The Split

by Sharon Bolton

  ‘Any time you want to show me how it’s done,’ Joe offers.

  ‘Once I’m sitting, I can’t get up. So, the reluctant patient decides to open up. Must have felt like a big step forward.’

  ‘I thought I’d have to tease it out of her, session by session. Turns out all I had to do was ask about her private life.’

  ‘And these memory lapses presented suddenly and recently?’

  ‘So she says. Within the last few weeks, coinciding with nothing that she can think of.’

  ‘And are they affecting her at work too?’

  ‘She insists not. And given the glowing report her company gave her GP, she’s probably telling the truth about that.’

  ‘Acute symptoms that only happen at home?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  They are approaching the second of St John’s bridges, the Bridge of Sighs. Joe bends low. Torquil reaches up, touches the roof and pushes them on. ‘Did you ask about head injuries?’ he says.

  ‘I did. She says there’s been nothing. She doesn’t even get headaches.’

  ‘Sleeping well?’

  ‘So she says.’

  ‘Amnesia often has a physical cause. Alzheimer’s isn’t unknown in people her age. Are you organising the various tests?’

  ‘All in hand.’

  ‘That’s twice now you’ve said, “so she says”. Do you think she’s lying to you?’

  ‘I think she’s holding a lot back. Tell me something, Torq, does her suspicion that someone else is living in her house sound delusional to you?’

  Torquil thinks about it. ‘Not sure. It sounds as though she knows this can’t be the case, that somehow she’s responsible for the fag ends, and the unmade beds and the mysterious diary. That suggests the opposite of delusional to me.’

  Joe’s arms are aching. Thank God, they are almost back at Magdalene Bridge and the punt dock.

  Torquil asks, ‘Do you still suspect her of being a self-harmer?’

  ‘Hard to say. Her medical notes weren’t specific about where her scars are. Or whether they could have been self-inflicted. I haven’t felt there’s been the right time to ask.’

  Their punt nudges up against the jetty. The boatman takes the pole from Joe and waits for them to climb out.

  ‘So, that’s all your patients sorted,’ Torquil says, as he wobbles to his feet. ‘How are you doing?’

  Joe has been waiting for this. ‘I’m fine,’ he says. ‘It’s good to be back at work. Good to be busy again. Two months of convalescence was sending me stir-crazy.’

  ‘Any news on our roller-skating friend?’

  Joe tries, and fails, to stop the shudder. ‘Nothing,’ he mumbles, as he climbs onto the bank. ‘Mum would tell me right away if she’d been seen.’

  She would, wouldn’t she? She would tell him? Joe has a sudden flashback to a spring evening, to his mother spreading crime scene photographs over his hospital bed. He’d looked, trying to feel something other than numb, at a picture of the river bank just outside the city, and a rucksack containing a homeless girl’s entire belongings, including a pair of roller skates, lying in the mud. There had been no trace of the owner. After several weeks and an extensive police search, the young woman called Ezzy Sheeran had been declared missing, presumed dead.

  ‘Not everyone who goes in the river comes out again,’ Joe says. ‘The police think she was washed into the Ouse and then out into the North Sea.’

  ‘A body would be good, though,’ Torquil says. ‘Just to make it official.’

  Joe cannot bring himself to agree with this. Not out loud, at any rate.

  ‘This time last year, wasn’t it?’ Torquil says. ‘That she first turned up, I mean.’

  ‘Last Friday in June.’

  ‘I’m probably stating the obvious, but your mum and her mates have considered a link between what happened to Miss Sheeran in April and Bella Barnes’ death, haven’t they?’

  It takes Joe a second or two to catch up. ‘You think they could both have been murdered? By the same killer?’

  ‘Is it impossible?’

  ‘Bella was stabbed. The theory is that Ezzy committed suicide after what she did to me.’

  ‘But in the light of new information, I mean Bella’s murder, maybe Ezzy suffered a similar fate and her body was thrown in the river.’

  Delilah hasn’t said a word about any new theories regarding Ezzy Sheeran’s disappearance. Joe feels sure she wouldn’t keep him in the dark. On the other hand, she knows how difficult it is for him to talk about what happened in April.

