The Listeners

by Anthony J. Quinn

  When she returned downstairs, her mother-in-law had retired to her room to watch a soap opera. David had served out the lasagne and was wagging a bottle of wine at her.

  ‘To domestic bliss,’ he said, filling two large glasses.

  She took a large gulp and thought, it’s her domestic bliss, not ours. ‘What would you do if I gave up my job and stayed at home?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’ But he wasn’t fully listening. He was keeping one eye on the football match on TV.

  It did not matter. She had not really meant it. What was the point in risking an argument when there was a witness residing in a room nearby, one who would surely take sides?

  ‘Rough day?’ he asked with his glass raised to his lips.

  ‘The usual. When this investigation is over, I’m going to take some annual leave.’

  ‘Good.’

  A goal was scored on TV and his eyes lit up. It had been ages since she’d seen him so relaxed. Over the wine, they discussed possible holiday destinations, places that were child friendly. They even toyed with the idea of taking the children to Disney World. Afterwards, they cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher. She was not used to drinking and felt the warmth of the wine course through her veins, instilling a sense of liberation, which was enhanced rather than inhibited by the thought of her domestic rival watching TV in the spare room. She concluded that there were benefits to having her mother-in-law staying under the same roof, at least until things calmed down at work. Mrs Herron was fulfilling what mattered most to her – the maternal wish to look after her son and grandchildren – and she was getting on with her career. Nobody was using or taking advantage of anybody.

  When they had finished the wine, she drifted to the computer in the study. She stared at the screensaver, a photograph of Alice and Ben, without thinking about anything. She heard David stumble towards bed. He was drunk and would be asleep in minutes. She went to her briefcase and took out the copies of the photographs from Pochard’s house. She stared at them and told herself she had to work out the other locations, especially the one with a log cabin in the background. Where were they and what did they mean? The body of water glinting through the branches, the thickets of brambles and overgrown paths that led absolutely nowhere except into the mind of a killer. She studied the hopeless looks on McCrea’s face, the patient with the stray eyes and long white eyelashes, looking in different directions in each of the photographs; the excited gaze of Sinden, always fixed on McCrea, and in the background, an older man, another psychotherapist, she thought, his tall figure wrapped in shadows. She wished he would step into the open, that for just one shot he would turn his face fully towards the camera. She could not decide if the photographs were clues or red herrings, and her uncertainty made her impatient.

  She moved the mouse of the computer and clicked on the button for Google Earth. The landscape of the Scottish borders lay before her once again. She felt in control, swooping over its forests and hills, far above the pine needles and dripping heather. She followed the lines of paths and rivers, the imprint of old foundations and field works showing through the hillsides. After a few screens, the houses grew sparse and the terrain more rugged. The landscape lost the sheen of civilisation, the bright roads and clusters of buildings. She searched the vast swathes of forests, the ridges and swirls of the trees reminding her of water ebbing over sand.

  She zoomed into a valley full of darkness, and then a glitter of sharp silver appeared on screen, sunlight on a remote loch. She scrolled faster, towards the water. The loch seemed to have a face, eyes like islands and inlets that resembled a nose and mouth. However, there were no signs of what might be a log cabin around its edges, so she scrolled towards the border, making zigzag sweeps across the terrain. She focused in and moved along paths that might have been deer tracks. None of them were continuous, the moor seeming to swallow their traces. Burly mountains formed on the screen, little clouds hanging over their peaks. Patch by patch, she pushed through the purple heather and bogland. She saw the remnants of tumbledown bothies, which might also have been random deposits of rocks. She hovered over ravines and dead alleys of stones that looked to be several miles long. Then she navigated back to the lower lying forests. She scrolled over the blocks of green and brown, the forests and hillsides where her instinct told her Chisholm might be hiding Laura Dunnock. She chose a suitable-looking loch and scanned its fringes, but could find no sign of a cabin that might resemble the one in the photographs.

