Swimming in the Shadows

by Diane Janes

  ‘What are you grinning at?’ asked one of the district nurses.

  Cocooned in thought, I had not realized I was grinning at all.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said quickly. ‘It was just something a friend said to me the other day. It suddenly popped into my head. It’s not worth repeating,’ I continued to improvise desperately. ‘It’s one of those things where you had to be there.’

  She seemed satisfied by this and returned her attention to the Trainspotter, who had started to say something about an ongoing storyline in Coronation Street. Meanwhile, I crossed the common room, dropped my yoghurt pot and apple core into the swing bin and washed my teaspoon in the sink as I considered the possibilities thrown up by this idea. Obviously any scheme would require a very careful strategy on my part. I wanted to help Alan, but not at the cost of my freedom. We would have to find a way of avoiding publicity, and it would need to be understood from the outset that once the business of the body in the ditch was sorted out I intended to disappear from his life again forever, but surely Alan would be so grateful to be freed from police suspicion that he would be willing to accede to whatever conditions I might care to impose? (Even if he was initially inclined to recall that if it hadn’t been for me, he would never have been in this awkward position in the first place.)

  The theory was fine, but putting it into practice was much more difficult. In no time at all I had covered two sides of paper with possible messages. I didn’t want to initiate interest from every crank and lonely heart in the country, but then again I dared not be too specific, lest some highly intelligent or semi-clairvoyant Times reader cottoned on to what was being said. I needed something which was instantly comprehensible to Alan but meant absolutely nothing to anyone else.

  My final version was: Sweetie-Pie alive and well. Concerned about your situation. Identify yourself via same means. My message appeared in the Saturday edition of The Times and I went through agonies during the next forty-eight hours as I awaited any response. In the meantime, there was no respite from unwelcome reminders of Alan’s plight: every news bulletin carried a reminder of the operation being conducted at his house and the Sunday papers had a field day. With essentially no new material, apart from the discovery of one woman’s body in a field, they filled entire pages with stories of missing women and girls, accompanied by the old familiar pictures of Marie Glover, Sally Walsh and all the rest, with the whole serial-killer-in-Nicholsfield idea resurrected. All sorts of odd clues about sightings of mystery men in cars and sinister men lurking in country lanes, none of whom had ever been satisfactorily identified, were dredged up and recycled, with inevitably a grainy picture of Alan and me on our wedding day on an inside page. Meanwhile, the police were still appealing for Alan to come forward and help them with their enquiries.

  I was on the step of the village stores when they opened for business on Monday morning, along with Mrs Lindsay-Scott, whose clothes bore evidence of an early stint in the stables, and Mr Henderson, dapper as usual, complete with his terrier on a lead at his side. While he was asking her opinion on the chances of a local runner in the Hornby Castle Point-to-Point, I fussed Jeff, interest in the little dog providing a convenient way of not betraying my agitation while I waited for the door to be unfastened.

  ‘You’re an early bird this morning,’ Mrs Lindsay-Scott’s voice boomed out above my head, forcing me to straighten up and leave off stroking the dog as I vainly tried to think of a reason for my presence. Not that wanting to buy a paper was a hanging offence.

  ‘I’ve never been to a Point-to-Point,’ I said, deciding a diversionary tactic was necessary. ‘I’m not even sure that I’d know how to put a bet on.’

  ‘Easy, m’dear. Just choose your horse and hand over your money – there’s no mystery to it.’

  ‘It’s a grand day out.’ Mr Henderson added his encouragement. ‘Nowt to beat it on a nice day. Picnic chairs into the car and away we go, eh, Jeff?’

  ‘Do they allow dogs?’ I asked.

  Mrs Lindsay-Scott emitted a friendly bark of laughter. ‘Dear girl, the place is always teeming with dogs. Pongo has a marvellous time, hoovering up discarded picnic remnants before I can stop him. He’s a dreadful animal, really – no discipline, but what can you expect with Dalmations?’

