The Wisdom of Crocodiles

by Paul Hoffman

  ‘If she needs somewhere to stay, she could come and borrow my sofa-bed.’

  She came back in carrying her handbag. ‘I’ll bet,’ she said, smiling. ‘Anyway, nearly all the women I know are dropping hints about leaving their husbands or lovers. It ought to be an organised sport, like football, with rules and a special kit.’

  She kissed him warmly but with no trace of the hunger that was such a feature of the way she touched him now and which she had originally fought to restrain. How calm she felt now, and satisfied. ‘I’ll go now.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘I have to.’ She was firm and he could see that she was not to be argued with. She kissed his cheek and went out into the hall. He followed her and helped her into her coat. He was still in a state of shock at what Anne had said. She seemed to have forgotten all about it until she looked him in the eyes, held his gaze, then left.

  Epper knocked on the side of the open office door and Anne looked up with a vacant expression that suggested her mind was still on what she was doing.

  ‘Have you got some time, Anne?’

  ‘Not really,’ she said, with neither kindness nor irritation. ‘I’m a modern woman. I have it all. Except for one thing, Gary, and that’s time. I’m timeless.’

  ‘It’s NEMO . . . important. We’ve found something about Tessa Nancarrow.’

  ‘I thought you showed me everything,’ she said, alarmed.

  ‘It turns out we didn’t.’

  She put aside what she had been working on. ‘You’d better sit down.’ Epper was conscious of being watched as he came in and shut the door behind him. He felt like a shoal of fish being radar-scanned by one of those Russian trawlers with a seventy-mile net.

  ‘You know we’ve been working over at the Tavistock Clinic on techniques for getting people to talk about things they . . .’ he paused, ‘don’t want to talk about.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I picked up on some research they’d been kicking around about the psychology of confession. Basically, they found there was a much greater willingness on the patient’s behalf to tell their counsellors really difficult things about themselves if they’d already told someone else, a friend or a priest or whatever.’

  ‘It makes sense,’ said Anne, meaning to be encouraging, but he misunderstood and thought she was unimpressed. The undertow of his mixed feelings about Anne – desire and admiration – swirled with the added salt of repressed resentment and fear. He was afraid of Anne because she held him in her hands. He was on a three-year contract and it was soon to expire. Nothing had been said about its renewal. In fact, it had not occurred to her that he would worry in any way, let alone so deeply, about the contract because it had never crossed her mind not to renew it. She had assumed he realised this. But in this one respect, Anne was behind the times. Her irreplaceability had insulated her. He was right to fear the new emperors and their absolute power of life and death over work. She would have been horrified to know how anxious he was, an unease that was to a greater or lesser extent continuous. As soon as a new contract was signed, the sense of security began to diminish as the date for its renewal approached. The worry graph for millions in the time to come will look like an alarming ECG, the teeth of a saw, a lightning bolt, a mountain range of peaks and troughs leading into the distance as far as the eye can see.

  Epper continued coldly. ‘I set up an extra program so that whenever it reached a blocking point of this kind NEMO would offer the patient the confessional. It would assure them that whatever they said was totally confidential. NEMO wouldn’t know what they’d said and no one could get access to it without their permission. I’ve been working on making it watertight but it’s only experimental.’

  Anne looked nonplussed. ‘But what’s the point if you can’t get access without permission?’

  ‘It’s very simple. You persuade them to confess by offering them a situation where they’re comfortable about telling their secret, but once they’ve told it, you’ve broken down a major barrier, so that if you ask them to tell you the same secret in the main program the following week, they’re much more likely to do so. The thing is, I’d decided that in order to be truthful about the confidentiality of this “confessional” I’d have to set it up so that it wiped out the answers immediately after it responded to them. But I haven’t done that yet.’

  ‘What’s this got to do with Tessa Nancarrow?’

  Epper took a deep breath. ‘She got into it by mistake.’

  ‘What?’ Anne was appalled, and all thought of being kind to Epper fled. ‘You left NEMO linked up to an experimental program? For God’s sake, Gary, what on earth were you thinking of?’

