A Game of Minds

by Priscilla Masters

  Now Claire had seen Kobi through someone’s eyes who’d been fond of him, she had a different perspective. The kaleidoscope had twisted.

  EIGHTEEN

  Wednesday 25 September, 11 a.m.

  She visited Ilsa on the ward and sat down with her, still troubled by the decision she was about to finalize. As an inpatient they could monitor their patients hour by hour, change medication within minutes, note serious incidents. Above all watch and sometimes prevent assaults, meltdowns and suicide attempts. Do their best to carry out that government directive. As an outpatient they would be cutting her free. She recalled Edward Reakin’s words. Possibly psychotic, possibly not. As Claire entered the room she sensed that Ilsa was withdrawing into herself. She was sitting in the corner, in an armchair, frowning, her mouth working as she muttered. She didn’t look up when Claire entered but continued with a slight rocking movement and the continual working of her mouth. If anything, she seemed even more distant and detached.

  ‘You’ll soon be going home.’

  Ilsa didn’t respond.

  ‘John is, I believe, getting the house ready for when you return from the clinic.’

  No response.

  ‘You’ll see your son.’

  Still no response.

  ‘I think he’s planning for Maggie—’

  Ilsa’s head shot up. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not in my house.’

  Claire kept her voice calm. ‘I understood she was your friend.’ She pursued the subject. ‘Maggie is a good friend, isn’t she?’

  This provoked a soft huff. But there were questions it was her duty to ask.

  ‘You know where you are and why you’re here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And now?’

  Ilsa’s expression was pure cunning. Instinctively Claire leaned forward and touched her hand. ‘You need to tell me,’ she said, ‘what you want to do. You’re not powerless, you know.’

  Ilsa made no response.

  ‘You need to tell me if you really are happy to go home.’

  Ilsa leaned forward. ‘Nothing you can do will make any difference. John won’t win, you know.’

  ‘Won’t win what?’

  ‘This round.’

  ‘He doesn’t need to win, Ilsa. There is no competition.’

  Ilsa licked around her mouth. ‘There’s always a competition. Life is a competition.’

  ‘In some ways, yes. But he isn’t my patient, Ilsa. You are.’

  ‘Maybe he wants me out of the picture so he can carry on with Maggie.’

  ‘That isn’t the impression I get. He seems very fond of you. He just wants you to get better.’

  ‘He’s good at deceiving people.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  For the first time since Ilsa had been admitted Claire saw a mischievous smile as she responded. ‘Who knows?’

  Claire made her decision. ‘I’m going to ask Edward Reakin, the psychologist, to spend some time with you so we can work out a care plan for your discharge. And it will be one that puts you first. Understand?’

  Ilsa nodded.

  As Claire left the room, she felt worried. Something here felt dangerous. Ilsa was far more manipulative than she had realized. What was she really capable of? She must call on Edward, she thought, as she wrote up the notes and left the ward. As she passed Ilsa’s door, she peeped in. Ilsa was sitting on her bed looking pleased with herself.

  Grant rang at lunchtime wondering if they could meet up, but she had to say no. ‘I’m sorry but this Kobi thing is taking up a lot of my time. I’m really behind at work.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She felt unaccountably irritated at his disappointment. ‘Come on, Grant, this is how it is.’ She felt like adding the same tired, worn, old phrases, that this wasn’t just a job. Like the police it was more a way of life. But that would have been pointless and unnecessary and she’d said it all a thousand times before. Instead she suggested, with a heavy weariness, that they meet tomorrow. ‘And I’ll give Adam a ring, see if he and Adele are free.’ His response was a dissatisfied grunt. Both he and she knew perfectly well what she was doing, using her half-brother as a foil. While he was there they would not be able to discuss their ‘future’. In fact, she didn’t want to discuss their future at all but wanted to leave it out of focus. She was deliberately putting it off. And Grant’s ‘Great’ was ironic.

  NINETEEN

  Thursday 26 September, 12.30 p.m.

  The day wasn’t turning out quite how she’d anticipated. HMP Stafford had rung her at nine o’clock saying that Jonah Kobi was asking to see her – urgently.

