A Murderous Mind

by Jane A. Adams

  FORTY-TWO

  ‘You’re lucky,’ the blonde woman escorting Tess told her. ‘She’s having a relatively good day.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Tess looked at the name tag the woman was wearing. It was small and discreet and pinned to her cardigan and it said that her name was Doctor Kirkwood. ‘What’s wrong with her, I mean—?’

  ‘Dissociative Personality Disorder. It’s what people used to call multiple personality syndrome, but that’s never been a very accurate description. Sufferers don’t necessarily switch between different personalities. Sometimes, like Penny, they have simply lost hold of who they are, or were. If you can imagine, it’s like losing your definition of self. In Penny’s case, it drifts and shifts, and some days, like today, she seems to have a handle on who she is or at least part of who she might be.’ Dr Kirkwood smiled gently. ‘What I’m saying is, don’t expect too much. There are some days when she’ll happily talk about her father; others when she is quite convinced that Joe Jackson was father to another woman, someone Penny calls Naomi?’

  ‘Naomi Friedman.’ Tess nodded. ‘She was Blake back then. Penny was terribly jealous. She tried to kill Naomi.’

  ‘A fact she no longer associates with herself. And if it’s not relevant, I’d appreciate it if you don’t bring it up.’

  ‘It’s not. I’ll leave it well alone. I want to ask if she ever heard her father mention a man called Tom Reece. He’s—’

  ‘A psychiatrist. Yes, we consult with him from time to time. Can I ask why?’

  ‘What do you think of him?’ It was a clumsy question, Tess chided herself. The doctor frowned.

  ‘He’s excellent with patients and very helpful if we need a consult. Goes out of his way to do a good job. Why? And why should you want to ask Penny about him?’

  ‘I can’t really say.’ Tess wished she’d not mentioned him now. She thought fast and tried another tack. ‘Does he have any enemies? Professional jealousy, maybe? Someone who’d want to blacken his reputation?’

  Dr Kirkwood laughed but she still looked puzzled. ‘There’s always professional jealousy,’ she said. ‘We’re all only human, but no, Tom Reece is well thought of. He’s produced some of the primary research and set teaching material for students and medics looking to work with young people. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to do him harm.’

  Tess thanked her. They had walked the length of a long corridor, a nursing station at one end and another halfway down. The corridor ended in a bright room with big windows overlooking a very pretty garden. Outside, staff and patients wandered, still wrapped against the cold and damp that came with the fag end of winter. A half dozen people sat in the bright room. Two played cards, one stared out into the garden and another at a television, on but muted. He wore what Tess recognized as infrared headphones, a small sender unit had been fixed to the wall beside the TV.

  A woman Tess recognized from an old photo as Penny Jackson sat opposite a member of staff, a young woman in jeans and sweatshirt, differentiated from the patients only by her name tag. She got up as Tess and Dr Kirkwood approached.

  ‘I’ve told Penny that she has a visitor,’ she said. ‘Penny is happy to have a chat with someone new.’

  She put gentle emphasis on the word ‘chat’ and Tess nodded. She had been asked to leave her bag, her phone, anything in her pockets back at the reception. ‘Sally will take notes for you,’ Dr Kirkwood had said. And this, it seemed, was Sally.

  The young woman smiled again and indicated the seat she had just vacated. Tess sat down and Dr Kirkwood departed. Tess saw her stop at the first nurses’ station and assumed that was as far as she planned to go. Sally took a chair close by, out of Penny’s eye-line but close enough to intervene if she got upset, as Dr Kirkwood had said she would. She held a small notebook and a pencil in her hand.

  Tess felt uneasy, both at the thought of questioning Penny Jackson, a woman who was obviously out of reach of any reality Tess could recognize, and at the thought that someone else was listening in, making decisions about what to record and how to set it down. It was so far from her usual working practice that it felt improper, somehow. Unprofessional.

  Penny was watching her.

  ‘Hello,’ Tess said. ‘My name is Tess. Thank you for agreeing to see me.’

  Penny’s expression did not change.