  ‘It was a chance in ten thousand . . . more than that. She just happened to reply to one question from NEMO in a particular way which connected her up with CONFESSOR. I’m sorry. I didn’t think it could happen. Anyway,’ he said, hurrying past the apology, ‘it’s all worked out for the best because what she told it, well, it’s pretty amazing.’

  Anne’s annoyance was overcome, as Epper had hoped, by her curiosity. ‘Show me,’ she said. Epper stood up and went over to the workstation and swung it into the room so that they could both see it. He started typing, talking at the same time.

  ‘I did a lot of work on managing silences, particularly on not prompting people too soon. That psychiatrist, David Hendrix, I went to see about installing NEMO was very helpful there . . . he gave me a lot of suggestions about leaving big gaps after questions so that you’d force people to respond, things like that. Otherwise CONFESSOR is pretty rough – it’s early days.’

  ‘Let’s see, shall we,’ she said, impatiently. He typed into the terminal for a few moments. The screen filled with the last testament of Tessa Nancarrow.

  {[Silence: [At one minute prompt with question]}

  Confessor: What do you want to tell me, Mrs Nancarrow?

  Mrs Nancarrow: It’s very hard to talk about.

  Confessor: Why is it hard to talk about?

  Mrs Nancarrow: (silence) [one minute]

  Confessor: Why is it hard to talk about, Mrs Nancarrow?

  Mrs Nancarrow: (silence) [one minute]

  Confessor: Why is it hard to talk about, Tessa?

  Mrs Nancarrow: (silence) [forty seconds] He’s always, making me eat.

  Confessor: Why is he always making you eat?

  Mrs Nancarrow: (silence) [thirty seconds] He’s always making things for me to eat.

  Confessor: What things?

  Mrs Nancarrow: Cups of tea . . . toast . . . dinner . . . always on at me to eat. Chocolates. He’s always giving me chocolates.

  Confessor: How long has he been giving you chocolates?

  Mrs Nancarrow: For eight months. Chocolates and all the other things.

  Confessor: What other things?

  Mrs Nancarrow: The food: the toast, the dinners, the cups of tea. I just told you.

  Confessor: Could you tell me more?

  Mrs Nancarrow: I could tell you.

  Confessor: What could you tell me?

  Mrs Nancarrow: (silence) [one minute]

  Confessor: What could you tell me, Tessa?

  Mrs Nancarrow: My husband. He’s trying to poison me.

  Confessor: How long has he been trying to poison you? Mrs Nancarrow: Eight months. I told you.

  Confessor: Why did you tell me?

  Mrs Nancarrow: You wanted to know.

  Confessor: Why did I want to know, Tessa?

  Mrs Nancarrow: You want to help me.

  Confessor: How can I help you, Tessa?

  Mrs Nancarrow: You can’t.

  Confessor: Why can’t I help you?

  Mrs Nancarrow: I don’t know.

  ‘That’s it, really. They get stuck here and CONFESSOR returns her to the program proper.’

  ‘Gary, how did you get access to this if it’s supposed to be absolutely confidential?’

  He shifted uneasily. ‘This was never meant to be used. It’s a prototype.’

>   Something else occurred to her.

  ‘There’s no way NEMO could have accessed her claim she was being poisoned, could it? I mean, it didn’t get the idea from CONFESSOR.’

  ‘There’s no possibility of that. You can get into CONFESSOR from NEMO but not the other way around. Not yet, anyway.’

  Epper looked at her, suddenly uneasy. ‘Look, Anne, perhaps I should disconnect it completely.’

  ‘Perhaps you should.’ He turned to go as she went back to her papers. ‘But don’t.’

  Epper paused just as he was about to leave the office. ‘Anne?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Why on earth did she go back if she knew he was trying to poison her?’

  He did not expect an answer and he closed the door softly behind him.

  As on Healey’s last visit to Steven Grlscz’s flat, the door was half open when he arrived. He went in. Grlscz was sitting at his computer and turned in his seat to greet him. The first thing Healey noticed was that he was even thinner than when he’d last seen him in the police line-up. It was only a few pounds but the loss of weight on his already thin face accentuated the size of his eyes. He looked as if something terrible was happening to him.

