(1998) Denial

by Peter James

  ‘How about Brian?’ she said.

  He told Lulu of his visit to Trussler last night, and she didn’t seem surprised to hear he had another woman. ‘The guy’s a shit. I never told Amanda, but he has a reputation, right?’

  Michael detected an almost wistful look in those huge eyes, as if she regretted, almost felt slighted, that Trussler hadn’t made a pass at her.

  ‘So we can discard Brian Trussler?’

  ‘For the moment,’ she said. ‘You’re a psychiatrist. Tell me what other explanations you have for a mood change like this.’

  ‘It is possible to get a sudden personality change from neurological causes. The most likely are either temporal lobe epilepsy, a brain tumour or a stroke.’

  She looked aghast.

  ‘All these conditions can bring on paranoia, but it tends to be aggressive paranoia.’

  ‘Never fear?’

  ‘It’s possible to have persecution delusions – maybe Amanda believes I want to harm her in some way.’

  ‘What do you think is the most likely cause in her case?’

  ‘Of her paranoia?’

  ‘Yes.’ She knelt and picked up her mug.

  ‘The altered brain chemistry results in the condition causing personality change. Things that we normally repress can be released. You see it particularly in someone who’s been hiding a low self-esteem.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like the Amanda I know.’

  ‘No. But she’s displaying a dramatic behavioural change consistent with a neurological disorder. One of the classic symptoms is to misconstrue friendly actions by other people as hostile. This could be what we’re hearing here.’

  ‘And this is what you really think? That she’s had a total personality change because of developing epilepsy, or a brain tumour or a stroke?’

  ‘You’re absolutely certain she has no history of depressive illness?’

  ‘As certain as I can be. You’d have to be an idiot to lie on a medical insurance form, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘It would invalidate any claim.’ He drank some more coffee. He was hungry, yet he didn’t want to waste time eating. Life was on hold. Amanda was the only thing that mattered and his concerns were growing with every second.

  It felt strange being here with Lulu. Almost as if he was close to Amanda,

  ‘I’m not convinced there’s anything neurologically wrong with her. There are always exceptions to all conditions, but normally a person suffering any of the above turns aggressive. If she had a depressive illness that would be different, but as we know she hasn’t, it gives us a problem.’

  She nodded. ‘Why she’s sounding afraid – right?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ He rewound the tape and ejected it from the machine.

  She held out her hand. ‘Can I take a look?’

  He passed it to her.

  ‘This was made by the studio tonight?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about getting her voice analysed?’

  He stifled a yawn, tiredness seeping through the adrenaline. The air in the room felt heavy and slow. ‘I know the person to do it.’

  He pulled out his mobile phone and called his producer at home.

  A sleepy voice grunted into the receiver. When Chris Beamish heard it was Michael on the other end, he became hostile. ‘Ten to twelve. Jesus, I’m trying to have an early night. Michael, you’ve already given me one headache tonight. Call me in the morning.’

  Michael yelled at him not to hang up. The line stayed open. ‘Listen,’ Michael said. ‘This is a real emergency, I need your help.’

  He listened for a response, but all he heard was the faint hiss of static.

  ‘Chris, you used to work for the police analysing audiotapes, right?’

  ‘Yes. I still do,’ he said sourly. ‘And insurance companies and detective agencies. What of it?’

  ‘You love your wife and children. Three children, right?’

  ‘What the hell is this, Michael? You’re phoning me at midnight to throw a questionnaire about my life at me? I think, maybe, after your performance earlier tonight, you ought to go and see a shrink. Sorry I can’t recommend one – I used to know a really good one.’

  The line went dead. He’d hung up.

  Michael stared at the phone in frustration then called back. It was picked up on the second ring and Beamish, in a more resigned and less hostile tone, said, ‘Yes, Michael?’

  ‘This is not a questionnaire, Chris. The woman who rang, who I told you was missing, I think she could be in terrible trouble. I need your help. She means to me what your wife and kids mean to you. I haven’t lost my marbles – I wouldn’t be phoning you at this hour if I didn’t think that every minute mattered right now. Help me, Chris. I’ve never asked you for help before and I won’t ask you again, but for God’s sake help me this time.’

