You Are Dead

by Peter James

  Crisp’s secretary, Jenni, popped her head in through the door to say good night, then stood in the doorway, lingering, giving him the same curious, almost expectant stare she always gave him.

  “What are you up to this weekend?” he asked, out of politeness rather than interest.

  “Taking my niece and nephew, Star and Ashton, to Thorpe Park tomorrow,” she said. “Otherwise I don’t have any plans.” Her stare was irritating him intensely tonight. Although, at the moment, everything was irritating him. Why was the bloody woman staring at him? Was she expecting him to suddenly leap out of his chair and declare his love for her?

  A handsome woman, with a classic English rose face framed by short, elegantly cut brown hair, she was a sad and slightly tragic figure. He knew all about her private life, because she had confessed to him some years ago, when he had taken her out for their traditional pre-Christmas lunch, that she had been having an affair with a married man with three children, a prominent solicitor in Brighton, who had been stringing her along for years. One day, he had promised, when his kids were old enough to understand, he would leave his wife. But Crisp had always sensed that was never going to happen.

  He’d tried on more than one occasion to tell her to dump him, to join a dating agency while she was still young enough. She’d ignored his advice. But he had been right. The man’s children had long left home and the spark had faded in their relationship. All Jenni had now were her teenage niece and nephew, and she probably would not have them for much longer, once they started to date.

  “What are your plans?” she asked.

  “Taking Smut for a long walk tomorrow. Then I’ve been invited to a dinner party in the evening with a bunch of medics. A proctologist, an oncologist, a dermatologist and an anesthetist, with their other halves. They’re trying to fix me up with a woman.”

  “Sounds like fun!” she said, brightly, but with a disappointed look in her eyes.

  “Huh,” he responded, dismissively.

  “Well, call me if you need me.”

  He smiled, thinly. She said the same thing every Friday evening. “Thanks, will do.” In twenty years he never had. She closed the door behind her, and he sat still, alone with his troubled thoughts.

  High on the list of these was his bitch wife, Sandra. She was screwing a smug, smooth plastic surgeon, Rick Maranello. A medic friend had told him the news as if doing him a favor, some months ago. It wasn’t a big surprise to him—she had gone off sex around that time—and probably longer ago, if he cared to think about it. She’d pretty well gone off it after the second of their two children had been born. But he had bigger problems on his mind than thinking about his wife in bed with a creepily narcissistic plastic surgeon.

  His whole livelihood was under threat at the moment, thanks to new government regulations coming in.

  Until recently, working as a sole practitioner had been an option for all family doctors in the UK. But ever since another sole practitioner, Harold Shipman, had been sentenced to life imprisonment for killing fifteen of his patients—and his true death toll, though never established, was estimated to be several hundred—regulations for GPs had been changed. For National Health family doctors revalidation had been brought in. Their practices had to be scrutinized. They had to have annual appraisals both by professionals—peers or associates—able to monitor their work—and by patients. Half had to be medics, half non-medics. As a result, almost all National Health doctors now worked in medical centers, with a number of other doctors.

  Private general practitioners, like himself, were so far exempt from this, so he had been able to carry on, unhindered. But now he’d read that was about to change. All private GPs were soon to come under the same regulations.

  Why?

  Who were these moronic civil servants and elected creeps who had decided, because of one bad egg a decade ago, that family doctors were no long able to be trusted? In short, he was going to have to produce printouts from large numbers of patients and from medics testifying to his abilities. How demeaning was that?

  How sodding bureaucratic?

  The only option would be to join a bloody medical center of some kind. And risk his patients, whom he cared about deeply, seeing some possibly incompetent doctor when he wasn’t available, instead of the reliable locum of his choice. It was bloody ludicrous! All his patients loved him, and he loved them back. The ones at the start of their lives, the pregnant ones full of hope and joy, and the terminally ill ones who he helped through their prognosis, and cared for all the way to their final days—and then attended their funerals.

  Medicine was an inexact science. No one knew this better than he did. It was an established fact that one of the most effective of all drugs was a placebo. There were many occasions when he had cured patients of a range of ailments from depression to more serious illnesses by telling them to take some long walks in the countryside or along the seafront.

  Now these so-called health experts were making ludicrous demands. Calling his ethics—and every doctor’s like him—into question.

  Well, fuck them. Fuck them all. Fuck his wife—who was already being well fucked by Rick Maranello. Fuck his kids, arrogant, ungrateful little bastards both of them.

  Fuck the world.

  Because it sure as hell was fucking him.

  29

  Friday 12 December

  Jacob Van Dam’s last patient of the week sat in front of him now. Neil Fisher, an army captain who had been given an honorable discharge after suffering a nervous breakdown after his third tour of Afghanistan, a year ago.

  During an assault on an enemy position, the officer’s best friend, running alongside him, had been hit in the midriff by shrapnel from a shell. Fisher had carried the screaming, newly wed man on his shoulders, with half his intestines uncoiled around his face, into the safety of a shell hole, where he had died, sobbing for the arms of his bride. Captain Fisher was now suffering severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

  But the elderly psychiatrist was unable to focus on what the former soldier was saying, just as he had been unable to concentrate on any of his patients since his encounter with the strange anesthetist, Dr. Harrison Hunter. His mind was a turmoil of conflicting thoughts.