  Tess wasn’t sure how to proceed.

  ‘Tess wants to ask you some questions,’ Sally prompted gently. ‘You said that would be all right, didn’t you, Penny?’

  A slow nod was the only acknowledgement of that. Nervously, Tess decided she had better just get on with it.

  ‘Penny, did you know a man called Tom Reece? I think he might—’

  A slight shake of the head from Sally. One question at a time, Dr Kirkwood had said, Tess reminded herself. Take it slow, keep it simple.

  ‘Penny, did you ever meet a man called Tom Reece?’

  Penny scrutinized her visitor but said nothing.

  ‘Doctor Tom Reece? Doctor Tom.’

  ‘Doctor Tom.’ Penny nodded. ‘He visited sometimes. Then my father didn’t like him and he didn’t come again.’

  ‘But your father used to like him?’

  Penny nodded. ‘When I was really young. Then we didn’t see him for a while and then one day, he called round to see my father and my father told him to go away. Actually, he told him to fuck off.’ She laughed and for a moment the blank look disappeared from her gaze.

  ‘Do you know why?’ Tess asked.

  The light in the eyes died and Penny shook her head. ‘Dad was telling a lot of people to fuck off at that time. I thought it was just the way things were. Mum had gone, he was angry. I suppose that was it.’

  ‘And after that? Did they make friends again? Did your dad talk about him?’ Too many questions, she chided herself. Tess tried again. ‘Did he come back again?’

  ‘I don’t know. He might have done. I didn’t see my dad for a while. I went to live with my mother. Then she …’ Penny’s face contorted with remembered pain.

  ‘Then you left,’ Sally intervened gently. ‘Then you left your mum’s place, remember?’

  ‘Then I left,’ Penny agreed, ‘but my dad had found another child. He didn’t need me. Do you know what it’s like not to be needed? Not to be wanted?’

  Tess glanced across at Sally, not sure how she should respond to that one.

  ‘Tess wants to know about Doctor Tom,’ Sally said gently. ‘If he made it up with your dad?’

  ‘He came to see him about his new kid,’ Penny said bitterly. ‘The one he liked better than he liked me.’

  She’s talking about Naomi, Tess thought. ‘I’m sure he didn’t,’ she said softly. ‘He was still your dad, not anyone else’s.’

  Penny shook her head. She had blonde curls that were greying now at the temples and streaked here and there with silver. She must have been really beautiful, Tess thought. But now there was nothing behind the eyes and her skin was pasty and puffy. Tess wondered if she ever went outside, into the gardens, or if the medication caused the sallow skin, the dryness round the mouth and eyes.

  ‘Sometimes parents say things they don’t mean. Sometimes they do things wrong but they don’t mean to hurt by it.’

  ‘He meant it.’ The light was back in the eyes, but it was driven by anger now, by an inner rage that took Tess aback.

  ‘And did Doctor Tom try and help you?’ she asked.

  The question was a shot in the dark, just a random something sent out there to deflect the rage but she realized at once that she’d struck a chord of some kind.

  Penny smiled and the rage died in her eyes to be replaced by something sly and cunning that, Tess thought, was even more disturbing. ‘He knew what I’d done,’ Penny said. ‘He told my dad. That’s why my father liked the other girl more. He knew what I’d done.’

  ‘What you’d done?’ Tess was totally confused now. ‘What had you done, Penny? What did Doctor Tom know?’

  But the moment had gone, Penny�
��s attention shifted from Tess to the view beyond the windows and Sally shook her head. ‘Tess is going now,’ she said quietly but Penny didn’t respond.

  Tess got up and followed Sally to the nurses’ station where Dr Kirkwood was waiting. She tore the sheet from her notebook and handed it to Tess. ‘Sorry it isn’t more, but if you’ve got your number?’

  ‘Sure.’ She felt in her pocket and then remembered that everything had been left at the reception desk. Sally, she noticed, was standing so she could still see Penny. ‘I’ll leave my card with both my numbers, home and work, at reception.’

