by Tim Weaver
‘Mr Raker?’
‘Yes.’
‘Dr Russum won’t be long.’
A couple of minutes later, I saw a flicker of movement in the glass on the left side of the room, a shadow forming behind the frost. When the door clinked open, Russum appeared. She came across, attempting a smile. It wasn’t exactly effervescent, but she’d agreed to see me, and that was all that mattered.
‘Thanks for sparing me some time,’ I said, shaking hands with her.
She nodded and led me back through the door into a modern office with views west along Fenchurch Street. Two expensive leather chairs sat facing one another to my left, and there was a sofa, a spare seat and filing cabinets on my right. In the middle was her desk – fastidiously tidy, even down to pens being lined up in a row beside her keyboard – and another cabinet with a bonsai on it.
She brought the spare seat across for me.
We both sat down and I started to fill her in on what I’d found out about Richard’s case so far. She spent the whole time sitting forward in her chair, arms folded, not saying anything. In the moments when I would pause to check my notes, the silence was filled with the low rumble of vehicles passing and the whine of construction cranes at Bishopsgate.
‘I was wondering if you could talk about the kinds of areas you explore with Richard,’ I said, ‘perhaps where you hope to get to.’
‘I hope to get to a complete recovery,’ she replied tartly.
‘To a point where he remembers everything?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that likely?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s difficult to say. I’ve always believed that brains are like fingerprints. They’re unique.’
‘So it might happen – or it might not?’
Her expression remained neutral, but her lips thinned. ‘This is a complex psychological condition,’ she said slowly, as if she were dealing with a moron. ‘In localized amnesia, a person is unable to recall a specific event, or a period of time. In systemized amnesia, they forget one particular area – like one person, or one place. In generalized amnesia, which is what Richard is suffering from, the patient forgets their entire history and all sense of their identity. He has lost the fundamental building blocks of his life, the things that made him who he is. He almost certainly still has those memories, but the issue is finding them.’
‘So it could take years?’
‘It might.’
‘Or he could remember everything tomorrow?’
‘That’s possible too.’ Again, she shrugged. ‘All sorts of things could trigger those forgotten memories and return them to the surface. He might watch a film and suddenly remember seeing it in a cinema in a certain town, in a certain year. Or he might see a building in a magazine feature and recognize it as somewhere he went on a school trip. Those are just examples, but you get what I’m driving at. As I said to you before, the brain is a very particular and peculiar animal, and it’s hard to say with precision when memories will re-emerge – if they do at all.’
‘So, equally, he might never remember?’
‘That’s something he has to accept, yes.’
She leaned back in her chair, the leather wheezing against her weight. If I didn’t know before, I knew for certain now: she wasn’t going to discuss the actual content of their sessions, and not only because she was bound by the ethics of her profession. I could see it in her face, in the way she chose not to say anything: she didn’t approve of Richard’s decision to employ me, but if she raised an objection, she endangered her own work with him. If he thought she was going against his interests, getting in the way of what he wanted, he’d walk away from her, and all her ambitions – the commissions she hoped to get, the lectures she hoped to give – crumbled to dust. She’d agreed to meet me because it maintained the equilibrium.
‘I see you’re a qualified hypnotherapist.’
She eyed me. ‘Correct.’
‘Richard says you’ve used hypnosis before.’
‘There’s a lot of misconceptions about hypnosis,’ she said, firing back at an accusation I’d never even made. Her fingers were on the edge of the desk. It was clear she didn’t want to talk about this either, but at the same time wasn’t prepared to let me leave with the wrong impression. ‘Hypnosis isn’t a circus act,’ she went on. ‘It’s not making people dance around on stage, thinking they’re chimpanzees. If used in the right way, it can be an extremely powerful tool. Sadly, a lot of clinicians remain unconvinced by hypnotherapy – and not without reason. I spent two years doing a masters and three years studying for a PhD, both times in Psychology. My thesis was on hypnotherapy. I both run, and attend, training courses most months of the year, I lecture at King’s College, I like to think I know what I’m talking about. But it’s still a constant learning process. You learn all the time. You’re under an obligation to learn, as far as I’m concerned. Yet, here in the UK, you don’t actually need to learn a thing. You can practise hypnotherapy with little training, and you don’t have to join a professional association. The result is that a lot of people claim to be hypnotherapists, but they simply aren’t fit for purpose. I’m sure I don’t need to spell out the reasons why that is a potential area of concern.’
‘So how many times did you use it with Richard?’
‘Twice.’
‘Why only twice?’
‘Because you have to ascertain whether it’s the right tool for the job – and, after two sessions, I didn’t believe it was the correct fit for Richard. The bottom line is, you don’t use hypnotherapy like a map. You don’t just dive into someone’s head, find the things that have become lost in there and bring them back with you. You can’t pause and rewind and fast-forward, until you get to the bit you want. People are forgetting things all the time. As humans, I’d argue that we need to forget. If we remembered every single thing we’d ever done in our lives, we’d be unable to function. So, primarily, I used hypnosis to relax Richard. As you might imagine, when he first came to me, he was fractious, disorientated, scared. I did some initial work on trying to explore memories, feelings and thoughts that he might have hidden from his conscious mind, but it unsettled him.’
