(1998) Denial

by Peter James

  Michael stared back at him. It was a fair question, sensible police procedure, yet in this context, and probably because his patience was frayed with tiredness, it angered him. ‘Probably not, no,’ he said, testily.

  There was a lengthy silence, disturbed only by the hum from the fan, and the riffling of the edges of the report in its draught.

  He stared Roebuck back in the eye. ‘Want to lock me up as a suspect?’

  ‘I don’t think so, sir.’ Roebuck smiled, his tone conciliatory.

  ‘But it’s crossed your mind?’ Michael said.

  After a moment of hesitation, the detective said, ‘I’d be failing in my duties if I didn’t consider all possibilities.’

  ‘So that means you are at last concerned that something might have happened to Amanda Capstick? Good, I’m delighted. It’s only taken four days.’

  Roebuck gave him a wry smile of acknowledgement that he’d walked into the trap. ‘I’d like to listen to the tape.’

  Michael removed it from the box. The detective put it into one of the twin decks, and ran it.

  When it reached the end, Roebuck nodded in thoughtful silence, then he said. ‘The spectrum analysis shows the tape has been edited, through mismatches in the silences, you said?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mr Beamish has worked for us in the past. He’s good.’ He stirred his coffee, then drank some. ‘Did you bring a photograph of Miss Capstick?’

  ‘Yes.’ Michael was encouraged by his attitude this morning. From the same envelope as the spectrum analysis, he produced a handful of photographs Amanda’s mother had given him, and pushed them across the table.

  Roebuck sifted through them. ‘She’s a very attractive young lady.’

  ‘She is.’

  ‘I’d like to get posters put up in all the areas where she was last seen. Presumably her family have no objection to publicity?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘We’ll try to get her picture up on the missing-person slots on television covering this area.’

  ‘If she’s been abducted she could have been taken out of this area.’

  ‘We’ll go as wide as we can, sir.’

  ‘What else are you going to do?’

  ‘I’d like the names, addresses and phone numbers of all her family, friends and acquaintances.’

  Michael produced the printout Lulu had already prepared from the envelope and handed it to him. ‘What else will you do?’

  ‘I’m going to take a look at our own missing-persons records and see if there are any similarities that could link them.’

  ‘Link them to what? To the pattern of a possible killer?’

  There was another silence, broken only by the hum of the fan and the riffling of paper.

  ‘You’re not going to give me some crap about it being too soon to start jumping to conclusions, are you, DC Roebuck?’

  The policeman ejected the tape from the machine and slipped it back into the box. ‘Do you have a back-up copy of this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’ll make another.’ He tapped the edge of his cup. ‘You want to talk straight, Doctor, so let’s be open with each other. This tape changes everything, all right?’

  Michael nodded grimly.

  ‘And there’s something else, which I’d like you to keep to yourself. I’m not telling this to the press because it wouldn’t be in our interests at the moment. I don’t want to distress you more than you already are, but since you want me to be open . . .’ He picked up a plastic spoon then put it down again. ‘There are some parallels here with another missing-person inquiry. A young woman editor at a publishing house, who went missing three weeks ago.’

  ‘Tina Mackay? The one who’s been in the news?’

  ‘Yes. She’s a similar age to Miss Capstick. Also a professional woman, attractive, similar build. She disappeared without trace, with her car.’

  ‘None of that publicity’s helped you?’

  ‘Not in Tina Mackay’s case so far, no.’

  ‘Are you treating it as a murder inquiry?’

  ‘We’ve set up an incident room, and we’re giving it the same attention we would give a murder inquiry, if that answers your question.’

  ‘And are you going to set up an incident room for Amanda?’

  Their eyes locked. Roebuck said, grimly, ‘I’m going to show this tape to my governor this morning. I’ll do everything I can.’

  ‘You’ll keep me informed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They stood up and Roebuck escorted him through to the main entrance. Then he took Michael’s hand and shook it firmly, looking into his eyes once more, this time with deep concern. ‘Call me any time, Dr Tennent. Day or night. All right?’