  ‘Do that,’ Sally told her. ‘Penny might well have more to say later on. Sometimes she has to have time to process things then little details emerge, you know?’

  ‘Thanks,’ Tess said but Sally was already moving away.

  ‘Penny, are you all right? Penny, calm down sweetheart. I’m just here.’

  Penny Jackson had got up from her seat and was staring back at Tess, a look of pure hatred on her face.

  ‘You’d best go,’ Dr Kirkwood told her and Tess took no urging. One of the nurses left her station to join Sally in the sunroom as Tess hurried away. Behind her, Penny Jackson had begun to scream.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Dr Kirkwood asked as Tess collected her things and found a card to leave for Sally.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. Just a bit … shaky, I guess.’

  ‘It can be frightening. You have to remember that for Penny reality is fractured. Small fragments may coalesce from time to time, other fragments … it’s like her world is made of broken glass and even the pieces left intact are sharp edged.’

  ‘Will she get better?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘Did I … Did my coming here make things worse?’

  ‘Again, probably not. We have no way of knowing. You might have joined a few of the pieces together or you may have broken some apart but there’s no way of knowing for now if that’s a good or a bad thing either way. Sally will let you know if she says anything more.’

  ‘Does Doctor Reece ever come here?’

  ‘Very occasionally. His specialty is young adults and we don’t deal with young adults here, not unless it’s a major emergency and there are no beds elsewhere.’

  ‘And has he ever come to see Penny?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. But I can check and let you know.’ She frowned. ‘Doctor Reece is a good man, you know. A compassionate man and an excellent doctor.’

  ‘I know,’ Tess said. ‘People keep telling me that.’

  She was aware of Dr Kirkwood watching her as she left and she wondered how long it would be before she called Dr Reece to tell him of Tess’s visit.

  ‘Did you learn anything?’ Field asked.

  ‘Not really, no. She’s in a bad way. Reece was someone Joe Jackson knew. She said they were friends when she was very small, then her father turned against him and told him to “fuck off”. That seems to have been around the time that Naomi Blake was in counselling, but her thoughts and memories are so all over the place I don’t know if we can rely on anything. I’m just worried that asking questions will have made her worse.’

  ‘I’m sure the doctors would have refused to let you see her if they thought that.’

  ‘I get the impression the doctors don’t know what will help and what won’t. There were moments when, I don’t know, it was possible to almost see the woman she’d been, but then …’ Tess shook her head. ‘It’s a horrible place. I don’t mean the building or the doctors just everything else.’

  ‘Anything else to report?’

  ‘Only that everywhere I go people tell me how wonderful a human being Tom Reece is. And maybe they’re right. Maybe we’re chasing shadows. Maybe Joe Jackson just had a personal gripe. Maybe he was as nuts as his daughter is.’

  She left Field and returned to the little office filled with box files and cold cases. Only Alfie was there. He got up quietly and fetched her a coffee.

  ‘Bad?’

  ‘Bad. Alfie, did you know Joe Jackson’s kid?’

  ‘Penny? Yes, slightly. She was just an ordinary little girl so far as I could tell. Then her mam had an affair and left and for a while she stayed with him. Then her mam came and fetched her. I think she must have been about thirteen, fourteen at the time. I remember Joe wasn’t coping with all the teenage girl stuff.’

  ‘Teenage girls can be shit,’ she agreed. ‘I should know, I was one. And did that work out? She seems really resentful of the mother.’

  ‘Well, I imagine that must have cut both ways. Penny started a relationship with the bloke her mother had run off with – or he started one with Penny. Whichever way it was.’

  ‘But she was only—’

  ‘A kid. Yes. Her mam kicked her out and sent her back to her dad. She tried to rekindle the relationship, apparently, but then her lover disappeared on her and we know why now.’

  ‘That was Robert Williams. Joe Jackson killed him.’

  ‘And Penny never forgave him apparently.’

  ‘When do you think she knew?’

  ‘I always wondered if she suspected long before her father died. It was all too convenient. Anyway, lover boy disappeared and I think Joe expected everything to return to normal just because he wished it so.’