‘Which is why you stopped after two sessions?’
‘Correct.’
‘So is that what you’re trying to do with him currently?’ I asked. ‘You’re trying to drill down to events he may be hiding in his unconscious mind?’
‘In essence, yes – although it’s slightly different with Richard. There aren’t the traditional pegs on which to hang the therapy. You can’t ask him to talk about his family, or upbringing, or whether he went to university, because he doesn’t recall any of it. And my approach has to be even more delicate as a result. Anything erroneous – any lapse on my part – could be problematic.’
‘What do you mean, “lapse”?’
‘I mean, it’s why training is so important,’ she said. ‘Memory is a minefield. It’s full of potential hazards – and not just for the person affected.’
I waited for her to expand on her point but, instead, it looked like she was assessing how much she’d given me already, and whether I might be manipulating her somehow. I couldn’t deny that I was interested in what they discussed, but I’d long since accepted that she wasn’t going to tell me. And the truth was, I was starting to think there might not be that much worth discovering, anyway. Richard had been seeing her for eight months and he had nothing to show for it: his memories of the beach and the TV intro sequence were there from the start, before he ever set foot in Russum’s office.
She began rolling a pen back and forth across the desk, her reticence still obvious. ‘Have you heard of the American psychologist Elizabeth Loftus?’
‘No.’
‘She’s an expert on human memory and misinformation. One of her most famous studies, back in the seventies, was into whether eyewitness memory could be altered by applying information after the event. As an example, she had participants in the study watch footage of
a car crash, and then a week later, she and her research team asked them about their memories of it. She found that the participants were more likely to describe having seen broken glass during the accident if researchers asked about the car “smash”, rather than using words like “collision”. This was despite the fact that there was no broken glass visible anywhere in the film the participants watched.’ She rolled the pen back into place at the side of her keyboard. ‘So that’s what I mean. With someone like Richard, it’s important that the right questions are asked in the right way. It’s things as apparently trivial as language that can lead to problems.’
I wheeled back to what Reverend Parsons had told me over the phone, about the moments of confusion Richard had experienced over the last nine months; the time when his memories of the beach became the recollection of an entire city.
‘I talked to Reverend Colin Parsons earlier on,’ I said to her, ‘and he seemed to suggest Richard had become a little … confused.’
‘Of course he’s confused.’
‘No, I mean about his memories.’
She frowned. ‘In what sense?’
I explained about Richard remembering the beach as a city.
‘He never mentioned that,’ she said coolly.
‘Richard didn’t talk about those memories with you?’
There was a long pause.
‘Dr Russum?’
Her eyes returned to me and she straightened in her seat. ‘I’d suggest that Reverend Parsons misunderstood Richard.’
‘I don’t think he misunderstood.’
‘I’m sure Richard would have mentioned something to me.’
‘Or maybe he wouldn’t have.’
She prickled again. ‘I think we’re done, Mr Raker.’
She got to her feet, not attempting to disguise the fact that she’d taken offence, and when I stood she immediately began to lead me out to the lift.
But then something odd happened: she forced a smile and started chatting about the evenings closing in, about how she hated it when the clocks went back, and about how soon Christmas would be with us. It was so jarring, such a sudden change, it was impossible not to notice it. She was being too casual now, her conversation too forced, and it was totally out of sync with how she’d been in the office. There, she’d been stoic and expressionless, her face starched and hard; here, she was something else – awkward and unconvincing, as if she were trying to put on some sort of act.
I watched her closely as we shook hands at the lift, the doors sliding open behind me, and then kept my eyes on her as the doors bumped shut again.
I wasn’t sure what had just happened.
But I was going to find out.
12
Russum left work just after seven. Rain was still in the air, although it had eased slightly, the mist drifting away. In its place were slick pavements, gutters full of water and leaves, and puddles reflecting back the colours of the city.
I followed her, keeping my distance, weaving between crowds of people coming the other way. She was on her phone, one side of her face illuminated by it. Great Tower Street became Eastcheap, Eastcheap became Cannon Street, and she just kept walking. After a while, she pocketed her phone and appeared to be more aware of her surroundings, so I dropped back, in case she glanced over her shoulder, but almost as soon as I did she took another left, this time into a small road called River Hill. I slowed, stopping at a deli on the corner, its lights spilling across the pavement in pale blocks of cream. She was about eighty feet down from me, heading south, her long jacket swinging behind her. There was a bag over her shoulder, black like her coat, one I hadn’t noticed before because she’d had it tucked between the inside of her arm and her ribcage. She pulled it around to her front and began to go through it, her pace decreasing. Eventually, she came to a complete halt.
