Headcase

by Peter Helton

  “I can’t give you a diagnosis over the phone but it sounds to me like you experienced a migraine.” Some experience. My vision had cleared up gradually, my stomach had eventually stopped churning. I felt a bit wobbly still but otherwise okay.

  “But I didn’t feel any pain, apart from where my head hurts, if you know what I mean.”

  “Then you’re quite lucky. It’s still a migraine, I’d say. It’s not so uncommon to get visual disturbances only. I received your notes from the hospital today. You had quite a nasty crack on the head which could easily be the cause. You really should have stayed in hospital. I suggest bed-rest for the next few days. And do call me if it happens again. In fact, let’s make an appointment right now.” And I thought GPs were overworked. “I might be too busy for the next few days.”

  “Bed-rest, Mr Honeysett…”

  I checked my phone messages; Virginia Dufossee wanting to know why I hadn’t contacted her yet. Could I ring her asap; Simon Paris telling me that naturally the cheque for my canvases had cleared, doubting Thomas that I was, and he in turn had stuck a cheque in the post for me. He had also made enquiries about the Dufossee paintings but drawn a blank. And that was it. No new clients. Small mercies.

  “If I didn’t think it indelicate I’d say you looked shite.” Annis was sitting at the kitchen table, dressed in her spattered painting gear, with a glass of red wine, stabbing a fork into a huge bowl of salad that seemed to have just about everything in it: salad leaves, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, spring onions, anchovies, feta cheese, parmesan shavings and tiny white ovoid things.

  I joined her with a fork and speared one. “What are these?”

  “Quails’ eggs.”

  “Pathetic size.”

  “I think they’re fun.”

  I popped one in my mouth. It was fun. “Do you realize we spend most of our money on food, booze, and keeping a couple of thirty-year-old cars on the road?”

  “And paint. We spend lots on paint.” She waggled her fork at me, then skewered more greenery and folded it into her mouth. Her perfect, sensuous, generous mouth, glistening now with wine and olive oil. She caught my stare. “What?”

  “Nothing.” I gently put my fork down. “I gotta get some therapy.”

  I drove slowly and carefully, enjoying the spectacular warmth of evening light on the Bath stone of every building I passed. Nothing like going half blind for a while to make you appreciate the simple joy of looking. At anything. I took the long way straight through the centre along George Street, people milling about on the high pavement outside the RSVP bar; down Milsom Street, tourists and locals window-shopping in the sticky evening air; across North Parade Bridge, the weir churning to the left, past the new Magistrates Courts and turned right into Pulteney Road to Widcombe. It was still early. I found a parking space near St Matthew’s church and walked down to the towpath. Ducks were going about their lawful business on the pond behind the locks. Few people were about. Bits of police tape still flapped lifelessly in the quiet air near lock number ten. Never one for heights I approached it carefully and peered down into its noisy, shadowy depth. Though the lock was empty, water from upstream continuously squeezed through the bottom of the heavy doors, barred against the pressure of the canal. The cool and slimy wetness of the dark opening reminded me more than anything of an open grave after a spell of rain. A rusted ladder set into its concrete side led all the way down to the unquiet water level. I set one foot on it. A shudder ran down my body and I withdrew it. How desperate would you have to be to jump into that darkness or how easily pushed? Who would hear my short scream before I hit the water? Traffic was still strong on Pulteney Road nearby. The gardens and garages of Caroline Buildings backed on to the tow-path here but would anyone hear my shout of surprise and dismay as I fell? I pulled back from the edge and lit the last of Jenny’s Camels. Soon I would have to buy some myself and admit that I was smoking again. It was only a short walk along the canal to Horseshoe Walk and Abbey View. A deceptive name more use to an estate agent than the residents. Standing in the street I could see the abbey quite clearly but I doubted the residents could from any of their windows. I was early, the therapy session couldn’t have finished yet, but I was curious and decided to barge in if at all possible.

  The house was not what I had expected, an ordinary terrace, indistinguishable from its neighbours. Lights were on behind drawn curtains. There was no sign to advertise art or therapy but the name under the bell was right, K. Lythgoe, Dip. Hum. Psych. The door yielded to light pressure, left on the latch, for latecomers perhaps, not early comers like me. Quiet voices, some laughter behind a door on the right off the near empty hall. I opened it quietly without knocking. The little room was crowded. A couple of kitchen tables had been pushed together in the centre, leaving just enough room for the seven people to squeeze past the chairs, plan chests and shelves full of art materials. The clients were clearing their things away. A woman in her fifties with steel grey hair and an apron over a flowery dress pushed wordlessly past me with jam jars of mud-coloured water on a tray, others were putting away drawings and sheets of painted paper. A man in his late forties, also wearing an apron over a blue shirt and red tie, was busy moistening a clay relief with a plant spray.