  ‘Was he really that arrogant?’

  ‘Oh, he could be. Damned good investigator and he knew it. I sometimes wonder about people who are right often enough that no one believes they can do wrong. They believe their own press and it makes them … wrong in the head somehow.’

  Tess nodded. Like Tom Reece, she thought. A man everyone seemed to hero-worship.

  FORTY-THREE

  Patrick had gone back with Daniel to his house mid-afternoon. It was not unusual for him to do so and then spend an hour or so working on the large dining table. Usually, they had the same essays to write or at least the same subjects to wrangle into sense-making reports, and comparing notes, sharing the reading and helping one another to plan had become part of their routine.

  Daniel’s aunt usually provided snacks and the old house with its tiled hall and half-panelled walls and ticking clocks was, Patrick thought, a very peaceful place.

  He and Daniel had worked for about an hour when Daniel’s aunt brought coffee and biscuits through. ‘How’s it going?’ she asked.

  ‘Could be better.’

  ‘You’ll get there. Your uncle will be late so it’ll just be me you and Grandad for dinner. Patrick, you’re welcome to stay.’

  ‘Thanks, but it’s my turn to cook tonight. Dad won’t be home till after six.’

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right walking back alone? I don’t like to think …’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ Patrick said. ‘It’s only a few minutes away and I’ll keep to the main road.’

  ‘Well, humour me and let Daniel know when you’ve arrived.’ She managed a tight smile.

  ‘I will,’ Patrick promised.

  ‘Sorry about that. She’s not wanted me out of her sight,’ Daniel said when his aunt left.

  ‘It’s OK. It’s nice that she’s bothered. She hardly knows me really.’

  ‘It took her a long time to get over it when Mum and Dad died and I think it just worries her, you know? Like there’s a killer round every corner.’

  Maybe there is, Patrick thought. ‘Was it a long time ago?’ He’d refrained from asking Daniel about his parents, but now the opening had been made it seemed like the right thing to do.

  ‘I was twelve,’ Daniel said. ‘They went away for a couple of days and never came back. Dad lost control of his car and it went off the road and into a river. It was pretty … bad. I couldn’t believe they’d gone. I thought they’d just … it was like they were just a bit late home and we were all waiting for them.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Patrick said.

  ‘My uncle said I should have counselling but I think it was them that needed it really. Auntie Vi just went to pieces and Grandad was just in bits.’

  ‘Di
d you see anyone?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Daniel smiled. ‘You remember that Doctor Reece that came into the lecture. I saw him for a bit. It seemed really weird seeing him somewhere else. It was ages ago, but it still made me feel kind of awkward.’

  Daniel sipped his coffee. And Patrick said, ‘He was in the hotel that day we went to see Sam and Ginny?’

  ‘Was he? I didn’t notice.’

  ‘I asked him about it when he came to the lecture.’

  Daniel laughed. ‘I wondered what you were talking to him about. What did he say?’

  ‘That I had a good visual memory.’

  ‘Well he was right about that one. Why did you ask him?’

  Patrick shrugged. ‘I just did,’ he said, not feeling easy about suggesting that he’d noticed Dr Reece watching him at other times. ‘Did you like him?’

  ‘I suppose. I saw him for a bit and then another person for a bit. It didn’t help, not really. They wanted me to talk and I wanted to shut it all out. I could cope with it if I didn’t think about it.’

  Patrick nodded. He was really not sure about the way therapy was supposed to work. How you could let something heal if you were constantly prodding at it? But what did he know?

  He drank his coffee. ‘I’d best be going,’ he said.

  Daniel nodded. ‘OK, see you tomorrow. Be careful on the way home.’ The last was said with a grin and an eye roll in the direction his aunt had gone, but Patrick sensed that Daniel’s aunt Vi was not the only one feeling vulnerable.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Naomi and Alec had just returned from the shops around mid-morning when Gregory and Nathan arrived. She had been restless and upset since Trinder’s visit the previous day and she had talked at length to Gregory on the phone about it. He had promised that he and Nathan would gather what information they could.