  A brief silence. ‘Do you want to bring it over now?’

  ‘Now?’ Michael responded with excitement and relief.

  ‘I’m awake. Sue’s awake. The kids are awake. The dog’s awake. The damned budgerigar’s awake and the goldfish and the hamster. Let’s do it.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No, you’re not sorry, Michael. Just bring the tape over.’

  Chapter Seventy-seven

  This had to work. She had no idea how much time she had left. Michael might have night-vision glasses. He might have seen her working on the belt buckle when he’d brought in the tray – but if he had, why had he let her carry on?

  Pushing these questions to the back of her mind, she concentrated on her task. She doubled the mattress against the wall, on the spot she had marked with the spare shoe from the dead man then, holding the belt, with the end of the buckle spike beaten flat like a screwdriver blade, she climbed onto the mattress, careful to keep her balance. She raised her arms and groped for the ventilation grille.

  To her relief, the fit was perfect: the blade nestled firmly in the groove of the first screw. Holding it firmly, she twisted it. Nothing happened. She twisted harder. Still nothing. Harder still. The point of the spike was holding in the groove.

  A loud snap and a sudden painful jarring in her right hand; something stabbed her, tearing the skin of the palm. The buckle had broken under the strain.

  Fighting tears of disappointment, she climbed back onto the floor, straightened out the mattress and pulled it away from the wall, not wanting to give any pointers if Michael came back.

  Then she squatted down and carefully examined the buckle with her fingers. One of the cross bars felt as if it had snapped. And two of the studs that fixed the buckle into the leather had sheared. The spike was fine and the rest of the surround was fine also. It needed strengthening. But what the hell with?

  Something was sticking into her, some lump in the mattress. She put her hand down onto the mattress, pushed hard, testing. Then she released the pressure and the indent in the mattress sprang back into shape.

  Obvious!

  She felt a sudden lift of elation.

  Then she heard a sound, like the squeak of a rubber sole, only a short distance from her. Her mouth went dry. He was back in the room with her.

  ‘Michael?’ a shaky voice called out. Her voice, but she barely recognised it. Shivering with fear, she said, ‘Michael, is that you?’

  She could feel his presence.

  ‘Michael?’

  Silence.

  ‘Michael, please, can we talk? Please let’s talk about this.’

  A sudden explosion of light erupted from the darkness, scalding her eyes, like acid. She threw her hands over them, but the light had already gone again. And in that brief fleeting moment she had heard a familiar sound. A click followed by a brief whir.

  He had taken a photograph.

  Chapter Seventy-eight

  Michael drove the Volvo down a well-lit suburban London street of small, uninspiring, modern-box houses. Lulu was curled up on the passenger seat, cradling the cassette in her lap like a piece of priceless porcelain, na
vigating from an A–Z.

  ‘Michael,’ she said suddenly, ‘you were asking whether Amanda had any history of depression.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t know why I didn’t think to mention this earlier. She has a therapist she goes to once a week.’

  He braked and stared at her. ‘A therapist? What kind of a therapist?’

  ‘A sort of relationship counsellor.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Her name’s Maxine Bentham. It’s to try to see her through her crisis over ditching Brian Trussler.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of her but that doesn’t mean anything. Why the hell didn’t you tell me before?’

  ‘I don’t know – I – sort of didn’t – remember.’ She looked uncomfortable. ‘It was only thinking about what you were saying about depression. Amanda’s not depressive.’

  ‘You don’t go to see a therapist because you’re feeling happy.’

  ‘No. But it’s not like that with her. She’s been seeing this therapist for a while, and she was making good progress.’

  ‘You have this woman’s number?’

  ‘It’s in Amanda’s file in the office. OK, we just passed the first turn, we want the second – coming up, turn right here.’

  Michael made the turn. ‘I’ll call her in the morning.’

  They were in another identical street of modern-box houses.

