by Sue Walker
Copy to: General Nursing File
Copy to: patient file, I. Haldane
THIRTY-NINE
“Frankly, Innes, this couldn’t come at a worse time. We’re critically below acceptable staffing levels. I mean…can you give me some idea what this is about?”
“No.”
The sigh of exasperation had sounded deafening in the high-ceilinged office. “All right. Take a fortnight. But this may reflect badly on you at your next evaluation. And as for any promotion board…”
Reluctantly, she allowed the morning’s conversation to play back and forth in her head as she rode the Docklands Light Railway towards Greenwich. She’d been taken aback by her line manager’s lack of sympathy, perhaps expecting a more understanding ‘woman-to-woman’ encounter. Well, she’d misjudged that. Badly. Maybe she should have kept up the ‘viral illness’ fiction. Now it was surely exposed for what it had been. But, after all these years of loyal service, she’d honesdy expected to be allowed some compassionate leave to deal with ‘deeply personal matters’.
She let her eyes drift down to the waterside walkways outside Canary Wharf station, already bustling with lunch-break office workers in sharp suits and smart dresses. Well, if her decision was going to terminate her Civil Service career, then so be it. Perhaps she’d have to try the big wide world of commercial law again. If she could get back in at her age. Whatever, if she looked hard enough at herself she knew this was a time for personal upheaval. Long overdue.
She’d buried herself in work since her divorce five years ago. A divorce that she had wanted. A divorce mat had left her very comfortably off. She’d even inherited a few of her ex’s friends and welcomed them into her own circle. One or two into her own bed, on occasion.
She saw the sign for the Cutty Sark station appear and stood up. Outside, the day was warming up. She was tempted to sprint-walk the few hundred yards to the row of pretty former naval captains’ cottages she knew so well but held off. She veered left and took a seat on one of the benches beside the great, three-masted tea clipper. As always, it was crawling with inquisitive tourists, weaving in and out of the rigging.
She sat back and tried to relax. There was time to spare after all, and it never really did to be too early. She hadn’t been to see Liv for nearly eighteen months. But she’d had lapses before and had managed, as Liv put it, to ‘plug back in’ perfectly successfully. Usually when she was in trouble, like before, during and immediately after her divorce. Like when her last bouts of panic attacks became so incapacitating that she thought she was losing her mind. But in all the years she’d been seeing Liv she had never, ever admitted to her time in the Unit. Never admitted it to anyone, friend or lover or husband.
And maybe there was a lesson in that. That Time’ (as she always dubbed it to herself—maybe the others did too?) was consuming her. If she was to be honest with herself and look deep inside, it had been consuming her all her life, but had breached her sophisticated unconscious barriers only recently, when she’d arrived home on an ordinary weekday evening to hear the desperate tones of Isabella echoing out from the answering machine. Quite unques-tioningly in many ways, she’d followed where Abby had led, without exchanging one word with the living woman. Now she was dead and it was too late. Now she felt as if she was shadowing a ghost. Many ghosts. And would keep shadowing and following. For how far and how long she had no idea.
The front door looked the same. Appropriately navy blue, the brass plaque announced that LIV KLEIBEL & KIM HARVEY were REGISTERED PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOTHERAPISTS and had been in practice for over twenty years. A reassuring husband and wife team. The receptionist was new, as were the two bright airy extensions that had been built on to the back of the first floor. The decor of the treatment room remained the same, though. Liv’s favourite choice. Light, soft colours and furnishings. Cocooning, embracing chairs. Fresh lilies, and, of course, Liv’s obligatory burning candle. A comfort and a focus for the eyes, when the mind wanted to take over the senses. “Well, then, Innes. Welcome back. How are you?” The unusual but familiar inflection reminded Innes that this was no cursory, conventional inquiry into her well-being. It meant that Liv wanted, and expected, a straight answer.
Innes watched as the inordinately long, elegant limbs of her therapist stretched themselves out and away from the confines of her chair. It had been a hard session. For both of them.
“In answer to your worry about how our working relationship may be affected by the news you have given me about your adolescence, please, please put that from your mind. In here, in these sessions, you bring up only what you feel like. There are no ‘betrayal’ or ‘lack of trust’ issues where I’m concerned. However, I am pleased, as your therapist, to know an important bit more about your past than I did previously. When I consider what brought you here—your relationship with your mother, still troubling, though she has been dead for many years, your panic attacks and control issues, all of that and more—I have always been left feeling that there was something else. And that something else remained a puzzle to me. It is no longer.”
“As you know, any decisions about your future must be yours. But given that you have travelled down this road remarkably quickly, I would strongly urge you to consider confronting your demons.”
Innes frowned. “What d’you mean?”