  Michael thanked him, and left.

  Chapter Eighty

  Beneath the lurid glare of the mid-morning sun, the slack sea water in the harbour was the colour of tinned peas.

  Glenn Branson watched the steady stream of bubbles a hundred yards out from the dock wall where he was standing, breathing salt air richly tanged with rotting seaweed, rusting oil-cans and freshly sawn timber, thinking about Cora Burstridge.

  The tide on the far wall was down to the low-water mark. A gull swooped low then rose again; several more sat in the water, rich pickings from this busy port. A crane winched a container from the hold of a freighter lying low on its Plimsoll line, flying a Norwegian flag. A tiny harbour patrol boat chugged past, dwarfed by the freighter’s bulk. Ripples of wake bobbed the red buoys that marked where the two police frogmen were diving.

  Sandwiched between a bunkering station and a lumber depot, behind the green screens they had erected an hour ago, were parked two police cars, a white crime scene investigators’ van, the diving team’s grey van, and a dark blue van belonging to a local firm of undertakers.

  Danny Leon, the informer whom Glenn and Mike Harris had brought down from Luton prison yesterday, had given them the unwelcome news that the reason they couldn’t find a second key witness for Operation Skeet, Jason Hewlett, was because he was at the bottom of the harbour, without an aqualung. He had drawn a diagram showing the exact spot. Any minute now and they would find out whether he had told them the truth.

  Hanging around, waiting with him, were a police photographer, two crime-scene investigators, two undertakers who looked as out of place as extras hanging around a film set, Glenn thought, and Glenn’s immediate boss, Detective Sergeant Bill Digby.

  Digby, in a brown suit and golf-club tie, feet apart, hands behind him, like a soldier at ease, crinkly black hair gleaming in the sunlight, shrugged and said, ‘So far, Glenn, all you can produce is one small strip of cloth retrieved from a loft, and an unreliable, elderly witness, who may or may not have seen a man on a fire escape.’ He turned to the detective constable and gave a twitch of his trim moustache.

  ‘Don’t forget the Babygro, sir, the one she had bought that afternoon for her baby granddaughter. I think that’s very important.’

  ‘There’s been nothing from the post-mortem?’

  ‘No, Sarge.’

  Digby pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. ‘Glenn, do yourself a favour and forget about Cora Burstridge.’

  ‘Her funeral’s tomorrow. I –’

  The detective sergeant gave him an interrogative look.

  Glenn hesitated, then said, ‘I know it would cause distress to the family, but I’d really like to have the funeral delayed.’

  ‘What’s that going to achieve?’

  ‘It could save an enormous amount of hassle if . . .’ he was going to say, ‘if there were any further developments’, but decided not to. Digby wasn’t in a good frame of mind, and he was going to be in an even worse one if the informer was right about Jason Hewlett.

  And, he thought, dispirited, perhaps the sergeant was right. He stared at the bubbles and wondered if maybe he was obsessed with this because it was Cora Burstridge. Was her fame clouding his judgement, making him unable to accept that she really
had taken her own life?

  Digby was sending him clear signals that he disapproved of his giving all this time to the actress’s death, and even the governor hadn’t responded with any great enthusiasm to the form Glenn had put on his desk.

  Cora, you are being cremated tomorrow and I’m fast running out of road. I’ve done my best for you, and I don’t know how much more I can do.

  A sudden eruption of bubbles. The surface of the water between the diving buoys turned to a roiling, milky foam. A frogman’s hooded, masked head, broke the surface, then the other’s. The first raised a hand in the air and signalled a thumbs-up to the shore.

  Then a third head broke the surface between them. Except that this head wasn’t wearing any mask, or any skin, or any hair. It was a bare white skull.

  Glenn edged closer to the wall and peered down now, watching the divers in a mixture of horror and near disbelief. The skull was still, bizarrely, attached to its clothed body.

  There was a flurry of activity around him as the undertakers rapidly pulled on white protective suits, as did the two crime-scene investigators. Then all four ran down the steps to a ledge in the harbour wall and helped the divers wrestle the corpse onto dry land.

