effort to move, concentrating his eyes on her instead.

  “Some junkie kicked off in a bar, lashed out with a machete, sliced into one guy’s neck and killed him, drew blood from a few others. That idiot went in like the SAS and tackled him. The junkie hacked into his arm, and they had to amputate. Now look at him. One arm, no use to the filth, end of career. Naturally, they’re taking care of him. They’ll wait until he’s fully rehabilitated, then train him for office work. But it won’t likely be with the police. They’ll farm him out to some temp agency. But what does he talk about? His glory days as a beat bobby, and how he’s looking forward to getting back out there once he gets a bionic arm.”

  Sam delivered a short, cynical laugh, and returned to the bed, where she sat, still not looking at Drake, still concentrating on the blue sky beyond the window.

  In deference to her diatribe, Drake stood up, moved to the same position where she had stood, and looked through the window.

  At the far end of the garden, two men were walking along the path towards the far hedgerows. Both wore thick coats. The man on the right limped heavily and relied on a walking stick for support. There was nothing obviously wrong with his companion, but the empty sleeve of his coat tucked into his left pocket spelled out his disability.

  Drake returned to his seat. “I thought you didn’t talk to them?”

  “I don’t. I listen instead.”

  “And it irritates you that this man, and possibly some of the others, are living on dreams?”

  “I wouldn’t say irritates me. It just persuades me that I have nothing in common with them, and I don’t want anything to do with them.”

  Once again, Drake stood up. “Come on. Let’s go for a walk in the garden.”

  For only the second time since he had entered the room, he suddenly had her full attention. “No. I don’t want to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t.”

  “That’s not an answer. It’s repetition. What is there out there which makes you so afraid?”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “Prove it. Come with me.”

  The defiance left her, and her face turned sour once again. “I don’t have a coat. I came here early in October, and I didn’t need one.”

  Drake removed his overcoat and tossed it on the bed. “Take mine.”

  It was a risky strategy, painting her into a corner from which she had no means of escape other than acquiescence or admitting to her fear. For a moment, she floundered.

  “You’ll freeze out there.”

  Drake denied it. “My car has an excellent heater. Once I’m driving home, I’ll be warmed up in a matter of minutes. I’m fit enough to stand half an hour out there. Now, come on. Let’s go.”

  This was the point of no retur
n. In the next few seconds, she would either capitulate, or order him to leave. She could conceivably launch herself at him, attack him physically.

  “What’s out there that isn’t in here?”

  “A taste of the freedom you’re seeking.”

  It was a shot in the dark, based largely on her criticism of the one-armed police officer, a man she saw as trapped in a behavioural system inculcated by the police academy’s basic training, and the inherent discipline instilled in all officers from the day they first set foot on the beat. Drake knew nothing of the officer in question, but her criticism of him hinted that she, too, was cornered by those same modes of thought, and she wanted to break free.

  “I’m waiting.”

  She huffed out of breath. “You can wait until forever for all I care.”

  “Sam, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “At the risk of repeating myself, I am not afraid.” She stared him in the eye. “You talk instead. Tell me about the Anagramist.”

  Drake resorted to the challenge of the schoolyard. “Only if you come outside.”

  With another furious sigh, she flounced from the bed, skirted round it, yanked open the wardrobe and took a heavy, quilted coat from within.

  “I thought you didn’t have a coat.”

  “I lied.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  A blast of freezing, January wind hit them as they stepped out of the building. Sam shivered. Drake turned to her, putting himself between her and the wind, and made an effort to fasten up her coat. She brushed his hands away, and dealt with it herself, zipping up the front all the way to her chin.

  “I’m not helpless.”

  Drake did not reply. It was just another manifestation of her determined independence. He encouraged her along one of the paths which led into the more open areas of the grounds. As they ambled slowly along, he took a deep breath of fresh, but cold winter air.

  “I had a school friend. His father was some kind of import export agent. Worth quite a bit of money. Enough to pay the school fees at Nostell. His father confidently expected him to go into the family business, much like my old man expected me to become a lawyer. But my friend wouldn’t have it. I caught up with him a few years later, and he was driving lorries. When he was old enough, he got the necessary licenses, and then borrowed £50,000 from his father. It was enough to buy a second hand truck. Then he secured a couple of contracts, and he went on from there. A one-man band, they call it in the trucking industry.”

  “Is there any point to this story?”

  Drake continued in the same patient tones. “I don’t want to sound snobby, but I couldn’t understand what made a well-educated man like him going to what was effectively a working-class job. And then he told me. Freedom. Plain and simple. When he climbed into the truck, and set off for wherever he was going, he had no bosses breathing down his neck, no one looking over his shoulder to find out what he was doing, no one ready to grass him up for minor infractions of the rules. But there was more than that. He wasn’t office bound. He didn’t spend his days hemmed in by the metaphorical four walls. He was out in the fresh air every single day of his working life. He could probably have made double the money by working with his father, but money didn’t bother him. He just wanted that freedom. And he made me think about my life. Like him, I’ve always been self-employed – aside from my position at the college, that is – but I still didn’t have his freedom. If I attend a business conference, I’m closed in with a bunch of executives, all of them arguing the toss, each and every one of them wanting to get his point across. When I’m with a client, like you, say, I sit in an enclosed room, listening to someone drone on about their problems, and I can’t escape. If I tried, it would be unprofessional to say the least. I make maybe three or four times what my friend makes, but he’s freer than me; he has all the aces belonging to freedom.”

  He stopped, turned deliberately, and stood in front of Sam.

