by Peter James
She made him smile. And Katy had made him smile – once, at any rate; the Katy he wanted to remember. He tried to ignore Amanda Capstick, concentrate on his caller, but he couldn’t. Normally he did his weekly one-hour radio show for the benefit of his callers, but tonight he was aware that he was doing it for the benefit of Amanda Capstick, sitting behind that glass window in her denim suit and her white T-shirt with her classy wristwatch.
She was his audience. She had been inside his head for the past three weeks, although this was the first time he had seen her since that first brief meeting. And it was only her presence, and nothing else today, that had enabled him to forget, if only for a short while, the nightmare that had begun when he had received the phone call from the City of Westminster Coroner’s officer.
Amanda Capstick watched the psychiatrist hunched over the console, oversized headphones clamped to his ears, his face partially obscured by the bulb of grey foam rubber that encased the mike, deep in concentration, and serious, soooo seeeeerious. He was interesting-looking, a mixture of maturity and wisdom coupled with distinct flashes of a little boy lost. And at forty, he was on that attractive cusp between youth and middle age.
He dressed on the cusp, too: a quiet navy suit, but with a fashionably high-cut collar, and a bold tie. His dark brown hair was gelled back, and he wore small oval tortoiseshell glasses that on some people would merely have been a fashion statement, but which gave him the air of an intellectual, and something beyond that. She felt she was looking at an adventurer.
You’d be good in my documentary, she thought. He had a natural air of authority, of commitment. But what she liked most about him was his openness, his lack of arrogance. So many medics, particularly psychiatrists, seemed to have become jaded by their profession. They had lost their inquisitiveness, seemed to have reached a point at which they were satisfied with what they understood.
This guy was different. And there was a touching sadness about him. When he smiled, it seemed he was struggling against some inner conflict that forbade him to smile. She knew, from her research, that he had lost his wife three years ago in a car smash – maybe he was still grieving.
She knew also that he did this programme every Wednesday between seven and eight p.m. for Talk Radio. He wrote a weekly column for the Daily Mail on psychiatry. He had a special interest in obsessive compulsive disorder and body dysmorphic disorder – the official name for what the media called ‘imagined ugliness syndrome’ – and he appeared regularly in the press or on television, either giving opinions or as an expert witness in criminal proceedings.
Three days a week he saw mostly private patients at the Sheen Park Hospital, near Putney, and a further two days a week saw research patients at the Princess Royal Hospital Medical School, where he was honorary senior lecturer. He had a reputation as a philanthropist, giving donations to establish new self-help organisations for phobia sufferers and for those with his speciality disorders, and he was always prepared to waive his charges if a patient had a problem getting either the National Health Service or private insurance to pay.
Michael had never found the secret of getting comfortable in this studio. It smelt of stale air. It was either so hot that he ran with perspiration, or there was such a cold blast that his eyes watered. The cans were clumsy and always slipping down over his ears. The coffee seemed to get weaker and the flavour of the Styrofoam cup stronger each week. And he always had to be careful: he must resist the temptation to slide one of the control knobs up or down, avoid being distracted by the swinging arms on the level dials or touching the mike or the battery of switches with handwritten notices that said DO NOT SWITCH OFF!
Normally he never suffered from nerves on this show, he just relaxed, got on with it and did his best to help distressed people who did not know where else to turn for help. But tonight he had the distraction of Amanda. And he had that news on his mind. That terrible, terrible news that one of his patients, an actress, had committed suicide, and that he was to blame. He usually found that the hour flew by, but tonight it had crawled. He’d had difficult callers, and in trying to play to Amanda – his gallery – he’d lost the spontaneity and warmth that normally came out of the intimacy of his one-to-ones with his callers.
Now it was nearly over, thank God. And on the end of the line for the past ten minutes he had had Marj, from Essex. Right now he could have cheerfully strangled her. She was talking to him in the same tone she might have used to a supermarket checkout girl who’d overcharged her for an avocado.
Doing his best to remain calm, he said, ‘I think you ought to read that book on Freud again, Marj. It was Carl Jung who believed in the collective unconscious, not Sigmund Freud.’
‘I don’t think so, Dr Tennent. And you still haven’t explained my dream,’ she said petulantly. ‘My teeth falling out. What does that mean?’
Through the cans, the producer said, ‘Wind it up, Michael, news in sixty.’
Michael glanced up at the clock above Amanda Capstick’s face. Its hands were closing on seven p.m.
‘It’s a very common dream, Marj. I explained it in detail to a caller a couple of weeks back. There are two periods in life when your teeth fall out: the loss of milk teeth, which means all the problems relating to maturing, in particular that of taking on responsibility. And the other period,’ he said, with perhaps more malice than he had intended, ‘is where you are now, from the sound of your voice. Fear of old age, and all the baggage that comes with it, becoming undesirable, ineffectual, impotent. Toothless, effectively.’