  The smell hit all of them simultaneously. Glenn turned away, close to retching, and saw Digby react in the same way.

  ‘Fuck me!’ Digby said, pinching his nose shut.

  Glenn pinched his nose shut, too. That putrid-fish stench of death again, but unbearably strong. Looking down at the ledge, he could see why.

  The body was in leather motorcycling gear, which had bloated right out. The hands were covered in leather gloves, the feet in boots. Wound several times around the midriff, pinioning the arms and legs was a length of anchor chain, which was also wound and secured around a small concrete breeze block.

  The skull, protruding from the collar, and completely bare looked ludicrously small for the body, as if it had been stuck on as some appalling sick joke.

  ‘Been there three weeks,’ Digby said, grimly. ‘Crabs have picked his head clean.’

  ‘You reckon that’s Jason Hewett?’ Glenn asked.

  ‘Want to go and check the body for some ID?’

  Glenn swallowed. ‘I’ll get some overalls and gloves.’

  Digby said, quietly, ‘Take a good look at him, lad. Remember him, next time life throws you a curve. OK?’

  The detective constable stared back at his sergeant, uncertainly. ‘Remember him, Sarge?’

  Digby nodded. ‘Just remember him. You’re all chewed up because you think I’m not being fair to you over Cora Burstridge. Next time you think life’s a bitch, just remember how lucky you are that you’re not that sad bastard lying down there.’

  I don’t think Cora Burstridge was very lucky either, sir, Glenn wanted to say, but didn’t.

  Instead he went, silently, to the crime-scene investigators’ van in search of the protective clothing and face mask they had laid out for him.

  Chapter Eighty-one

  After his ward round, Michael looked at his list of patient appointments for today, then frowned at his secretary, who was pecking at her keyboard. ‘Terence Goel again? It’s Thursday – he only came on Tuesday. Why the hell’s he coming twice in one week, Thelma?’

  In her nervy, defensive manner, she said, ‘Well, you do have several patients who you see twice a week.’

  ‘I can do without this one today.’

  She looked at him with quiet sympathy. ‘I’m sure he needs you, Dr Tennent. All your patients need you very much.’

  He felt so drained that he was close to tears. He turned away so she couldn’t see his face.

  ‘Mrs Teresa Capstick – Miss Capstick’s mother – phoned you about ten minutes ago, wondering if there was any news.’

  Crushing a tear with his eyelids, he said, ‘I’ll call her.’ Then he stepped out of her office and into the corridor.

  ‘Dr Tennent?’ Her tone softened.

  He stopped. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m sure that Miss Capstick will turn up safe and well.’

  ‘I hope.’

  ‘Shall I send Mrs Gordon in?’

  His first patient of the day, Anne Gordon, suffered from desperately low self-esteem. It was nine thirty, and he was fifteen minutes late for her after his drive across London from Detective Constable Roebuck, and a problem in one of his wards. She would be thinking she did not matter to him, and this was why he was keeping her waiting.

  ‘Apologise to her. Give me two minutes to call Amanda’s mother. Also, could you call Lulu, I haven’t been able to get hold of her yet, and ask her for Maxine Bentham’s phone number? Got that?’

  ‘Maxine Bentham, yes, Dr Tennent.’

  His shirt was sticking to his back with perspiration. In the sanctuary of his office he closed the door, removed his jacket, then opened the window, letting in a faint hint of a breeze and the ever-present scent of cut grass. He checked his e-mail, then picked up the receiver to call Teresa Capstick, and then put it down again, not sure what he should say to her. Had word of the phone call from Amanda during his radio show reached her? He should tell her the truth.

  Except that right now the truth wasn’t looking good.

  He rang her, and gave her part of the truth. He told her Amanda had called, that he was having the tape analysed and there was some evidence to indicate her voice had been a recording and not live. He promised to let her know as soon as he had more news, then pressed the intercom and told Thelma to send in Mrs Gordon.