  ‘Number thirty-seven,’ she said. ‘That’s it.’

  In the front garden, a gnome with a pointy hat and a fishing rod sat on a rock in a round ornamental pond, illuminated by green floodlights.

  Maybe the gnome was his idea of a joke, Michael thought, or maybe he really liked it. Behind the seclusion of his heavy beard, Beamish was always unreadable.

  The radio producer opened the front door, in a Talk Radio sweat-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, and ushered them inside. He led them through an internal door into what Michael presumed had been the garage but was now a soundproofed room filled with electronic apparatus.

  He introduced Lulu to Beamish, who relieved her of the tape, slotted it into a deck beneath a monitor, and went off to fetch a tray of coffee. There was only one chair in the room, in front of a computer keyboard. Michael and Lulu both stood, worn out, and gazed at the elaborate rig: panels of switches, dials, strobing lights, monitors, consoles.

  ‘Eat your heart out, NASA,’ Lulu said.

  Michael smiled thinly.

  Beamish came back in and set the tray down on a flat console between two reel-to-reel tapes.

  ‘Quite a set-up,’ Michael said.

  Beamish gave a curt nod of acknowledgement, then pressed a sequence of buttons on the cassette deck. The tape began to play and spikes jumped on the monitor. He sat on the chair and turned to face Michael. ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘Its provenance,’ Michael said.

  ‘We don’t think her voice sounds right,’ Lulu explained.

  Beamish raised his eyebrows. ‘We’re not travelling in the same bus, Michael.’

  Michael explained Lulu’s relationship with Amanda. ‘She knows this woman really well, Chris.’

  ‘Yes, fine, but I’m still not sure what it is you want from me.’

  ‘This may sound daft, Chris,’ Lulu said. ‘We’re not sure what we want either. I – I – Isn’t there some way you can analyse her voice to see if there is something wrong?’

  ‘With her or with the tape?’

  ‘Anything.’

  Without any hint of humour, he said, ‘I might be able to tell you if there’s something wrong with the tape. I think Michael would be more qualified to say if there’s something wrong with her.’ He blinked two slow, heavy-lidded blinks. ‘How does she sound normally? Do you have a tape of her voice to compare against it?’

  Michael and Lulu looked at each other. Lulu said, ‘I could dig around the office and find something – one of her dictation tapes, something like that?’

  He turned back to his keyboard and tapped out a command. ‘Let’s work with what we have.’

  A green 3-D bar graph appeared on the monitor. Beamish replayed the tape and they all sat in silence watching the spikes jumping as Amanda spoke.

  When the replay ended, Beamish stopped the tape and rewound it again. He tapped out another command, and the shape of the spikes rotated, becoming more complex, then rearranged into a geometrical pattern that made no sense to Michael.

  ‘OK, that was her voice,’ Beamish said. ‘Consistent throughout. The pattern indicates it’s the same person.’ He glanced at Michael then Lulu for verification. ‘Now we’re going to take a look at the silences.’

  The tape played through once more. Again, he tapped the keyboard. More spikes appeared. This time there was an even more elaborate pattern made from a row of peaks and troughs. Beamish turned to them both, then pointed at the screen.

  ‘This is a spectrum analysis. It gives a high-resolution frequency analysis, like a fingerprint. I’m not picking up anything significant from her voice, but I’m getting something interesting from the silence.’

  He ran his finger along the spikes on the screen. ‘Either of you know anything about ambient sound?’

  Michael shook his head.

  ‘No,’ Lulu said.

  ‘Right,’ Beamish said, looking more animated than normal. ‘Let’s give you an example. If you looked at one small section of an ocean on a calm day, for several minutes, you aren’t going to see anything change. It all looks the same. Yes?’

  Michael nodded.

  ‘Right, it looks the same, but it isn’t. No two waves are quite alike. There’s a current running, there’s a very complex pattern in the water, all the way through. You couldn’t see it with your naked eye, but imagine you froze a slice of that ocean and lifted it out. The segments either side wouldn’t match up, not exactly. If you looked closely enough you would be able to see a break in the pattern.’

