(1998) Denial

by Peter James

  Terence Goel must ask his psychiatrist about these memory lapses next time he sees him.

  The weather is bad this morning. Heavy rain. The thing doesn’t realise how lucky it is to be in a warm, dry place.

  I must ring my stockbroker today, haven’t spoken to him in a while. Lots of movements in the markets. And I need some groceries. I must buy some more of the solvent that removes grease from hands. Dismantling the bitch’s Alfa Romeo is hard work.

  So far it’s had it pretty cushy. I really haven’t been unpleasant to it at all, and I’ve given it no cause for alarm. It has a mattress, food, drink, soapy water, a towel, nice-quality lavatory paper, life could be a lot worse for it.

  I wonder how Dr Michael Tennent will react tonight when he hears it scream?

  Chapter Sixty-five

  The fat boy was telling a joke. He liked to use this time, before the teacher arrived, to tell unfunny jokes to the assembled class. His name was Martin Webber. Ginger hair, freckles, small ratty mouth, cheeks like hamster pouches. He told his jokes loudly in a squeaky, self-important voice.

  The one he was telling now he had told before. Thomas Lamark remembered that, even if the rest of his class were too stupid to.

  ‘There was this Irishman called Paddy, who tried to commit suicide by jumping out of a basement!’

  Thomas watched as everyone roared with laughter. He still failed to see what was funny. A man wanted to commit suicide. That was tragic, not funny. The man did not have enough intelligence to understand that to kill himself he needed to jump from a considerable height. The fact that the man was Irish seemed to add resonance. Irish was some kind of shorthand for inferiority or stupidity, but Thomas did not understand why it should be so.

  ‘Thomas doesn’t get it!’ said another boy, Justin Watts-Weston.

  ‘God, you’re such a thick bastard, Thomas!’ said Tony Dickinson, leaning right over his desk and sticking his face right in front of Thomas’s. ‘Thicko! Thicko! Thicko! Dwooorrrr! Dwoooorrrr! Dwoooorrrr!’

  Dickinson had spiky fair hair, a snub nose and nasty little bulging eyes, like a frog. Thomas had been wondering for some weeks what would happen if he slit one of those eyes open with a razor. He had a razor blade inside his desk now, his Stanley knife for modelling. It would be so easy –

  ‘Hey, precious boy, if your mummy’s such a famous actress, how come she hasn’t been in a new film this year?’ Dickinson taunted further. ‘My dad says your mum’s a has-been.’

  Thomas was about to lunge at Dickinson, when the boy retreated to his own desk, and the class fell silent. Mr Landymore, the history teacher, entered.

  Thomas, seething, glared at Dickinson. Mr Landymore began writing on the blackboard, but Thomas had nothing to learn from this ignorant man: he already had a far better knowledge of history than his teacher.

  He raised the lid of his desk and stared down at the bluebottle, which was still alive, rocking from side to side. Suddenly it spun around in a circle, several times. Without its wings, it made no sound.

  He had captured it earlier. Using a magnifying glass, tweezers and a modelling knife, he had removed its wings and legs. He lowered the desk lid and wrote down in his notebook, ‘Spiders spin webs. Flies just spin.’ Now that was funny.

  Then he closed the book to stop anyone else reading it.

  Martin Webber told jokes that were not funny and knew nothing about Max Planck’s quantum theory. He had tested his classmate out on this. Martin Webber had no idea that quantum mechanics was a mathematical system for computing the statistical behaviour of subatomic particles.

  He doubted also that his classmate had ever read Gray’s Anatomy. Thomas had found it in Kensington library and had read it from cover to cover, memorising every diagram. It would be a simple job to excise one of Webber’s kidneys. It would be possible to capture him, anaesthetise him, excise the kidney, suture him and send him home. Then afterwards he could post the kidney to Webber’s parents. He had worked this out, every detail, and he liked this idea a lot.

  Almost as much as he liked the idea of slitting Tony Dickinson’s froggy eye with a razor.

  He wondered if Martin Webber would spin round in circles if he cut his arms and legs off.