“I mean, do what I think is already at the forefront of your mind. That is, to contact this…this Alex and Simon. They are, after all, the only remaining living, or at least healthy, former patients left. They are your only link to this intriguing past of yours. You know where they live. Your concerns about these deaths being somehow linked to your collective time in the Unit are clearly troubling you deeply. Maybe you feel the need to perhaps warn them, or at least explore further your theory that the Unit is somehow causing all these deaths and misery with some of those who were actually there. They may know about what’s been happening in the way that you do. On the other hand, it’s quite possible that they might be upset by your interest. They may know nothing about each other and be living in absolute ignorant bliss, having also buried their Unit days. From what you’ve told me, both Simon and particularly Alex were extremely disturbed adolescents who have now made something of their lives. And, if that is the case, this may leave a high motivation in them to excise the unpalatable past. I’m not saying that this is the case. It’s just possible. But that is a calculated risk that you have to take. If you choose to contact them.”
“This monumental period of your early life has returned to have significance in your life now, today. Whatever the truth behind these deaths, they have come into your life and collided quite spectacularly with your controlled and, most of the time, apparendy contented, ordered existence. But I wonder? Given your history of anxiety, panic attacks, difficulties in forming successful and abiding intimate relationships, I’m left wondering if some of die answers lie in this past which you have suppressed for your entire adult life. You’re a highly intelligent and very self-aware woman. You must have reached this realization yourself?”
Innes could feel the tears ready to roll, each of Liv’s incisive observations cutting further and further into her own dwindling self-control. “You’re right. So right. I…I…I don’t know why I never brought up die Unit diing in our sessions. I…I think somewhere deep down, I felt…I felt…ashamed. I can’t really explain it in any other way. There’s always shame in mental illness. For me. For many who have suffered likewise. But…but…at this moment, I feel as if I’ve been waiting for something like this to make me look at, face up to that time. But I’ve always held back. Until now.”
“That’s fine, Innes. But what else is there? Other than shame?”
“I think you know what else, Liv. I’m scared. Terrified. And it seems with good cause.”
FOURTY
Innes? Innes, it’s Isabella. Isabella Velasco. I…I…Don’t ask me how I got hold of you…I…we live quite close, you know, would you believe? God, you sound just the same. J
ust the same! Look…please don’t be angry…I need to talk to you…see you. Can you call me as soon as you can? My number i—
She clicked off the mini-tape player and sat motionless at the desk of her hotel room. Anyone watching her would have thought her mad. Obsessive. They’d be right. She’d known it was an odd thing to do at the time. Keep the tape, when she had no intention of answering the call. But something had made her do it. She’d tried to analyse why and given up. Part of her was glad she had. Another cursed herself for the act of foolishness. Playing it again, Abby’s voice appeared even more infused with desperation. And something else. Fear? The guilt kicked in stronger than ever. She should have called her back. It was a plea for help. She should have called. It was as simple as that.
She’d gone over that particular ground again and again in her session with Liv in London two days ago. And hadn’t felt much better about that issue afterwards. What she did feel better about was Liv’s urging her to ‘confront her demons’. And here she was again. In Edinburgh. About to do just that.
She turned to her laptop and stared again at the story she’d downloaded. The north London local paper, anxious to fill its pages in a slow news week, bad done what she thought it would—a follow-up piece on a well-to-do resident.
Leading dental surgeon leaves generous legacies
Leading dental surgeon 42-year-old Professor Isabella Velasco, of 12 Belsize Park Square, who was found dead floating in the swimming pool of the Belsize Sports Centre last month, has left a number of generous legacies in her will, made public today.
The troubled Prof Velasco, who was found to have committed suicide, left the majority of her considerable fortune to charitable trusts and hospitals. She left £50,000 to the Eastman Dental Hospital, to be used in the specialist training of paediatric dentists. The sum of £40,000 is to be donated to Urban Medical, a charity that provides dental and medical care to the homeless on London’s streets; Prof Velasco used to do occasional voluntary work for them. But, surprisingly, the bulk of Prof Velasco’s fortune goes to two charities unrelated to her work.
The mental health charity MIND receives £100,000 with the proviso that the money be used for work directly related to young people with mental illness. But most intriguing of all is that a small Scottish charity, called ‘Renewal’, based in Edinburgh, which supports bereaved parents and relatives of children who have been murdered, has been left a colossal £220,000. Its director, Mrs Lavinia Henderson, said, “It is quite an astonishing act of charity. It will affect so many lives for the better. We are very moved by the kindness of Professor Velasco.”
Prof Velasco leaves no children. The remainder of her estate was bequeathed to her former husband, an anaesthetist now living in New Zealand.
A couple of minutes later the information she wanted was on the screen.
“Renewal”—Aims and Objectives:
To provide support to families and relatives who have lost children or young relatives through murder, manslaughter or any form of unlawful killing.
To foster research into the effects on families of murder, manslaughter or unlawful killing.
To distribute this research to the general public and professional bodies, with a view to increasing their awareness about the needs of those affected by such loss.
She re-read the information and sat back, puzzled. A small, obscure charity, no doubt doing important work, and one Isabella thought enough of to leave most of her fortune to. The why of it chased through Innes’s mind as she wrote down an address in her notebook.
She found the offices surprisingly plush for a small charity.
“I’m sorry, Ms Haldane, we can’t give out details about benefactors other than those already in the public domain. What I can say, though, is that we are eternally grateful for your friend’s generous donation.”
Innes studied the firm face of the charity’s Director. A woman in her sixties who, she knew from the charity’s website, had lost all three sons in an arsonist’s fire at a nightclub in 1976. Intimidating demeanour. Not surprising perhaps.
