by Peter James
‘Put your hands on top of your head and stand up,’ Glenn gasped, the rattling wheeze in his chest startling him.
Thomas Lamark stayed where he was.
Close to panic at his own condition, Glenn wheezed, as loudly as he could manage, ‘Put your hands on top of your head, Mr Lamark, or I’ll shoot.’
Sounding as charming as when he had opened the front door, Thomas said, ‘I counted before I came in, Detective Constable Branson. There were only three bullets left in the magazine, I’m afraid. You have an empty gun in your hand and you are bleeding to death. We can wait, I’m in no hurry and my friends here aren’t going anywhere. I’m afraid I really don’t have any alternative to suggest at this moment.’
‘Thomas,’ Michael Tennent said suddenly, again, ‘I’d like you to tell me about your mother.’
With no last-minute warning flicker, Glenn’s torch went dead. Then out of the darkness, he sensed something coming at him. Pointing the gun dead ahead, no idea whether Lamark was bluffing or not, just sensing imminent danger, he pulled the trigger.
The muzzle flash, the numbing bang, the heavy kick of the weapon all took him as much by surprise as the terrible shrieking that followed. It was like some wild animal in mortal agony.
For some moments it was impossible to tell whose voice it was. Glenn got to his feet. The howling continued, deep, gulping bellows of pitiful agony.
It was Lamark’s voice.
‘Help me, oh, help me, help me!’
Glenn shook the torch again, slid the on-off switch back and forwards. A weak beam flickered on. Lamark was on the floor, writhing like a snake, his face contorted, screaming. Glenn stood at a safe distance from him, not trusting him. Then he saw the bloodstained right leg of the cream linen suit and knew that he had shot Lamark through the kneecap.
The man looked up at him, begging, ‘Get me something, oh, God, please get me something.’
Still wary, not knowing what strength the man had, Glenn studied him for a few moments more, then in a swift movement, using almost his last reserves of strength, he knelt down, yanked Lamark’s arm onto his stomach, ignoring his shrieks and clamped handcuffs on him.
Then he stood up, and staggered sideways, his legs starting to buckle. He gripped the side of the trolley and gave Amanda a reassuring smile. ‘You’re going to be all right, you’re going to be fine, you’re safe. I’ll free up your friend, and we’ll help you together. Don’t worry about anything, we’re going to make you fine.’
On the floor, Thomas Lamark screamed again. ‘Do something for me! Oh, God, please, do something to stop – stop – stop – pain oh, please – please, somebody, do something!’
Glenn looked down at him, and Thomas fell silent.
‘I’m surprised at you, Mr Lamark,’ Glenn said, his breath shorter and raspier every moment. ‘“There’s always one bullet left in the chamber; never forget that one in the chamber.” You didn’t remember, did you? The last line of Wings of the Wild? Your mother’s greatest film.’
Chapter One Hundred and Five
Amanda clung tightly to Michael in her sleep, shuddering, making little sounds every few minutes, tiny, frightened moans.
In the morning she would stare at him with wide eyes and say, in genuine innocence, ‘I did it again, didn’t I? I don’t remember, I really don’t remember!’ Then she would kiss him and say, ‘Poor darling, I woke you again, I’m not being fair to you.’
But she never woke him. He was always awake – like now, wide awake at three o’clock in the morning, exactly one year, four months and eleven days since that sweltering July Friday last year when he had entered the Lamarks’ house.
Maybe one day, Nietzsche’s dictum, ‘That which does not kill me makes me stronger’, would come true for him.
For them both.
In the meantime they slept every night with the light on. Amanda wanted it on and, silently, he was grateful. He wanted it on too, but to tell her would mean admitting his own fear to her, and in trying to make her strong again, he needed to pretend to be strong himself.
Churning it all over again and again inside his head. That last consultation with Gloria Lamark. Wondering, always wondering, whether five people, an editor called Tina Mackay, a junior newspaper reporter called Justin Flowering, two police constables called Nick Goodwin and Simon Roebuck, and the actress, Cora Burstridge, might still be alive today if he had handled that consultation differently.