  Torquil is watching him closely. ‘Pint?’ he offers.

  Joe shakes his head. ‘I’ve got my first session back at St Martin’s. It wasn’t available on Tuesday. Exam time.’

  ‘Want me to come?’

  Joe reaches out a hand and pats Torquil on the shoulder. ‘Mate,’ he says, ‘I’m fine.’

  The look his supervisor gives him as Joe turns away is one he’s seen many times before. Usually, though, on his mother’s face.

  * * *

  ‘But I only looked at the baby.’ A tear zigzags down the elderly woman’s cheek. Her face is so wrinkled it can’t flow in a vertical line.

  ‘Dora, you took the baby out of its pram while its mother was attending to an older child. You know you can’t touch other people’s babies.’

  ‘She hit me.’

  ‘The baby hit you?’

  ‘The mother. She snatched it back and hit me. She called me horrible names. She should have been arrested, not me.’

  Behind Dora, the woman from the charity who organises the weekly drop-in is hovering. His next appointment is waiting.

  ‘Mothers are fierce if they think their babies are under threat,’ he says.

  ‘I wouldn’t hurt a baby.’

  Dora’s lip is trembling and another tear spills out from the corner of her eye.

  ‘I know,’ Joe says, although the truth is, he doesn’t, because decades earlier, married to a solicitor and teaching at a local girls’ school, Dora lost three infants to cot death. Sympathy at the time was huge, until she was arrested and charged with the murder of her own children. The charges were dropped for lack of evidence, but the resulting depression cost Dora her job and her marriage. Long ago, she began drinking and lost her home. Now she lives on the streets and no one knows whether she is the unluckiest woman alive, or a monster.

  ‘You’ve been cautioned again, haven’t you, Dora?’ Joe says. ‘An incident in the shopping centre.’

  ‘Those girls were bullying Martin,’ Dora says. ‘I couldn’t do nothing.’

  Martin is one of Dora’s homeless friends who got into an argument with some school girls. Dora, begging nearby, pitched into the fray, swinging her shopping trolley at one of the girls and giving her a nasty cut on the leg.

  ‘You’ll be arrested if you do it again. You could go to prison.’

  ‘You won’t let that happen to me.’ Dora grips Joe’s hand. Her skin is scaled and rough. ‘You have a word with that mum of yours. Tell her I wouldn’t do any harm.’

  Joe sighs. No one is supposed to know his mother is with the police.

  ‘When can I see you again?’ Dora asks. She still hasn’t released his hand. ‘It hasn’t been the same without you these last few weeks.’

  ‘I’ll be here on Tuesday. How about twenty past eight?’

  ‘Is that your last appointment?’

  It isn’t, but he’s learned from experience never to give Dora the last appointment of the evening. Getting her to leave is always twice as hard.

  ‘Last available. Look, I’ll write it down for you.’

  He writes 8.20pm, Tuesday on a business card and she grabs at it, tucking it away in an inside coat pocket. Her sweater is a blue fleece, he sees, with insignia from the film Frozen.

  ‘You take care, Dora.’ He gets to his feet. And don’t hurt anyone, he thinks to himself.

  * * *

  ‘I need some cash,’ the man in his forties says before he’
s even taken a seat. ‘I need some money. A loan. I’ll pay it back.’

  ‘What do you need money for, Michael?’ Joe asks. ‘Take a seat.’

  Michael sits on the edge of the chair.

  ‘Fifty quid will do it. Twenty. Can you lend us twenty?’

  ‘I can’t lend you money, you know that.’

  Michael leans forward, letting Joe see his blackened teeth. ‘I need to go somewhere safe.’

  The evening is warm, but Joe feels a cold breeze sweep through the hall. ‘Why do you think here isn’t safe?’ he asks.

  ‘Well, you know. That Shane fella.’

  Joe sits up a little straighter. ‘Who’s Shane?’

  ‘You know, the fella that’s been knifing homeless people. You probably don’t know about it, what with you being sick and all for weeks. Stabbed young Bella, he did.’