Innes tried again. “But did you ever meet Isabella or have any contact with her? The thing is, as far as I know, she hadn’t lost any young relative through death of any sort. It’s very puzzling.”
The Director stood up, motioning towards the door. The battle had been lost. “I’m sorry. All I can say is that I have no recollection of ever having met Professor Velasco. She clearly considered us a good cause, but her reasons for doing so must remain her own, and die with her. We’ll never know.”
FOURTY-ONE
She’d spent the rest of the day sitting at one of the hotel’s outside tables, drinking too much coffee and watching the tourists wander around the rejuvenated and gentrified Leith Docks. It had seemed a long wait until evening, but she knew it was the right time to try to make the visit. There was more chance of his being in then. But why not call him? His number was in the book. She’d vetoed that idea almost immediately. Too risky. Too easy to be turned down, hung up on. No, if she was going to do this, far better to try the personal approach. And she could always duck out of it right up to the last minute, couldn’t she? And why Simon? As she made her way through the hotel lobby to her car, she thought that one through all over again. Of the two, Simon and Alex, as she remembered them, Simon was surely the more approachable. And he was a trained psychologist now. He, of all people, must know how to conduct himself in tricky situations.
But Alex? In Innes’s memory, Alex still stood out as the hard skinhead with the hint of real physical danger about her. Of course she couldn’t be like that now. As a former City trader and now internet executive, it seemed unlikely that she hadn’t learned to control her temper and wayward behaviour. Though, you could never accurately guess just how much people didn’t change over time. Part of her felt that there was a central, emotionally brutal core to Alex, which had its roots so deeply seated in her self from some horrendously dysfunctional upbringing that it was probably still there. The thought not only disturbed Innes, but she had to admit that it also left her almost afraid. Of course she had no evidence whatsoever for this speculation. But, on balance, knocking on Simon Calder’s door seemed infinitely preferable to wandering into Alex’s den.
The sight of the evening’s golden sky as she crossed the Forth Road Bridge eased her nerves a little. The roads remained unclogged and she made it in good time, with the sun beginning to set as she took the winding road down to St Monans Harbour. As she zigzagged her way through the village, it seemed surprisingly busy. The usual gangs of bored teenagers hung around outside the quayside chip shop. Further up towards the top of the town, elderly holiday-makers took their last stroll of the evening before repairing to the pub or to an early bed.
She smiled to herself as she remembered her own happy childhood visits here. And then she remembered that the Unit had organized a ‘reunion picnic’ here in…’79 was it? Yes, she’d missed it, somewhat to her relief, because she’d been away on holiday with her parents. On her return she’d actually summoned up the courage to call the Unit to ask how it went. Student Sarah Melville, who wasn’t a student any more, had been honest. The picnic had ended in chaos. Carrie had punched Lydia. Sarah said that she didn’t know why and sounded as if she didn’t care anyway.
Innes shook her head at the memory. Typical Unit fiasco. She shoved the thought away, and felt relieved that at least what she wouldn’t be confronted with at Simon Calder’s home was indiscriminate violence. As she crested the hill on her final journey down to the Auld Kirk and Simon’s shoreside house, the expected peaceful landscape had changed. In the car park of the church and in the lane that led to the Old Manse, a police car and a van were parked. Uniformed men and women were coming out of the house and a handful of worshippers were leaving the church after an evening service. One group had collected and stood in a ragged semicircle, while the local minister, complete in cassock and dog-collar, was standing holding die hand of a clearly distressed old lady.
/> Innes parked, and tentatively approached a friendly-looking middle-aged woman on the edge of the group.
“Eh…I…I’m sorry, excuse me? I…I…I’m a friend of Simon, Simon Calder. Is anything wrong?”
She knew the question was stupid, but the woman turned with a concerned look. “Oh, my dear, you know Dr Calder?” At this she laid a steadying hand on Innes’s forearm. “I’m afraid I’ve got an awful shock for you. Dr Galder’s missing, presumed dead. They think he fell over the side of his garden wall. You see, over there? The wall goes down to the rocks and the sea. They think it happened the night before last. They found some of his torn clothing. It had become lodged in the rocks and…and…well…here we are. I’m very, very sorry, dear.”
Innes felt like she was going to faint. She leaned against a nearby parked car, hoping that die dizziness was going to fade as fast as it had overcome her. She patted her jacket pocket, listening out for the telltale rusde of the paper bag. Good. It was there. But, miraculously, her breathing was staying under control.
She was aware that the friendly woman had led her just a few yards into what was obviously her own garden and settled her in a wrought-iron chair. “You sit there and get some air. It’s a lovely evening.”
The woman then disappeared inside her house and returned within seconds, handing Innes a glass of chilled, over-sweet, home-made lemonade. But it tasted wonderful. She turned back into the woman’s cooing tone, picking up the last phrase.
“…unbelievable, especially after what happened to his daughter and everything.”
“I’m sorry. What did you say?”
The woman frowned at her. “Katie. Dr Calder’s daughter? She was abducted last year. It was in the papers. You don’t know about that?”