Possession

by Peter James

  ‘A pupil?’ She felt his eyes raking her, boring into her.

  ‘I wrote a thesis on him – on his work.’

  ‘I – I thought you were studying chemistry?’

  ‘Yes. His work was chemistry; chemistry and biology.’ He smiled and stared, mockingly. ‘Biology and chemistry are very intertwined, Mrs Hightower – I think you understand that more than most people.’

  She felt herself reddening even more. How much do you know, she wanted to say, feeling her embarrassment beginning to turn to anger; how much do you know, you bastard?

  He turned away from her, looked around the hall, and studied the suit of armour at the bottom of the stairs. Then suddenly he spun around and stared hard at her. ‘I know why you have come here.’

  She was startled by his words and by his movement; she tried to compose herself, tried to stare him back and show nothing. ‘Do you?’ she said acidly. ‘Do you really?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ He smiled. ‘I can help you. I know where the files are. I know where all of them are.’ He turned away again, and began to walk across the hall towards a corridor.

  She felt the anger draining away and helplessness replacing it. Limply, she followed him.

  The drawer slid open silently and stopped with a sharp metallic clang.

  ‘Tell me, Otto,’ she said, ‘why was Dr Saffier struck off?’

  He stared inside the drawer at the files. ‘He interfered with young boys in a public lavatory.’

  She reeled as the words sank in, then watched his face, to see if it was a joke, something from his odd sense of humour. But there was nothing; a fact, that was all.

  Did he interfere with you too, you bastard, she wondered.

  ‘No,’ he said, turning to face her.

  ‘Pardon?’ she said, feeling a flush sweeping through her that was both cold and hot at the same time.

  ‘No, he did not interfere with me.’

  She stared at him, feeling her head hot, so hot it was sweating. How? Had it shown in her face? Or had he picked it out of her mind?

  She looked around the dank cellar, lit by one naked bulb, at the shadows that danced menacingly against the walls each time she or Otto moved, at the old green filing cabinets that stood in a row in the middle of the room like sentinels. What did they contain, she wondered, what secrets were there that should have been in Somerset House? What secrets were there that Saffier had not taken with him to the grave? This strange, brilliant man who interfered with boys. Public lavatories? Surely he had style? Surely he could have at least–? Frightened, she stared up at the stairs they had come down, up at the door at the top which Otto had closed and locked from the inside.

  Otto ran his fingers through the files with a sharp clacking that echoed around, then stopped. He pulled out a slim green file and held it up to the light, studied it for a moment, then walked across the cellar floor to a metal table directly beneath the light bulb. He laid it down, nodded at her, then stood back.

  Holding her breath, Alex walked over to the table and looked down; she saw the name typed on the index tab: Hightower. Mrs A. Nervously she lifted the flap. There was a wodge of graph paper and several index cards held together with a paper clip.

  She felt her face go red as she looked at the graphs and remembered. Temperature charts, with the most likely days of each month circled in black. God, what they’d gone through. She looked at the top index card. Her date of birth. David’s date of birth. His sperm count. Then a list of dates, with tiny illegible handwriting in faded ink beside each one. Her heart began to sink. Nothing. There was nothing here. Nothing that was going to help.

  And then she saw it.

  She began to tremble as she read, and then re-read, the tiny slanting handwriting beneath the date on the last card: ‘J. T. Bosley’.

  She heard again the echo of the sharp nasal voice. My name is John Bosley. I’m the boy’s father.

  She tried to hold the card, but her hand was shaking wildly. She looked around and saw strange shapes flickering in the shadows, flickering among the filing cabinets and along the walls that seemed to stretch away into the dark for ever.

  She saw Otto’s face; the smile. The smile. Otto walked to another filing cabinet, opened the drawer, pulled out another file, carried it to the table as if it were a priceless jewel, and laid it down. Again he stood back and folded his arms behind him.

  The tab was marked, simply: Donors.