  Again? It was a repetition of Monday. And what had she gained from that interview? Nothing. It was all part of his game, but she made a two-hour gap in her day to see him anyway.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ Kobi greeted her as she entered the room, making that polite gesture of raising himself from the chair and holding out his hand. ‘If it isn’t my dear friend, Dr Roget.’ He turned and spoke to the prison officer. ‘Come to interview me over a murder she’s not quite sure whether I did or did not commit. She’s wondering now what, if anything, I have to tell her.’ His smile broadened as he continued addressing the prison officer. ‘What do you think?’

  The officer was not playing any game. He remained expressionless as a soldier on parade and, with a swift check at Claire, he left them alone.

  Kobi lowered himself back into the chair. A smile played around his mouth as though he was really enjoying these interviews, but it didn’t quite ring true. Claire kept her eyes on him. His confidence was hollow, his mouth wavering and uncertain. He was, she decided, uncomfortable.

  ‘Nice to see you again, Claire.’

  She didn’t respond. Instead, she said, ‘What’s so urgent you wanted to see me today?’

  ‘Maybe I remembered something. Now what was it?’ He put his finger on his chin.

  She waited, glancing pointedly at her watch.

  ‘Miranda,’ he said. ‘Have you spoken to her?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m not convinced she’ll be of help.’ She turned the topic. ‘Unlike your wife.’

  His mouth tightened. ‘Why do you want to talk to her?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ she said casually, ‘background information can be useful. Give you another perspective.’

  He’d lost his swagger.

  ‘Why did you marry her, Jonah? You’re unlikely ever to live together or have a normal married life. So why marry? What’s the point? Is it because you won’t ever be expected to have sex?’

  His face darkened but he managed a tight smile. ‘Well. You’re the psychiatrist. Why do you think I married?’

  She leaned back in the chair and delayed responding, as though only now was she giving the question consideration. ‘To have someone on the outside,’ she said slowly. ‘A voice. A representative. Possibly a means of making a plea for release. Someone you could manipulate, Jonah? I’ll find out,’ she said, ‘because I intend to speak to her.’

  He didn’t like that. He leaned forward. He smelt clean. Soapy, his breath scented with toothpaste. ‘I would have thought more interesting, is why did she marry me?’ He treated her to one of his wide ‘open’ smiles.

  She trotted out the notes she’d read. ‘There are well-documented reasons why women take an interest in a lifer.’

  ‘Such as?’

  She played along. ‘Wishing to reform a “bad character”. Sharing in notoriety, a sort of negative fame. Sometimes they have’ – she paused delicately, observing his responses – “tendencies” themselves. There is a recognition of the same type.’

  Kobi stiffened.

  She continued smoothly, pretending she had seen nothing. ‘They can have a genuine interest in a killer’s personality. There are the ones motivated by curiosity having read something or heard something that catches their interest. There are the fantasists. And then there are the reformers. So which is it, Kobi?’
r />   He responded quickly. ‘That’s for you to work out.’

  ‘And then,’ she picked up, ‘the relationship moves on, in stilted form, often a disappointment – to both. I will be interviewing Jessica to decide for myself which category she falls into.’

  He didn’t like that. ‘Who told you her name?’ He snapped out the words.

  ‘Oh, come on, Kobi. It’s hardly difficult to find out but actually DS Willard told me about her.’

  ‘About her?’

  ‘Only the bare bones, her name. Very little else.’

  Something flared in his eyes. She’d touched a sensitive spot. Claire couldn’t resist pressing her advantage. ‘Yes,’ she spoke to herself. ‘I think that would be a good idea.’

  ‘And if I forbid it?’

  She looked down at her hands, still relaxed, lying on her lap. ‘I don’t think you can do that, Kobi.’

  He tried another tack. ‘She doesn’t have to see you. She can’t know anything. She wasn’t on the scene until later. It would be … pointless. A waste of your time.’

  ‘You might have confided in her.’

  He shuffled in his seat and she realized why he had so wanted to see her. Not to give her information but to extract it.

  ‘I’ll stop her.’