  “You’re a little early.” Kate Lythgoe, Dip. Hum. Psych., didn’t look nearly as forbidding as she sounded on the phone. She wore a long white painting smock over faded jeans. In her early forties, with short, mud-coloured hair, she even managed a smile that enlivened the laughter lines behind her fashionably small glasses. “I didn’t hear a doorbell though,” she added.

  “The door was ajar,” I lied. But I was distracted by the man moistening his clay sculpture. Now he pulled cling-film over it. The therapist too was distracted. “Careful you don’t smudge it now; yes, of course you can take it home with you; if you leave it on top I’ll put it away when it’s dry; goodnight, Ben; did you write your name on it, Gail? Won’t be a minute,” she said to me. Spray-man looked up, our eyes met briefly. There was no sign of recognition in his. I broke eye contact casually, pretended he was just another face to me. The place emptied with goodbyes and a rustling of paper. Spray-man took his time, was the last to leave. “Goodnight, Kate,” he said in an imploring voice, making middle-aged puppy eyes at her. “Goodnight, John,” she answered with professional cool.

  So when Mr Turner, our elusive estate agent, pretended to work late, showing houses to clients, he was really making clay sculptures at art therapy classes in Widcombe. There was no doubt in my mind that he had a monumental crush on his therapist. Which came first, his secret therapy sessions or his feelings for Kate Lythgoe, I couldn’t judge, but either might go some way towards explaining the behaviour that had made his wife suspicious.

  “I feel in need of a mug of tea, would you like some?” she offered when the door closed after him. The therapist suddenly looked tired, as though she had merely been holding herself together for the last session of the day. I needed something to wash down my evening dose of painkillers and anti-inflammatories and nodded, not feeling so hot myself. While she busied herself around the kettle and tea things on top of one of the plan chests I looked around. The walls were covered with mud-coloured paintings, stark cardboard constructions and some bright offerings in tissue paper and glue. My last painting, still festering unvisited on my easel, might have fitted in well. Silently I was handed a mug of weak tea, white specks of curdled milk floating on its surface, and silently invited to sit. She might not be a champion tea maker but she certainly knew how to avoid chit-chat. I squeezed my meal of pills out of their plastic strips and chased them down with a gulp of truly awful tea. She merely raised her eyebrows and inclined her head a fraction.

  “Not for psychological reasons, I assure you. Painkillers. Had a little accident.”

  “Everything has psychological reasons. Especially so-called accidents.”

  “I can’t see psychological reasons for this particular accident.” Unless of course it was the warpe
d psyche of my attacker.

  “With a different psychological make-up, behaviour pattern or attitude you might not have been in a position to get hurt in the first place.”

  In other words, if I hadn’t forced my way into a warehouse, if I was in the habit of leaving things to the police, if I hadn’t lent my gun to Annis…I was beginning to see her point. Which for some reason annoyed me considerably. “What if the accident is clearly someone else’s fault?”

  “It has nothing to do with fault or blame. It’s the accident itself and what brings you to meet these circumstances that matter.” She shrugged: it didn’t matter.

  “But what if, for instance, someone suddenly threw a mug at you?” I proposed. “Then I’d assume that I’d annoyed you just a little?” She smiled a tired smile. I smiled back. She really was quite good at this. A useless friend in a brawl perhaps, since like some Zen master she probably wouldn’t be there in the first place. But otherwise quite good.

  I repeated my reasons for coming to see her. “I don’t need any medical details. But both Gavin Backhaus and David Cocksley are murder suspects in the eyes of the police.” I didn’t mention that so was I. “And Dave is dead. You could help. Have the police interviewed you yet?”

  “You’re the only one to have contacted me.”

  “So both Dave and Gavin were clients of yours?” A nod. “And they came to therapy sessions together on Fridays?”

  “They came on Fridays. But never together. Dave was quite upset, I think, that Gavin decided to come to the same sessions. Gavin lacks confidence. He was following him around like a puppy dog and Dave couldn’t stand it. It interrupted his inner monologue, and he had come to depend on that to keep himself calm. He especially liked walking by himself. So they always arrived separately. Dave usually arrived here first.”

  “So, should you be telling me all this?” I couldn’t resist asking.

  “As you pointed out, David Cocksley is dead.” She took a swig of tea and pulled a grimace. “I make lousy tea.”

  “I’m glad you said it first. Have you ever examined the deeper psychological reasons for making lousy tea?”

  “Far too complex.” She waved it away with a weary hand. “Years of therapy required.”

  “Gavin and Dave did come to the therapy session on the Friday of the murder?”

  “They did.”

  “Did they seem different?”

  “Yes, both of them were…no, that’s not true. David was very agitated. He took up a lot of space, kept bumping into other clients and muttered a lot, but wouldn’t really talk. He spilled a lot of paint and produced a big, nervous painting.”

  “Of what?”

  “It was abstract. Jagged forms, angry colours.”