  She moved out and found another loch. There was some sort of industrial building at one end of it, surrounded by heavy machinery. What could it be? She zoomed closer. A large concrete embankment closed off one end of the loch. A reservoir, she thought. It looked too exposed, the trees too sparse, to be the one she was hunting for. She travelled north again, and the trees grew denser. She came to a pine forest darker than the others, sucking in all the colour and light even when she zoomed in as close as she could. Everything on the screen looked as black as night. A sudden chill gripped her. She leaned closer, peering at the darkness that lay waiting for her.

  She scrolled some more, but the images began to freeze on the screen, the forests blurring into each other. Exhausted, she switched off the computer and went to bed.

  ‘You’re back,’ mumbled David. ‘I thought you’d done one of your disappearing tricks again.’

  ‘No. Just googling possible murder sites.’

  She slipped in beside him, her mind fixated on what he had just said. Searching for Pochard’s killer had become her disappearing act, she realised. She settled into sleep with the strange feeling that she was rising above the border hills, like a lost soul or a star, reaching through miles of fathomless space. She roamed the corridors of darkness, the shadows between the trees, and the spaces between the stars, until there was no more light and nothing more to be discovered or remembered, her thoughts burning themselves out one by one, with only a final image remaining, the murderer’s door locked day and night, and then that vanished, too.

  24

  If anything, Sinden looked more sleepless and worn-out when he opened the door for Herron the following morning. The darkness around his eyes gave him a frightened, haunted look. He explained to the detective that being stuck at home every day had not agreed with him, and that he was dreading the day he would have to return to Deepwell.

  Herron had not appeared on his doorstep to provide sympathy. She pushed on into the hallway, no longer so concerned about disturbing him. ‘I have some important questions to ask you,’ she warned. ‘Your refusal to answer them could obstruct an important murder investigation.’

  ‘Fire away, if you must,’ he replied.

  ‘Who was your supervisor on Ward G?’

  Sinden braced himself, but did not reply. She was growing used to silences now, and she allowed a very long gap to develop in the interview. He is not going to tell me, she realised as the moments ticked by and Sinden withdrew deeper into his thoughts. She tried a different front. ‘What do you know about the disappearance of Laura Dunnock?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

  ‘What about your colleagues? What do they have to say?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘So you haven’t spoken to any of them. Not to Dr Barker or even your supervisor? Not once in the past week?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Tell me about the holistic foundation,’ she asked. ‘What does it do? What are its principles? How is it different from other psychotherapy groups?’

  He glanced at her furtively. ‘I’m not at liberty to talk about those things.’ The shadow of the foundation seemed to lurk over him.

  ‘Look, I’ve already talked to Professor Reichmann,’ she said. ‘He says the foundation and your supervisor are the subjects of an investigation.’

  He looked at her in surprise. ‘What is he investigating?’

  ‘He knows that the group is hiding something. He says that he has been compiling evidence of it
s malpractice for some time.’

  Sinden’s eyes widened but he remained silent. He stared past her and out the window. She was going to have to use subtler means to change his attitude and force the truth out of him. She asked could they sit down together and when they had settled into chairs in his kitchen, she said in a softer voice, ‘May I ask you a personal question, Dr Sinden?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘What made you want to become a psychotherapist in the first place?’

  He gazed at her with his slightly haunted eyes, and then, slowly, he began speaking. He said that after he qualified from medical school his personal life had felt like a complete mess. ‘I wanted to know where I had gone wrong in my relationships,’ he explained, ‘and so I decided to see a psychotherapist. I thought the reasons lay in my childhood and in my difficult relationship with my parents. There was no one else I could turn to, and so I became a patient of Dr Robert Llewyn, who was the director of the hospital at that time.’ He clasped his hands upon his knees. ‘Robert helped me escape from loneliness and the sense of being completely directionless in my life.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I hadn’t decided on psychotherapy as a career until I came to see him. He fixed things for me, made sure I completed the correct courses, and then he examined me on psychodynamic practice. I was still in therapy with him, but I was also his student, and disciple. I felt so privileged.’

