Deep Shelter

by Oliver Harris

  “Trust me.”

  “I can’t turn over what is most personal to someone, hand it to the police, without being legally compelled.”

  “Their name and address isn’t personal.”

  “Their address is their home.”

  Belsey felt a wave of fury. This was all the doctor had, he thought: this bastard wisdom. This act. The faded blue eyes. It was what he charged for. Nothing was as immovable as a meal ticket. The anger steered him into a bad move.

  “I have CCTV of you meeting him at Costa Coffee in Belsize Park yesterday. What was that about? Did you know it was a patient who took your car?”

  The doctor continued to stare, but building from compassion to quiet outrage, the moral victory of outrage. He narrowed his eyes.

  “You never did say why CID were going to so much trouble over a stolen car. When you came here with the magazine. That is a lot of police effort for a vehicle theft. Now I ask myself: why would you be coy? Detective Constable Belsey, my patient believed he was being harassed by the authorities.”

  “I think he’s right.”

  “He believed he was being monitored. I hadn’t taken him seriously until now.”

  “I think he’s being monitored by people a lot less friendly than I am. I highly recommend you let me get to him first. I think he may have stumbled upon something that’s dangerous for him to know.”

  Green took a pencil from his jacket as if he might write some kind of cheque and sort this out. But he was looking for a prop. He balanced it between his fingers in a practised pose.

  “But that’s not what you were saying. You were telling me he is some kind of psychopath. Who is he at risk from, do you think?”

  “The state.”

  “And what, exactly, are you?”

  “Not very much to do with it.”

  Green twirled the pencil. It was missing its eraser. All his pencils were like this, Belsey saw, looking across the desk. Either Joseph Green didn’t make mistakes or he didn’t believe in revising them. That sounded right. The doctor caught him staring and put the pencil away with the first touch of self-consciousness he’d displayed. But it only sealed the defences. Belsey had never got what he wanted from an analyst. His luck wasn’t going to start now.

  “Why don’t you have a warrant?” Green asked.

  “Forget it.” Belsey stood up.

  “Should I?”

  Belsey went over to the window, opened it and took a breath. The garden was big enough to neglect and still look splendid, teetering snapdragons, a gnarled apple tree. He breathed again, then turned and admired the organised chaos of the study itself. The files, the paperwork, notebooks on the desk, an old PC. On the floor by the desk was a box of Dr. Green’s own Living with Others, Living with Ourselves. Green’s face smiled up from the dust jackets, looking a lot more amenable. When you’re ready to begin the journey of recovery . . .

  “What?” the doctor asked, watching Belsey carefully.

  “It’s a nice study, that’s all. When I was sent to counselling it was all white walls and IKEA furniture. It was like an interview room. I used to think it must be strange hearing so many confessions and not prosecuting anyone.”

  Green allowed himself a cold smile. He was waiting for Belsey to leave. Belsey reached over the photo frames and placed his card on the desk.

  “If you feel there’s anything you want to share.”

  He walked out of the house, gave it a minute then threw a stone Buddha at the front window. Glass smashed. He cut to the side, climbed over a gate into the back garden. The study window was still open. Green had abandoned his post. The old tricks were the best. Belsey climbed through the window, stepping down via the couch. He closed the study door and rammed a chair underneath the handle. Then he took his card from the desk and began to search. He started with the desktop, progressed down the drawers. He found an appointments book in the middle desk drawer and tried to remember exactly when he’d first visited Windmill Drive. Tuesday, around 3 p.m.

  Tuesday 2–3 p.m.—Michael.

  He flicked back through the preceding pages. “Michael” three times a week, 2–3 p.m. Going back six weeks to 22 April.

  There would be an address somewhere. Belsey pulled the files down from the shelves, rifled through, tossed them to the floor. He opened a cupboard beneath the shelves and found a stack of ledgers, black hardbound books each labelled with a name on a white sticker. Inside were notes on treatment. Case histories. Only one initialled M.

  M. Easton.

  The door handle rattled. Belsey opened M. Easton’s case notes.

  Session 1

  Patient 37 yrs old. Reports increasing levels of anxiety over past year. Fears for own mental health.

  Describes himself as possible object of surveillance by unknown individuals. Asks whether this sounds irrational. Alludes to something confidential he may have uncovered—something that places his life in danger.

  High intelligence. Left job last year. Not in a relationship. No previous history of mental illness.

  Michael Easton. So much less mysterious than Ferryman. So much more vulnerable.

  No address, though. Green was banging outside. The barricade flexed. It wasn’t going to last long. Belsey looked around for the place he’d keep patient addresses. Then something hard slammed against the door. Wood began to splinter.

  He took the case notes and went back out of the window, through the garden, over the gate.

  HE DROVE FOR A minute, down the hill, into the grey bustle of Archway. Past the hostile stare of the Archway Tower itself, a little more unnerving now he knew it played a role in the underground scheme.

  Alludes to something confidential—something that places his life in danger . . .

  Belsey continued along Junction Road, through the everyday hubbub of greasy spoons and Irish pubs. He parked behind a Cash Converters and sat in the driver’s seat, skimming the case notes. He searched for any suggestion as to who Easton was, for clues to tunnels, Site 3, JIGSAW. Green’s summaries were terse, sometimes telegraphic, evidently written during sessions or immediately afterwards. The writing was cramped but legible enough.