  “Do you have it here by any chance?”

  “Gavin took it.”

  My turn to raise my eyebrows.

  “Gavin was also upset but it showed in a different way. They always arrived separately, a few minutes apart, but this time they arrived simultaneously. I had the impression that Gavin had been haranguing Dave outside or on the way here. They were both quite a handful that evening. Towards the end of the session David ran out. Gavin grabbed both their paintings and ran after him. Some of my other clients got upset with the disruption. People like to have rituals, they come to rely on it. Another of my clients ran out too, because I had been forced to focus all my attention on those two and he felt neglected. So I brought the session to an early close.”

  “You know of course that David died in the lock that evening, not far from here?” A slow nod. “And you didn’t feel you should contact the police?”

  Another shrug. “Clearing up a murder is being wise after the event.”

  “You want to be wise before the event? Do you realize that whoever killed David might kill again?”

  “It had occurred to me. And that’s the only reason I’m talking to you.”

  I’d had enough by then and made for the door. “Just one more thing. Which one of your clients ran out after them?”

  “I feel I shouldn’t implicate anyone. I’m sure it had nothing to do with what happened later.” She gave me a tired look, cradling her mug. “Very sure, in fact.”

  “It wouldn’t have been Mr Turner, then?” She swallowed. I didn’t wait around for any more. One Dip. Psych, swallow was enough for me.

  I wasn’t in the best of moods when I got back to the car. The migraine had unnerved me and lunchtime drinking at the Bathtub had rewarded me with a fuzzy headache behind my eyes which started up a jam session with the perpetual pain that seemed to sprout daily from the back of my head since the warehouse disaster. Hopefully the pills would soon dull both of them. This whole investigation was making me ill. I had to simplify things and what better way to do that than resolve one or other of my cases? Not that I really thought of Jenny’s murder as a case, it was far too personal for that. Which is why Needham had warned me off it more than once. At least the police were working on it, unlike the case of the missing Dufossee canvases, which had turned into a right nuisance. I had one more call to make before I’d confront the art-loving siblings: the trusted Mrs Ibbs. I checked my watch — it was an impolite hour to call on her, so I pencilled her in for the next morning. What else could I usefully do tonight? Try and get rid of my assorted aches in a long hot bath followed by…? Too bleak a prospect. I turned left into Claverton Street and switched right after the railway arch, crossed north of the river by way of Churchill Bridge. A couple of pints in the Waggon and Horses, Tim’s quiet, unloved local, would do me just fine, with or without Tim. The DS zoomed smoothly around Queen Square with its drab obelisk, up Gay Street and past Mr Turner’s estate agency into the Circus. The car moved as though revitalized by its dodgy MOT so I drove once around the centre green with its five, century-old plane trees just for the heck of it. Whatever welding it might need there was nothing wrong with the suspension. I flicked it effortlessly into Brock Street the second time it came around and whizzed past the sad green where St Andrew’s church had fallen victim to the Luftwaffe, now just a triangle of ragged grass known locally as the dog toilet. I found a parking space smack in front of the Waggon and Horses in the shadow of Phoenix House and heaved my bruised carcass out of the car. A quick look inside the Waggon: no sign of my favourite boffin. Stepping back into the road and scrutinizing Tim’s windows I detected a glimmer of light. I leant on his bell. It took him a whole age to come crackling over the squawk box.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s me.”

  “All my friends are called “me”,” he complained as he buzzed me in. He appeared at the door to his flat in nothing but boxer shorts, his woolly hair a tangled mess.

  “You been asleep?”

  “Bit of a session at lunchtime, had a kip.”

  “Want to go back to bed? I just fancied a beer, that’s all.”

  “No, I’ll come. Only give me a couple of minutes for a shower. Why don’t you nip next door and start getting them in? I won’t be long.”

  I pulled out my mobile and keyed in Annis’s number. “Let’s see if Annis wants to make it a threesome.” A phone rang beyond the half-open bedroom door. “Yours?” Tim’s face creased into a painful grimace.

  Annis sidled through the opening, wearing even less than Tim, and leant against the door jamb. She folded her arms. I folded my mobile. “Hi, Chris. Yeah, I’ll make it a threesome.”

  This was one of those situations that required the delicate diplomacy I pride myself on having developed in my later years. “You’re sleeping with both of us?!” I blurted out. She gave the slightest of shrugs.

  “You’re sleeping with Chris?” Tim’s embarrassment had instantly evaporated.

  “I only slept with him once.”

  “You only slept with me once,” he complained.

  Annis shrugged again and pushed herself off from the door jamb. “If you two are going to make a big deal out of this I won’t sleep with either of you again, okay?” She slipped back into th
e bedroom and after a short minute, during which Tim and I exchanged raised eyebrows and head-scratches, re-emerged in deck shoes, jeans and black vest. “Coming?” she shot at Tim.