The Rules of Murder

by The Rules of Murder (epub)

  ‘So the job’s going OK?’ Dani asked.

  Gemma raised an eyebrow as if to say, do you really care? She took a gulp of her coffee before setting the cup back down again on a coffee table that was mostly piled high with comics and football cards.

  ‘Gemma?’

  Gemma sighed. ‘Changing the subject isn’t going to get me to change my mind.’

  ‘I’m asking because I’m genuinely interested.’

  Gemma paused for a few moments as though trying to decide whether she believed Dani.

  ‘I’ll be going full-time in a few weeks. First time since… you know.’

  She didn’t sound at all excited by the prospect, in fact she remained downright sullen, but Dani guessed that was more likely because the mood of the conversation had already been irrevocably tarnished because of the talk of Ben.

  ‘I’m really pleased for you,’ Dani said. ‘You deserve it.’

  ‘I need a life outside of these walls.’

  ‘And you’re still seeing…?’

  ‘Paul?’ Gemma looked away now. Not sadness, more like embarrassment. ‘No. Why would anyone take this mess of a family on?’

  ‘Gemma, I’ve never heard such nonsense. You’re a fantastic mum, you’re a loving, caring person, and you’re bloody gorgeous.’

  Gemma scoffed but said nothing, yet Dani’s heart ached to hear her talk like that. Knowing that the happiness of Gemma and the kids – Dani’s own blood – had been so tainted by her brother. Yes, life wasn’t exactly a walk in the park for Dani either, but she had Jason, and she certainly didn’t have the added complication of kids to the mess that Ben had made. Dani really couldn’t imagine how much harder life was for Gemma than it was for her.

  And yet here was Dani in Gemma’s home, trying to persuade her that she and the kids needed to spend time with Ben, the very man who had caused all this misery and pain in the first place.

  Dani looked at her watch.

  ‘I’d better get going,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘But please, Gemma, just think about what I said. You’re right, I’ve come here with my detective hat on today, but perhaps you need to think about this without your mother’s hat on. You understand exactly the pain and misery that can be caused by a killer. You can help stop other families being torn apart like that.’

  Gemma said nothing, though the way her face was now screwed suggested she was more angry than anything with Dani’s parting comment, which really hadn’t been her intention at all.

  ‘I’ll let myself out.’ Dani said.

  * * *

  It was five to eleven when Dani and Easton arrived outside the building which housed Dr Helen Collins’s office. Not even ten minutes’ walk from HQ, the office was located in an odd-looking and narrow five-storey stone building that was crammed between two much larger and more prestigious neighbours.

  The intercom on the wall had at least a dozen different buttons for the various companies that took up the space beyond.

  Dani pressed the button for Collins Psychiatry Limited and waited. There was a brief silence before a smooth female voice came out of the box. Moments later Dani and Easton were steadily climbing the bare stone stairs to the fourth floor, where they found several closed and locked doors, each with a small plaque identifying the modest-sized business beyond.

  Dr Helen Collins, a short and smartly dressed woman in her mid-thirties, with strawberry blonde hair pulled tightly back and a lightly freckled nose, was standing in the open doorway of her rented space.

  ‘Come on in,’ she said, eyeing Dani quizzically.

  Of course the two of them had never met before, Dani had still been in hospital throughout Ben’s trial, but Collins would know exactly who Dani was. Dani would come to that later anyway.

  She and Easton stepped through. Beyond the door was a small waiting area with a single armchair and a basic reception desk, though there was no one working there. Collins led them through a narrow corridor that had just two doors: one a kitchenette with a toilet off it, the other Collins’s office, which was far more plush than Dani had been expecting, given what had come before it.

  ‘Can I offer you tea, coffee?’ Collins asked as she indicated for Dani and Easton to sit at the two seats in front of the sturdy-looking oak desk.

  Dani and Easton both declined, and Collins was soon seated as Dani spied around the room. She’d come to expect a certain style of office for people in Collins’s field of work. She’d certainly seen the inside of plenty of such places herself the last few years, and this one had all the trappings she expected, from the comfy chairs in one corner, to the bookcase crammed with medical books and literature on mental health and the like, to the abstract art on the walls and the abundance of houseplants – everything designed to create a professional yet relaxed ambience, however forced it might be.

  ‘We need to discuss Damian Curtis with you,’ Dani said.

  Collins sighed and sat back in her chair. Dani half expected her to come back with some bullshit about patient confidentiality.

  ‘What is it you want to know?’ Collins asked.

  ‘We want to understand more about the work you did with him,’ Dani said. ‘You spent many hours interviewing and talking to him as part of his trial a few years ago.’

  ‘I did indeed. And I’ve seen him plenty of times since then too.’

  ‘You have?’ That was news to Dani. She looked to Easton who shrugged.

  ‘Damian’s defence team tried for years both for an appeal, and for him to be moved out of Long Lartin on medical grounds, but neither was ever granted.’

  Dani played that one over in her head. She’d come back to it.

  ‘At trial, his defence team claimed that the night he was involved in the fatal car crash, he was acting with diminished responsibility.’

  ‘I believe they did,’ Collins said.

