The Primrose Switchback

by Jo Bannister

  Chapter Thirteen

  Prufrock was cleaning his parlour when he heard the familiar engine and, looking out, saw the car he’d waved goodbye to only a couple of hours before pulling up once more at his gate. He went to the front door, was about to call a greeting and ask what she’d forgotten, then he saw the expression on her face and forgot everything else.

  “Come inside. Tell me what’s happened.”

  “It’s Shad.”

  Almost nothing else would have brought her here looking like that. Grey wasn’t a colour you associated with Rosie Holland.

  Prufrock steeled himself. He closed the door and followed her into the parlour. Mostly they chatted in the kitchen, but that was because it was the only place Shad could join them without cleaning up first. But Shad wasn’t here.

  She didn’t sit down. She stood in the middle of the little chintzy room, unsure how to start.

  “Spit it out,” Prufrock recommended softly.

  So she did. “He says it was him. He says he remembers what happened, and what happened is that he killed Jackie Pickering.”

  The silence in the room was more than an absence of sound: it was a vacuum, a state in which sound was inconceivable. Neither of them would have been surprised if the clock had stopped ticking or a bird paused in flight outside the window.

  Finally Prufrock found a voice of a kind, cracked and run up high, a plaint. “What have they done to him?”

  Rosie breathed unsteadily into prayer-folded hands. She shook her head. “It isn’t like that. Nobody beat a confession out of him. You know he’s been working with Doctor Cunningham to get back what he’d forgotten? Well, he succeeded, and this is what he found. This is what was lurking at the bottom of the black lagoon.”

  Prufrock stared at her in astonishment. “Rosie! Don’t tell me you believe this nonsense?”

  Her mouth opened and shut a couple of times before anything came out. In the short time she’d had this information – Marsh had called her because he didn’t want to be responsible for an elderly ex-schoolmaster’s heart attack – she’d agonised over how it had happened and why it had happened, but it hadn’t occurred to her to wonder if it had happened. She wondered now. It seemed incredible that Shad could have got it wrong – imagined it, remembered wrong, lied … But it made no more credible a truth. Prufrock was right: there was room for doubt.

  But she’d been too long answering. Anger, and hurt which was worse, flared in the pale blue eyes, clear and sharp as ice on periwinkles. “You do! Rosie, he’s your friend. You know him, you know what he’s like. He’s not … smart. He can’t make witty conversation to save his life. He’s as out of place in the vodka and Volvo belt as you and I would be in the front line of the Bolshoi Ballet, if you want someone to make up the numbers for a glittering social occasion you’d be better asking Dolly the sheep.

  “But if you need someone to stand by you when it matters, when all the witty, clever, sophisticated people you know have found urgent business elsewhere, when standing by you is going to take stamina and courage and the only reason anybody’d do it is the obligation which true friends owe to one another, then you could count on Shad Lucas as you could count on very few others. He’s as honest as people come. You know that, Rosie. How can you think he might have killed a girl?”

  Rosie was feeling pretty rotten, but not rotten enough to take that lying down. One unplucked eyebrow lifted querulously. “You mean, apart from the fact that he says so?”

  “Says so!” snorted Prufrock. “You know the state he’s in. Something horrendous happened to him, and six days ago he’d no idea what it was. Yesterday he thought he’d witnessed a murder; now he thinks he committed one. But why should we trust his memory now when it’s been playing silly beggars for a week? There is such a thing as false memory, you know, where people remember something that never happened.”

  “I know that,” snapped Rosie. “But it’s not like he remembers meeting Elvis on the steps of Buckingham Palace. What he says he remembers is perfectly feasible. We know he was at the scene of the murder. He handled the knife, and he was close enough to the victim to get her blood on him. There’s no proof that anyone else was present. In those circumstances, if he says he stabbed her we have to listen to him.”

