‘He hinted at this?’ Beth knew that most suicides had talked about killing themselves in the past.
‘Not exactly, but he said that he’d never find a girlfriend, that no one at the gym – that’s where he worked when he wasn’t doing his freelance personal training – understood him, that even his parents had preferred his brother. And he kept bringing home these self-improvement books. Remember I told you about them?’
‘Uh huh,’ Beth said, though she couldn’t quite remember. He’d mentioned John’s love of change-your-life courses when she’d said that some doctor’s surgeries were now referring the bereaved to positive thinking classes. Other than that, he’d rarely talked about the youth.
‘Will we call in someplace for a drink?’ she asked hopefully when they’d been walking for over an hour.
Adam stopped. ‘You bet! Make mine a double.’
‘Mine too,’ Beth said, realizing that her spirits needed a lift.
They found a pub and both ordered whisky. When they were seated, she checked her mobile phone but Matthew hadn’t been in touch. She realized that he was contacting her less and less often, yet, for the first few months, he’d sent her daily text messages and often phoned to see how she was. He hadn’t even asked her about the nature of tonight’s emergency, had seemed just as happy to stay in Clevedon with his kids.
‘Planning a hot date?’ Adam teased.
‘No, I just cancelled one with Matthew.’
‘Because of me?’
‘Because I’ll always put bereaved people first. I remember how I felt when my husband died.’
‘I hope that Matthew appreciates you,’ Adam said, briefly touching her hand.
Beth hoped so too.
Why was she spending so much time with other widows and widowers? It simply wasn’t healthy. Matthew put down his mobile feeling put out and confused. She worked all day in a hospital yet still chose to spend her free time counselling on a voluntary basis. It meant that her life was totally unbalanced, dedicated to the sick and the bereaved. He did a semi-manual job so made sure that his social life revolved around the cinema, meals and pubs, places where he could laze about and rest his muscles. It made for a more rounded life.
Going to his landline, he phoned his youngest daughter, the one who could never resist a night out.
‘Do you fancy going to the pub?’
As usual, she sounded pleased to hear from him. ‘Love to, but aren’t you going out with Beth tonight?’
‘She cancelled on me at short notice, says she has to help someone who’s bereaved.’
‘I didn’t realize that she had to work nights.’
‘She doesn’t.’ He didn’t feel like defending her. Why couldn’t she get her priorities right?
‘It’s a mate, then?’
‘Apparently. She’s surrounded by widows all the time.’
‘Do you think she’s seeing someone else, Dad?’ His daughter sounded worried for him.
‘Not with that hair,’ Matthew said, then laughed somewhat bitterly at his own joke.
THIRTY
Once again, life had returned to normal. Beth had become his friend, the police had informed him of John’s suicide, his father had told him about Tim’s untimely death and his patients were thriving. He’d just taken on a kleptomaniac so was keeping a close eye on the contents of the room. He’d lost heavily on the horses this week, and no longer had John’s rent money coming in, so couldn’t afford to let his new patient steal anything remotely valuable.
‘How do you feel when you don’t steal?’ he asked the man, a sixty-year-old who had accepted a generous redundancy package and subsequently received a substantial inheritance from his parents.
‘Depressed. Sort of flat. Ordinary.’
‘So shoplifting gives you a temporary high?’
‘Just in the moments immediately before . . . I mean, I don’t plan it. I’ll be browsing in a department store and suddenly this inner voice is urging me to steal.’
It was the same with raping and killing, Adam thought – sometimes the anticipation was better than the actual event.
‘And what do you take?’ He knew that many kleptomaniacs preferred a specific type of item. One of his former female patients had amassed a huge collection of contraband lipsticks. She’d even had her lips tattooed with semi-permanent colour but it had made no difference to the need to thieve.
‘I mainly take pens.’
Adam relaxed: he didn’t own a Mont Blanc.
‘And you always hang on to them?’
The man looked surprised that he was even asking the question. ‘Of course, I keep them in a special room.’
His patient would never sell these pens – he had lots of money. They were merely the outward manifestation of an obsessive compulsive personality.
‘So when did this start?’ he asked, genuinely curious. He loved to find out what made people tick. It helped him to manipulate them and others cut from the same cloth.
‘After I gave up work. I suppose that I was bored and started going out and drinking more. I got mugged one night and stayed home for a week afterwards, feeling really shaky and just ordering home deliveries. One day I made myself go shopping and, for some reason, took a potato peeler from a display stand in the supermarket. For a few minutes, I felt so much better, but afterwards I was shocked at myself and felt really ashamed.’
‘A traumatic event can trigger such behaviour,’ Adam said calmly.
‘I didn’t know that. I just thought that I was sliding into madness,’ the man replied, looking relieved.
‘No, you might be low on serotonin or have some genetic predisposition to this type of behaviour but you are perfectly sane.’
‘I’d like to start dating again – I think I said that I was recently divorced? – but I don’t want to keep doing this, bring shame on a new partner.’
Adam adopted his most reassuring tone. ‘Counselling and, perhaps, medication, will make all the difference.’ He hesitated. ‘So, what made you seek treatment now?’