  ‘Michael, if you know something about what happened to Bella, you really should talk to the police.’

  ‘I’m not talking to no fucking police. I just want to get out of here.’

  ‘Ok, talk to me then. Tell me why you’re frightened of Shane.’

  Michael glances back, as though someone could be eavesdropping. ‘He’s not right.’

  ‘In what way.’

  ‘He watches us. While we’re asleep.’

  ‘I’m not trying to be clever, but how do you know if you’re asleep?’

  ‘We’re never really asleep. We can’t afford to be. We, like, doze. I saw him, the other night, down at Silver Street. He was staring down at this geezer like he wanted to – you know – eat him.’

  ‘What does he look like?

  ‘It was dark. I wasn’t close.’

  ‘How old?’

  A shrug.

  ‘White? Black? Asian?’

  ‘White guy, I think. I don’t know. I didn’t get a good look. Fucking Norah, what is she doing here?’

  Joe follows Michael’s gaze. His mother is standing in the doorway.

  * * *

  ‘You’ll never find him.’ Joe catches Delilah by the shoulder. She’d been about to tear out of the hall in hot pursuit of Michael. ‘He’ll be on the other side of the city by now.’

  Delilah pushes out a heavy sign of exasperation. ‘What is wrong with these people?’

  ‘Where do I begin?’ Joe has four more people to see and he’ll be lucky if any of them stay now that his mother has arrived.

  ‘And he definitely knew this Shane bugger?’

  ‘White guy, possibly, watches the homeless while they sleep. All I could get out of him.’

  Delilah pulls out a chair. ‘You’ve got to help me out, Joe. These people of yours know Shane. If they start co-operating, we can find him before he hurts someone else.’

  Joe hears the sound of the main door opening. He looks back into the hall to see the last of his evening’s appointments disappearing and remembers that Bella Barnes may not have been the first person that Shane hurt.

  ‘Is it possible that Ezzy Sheeran’s disappearance and Bella’s murder are linked?’ he asks.

  ‘Who put that idea in your head?’ Delilah snaps.

  ‘Is it?’

  Delilah makes an exasperated gesture. ‘We can’t rule it out,’ she says. ‘Two young homeless women in the same city, within two months of each other. We really need to find this Shane.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ he says. ‘And for what it’s worth, I agree. Shane sounds dangerous.’

  * * *

  Sometime later, Joe sits, on a wooden bench by the path on Midsummer Common, enjoying the cool of the evening. There is a scent in the air that he thinks might be jasmine, and crickets sing in the grass at his feet. Joe closes his eyes, wonders what Sarah and the kids are doing, and feels a wave of loneliness wash over him.

  ‘You’re Joe, aren’t you?’ says a voice in his ear.

  Joe opens his eyes to see a girl sitting by his side. She is small, maybe in her late teens, and would be very pretty, except that she has too many piercings for his taste, and green hair doesn’t really do it for him.

  ‘That’s my name,’ he agrees. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Erzebet,’ she says. Her voice is low pitched, with an Irish lilt.

  He blinks. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘It means devoted to God.’ She smiles at him. It would be a sweet smile, but her teeth are a little crooked, and don’t look entirely clean. ‘I’m not though,’ she says. ‘Devoted to God, that is. People call me Ezzy.’

  She moves a little closer to him on the bench and he notices that over her trainers she is wearing roller skates. She is very thin, and her skin has a dry, grey look about it. Her pupils, he sees now, are dilated.

  ‘Well, nice to meet you, Ezzy. How do you know my name?’

  ‘I was at St Martin’s in town just now. Your people back there were talking about you.’

  Joe wonders if the girl, who seems to be edging closer along the bench, has followed him here.

  ‘How old are you, Ezzy?’

  ‘Eighteen.’

  She barely looks fifteen.

  ‘If you’re under eighteen, I can call social services. There are charities that can help. Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?’

  ‘Can I stay with you?’

  Joe gets to his feet. ‘That won’t be possible, I’m afraid.’