  Inside was a thick wodge of computer printout. Names in alphabetical order, pages and pages. On the fourth page she found it: ‘Bosley. John Terence. Guy’s Hospital, Lon. Date of Birth: 27.4.46.’ He would have been twenty-one then, she thought. It was followed by several lines of minute detail; the colour and texture of his hair, size of forehead, colour of eyes, exact length and shape of his nose, mouth, chin, teeth, neck, his build. She shivered. It could have been a description of Fabian.

  At the end of his section were the words: ‘Donations used: 1 time. Ref. Hightower, Mrs A.’

  She turned and looked at Otto.

  ‘Have you seen enough?’ he said.

  ‘Is there any more?’ she said, weakly, trembling.

  He smiled again; that hideous knowing smile; the mocking eyes. ‘Not down here.’

  ‘So where?’

  ‘That depends on what you want to know.’

  ‘Don’t play games with me, please, Otto.’

  ‘I don’t play games.’

  ‘Who was John Bosley? What was he like? How did he die?’

  ‘He’s a doctor. But I don’t think he died.’

  Alex shuddered as the snarling in the séance came back. Bosley’s words. Don’t let the little bastard … ‘Yes; he’s dead; I know that.’

  Otto looked at her scornfully and shook his head. ‘He didn’t die.’

  ‘How do you know?’ she demanded, feeling her temper flaring.

  ‘I already told you. I know a lot of things.’

  ‘Well this is one that you don’t.’

  He smiled. ‘Would you like his address?’

  She looked, hesitantly. Something; there was something in the way he spoke. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s easy to remember. Dover Ward, Kent House, Broadmoor.’

  ‘He’s a staff doctor there?’

  ‘Oh no, Mrs Hightower.’ Otto smiled. ‘He’s an inmate.’

  The words sank in slowly. Inmate. Inmate. She wanted to escape from here, be somewhere, anywhere, alone. She wanted to be away from the eyes, from the smile, from the pleasure that was in that smile. Inmate. Public lavatories. What had Saffier been up to? How much damage had he done, to her, to others? Christ, what the hell had he been playing at? Impregnating her with the sperm from a criminal lunatic. ‘What – why – was – is he there, Otto?’

  Otto shrugged. ‘Murder; I don’t remember how many.’

  ‘Who – how –?’ She wanted to sit down, wanted desperately to sit; she leaned against the table, let it take her weight, tried to think clearly. ‘Who did he murder?’

  Otto shrugged, and smiled. ‘Women.’

  ‘Did Fabian know?’ She stared at the floor.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You told him?’

  ‘A son has a right to know who his parents are.’

  She felt a flash of rage, but bit her lip, somehow contained it.

  ‘I showed him the file.’

  Alex glared at Otto. ‘And you thought you were being frightfully clever?’

  ‘Your son was kind to his father, Mrs Hightower. Kinder than you will ever know.’

  What did he mean? A knife. It was as if he had a knife inside her and kept on twisting it. ‘He was a very kind boy,’ she said, helplessly.

  Otto glanced up at the door and smiled again. ‘Shall we go back and join the party?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  She drove up the hill through the messy High Street of the village; an uneasy blend of neat Victorian red brick houses and modern urban sprawl. Plenty of money. How did they feel, she wondered,
living here, so close?

  The sign was like any other road sign, small, unobtrusive: Broadmoor. ½ mile.

  She felt her pulse racing as she turned off into a much steeper road. It did not feel right, it was too quiet, too residential. She wondered whether she had misread the direction: she saw an elderly man weeding the front garden of his bungalow and she stopped the Mercedes. Then she hesitated for a moment, embarrassed, suddenly, embarrassed to ask the way, embarrassed to admit to a stranger that she was going there.

  ‘Is this the right road for Broadmoor.’

  ‘Straight up; you’ll see the sign.’

  She felt herself blushing under his gaze; what did he think her business was? Was there something wrong in going there? In merely being even associated with the place?

  The sign rose up from behind a tall hedgerow. ‘Broadmoor Hospital. Private.’ Grey with black and red lettering. She turned into a road with neatly trimmed grass verges. ‘Private Road Patrolled by Wardens.’