‘I was caught but paid the store detective and the owner a small fortune not to take it further. If I keep going, I could face a custodial sentence and I couldn’t cope with jail.’
Adam shuddered. He, too, hated the thought of prison. What must it be like to get up when the wardens told you to, to eat terrible food and share accommodation with dirty, violent illiterates? What must it be like to lose life’s simple pleasures – a single malt, a game of blackjack, a good fuck?
‘Don’t worry – we’ll devise a plan to keep you away from Her Majesty’s establishments. You’re alert and motivated, you will find it easy to follow a plan.’
A lot of his job was about sounding confident, getting the client to believe in him. Weak people needed an anchor, in the form of a deity, a holistic practitioner, a guru or a shrink. If they thought that he had the answers, was a source of comfort, they would gladly follow his advice.
‘Do you get many patients like me?’ the man asked.
‘A few, though most don’t have the courage to self-refer, come to me through the criminal court system.’
‘So, at least I’m proactive,’ the man said with a wry smile.
‘You certainly are.’ It was good to have a client who was intelligent and articulate. Sometimes the person facing him was so withdrawn that it was like talking to the wall.
‘And am I older than your average client?’
‘There’s no such thing as average,’ Adam explained, meaning it. ‘I have seven-year-old patients with enuresis.’ He was tempted to add that he had eighty-year-olds with the same problem, but instead settled for: ‘And seventy-year-olds with memory impairment.’
‘And they are all improving?’
‘They are making great strides,’ Adam said self-assuredly. He was especially glad that Brandon Petrie had recovered from his little cousin’s accidental death, was turning into an exemplary young man.
He hadn’t taken his Ritalin for weeks now, and was
feeling so much better. The drug made him feel tired and down, sort of hung-over. Now, he was energized and ready to kick ass.
‘Brandon – stop kicking your chair.’
He hadn’t even realized that he was doing it until Mr Leston loomed in front of him, hands slapping down hard on his desk.
Brandon stared at the English teacher, who eventually looked, and walked, away. He stared at the other teenagers in the class until they, too, returned to their books.
Should he walk out? Why the fuck was he here, learning about the quality of mercy from a long-dead playwright? He was an ideas person, a radical, shouldn’t be constrained by the system and by four walls. Entrepreneurs often left school at sixteen and started wheeling and dealing. Bill Gates had the right idea, dropping out of university.
‘Brandon, I won’t tell you again.’
Good – he’d have peace, then. With difficulty, he stilled his feet.
As the class filed out, Mr Leston called out to him.
‘Brandon, can I have a word?’
Which word? Cunt?
He kicked each chair leg as he went past in a contemptuous gesture.
‘Is something wrong?’ the teacher said.
Something was always wrong in the world – global warming, mass starvation, the small mindedness of most parents. Couldn’t the man be more specific? Didn’t he mean ‘is something wrong with you?’
He shrugged, stared.
‘You’ve been concentrating so well until recently.’
‘Maybe I just don’t rate Shakespeare.’
‘Admittedly he doesn’t appeal to everyone, but remember we spoke about how becoming an adult means deferring gratification, doing some boring and repetitive tasks?’
God, he sounded like Adam now, the all-knowing psychologist.
‘But not all adults study Shakespeare.’
‘No, but chances are that the successful ones will have studied something which didn’t appeal to them. For example, you might prefer science subjects but recognize that you also need a pass in English Lit to get into university.’
‘Not all successful people go to university.’ He shifted from foot to foot, looked at the door and made a slight movement towards it.
‘But you said that you did want to go to uni, Brandon.’
‘Did. Past tense.’ Only the dull and unimaginative never changed their minds.
‘Whatever you’ve decided, I can’t let you disrupt the class.’
‘Bar me, then.’
‘We only do that as a last resort. Brandon, you don’t belong with the unteachables. You’re intelligent and creative. Please don’t waste it. You could go really far in life.’
God, he felt such contempt for this man who taught the same plays and poems over and over. They could replace him with a recorded message or a sheaf of notes.
He said nothing, looked out of the window. He could sense the teacher staring at him and he hated that, loathed making eye contact.
‘Has anything changed?’ the man asked.
Aha, the million dollar question. What he really meant was ‘have you stopped taking your medication?’ but the notes from his doctor had said that the teacher wasn’t allowed to ask. Similarly, they weren’t allowed to give him his lunchtime Ritalin as that would mean that the other students would know that he was on tablets. Instead, they trusted him to take it himself.
‘What could have changed, Mr Leston?’
‘You tell me, Brandon.’
‘I can’t imagine.’
Stalemate. He walked towards the door.
‘If you ever want to talk . . .’
Oh, he loved to talk – but to the scientists and academics that he met online, not to bog standard secondary school teachers. This time, he didn’t bother to reply.
His mother was doubtless parked out at the front, so Brandon went out the back way, and walked home in the rain, feeling trapped and alienated and enraged: he hated these patronizing pep talks, had an increasing need for action. Maybe he’d really give them something to talk about by burning down the school.
THIRTY-ONE
‘Is John here?’
I hope not. Adam stared at the small, plump girl and realized that she looked vaguely familiar. He wondered where he’d seen her before.