  ‘Right,’ Michael said, unsure where this was heading. Then, when Beamish went on, he began to understand exactly.

  ‘This spectrum analyser does exactly the same thing with silence. You remove a slice of a silence – doesn’t matter what silence, any silence – and the other two halves won’t match up. That’s what we have here.’

  ‘So what does that mean, exactly?’ Lulu asked.

  Michael was already there. ‘It means that what Amanda is saying has been edited, right?’

  ‘Now we’re all riding in the same elevator car,’ Beamish said, with a triumphant smile.

  The colour drained from Lulu’s face. ‘Oh, Jesus,’ she said. ‘That wasn’t Amanda speaking to you in person?’

  ‘No,’ Michael said, quietly, watching Beamish’s face for acknowledgement. ‘It was an edited recording of her voice. Right, Chris?’

  ‘On the button.’

  ‘Why – why would – she – do that?’ Lulu asked.

  ‘I think,’ Michael said quietly, ‘we ought to work on the possibility that it wasn’t Amanda who did it.’

  Chapter Seventy-nine

  After only four hours’ sleep, Michael rose shortly after six, his brain wide awake, his stomach aching from hunger.

  He showered, shaved and doused himself in the Boss cologne Katy had always bought for him, hoping it might help him stay fresh for the long day ahead. The Today programme warned of a heatwave, London in the nineties. He made himself a breakfast of cereal and scrambled eggs, then dressed in a white lawn cotton shirt, his Jasper Conran beige linen suit, which was the lightest weight suit he had, and brown loafers. For decorum, but with reluctance, he added a tie, with a sober geometric pattern.

  At seven o’clock he dialled the home phone number that DC Simon Roebuck had written for him on the back of his card.

  Now barely an hour later, in Hampstead police station, Michael sat leadenly on the hard plastic chair in the small interview room that stank of stale cigarette smoke. On the tired Formica table in front of him sat the tape cassette, a brown envelope containing a printout of Beamish
’s tests, and a buff folder belonging to DC Roebuck, who had gone to fetch some coffee.

  The first beads of perspiration were already popping on the detective’s forehead as he lumbered back into the room gripping the tops of two Styrofoam coffee cups in one hand. He put them on the table, and showered down beside them an assortment of plastic spoons, sugar packs and creamer tubs. Then he closed the door and lowered his hefty frame into the chair opposite Michael.

  ‘Going to be a warm one,’ he said, standing up again, briefly, to switch on the fan. He pulled out a handkerchief, mopped his brow, then ran his massive hands through his light fuzz of close-cropped fair hair.

  Michael watched him warily, mindful of the blazing row they’d had on the phone yesterday afternoon, when the detective constable had told him that so far he’d done nothing to follow up Michael’s missing-person report. Today, the policeman seemed surprisingly receptive to him.

  ‘I hear you had a bit of an incident on your radio show last night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Roebuck peeled away a foil lid, and poured creamer into his coffee. Then he tore open a sugar pack and tipped that in. His eyes rested on the tape cassette, and the envelope containing the printout from Beamish, which Michael had laid on the table.

  ‘My fiancée was listening to it, Dr Tennent. She heard your conversation before it was cut off.’

  ‘What did she think?’

  ‘She’s a police officer, she works for the CPU – the Child Protection Unit,’ he added, when he saw Michael’s blank look. ‘She listens to a lot of phone calls of people in distress. She said in her opinion that this young lady, Miss Capstick, sounded in deep distress. Would you agree with that, sir?’

  The detective’s eyes, in contrast to his almost clumsy-looking frame, were hard, quick-moving and intelligent. Michael could see this man turning mean in any circumstance that required it. And he was aware now that he was being scrutinised carefully.

  He removed the spectrum analysis printout from the envelope, and talked the detective through it.

  Roebuck opened his folder and jotted down some notes on a pad. Then he looked back at Michael. ‘Are you able to account for your whereabouts on Sunday afternoon and night, sir?’