  Session 3

  M talks at length about nuclear war. Acknowledges something bordering on obsession. He traces interest back to childhood. Age ten he saw a documentary about the atomic bomb and it produced feelings which he struggles to describe—familiarity, comfort, recognition. He has researched the topic and is adamant that there is a great deal we have not been told—about tests carried out, knowledge acquired. Recently this theme has gained fresh importance for him, providing a possible explanation for his trouble. His lifelong interest in the Bomb has made someone uneasy.

  Another week in and the doctor was more cautious.

  Session 5

  Further attempt to articulate his relationship to what he has begun to refer to as the “central secret.” M claims the confidential information is within him. Either he was born with it or someone implanted it, somehow. Asks whether, through analysis, we might gain a sense of what it is and how it might be removed so he can live normally.

  This is the first step to alleviating his suffering. He has read my work on trauma and believes that a similar course of treatment might rid him of this traumatic and confidential knowledge.

  Wants me to extract it from his unconscious like it is a tumour.

  A sheet of yes/no tick boxes had been folded in: the Borsch-Chapple Early Psychosis Indicator Test. I have trouble speaking the words I want to say, or I am able to speak but other people have told me that what I say is incoherent . . . I see or hear things that other people cannot see or hear . . . It went on for fifteen questions. From what Belsey could tell, Easton wasn’t psychotic. Not according to Borsch-Chapple.

  Belsey tried to match what he could glean of Michael Easton the patient to Ferryman the killer. Was there genuine desperation? It was hard to tell through the cool filter of the doctor’s notes. But all the talk of secrets within him—it didn
’t chime convincingly. It sounded like another game.

  Session 6

  M keen to elaborate his theory. Provides new “evidence.” Claims he dreams of places before he’s seen them. So convincing are these dreams that he attempts to draw maps when he wakes, mapping the journeys he has dreamed. Sometimes he can wander London and find the buildings he’s dreamed of. But in the dreams London is always empty. Swears me to secrecy with regards to this. In his dreams he sees London, empty and abandoned.

  Belsey’s radio crackled:

  “Break in—Windmill Drive.”

  Green had reported him, then. Belsey listened, to see exactly where police were searching. Then he turned it up and listened more closely.

  “Break in—Windmill Drive—individual detained.”

  36

  HE DROVE IN THE DIRECTION OF GREEN’S HOUSE, parked around the corner and walked. There was a squad car outside. Belsey could hear someone remonstrating in the back seat. One restless-looking special constable, no older than twenty-two, hovered nearby. Not someone Belsey knew. He risked showing his badge.

  “I got the call late. Is it under control?”

  “I think so.”

  “Who’ve you got in the car?”

  “A nuisance.”

  “Suspect?”

  The man laughed.

  “No. A guy, knows the victim, got in the house while we were here. Says he was trying to help.”

  Then Belsey heard the nasal voice of the disciple: “I’m telling you, I think I know what’s going on . . .”

  “There’s some kind of grief between him and the householder. Things got a bit antsy so we’re letting him calm down before taking him home.”

  “What was it about?”

  “Some kind of tiff between them. Not what we need.”

  “What’s he saying?”

  “Haven’t the foggiest. Reckon he’s just a bit of a character. Wouldn’t read too much into it.”

  And Belsey remembered that first visit to Windmill Drive once again—he had stood beside the disciple while they waited for Green. And then the patient—Ferryman, Easton—had emerged from the office. And the two had exchanged a glance. Belsey heard the joking, the disciple asking Easton: “What would you say? Is Joseph any good?” They knew each other.

  Belsey looked towards the squad car. He wondered if he should ask to speak to the disciple. Then he saw two DCs from Highgate station coming out of the house. They knew Belsey. They’d know the score. Belsey turned his face away from them.

  “You say you’re taking him home?” Belsey asked the Special Constable.

  “In a minute.”

  “Did you get his full name?”

  The Special checked his pocket book.

  “Hugh Hamilton. Doctor Hugh Hamilton.”

  BELSEY RAN A SEARCH on his pay-as-you-go when he was back in the Skoda. According to Dr. Hugh Hamilton’s website he was a member of the British Association of Psychoanalysts, Kleinian in orientation, “a solution-focused practitioner in integrative therapy.” It listed his publications: “Joseph Green and Regression,” “Green and Klein: the Missed Encounter,” “Joseph Green: Unspoken Debts.”

  There was an address advertised as a clinic on Langford Place in St. John’s Wood. Belsey drove over, careful as he crested Hampstead, down through the heartlands of psychoanalysis, along a tightrope of north-London wealth. Deep among the townhouses of St. John’s Wood he found a ground floor flat. It seemed Dr. Hamilton worked from home. A woman answered, blonde and anxious. She stared at the Skoda then at Belsey.

  “I’d like to speak to Hugh Hamilton,” Belsey said, badge out.

  “He’s not in.”

  “It’s OK. He’s on his way back.”

