The Possessions of Doctor Forrest Read online

  I pounded up to Parliament Hill and there he stood with Calder, both in jogging sweats. I suppose he’d persuaded the lad to join him on a sprint. Still, they were sucking fretfully on cigarettes, Grey’s usual parental rein relaxed – I nearly laughed, so clear was the evidence of how much his agitation must have wanted company. I’d have liked a few words with Cal, but some prearrangement between father and son was wordlessly invoked and the boy wheeled round, jogged off down the hill. Grey tossed his fag-end to the breeze.

  ‘So what’s the mystery, old fella?’

  ‘Ach. Wanted to tell you in person, instead of you hearing it on the news.’

  ‘What? You’re retiring?’

  My friend’s sorry look knocked back my try for levity. ‘No, Steve, no. It’s Killian MacCabe. He’s dead.’

  I never met the man but still I was shocked, and I assumed Grey must have felt all the worse for his closeness to Malena. I soon sensed, though, that for all the gloom around him he had already moved into a mode of obsessive analysis, and as I listened to him tell the full story I realised he would expect from me some astute, up-to-speed opinions on the sorry turn of events.

  ‘I had a call just after 4am from DI Hagen, who’s had, I should say, quite a night of it. They found MacCabe’s body just after 11pm, in the aisle of an over-ground train headed north out of London. Now – mark you this one – at that same hour Hagen was attending Robert’s apartment in Artemis Park, there’d been a break-in, albeit done without damage to the locks. A break-in for which Killian MacCabe is the chief suspect – or at least he was as soon as I’d told Hagen that Killian had access to Robert’s bloody keys.’

  How was I meant to compute all of that? I put my hand on Grey’s shoulder, as if I could, for once, be the rock in this relationship. ‘Grey, wait, listen, start again. With Killian, what was the cause of death?’

  ‘Undetermined as yet. Foul play not suspected. Hagen said the view from the pathologist is something to the effect that’ – and he grimaced – ‘it looks like one of those weird ones where the heart just stopped. Some defect, like Eisenmenger’s. Not really explicable in one so young, but. One for the procurator fiscal, as Hagen puts it.’

  ‘Weren’t there any witnesses?’

  ‘Nope. Train was near-empty, it chugged on a wee while before someone found him lying there on the floor. No CCTV in the carriage. They’re looking at the cameras at the station stops, but it’s not a well-covered line. Me, my first thought was suicide. Overdose, based on what I’ve seen and heard lately. But, there were no external injuries, no signs of toxicity.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to Malena?’

  He nodded slowly. ‘She’s just … destroyed. The poor girl. God knows how she comes back from this.’

  Whereupon Grey informed me that Killian had beaten Malena badly prior to his absconding – the grim culmination of his recent manias, I suppose. I was almost relieved to have something of my own to relate on this score, and told Grey I was more or less sure it had been MacCabe who rang my house drunkenly the night before last. Grey appeared to like my input not one bit.

  ‘Killian called you? Why the blazes would he do that?’

  ‘God knows. He was pished, for sure, or off his head on something. But it was like you’d said about him – almost a sort of a threat, in every word out of his mouth.’

  Grey nodded. ‘Right. You need to tell that to Hagen, Steve.’

  The idea oppressed me somehow. ‘But what does it mean? It’s not like there’s a crime here. Just a man who came off the rails – drastically, yes, assaulted his wife, yes – but now the bugger’s gone and died. It’s all ghastly but … I mean, what does it amount to, Grey?’

  His eye on me had a critical caste. ‘“Off the rails”, you say. What does that behaviour say to you, Stevie? About MacCabe’s state of mind?’

  I could only shrug. ‘I’d need the real story, but … the point, the tragedy is it’s all too late now. Isn’t it?’

  ‘What was Killian playing at, breaking into Robert’s apartment?’

  ‘Hang on, do they know it was Killian? I mean, god, could it not have been Robert? Is nobody working on that possibility?’

  ‘Robert wouldn’t be an intruder in his own home, wouldn’t creep in like a thief. This man came stealthily, and left the same way – only after putting young Sergeant Goddard in hospital, mind.’

