The Deceiver

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘Well, be glad of it. Because that means that complaining about you to your professional body is the last thing on her mind.’

  Silence. Then, ‘Really, Claire, how worried should I be? How nuts is she?’

  ‘On a scale of 1–10?’

  He waited.

  ‘A nine.’

  He took a moment to digest this, then, ‘And if she realizes this … romance … is nothing but a fantasy, am I likely then to come under attack?’

  ‘She’s never done that before. Her allegations have never gone as far as the courts, but as I say, I only have a patchy history of her two previous episodes.’

  ‘What does her husband think of all this?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t met him yet but he’s on my list.’

  ‘Thanks. Hardly reassuring but thanks anyway, Claire.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  ‘I owe you one.’

  Her response was a chuckle. She almost put the phone down then but didn’t. Instead, she allowed him to see the one ray of hope that she believed might exist. ‘There is the possibility of a rational explanation behind all this.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Heather has hinted at abuse by her husband. If that is so, and we can obtain hard evidence, it would provide us with an explanation for her flights of fancy. A substitute father for her children. Someone other than her cruel husband.’

  ‘O-o-h.’ It was as though a dawn had peeped over his horizon.

  Which she had to dim with a cloud. ‘But then that viewpoint would be unusual for her sister to share.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  When she put the phone down, she glanced back at Dr Sylas’s initial referral letter and wondered whether she would learn anything else useful from the GP.

  There were potentially a few other points that she could pick up on which might point her in the right direction. She was starting to piece together a narrative. Beginning with the historic physical and mental abuse by her father. Mirrored by her husband? It happened so often. Strange that so many women did this – married their fathers’ shortcomings. She grimaced. No danger of that happening to her. She could hardly remember her father, who had walked out on his baby daughter and her mother without a backwards glance. All she had left was her imaginary dad, ‘Maurice Cantona’. Not her mother’s version. Her father, Monsieur Roget, as she always called him, the venom in her voice making the title sound poisonous, was a filthy frog.

  She left Monsieur Roget in his foreign land and returned to the present. Back to Heather Krimble and Geoff. She knew the drill as well as any other psychiatrist searching for domestic abuse. Look for hard evidence: unexplained cuts, bruises, a black eye. Controlling behaviour or mental abuse would be much more difficult to ascertain but here she had an ally. She could rope in Edward Reakin, clinical psychologist. He had a real talent for winkling out factual history as well as for putting patients at their ease. The bottom line was this: patients trusted him.

  Then there was this Aussie guy, the locum who was filling in for Laura. What was his name? She glanced down at her notes. Simon Bracknell. Like Salena, he would bring a perspective from another part of the world. But mental illness, delusions, psychosis, depression, mania … Salena was right. They were the same the whole world over. Though how much insight would he have? Bracknell had never even met Heather, so anything he could tell her would necessarily come from Laura’s notes. Second hand.

  She could speak to Geoff Krimble herself. And she wouldn’t mind interviewing Ruth alone again. When the baby was born, they could take a DNA test which would exclude Charles Tissot for ever. At least from being a father.

  One step at a time. First, she’d better make contact with the community midwives. Get the obstetric team on board. She had to do that before she could admit her. But that meant explaining the situation to Rhoda Tissot. And this was when things were about to become a little more complicated.

  Justice is a fickle fellow, elusive and unfair. Heather had, unwittingly, selected the right candidate for her allegation. Charles was a philanderer. Perhaps something in Heather had sensed this on that night. It would be just like him to seduce someone drunk or a rather naive woman, someone he’d just met at a party – lure her out to his Jaguar for a sordid little fuck. But just because he was capable of it did not necessarily make him guilty. Likewise, because Heather was a disturbed and deluded woman, it did not make her story necessarily fiction. Just because the cap fits, it does not mean you are committed to wearing it. These thoughts spinning around in her head, she glanced at her watch. The day was moving on. Heather Krimble was not her only patient, so she climbed the stairs to the top floor. She needed to work on the cases of her two other tricky patients – Riley, who deserved a custodial sentence and was about to be set free, and Arthur, who didn’t have an evil bone in his body but would still be sent down on a charge of GBH and sentenced to a very long stretch.