  ‘You mean your entire career as a therapist was born out of being one of Dr Llewyn’s patients?’

  ‘Yes. I was in therapy for over a year when I asked him to teach me. He produced a sheet of paper from a drawer. On it was a list of names, all patients of his, whom he was also training. He invited me to join their study group. Over time, the group became the holistic foundation.’

  ‘Who else was on the list?’

  ‘Dr Pochard and Barker, and also Laura Dunnock.’

  ‘You mean they were all patients of his?’

  ‘Yes. Normally it’s a hanging offence for a clinical supervisor to be also one’s personal therapist. But since Dr Pochard and Barker had followed the same path, I thought, why not? Dr Llewyn flew in the face of conventions and rules. He was brave and controversial.’

  That did the trick, she thought, wetting her lips with her tongue. Finally, Sinden had revealed the name of his supervisor, Dr Llewyn.

  ‘And during your therapy sessions with Dr Llewyn, you also discussed your patients?’

  ‘Robert helped me understand their mental conditions. He showed me the way forward by linking my feelings towards them with events and relationships in my own childhood. His analyses were always impressively sharp.’

  ‘So your treatment plans emerged while in therapy?’

  ‘In principle, all his patients who were also therapists had to discuss their treatment plans.’ Sinden explained how hard it was to work intensively with patients on Ward G. Without firm guidance, a therapist might grow confused and lose their way.

  ‘How could you be so sure that his guidance wasn’t flawed?’

  ‘Robert had worked for such a massively long time in the field. Instinctively, he knew the right approach to take. Other therapists placed their absolute trust in him, as well. He kept telling me that I was breaking new ground, that I was an expert in the field, going in more deeply than anyone else.’

  ‘Your theory that some of the patients on Ward G were repressing terrible memories such as murder, whose idea was that?’

  He grew uncertain for a moment. ‘It was an idea that came from me.’

  ‘During therapy with Dr Llewyn?’

  ‘Yes. I knew that it was the approach I needed to follow. I could sense that my patients were suffering from traumas that had not yet been mapped out, and Robert understood that.’

  ‘How many of them had ever hinted at being murderers?’

  ‘None of them.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier about Dr Llewyn’s role as your supervisor?’

  ‘I wanted to protect his good name. My treatment plan for Ward G was branded a failure because I had ignored the latest research on false memories, but it was my fault, not his. Robert suggested that I had not worked intensively enough on my own problems, that the therapy had failed because of my own weaknesses. He said I lacked drive, that I didn’t have enough passion to do what had to be done to vindicate our therapeutic vision. He stopped my therapy for several months and I had to be content with seeing another one of the foundation members.’

  It was evident to Herron just how much Llewyn had meant to Sinden. He had been his therapist, his teacher, and his father figure. In spite of his arrogance, there was a childlike simplicity about Sinden, and Herron was appalled at the image of him sweeping through the corridors of Ward G, the near-blind treating the blind, attaching the most grotesque interpretations to the patients’ illnesses. And Dr Llewyn had been behind it all, working in secret on Sinden’s mental state, expanding his confidence, dominating him completely, and all the while treating his patients like specimens in a jar.

  Sinden gave her a weary smile. ‘The only way to cure patients is to make interpretations. That’s what Robert always said.’

  ‘Have you spoken to him?’

  ‘Not recently. He’s retired now from Deepwell and the foundation.’

  ‘Do you know where I can find him?’

  ‘I’ve tried myself. But he’s not at home and won’t answer his phone.’

  ‘Would you think it right for his friends to hide him, to protect him from the law and not cooperate with the police?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘What if Dr Llewyn were working hand in hand with Chisholm? What if he were behind Pochard’s murder and the disappearance of Laura Dunnock?’