  “It’s a memory dredged up a week late out of an injured brain,” retorted Prufrock. “If he found her dying, of course he’d try to help. He held her; perhaps he pulled the knife out, thinking that without it he could stem the bleeding. I know it’s not good medical practice, but he isn’t a doctor, he was just someone trying to deal with a grim situation he’d been catapulted into. Neither his fingerprints nor her blood make him a killer. We don’t have to believe it just because he does.”

  They were shouting at one another because they didn’t know where their anger should be directed. They had reacted to the shock in characteristically different ways: Rosie by trying to understand it, Prufrock by refusing to accept it. This was a reflection of their professional experience. When people confessed outrageous acts to Rosie, they were telling the truth and looking to her for some insight. But his own career had taught Prufrock the value of scepticism. He believed only that which made sense. This didn’t, and he trusted his own judgement better than Shad’s memory. He’d known Shad Lucas for two years – well enough to have seen him through triumph and disaster, well enough to have seen him in love, in pain and in tears – and he didn’t believe he was capable of murder.

  “All right,” said Rosie, a tremor in her voice, “all right.” She sat down. After a moment Prufrock did too. “So we aren’t convinced. I don’t think Marsh is either.”

  “What did he say?”

  The superintendent had said that a confession obtained that way had to be treated with great caution; that he’d require clear corroboration before he’d prefer charges; that there were problems with the timing; that Doctor Cunningham was continuing to work with Shad in the hope of uncovering details that would put the matter beyond doubt. Details that only the killer could know; or else some elaboration of the story that proved it a fantasy.

  “Then, what?” asked Prufrock, puzzled. “He’s sending him home?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Fellowes Hall had been Doctor Cunningham’s idea. Shad was afraid that whatever madness had driven him to kill and then hide the fact even from himself could recur. And indeed, if he’d done what he thought he’d done, reacted to a pushy TV researcher with lethal violence, then behind bars was the only place for him.

  But Marsh didn’t just want a man in jail, he wanted the right man in jail, and he didn’t think he had the full picture yet. He wanted to understand what had happened, and with all that Shad had remembered he hadn’t been able to explain why Jackie Pickering had to die. Until he could, Marsh wasn’t prepared to rely on his recollections. He didn’t consider the confession of a man who’d been suffering from amnesia a good foundation for a murder charge. There were also practical considerations. With strict limits to how long he could hold a suspect for questioning, he was reluctant to start the clock ticking until he could count on getting the answers he needed.

  Cunningham proposed, as a compromise, admitting Shad to the addiction clinic where he was the senior consultant.

  “Addiction clinic?” exclaimed Prufrock, his voice soaring. “They think he’s made a habit of this?”

  The point about an addiction clinic, Rosie explained, was that people arrived voluntarily, but most of them would leave within a day or two if there weren’t systems in place to encourage them to stay. Fellowes Hall wasn’t secure in the way that Broadmoor was secure, but the whole ethos was designed to keep damaged, irrational, often hysterical, sometimes violent people where they could be helped. It was an environment in which he could continue working with Shad until the doubts were resolved.

  Prufrock mulled it over. “I suppose it makes a sort of sense,” he conceded quietly. “Can we see him?”

  “We can go now.”

  “It’s
that damned shrink’s fault,” Prufrock said thickly. For him, this was strong language. “I never did trust psychiatrists.”

  They were in the car now, heading east into the Warwickshire countryside. Rosie gave an awkward shrug. “You’re not being fair. All he did was help Shad to look behind the wall he’d erected in his mind. You can’t blame Cunningham for what they found there. He’s doing his best. If you’re right and Shad’s mistaken about how it happened, Cunningham will find out.”

  Even in her own ears it lacked the ring of conviction. Prufrock noticed too.

  “If I’m right?” he echoed quietly. “You mean, you think I could be wrong?”