  A few hundred yards further up the hill, she rounded a corner, and gasped. Christ. The massive buttressed red-brick wall and the huge Victorian red-brick institution rising up behind it, with the barred windows and the steep slate roof. More unfolded; it seemed to go on for ever. A huge red-brick tower with guard rails, a weather vane and a massive radio aerial at the top and the wall, stretching away out of sight. The wall. She shivered. Bosley was in there, somewhere. The father of her child.

  There was a maze of roads and signs and triangles of neatly mown grass in front of her. ‘Staff Club, Access to Main Gate For Collections, Deliveries & Emergencies Only, Cricket Ground.’ Signs. Everywhere. Everything labelled. Was John Bosley labelled too? ‘Upper Broadmoor Road, Terrace, Chaplain’s Hill, Drive Carefully, Speed Controlled Ramps.’ She looked around, bewildered, for the road name she had been given. Then she saw it, right beside her. Kentigern Road.

  She followed along and it dipped down away from the wall, past a sloping lawn with two fir trees and a small statue of a winged angel. Salvation, she thought, staring at it puzzled. Then she saw the house, Redwoods. A sizeable modern brick house, standing back from the road behind another grass triangle, with a parking area in front of it.

  The door opened before she had got out of her car and the chaplain stepped out, a sturdy middle-aged man with greying hair and a kindly face; he was dressed in conventional black, with a white dog-collar, and wore sandals, she noticed. His glasses were turning dark in the sunlight, blotting out his eyes.

  ‘Mrs Hightower?’

  She nodded and his hand enveloped hers, warm, firm, comforting.

  ‘You found it all right?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He looked at his watch. ‘I’m afraid we will have to be brief – unfortunately one of our patients has had a sudden family bereavement and I must …’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘It’s kind of you to see me at such short notice.’

  He led her through into a large drawing room with a pink carpet and pointed her to a sofa. He sat down in an armchair and put his feet up on a pink pouffe. She looked around the room. Everything was in soft pinks and browns; the colours were unobtrusive, like the furniture, but did not quite blend. The room felt oddly bare to Alex, lacking bits and pieces, ornaments, as if it had recently been burgled. There was a solitary Coalport statuette on the mantelpiece, a young courting couple, a framed photograph of a schoolboy on the wall and a television; but little else, nothing to dominate, nothing to distract from the presence of the man in the armchair opposite her. She wrung her hands together. ‘It’s very kind of you to see me,’ she repeated.

  He smiled benignly. ‘Not at all.’ He paused. ‘John Bosley?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Know him well.’

  ‘He really is still alive, is he?’

  There was a strange flicker across his face. ‘He was yesterday, yes. Very much so.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure – that was all.’

  ‘Oh yes, very much alive.’ He stood up. ‘I’ve just remembered – one moment.’ He went out of the room and she stared around again, at the television, the video, then back at the statuette on the mantelpiece. Two young things from another century, elegant, in love, carefree. Carefree. Was there such a place, she wondered?

  ‘I brought this – just to make sure.’ He walked back into the room and handed her a small black and white photograph.

  She stared down. The photograph was shaking in her hands, shaking so much it was almost a blur. She saw a double portrait, one face-on, the other in profile, with a row of numbers printed beneath, a pale gaunt face; a shock of fair hair. And the eyes. The eyes. ‘Oh my God,’ she mouthed. ‘Fabian. It’s just so incredibly like him.’ The photograph fell out of her hands into her lap. She tried to pick it up, but it danced in her trembling fingers then flipped on to the floor. She leaned over, feeling sick suddenly, violently sick, and put her hand in front of her mouth.

  She breathed deeply and it passed. Then she looked at the chaplain again. He was back in his chair, smiling gently.

  ‘Very difficult,’ he said, gently. ‘Very difficult.’

  ‘The likeness,’ she said. ‘It’s incredible.’

  He nodded; there was something about his expression that she thought was odd.

  ‘You’ve never seen him before?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Forgive me – I don’t quite understand. You say he’s the father of your – er – son?’

  She nodded.

