(1998) Denial

by Peter James

That Sunday morning his mind hadn’t been on the road. He was trying to explain his feelings to Katy. She told him to slow down, he was driving too fast, it was his fault they were late, they should have left earlier, he was trying to cover an hour’s journey in forty minutes.

  They were overtaking a lorry, Katy shouting at him through her tears to slow down. Empty road ahead. Pulled in past the lorry. Coming up to the brow of a hill, a right-hand bend. Something was coming the other way, a yellow blur; a van losing it on this bend. Crossing onto their side. Coming straight at them.

  Michael saw the replay in his mind now in slow motion. He swerved to the right, trying to angle in front of it, the van impacting on Katy’s side, airbags exploding, a man in the passenger seat of the van bursting through the wind-screen, the glass shards looking like feathers from a ruptured pillow. The van bouncing back, the front pushed right in, the roof twisted, the driver through the open windscreen still behind his wheel but part of his skull had been sheared off.

  Then he looked at Katy. Not a mark on her, but she was twisted round at an impossible angle, her head hanging slack like the airbag.

  ‘I still cannot remember how the accident happened,’ Terence Goel said.

  Michael stared at his patient. He ignored him, held the image inside his head. The memory.

  The guilt.

  Nicola had come to see him in hospital. He had ended his relationship with her there, from his hospital bed.

  It had felt then as though his whole life was finished.

  Ten months later, he heard that she had married an eye surgeon in Sydney.

  He stared at the picture of Katy on his desk; then he looked back at Dr Goel, aware that he was waiting for his response. ‘Do you blame yourself?’ he asked.

  ‘They tell me it wasn’t my fault.’ Thomas leaned back further in the sofa. This was hitting home. Dr Tennent was looking distressed. Their eyes met again, and Thomas lowered his, not wanting to push his luck too far.

  Michael tried hard to pull himself together, to put the crash from his mind. And yet . . . last week Goel had mentioned a car crash. Then on Tuesday, he had talked about a bird, the bower-bird, losing a loved one. It was uncanny. Too uncanny.

  This man seemed to know something about his past.

  ‘Tell me more about your wife,’ Michael said.

  The morning sun was coming in through the window now. The left side of his patient was in shadow, the right side brilliantly lit. It made him look even more unreal. He remained almost hypnotically calm as he spoke. ‘I bought two birds, two white doves, after she died. They loved each other. I used to sit and watch them in their cage, and envy them so much. They used to nuzzle each other all the time, and made strange little sounds.’ He paused, then he said, ‘Have you ever envied something’s happiness so much you wanted to destroy it, Dr Tennent?’

  ‘Did you want to destroy your birds?’

  ‘I took one out of the cage, and I put it in darkness, down in the cellar. Then I just sat, for days, watching its mate pine in its cage. It stopped eating, after a while it stopped calling for its mate. Its coat became matted and dirty.’

  Like me. I’m pining like the dove, for Amanda.

  ‘And the mate in the cellar?’ he asked.

  ‘I left it there.’

  ‘To die?’

  ‘It didn’t. It kept on living, somehow. Eventually I killed it.’

  The man’s face was a mask of steel. He gave Michael the impression he was enjoying himself. Michael was curious about this, and wanted to draw him further.

  ‘Tell me about how you felt when you were watching the dove in the cage. Did you feel powerful?’

  ‘I always feel powerful, Dr Tennent.’

  ‘Are you sure you always feel powerful, or are you just feeling powerful at the moment?’

  For the first time, Michael detected a change in the man’s body language. Terence Goel glanced down at the floor, and tightened in on himself. Defence. ‘The past is –’ He fell silent.

  ‘The past is what?’ Michael pushed him.

  ‘Do you know your past, Dr Tennent? Do any of us know our past?’

  Michael pursued his original question. ‘Tell me what else you felt when you were watching the dove in the cage.’

  ‘I despised it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it was so weak, pathetic, helpless. Because it neglected itself, it allowed itself to get run down, malnourished. It did not portray any strength of character, Dr Tennent.’