  ‘And that defence was in a large part as a result of evidence you gave on the witness stand.’

  Collins shuffled a little uncomfortably in her seat now.

  ‘Is that right?’ Dani said.

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘But the jury didn’t buy it.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’d put it quite so simply,’ Collins said.

  ‘Then how would you put it?’

  Collins sighed. ‘Have you spoken to his defence team?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Then I’d suggest you do, as I can’t speak for everything that happened in that trial, or the decisions that were made either in the court room or thereafter. I wasn’t part of the defence team, you have to realise; I was appointed as an expert witness. I didn’t testify to their position, I testified in relation to my medical expertise.’

  ‘But you must have been party to their strategy, to their intentions for proving that Curtis was… well, what was it exactly that you concluded?’

  ‘Once again, I’m not sure I’m the right person to say exactly what their strategy or intentions were. From what I gather about the legal process, there were various possible outcomes from Curtis’s trial in relation to what he could be convicted for, and what sentencing would follow. You know he was originally charged with murder?’

  Dani didn’t, but found herself nodding.

  ‘In fact, much of the CPS’s case continued based on that charge during the trial,’ Collins said. ‘Yes, I understand Curtis’s defence were arguing diminished responsibility. You’d have to speak to the lawyers to better understand this, but under such circumstances you cannot convict someone of murder.’

  ‘But in the end neither verdict was returned. He was convicted of manslaughter?’

  ‘I believe that’s what he plead guilty to ultimately, though at one stage his team were even talking about a death by dangerous driving conviction, which would perhaps have been the most lenient outcome, sentence-wise. There were a lot of possibilities. You can see it wasn’t such a simple case of the jury believing or not believing what I said about him.’

  ‘Then for
my benefit, could you explain exactly what your position was in relation to Damian Curtis’s mental state?’

  ‘My position?’

  ‘Do you think he’s crazy?’ Easton asked, cutting to the chase.

  Collins stared at him for a few moments.

  ‘Crazy?’ she said. ‘That’s certainly not a legal or clinical definition. Do I think Curtis was acting with diminished responsibility that night? Absolutely I do. I testified to that effect, and I’d continue to do so if pressed.’

  ‘Can you explain that more clearly, please, Dr Collins?’ Dani said. ‘What is wrong with Damian Curtis?’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ Collins sighed again and sat back in her chair. ‘Perhaps we should start from the beginning. Because this isn’t a simple case at all. But to try to put it in simple terms for you, based on my own experiences… Damian Curtis is one of the most disturbed people I have ever met.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Collins’s words sent a shrill shiver down Dani’s spine.

  ‘So you’re saying Damian Curtis was mentally ill?’ Dani said.

  ‘Oh absolutely,’ Collins said. ‘I hadn’t realised that was ever under any real doubt? Even at trial the prosecution did little to counter anything I said, and they didn’t call their own expert on the matter to dispute anything.’

  ‘But he wasn’t convicted of—’

  ‘Please, DI Stephens, if it’s analysis of the legal case for and against Curtis, and how the court reached its decision, then I’m really not the best person for you to speak to.’

  Dani paused as she thought how to better rephrase what she was asking.

  ‘Can you tell us more specifically about your time with Curtis?’ Easton asked, before Dani got there. ‘What behavioural problems did he exhibit?’

  ‘Where to start? It must be coming up for four years ago that I first met Curtis. By that point he’d already been charged with murder, and was in the midst of preparing for his trial. How much that pressure had already affected him I really can’t say, but certainly he was already exhibiting strong signs of psychosis at that point.’

  ‘In what manner?’ Dani asked.

  ‘Such that I often failed to have any rational or logical contact with him. Sometimes he barely seemed to comprehend where he was or why. And when he did, he believed people were trying to frame him, that there was some big conspiracy, which as far as I could see, was all nonsensical. But I also got the distinct impression that… basically he was hearing things.’

  ‘Voices?’

  ‘It’s a very judgemental thing to analyse,’ Collins said. ‘People in his position often have a hard time explaining it themselves. Is it really a voice or just their conscience? Or just an internal monologue? We’ve all heard someone in our minds, in some way or another. A friend, a family member. Does that mean we’re all psychotic?’

  ‘But you did believe he was suffering from psychosis?’ Easton said. ‘You said that already?’

  ‘On balance, yes. And he’d suffered mental health problems for a large portion of his life.’

  ‘Really?’ Dani said. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Perhaps you really should speak to his QC,’ Collins said, looking a little vexed now.

  ‘I assure you, we will be doing that,’ Dani said. ‘And I have read your witness statement too, but this is your area of expertise and we really want to understand everything we can from your point of view, in your words.’

  Plus, Dani hadn’t even started on the apparent coincidence that Collins was also the expert witness for Ben, who would later become Curtis’s cellmate. What was that all about?

  ‘I can only attest to this second hand—’

  ‘Noted, and that’s fine.’