  She shook her head unhappily. “Arthur, I don’t know what to think. It’s true that everything people think they remember didn’t necessarily happen. So yes, there’s reason to hope we can clear things up and get him home before word of this gets about. But you should be ready for two possibilities. If matters drag on long enough for Shad’s involvement to become public knowledge, there’ll be a reaction beyond anything you’d get if Jackie Pickering had been killed by a mugger or a jealous lover. People who consider themselves at the forefront of modern, scientific, twenty-first-century thinking will start chanting slogans that haven’t been heard since the Inquisition. We’re all liberal thinkers until we feel threatened by something we don’t understand; then we’re mediaeval villagers again, nailing horse shoes to the door and hanging garlic from the rafters for fear of the powers of the dark.”

  She was talking about a witch-hunt. And that wasn’t the worst thing she’d thought of. “And the second possibility?”

  Rosie risked taking her eyes off the road for a moment to cast him a sidelong look. “That he did what he says he did.”

  Prufrock refused to meet her gaze, stared haughtily out of the window. “No.”

  “Arthur, you don’t know. Believe in him, by all means. Give him the benefit of every doubt. But don’t close your mind to the possibility that it happened just as he remembers. She targeted him – to expose him, to ridicule him – she cornered him, he panicked and lashed out. It’s possible. Don’t count absolutely on some mistake coming to light.”

  “It isn’t possible,” insisted Prufrock. “Whatever she did, however she upset him, he wouldn’t react like that. Not with a knife. I know him better than that.”

  “Better than he knows himself?”

  “Much better,” said Prufrock dismissively. “He’s always been afraid of what he could do. It’s a great pity his uncle died when he did: Shad needed guidance from someone with the same sort of sensitivity. But Jacob died and Shad was left to cope alone, struggling with a faculty he only half understood. It’s no wonder that by the time I knew him, even by the time you knew him, he’d come to think of his gift as something dangerous and outside his control. He was always afraid that it would jump the rails one day and …” He broke off abruptly, staring straight ahead once more.

  She finished the sentence for him. “And something like this would happen. Arthur, that doesn’t make it either more or less likely to be true. But it’s no use closing our eyes to the possibility. If we’re really his friends, we have to face the truth, or how do we help him to?”

  They drove the rest of the way in silence.

  She was expecting a Jacobean mansion, all grand vistas and inferior plumbing. But too many winters under too few slates had reduced the original Fellowes Hall to a dereliction beyond repair and it had been levelled to make way for the clinic: a range of low, streamlined buildings in conker-coloured concrete with smoky-brown windows. The name was etched discreetly on a copper plate by the gate; no explanation of its function was offered.

  Doctor Cunningham met them at the door. After days of hearing his name in every conversation, it came as a little shock to both of them that they’d never seen him before. He was a tall man, slender in a steely kind of way. He moved deliberately but gave the impression he could move rather faster if he had to; which in his job was probably just as well. He spoke with an odd mixture of softness and precision.

  He showed them to his office. “I’m glad you came. Shad could do with cheering up.”

  “I dare say he could,” said Rosie. “Is there anything he needs?”

  “Ask him,” suggested Cunningham, “but I don’t think so. He brought some things from home. What he needs most is to get this matter settled, and we’re working on that. Even if there’s no happy ending, he can start coming to terms with it once he knows the worst.”

  “You think there’s some doubt then,” said Prufrock, more hopefully than he probably intended.

  Doctor Cunningham smiled sombrely. “We don’t know the full story yet. If everything Shad says is true, there may still be mitigating circumstances. He may have forgotten something which will alter the entire picture. I don’t want to encourage false hopes but it’s a possibility we can’t yet discount. I’ll go on working with him until I’m sure there’s nothing more to be recovered.”

  “And your honest feeling about what he’s saying?” Rosie watched closely for his reaction.

  Cunningham’s gaze flicked reproachfully at her. “I’m neither his judge nor his jury: his culpability is something for others to decide. If you’re asking whether I have any reason to disbelieve what he’s telling me, then no, I haven’t. But Shad thinking it’s true doesn’t necessarily make it so – particularly after a head injury and a week’s amnesia. He could believe it absolutely and still be wrong.”