  We all turned at the audible sound of bolts being drawn back behind the shop door. I stood back to let the others pass, trying not to appear too eager, and managing to restrain myself from opening the paper until I made it into the security of my office. I had assumed that my message would only solicit interest from one particular individual, but I was mistaken. To my amazement Sweetie-Pie had provoked three replies in the personal columns. One was from a man called Derek, who said it was good to receive this positive news and invited me to contact him through a box number. A second correspondent, identifying him or herself only by the letter J, rejoiced in ‘Sweetie-Pie’s good news’, exhorting me to pray to the Lord Jesus that I might be ‘found indeed’ – a sentiment not at all in keeping with the spirit of my intentions. The final message was the shortest: Toodlebum requests Sweetie-Pie’s intentions be stated via same channel.

  It was a curiously abrupt message. Then again why should Alan, the husband I had deserted, be anything but cool when I suddenly decided to initiate contact? Not only had I caused untold pain by walking out on him in the first place, the manner in which I had elected to do so had resulted in his present predicament; moreover, perhaps the sudden reappearance of his estranged wife, when he might reasonably have assumed her to be gone for good, suggested all sorts of unpleasant complications to him. I needed to reassure him that I posed no threat to whatever romantic or domestic arrangements he had in place now – all I wanted was to establish with the authorities that I was not the body in the field. Once things were sorted out we could both go our separate ways. No strings. No complications.

  Could this be accomplished without any publicity, if Alan and I made a discreet appearance at a police station to vouch for each other? Might it still be possible to continue with my Susan McCarthy life? Surely a police force engaged in a major murder investigation wouldn’t want to interest themselves in what I had been up to for the past six years?

  No, that was hopelessly optimistic. They would probably throw the book at me – everything from deception to wasting police time. Was Alan’s freedom that important to me? Maybe if I just lay low everything would sort itself out without my intervention. Alan was a smart cookie. Surely he could work something out for himself without Sweetie-Pie along to hold his hand?

  I was still engaged in this inner debate when a tentative rap on my office door preceded the entry of the Trollop. She was carrying a set of patient’s notes in her hand and something in her manner alerted me to the possibility of a problem above and beyond the normal routine.

  ‘Susan, have you got a minute?’ She spoke in the tone habitually adopted by a member of staff initiating an awkward conversation of a confidential nature – urgency coupled with a voice slightly lowered, as if there might be listeners posted outside the door.

  ‘Of course. Is something the matter?’ I could feel my heart speeding up, because lately any unexpected request for a word with me might be a precursor to a conversation about my similarities to an actress, a murder victim, or ‘something a bit odd’ that Dr Milly had let slip.

  ‘It’s this file. Not the file exactly … well, what’s in it. I think … well, I know we can’t … but I think we should …’ She stumbled on, searching my face for help, but drawing a blank because I hadn’t the first idea what she was getting at, or whether it had possible consequences for me. ‘It’s Luke Robinson’s file,’ she said. ‘You know Luke Robinson?’

  ‘Not really.’ I forced my features into my calm management smile. It wasn’t about me. It was a work thing – just a work thing.

  ‘He’s this lad. He used to go to the comp, but now he works with his dad on their farm.’

  I nodded to confirm that I knew this much. He was the boy who us
ed to get the bus at the same place as Julie Peacock.

  ‘He’s been under the Young People’s Psychiatric Service for ages. I’ve been filing the letters. You can’t help seeing what they’re about.’

  ‘Everything in a patient’s file is confidential,’ I interrupted gently, while thinking that there hadn’t been a word of this in the village stores. The boy and his parents had evidently managed to keep the referral quiet – there were more secrets in Lasthwaite than I thought. ‘Even if you happen to see something accidentally, you know you’re not allowed to discuss it with anyone, or divulge it.’

  ‘I know.’

  We all knew. It was a golden rule. Patient confidentiality was paramount. Not only was this an unquestioned given, but quite a few of the staff actively liked it, because it inflated their sense of importance, made them the guardians of secrets – even if the secret was no more than a prescription for a cough linctus.