  ‘But you’ve never seen him?’

  She felt herself going red. ‘My husband was – er – is – infertile. I was inseminated by semen from a donor – John Bosley was the donor. It was all done through a specialist in London.’

  He nodded, frowning. ‘So you’re not, strictly speaking, related?’ He paused. ‘Well, I suppose you must be; an interesting one, that.’ He smiled, happier.

  ‘Would it be possible to see him?’

  ‘I’d have to get the Governor’s consent.’

  ‘I’d like to see him.’

  He smiled. ‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head. ‘It may be opening a whole can of worms that’s not good for his treatment. I can put your request forward – but I’m not optimistic. He’s making progress you see, but the treatment of schizophrenia is a very slow and difficult business, and he has of course already had a major set-back.’

  ‘Am I allowed to know why he’s here?’

  He stood up again. ‘I brought the file – I think it’s probably quite irregular – but under the circumstances – I’m sure we can make an exception.’

  She pushed the sheaf of stiff typewritten sheets back into the yellow envelope and wound the cotton back around the fastener.

  ‘Oh – before you do that, we’d better put the photograph back.’

  ‘Photograph,’ she said, mechanically. The blood was drained out of her and she felt exhausted. She unwound the cotton again, grateful to have something to do for a moment, to occupy her mind, anything. ‘Photograph,’ she said, again.

  ‘Mrs Hightower, there’s nowhere in the Bible,’ he said gently, ‘nowhere where it says that a person has to be a good person to be of value.’

  She stared at him blankly, seeing only the stark paper and the clinical black typing, and nodded, trying to fight back the tears. ‘If someone is mad,’ she said, falteringly, feeling a tear running down her cheek, ‘if someone is mad, can they be absolved of blame?’

  ‘God laid down the Ten Commandments. We cannot break them without responsibility. There is sin and there is responsibility, even in the mentally ill. Psychiatrists cannot wipe a slate clean. I cannot either.’ He smiled again and crossed his legs. ‘A person who has committed a crime when ill can only become better when he becomes aware of what he has done, when he can say “I was ill then, but now I feel I need to be forgiven”.’

  ‘Has John Bosley said that?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m afraid he’s confused, terribly confused.’

&n
bsp; ‘It seems very cruel,’ she said.

  ‘Cruel?’

  ‘Cruel of God to make that condition.’

  ‘We take the view, in the Church of England, that evil will not enter a person who will not receive it.’ He smiled. ‘Evil must be invited in – Satan must be invited by that person into his life. Satan will not come on his own.’

  She looked at him, chilled. ‘You’re saying that John Bosley, in spite of his madness, is fundamentally evil?’

  He lifted his arms, slowly, with a sad bemused expression on his face. ‘Perhaps not in spite of his madness – we must consider the possibility that the mental problems of someone who has committed a terrible crime are a symptom of their evil.’

  She shuddered. There was a long silence and she sensed him looking at his watch.

  ‘Can schizophrenia be passed on – inherited?’

  ‘There is a lot of evidence, yes. The Schizophrenics Society could give you information – they have been making some very interesting discoveries.’

  ‘So my son –?’

  ‘It’s a possibility to be aware of.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘Perhaps you could come back and we can have a longer chat?’

  ‘Thank you. I’d like that.’

  He stood up and straightened his shirt.

  ‘You said that there had been a set-back in his treatment – what was that?’

  His face reddened and he touched his hands together, awkwardly. ‘Just a foolish incident,’ he said. ‘Very foolish.’

  ‘What happened?’

  He looked again at his watch. ‘Nothing. It was nothing.’ He paused. ‘Perhaps you should know. Next time – I’ll tell you next time – I’ll have to think about it.’

  She stared. What was it? What the hell was it?

  ‘You’ll be able to find your way out all right? Back to the main road? Just turn right.’

  ‘Thank you, Father – er – Reverend – er –’ she said.

  He smiled. ‘Call me. I’m very busy for the next few weeks – perhaps in June sometime?’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You’ve been very kind.’ But his mind was somewhere else, somewhere a long way away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX