She had been working with the group for six months now, and she was keen to publish an original piece of research on the effects of suppressed memories on criminal behaviour. It was this aspiration, glowing brightly within her, that had inspired her to choose that particular passage, believing that it would help her delve more deeply into the minds of her patients. The previous Monday, she had set the men a task. She wanted them to bear witness to the memories they had locked away, the memories they refused to fathom or confront. She was convinced St Augustine’s words would give their thoughts the right push and set them off on their own inner journey to the truth.
The group met every week in the library because it was the most comfortable room in the hospital, the only library in that part of Scotland without a stolen or misplaced book, every one of them secure with its own catalogue number, colour code and place on the shelves, its reading history recorded in neat index cards. The walls had not been painted for years, but in the morning sunlight they looked sturdy and bright, a room that would never make Laura’s patients scream in terror, nor did it reek of antiseptic or bleach. Its smells were warm and familiar, the scent of the printed page and dust jackets warming in the heat from ancient radiators. Laura inhaled, waiting until one of the men began talking, and then she leaned forward in her chair and listened carefully.
However, the patient had barely started when someone interrupted from the corner of the library.
‘I need to say something,’ said a ghostly tenor voice. Its oddness provoked a few smiles from the group as well as the barely disguised annoyance of the patient who had been interrupted.
The shelves were partially blocking Laura’s view, and she craned her neck to see who had spoken. A head of unruly grey hair appeared from behind the hedge of books. A pair of large eyes with long, white eyelashes met her gaze. She was surprised to see that it was Alistair McCrea, a middle-aged, long-stay patient who had never spoken in the group before, and who was described in his notes as utterly friendless and alone in the world. Even in one-to-one therapy sessions, he tended to stutter badly, or weep uncontrollably. When he was not weeping, he wore a look of bewilderment, as though his life was already past and lost, destined to spend his days roaming the restricted corridors of institutions like Deepwell in shapeless T-shirts and jogging bottoms. He usually trudged to the library and sat in a corner, not listening to anything, clinging to his silences.
However, this morning his presence seemed more intense, his eyes bright and darting. She felt the keen interest of his gaze. She had read his history, the details of his abuse at the hands of an uncle, and the history of drug taking and housebreaking that had blighted his young adulthood. She imagined the scars he must carry. She thought of the frightened little boy inside him, and she wished she could reach out and reassure him. He took out several sheets of paper, and the sense that something had awoken in him grew stronger. He leaned forward in his seat and then tilted back, shuffling the set of handwritten pages that the courts were later to record as ‘Exhibit B, The Confessions of Deepwell Patient Alistair McCrea’.
He rose and then sat down, almost spilling the sheets of paper. The medication round had taken place an hour previously, during which he had requested an extra Valium and Xanax to help him cope with his anxiety. However, she could see that the tablets had done little to stop the shaking in his hands.
‘Where’s Dr Pochard?’ he asked. ‘She was meant to see me this morning.’
In circumstances like these, Laura was trained to give as little detail as possible. ‘Dr Pochard is otherwise engaged,’ she said.
‘Otherwise engaged?’ He looked as though his worst fears had been confirmed by Laura’s bland excuse. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It’s really none of our business.’
‘So you don’t know where she is?’
Laura saw the look of fear increase in his eyes.
‘The poor woman,’ said Alistair, his voice dying away.
‘Really, there’s nothing to be concerned about. I’m sure Dr Pochard is perfectly fine.’ She asked the patient who had been interrupted to resume talking but once again, Alistair spoke.
‘I told you I’ve something to say.’
She asked if he wished to comment on what the other patient had said. When he replied no, his answer prompted an exchange of glances and threatening murmurs from the other patients. Laura sighed. Surely he understood the rules of the group. Only when the current speaker had stopped talking could another member talk, and then only if the comment was pertinent to the material being discussed.
He held up his pages and gave her a pleading look. It was the first time he had read in the group, and in the hope of encouraging future participation, she relented and invited him to continue, deciding to treat him to the most lavish display of therapeutic listening bestowed upon a patient since the days of Freud.
He clasped the pages to his chest and screwed his eyes shut. His lips moved as though he were rehearsing mutely the story he was about to relate, but then he stared at the pages for so long without speaking that she began to think they were empty and the words would never be spoken.
She smiled gently. ‘If you like, I could read it for you.’
The agitation increased in his eyes. ‘I’m afraid of how you will react.’
‘You shouldn’t worry about my reaction.’
‘After you read it, you might not want me here.’
‘But you’re always welcome here, no matter what you’ve written.’
‘You’re very kind.’
‘All I do is listen.’
‘More than listen. More than that.’ In a low, monotonous voice, Alistair told the group that he found it difficult to remember the events of his story, even though the latest act had occurred on Friday night. ‘I have forgotten many things in my life, but some memories I can never escape. I want to confess the terrible things I have done.’