  ‘In my heart of hearts, Inspector, I can’t honestly say I’m pleased to see you.’

  Healey smiled. ‘No.’

  ‘Have you come to arrest me?’ asked Grlscz quietly, almost matter of fact.

  The surprise on the policeman’s face was obvious. ‘No, no, not at all, rather the opposite in fact.’ Healey felt that he had been stupid not to realise that his visit might be alarming under the circumstances; he took pride in his belief that he was capable of a degree of sensitivity.

  It was clear from his expression that Grlscz’s usual politeness was wearing thin. ‘To be honest, Inspector, I feel that you’ve buggered me about quite enough without adding obscurity to it all.’ A thought struck him. ‘Maria?’

  ‘There’s still nothing,’ said Healey. ‘The reason I’m here is that I wanted to tell you that we’re closing the file until we have something more concrete to go on.’

  Grlscz said nothing.

  ‘At any rate,’ continued Healey, awkwardly, ‘I just wanted to say that you’re no longer a suspect. Not that we ever really felt you were, but you have to understand that we had nothing to go on except a report that after she disappeared Maria was seen with someone who answered your description.’

  He stopped, but Grlscz said nothing. As he was about to speak again, Grlscz interrupted. ‘Why are you telling me this now?’

  It was a fair question, thought Healey. It was hardly good police procedure to tell someone who might again be a suspect that you thought he wasn’t guilty. Nevertheless, he had been feeling bad about what he had put Grlscz through, even before the identity parade. But although it had been weighing on his conscience, it had not done so to the extent that would have made him break the habit of a professional lifetime. But what he had found out the previous day had made him feel that he could no longer continue to leave Grlscz wondering if he was going to be arrested for murdering someone it was clear he had loved very much.

  ‘I had a talk with someone who, according to Maria’s mother, was her closest friend. Did you know Judy Halpern?’

  ‘Judy? I met her a couple of times. She was a junkie . . . did some small-scale dealing. I thought she was violating her – bail with an extended trip to Phuket.’

  Healey smiled, ‘Apparently Miss Halpern missed her mum. Anyway, she was re-arrested at Heathrow on Tuesday and I had a word yesterday evening.’

  ‘Did she have any idea where Maria might be?’

  Healey shook his head. ‘But what she did say was consistent with what everyone else has said . . . that she had never been happier and that Maria said it was because of you.’

  Grlscz’s expression did not change at all.

  ‘She did tell us something new though, and to be honest I’m a bit surprised you didn’t bring it up yourself.’ Grlscz looked puzzled and also alarmed.

  ‘I was just wondering why you didn’t tell me you’d saved Maria Vaughan’s life.’ Healey could see that he was mystified. Now it was his turn to be puzzled. ‘Judy Halpern said that Maria had told her that she’d been about to throw herself under a tube train and that you pulled her back. That was how you met.’

  Grlscz squeezed his eyes shut as if they were hurting. ‘I suppose it’s sort of true but it was all much more . . . diffuse than that. It wasn’t the first time we met exactly. I’d come across her a couple of times before and later in the bookshop she used to work in. But it was pretty casual. I suppose in a way Judy’s right.’

  ‘But you didn’t save her life?’

  There was a brief pause and what Healey saw in Grlscz’s expression convinced him beyond doubt that whatever had happened to Maria Vaughan, Steven Grlscz had nothing to do with it.

  ‘The third time I met her it was in the bookshop she worked at in Covent Garden. We talked for a bit and I left to . . . I was having my hair cut a couple of streets away. After that, I went to the tube and there she was, waiting for a train, and to be honest I was rather hoping she hadn’t seen me. She was looking around and she seemed a bit stressed, nothing more. A train was about to come in. I thought she’d seen me so I went over to her but as I moved in front of her to get her attention the look of surprise she gave me . . . well, it was obvious she hadn’t. She was completely startled . . . looked at me as if . . . I don’t know . . . as if I were a ghost and then she ran off.’ He looked at Healey for a few moments. ‘She told me later, after we started going out, that she had been about to jump. But I didn’t believe her. So, if I did save her life, it was by accident.’ He smiled. ‘Do I go back to being a suspect now?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so.’ Healey stood up. ‘If we hear anything I’ll let you know. But for what it’s worth, and I may well be wrong, I think she’ll turn up one of these days.’ He looked at Grlscz to see how he had taken this. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘Perhaps. But thank you anyway.’