  *

  ‘The ball, you wanker! The ball! Kick the ball, you wanker!’

  Dickinson again. Now the playground, during morning break, was the place of torment.

  Thomas’s mother had said to him recently, ‘You do understand don’t you Tom-Tom? About not being quite right in the head? You do understand that, don’t you?’

  Yes, he understood. Something was wired up wrong inside him, but no one knew that, just himself and his mother, it was their secret. They shared it with Dr Brockman in Harley Street, who gave him medication and saw him less frequently now than he used to, and they all knew that Dr Brockman would never tell anyone else either.

  His mummy had sent him to school as punishment for not loving her enough. She had warned him not to tell other boys their secret; that if anyone else knew their secret, they would come and take him away, and lock him up in an institution and he would never be able to see his mummy again, ever.

  They were pointing fingers at him in the school playground now. Something that he’d done wrong but he didn’t know what it was. They didn’t like having him here, they didn’t want him here. They were always telling him here that he wasn’t quite right in the head and he got scared sometimes, that his mummy was leaking this information out to them to punish him for when he was bad.

  A football rolling towards him, that he was ignoring. This was why they were bawling at him? A silly football?

  Someone shouted, ‘Hey, Thomas, creep, kick the ball!’

  Richard Grantham ran up, panting, trapped the ball with his foot, dribbled around him twice in a tight circle. ‘Hey, you know something, Thomas, you’re weird. You know that?’

  Today they were getting at him because he was supposed to have laughed at something, and he hadn’t. Yesterday they were getting at him because he had laughed. This place, this school, everyone in it, they all operated on some level of consciousness he wasn’t tuned in to at all. He didn’t want to kick balls. In this place, if you didn’t want to kick balls you were a freak.

  The rush of footsteps behind him now. Then, before he could turn, he felt the shock of the hard toecap in his backside and he stumbled forward, crashing into the wire-mesh netting that surrounded the playground.

  Winded, his face stinging, he turned and saw Tony Dickinson standing, arms folded, smirking. Several other boys were standing still, too. He turned, walked away, trying not to let them see that he was limping from the pain, went inside to his classroom, opened the lid of his desk and took out his modelling knife.

  He tested the steel razor blade, to make sure it was really sharp, by making a tiny incision in his own finger and watching the thin line of blood appear.

  Perfect!

  Now, concealing the knife inside his hand, he sat down at Tony Dickinson’s desk and monitored the clock on the wall, waiting for the end of break. He listened to the shouting outside, Then, finally, the sound of footsteps, chatter coming closer, chairs scraping, classmates drifting back in. And now, Dickinson’s voice.

  ‘Hey, jerk, you’re in my place.’

  Thomas stayed where he was, looking at the blackboard on which Mr Landymore had written in large, clear writing, MAGNA CARTA 1215, listening to the footsteps closing behind him.

  Then his head was yanked back hard, by his hair, and he was staring straight up into Tony Dickinson’s bulging eyes.

  ‘Out of my chair, creep!’

  Thomas did not move.

  Dickinson lowered his face. ‘I said out, creep!’

  He started to hoist Thomas out by his hair. As he did so, Thomas raised his right hand and brought the blade in one fast, firm, horizontal slash across the boy’s eyeball, straight across the white, the greeny grey iris and the black pupil. It was like slicing a grape. He saw the clean partin
g following the line of the incision, and then, in that brief (exquisite!) moment before Dickinson realised what had happened, clear fluid oozed out.

  It looked just like grape juice.

  Chapter Sixty-six

  The smell hit Glenn Branson as he walked down the corridor on the second floor of Brighton police station, hands in his mac pockets, tired from his early start for Luton this morning. Although it was now only just after one p.m. he already felt he’d done a full day. And now this smell to contend with.

  A WPC he recognised, who was with the Child Protection Unit, also housed here in the Serious Crimes Unit, walked past him and wrinkled her nose.

  ‘Cor!’ she said.

  Glenn nodded. Death. For the second time in a week. This putrid, rancid smell, growing stronger as he walked down the corridor, was exactly like the smell that had been in Cora Burstridge’s flat last Thursday, although, if it were possible, this was even stronger.

