The Possessions of Doctor Forrest Read online

  ‘The road ahead’s got a bleak look, my friend.’

  ‘Ach c’mon,’ I chided. ‘There’s plenty hunger in you yet.’

  ‘Hunger? Oh aye. I’m ravenous. But it’s just not satiable, doctor. It’s starting to cause me pain …’ His mouth, I saw, had set in a hard line and in the next instant he tossed his champagne flute into the air like so much rubbish. It landed on the plush grass without a crack; the gesture nonetheless seemed one of worrying indifference.

  He had been sickening of his work a while, I know. For a man who not unreasonably rated himself a sort of artist, he clearly found it harder and harder to live with his flighty clientele, forever pestering him with their shopping list of wants, irrespective of the physical materials at their disposal – their body type, weight, height, colouring – even just the basic matter of how their bloody nose ought to look right bang in the middle of their face (‘Could you move it a tad to the left …?’) Robert had grown to find all that profoundly vacuous, rightly so.

  Then there is his ‘bad influence’ of recent weeks, that Vukovara woman, la signora nera … But I just can’t believe such a shady female truly got hooks into Rab. He saw through her, I’m sure – she was off the scene.

  So, I try to relive his and my last encounters, scour our small talk for tiny signs. But one knows, too, in one’s heart, that this is forlorn detective work. For starters, if a man commits suicide who would ever really know why? There are ostensible ‘reasons’, sure, but none get to the nub. Like the wise chap said, ‘The worm is in man’s heart.’

  Malena’s leaving him for Killian counts the heaviest, of course. I saw Rab distinctly red-eyed, cut up – a state in which I’d never seen him previous – on the day after Malena and her possessions were finally shifted out of his place in Artemis Park. But there was nothing he could do to stop that: on one level he had plain ceased to deserve her. Malena told me herself she’d come to feel Robert was ‘no longer on the side of life’. The remark had struck me as curious, if clearly damning: mentally I filed it along with what I took to be her frustrated wish to start a family. Rab knew Malena would want children, she a full fifteen years younger than him. And yet he persisted in wanting to bring other things than kids into this world. So, in the space he left her …? Malena is herself an artist, drawn to fellow connoisseurs. Without doubt she was smitten first by Robert’s aesthetic genius as a surgeon. But her tastes were wide. At a certain point another model caught her eye, and she his, and that was the end of that.

  A huge blow, then, to Robert’s heart. As to make a man suicidal? I don’t discount it, but still I can’t believe it. For, much as I hate the thought, he had got himself back in the hunt, was consorting again with women, however second-rate and disreputable. The Vukovara creature … My God, I find that just to think of her is to want her expelled from my mind without delay. But the police ought to be made aware of her, I know it – I really must raise the matter.

  Certainly I’ve shared every other scrap of data in my possession with the appointed officer, young Goddard’s superior DI Hagen. Thus far he and I have conferred only by phone, and he’s a usefully bullshit-free talker, his habitual stress on the third syllable (‘fascinating’) betraying him for Northumbrian, i.e. just the wrong side of the border. Naturally I have lobbied as far as I’m able for Robert’s to be rated a fully-fledged Missing Persons investigation. Hagen is not unsympathetic, but I know, as he tells me, that hundreds of people vanish every week, most by choice, not wishing to be found, only a fraction of them victims of crime. Until they have significant evidence of wrongdoing they’ll not be embarking on a manhunt. For all that, Hagen’s knowing tone sometimes shades into offence. ‘Dr Forrest’s a grown man,’ he told me at one point. ‘If he fancied buggering off, that would be his own business. Even with some other bugger’s wife. Wouldn’t be our place to judge – he’s got a right to privacy.’