  ‘So whatever you saw – accidentally – on Luke Robinson’s file, you mustn’t discuss it with anyone – including me – in or outside the building.’

  It was not as if a longstanding employee like the Trollop needed any such warning, but in framing the reminder I was essentially warning her not to step any further over the line, so I was shocked when she continued inexorably: ‘The letters from his psychiatrist say he has violent fantasies directed at fellow pupils. Everyone knows he was hanging around Julie Peacock.’ She was meeting my eye, staring me out.

  ‘That’s between Luke Robinson and the doctors treating him,’ I said firmly. Whatever I thought privately about the matter I had to tow the party line. ‘I’m surprised at you—’

  ‘Someone should tell the police,’ she interrupted. Her voice had a surprisingly decided quality which brooked no argument. ‘He might be dangerous, Susan. He might do it again. And what about all the decent men around here who’re under suspicion?’

  ‘It’s not our decision.’ It was my turn to interrupt. ‘We’re not responsible. We don’t make the rules, but we have to keep them. Besides which, this boy might be completely innocent – have you considered that?’

  ‘I’ve got a thirteen-year-old niece …’

  ‘You are not allowed to reveal the contents of a patient’s records. You wouldn’t only lose your job you know, you could be prosecuted. You might go to prison.’

  ‘And what if he’s never arrested and he hurts someone else?’ she asked. ‘Would I rather have that on my conscience? I’ll leave the file here so’s you can read it yourself.’ She dropped the file on the corner of my desk and made for the door.

  ‘No … wait,’ I protested, but she had already closed the door behind her.

  I brought my hand down hard on the desk, the impact sending my pen skittering on to the floor. Not now, I thought. Don’t try to involve me in this now when I’ve already got enough dilemmas to hog-tie Confucius. There was no dilemma here anyhow. We’re not allowed to blow the whistle, even if psychiatric reports made it obvious that Luke Robinson was guilty of everything from sheep shagging to multiple homicide.

  Yet even while knowing that she was one hundred per cent in the wrong, part of me paid the Trollop grudging admiration. She was by no means the first person in the medical world who thought that public safety ought to score higher than an individual’s right to gag his doctors and associated staff. A tiny minority believed that far from keeping silent, medical professionals had a positive duty to work with the police where it might prevent other people being put at risk, particularly in an era where psychiatric patients were routinely cared for in the community and detaining anyone on a mere suspicion that they might present a danger to others was all but unheard of.

  I’d never had the Trollop down as a woman of strong enough convictions to put her job on the line for a principle. Why, oh why did her conscience have to rear its head just now? It was a disciplinary matter, of course. Staff were not supposed to peruse correspondence relating to a patient unless they actively needed to. I couldn’t just ignore the confession that a member of my staff had done so, or that she was now threatening to go public with the information she had gleaned.

  My head was beginning to spin. At any moment I might hear that ‘my’ corpse had been reclaimed by its rightful owners, which would probably lead to me being unmasked as the real Jennifer Reynolds by Dr Millington. Dr Millington had been treating me with exaggerated politeness since his last visit to my cottage, but how vindictive might he feel when he discovered that all this self-abasement had been for nothing? On the other hand, if the corpse in the ditch continued to be identified with me, then I might have to unmask myself to get Alan off the hook. And as if all that wasn’t enough, the staff I was supposed to be managing were either individually or collectively (for Medical Records tended to operate as a pack) on the point of plunging the practice into a massive breach of medical ethics.

  My little world was falling in on itself. I can’t cope with all this, I thought.

  I dumped a computer print-out on top of Luke Robinson’s file, trying to make-believe that out of sight genuinely equated to out of mind, and returned to the vexed question of communicating with Alan. If the initial message had been difficult to formulate, the second was even worse. There was an afternoon deadline for placing any items which were to appear the following day, so I had to work on the wording at my desk, stuffing my various attempts out of sight every time someone entered the office. After numerous false starts I came up with: S to T. Want nothing except to get you out of present difficulties. Must avoid publicity.