  She is upright too, like a child beside him, even with the added height of the skates. ‘They said at St Martin’s that you look after the pretty girls.’ She pushes her bottom lip out. ‘They say you take them home and make them nice and comfortable.’

  ‘I don’t know who—’

  ‘Are you cheating on me already, Joe? We’ve only just met and you’re cheating on me.’

  The girl’s face is twisted with rage. She isn’t Ezzy, any more, though, she’s Felicity, and that is a knife in her hand.

  ‘Serves you right,’ she hisses, as she drives the knife into his stomach and his whole body begins to burn with shock and pain. ‘Cheating bastard.’

  * * *

  Joe wakes with a start to find that he is in his bedroom at home, and the clock by his bed reads 02.45. He has had the dream again.

  It has never featured Felicity before.

  He gets up, to let the night air cool his body, and checks the locks on the doors and windows before he gets back into bed. He lies, trying to think about anything but Ezzy and finds himself thinking, instead, about Bella and the mysterious Shane.

  Watching people while they sleep? Joe wonders if he will ever sleep soundly again.

  27

  Shane

  Shane is very good at entering property. He doesn’t like the term breaking and entering. There is no need to break if you are good at what you do, and Shane is very good at what he does. Of course, he doesn’t usually enter properties when people are inside, but he likes a challenge.

  The fire escape makes it easy because people are never as security conscious on their top floors as they are on the ground, and the locked yard around its base gives an odd illusion of safety. Don’t they know how easy it is to scale a stone wall that’s no more than seven feet high? Child’s play.

  He ascends the steps slowly, knowing how noisy iron can be, and how close to sleeping people he will be as he climbs to the first floor, the second and then the third and last. On the third floor a doctor lives and works.

  A special doctor. A doctor who treats the mind. A doctor called Joe who spends a lot of time with the homeless. Shane isn’t sure whether or not he trusts Joe with his people. It is time Shane paid Joe a visit.

  When Shane reaches the top, he tries the door handle, because you never know, but it won’t budge. His bump keys will not work on this sort of lock. There are two windows to the left of the door, a larger one that he could climb through easily and a much smaller one above it. The smaller one is slightly open to let in the night air.

  Shane swings one leg over the side of the fire escape and feels it shift on its clamps. Using his other leg as an anchor, he leans ou
t towards the open window, until he can slip his thin hand in through the two-inch gap. Reaching the lock, he turns it. The small window can now be opened fully and by balancing on the sill, Shane can reach down and unlock the larger window. Getting in now will be easy. He climbs in, onto the worktop surrounding the kitchen sink and drops to the floor.

  He waits to check that all is silent. He has made no sound and in his dark clothes it is unlikely that he has been seen. Cautious, though, he unlocks the back door. He closes the lower window and returns the smaller one to the position he found it in. Only now, can he take stock of his surroundings.

  He is in the small, functional kitchen of a professional single male. He sees the cheap IKEA crockery and the top-of-the-range coffee maker. There are economy bags of basmati rice and penne pasta on the shelves but the wine on the rack is good quality. To one side of the sink is a knife rack. Shane is never entirely sure how he feels about knives. On the one hand, they feel nice when he’s holding them. On the other, they cut through skin and flesh so easily and there have been accidents before now. He chooses the one from the middle of the row. It is a perfect fit in his right hand.

  Armed now, he steps out onto a narrow landing and passes a bathroom on his right. The door that will open on to the internal staircase has a Yale lock and bolts at both top and bottom. He draws back the bolts and puts the lock on the latch. A second escape route never hurts.

  The room ahead is large and lit by the streetlamps outside. Even in the poor light he can see the warm colours, the good-quality furniture. He spends longer than he should at the window, looking out at his city by night. He cannot see any of the sleepers from this height but he knows where they are. Before the night is over, he will have visited them all.

  A clock strikes the quarter-hour and breaks him out of his reverie. He returns to the landing. There are two more rooms in the top-floor flat.

  The first is a living room, with sofa, armchairs, bookcases and a TV; smaller, shabbier and more cosy than the room where the doctor sees his patients. Most of the books are about psychology or psychotherapy but there are a few novels. Shane has little interest in books.