  Outside Arthur Connolly’s room, she paused, her hand on the handle. What could she really do?

  SIXTEEN

  He was sitting in the corner, almost invisible. In a pair of dark trousers and beige sweater he practically blended in with the wall. Arthur was this sort of man. He never would stand out in a crowd, never act the hero, but would blend in with whatever background he was stood against.

  Given only the bald history of a man who had apparently gone mad and stabbed his wife, when she had first met him, Claire had been unprepared for such a small, timid man.

  He looked up and smiled, eyes watchful and intelligent. But meek, ashamed, a man who tried to shrink into the background, a man who wanted nobody to notice him. And usually his wish was granted. Nobody did. Except soon, when he would be Centre Court.

  ‘The hearing will be in the next week or so,’ she said, sitting down in the adjacent armchair. ‘We need to present you in the best possible light.’

  Again there was that eager, wanting-to-please nod.

  ‘Arthur. You need to understand,’ she urged. ‘You were lucky to be sent here for assessment rather than to prison. Although I understand many things about your case, you have been charged with GBH.’ She hesitated and continued. ‘Grievous bodily harm, if not attempted murder. You understand that?’

  His eyes flickered and he looked as though he was reaching for something deep inside his mind. ‘I understand that perfectly,’ he said quietly, ‘but you must understand too. I didn’t want to kill her. I just wanted her to stop.’

  She’d heard this all before but she had to make him understand that there could be no plea of diminished responsibility. He would be held fully responsible for his actions. Unless … ‘Why then?’ she asked baldly. ‘You’ve been married for almost thirty years.’ She repeated the question. ‘Why then?’

  ‘It … just … happened.’ He was choosing his words very carefully, rejecting some, selecting others like picking bones out of a fish. Setting them carefully around the rim of a plate in an invisible pattern. Tinker, tailor, soldier …

  ‘Can you think of any reason why? Did something particular happen that day?’ She was clutching at straws, knowing most of the time it was just like elastic that had simply been stretched too far. And snapped. Randomly.

  His look changed. It became desperate. Arthur was hunting for a reason too, something that would give him a get-out-of-jail-free card. His eyes bounced around the room, searching for an explanation that took its time coming.

  ‘She …’ he finally said. ‘My wife. Lindsay. She …’ He looked as though he was about to give up. He couldn’t find the words.

  She waited. Give me some clue, something I can hang a plea on.

  He began again. ‘She … I … I found it difficult.’ He was speaking very, very slowly. Words emerging, sluggish and hesitant. Testing the water. ‘It was difficult,’ he finally said, ‘to be myself. I wanted to be myself.’ His fists were clenched. It had been a very strong desire. Strong enough to almost murder her.

  ‘Arthur,’ she continued, ‘I think you shou
ld be prepared for a custodial sentence.’

  His eyes widened. ‘But … Doctor Roget, surely that’s why I’m here. I thought you would be able to help me.’

  ‘I can only go so far, Arthur. My job is to assess your mental condition.’

  ‘It was,’ he said firmly, handing her the words at last, ‘a temporary madness.’ He gave a tentative smile. The first smile she had really seen. It was achingly sweet, trusting like a child. But she would have to let him down. ‘That’s what it was,’ he said firmly.

  It was not enough.

  He looked up, eyes bright. Suddenly hopeful. ‘My sister came to see me today,’ he said. ‘Mary. I haven’t seen her for ages. It was nice. She says Lindsay’s going to be all right. She’s going to be fine.’

  ‘Yes. I heard that,’ she said. ‘That is good news.’

  He spent some time nodding, then, ‘I wonder, Doctor,’ he said. ‘Should I send her some flowers? Or would that be inappropriate? Misinterpreted, perhaps?’

  Patients always did this to her. Surprised her. They asked her impossible and inappropriate questions and expected some sort of rational answer to an irrational question.