  While he was waiting for the lift, Healey thought about what had happened and the expression on Grlscz’s face that had convinced him that even if Maria was dead he had nothing to do with it. Grlscz had been offered a way out. An independent witness had said he’d saved Maria’s life, and while it was possible to think of a reason why someone who had done this might subsequently murder the person they had saved, it was pretty implausible. And especially so in this case, given that everyone he had talked to confirmed that Steven Grlscz had transformed Maria’s life. But it was still possible. Such a man might have taken the view that the woman he had transformed was indebted to him, or that she was his creation and should remain so. If his creation had shown signs of too much independence it was credible that someone with a power complex might kill in a moment of rage. However guilty he felt about the identity parade, Healey realised he would never have entirely ruled out Grlscz as a suspect. It was only now that he had done so that he realised why he’d pursued him on such a flimsy basis. Grlscz was convincing but Healey hadn’t been convinced. He was almost convinced, not least because he liked his manner and admired the way he had behaved during all of this, but something had been nagging him. It was based on nothing. It was not a hunch, but rather the shadow of one. But until now it had always been there. The reason it had now dispersed was that what he had seen on Grlscz’s face, just for an instant, was that he had almost decided to lie, to allow him to believe that he had saved Maria’s life. But against his own interests he had told the truth. This was what had done it. Healey laughed softly and bitterly: The truth will set you free. A wave of loneliness and shame and misery swept over him as he entered the lift and pressed the button for the ground floor.

  Grlscz was still sitting where Healey had left him. After a minute he got up and went to the window, but couldn’t settle and sat down again. As suddenly as it had begun, it was over. The policeman had come to see him, another momen
t of terror as he thought he was going to be arrested, and then he was saved. The poverty of what he had taken from Maria and the long wait while the police investigated her disappearance meant that he was beginning to starve. For the second time in as many days he thought how strange relief was and how intense it could be, how profound its pleasure. It was not a sudden absence that made it so – like the end of intense pain – it was a presence. It was a wonderful reminder that life is not what you feared. Life can be what you hope. Everything can work out all right.

  The Wisdom of Crocodiles

  In the past we beat both our children and our wives. In the past we dictated the financial behaviour of citizens by credit restraints and exchange controls, by money squeezes and cash corsets. In the past we fired people. Violence and duress solved things. Now we do things differently, without recourse to threat and menace. Now we get consumers to curb themselves by orchestrating their levels of anxiety and desire through interest rates. Now instead of dismissing our servants we let their contracts lapse.

  But if we no longer hit women as a matter of course, and it will soon be against the law to beat a child, how are we to exert our will on those who are close to us? The lesson in all this is clear: the commercial practices of one age become the moral practices of the next. In advanced industrial nations the movement from coercion to manipulation is happening everywhere and in everything. From now on all sticks will come in the shape of carrots.

  Louis Bris, The Wisdom of Crocodiles

  Over the next few days Grlscz’s exhilaration faded as he exchanged one kind of anxiety for another. The moment might be right at any time she came to his flat and he was nervous as a cat before she arrived. Every now and then a surge of fear hit him in the stomach as he realised the dreadful risk of what he was about to do. And always in the back of his mind there was a sympathy for the creature he was about to kill. He admired her, or rather it was deeper than that: he was proud of her. At first the implications of feeling anything like this had terrified him, as if he had discovered the early symptoms of a wasting terminal disease making itself known through easy bruising or an increase in minor acts of clumsiness. After a while it struck him that it all depended on what you did with it, on what it was or was not connected to. If sympathy was unattached to shame or pity it was neither a weakness nor a strength.