  It occurred to me then that I might have said too much to Hagen of Robert’s ‘Don Juan’ side. Still, I pressed him to say if it was indeed the official view that Robert had engineered his own disappearance. Again the detective disconcerted me: ‘I’ve observed, Doctor, that there’s many a man takes a fancy to just … walking out, on a life that’s not fulfilling him, wanting to be new again under a bigger sky. Have you never felt that? I know I have. I’m maybe just not crafty enough. And, y’know, I’d miss the wife …’

  ‘Crafty’ indeed. The police opinion, then, is of a man who might just have a gift for disappearing. I can’t persuade them of the danger that someone might have disappeared him. True, I don’t myself accept that Robert had any enemies of sufficient bitterness, for all that he owes money to more than a few people, and has dallied with the wives of some fairly hard-nosed husbands. That nocturnal side of his life, those dubious enthusiasms, had earned him some shadowy acquaintances, yes. But all that carry-on had been fading away the closer he got to 50. The motiveless crime, though, the meaningless act of violence – that some thug could have stabbed him in the face for his wallet, kicked his body into a ditch – that I can imagine, in this feral bloody London. But if so, then where’s the body? Hagen is most intractable on this point: ‘It’s not hard to vanish in this world, doctor, so long as you keep breathing. Far, far harder if you die. Because a corpse is a big thing to get shot of …’ Yes, there would be a body by now: only the wretched of the earth can be made to vanish without trace. Whereas a man of Robert’s status – such a man is noticed, always.

  There’s one more unhappy possibility, I suppose – that I just never really knew or understood the sort of man my friend was, and so cannot conceive now of some venal act he’s gone and done. Even were that the case, would Rab have taken off without any kind of goodbye? And had his actions been so much beyond the pale, would I then have turned my back on him? Or, however guiltily, allowed him the same forgiveness of old?

  No – when I call all this to mind I feel awfully certain something wrong has happened to Robert, something very wrong. As I mull it over, the truth lies out there, somewhere, cold and comfortless as old Craigleith sandstone. I am assured I can be ‘useful’ to the police by making enquiries of my own, staying in touch with Hagen and Goddard should I uncover anything new. Well, they will find me diligent on this score.

  Oh Jesus, Robert, where are you, son? Where the hell have you taken yourself? Go your own way if you have to, but don’t leave us lost in the dark.

  2

  DI Hagen’s Notes

  A man of night and day

  Private & Confidential

  FORREST, Robert Kyle (‘Rab’), Dr

  MisPer ref. # 187–2059 (Amber Alert)

  Reviewing actions to date in the case of Dr Forrest, this does strike me as one of those unhappily nagging Medium-Risk MisPers.

  There are several decent reasons why the man might have taken off; I don’t believe he’s fallen down a hole, or done himself a mischief. But small things perplex me, there’s a hollow in every scenario I build. He packed no bag, indeed I can’t see that he took anything with him he could use, beyond keys, wallet, phone – and he’s not used them, has made no calls, not withdrawn from his bank or put down his credit cards. On the evidence of our paper-chase Dr Forrest doesn’t seem to be doing any of the things he surely would be doing if he was alive.

  On the upside we have good info: credit to DS Goddard of the MisPer Unit. Forrest wasn’t seen at his apartment building (Artemis Park in Finchley) on the night of August 14, but his car was. Evidently he drove himself home, and we assume the clothes on his back are still those he wore for work that day – black suit, white shirt, scarlet tie. The searches of both apartment and workplace (‘The Forrest Clinic’, St John’s Wood) were impeccable, Dr Forrest’s toothbrush was bristling with DNA, two laptop computers were taken in but have offered nothing of interest.

  The man’s mental state? His long-time PA Ms Fiona Challenor (who reported him missing) worried to Goddard of his recent ‘distractedness’. He was taking the strong antidepressa
nt Remeron, prescribed by his close friend Steven Hartford, albeit at low dosage – Hartford hadn’t believed he was really in a pit. But evidently he was still glum over the end of a five-year relationship with Ms Malena Absalonsen, since when he’s been alone. (Though Ms Challenor, a keen-eyed observer of her boss – also an ex-girlfriend, I would guess – usefully alerted us to a recent dalliance Forrest had with one of his patients, who, interestingly, is currently lodging at the private psychiatric clinic in Berkshire where Dr Hartford is director.)