  ‘Was it the male or the female that you locked in the cellar?’

  ‘The female.’

  Did this man have Amanda locked in a cellar?

  The thought was absurd, and yet Goel was looking at him as if he knew he had the upper hand. But what upper hand?

  Michael, determined not to lose control of this session again, used the one weapon he knew he had.

  Gently, he asked, ‘I’d like to know something about your own past, Terence. Tell me about your mother and father.’

  The effect was instant. Goel looked like a frightened child.

  ‘I’m not sure I want to talk about them.’

  ‘Are your parents alive?’

  Goel was trembling. His eyes were shut. Several times he opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. ‘You know –’ he said finally, then stopped.

  ‘What do I know?’ Michael kept his tone gentle and pleasant, easing the man through his distress.

  Pushing his hands through his hair, Goel said, ‘I – I don’t think –’ He fell silent again.

  Michael allowed the silence to play for a while, then he said, ‘You said you despised the bird. Do you think this might be some aspect of yourself that you are despising? Do you feel trapped by something?’

  ‘You’re missing the –’ He stopped abruptly, clenching his fists.

  ‘Point?’ Michael suggested.

  Goel shook his head angrily. ‘We just need a bit of silence here, you’re getting me confused, you are not helping me, OK?’

  This man was in a worse state than he had previously suspected, Michael thought. On the verge of a breakdown. What the hell had been going on with his parents that he was unable to talk about? He waited for Goel to compose himself.

  ‘Let’s go back to the dove in the cage. Can you imagine what it feels like to love someone and then to lose them, Dr Tennent?’

  ‘Did you feel that by tormenting your doves you were somehow compensating for the loss of your wife? That because she had died, no living thing had the right to happiness? I’m interested in how you reconcile that to Arun Gandhi’s statement about rights without responsibilities.’ Michael raised his eyebrows at the man. ‘You are stronger than the dove, you can put it in the cellar, but what about the feelings of the dove in the cellar?’

  ‘Fallout shelter,’ Goel corrected.

  Michael leaned forward. ‘Fallout shelter?’

  Thomas felt his face going red. He hadn’t meant to say that, it had just come out. Careful. Careful. Bugger, bugger, bugger.

  Michael watched Goel shaking, his knees banging together, as if he was close to having a fit. He was aware this was because the man was angry with himself. Why?

  ‘It’s – she’s – it –’ Thomas windmilled his hands. Careful. Careful. His face was burning, his voice seemed to jam in his throat. Careful. ‘A joke – she – she used to – used to say it was a shelter.’ He opened his hands out expansively. ‘People do, don’t they?’

  ‘She?’

  Goel rocked backwards and forwards for a moment. ‘I think we need to return to the cellar here, Dr Tennent. I think we were doing better with the dove in the cellar.’

  Michael decided to strike hard again, while the man was floundering. ‘Tell me about your childhood. I’d like to know about your parents. Let’s talk about your mother.’

  Careful. Thomas closed his eyes, clenched his fists again. Careful. Careful. Why are you asking about my mother? Are you trying to trick me? ‘You haven’t answered m
y question about the dove, Dr Tennent. Answer my question about the dove, for God’s sake, will you?’

  Michael noticed the anger in his outburst. Against what?

  What had this man’s parents put him through?

  ‘I really think it would be helpful to talk about your relationship with your parents. Tell me about your father – or your mother, if you prefer,’ he said calmly.

  Thomas got to his feet and paced up and down the room, agitatedly, trying to compose his thoughts, trying to connect back to the psychiatrist. Rage seethed in him. You smug bastard, you killed my mother and now you want me to talk about her. You want to sit there and get some kind of sick, sadistic pleasure out of hearing about how much I loved her? I’m not going to give you that pleasure, Dr Michael Tennent.

  He went over to the window and looked at the cloudless sky. ‘We’ll talk about them but some other time, all right?’

  ‘I’d like to know why you find it difficult to talk about them,’ he heard the psychiatrist say.