He said that he had tried to worm his way out of responsibility for his crimes, but now he wanted to be above board and tell the truth to the authorities. He hesitated, and then explained that for years his memories had felt more like fantasies or nightmares.
At first, Laura found herself a little thrown by the spookiness of his voice, the way it swooped up and down, and for a few brief moments she wondered what it would be like to be trapped alone in a room with that voice. She felt an unprofessional shiver of revulsion, her first during her time at Deepwell.
With a sudden, anguished sigh, McCrea announced to the group that he had murdered a red-haired woman on Friday night. He said he suspected the victim was Dr Pochard, and his suspicions had been confirmed by the fact that she had not turned up at the hospital this morning.
‘I have tried to forget, but the images of what happened have remained clear in my mind. I can no longer shut my eyes to them. They are horrific and unbearable.’
He told them that the killing had been the moment when all his repressed memories had burst their banks. He said that Pochard was the latest in a long line of victims stretching back to his first sexual awakenings as a teenager. He had started writing down everything over the weekend, and the more he wrote, the more he remembered. He had written all night, but still he felt he had not explored all his repressed memories.
‘I have tried to write down as many factual details as possible to help the police in their investigations,’ he said, and then he began reading from his notes.
The attention of Laura and the other patients seemed to change McCrea. He stood tall and bright in the sunlight, his long, white eyelashes fluttering, his voice barely keeping pace with his crimes, the record of his trudging through dark forests, his days and nights as a murderer, his victims stumbling through the undergrowth, their sodden hair and clothes, the stone chambers he erected to contain their remains, the little memorials he made for the dead women he referred to as his beautiful-eyed birds. His descriptions were lucid and gripping, but his voice was beginning to tremble. He sounded on the verge of tears
.
At the start, Laura’s mind worked hard to keep up with his story, formulating appropriate responses, trying to sift between what was fantasy or hallucination, and what might be the truth. However, the more she listened to the details, the more uncertain she became, as though a void had opened up beneath his words. She shifted in her seat. Had her breakthrough moment arrived? The most shocking of hidden memories might be revealing themselves before her eyes. All those months of sitting beside patients, listening and making notes, observing and recording their progress, hoping to prove herself as an insightful psychologist, and now this revelation.
He had come to the end of the pages, but everyone in the room sensed the story had finished too abruptly, like a bridge hanging in mid-air. The group grew still and quiet, teetering on the story’s brink.
She collected herself and returned Alistair’s gaze with a pleasant smile. ‘You’ve… I told you to write what was in your memory and nothing else. Do you remember? The memories that are difficult to talk about.’
‘And I have told you them.’
‘Are you telling me that you murdered Dr Pochard?’
‘Yes. And I’ve been waiting all weekend to tell someone. I thought I could confess here.’
‘Confess here? Why?’ She could see that he was beginning to shiver.
‘I thought the library was the most convenient place.’
The hairs stood on the back of her neck. What he was saying could not be true, she reassured herself. It couldn’t. He had made it up. For a start, he was locked in his room every night, and he had not left Ward G all weekend. The entire story was a fabrication, a fantasy of his illness. However, she recalled a detail from McCrea’s case history, something about him confessing to attacking several young women, but the police had never been able to trace the victims.
She asked stupidly, ‘Are you sure you did these things?’
‘Check with the police. They will be able to investigate everything.’
The patient next to him spoke. ‘Come off it, Alistair, you’ve made it all up. I’ve heard these stories before. Your fantasies about chasing women.’
The rest of the group nodded and murmured. They seemed jealous and indignant at the way Alistair had stolen the spotlight. They tried to get a discussion going on their own memories and looked to Laura for encouragement.
However, she was unable to make a response or show any interest. The session was over. Her work would not proceed today. She had to collect her wits and work out how to deal with this unexpected development. She should report Alistair’s claims to his caseworker and the senior psychiatrist on the ward.
She looked around the room, the bright sun on the solid rows of books, the curious faces of the patients, and the figure of Alistair McCrea staring at her like an angel of death, his eyes with their white eyelashes, challenging and provocative.
*
Afterwards, she saw two male nurses escort McCrea across an inner courtyard to the lock-up ward. Through a windowed corridor, she watched them open a door into one of the most secure rooms in the hospital. For a moment, Alistair turned back and looked out through the windows, as if savouring his last moments of freedom. She thought she glimpsed a look of peace fall across his face, before he stepped into the room without showing any sign of resistance whatsoever.
Then later, a strange car pulled up in the visitors’ car park and two men got out. One of them was a senior psychiatrist at the hospital, but she did not recognise the other man. He was not a relative of any of the patients, nor did he look like a mental health professional. Laura guessed he must be a police detective.
That night, she did not sleep at all.
3
Carla Herron had only managed to persuade her three-year-old daughter Alice to come along to the birthday party by promising her she could wear her red princess shoes. Now she tried, unsuccessfully, to get her to play with the other children, but the toddler clung obstinately to her hand, the delicate pressure of those sticky little fingers a constant reminder of the confinement of motherhood. Carla had never understood the point of birthday parties for children who barely got along with each other at nursery, and had yet to throw one for her own daughter.