  ‘Impossible.’ Sinden had lost his sense of weakness and confusion. He seemed energised. ‘You have no idea,’ he said, leaning towards her, his eyes glowing. ‘You have no idea what it was like being Robert’s patient. If you had any inkling you would be clamouring to be one yourself.’

  ‘Apart from Dr Pochard, was there anyone in the society not dedicated to Dr Llewyn and his theories?’

  ‘Like I told you, everyone is loyal to the society and its leader.’

  ‘Everyone?’

  She said it in such a disbelieving voice that Sinden stared at her.

  ‘Well, almost everyone,’ he replied. Without uttering a word of explanation he left the room. She looked at the door and waited. After a while, she began to wonder if he had slipped out of the house in order to escape further questioning. She would have gone in search for him, but then she heard, from much deeper within the house, drawers being opened and shut, and the scraping sound of heavy objects being pulled out of dark corners. At last, Sinden appeared. There was a look of satisfaction on his face when he placed a photograph on the table beside her.

  ‘The society has strict rules of confidentiality,’ he explained. ‘And I can’t break them by revealing the names of any of its members. However, I can show you this. It was taken a few years back.’

  Herron looked at the photograph, and immediately recognised the serious figure of Derek Cavanagh, the father of Alice’s playschool friend, standing next to the equally serious figures of Pochard, Barker, Sinden and a few others.

  ‘That’s Derek Cavanagh, isn’t it?’ she said.

  He seemed intrigued that she knew him. ‘You’ve crossed paths?’

  ‘I can’t say. Is he a member of the holistic society?’

  ‘Was.’

  ‘Expelled?’

  Sinden laughed. ‘Cavanagh would deny that as if his life depended on it.’

  ‘What were the circumstances?’

  He leaned back and gave her question some thought. ‘I can only speak in general terms. You see, the society has a professional mindset, a fixed belief system.’

  ‘Like a sect?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far. But it has to sift out those who would launch critical attacks from within, or reject the guidance
of the society’s leader.’

  ‘Would an expelled member have difficulty afterwards working in the psychiatric field?’

  ‘I think they would struggle. Doors in that field would be closed to them.’

  ‘What about the emotional repercussions?’ She wondered how difficult it would have been for Cavanagh to detach himself from such a cult-like community.

  ‘In the case of Cavanagh, he was probably unbalanced from the start. His contributions at meetings were uninteresting. My colleagues regarded him as a mildly boring narcissist, a sociopath.’

  She nodded and filed away the information for further investigation. She had just one more question for him. ‘Are there any staff at Deepwell who weren’t under Dr Llewyn’s influence?’

  He shrugged. ‘We belonged to the one family.’

  ‘The foundation?’

  ‘Yes.’

  25

  Silence and privacy. Nothing can be unearthed from the human mind without the two of them, and now, for the first time in his life, he had both in abundance. He walked from room to room in the log cabin, carefully avoiding Laura Dunnock, who was still tied to her chair in the back room.

  He picked up books from the shelves, the heavy tomes on psychotherapy, and flicked through the pages, but did not bother to read them. He sat in a chair and stared at the trees outside. There was no television or internet connection in the cabin. He was completely cut off from the rest of the world, and the place felt blessedly peaceful, but still he could not shake off the inner voices and thoughts. His therapist had told him to accept and get used to them, and then perhaps the feeling of being watched and haunted might disappear. As for Dunnock, she had been quiet for hours, adding to the restful mood that he kept trying to enjoy but could not. He had entered into a state of nervous anticipation. He felt glad that the oppressive mood would soon end. It was almost over. Tonight was the appointed time for the second murder.

  Fantasies belong to more people than their creators. Once a disturbing dream has been told, it’s anyone’s to share, and his had become common currency on Ward G, twisted and changed in the minds of his fellow patients and the doctors who tried to listen in and analyse every word. He was no longer sure if it was his fantasy, and not someone else’s, that he was committing the murders secretly for another person and waiting for their approval.