  And it got stronger still as he reached the open doorway of the photographic studio. Brilliant white light inside. A bloodstained cotton jacket was lying on a sheet of white background paper in front of a camera mounted on a tripod. Standing beside it, in a white protective suit, rubber boots and rubber gloves, was Ron Sutton, a scene-of-crime officer Glenn had befriended during his two years’ uniform apprenticeship at this station. Ron, like Glenn, had a passion for old movies.

  Tall, fair-haired and bearded, with a quiet, methodical air, Ron Sutton never seemed fazed by even his most gruesome tasks. At this moment, he was pulling a bloodstained beige sock out of a black plastic sack.

  Glenn stuck his head through the doorway and felt the heat of the lights in here. ‘Jesus, man, that is one fucking awful smell.’

  ‘Tammy Hywell’s clothes.’ Ron turned to him and raised his eyebrows.

  Glenn nodded. Tam Hywell, their key prosecution witness in Operation Skeet who’d been hacked to death with a machete in his flat.

  ‘I was wondering if you were busy,’ Glenn said. ‘Stupid question.’

  Ron stood behind the camera, took a series of photographs of the jacket from the same angle, but with different apertures. Glenn let him concentrate, watching him. Ron then lifted the jacket, dropped it into another bag and laid out the sock on the background paper. ‘You? How you getting on over in Hove?’

  ‘Up and down. I need a favour.’ Glenn hesitated, then gave him a hopeful grin. ‘Mike Harris said to mention his name.’

  ‘He did, did he?’

  ‘Yup.’

  Ron moved the tripod forward, adjusted the tilt of the camera, then squinted through the lens. ‘What kind of favour?’

  ‘Would you mind bringing your gear to look at a loft hatch, and doing a little dust around a flat for me?’

  Ron took a sequence of shots, removed the sock, then rummaged in the bag and produced the second sock. He laid that out on the paper. ‘Not sanctioned?’

  ‘It’s a suicide, but I’m uncomfortable with it – I’ll show you why.’

  ‘Can’t you get your DS to sanction a dusting?’

  ‘No, I’ve tried Bill Digby – he’s convinced it’s suicide. Mike advised me to put in a G30 to the governor, which I’m doing.’

  ‘I can’t get prints processed without a sanction.’

  ‘That’s fine. I’d just like you to hang on to them, so at least you have them if we ever need to take it further.’

  Ron gave him a strange look. ‘You want to put your neck on the block, and mine? Why?’

  ‘I’ll tell you who it is, Ron. Cora Burstridge!’

  Sutton’s demeanour changed a little. ‘That makes it more interesting. I might have guessed you’d find an excuse to go sniffing around her place.’

  ‘It’s not quite like that. I was the bugger that found her, and something’s wrong, I tell you. Tomorrow her daughter and family tip up and there’ll be prints all over the place. You don’t just owe Mike a favour, you owe me one, too.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘Remember that videotape I got you – of Clockwork Orange? Stanley Kubrick insisted the film was never shown again. The tape I seized in a haul last year and you said you’d give your back teeth to see it. I could have lost my career for getting you that tape.’ Glenn stepped in front of the camera lens. ‘It’s that favour, Ron.’ Then he waved at the camera. ‘Hi, Mum!’

  ‘You’re a pain, Glenn. You’re a big, bald pain.’

  ‘And I’m black.’

  ‘That, too.’

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  She was beautiful, and he was finding it hard to look at her. Partly because of the pain in her face, and partly because she reminded him so much of Amanda – the sound of her voice, the way she articulated, the way she moved, certain expressions in her face. She was, perhaps, an inch or two taller than Amanda, but the difference wasn’t significant. With her long straight auburn hair, her tight black T-shirt and equally tight jeans, Teresa Capstick had more the air of an overgrown teenager than a woman of fifty-four.