  For the first few minutes of the session, it was almost a relief to get back to the normality of work. He worked through Anne Gordon’s litany of events in this past week of her sad life. In her mind she had been snubbed by a Safeways checkout girl, by a succession of telephone operators, a taxi driver, her next-door neighbour, and even by a caller for Christian Aid, who clearly did not think her contribution (five pounds) to have been enough.

  Increasingly his mind kept returning to Amanda, and he began to watch the clock fiercely, willing those minutes away, desperate for the session to end so that he could check with Thelma to see if there had been any calls.

  Anne Gordon noticed. ‘You’re not interested in me either, are you, Dr Tennent?’

  The final ten minutes shot by as he struggled to extricate himself from that one.

  ‘Are you familiar with the writings of Mahatma Gandhi, Dr Tennent?’

  In contrast to Michael’s ragged, perspiring state, Dr Goel leaned back on the sofa in a commanding pose, the picture of cool. Dressed in a lightweight black suit, collarless white shirt, black Nubuck loafers and immaculate hair, he looked like a hologram from a style magazine.

  ‘I presume you are,’ Michael replied, determined to dominate this session with this man. ‘Tell me why.’

  ‘Actually I prefer the writings of his son Arun. Mahatma wrote the Seven Blunders of the World. Wealth without work. Pleasure without conscience. Knowledge without character. Commerce without morality. Science without humanity. Worship without sacrifice. Politics without principle. But it was Arun who added the eighth, which is the greatest of them all: rights without responsibilities. Do you not believe this applies to psychiatrists, Dr Tennent? That you assume rights over people without any ultimate responsibility?’

  ‘Tell me why you think that.’ Michael watched him carefully. Goel seemed to be struggling with a deep inner anger, but his response came out in a measured, calm voice.

  ‘Why do I think this? I don’t think this, Dr Tennent, I know this.’

  ‘Would you like to explain your feelings on this to me?’

  ‘Come on, Dr Tennent. You sit arrogantly on your chair, telling people what’s wrong with how they perceive the world, with the way they live their lives, and you gaily tell them what they should do about it. But they walk out of this office, and it doesn’t matter to you what they do then, does it? You carry no responsibility for their actions once they’re out of here. None. You can say what the hell you like and there’s n
o comeback. I think that is rights without responsibilities. Don’t you?’

  Michael considered his reply. ‘Psychiatrists are doctors of medicine, and we do the best we can for our patients. I think we take our work very seriously, and we are acutely aware of how what we say can affect our patients. I can’t agree with you, but let’s continue down your line. Tell me how you think psychiatrists should become more responsible.’

  Thomas Lamark watched the man squirm in his chair, hot, uncomfortable, exhausted. ‘Have you ever been in love and lost someone, Dr Tennent?’

  Michael leaned forward, eyes on his patient’s face. ‘It sounds like you’ve had this experience yourself. What were the circumstances?’

  ‘On a country road. I was driving with my wife and we hit a truck. She was killed.’

  And suddenly, with utter clarity, it was all back in Michael’s mind. That February Sunday morning. Rain tipping down. Late for a christening. Driving his red BMW M3 fast down a country road. Too fast. Katy sitting beside him, crying. He had told her the previous night that he no longer loved her, that he had been having an affair with another woman, a nurse called Nicola Royce, for three years. He was sorry. Their marriage had run its course, he was leaving her.

  It wasn’t Katy’s fault, she had done nothing bad. It was just the way she was – a nice person, but cold, obsessed with her own work. They had grown apart. He had married her because he had been in love with her beauty and with her talent. They had made a glamorous partnership, the successful artist and the successful shrink. But they weren’t a loving couple and never really had been, except perhaps in their earliest days. They had few things in common. She didn’t enjoy sex, she was always too damned serious, obsessed with her looks, her health, her career.

  Nicola, a nurse whom he had met at a party, gave him warmth. They had fun, terrific sex, got drunk together, she made him feel young – he’d even taken up motorcycling because Nicola loved bikes. Life with Nicola was a party for two. He adored her. They had planned their future life together.