  This Dr Grey Lochran, a surgical consultant in paediatrics, is clearly Forrest’s most bosom friend-confidant: he’ll be our point of contact and first to be informed as and when the subject is located. Lochran is also the executor of the will: all assets and possessions of Dr Forrest pass to him on death. But as Lochran tells it, this arrangement only expresses Forrest’s wish that his godson, Lochran’s teenaged son Calder, be the ultimate inheritor.

  In any case there’ll be nothing to inherit until we have a death certificate. And still there mightn’t be much, from what I understand of Forrest’s finances – his accumulation of money troubles and legal difficulties, both current and pending.

  Lochran painted me an interesting portrait of his friend: ‘self-made’ insofar as he was adopted young by an uncle and aunt after the death of his parents in a drink-driving smash-up. (The father, Jack, a publican turned slum landlord/‘property developer’, was considered responsible.) Lochran and Forrest, also Hartford, all met as pupils at Kilmuir school (‘the Eton of Scotland’) outside Edinburgh, then went on to medical school together before separating to specialise. Originally Forrest’s surgical focus was disfigurement and reconstruction, but gradually he swung toward aesthetics, cosmetics. (cf. Lochran: ‘Robert liked beautiful things, he wanted to make things beautiful.’) In his late thirties he left the NHS for pure private practice, founded his own surgical ‘boutique’ offering all the beauty procedures and so-called noninvasive treatments. The work paid handsomely, though Lochran believes his friend was disillusioned (‘I think it occurred to him he’d rather sold his soul.’) And not just the practice in itself but Forrest’s own sense of what he ought to have done instead.

  As Lochran described, Forrest was at one stage highly engrossed in the theory of full-face transplant for patients who had suffered especially terrible traumas or burns – the sort that would take a hundred grafts of skin/muscle just to give them anything remotely like a human face again. Dr Hartford told me Forrest hired him to do some ‘profiling’ of the sorts of victims who might be suitable, psychologically, for such an extreme procedure. Of course, if we lived in the realms of science fiction then all this might propose a notion of how a man could make himself vanish … The point for our purpose, though, is that Forrest had to bankroll all this pricy research from his own pocket, only to jack it all in for pressure of time and money, having come to the dispirited view that too many of his fellow professionals were too far advanced of him in the field.

  Then two years ago he took out an eye-watering loan in order to buy out the investors in his Clinic, apparently wishing to be free of their interference. Not long after that, he was sued successfully by a patient claiming to have suffered pain and facial scarring from incompetent injections of collagen. The culprit wasn’t Forrest, rather a woman he’d hired who turned out to be not so well trained as she’d presented herself; but Forrest carried the can. The judgement came down in the same week that Ms Absalonsen moved out of his apartment. Such misery could spill the wind from any man’s sails.

  This man does intrigue me, though, I admit. The photos we obtained show a fellow very presentable for his age, if somewhat saturnine in looks. Physically he was in decent shape though a habitual drinker, and partial to some soft drug use. ‘A man of night and day’ is how his friend Lochran describes him, albeit fondly, attributing this to what he calls ‘a touch of the Jekyll-and-Hyde’ inherent in the surgical profession. That is to say, the incredible rigour of the work produces a commensurate need for a private cutting-loose, what in Forrest’s case Lochran quaintly calls ‘carousing’. (Mr Hyde can take other forms too, I would say: Lochran, initially open and affable, can switch to a very stern and short-tempered force coming down the phone-line.)

  And then … these are minor matters, but … Forrest’s identifying marks are distinctive, suggestive of a ‘colourful’ youth. Lochran mentioned the scar on his chest, a laceration from some boyhood knife-fight. Both he and Ms Absalonsen spoke of the prominent tattoo on Forrest’s upper right arm, acquired after some drunken cavort in his medical school years, depicting a great green snake coiled round the earth (the uroboros, as it’s known in mythology). A further quirk: we found no private diaries or letters at Forrest’s apartment, or among his hard drives, but on his writing desk was a French-language book about a Japanese writer, Mishima, who killed himself most gorily at much the same age Forrest is now. There were various pencil scribbles in the margin, but Forrest had underscored – by a precise slash of red – a line from the man’s suicide note: La vie humaine est limitée, mais je voudrais vivre éternellement. That being, ‘Human life is limited but I would like to live forever.’ Clearly this Mishima went about the ‘living forever’ part in a queer way. But I daresay we ought to take Dr Forrest’s distinctive and offbeat interests as offering some window into his state of mind.