Next to her was an archway that looked like it might lead to some sort of courtyard, but then I realized she wasn’t going in there, she was going into a glass door adjacent to it. She took out a swipe card, ran it through a reader on the wall, and then pushed through the door into whatever lay beyond.
I headed after her. At the door, I could see a coat of arms etched into the glass and a corridor inside – oak floors, cream walls – that ran for about ten feet to another door and a second card reader. I stepped back and took in the whole building. It was big: three floors, eight windows on each floor, closed wooden shutters behind each pane of glass. On closer inspection, I saw that the courtyard adjacent to it was actually a small car park. Above the entrance to the courtyard was a wooden sign: RED TREE EMPLOYEES ONLY.
Thinking there must be a main entrance to the building somewhere, I walked to the bottom of River Hill, where the road dog-legged into a small cul-de-sac. Beyond that was a paved, pedestrianized area full of benches and raised flower beds, a sculpture – a tree made from iron, with red metal leaves – on a plinth at its centre. To my right, beyond the flower beds and benches, were the noise, lights and traffic of Upper Thames Street. To my left was the front of the building, an elegant Georgian façade with restored sash windows and marble pillars, and a set of steps leading up to four opaque glass doors, all imprinted with the same coat of arms I’d seen on the side door. In front of those – all of which were locked, the interior semi-lit by pale yellow night lights – were four huge advertising flags. Each one showed staged shots of school kids in uniform, focused and engaged in lessons, or out on the sports field with hockey sticks or rugby balls. Words like Respect, Responsibility and Innovation were printed on the flags, as was the same coat of arms. So was the name of the school.
The Red Tree City of London School.
As I tried to think whether any of this even mattered, whether Russum, or her behaviour, or her reasons for coming to the school, held any importance in the case, my phone burst into life.
It was Richard Kite.
‘David,’ he said after I answered. ‘You left a message for me.’
I’d called him about the unexplained data on his phone. He listened in silence as I told him about the anomalies I’d found in his app usage.
‘But I never use apps,’ he said.
‘I know. That’s what makes it odd.’
‘Do you think there’s something wrong with the phone?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Has it been acting up?’
‘Not really. Nothing major, anyway.’
‘But it has been acting up?’
‘Sometimes it just switches itself off, that’s all.’
I paused. ‘It just shuts down for no reason?’
‘Yes.’
‘It does that even when the battery isn’t flat?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It can do it at any time. It did it to me yesterday, and I’d only just recharged it.’
I felt a stir of unease.
‘Anything else like that?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, giving it some more thought. ‘Not really. I guess it depends on how far back you want to go.’
‘As far back as you can remember.’
‘Well, for a while, when I first got the phone, there would sometimes be weird noises during calls.’
‘Weird how?’
‘Like, echoes and buzzes. Interference.’
‘All the time?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Just for a short period.’
The stir of unease became something worse.
‘Richard, you’re breaking up a bit.’
‘Am I? Oh. You sound okay.’
‘Yeah, I’m really struggling to hear you properly. Is there a phone at the caravan park you can use?’
‘You mean a landline?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Yes, there’s one in the clubhouse.’
‘Could you call me back on that?’
‘Uh, okay.’
I told him I’d wait, and five minutes later my phone started buzzing again. It was a Christchurch number.
‘Richard?’
‘Yes, I’m here
.’
‘I don’t want you calling me on your mobile phone again, okay?’
‘What?’ A confused pause. ‘Why?’
‘Because it’s been compromised.’
A hesitation. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m pretty sure there’s spyware installed on it. All of these things – the data usage, the weird behaviour – they’re spyware warning signs. I mean, it’s not sophisticated spyware, but it’s spyware. Someone’s watching you, monitoring your calls and texts, what you look at on the Internet. The static, the interference; whoever it is, they’re using the handset like a conference call. They’re listening.’
He was silent.
‘Richard?’
‘I can’t … I don’t …’ He faded out. ‘How did it even get on there?’
‘Probably through an email or a text. It’s like phishing. You click on a link you think is legitimate, but what you’re really doing is opening your phone up.’
‘So whoever it is can see and hear everything I do?’
‘I think we have to assume they can. We have to assume your phone calls, your texts, your emails – they’re being watched and monitored. Until I figure out why, I need to change how you and I communicate.’
He went silent again.
‘Richard?’
‘I … I don’t understand.’
If he didn’t know what spyware was he could probably take a pretty good guess. What he didn’t understand was why he was being watched.
‘Have you got any idea who might have done this?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said, a little breathless. ‘No.’
‘I know you probably don’t believe me at this point, but you’re not in any danger.’ I paused. Was that even true? ‘This has been going on since you first got the phone, and no one has made any kind of move. To me, that suggests that – whoever it is – they’re happy watching for the moment. So I want you to continue to use the mobile to speak to the people you normally would – the caravan park, Reverend Parsons …’ I stopped, glancing at the front of the school. ‘Naomi Russum too.’