  But … What the hell? ‘I don’t see why not, Arthur,’ she said, ‘though she might not quite take them in the spirit in which you sent them?’

  He chuckled. ‘What you mean is that she’ll probably just throw them in the bin?’

  And patients did this to her too – proved they had insight. No easy answer came to mind. She shrugged and he attempted to explain. ‘The spirit in which I’d send them would be a form of apology,’ he said, ‘for hurting her so badly.’

  She had gone through this when he had been first admitted two months ago.

  When you stuck the knife in her, did you mean to kill her?

  He had appeared initially confused by the question. She had repeated it and he had finally said, ‘I didn’t care. I only wanted her to stop saying such horrible things to me,’ he had raised his eyebrows, inviting her to see things from his perspective, ‘and about me.’

  ‘Did you want her to die?’

  Again, he had considered the question carefully. ‘If Lindsay had died she would never have been able to criticize me again, would she? So, yes. I suppose I did want her to stop for ever.’

  Perhaps it was at that point that she started to realize just how out of touch Arthur Connolly was. But out of touch is not quite temporary insanity. It would not help his plea or shorten his sentence or gain him the sympathy of the jury who, however hard or skilfully she might try to portray the Connollys’ marriage, would see yet another man assaulting a defenceless woman.

  ‘Can I ask you,’ she ventured now. ‘We suspect you might have a custodial sentence but we can’t even guess how long that will be. When you are free, what are your intentions?’

  ‘I’m not going back to her,’ he said, his mouth twisting in wry humour. ‘I’d just do it again.’

  So – for once in psychiatry – she did have a definite answer. Something tangible. Such a relief after the ghosts and shadows of Heather’s claim.

  She wandered along the corridor but Riley’s room was empty. One of the nurses answered her query. ‘She’s with Edward Reakin,’ she said, ‘having one of her sessions.’ She pulled a face. ‘Rather him than me. She’s a tricky little bugger, that one.’

  Claire was still smiling as she returned to her office, where she spent the next hour collating the statements she had received about Arthur, searching for something that would lighten his inevitable sentence. Plenty of people had spoken up for him: Arthur’s sister, friends, neighbours, relatives, acquaintances, people who went to the same Methodist church. All saying the same thing but in different words. Arthur was completely dominated by his wife, that if he put a foot out of line he would be publicly humiliated verbally, on occasions even physically by her slapping his head, his shoulder, his face or twisting his ear. Lindsay Connolly, they all agreed, was a monster, a twisted, vindictive woman. But, they all also agreed, Arthur was, in some way, responsible for his own fate. He should have been a man. He should have stood up to her. One particularly perceptive neighbour suggested that that was what Lindsay had wanted, for Arthur to act like a man, to stick up for himself, stand up to her. But, Claire had thought, if Arthur had stood up to her, he would have been the one labelled a bully.

  People are more prone to being judgmental than sympathetic. It is easier to take a side, whichever side, rather than stand, piggy-in-the middle, or sit on the fence and wonder. And what outsiders see is what outsiders are meant to see. She leafed through the statements one by one.

  ‘He should have stood up for himself’, ‘Shouldn’t have let her get away with it’, ‘He brought it on himself’, ‘He should have acted more like a man’. All had added, ‘But she was a devil to him.’ While others had been more descriptive. ‘Treated him like something you picked up on your shoe.’

  But having responded to the cumulative effects of years of bullying, allegiance had shifted from Arthur to his wife. People always pity the injured party. Not one of them had condoned Arthur’s assault. The aggressor rarely gets the vote. So now different words echoed round and around, the tables turned. ‘Poor Lindsay, married to that maniac. What she must have put up with.’

  Maybe even that would be just temporary. Once her injuries had healed and Lindsay Connolly had recovered her character, possibly finding someone else to pick on, perhaps the streams of sympathy would dry up and Arthur’s friends and acquaintances would gather round him again?

  Some hope.

  Tattooed as a jailbird, a manslaughter/attempted murder conviction under his belt, he would be dropped by all except his ever-faithful sister, Mary. Like Ruth Acton, sisters can be close. For, after all, blood is thicker than water, and a prettier colour, too.