  Thomas marched over to the door. Then he turned towards Michael and said, ‘We’ll talk about her, I promise you. Some other time. We’ll talk about her a great deal. We really will. I think our time is up now, isn’t it?’

  Michael looked at his watch. ‘We have another ten minutes.’

  Thomas nodded. He wanted to get out of here, he was scared that he had said too much already. It was dangerous to stay, Dr Tennent was outsmarting him, he was going to give too much away. ‘You can have these ten minutes as a gift from me, Dr Tennent.’ He smiled, some of his composure returning. ‘Enjoy them. Use them well.’

  He opened the door and was gone.

  Michael turned to his computer, logged on to the Net, entered a search command for ‘Dr Terence Goel’.

  A website address appeared. Michael typed it in, then read it as it downloaded. It was a smart site, but a little showy, perhaps.

  There was a colour photograph of the man, followed by his biography. Dr Terence Goel was cousin of the astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell. A member of the Scripps Research Institute. A junior professor at MIT. A member of the Select Presidential Advisory Committee on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence for Ronald Reagan.

  Michael decided he would ask him about his work on that committee at their next session, he was interested in UFOs himself.

  He looked at the man’s list of hobbies. Food. Chess. He was a member of Mensa.

  Dr Goel’s credentials were extremely impressive.

  Far more impressive, Michael thought, than the man himself.

  Chapter Eighty-two

  The actress, Natassja Kinski, breasts hanging free through her open négligée, was straddling her black lover, Wesley Snipes. They were both gasping, groaning, her lover was reaching up, holding those breasts, they were coming, they were both coming –

  The television screen went blank.

  ‘Why are you watching that, Tom-Tom?’

  Staring at her holding the remote in her hand, his face flushed, he had no answer. Because. Because.

  ‘She’s so thin, Tom-Tom. A beautiful clothes-horse, but that’s all. Skeletal. She reminds me of someone out of a concentration camp. Doesn’t she remind you of that?’

  Images of skeletal figures in Auschwitz came into his mind. Natassja Kinski’s face transposed. Straddling him. He squirmed in revulsion. ‘I – I –’ he said. ‘It was just on. I was watching the film, a preview.’

  ‘My films were pure. We suggested, but we never showed. I could never have lowered myself. You understand just how low actresses have sunk, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said quietly, angry because she was right, angry because she had stopped him watching Natassja Kinski, angry because – because of the images she had put in his mind.

  ‘Can you imagine how you would feel if you were watching me on the screen doing that, darling?’

  He looked up at his mother, confused thoughts swirling around inside him. What would it be like with Sharon Stone? Or Kim Basinger? Sigourney Weaver? Would they be thin, too, like concentration-camp survivors? Would they laugh at him the way the nurse at medical school had laughed at him?

  Then the guilt came up at him, like some dark shadow. His mother looked so beautiful; she was lovelier than any of those other famous actresses. Why was he thinking like this?

  She would leave him if she knew he was thinking thoughts like this.

  ‘I love you, Mummy,’ he said.

  Sternly. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She released the sash cord on her dressing gown. Her breasts, larger, whiter, less firm but so much larger, so much whiter and softer than Natassja Kinski’s, fell free in front of him. ‘Show me how much your choo-choo loves your mummy.’

  He opened his trousers, lifted himself in his armchair and pulled them down, and then his boxer shorts.

  She stood, staring at his erection. ‘Dr Rennie tells me I spend too much time at home. Shall I do what he says, Tom-Tom? Shall I go out and do charity work for other people? Shall I leave you, like your daddy left you?’

  He stammered, ‘No, please, I don’t want you to do that.’

  ‘Is your choo-choo for me, Tom-Tom, or is it for Natassja Kinski?’

  He hesitated, confused, he wasn’t sure. He wanted to make love to Natassja Kinski but he did not want his mother to leave him, in case – in case –

  Images of walking skeletons.

  He hardened even more.

  Images of walking skeletons.