‘I’m Louise,’ she added. ‘I did his health and well-being course here last week.’
Aha, she’d sat happily on his settee eating the rice that had been next to Kylie’s corpse in the freezer. She’d been John’s potential love interest, would probably have become his first girlfriend and, eventually, his wife.
‘I think I left my mobile here and as I was passing . . .’ she continued.
He quirked an eyebrow and she had the grace to blush.
‘Do you want to come in and look for it?’
She was obviously lonely, so he might screw her sometime that he had a spare night. She’d be suitably grateful. On the other hand, he liked his women to be slimmer, though she had nice big tits.
‘That would be great.’ She bounced through the front door and into the lounge. ‘It might have slipped down the settee.’ She made a show of looking for it.
‘Wouldn’t I have heard it ringing?’
She blushed again. ‘Oh no, I was concentrating on John’s words, had it switched off.’ She hesitated. ‘Is he at the gym? I popped my head in the door but didn’t see him. He said that he worked odd hours.’
Damn, he was going to have to tell her and she’d cry and he’d have to do ten minutes of arm patting when what he really wanted to do was walk to the hospital and see Beth. He was sure that there was a growing spark between them and he was keen to capitalize on it. Maybe they could be friends with benefits until she wised up and walked away.
‘Louise, you’d better sit down. I’ve something to—’
The bell pealed through the house and he excused himself and went to answer the door.
Shit. He stared at the police. Couldn’t they phone up and arrange an appointment like everyone else?
‘Mr Neave? If we could come in?’
He wanted to say no but that would look strange. He had to be calm at all times, border on the charming. He wouldn’t even ask what it was all about, would presume, until they said otherwise, that they were here to discuss John or tiny Tim. Or could his mother have died and his father have followed suit due to the shock? In some families, sickness caused member after member to collapse like a pack of cards.
‘Of course.’ He showed them into his study, then said, ‘Excuse me a moment.’
Hurrying to the lounge, he smiled at Louise who was sitting, waiting patiently, on the settee, unsurprisingly sans mobile.
‘My guests have arrived. Can I phone you about John? Leave your number.’ He picked up today’s copy of the Guardian and a pen and handed them to her. He tapped his foot impatiently as she wrote, afraid that the police would come through here and start talking to her. He had to make them think that John had nothing to live for, was without hope.
‘He doesn’t have to call if he doesn’t want to,’ she said tremulously.
I doubt if he can dial, sweetheart.
Forcing himself not to give her a shove, he shepherded her outside, shut the outer door and returned to his study to find both detectives studying his bookshelves. Good. Hopefully they’d treat him with respect.
‘So, gentlemen, what can I do for you?’
He sat behind his desk and watched them sit awkwardly on the therapist’s couch, like a gay couple coming to a Relate session.
‘We need to talk to you further about your tenant, John Jameson.’
‘A sad case. He was just so lost.’
‘The thing is, Mr Neave, we’ve had the autopsy report back and he didn’t commit suicide.’
‘He didn’t?’ Adam heard his own voice go up an octave. ‘He wasn’t enjoying life so, when you said you’d found him hanging, I naturally assumed . . .’
‘No, we’re still trying to ascertain how he died, but he was de
ad hours before he was strung up. We know that from the way that the blood had pooled and the ligature marks. Someone wanted to make it look as if he took his own life.’
‘How odd,’ Adam said. He’d watched Columbo and knew that people often trapped themselves by supplying additional information. He sat back and looked at the two men and they returned his gaze. He let the silence lengthen, was pleased when they cracked first.
‘Did he have any enemies?’
‘I don’t know. He was only my lodger.’
‘But he confided in you that he was unhappy, that –’ the detective consulted the notes that their colleagues had presumably taken on the previous visit – ‘he had never had a girlfriend and feared that no one would ever care for him.’
‘Oh yes, he said that and mentioned that he was unhappy at work – he was a personal trainer but a very thin man, could never build up his own muscles, so I think he felt fraudulent and would become depressed. He was always buying these books to improve his mindset but nothing seemed to work.’
‘Could he have made a pass at another man?’
‘It’s possible,’ Adam said, understanding their line of questioning. A straight man might lash out at someone who made a pass and kill him by accident then panic and try to make it look like a suicide. ‘I mean, he was desperate to be in a relationship and any port in a storm . . .’
‘Could he have walked from here to Uphill Woods?’
‘Easily, he often walked for miles for work or leisure.’
‘And did he know anyone in Uphill?’
‘I doubt it. He was completely without friends.’
‘Well, it wasn’t a friend who killed him, was it?’ said the older detective with an edge of sarcasm to his voice.
‘I suppose not.’
He wasn’t so sure about that. Weren’t most people killed by those they loved?
‘Have you any idea who might do such a thing?’
‘As I said, I was only his landlord.’
‘Can I ask how you met him?’
‘I took out gym membership and joked to the receptionist that I needed a personal trainer. John works – I mean worked – part-time for them in that capacity and he overheard, introduced himself. I had a few sessions with him before my client list became too demanding, but by then he’d mentioned that he was looking to rent a room and I’d been toying with the idea of taking a lodger, so he moved in.’
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