  With the message phoned through I tried to catch up on my regular work. It was getting on for half past five by the time I was done for the day. Most of the staff were long gone by then. I began to tidy the top of my desk, ignoring the Luke Robinson file for as long as possible. The correct thing would be to send it back for filing. I had no business reading a patient’s notes just because a member of staff had directed me to something interesting in the contents. Yet in a strange way, I felt as if the Trollop had dared me to do it. Only now did it occur to me to question why, if she intended to leak the information to the police, had she bothered to involve me at all? If she had simply photocopied the relevant pages and passed them on anonymously, the source of the leak might never have been traced. The file was accessible to anyone working in the practice if they wanted to get hold of it. It was easy enough to slip into Medical Records and pull a patient’s file. For that matter the boy’s psychiatrist, or more likely the medical secretary who typed up his reports, could have been responsible. So why flag up her intentions to me?

  Did she want me to be complicit in order to shield her during any ensuing investigation? Or could she be letting me know what she planned to do in order to protect her colleagues? If so it was a brave admission – I knew she couldn’t afford to lose the job. Apart from the occasional opening in hospitality, work was all but impossible to come by in the dale. Maybe she was challenging me to do the deed? Well that definitely made her Crazy Woman. Even under normal circumstances I had my career to think about. No one breached medical confidentiality.

  I had my coat on and a hand on the door knob when, seized by a sudden impulse which would have done Crazy Woman credit, I returned to my desk, sat down and opened Luke Robinson’s file. It was more bulky than was normal for a healthy seventeen-year-old. Words and phrases jumped from the page, turning me cold. When Linda the cleaner popped her head in at my door, I jumped and cried out.

  ‘Ee, sorry Susan, I didn’t know you were still in here. I’ll come back.’

  ‘No, no. It’s fine, I was just going.’ I scrabbled the file closed and locked it in my desk drawer with an undue haste which was fortunately lost on Linda, who had dragged a black bin liner across the floor and was engaged in upending my waste paper basket into it.

  We wished each other cheery goodnights, though my mood was anything but cheery as I climbed into the car with those phrases still buzzing around my head … obsessive behaviour … violent ideation … pa
ranoid delusions, particularly regarding various school friends … admits he has sometimes followed these girls without their being aware of it … particularly fixated on a girl he calls Julie …

  TWENTY-THREE

  Alan’s reply bounced back within twenty-four hours of mine: S and T ONLY to meet at last port of call 6th inst. Signify agreement or not.

  What the hell was he talking about?

  The sixth was only the day after tomorrow. I had to reply, but how could I agree to meet him if I didn’t know where to go? I puzzled over the message all day, but I couldn’t get it. ‘Port of call’ was one of those irritating phrases Alan had been prone to use a lot. As in, ‘I think we’d better make Sainsbury’s our next port of call.’

  Did he mean the last place we had ever been together? Well, surely not. That had been our kitchen, breakfast time, the day I went away. With police swarming all over the house and the press there in force, he couldn’t possibly be proposing that we walk into the middle of that three-ring circus?

  Did he mean the last place we had specifically gone to together? A pub lunch at The Ship? Or had it been somewhere else altogether? I realized with alarm that while our last outing might have been etched forever in Alan’s memory, I had no accurate recollection of it at all.

  I could understand him being cagey. He probably suspected a trap of some kind, so he wanted me to come discreetly and alone, to a location encoded in a way that only I would know where to go – except that I didn’t. I ripped the relevant square out of the newspaper and kept it on my desk, concealing it under Luke Robinson’s file whenever anyone came into the office.

  I experienced a moment of anxiety when I went into Medical Records and saw that the Trollop’s desk was empty, but my tentative enquiry met with an immediate reminder from the Tragedy Queen that she was on a scheduled day off. Something to do with her mother and a hospital appointment. Well, at least while she was tied up at the Infirmary she couldn’t be faxing documents through to North Yorkshire Police.