  “Don’t you envy him?”

  She was nonplussed by the question. “Not particularly. His freedom is an illusion. All right, so he’s not cooped up in an office or factory, but he’s still bound by the rules of the road, the law, and government agencies which can pull lorries for spot-checks any time they want.”

  It was a stock answer, and one Drake delivered to his friend many years earlier, but it was not persuasive.

  He turned and continued walking at a slow pace, and Sam took a couple of quick steps to catch up with him.

  “Did you enjoy a great deal of freedom in your job?”

  She shivered, and Drake guessed that it was a reaction to the mention of her work, not the weather. “No. The rules governing the police are very strict.”

  “But you were out and about most of the time, weren’t you?”

  Once again she disagreed. “Not so you’d notice. I spent a good deal of time in an office, checking and countersigning timesheets, writing reports, collating evidence, kicking the occasional backside when it was warranted. It’s not like you see on the TV.”

  “Of course not.” Drake rehearsed his next words carefully. “Cushy, though, wasn’t it?”

  She laughed. A short, sharp bark which, it seemed to Drake, echoed from the gardens around them. Twenty yards ahead of them, a group of four men and women were seated on a bench, and Sam’s response caused them to look round.

  “Cushy, my eye. Have you ever seen the caseload of an average inspector? You sign on at nine in the morning, and you don’t have one minute’s peace until you sign off at five, six, seven in the evening. You want cushy, look at your own job.”

  Drake conceded the point as they ambled past the group on the bench. He nodded a greeting, but Sam ignored them as if they were not there, and if Drake was not mistaken, they reserved contemptuous scowls for her.

  They were walking in bright sunshine now, and despite the winter chill, Drake felt uncomfortable wrapped in his overcoat. He unbuttoned his coat along with the jacket beneath, allowing the air to his shirt.

  “My life is pretty cushy, I’ll admit. The biggest pain in the posterior I have is a principal demanding my report on last term, and hinting that I should fudge the numbers to make it appear better in the eyes of OFSTED. But Quentin’s easy to deal with. I just threaten to resign, and he backs off.”

  “And could you do that? Resign, I mean?”

  “It wouldn’t be too big a wrench. I don’t need the money, but I would miss the interaction with other people. I spend a lot of the time talking to people who are naturally anxious or depressed, and it can have a detrimental effect on me, so the chance to rap with colleagues and other, more contented students provides a sort of safety valve.”

  They walked on, reached the far hedgerows, and then turned right, to follow the line of the garden, before taking the next path back towards the house.

  “Do you realise that you spend more time talking about you than you do about me?”

  It was an observation Drake had been waiting for her to make. He stopped, and once again faced her, blocking her way along the path. “That’s because you won’t talk to me about you.”

  He gave her a moment to allow the significance of his statement to sink in, and then went on.

  “I don’t know Sam Feyer. Iris Mullins doesn’t know Sam Feyer. Sure, she has Sam Feyer’s exemplary record in front of her, and she can judge the state of Sam Feyer’s attitude, but she doesn’t know her. The only one who does is Sam Feyer, and Sam Feyer won’t talk about Sam Feyer.”

  Her answer came so quickly that Drake knew it had been prepared in advance, and it was yet another attempt to head him off. “There’s nothing to know about Sam Feyer.”

  “Wrong. There’s plenty to know. What you really mean is, you don’t want others to know.”

  Her anger began to rise again. Her chin jutted forward, her lips thinned, and her eyes narrowed to tiny, sparkling points. “What is it you want to know? What’s my favourite food? Do I like to get drunk? Do I like a good time in bed? Well? Co
me on. Tell me.”

  Drake maintained his equilibrium. “I want to know what it was Sam Feyer learned about herself after the terrible treatment she suffered at the hands of her husband and colleagues.”

  Drake’s experience told him that this was a pivotal moment. With other clients, it could take many sessions to reach this point, but he knew, had known from their first meeting, that Sam Feyer was possessed of sufficient self-knowledge to get there much faster.

  Her reaction confirmed what he suspected. The anger left her. The pupils of her eyes dilated, her jaw and lips began to move, worriedly, agitatedly, and she was close to tears.

  “I joined the police straight from university. Fast-track. I made CID in no time. Since then, I’ve worked and worked and worked, and now, suddenly, I’m a chief inspector, and through it all, I maintained a professional distance from the people I was dealing with. Not just suspects, but victims, too. You tell a woman that her husband of twenty years is dead, and you know she’s going through the torments of hell, and you feel sorry for her. You tell another that her husband has been arrested and charged as a paedophile, and you can see the agony, so you feel sorry for her. You visit a couple of forty-somethings to let them know that their drugged-up or drunk son or daughter has been killed in a road traffic accident, and their pain is almost unbearable. But you have to press on and question them. Did the newly widowed woman know her husband had a heart condition which threatened his life? Was the other woman aware that her old man was into little boys and girls? Did those parents know that their offspring was driving while under the influence of drink or drugs?”

  She sucked in a shuddering breath, turned, and pointed across the lawns, picking out the one-armed officer and his limping friend once more.

  “A courageous and dedicated police officer. He must be to tackle some half head waving a machete about. I can only guess at the torture of his injuries. I can only sympathise with the mental pain of knowing, deep down, that he can never go back to the job. He covers it by deluding himself to believing it’ll all work out. What kind of agony is that? I think I know, but the truth is I don’t.” For a moment she calmed down, before launching into her diatribe again. “And then, when that bastard did what he did to me, when everyone shunned me, cursed me, spat on me… Then, I knew.”