  She raised her eyebrows.

  ‘I’ll tell her not to meet you.’

  ‘So you have control over her?’ She kept her voice low and slow.

  And for the first time Kobi wasn’t quite sure how to respond.

  She smiled, drew in breath and proceeded. ‘I’m not exactly short of women to interview about you.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘I’ve already spoken to Chloe.’

  He looked surprised. ‘But she’s just a kid.’

  ‘Not anymore.’

  ‘You can leave her out,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t know anything. She was just an innocent.’

  ‘That was my conclusion. But then there’s Miranda.’

  ‘Miranda?’ he jeered. ‘You’ll learn nothing from her. She’s a trumped-up little liar.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘But why you? That’s what interests me. Why didn’t she make an allegation against one of the other teachers? I wonder if she sensed something wasn’t quite right about Mr Kobi, history teacher.’

  If she’d touched a sensitive spot before this was raw. He sucked in a deep breath and she caught a glimpse of the fury against this schoolgirl. She weaved her fingers. If she could only use this blind anger. ‘Miranda, of course, is the smart one. She not only got you suspended while the enquiry went on, but she made a packet of money from selling her story to the tabloids when you were found guilty of the girls’ murders.’

  Kobi drew in a couple of deep, scooping breaths and struggled to regain control. His eyes burned.

  She’d got under his skin.

  She still felt dirty after she left the prison. It wasn’t the building itself, which was actually clean and smelt more of pine disinfectant than anything else. It was Kobi’s character. It was rubbing off on her. If he was playing a game then so must she.

  But the question she had asked Kobi stayed in her mind. Why had Miranda picked on Kobi?

  For now, she shelved the question. She’d made a promise to Grant. She rang Adam, her stepbrother, on the way home, to see if he and Adele were free. It was time she saw him and his fiancée again. Besides, she was wondering how they would absorb the tricky family situation into their wedding plans. At least she’d have Grant at her side to smooth over any family awkwardness.

  Adam didn’t answer the phone and she left a jaunty message. ‘Hi, Ad, big sister here. It’s Thursday. Don’t suppose you fancy trying out a Greek meal tonight with me and Grant? Ring if you do and bring Adele.’ She paused before adding, ‘Love you’ and making a kissing noise as she turned out of HMP Stafford’s car park.

  TWENTY

  The visit to Kobi had reignited interest in the woman who had made that damaging allegation. She pulled over and found Miranda Pullen’s contact details in her notebook. Miranda now lived in Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s town, though when Claire had visited it last year there had appeared little left of Mr Shakespeare.

  The voice that responded on the phone was crisp, clean and as decisive as sliced lemon. But when Claire introduced herself and gave the reason for her call Miranda was instantly guarded and she quickly mounted her high horse. ‘I don’t quite see how I can help,’ she said. ‘My contact with Mr Kobi goes back to well before he began his killing spree.’ Which hadn’t stopped her selling a lurid account of her one-time teacher to the tabloids and making a packet of money out of it. Claire had scanned the stories and found no sympathy for his victims, only a sharp self-protectionism and justification for her original allegations. Psychopaths come in all shapes, degrees and sizes. And no one now cared whether the stories she’d told were true or false.

  There were veiled allusions to him making ‘suggestions’, watching her ‘in a particular way’, attempts to isolate her from her friends. Nothing actionable. If there was any truth behind the story it was buried in a dung heap of lies. Whatever – the papers had lapped it up and would have paid well for ‘insight’ into a notorious serial killer.

  ‘It’s true that your allegations pre-date his crimes,’ Claire agreed, ‘but fairly obviously there is a possibility that it was those allegations …’ She paused, aware she was about to cross a line. Instead she substituted her original words with a safer version: ‘Might have woken some dark instincts in him.’

  As she’d anticipated, Miranda quickly sprang to the defensive. ‘You can’t know that.’

  ‘I’ve read the articles, Miranda, as well as the police files and the post-mortem reports of the dead girls.’ She didn’t repeat her request for an interview.

  The response this time was a heavy silence.