‘But that’s what Freud said,’ the woman retorted.
The producer’s voice in his ear said, ‘Ten seconds!’
‘We have to end it there, I’m afraid, Marj,’ Michael said. ‘I hope I’ve helped you a little.’ He clicked the switch, tugged off his cans and felt a trickle of sweat scurry down the back of his neck. Amanda Capstick smiled at him again from behind the window and gave him a thumbs-up.
He grimaced back at her and shrugged, then sipped the last tepid half-inch of his coffee. The studio door opened, and the producer, Chris Beamish, six foot tall, bearded, eyes wary and birdlike, came in, nodding solemnly.
‘How was it?’ Michael asked the same question every week.
And Beamish gave him the same reply each week, ‘Good, good programme, I think they liked it.’
‘I was off-key,’ Michael said. ‘I was toast.’
‘No, they liked it,’ Beamish repeated, speaking by some kind of proxy on behalf of the show’s alleged 382,000 listeners.
‘You’re very good,’ Amanda told Michael, a few minutes later, as they walked past the security guard in the deserted lobby. ‘You have a very comfortable way with the callers.’
He smiled. ‘Thanks, but I wasn’t on the ball tonight.’
‘I’d like to use a segment of your show in my programme.’
‘Sure.’
‘We could try to do it live and get that spontaneity.’ She paused and then said, ‘Ever thought of having your own television show? Something like Anthony Clare’s In The Psychiatrist’s Chair?’
‘I’m not convinced that media psychiatry is the right thing for people,’ he said. ‘I’m having a lot of doubts about this. Ten minutes isn’t enough. Nor is half an hour. I’m beginning to think I might be doing more harm than good. Doing this without being able to see faces, body language, is difficult. I thought originally it might encourage people to see the benefits of psychiatry. Now I’m not sure.’
They reached the doors. Michael smelt her perfume: it was subtle, a faint muskiness, and he liked it. In a moment she would be gone and he’d be heading home to another evening on his own, defrosting something from Marks and Spencer, then scanning the television guides or trying to get stuck into a book, or catching up on some paperwork, or –
– writing the report the Coroner’s officer had requested.
He wanted desperately to stop her from disappearing. But it had been so long since he had chatted up a woman
that whatever apology for a technique he’d once had was now long gone. Also he had no idea whether she was single or married, and glanced surreptitiously down at her hands.
She wore no rings. Her hands were surprisingly small and bony and the varnish on the nails was chipped, as if she was a grafter who didn’t give a toss about appearances, and he found this endearing. He didn’t like perfection. Too many of his patients were perfectionists. He liked to see a bit of slack in life.
‘Do you have time for a quick drink?’ he asked, surprising himself by how nonchalant he sounded.
Their eyes met and held. She had beautiful eyes, cobalt blue, bright, intensely alive. She smiled, glanced down at her watch, then looked away evasively. ‘Actually, thanks, but I – I have to get to a meeting at eight.’
‘Sure,’ Michael said, masking his disappointment with a cheery smile, and wondering what kind of a good-looking hunk this meeting was with.
He thought about her as he drove home, steering the Volvo in the slow crawl south over Putney Bridge and up the high street. He thought about her smile through the glass window of the control room. He thought about that look she had given him in the doorway as they were leaving. There had been some kind of attraction, definitely.
She had turned down his offer of a drink.
But hadn’t he detected some hint of reluctance in the way she’d turned it down?
There would be other chances. They’d be meeting again. Or . . . hell, he could call her tomorrow and try his luck. Why not?
Oh, yes, Dr Michael Tennent, and what exactly would she see in you? You’re a decade older than her. She’s a young, bright, hip girl with the world at her feet. You’re an old fart in a Volvo.
You’re not even any good at your job any more. The proof of that is in this morning’s paper. You’d better hope Amanda Capstick doesn’t get to see it.
But she liked me. She did. She really did. So she had a date, so what?
He would call her in the morning, he decided.
She could always say no.
Chapter Two
wednesday, 9 july 1997
No one ever prepares us for death. It ought to be on the school curriculum. Instead, teachers make us learn that in a right-angled triangle, the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the two remaining sides. I’ve carried that nugget in my head for twenty-five years and never yet had any use for it. They make us learn how to ask the way to the town hall in French. I’ve got through thirty-seven years of my life without ever needing to do this.
But they don’t ever teach you how you are going to feel when someone close to you dies. And that is going to happen to all of us. It has just happened to me, and I’m all alone here, having to work this out for myself.
It seems there’s a whole sequence of emotions you go through. Shock. Denial. Anger. Guilt. Depression.