  3

  Dr Lochran’s Journal

  Bad for the soul

  August 25th

  ‘Ghosts return gently at twilight …’ Last night I had a sad call from Robert’s uncle Allan Steenson, whom I’ve not seen – whom Robert hardly saw – since Kilmuir. He must be 70-odd now, and he lost Jenny to cancer five years ago: the most steadfast and God-fearing of marriages torn asunder. They raised Robert together so painstakingly, after the tragedy of his real parents. (Not that Rab ever recognised old Allan as a father – I knew when we were lads, the bitterness Rab felt over his dad’s boozy recklessness could never quite mask the sneaking regard he had for the old bastard’s ‘maverick’ character.) Still, fatherhood was the duty Allan loyally discharged, and continues to – hence the awful sadness of his faltering voice asking me this and that about the ‘investigation’, me unable to say one damn thing of consequence or comfort in respect of his lost middle-aged stepson.

  This afternoon I took the family to Jon’s for our annual reunion of St Andrews Class of ’83: a supposedly ‘fun’ occasion I’d hoped might lift my mood. No spot finer than Jon’s epic roof terrace overlooking the Highgate end of the Heath, and after this dank, dour, generally dreich summer we were blessed with a crystal day of high sun. Only by late afternoon could you feel in the air and the shadows that we’re now slipping ‘between seasons’ – always a wistful feeling for me. Another summer fades, a finite number remain, this much achieved, that much unresolved.

  The big difference this year, of course: Robert’s absence. (Not to speak of Malena’s.) But then I was much the closest to Robert. Today it seemed the company just didn’t want to speak of him. And I suppose Robert had somewhat estranged himself from said company. Our ranks are depleted anyhow, what with Donald and Kate decamped to Boston, Duncan to Côte d’Ivoire. And poor Edmond, of course. I don’t think I let the clouds hang over me, I impersonated my usual self, made conversation. But today lacked that good sociable grease, the easy shift into topics beyond the commonplace. Too much talk of minor ailments, far too much of fucking golf. It was Livy I felt for, for all that she managed gracefully.

  We have hung together as a bunch, despite the dispersing tendency of the vocation; and, on the whole, we turned out as we expected. Character is destiny, yes? Didn’t we know as late adolescents – at first sight in halls of residence – that Jon, with his ponytail and Black Sabbath tee, was earmarked for Pathology? (Today, still, he drew me over to his stack of Denon separates, tried to enthuse me about some dreadful hard-rock racket.) Susan – how soon we understood! – was too kind for her own good, so heading down the pipe marked ‘Palliative
Care’. And Tony, given his remote engineer-boffin air, his obsessive tinkering with car engines and Jon’s hi-fis – he had been chosen for Orthopaedics, destined to doggedly perfect his plates and screws even as the patient expired on the table. I’ve never asked but presumably they looked at me and thought, ‘There’s a big dependable oaf, probably good with kids, kind enough to cut them open carefully …’

  Look at us now then: older, fatter, richer, with grey or balding heads and weary, worried laughs. More kids around us, too – more, and older. They spoil the day somewhat, with that recalcitrant teenage moodiness, studying the affluent oldsters from a distance, waiting for us to die so they can be free to do as they like, since they bloody well know it all already. I should have nipped that little tendency in the bud far earlier – bringing the kids. I should have laid down the bloody law. (Steven’s twins Julian and Jacob, for instance, are as cheery as a broken toe, God bless their glum little faces.) But then I suppose I started it all off when I first brought Cal. What was I thinking …?