  I was beginning to feel an ache between my eyes. ‘Grey, you’ll have to explain …’

  ‘Hagen’s had Goddard watching Robert’s apartment the last week or so – not round the clock, just checking in. He was parked outside last night, spotted a face he didn’t recognise scurrying in the main door, and when he sees a light in Robert’s window he goes up. Gets in there, checks around, sees some things disturbed in Robert’s office. But no one in sight. So he goes upstairs, then hears a noise below, hares back down and there’s his fella making a bolt for the door. So Goddard reckons he’s got the boy good and cornered, right? But I expect his bloody heart stopped when he got a better look, because the guy’s only got on his face one of those hellish black masks of Robert’s – the cold therapy things?’

  I nodded, swallowed, aware as I am now of Robert’s ugly ‘recreational’ uses for same.

  ‘He’s not so big, but, the intruder. So Goddard reckons he’ll take him. Only Robert’s umbrella stand is by the door. And Killian pulls out that cane I gave Rab on his birthday, whacks the lad with it, knocks him down and thrashes away at him where he’s lying on the floor. Until the bloody stick snaps.’

  The violence sounded so horrendous, Grey’s contempt for it so palpable, that I needed a moment to remember what had stirred in my mind. ‘You’re saying “Killian”, though, like it’s a certainty.’

  ‘The guy’s got Killian’s height and build, and it’s Killian who’s stormed out of his own house with Robert’s keys a few hours previous. So, aye, that’s our man, Stevie.’

  ‘Was anything actually taken from Robert’s?’

  ‘Odds and sods. Some leather carry-on bag got swiped from the office. Some papers, pages ripped out of a file of patients’ details. No, I’ve no bloody clue what Killian wanted with them. Nor the scalpel he swiped off of Rab’s dining table, it had been sitting with the mask – they were both there that day I met Hagen. But who’s to say we’re not missing something else? They’re going to need the light of day in there.’

  Mentally I was still wading through a mire. ‘Hold it, surely – whatever items got taken were found on Killian’s body?’

  ‘Nope. Not the bag or the paper, not the mask, the blade – nothing. He’d been pick-pocketed clean. Scavenged.’

  I glimpsed a light of sorts. ‘Could Killian have stolen those items so as to pass them on to someone else? Who was it actually found his body?’

  ‘A passenger who got on, probably the second stop down the line from when it would have happened. Found him just sprawled there in the aisle, like a broken doll.’

  ‘Grey, I do defer to the pathologist but … it is hard to believe he just stopped breathing and that’s it.’

  It was Grey’s turn to shrug. ‘Malena had thought he seemed very sick, suddenly, at the end. It’s just not reflected in the pathology. Not yet. Like you say, he’s gone, that’s it, he’s in the morgue. The stuff he nicked is God knows where. But Hagen’s not unreasonably formed the view that anyone whose details are in those pages could know something – or else be in danger. So he’s contacting them all as a precaution.’

  We sat awhile. I wanted badly to say something that could help dispel the murk. What occurred was this: ‘It would be useful, wouldn’t it, if Robert picked this moment to resurface? At a police station, ideally.’ Grey stared as if to say he didn’t follow, or didn’t care to. I held up my hands. ‘Grey, I know you don’t like to hear this, and I didn’t know MacCabe, or his friends or his enemies, but I do have to say again – if one were writing a list of people who might wish him harm, then surely Robert would be on it. Prominently.’

/>   Grey scowled. ‘Steven, this is a stinking mess, but you tell me what part of it suggests Rab did any harm to Killian. It’s Killian who’s been the aggressor. Unless you’re telling me Rab managed to stick some mind-altering drug into his tea. Something to account for what twisted the man. No, you ask me? I’m still not convinced Killian’s hands are clean about Robert’s going missing but whatever’s happened to him now – you and I, we know Robert had no part in it.’

  ‘Do we?’

  I meant to lodge my point, but Grey’s eyes had acquired the flintiness I recognised from past occasions when he was minded to ‘persuade’ by force. ‘If Robert “resurfaces”, Stevie, then you and I, his best pals, we’ll know about it. Don’t you think? Right now, though, he remains missing. And it’s not looking good. Jesus Christ, I’m more inclined to worry if someone did do for Killian – if – then maybe they did for Robert as well.’

  Rare it was for me to feel like the sober, grounded individual among the two of us. ‘Grey, just think about it. There’s nothing here but a tenuous connection, no real motive for anything, no circumstance to make it plausible. The link’s only poor Malena, I suppose.’ I did feel an urge, not unreasonable, surely unforgivable, to remark on the seeming propensity of her lovers to come to harm. I held back, knowing Grey’s feeling for her, in which he did look rather immersed.

  ‘Aye, I know, it’s true,’ he said after a long pondering while. ‘Malena’s the link. But there’s got to be something else. Somebody. Who is it, Stevie?’

  He looked at me very searchingly but I had said my piece as best I could, and no answer was going to fall on us from the palerose of the morning sky. I asked Grey for one of his red Marlboros, he obliged wordlessly, without surprise, and we smoked in silence.

  * * *

  I was late out to Blakedene, cursing myself, for I’d had an important session scheduled with Eloise, had hoped also to grab a serious word with Gillon beforehand. But that chance evaded me again.

  Eloise I found in pensive mood. Niamh had knocked on her door first thing this morning, as a call had come from Hagen’s team. Turns out the pages torn by ‘the intruder’ from Robert’s files last night contained personal details for all his recent patients with surnames beginning J–L … So, for the sake of form she had reprised for the police the details of her treatment at the Clinic, described (in tersest fashion) her brief entanglement with Robert, asserted she had never met Killian MacCabe, was herself in no one’s debt, and did not believe that anyone had grounds to blackmail or otherwise injure her. As we sat, though, she seemed to want to fathom the same mystery over which Grey and I had been ineffectually troubling our heads.

  ‘What do you think it means, Steven?’

  I threw up my hands. ‘It’s a riddle … All I see is a man’s dead, Robert’s still missing, neither event is quite explicable.’ I wanted to stay focused on her. ‘I do have some worries, though. With Robert. Given what you’ve told me … what he’s capable of. If he is still roaming around with something on his mind – understand, I don’t mean to alarm you, Eloise, any more than—’

  ‘I’m not afraid of Robert,’ she said simply, her frown suggesting only that I was the one with comprehension problems. ‘He always knew where to find me. But he never cared. And I do think he’s gone – for good, I’m afraid. I’m sorry if that sounds …’

  I have no idea how she’s arrived at this view, but what she said next so gratified me that I ceased to worry. ‘Anyhow, I’ve never felt as safe – “looked out for” – as I do here …’ She stood, hugged herself as if chilly, took a little turn around the room. I sat, thinking that our aborted session could hardly have delivered a more gratifying outcome.

  * * *

  David Tregaskis was unhinged today, there is no other word for it. I may have to admit defeat with him: anything less might be dangerous to us both. As we began I was no doubt preoccupied, and David too wore a subdued air, an unusual meekness about him. It wasn’t long before he flared, though. I had suggested, given the skill in his hands, he might consider turning this to an occupation – carpentry, say. But he resents this, loathes the very thought of earning his keep in life.

  DT: … The true worth of a man is not work or money. It’s his soul, how he suffers what the world throws at him. No one suffers like the poor, Steven. You’re too pampered, insulated, to see it. Do you know what it means to have nothing, to be junked on the street, turned away from every door? Spat at, despised, rejected, beaten, burnt?

  SH: I don’t claim direct experience, David. But most of my work as a hospital consultant was with the unwaged, the long-term homeless, the—

  DT: ‘Your work’, yes, not your experience, no. I tell you this – if there is a God, a true master, then I know He’s been among us, He’s lived as a despised man. Nothing human could be alien to Him. Any great force contains multitudes. Also humility. He is everybody. And, in that, He teaches us not to be narrow or defined. God should know how to feel as a man feels. Or an insect. His power should be that He changes his form, is capable of that great corporeal sympathy. By being embodied. From the great heights down to the lower depths.

  SH: Well … yes, David, you will know, legend has it, that God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son. ‘Who was pierced for our transgressions.’

  DT: Don’t give me ‘Jesus’. Jesus was a cross-maker, a rat, an informer …

  For all the sneer in his voice there was a low excitement on David’s face, and he was jogging up and down restlessly in his seat, twisting that silver bangle of his to and fro like a combination lock. I thought I would hazard a friendly enquiry.