  After phoning his distraught sister Tina to verify that Logan was still missing, he had spent his lunch hour on the internet, frantically searching first the medical register, then googling the doctor’s name. The only Harrison Hunter he had been able to find was the Chief Executive of the Canadian Pacific Railway. And that man’s photograph didn’t bear any resemblance to his new patient.

  Dr. Crisp had phoned him back, but wasn’t able to provide any real insights into Harrison Hunter beyond his views that the man was delusional and needed psychiatric help. He suggested that Van Dam contact the police.

  After Fisher departed, clutching a new prescription for anti-depressants that the psychiatrist had written out for him, Van Dam sat in silence, thinking hard. Should he phone the police? But to do that he had to be sure he believed Hunter—whoever he really was. And he had a strong feeling the man might be delusional. He’d had patients in the past who had confessed to imaginary crimes they had committed. On one occasion he had called the police, after a confession to murder, only to discover that no such crime had been reported. And in a subsequent session, this patient had admitted to making it all up.

  Was Hunter, as Dr. Crisp believed, really delusional? If he were to phone the police, giving them false information supplied by Hunter, might it actually harm or slow down the investigation?

  Logan was a lovely girl. Bright, warm and natural. His desperate sister had told him what he had already read, about the manhunt that was taking place to find her. He noticed the winking light on his phone. An incoming call. His secretary had left a couple of hours ago. He lifted the receiver and pressed the button to answer it.

  “Dr. Van Dam?”

  “Yes?” He recognized the man’s voice. “Dr. Hunter?”

  “It’s n
ot looking good for Logan Somerville, is it?”

  The psychiatrist had prepared himself for a further conversation with the man. He’d lined up a number of questions to test him. “How well do you know my niece?” he asked.

  “I don’t know her at all, Dr. Van Dam. I only know the man who has taken her.”

  “Is that so?”

  “He’s very deeply disturbed. We are going to have to tread very carefully if we want her to be safe.”

  “Tell me why I should believe you?”

  “Well, it’s because I can tell you something about her that the police don’t know.”

  “What’s her middle name, Dr. Hunter?”

  “I wouldn’t know that.”

  “Perhaps you can tell me her birthday?”

  “What are we doing—playing some kind of Trivial Pursuit, Dr. Van Dam?”

  “I wouldn’t say there was anything trivial about a young lady who might have been abducted.”

  Hunter’s voice sounded almost gleeful. “You see? You don’t even know for sure she has been abducted. She might have just run away to safety, to get away from her boyfriend. Sorry, her fiancé.”

  Van Dam was jolted by this. It was what his sister had told him earlier when he had called her to ask if it was true that Logan had disappeared. What was his connection? “Can you shed some light on how you know that, for me?”

  “It’s on her Facebook page!”

  “I’m afraid I’m not up to speed on social media.”

  “Well, Logan has put a couple of recent posts up on her Facebook page. The first says that she had broken off her engagement to Jamie Ball. The second, a few days ago, says, ‘Quoting Henry 2nd. Will no one rid me?’”

  “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” Van Dam said.

  “You’re on the money!”

  Van Dam frowned. “Are you saying the reason for her disappearance is to get away from her fiancé?”

  “You’re meant to be the expert on the human psyche, Dr. Van Dam. The lady changes her mind and her fellow doesn’t accept it. Perhaps the smart thing is to disappear. Lie low for a bit. Let him calm down.”

  Jacob Van Dam suddenly found his entire thought process in a tangle of confusion. Was this true, had Logan engineered her disappearance to get away from her fiancé? But before going down this route, he needed to be sure this man was real, and not, as he had originally feared, delusional or a fantasist. “How well do you know this man who you claim has taken my niece, Dr. Hunter?”

  “Well, there’s a difficult question. How well do you know any of your patients, I wonder? You will only ever know what they let you know. How well do we really know ourselves? Do you know yourself? I doubt I know myself. Remove my face and my name, and I doubt I would recognize myself if people were talking about me. How about you?”

  “I don’t think this is an appropriate time for philosophical discussions, Dr. Hunter. My niece is missing, and there are people who believe her life is in danger. If you have information to the contrary, I would really appreciate you sharing that with me.”

  “You sound very skeptical, Doctor.”

  “I don’t like people who play games with me. It’s six o’clock on a Friday evening. I’m tired and I want to go home.”

  “I expect Logan would like to go home, too.”

  “You’ve just told me she might have run away.”

  “And I told you earlier today that I’m the only person who may be able to save her life.”

  The psychiatrist took his time before answering. All his years in medical practice had not prepared him for someone as odd as this character. Was Hunter the man who had taken Logan? Was he actually a friend or associate of the man who had taken her? Or was the real reason for Logan’s disappearance, as he had suggested, altogether less sinister than everyone thought?

  “All right,” he said. “If Logan has run away to get away from her fiancé, what does she do next?”

  “I wouldn’t want to speculate on that. This is what I’m saying.”