  So, if blood really is such a bond, what about Arthur’s son, Saul? Their only child? She had him down as siding with his mother. But what was his true perspective?

  Perhaps, if she spoke to him face-to-face, he could throw some helpful light on the case, help her arrive at a conclusion that was fair, some way down the middle. She was running out of chances and people to speak for the underdog, unless something unexpected happened.

  In Claire’s mind, there was only one cause for celebration. Arthur’s action had been so completely out of character, so shocking and unpredictable that he had ended up in Greatbach Secure Psychiatric Hospital for assessment, finally away from Lindsay, albeit under an umbrella of temporary madness.

  So back to Arthur’s son, Saul. Surely he had witnessed the relationship between his parents? She made a note in her diary for Rita to make an appointment with Saul Connolly, aware that it was a last-ditch attempt at keeping Arthur out of prison. And, she supposed, she should interview the dreaded Lindsay at least once more. Recalling her square chin and tight lips, she was not looking forward to repeating the experience.

  But she would dig deep to try and rescue her patient from prison, which would damage him even further, only too aware that if the narrative had been different so too would the outcome.

  If this had been a woman claiming mental cruelty, complaining about controlling behaviour, if eye witnesses had come forward telling their stories of physical and mental abuse, Claire reflected, there would be a very lenient sentence. Maybe not even a custodial one. Harassment, domination – these were crimes. Against females. But who had sympathy for a male victim? Men were seen as physically stronger but Claire had often reflected that it was women who were psychologically stronger.

  Just look at Grant, her ex.

  His weakness and inability to stand up to a stronger force had been one of the things she had loved about him. Initially. He was so very amenable. So sweet-natured. So kind, so lazy, easy-going. Accommodating. And it was that which had led to his downfall. A mother and a sister manipulating him, pushing him into a corner and making bloody sure he stayed there. Claire realized her fists were clenched. She hadn’t realized how angry she was ove
r all that. The way she’d been robbed of a gentle, loving … She smiled. A sexy and wonderful bloke. The best.

  And she hadn’t helped. She had simply joined his sister and his mother in pinning him into that corner. Giving him an ultimatum. This was something she still found uncomfortable, a sense of guilt that she hadn’t been fair on him. In fact, she’d sulked. Oh, for goodness’ sake, she thought, exasperated, tempted to hurl something across the room. Leave it. Move on.

  She didn’t exactly. She moved back to her original thought, acknowledging that while the law recognized male-to-female controlling behaviour it had yet to be tested female to male. She looked up, startled at something. Maybe that was her role. To be the first to draw attention to it, recognize it, maybe even give it a name.

  Roget’s Syndrome.

  She giggled and started writing her report with a lift of her spirits. Arthur Connolly, she wrote, is not a danger to the wider society. While the assault against his wife was serious, there had been extreme provocation. Independent witnesses have affirmed that Mrs Connolly was controlling and belittled her husband in public on occasions, even going so far as ‘slapping’ him. With this affirmation, I would suggest a lenient sentence. However, there is no psychiatric diagnosis. And while agreeing that the assault on Mrs Connolly was serious and potentially life-threatening, it was a spur-of-the-moment act, a kitchen knife pulled from the knife block. It was to hand and the entire incident happened early in the morning when Mr Connolly – Arthur – had spilt some coffee and his wife, as was her wont, berated him. He has expressed remorse and, when he is free, he will not return to what he describes as an abusive relationship.

  What, she wondered, would be the courts’ decision?

  SEVENTEEN

  She went home on the Friday evening still tussling with the problems of Arthur Connolly and Riley Finch. And, at the same time, she was considering her next move on the Krimble/Tissot case, which was intriguing and entertaining her at the same time. Something, long buried within her, was feeling that, after all this time, Charles Tissot was getting his just deserts. He might be a hundred per cent innocent this time, having just caught Heather’s eye at the party. But, oh, what a fitting punishment.