  SH: David, are you aware just how often you worry at that bracelet of yours?

  DT: Yes. I am. It’s just— tight. It chafes.

  SH: Why not loosen it? Or slip it off awhile?

  DT: Never. It’s too dear to me. It has power, see.

  SH: What kind of power?

  DT: To ward away evil.

  SH: What sort of evil?

  DT: How many sorts do you know of?

  SH: Forgive me, I was thinking of your spirits. Master Ravenscourt? The Slaney girl.

  DT: No. I was mistaken there – about the spirit-ridden nature of my room. In fact I now think it’s Miss Keaton’s room that is the locus of that— disturbance. Maybe I should loan her this bracelet … When I pass her door, I swear, I get a very precise pricking sensation in my fingers and toes. Which is a sign. SH: ‘By the pricking of my thumbs—’

  DT: ‘Something wicked’? No. But wondrous, perhaps.

  […]

  DT: Forget it, Steven, I’m having sport with you … No, the truth? I was led at point of sale to believe my bracelet had transformative powers. I don’t know, but … I think it could possibly be some sort of an agent in that line. I could believe it might have those properties. I’ve seen it happen.

  SH: ‘Transformation’?

  DT: In my mind. Sometimes I don’t want to be myself. This body, this … envelope of flesh? It’s distasteful, Steven. I get sick of these hands of mine, big thick woolly wrists. I have hands like a burglar. Like a strangler. You want to try my bracelet on? I’ll let you.

  SH: You said you wouldn’t take it off.

  DT: I lied. No, it’s just I notice your wrists are quite slender. To be honest, it would suit you better than me. And then you could transform.

  SH: I’m content as I am, David.

  DT: Oh you are?

  SH: What do you transform into, David? In your mind?

  DT: A bird, mostly, Steven. They’re so obvious, aren’t they? Human dreams. Wanting to take flight from the ground, free of gravity’s pull. Sometimes I’m a spider, scuttling into your mouth at night …

  I was already gazing past David, out through the window, at the hues of twilight, the ink and the fire in the sky. I knew it was time for home and that, tonight, I would leave. Tregaskis was visibly irked to sense my withdrawal, but I also wanted to catch Gillon before he left for the day. So I sent David bac
k to his room, muttering all the way.

  I found Gillon in his office, asked him for an update on the sale/merger situation. Regrettably what I’d thought would be an awkward exchange turned into a full-scale quarrel. I had believed matters were moving sluggishly – in fact they seem to be flying – the point is that I am excluded from the loop, and Gillon doesn’t seem to care how I feel about that. I had to ask him outright if he believed he’d been hired to help me or, rather, undermine me at every turn. He threw me a disbelieving scowl, said we ‘should both stick to what we do best’.

  Back behind my office door I felt rattled and – almost without thinking – took the Remeron bottle from my desk drawer, popped a capsule. Whereupon my phone rang and I jumped, like a guilty child nabbed in the act by Father. It was Grey, of course, commandingly sure I’d want to brood with him over some details he’d received from Bill Hagen about Killian MacCabe’s autopsy. ‘Natural Causes’, definitely, for all that Grey seems to wish otherwise. Transport Police and crime-scene technicians were all over that carriage, dusting and tweezering up all the prints and micro-fibres they could want, but they found not a speck of Killian’s blood. The SGM guys combed his corpse, found the obvious traces of Malena – hair, skin, also blood – plus DNA of at least one unknown person, but nothing matching the database. So be it. Tonight I had nothing to give Grey for his pains. The Remeron was washing over me, I only heard myself assuring my newly superstitious friend that we do well not to make a mystery where the facts are plain.

  As I dandered to the window, phone in hand, I saw that Tregaskis had inexplicably left his precious bracelet behind on the sill. I picked it up as I talked to Grey and, absently, slipped it round my wrist. There was something pleasing in its cool silver clasp. I was staring out of the darkening window as I listened, and – just for a fraction of a second – I felt a little current of shock as the features of my reflection swam and seemed not quite my own. It was, as I say, the briefest blurring, then I relocated my familiar frown. But for a moment I was sure the face in the half-light was slighter, softer, more sculpted, even somehow female … The lesson, no question: Remeron is never to be toyed with.