  There was something in the man’s voice that deeply perturbed Van Dam. It was as if he was gloating about something. Some superior knowledge that he held. He decided to push him.

  “Would you say that you know my niece quite well, Dr. Hunter?”

  “I wouldn’t say so.”

  “But you know her?”

  There was a long silence. Van Dam sensed the dynamics had changed. He needed to get to a conclusion—and he was still far from one at this moment. He decided to push further. “There is very little you have told me, Dr. Hunter, that gives me any indication that you know Logan or anyone associated with her. It’s my view that you are a very disturbed man, trying to fulfill some deep inadequacy. So I’d appreciate it if you would either tell me something significant about Logan Somerville, or else crawl back into your hole and go pick on someone more gullible.”

  “You really want to blow the opportunity to save your niece’s life?”

  “Not at all. But I don’t believe you are the man who can save her. Answer the question I just put to you. Tell me something significant about Logan that will enable me to believe you.”

  “OK, Dr. Van Dam. Listen up. I’m going to tell you something. If you go to the police about me, I’ll never speak to you again and no one will ever see her alive again. So just keep this to yourself. Your niece has a mark on her right thigh.”

  “Does she? What kind of a mark?”

  “Three words, two of them abbreviated.”

  “What do they say?”

  “They say, ‘U R DEAD.’”

  30

  Friday 12 December

  At 6:15 p.m., carrying a mug of coffee, Roy Grace left his office, and made his way through the security door and along the labyrinth of corridors, past the Major Incident suite—MIR-1—which his Operation Haywain was sharing with Glenn Branson’s Operation Mona Lisa, the body from the Lagoon. As was the Sussex CID tradition, still maintained although they were now merged with Surrey, some wag on each team had stuck pictures up on the inside of the door. His operation was denoted by a photograph, torn from a magazine, of a reproduction of Constable’s Haywain painting as might have been interpreted by Banksy, with a supermarket trolley sticking out of the stream, and Glenn Branson’s by a cartoon of a smiling Mona Lisa holding an iPad.

  Suddenly he heard a familiar voice behind him, sounding distraught. “Chief, can I have a quick word?”

  He stopped and turned to see the forlorn figure of Norman Potting, the fifty-five-year-old Detective Sergeant’s comb-over looking even more ragged than usual, dressed in a shabby tweed jacket, crumpled shirt, tie askew, and badly creased gray trousers.

  “Sure, Norman,” he said with a kindly voice. “How are you bearing up?”

  “It’s hard, especially when I’m here in Sussex House.”

  “Are you sure you’re up to it?”

  “I’ve got to keep busy, Chief. I can’t just sit at home.”

  On Monday was the funeral of Potting’s fiancée, Bella Moy, who had died bravely rescuing a child, then a dog, in a house fire in Brighton several weeks earlier. “I understand, Norman.”

  “There’s something else—I need your opinion.”

  “Yes?”

  Three members of his team filed past them, nodding at Grace respectfully, and one of them patted Norman on the shoulder. When they were gone, Potting said, “It’s about my prostate cancer. I have to make some decisions—now—you know—now that keeping my winky action’s not so important any more. I’ve got all the options from the medics—I’d appreciate the chance to sit down with you and go through them—I don’t have anyone else I can talk to whose opinion I would respect.”

  “Do you want to do it next week, sometime after the funeral, Norman? Or is it more urgent?”

  “Next week would be fine, Roy, thank you.”

  Tears welled in Potting’s eyes, and he walked on, hastily.

  Grace stood for some moments, watching him with deep sadness. God, pe
ople got dealt shitty hands at times. Norman Potting’s private life had been a never-ending disaster. He had been through three—or was it four—failed marriages, but just recently had finally found what really seemed to be true love. Only to have it snatched away. And on top of that the poor sod had recently been diagnosed with cancer.

  And that cancer was really worrying Grace now. He’d read that trauma could seriously affect people’s immune systems. He had heard of several people who had suffered severe traumas in their lives and who, a short while after, had developed aggressive cancers. He hoped so much that Bella’s death wouldn’t do the same to Norman. Quite apart from the fact that he was a very fine detective, over the years he had known him he had developed a soft spot for the man.

  He switched his mind back to the immediate and seriously pressing task of finding Logan Somerville. As he walked along the corridor toward the conference room of the Major Crime suite, following Potting, he glanced at one of the flow charts that were pinned on the row of red noticeboards lining the walls. The charts were there to serve as a reminder to Senior Investigating Officers, and their team members, of the procedures and protocols of major crime investigations.

  Most of the time everyone strode past them, barely noticing them. But, every now and then, Grace liked to stop and reread them. It was all too easy to get complacent and that’s when you made mistakes. He stared up now at the “Murder Investigation Model” with all its flow charts. Then up at the “Fast Track Menu.” He was looking for one that related to mispers. He didn’t find a specific one but cast his eye down “Standard Analytics”:

  1. Victim Association

  2. Sequence of events

  3. Timelines on suspects

  4. Case comparison

  He stopped at that, and thought hard for some moments. Case Comparison. Then he read on.