Gently, trying not to disturb Amanda, he prised himself free of her arms and eased himself up in bed, as he did on so many nights, and picked up his worn copy of the writings of the grand old father of medicine, Hippocrates. The book fell open at the passage he had read and reread so often in these past sixteen months.
Life is short, and the Art long; the occasion fleeting; experience fallacious, and judgement difficult. The physician must not only be prepared to do what is right himself, but also to make the patient, the attendants, and externals co-operate.
He moved on to the next passage, which also fell open to the touch.
Medicine is of all the arts the most noble; but, owing to the ignorance of those who practise it, and of those who, inconsiderately, form a judgement of them, it is at present far behind all the other arts. Their mistake appears to me to arise principally from this, that there is no punishment connected with the practice of medicine (and with it alone) except disgrace, and that does not hurt those who are familiar with it. Such persons are the figures which are introduced in tragedies, for as they have the shape, and dress, and personal appearance of an actor, but are not actors, so also physicians are many in title but very few in reality.
He put the book down on the bedside table. He liked the wisdom of the ancients. Sometimes, it showed how little humans had progressed between millennia in the areas that really mattered. We were better at easing pain than the ancients; we were better at dealing with diseases and with injuries. But we weren’t a whole lot wiser.
He had given Gloria Lamark the advice that in his heart he had felt was the right advice. Events had proved otherwise. He felt deep sorrow for the victims, but no disgrace. He had done what he thought was best for his patient. And he knew that, for his own sanity, he had to go on believing that.
This was how he lived now, in a state of denial.
One day, perhaps, that might change. Maybe today. Or tomorrow. Or in a year, or ten years, or when he was old and infirm and thinking back over his life, thinking about regrets, thinking about what might have been. And maybe there was, in a parallel universe somewhere out there in another dimension, a psychiatrist called Dr Michael Tennent who had an ageing movie star called Gloria Lamark as a patient, and this Dr Tennent never told her to face the fact that she had lost her looks and had blown her career, and never told her to stop living in the past and go out and get a life. And this Gloria Lamark was still alive, and in this parallel universe, so were Tina Mackay and Justin Flowering and Cora Burstridge and the young policemen.
And in this parallel universe, Dr Michael Tennent was a lousy psychiatrist who hadn’t the guts to tell his patients the truth about themselves.
Big day today.
A massive crowd of press and media were gathered early outside the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey. Many of the morning papers carried the story on their front pages.
Months back, Thomas Lamark’s lawyer had failed in his efforts to have his client declared unfit to stand trial. The case had lasted for seven weeks and the jury had unanimously found Lamark guilty on five counts of murder, on one count of attempted murder of a police officer, and on four counts of kidnap.
The judge had delayed pronouncing sentence for two months, pending further psychiatric reports requested by Lamark’s counsel.
Today he would announce whether Lamark went to prison or to a secure psychiatric hospital, and for how long.
Michael and Amanda climbed out of their taxi into the bright October sunshine, and ran the gauntlet of the barrage of flashlights and micr
ophones, up the steps and in through the doors.
Through the mêlée of people in the foyer, one man made his way across to them, smiling broadly, hand outstretched in greeting. He was a tall, bald, black man in a sharp brown suit, white shirt and sober tie.
‘Good to see you two guys!’ he said.
Michael pumped his hand warmly, and Amanda gave him a kiss on both cheeks.
‘So!’ Glenn said. ‘Congratulations are in order! I got your wedding invitation.’
‘You’re coming?’ Michael asked.
‘Try and keep me away!’ His smile was tinged with sadness. There would always be a shadow in his life. The responsibility he carried in his soul for the death of Nick Goodwin.
Michael grinned and Amanda laughed. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lulu pushing her way over to them. Amanda was leaving 20–20 Vision to go freelance, so she could spend more time with Michael. Lulu was being promoted to her job.
The two women hugged. Then Amanda said, ‘Lulu, let me introduce you to the man who . . .’ She faltered. ‘Who saved our lives. Detective Constable Glenn Branson.’
Glenn raised a finger, a feigned hurt expression on his face. ‘You didn’t hear?’ Then with a proud beam, he said, ‘I’m not a detective constable any more. I’m now a detective sergeant!’
Michael congratulated him warmly, so did Amanda. Then all four stood in awkward silence, as if suddenly they had become aware that their good news was tainted with the collective guilt they all carried. Guilt, because in some way all of them had gained from their encounter with the monster to whose house the press had given the soubriquet, ‘Holland Park Chamber of Horror’.
As they shuffled forward towards the courtroom door, unsure quite why they had come today, Michael put one arm round Amanda the other round Lulu. He squeezed their shoulders. They hadn’t come here to see a man sentenced. The sentence did not matter. That was a formality. A symbol. A marker. An end.
They had come because it was also a new beginning.
Epilogue
wednesday, 9 july 2000
I haven’t decided whether I am going to tell Dr Michael Tennent. I have a lot on my mind right now.
There are some very weird people in here and, frankly, they irritate me.
It seems I am destined for ever to go on despising Dr Michael Tennent. He no longer appears to have the high public profile he used to; in fact, he seems to have gone into hiding. He doesn’t write his newspaper column any more, and I don’t hear him on the radio these days, although it is difficult tuning into that station on the one communal radio we have: all the idiots here can never decide what they want to hear, so usually we end up hearing nothing.
Instead, Dr Michael Tennent has taken to publishing serious papers in medical magazines. He seems quite obsessed with the responsibilities of psychiatrists and psychologists in our society. In the latest British Medical Journal he was even having a go at the so-called media and celebrity shrinks – which he himself was, for God’s sake! Sound-bite psychiatry, he calls it.
I see my own name appears in two papers. He never asked my permission, and there is perhaps the question of royalties I should raise. However, I’m not about to seek revenge, I’ve learned to my cost that revenge is indeed its own executioner.
They don’t even allow me a computer in my little padded cell. What do they think I’m going to do? Beat my brains out on the keyboard?
They really are idiots here. Last week, my mother’s film, Wings of the Wild was showing, but I didn’t watch it. Too many memories. And you know something? Not one single colleague of mine in here said they had even heard of my mother. I will have to make an example of someone and punish them for this, but there is no hurry: looks like I’m going to be here for a while.
I really ought to write a book to set the record straight, but the thought of having to do it in longhand, with pen and paper, is really too degrading. And, besides, do I want Dr Michael Tennent to know the truth?
This is a question I have asked myself repeatedly over the last year and a half that I have been here. That old proverb, and the truth shall set you free.
Do I want to set you free, Dr Michael Tennent? Do I have any reason to? Do I owe you anything?
All I ever wanted was to be free. It’s strange, how I didn’t remember, because my memory is so much better these days – I think it must be the medication they’re giving me. But honestly, I had no recollection then at all. I seemed to forget so much.
I forgot that afternoon, that Monday afternoon in July 1997, when my mother came home in such a bad mood after she had been to see you. She went up to bed and asked me to make her a large whisky. I didn’t tell her about the message on the answering-machine you had left, because this was my own chance to be free.
I popped the blister packs and dissolved the Nembutal in her whisky. I poured in the liquid Valium also; and just to speed the process along, and to make sure, after she had drunk the drink and was fast asleep, I injected curare through her heel.
Funny how it has all come back to me now. And to think I blamed you for this, Dr Tennent! I really did, I was so angry with you. Perhaps what my mother said to me as a child was true all along. Perhaps I am not right in the head.
Although I really do feel fine now.
All I wanted was to be free. And now, in reaching for my freedom, I have committed myself to a lifetime in institutions for the criminally insane.
Huh!
I’ve been locked up and they’ve thrown away the key.
But you are locked up, also, aren’t you, Dr Michael Tennent? In your own way, you are just as much a prisoner of your actions as I am.
But I at least have the power to set you free. I will deal with this the way I have dealt with so many decisions I’ve had to make in my life.
I will let the coin decide.
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