  “Detective Superintendent Marsh said you’ve done a lot of work with amnesiacs. Had a lot of success.”

  “That was kind of him. Yes, recovered memory has been a speciality of mine.”

  Rosie frowned. “Funny place to pursue it – a drying-out clinic.”

  Cunningham gave her a tight-lipped smile. “Some people are genetically predisposed to addiction. But there’s usually a trigger factor somewhere in their past. Getting them to confront it is a necessary step in controlling their addiction.”

  It made as much sense to her as anything else in the realm of psychiatry. Rosie stood up. “Can we see him now?”

  “Of course.” Cunningham walked them down the corridor. There were no padlocks, but there were doors he needed a swipe card to open. “One thing: routine is important in our work here. We find it helpful to restrict visits once patients have settled in. I don’t mean I want him in isolation, but perhaps you could let me know when you’re coming again.”

  He’d stopped at a door, tapped and opened it. “You have some visitors, Shad.”

  One thing was clear: Fellowes Hall treated the better class of addict. Expense had not been a limiting factor in furnishing the place – Shad’s room was more comfortable than his flat over the shoe shop. The television was bigger, the furniture newer, the decorations fresher, and parked in a corner beside the slimline radiator was a trouser press. Rosie wasn’t sure Shad owned an iron, let alone a trouser press. Of course, there were people who thought the same about her.

  Shad was lying on his back on the bed, one arm across his eyes. He didn’t move; his voice was muffled by his sleeve. “I don’t want any v—”

  “Too late,” said Rosie briskly, shouldering her way into the room, “we’re here now. Thank you, Doctor Cunningham, we’ll let you know when we’re leaving.” Certainly she didn’t put him bodily outside, but somehow he found himself standing in the corridor with the door closed.

  Prufrock could think of nothing to say. The pale sharp eyes that had instilled respect in generations of schoolboys filmed over.

  “Oh, Shad.”

  If they’d thought they were doing him a favour by rushing over here they were mistaken. He was appalled to see them, the last thing he wanted to do was talk to them. He was ashamed and afraid, and he didn’t want Prufrock’s fussy paternalism or Rosie’s celebrated smart-with-a-heart trying to make it better.

  In a very real sense he was grieving: not for the girl but for his own lost self. Until today he’d believed himself one kind
of man, and now it turned out he was another. Discovering what he was capable of was shocking beyond words. He wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere and pull the sods on top of him. Quite literally, he wished he was dead.

  Only a fraction of this showed in his face. He’d spent a lot of time as he grew up learning to keep his emotions out of sight, precisely because of their innate power. They frightened him, he knew better than to put them on public display. He raised enough eyebrows as he passed: an intense young man with the faintly dangerous looks of his gypsy forebears; a strange man plainly listening to the beat of a different drum. He didn’t need to give the impression of being unstable as well. He learned to filter. He did it so automatically now that most people who met him thought him curt and detached. He was doing it now. He didn’t want anyone, even friends, to know how deep the pain went.

  And still he looked as if his soul was in shreds. Desolate, tormented, riven to the core. He was a gardener, sturdy and fit, muscles hardened in physical toil, but right now he looked so frail Rosie’s heart swelled and cracked within her.

  She said gruffly, “You look like shit. I imagine you feel the same way.”

  Filtered or not, kindness would have broken him. Unvarnished honesty he could just about cope with. He nodded jerkily. He sat up and braced his back against the wall as if anticipating assault.

  Rosie wasn’t good at small talk either. Only one thing interested her: she came straight to the point. “How sure are you? About what you told the police?”

  His eyes thought she was mad. “I remember.”

  Prufrock shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense, Shad. Perhaps you’re remembering wrong.”

  A sound that was half a laugh and half a moan burst from him. “Jesus, Arthur! Don’t you think, if there was half a chance …?” His head rocked back in despair. “There isn’t. I remember what happened. What I did.”