  Michael smiled wistfully as he looked around the drawing room, thinking how accurately Amanda had described her mother and her home. True Bohemia; trapped in a time warp from the late sixties. Aztec scatter rugs; bean bags; lava lamps; paper globe lampshades; joss-stick holders; a glass pyramid; a shelf piled with chunks of rock crystal. Self-help and mysticism books everywhere, and a framed quotation from Jonathan Livingstone Seagull on the wall.

  Yet there was plenty of modern taste and style in evidence too, in this handsome Regency terraced town house. Some curious abstract paintings on the walls, several equally curious sculptures, a riot of plants, and stunning cream and black striped curtains. Through French windows that looked out onto an attractive, well-tended garden, Michael could see that the rain had stopped, but from the colour of the sky, it could start again at any moment.

  He sipped some of his chicory-scented black coffee, then leaned forward and gratefully ate one of the smoked-salmon sandwiches she had bought for him from Marks and Spencer. He still had no appetite, but it was almost two in the afternoon, and as yesterday, he’d eaten only a meagre, hurried breakfast.

  There were several framed photographs of Amanda in the room, some on her own, some with her sister, Lara, whom he had visited this morning before coming on here.

  Lara looked quite different from Amanda. Brown-haired and with a heavier build, she was pleasant but much less confident than her sister, and today with her three small children all at home, ill with bugs, and her sister missing, stress showed in her pale, drawn face.

  Michael had learned nothing from Lara that he didn’t already know. Amanda had been to her niece’s birthday party, she’d mentioned to Lara that she had a new man in her life – himself – and she’d also told Lara that her work was going brilliantly. She’d left to drive back to London on Sunday evening in as buoyant a mood as Lara had ever known.

  And now her mother, who had also been at the birthday party, was saying the same thing. Nothing that Amanda had said to either of them on Sunday had given them any indication that something was wrong.

  Teresa handed him another photograph album. ‘These are her early teens.’

  Michael wiped his fingers and lifted up the heavy leather cover. Amanda, with some fifteen years seemingly air-brushed away, grinned up at him from a gondola in Venice. Another Amanda, harder to recognise here, looking decidedly drunk, was singing at him from a crowded table in what looked like a ski-resort inn, and precociously holding a cigarette. Then another photo, of her standing on skis against a mountain backdrop, with an absurdly cool look-at-me! pose.

  It was painful to look at these pictures, and yet he didn’t want to stop.

  ‘You spoke to the police again this morning?’ she asked.

  ‘Detective Constable Roebuck, yes. He had no news.’

  ‘And her assistant, Lulu? She’s very efficient.’

  ‘We speak every few hours. Nothing. How well did you know Brian Trussler?’ he asked.

  ‘I met him once in seve
n years – Amanda invited me to her flat to meet him over a drink. He was very charming, but it’s a difficult position for a mother to be in. You want the best for your daughter. An affair with a married man is not ideal. Do you know him?’

  ‘I met him last night. I wanted to try to assess whether he could have done something to Amanda, out of anger at being dumped.’

  ‘And what was your opinion?’

  Michael wanted to say that he thought Brian Trussler was a complete tosser, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, ‘I don’t think he cared enough for Amanda to want to harm her. But I can’t be sure. I’ve told the police they should talk to him.’

  ‘What do you think?’ Teresa asked him. ‘You don’t think it is Brian Trussler, so what do you think has happened to her?’

  When he looked up at her he saw the intensity of her gaze. The woman was no fool, she had studied psychology, she understood body language and now she was watching his.

  She’s checking me out. She suspects me, he realised, although it did not surprise him. I’d suspect me too, if I was her, he thought. I’d suspect anyone at this stage.

  ‘I think Amanda is too stable to have simply taken off on her own accord because of pressure of work – or because of . . .’ He tailed off.

  Teresa filled in the words. ‘Because of her emotional life?’

  ‘Yes. She wouldn’t have missed key business appointments, certainly not without phoning to cancel. At the very least she’d have spoken to Lulu.’ He glanced down at the album, avoiding eye-contact for a few seconds. ‘I think the best-case scenario right now is that something’s happened to cause her to have amnesia – a trauma, or a knock on the head, something like that, and she could just be wandering around somewhere.’