  ‘Curtis didn’t come from a bad family, there was no broken home, no drunk or abusive parent, or nothing more extreme than ninety-nine per cent of us experience in family life. So there was no violent or stressful trigger in that sense that could explain his deterioration in mental health. The fact is, some people are simply predisposed to these issues. Curtis’s father suffered depression for many years, which I understand eventually led to his separation from Curtis’s mother. Curtis had been estranged from his father for years because of that. Perhaps Curtis had been suffering mentally for years too, maybe since early childhood, but if I recall correctly it wasn’t until he was nearly twenty that he first spoke to a doctor about it. Did his parents not care about him enough to have sought help sooner? Or did they simply not understand what they were dealing with? I’d say the latter is the most common reason why mental health issues go untreated. Most of us simply aren’t aware of, and hence ignore, or at the very least gloss over the warning signs.’

  Dani would say Collins was spot on with that one. She herself had never even really thought about depression or other related issues, either in herself or in people around her, until depression had hit her like a freight train after her brother tried to kill her.

  ‘But if his father had depression, how did the parents not recognise the warning signs?’ Easton asked.

  ‘Clearly I can’t answer for them,’ Collins said. ‘But depression comes in many forms and people show it differently. And the very fact that the marriage broke down because of the father’s depression shows that perhaps they weren’t dealing with it constructively, so it’s not really that much of a surprise if the mother also didn’t recognise the problems with her son.’

  ‘But depression is a long way from psychosis and from killing people?’ Easton said. ‘So how do you explain what happened?’

  ‘As I was unable to assess Curtis until after the event, I really can’t say how much things changed for him over the years, or whether his symptoms had been the same for some time.’

  Which sounded a bit like a cop out to Dani, though she didn’t bring Collins up on it.

  ‘I understand he wasn’t close to either of his parents, and his mother died when he was in jail, which I believe hit him hard.’

  ‘Even though they weren’t close?’

  ‘Her death meant there was a lack of closure.’

  ‘Going back to the start though,’ Dani said. ‘The doctors he saw initially when he was younger, are you saying they got their diagnosis wrong?’

  ‘I don’t think I said that at all. From what I gather, Damian saw his GP initially. Actually, over the years he saw different GPs at different points in time, starting from when he was nineteen. More than once he was referred to a specialist, but he rarely kept up with his appointments for any period of time. I’m not going to either criticise or make apologies for any doctor in particular, but this was all care provided under the NHS, and… quite frankly, to say they’re overstretched is an understatement. If a patient frequently misses appointments then eventually… that’s it. The matter just gets closed. You can only help someone who wants to be helped.’

  Dani really didn’t know what to say to that. Was it brutal and simple honesty?

  ‘It would seem to me,’ Collins continued, ‘based on my experience of these matters, that Damian favoured the quick fix of prescription drugs over psychotherapy, which itself is not at all uncommon.’

  Dani found herself shaking her head to that, even though she had come to rely on drugs, and still did regularly. But her problems were surely on a different level altogether than Curtis’s? Was it really so easy for someone with a lifetime of mental health issues to fall through the cracks, repeatedly, year after year?

  ‘What about my brother?’ Dani asked.

  Collins’s face screwed up as she caught Dani’s eye. ‘Why is that relevant here?’

  ‘Were you aware Curtis and Ben were cellmates?’ Dani asked.

  ‘Yes,’ was all she said.

  ‘You’ve spent a lot of time with both Ben and with Curtis. How would you characterise their positions in relation to each other?’ Dani asked.

  ‘I’m really not sure what you’re getting at.’

  ‘You were an expert witness for the defence at Ben�
��s trial too. If I remember rightly, you claimed he too was acting under severe pressure when he killed, that it was your belief that his actions were carried out with diminished responsibility. Correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So it’s a very similar case to Curtis’s, surely?’

  ‘Actually they’re miles apart.’

  ‘Could you explain?’

  ‘Ben did not have anything like the same history as Damian.’ Collins sighed now and took a deep breath. ‘If you’ve the time I can try and explain.’

  Dani looked at Easton who nodded. ‘We have all the time you need,’ Dani said.

  ‘There are four legal tests to consider in determining whether someone who committed a criminal act was acting with diminished responsibility. And remember these are legal points, but an expert in the medical field must attest to them. Firstly, it has to be shown that the defendant suffered an abnormality of mental functioning. Secondly, that abnormality must arise from a recognised medical condition. Thirdly, it must have substantially impaired the defendant’s ability either to understand the nature of their conduct, or to form a rational judgement over it. Lastly, you have to decide whether all of that is an explanation for the conduct itself.’

  It sounded almost like she was reading from a legal textbook. How many times had she had to regurgitate those lines?

  ‘But you attested that Ben met all four criteria, the same as Curtis?’ Dani said. ‘The jury didn’t buy it, but how is the defence any different, and how are the positions any different?’

  ‘I did attest to that, yes, but even that doesn’t mean their cases were in any way related. You need to understand that there are countless circumstances in which a person’s actions could be put to this test, and there’s a huge degree of judgement required for each stage. At Damian’s trial, the prosecution didn’t have their own expert, and I honestly don’t know why. But for Ben’s trial, there was an opposing expert witness who testified that Ben didn’t meet the first two criteria. Yes his judgement was impaired, but they argued it was through what would be termed loss of control, rather than because of a medically recognised condition. Basically, Ben was under pressure in his life, he lost it and killed people.’