In the kitchen, the other parents were drinking wine, even the oldest son of the hosts, a gloomy, sullen teenager. Another group had formed a huddle at the back door around a few smokers, who seemed glad of the company. The conclaves made the party more bearable, and Carla, who had started on strong coffee, was now drinking wine and trailing Alice behind her like a hostage.
‘I want to go home,’ her daughter pleaded softly, tugging at Carla’s blouse.
‘But they haven’t taken out the birthday cake, pet. It’s too early to leave. Why don’t you give the present to Vicki and wish her a happy birthday?’
‘I want my daddy,’ said Alice. This time she dug her fingers into Carla’s arm.
She tried to drag her daughter into the playroom, but the child wrapped herself around her legs, causing her to stumble into the father of the birthday girl, a dark, heavily bearded man called Derek Cavanagh. For a moment, she was pressed up against him, and had to take in a lungful of his overpowering deodorant.
‘You’re a police detective, aren’t you?’ he said, and before she could think twice about it, she had nodded and said yes.
When it came to work, she usually tried to be as reticent or as vague as possible, but Cavanagh was a neighbour and knew her from the morning runs to the nursery. She stepped back but he grabbed a glass of wine and sidled closer. Regretting her response and seeing the gleam in his eyes, she braced herself for an account of some morbid or bizarre crime, as men at parties tended to do when learning of her occupation. Already she could feel the innocent mood evaporating.
‘Only someone with an enormous amount of common sense and maturity can be a police detective,’ he said, nodding approvingly. He spoke like someone in the know, sharing a professional confidence with her.
The mention of her profession in those terms had an unsettling effect upon her. She felt a sense of gratitude mixed with despair. For a moment, the entire burden of motherhood lifted from her shoulders, to be replaced by another burden, that of her career.
With a quick glance, she appraised him, his probing stare, the deep lines on his forehead, the beard that almost hid his mouth, the head held high, a determined man who was used to asserting his dominance in social situations. She suspected that he had rehearsed his opening remarks like a chat-up line.
‘If you knew some of my colleagues you might not think we were mature or sensible at all,’ she replied. She thought of the bickering within her squad, the long faces on Monday mornings, the endlessly repeated taunts and jokes that tossed back and forth daily, the simmering rivalries that lay behind the banter, and the frustration when investigations stalled, like being stuck in a series of joyless marriages.
‘I’m not talking about your colleagues; I’m talking about you.’ He turned his face sideways to stare at the nearby room of laughing parents. Not an ugly man, she thought. As attractive as his type could be. She glanced down and saw the flash of his wedding ring, but for some reason he wore it on his right hand, the opposite to hers. She followed his gaze, into the room full of seemingly carefree people. Sometimes, it might be nice to forget common sense and maturity, she thought.
‘There was a time when people had proper jobs you knew and understood,’ he said. ‘All these mothers and fathers moving down from Edinburgh, dressing like they’re still in their twenties, running around with made-up-sounding jobs. Calling themselves analysts and consultants and managers of this and that, blowing their own trumpets all the time. You’re different from all of them.’
‘How?’
‘You have an honest job, a real job. You’re a grown-up in a way everyone else here can never be.’
Carla relaxed a little at being called a grown-up. Yes, she could handle that. She liked thinking of herself as just a grown-up. That was the challenge facing
her. For too long, she had judged herself in terms of being a good or bad mother, or a competent or incompetent detective, alternating between the high-pressured roles like some sort of depersonalised two-headed being.
‘And what do you do for a living?’
‘I teach at the university, but I used to listen to people all day. I was a psychologist with my own private practice for fifteen years.’
‘Did you find it hard to leave behind your old job?’
He shrugged and moved closer. ‘I never stop listening, even at parties. You know, I’ve been listening to you since I first saw you. Before you uttered a word.’
The father of another of Alice’s classmates passed them by with an ironic smile. Carla worried that the other parents had noticed their closeness, the intimacy of his voice.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked sharply.
‘A good psychologist listens with more than just his ears.’ His eyes brightened. ‘The other senses have a vital role. For instance, you have a way of gathering your hair that is very expressive.’
She felt the intensity of his gaze again, as though he were reading her face, her body, listening to her inner thoughts through the channels of visual communication.
‘There’s more wine in the kitchen,’ he said, breaking the tension. ‘Would you like another glass?’
She hesitated, and then couldn’t make up her mind.
‘Just one? You’re off duty, aren’t you?’
‘I’ve already had a glass. Don’t let me stop you though.’
‘Shame. You know, I watched you come in through the door with your little girl and I thought you looked very unhappy.’
‘I’m not unhappy.’ She spoke in the coldest voice she could muster. She had nothing else to say to him and wanted to move away with her daughter in tow, but the corridor was packed at that moment.
The Listeners Page 2