  Belsey moved past her into the flat, taking the case notes with him. The flat had the same studious clutter as the Greens’, but glossier and more considered. A large dining-room table at the back supported piles of books and papers.

  “Does Hugh know someone called Michael Easton?” he asked.

  “Michael? He was a patient. Hugh saw him once before he began treatment with Joseph Green.”

  “Where does he keep patients’ details?”

  “I don’t know.”

  A phone rang and the woman answered.

  “Hugh? OK . . . Well there’s another one here. Yes, a police officer . . . I don’t know. Just come home. Please.”

  Belsey found himself a seat at the table and began sifting through the papers, a landscape of research on Green’s theories. The first book he picked up was Green’s own Living with Others, Living with Ourselves. Chapters ranged from “The Shattered Narrative” and “Fortress Personalities” to “Faith in a Future” and finally “Beyond Trauma.” Belsey turned the pages, wondering what convinced Easton that Joseph Green was the man to treat him.

  We all carry trauma. Trauma is the failure of memory; it is the undigested fragments of experience where neither our waking mind nor our dreams have completed their task of processing . . .

  He was still on the introduction when Hugh Hamilton walked in. Green’s disciple held a briefcase and looked feverish. A squad car pulled away, past the front window. Hamilton glared.

  “You.”

  “Me.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Who’s Michael Easton?”

  “I don’t need to talk to you.”

  “Sit down,” Belsey said. Hamilton sat down across the table from Belsey. “I need to know about Michael Easton, an address to start with. Or you’re back in a police car for obstructing inquiries into a multiple-homicide investigation.”

  Hamilton’s eyes widened. He pressed against his goatee as if it might fall apart and everything else would follow.

  “I never had his address.”

  “For Christ’s sake. You saw him, before he started with Joseph.”

  “Yes. He had a consultation session with me. What’s he done?”

  “Abducted someone, killed others, possibly upset the security services. I think he’s making bombs now.” Hamilton absorbed this. He looked dismayed, but not quite incredulous. “You were telling the police you had an idea what was going on.”

  “I knew it would be something about Michael. I heard you say that a patient was in trouble. It could only have been Michael Easton. Joseph has had concerns for a while. I think he feels very exposed.”

  “What kind of concerns?”

  “That he had got it terribly wrong. That Michael was far more dangerous than he had initially realised. Michael had one session with me, but it was Joseph he wanted. Michael had read all of his work. He quoted from it. I’m sure Joseph loved that. Michael came to London for him. Because he thought Joseph would help, you see. That’s what he said. He begged me to refer him to Joseph. Joseph doesn’t usually take on new clients without a referral.”

  “He thought Joseph would help with what?”

  “He thought he was dreaming state secrets,” Hamilton deadpanned. “And they were placing him in danger.”

  “Did he say what these secrets were?”

  Now Hamilton hesitated. “Something about a forbidden place, underground.”

  “Did he say where he thought it was?”

  “No.”

  “When did you see him?”

  Hamilton checked his diary.

  “April 17. I spoke to Joseph that evening and he agreed to see Michael the following week.”

  “Why did he agree?”

  “Michael offered to pay three times the usual fee. He was desperate. I think Joseph was . . . Let’s be generous and say he was intrigued. Concerned. But it was bound for failure—a situation like that. I know that recently there had been a deterioration. Michael wanted to terminate analysis. Joseph was concerned about this. Michael was becoming increasingly paranoid.”

  “Joseph and Rebecca Green met him in a cafe on Tuesday.”

  “He’d said he was done with it all. I think they were trying to persuade him to return. Not to do anything rash.”
>
  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Michael had some violent fantasies.”

  “No kidding.”

  Belsey placed the case notes on the table between them. Hamilton stared.

  “Take a look,” Belsey said. Hamilton plucked a tissue from an ornamental Kleenex holder and used it to open the notes. He read a few pages, nodded, pressed his goatee again.

  “What do you make of them?” Belsey said.

  “They’re what I’d expect. When he saw me he asked a lot of questions about the practicalities of psychoanalysis. How do you learn about the unconscious? How do you explore it? Is it like a place?”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I said you cannot explore the unconscious itself, by definition, but you can follow its edges: the moments when memory falters, or narratives unravel. He seemed to understand. He seemed fascinated. Do you know what I think he wanted?”

  “What did he want?”

  Hamilton closed the notes.

  “He wanted to know how to manipulate us. He wanted to be famous and thought Joseph would write him up. Joseph wrote up every other oddity that came to him. Michael wanted Joseph to disseminate his message to the world.”

  Belsey considered this. The sources of crime and fame weren’t so far apart. Still, he found himself having too much respect for Easton to write him off as a wannabe. As if anticipating his objections, Hamilton continued:

  “Michael is clever. He was communicating something. He was giving Joseph something to interpret. Because he knew how Joseph worked, you see. That’s always dangerous.”

  “What was the message he wanted disseminated?”

  “I don’t know. It wasn’t a game I was prepared to play. Joseph . . .” Hamilton sighed. “Joseph, perhaps, is too seduced by his own powers. This is what I have always said. There is a lack of theoretical rigour to his work.”

  “What were you arguing about when I arrived today?”