  Eventually Miranda capitulated. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘All right. If you think it might help. But I’ll only meet at my time and at a place of my choosing. I don’t believe I can help you find that girl for a minute but …’ Something changed in her voice. It lifted a few notes and acquired brittleness. ‘I don’t like all this being raked up again. It was a long time ago. I don’t want my family being exposed to notoriety.’

  Then you shouldn’t have gone so public with your little stories.

  ‘I’m getting married next year. I don’t want to start married life with this cloud hovering over me. I just want it over. Dead and buried.’

  Unfortunate words.

  They finally arranged to meet on the following Wednesday, at a hotel a little off Junction 14 of the M6. Miranda said she was ‘on the road’ that day and this would be the most convenient hook-up point.

  Claire put the phone down, acknowledging a surprising detail: Kobi might be a serial killer, as slippery as a wet snake, but of the two she preferred him to Miranda Pullen. If she had to make a choice at all.

  5.30 p.m.

  Edward Reakin was waiting outside her office to speak to her about Ilsa. He closed the door carefully behind him.

  He sat down and looked at her awkwardly. ‘Sorry to bother you,’ he said. ‘I know you’re busy.’

  ‘It’s OK, Edward.’

  ‘I’ve just spent some time with Ilsa,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure what we’re going to achieve here.’

  ‘Elaborate.’

  ‘She believes her husband is having an affair with her friend but’ – he looked troubled – ‘I’m not sure this is a genuine delusion.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s the way she says it, almost casually.’

  ‘You think she’s playing with us? To what ends?’

  ‘That’s what I can’t work out. It’s almost as though she has a secret agenda.’

  ‘What?’

  Edward simply shook his head. ‘Whatever it is, she’s hiding it from us. Maybe what she needs is to go home. Return to reality. Pick her life back up but her husband won’t have her home. Says he needs time.’<
br />
  ‘For what?’

  ‘That is another puzzle. To protect their son, perhaps? Because he still feels she needs specialist help? Or is there another motive? Ah …’ He held up his hands. ‘Claire,’ he said, ‘something is very wrong.’

  ‘I feel that too, but we can’t justify keeping her in because we feel that something is wrong.’

  ‘Her husband has suggested she go back to the private clinic in Birmingham.’

  ‘That might not be a bad option, Claire.’

  ‘Your instincts have been right before. I’ll talk to Ilsa and book the clinic, discuss the possibility of having a psychiatrist visit her there. We’re only on the end of the phone. Her medication has been sorted. She’s not acutely anxious or depressed. I don’t judge her to be a suicide risk.’

  ‘Decision made then?’ He smiled and looked relieved and then added, ‘I don’t know what her game is.’

  ‘Game? Is that what it is, a game?’

  ‘I just get the feeling she’s hiding something vital from us.’

  ‘Then that settles it.’ On behalf of all the patients who desperately needed a psychiatric inpatient bed, she felt angry. ‘Greatbach isn’t the place for a game.’

  Edward was almost out of the door when she added softly, half hoping he wouldn’t hear, ‘I only hope I’m not wrong here.’

  6 p.m.

  Adam still hadn’t rung back.

  Next to claim her attention was DS Zed Willard on the phone. ‘I just wondered where you are with your interviews?’

  ‘Not sure I’m getting anywhere, Zed,’ she said. ‘I have arranged to see Miranda Pullen next week – if she doesn’t cancel.’

  ‘Why her?’ He sounded surprised. ‘She probably made the whole thing up as a dare.’

  ‘That’s what I’m hoping to find out.’

  ‘He was found not guilty of sexual misconduct,’ he reminded her.

  ‘Which doesn’t necessarily mean he’s innocent. It only means he wasn’t found guilty. And when she made her allegation, the rules for sexual propriety between pupil and teacher were less stringent. I don’t know if she’ll throw any light on Marvel’s fate, Zed, but I do think she will give insight into Kobi’s character. Why she picked on him. There will be something there, some small and subtle clue. Teenage girls can be very perceptive of the opposite sex. They pick up on things other age groups miss out on. Let’s face it. Kobi is never going to confess unless we have more leverage.’