  ‘If you want to make love to Natassja Kinski you can’t be my little boy any more. I’ll discard you. No more treats, Tom-Tom. Other people might laugh at you, Tom-Tom. You remember how that girl you took out at medical school laughed at you?’

  Lucy. The student nurse he had met in his second year at King’s, who had been friendly to him. They had gone out for a drink a few times. He’d brought her to meet his mother, and his mother told him she was not good enough for him. He’d asked her when he drove her home after that meeting if she would like to play with his choo-choo. He could still remember her laugh, it was echoing in his head still, now, sitting in Terence Goel’s Ford Mondeo in the car park below Dr Michael Tennent’s office in the Sheen Park Hospital.

  The way the prostitute, Divina, had laughed at him.

  What is wrong with me?

  He accelerated down the drive. Angry with himself. Angry with the psychiatrist. You think you’re clever, Dr Michael Tennent.

  Will you still feel clever when you find Amanda Capstick’s breasts pushed through your letterbox packed in ice?

  Chapter Eighty-three

  Circadian cycles. The human body is out of sync with the rest of nature. Humans live a twenty-five-and-a-half-hour cycle. Experiments had been done by people spending months in total darkness down mine-shafts, with no watches. All of them calculated they had been down a shorter time than they actually had.

  Amanda had read about this a long time back and she was thinking about it as she worked away monotonously in the dark, slowly twisting and interweaving the spring she had removed from the mattress around the belt buckle, trying to make it into a sturdy handle, hammering every fraction of an inch into shape with the sole of the loafer. It was ready to test now.

  ‘Amanda darling, come here!’

  Her mother’s voice. She spun round. The darkness swirled as if she had disturbed it. She tracked the silence with her ears. Nothing. Just her imagination.

  She doubled the mattress once more against the wall, climbed onto it, reached up, found the grille, located the rim, then the first screw. Then she dropped the screwdriver. It rolled with a clatter somewhere below her.

  ‘Shit.’

  Down on her knees, crawling forward, moving her hands in front of her like a swimmer. She collided with the latrine bucket.

  Tears of frustration ran down her cheeks. Sod you, damn you, fuck you, where are you?

  Pull yourself together, Amanda Capstick. Survivors stay calm. Your screwdriver is
in here, somewhere. Just work your way across the floor and you’ll find it.

  Within a couple of minutes, she did.

  Back on the mattress, taking it more slowly, she got the blade into the groove, then turned. Nothing. She cautiously applied more pressure. Still nothing. Wobbling on the mattress, it was hard to remain steady. She twisted harder still.

  The screw turned.

  It felt like a valve had opened inside her.

  Upstairs, in his den, on the World Wide Web, Thomas Lamark was studying photographs of a mastectomy that had been carried out at St John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. The pictures were good, but he needed more clarity.

  Conveniently, there was a mastectomy being performed in the teaching theatre at London’s King’s College Hospital tomorrow afternoon. He had seen this on the list when he had dropped by there early this morning, to collect some things he needed from a store room to which he still had a key.

  It would be good to attend this, he really wasn’t at all familiar with this operation. And he wanted to get it right.

  Chapter Eighty-four

  After logging off from Dr Goel’s website, Michael just had time to put a call into Maxine Bentham before his next patient arrived. But Amanda’s therapist was able to shed no light on her disappearance.

  She told Michael she did not consider Amanda to be depressive, and she thought it improbable that she would have disappeared like this of her own accord. She wasn’t surprised to learn that Brian Trussler had another girlfriend, and from all that Amanda had told her about the man, she didn’t feel he was likely either to have kidnapped Amanda or physically harmed her.

  She asked Michael to keep her informed and he promised he would.

  He sat through his next two sessions finding it difficult to concentrate on his patients. Terence Goel was drumming in his head. The parallels. The accident that had killed Katy. The dove separated from his mate.

  During his session with Dr Goel he had dismissed these parallels as being connections made in his own fanciful mind, but now with Goel gone and time to reflect they weren’t going away.

  Goel could have found out about the car smash easily enough, it had made the national press at the time. But Amanda’s disappearance? Could he know about that?