I’ve been through shock, ticked that one off. I’ve been through refusal to accept. Ticked that box, too. Now I’m at the anger stage.
I’m angry with a whole lot of people. But, most of all, I’m angry with you, Dr Michael Tennent.
You killed my mother.
Chapter Three
‘Wednesday 9 July 1997. Report to Dr Gordon Sampson, Coroner, City of Westminster. From Dr Michael Tennent MD, MRC Psych. Subject: Gloria Daphne Ruth Lamark, deceased.
‘I had been seeing the deceased as a patient since March 1990. Prior to that she was a patient of my colleague, Dr Marcus Rennie, at the Sheen Park Hospital, intermittently from 1969 to his retirement in 1990. Her records show that she was under psychiatric care and on anti-depressant medications continually since 1959. (See attached schedule.)
‘My last interview with her, on Monday 7 July, was particularly unproductive. In recent months I had felt she was making some progress towards realisation of her difficulties, and towards acceptance that she was temperamentally unsuited to the disciplines required in the acting profession, and I was trying to encourage her to find other interests, particularly in the field of charity, where she could make a useful contribution to society and in so doing lead a more fulfilled existence.
‘In my opinion she was a deeply troubled woman, suffering from a personality disorder that prevented her from living an ordinary, socially interactive life, and led to her turning into a virtual recluse. This personality disorder was developmental from childhood or adolescence and the collapse of her promising career as a film actress during the mid 1960s was almost certainly a trigger for deterioration.’
In his den at home, Michael rewound the tape on his dictating machine, listened to the beginning of his report, then continued. ‘She had major roles, including some as leading lady, in several films during the late 1950s and the early 1960s but these rapidly petered out while she was still only in her twenties. She blamed the collapse of her career on a combination of factors. The birth of her son, Thomas. The breakdown of her marriage. Underhand behaviour by some of her rivals, in particular the actress Cora Burstridge, whom she believed, obsessively, went out of her way to destroy her career for motives of jealousy and self-advancement.
‘In my opinion the root cause of the demise of the deceased’s career was her personality disorder. She was unable to accept or face any of the realities of life. She had a massive ego, which needed constant feeding, and would lapse into bouts of violent, uncontrollable rage when any aspects of her talents or abilities were questioned, frequently causing actual bodily harm to others.
‘She displayed manic depressive symptoms in characteristic mood swings, during which she would veer between a severely exaggerated opinion of her own talents, and extreme depression. To this end she maintained a large retinue of staff, whose principal role, in my judgement, was to pander to her ego and maintain her delusion that she was still a grand star (there are certain parallels that may be drawn here with the character in the film Sunset Boulevard).
‘On a number of occasions during consultations the deceased broached the subject of suicide, although my records show that she had not mentioned it for two years. It is recorded that she attempted to take her own life in 1967, and again in 1986, following the failure of a theatrical play in which she was attempting an acting comeback. Previous attempts are a known high-risk factor and I was aware of this throughout my dealings with her. However, from the relatively low dosages of pills taken on these previous occasions, the wording of the notes, and the general circumstances, it has been my opinion that these attempts were more a cry for help than serious intent to take her own life.
‘She was able to maintain her lavish lifestyle due to inheriting a substantial part of the estate of her estranged husband, the German industrialist Dieter Buch, who died in a skiing accident before any divorce arrangements had been finalised.
‘Since the mid 1960s the deceased’s life had revolved totally around her son, Thomas, who has lived at home with her for most of his life, and upon whom she has been utterly – and abnormally – dependent, emotionally and socially.’
Michael stopped dictating. His report would almost certainly be read out in court at the inquest. He needed to consider her son’s feelings carefully. Gloria Lamark’s relationship with the son she rarely spoke about, and whom he had never met, had always bothered him, but he’d never succeeded in drawing out of her the full truth of it.
He gathered that the boy had been expelled from school for some reason she would not talk about, and had spent years of his childhood undergoing psychiatry. He had the feeling Gloria knew something was wrong with him, and had been shielding him, but whether it was for the boy’s sake, or to protect her own image, he had never been able to ascertain.
At fifty-nine she had still been a beautiful woman. After her husband had left her, she’d had a series of sexual relationships, but they had never lasted, and from the time her son had reached his early teens, she had stopped seeing other men.
He sensed that she was desperately protective of Thomas, and knew that for most of his childhood he had been ed
ucated at home. She had told Michael that Thomas had wanted to be a doctor but again, for some reason he could never elicit from her, the young man had dropped out of medical school and returned home. He appeared to have no friends.
Michael was pretty sure that this was due to the control she exerted over him. An overbearing possessiveness was not uncommon in mother-son relationships, although, he suspected, in Gloria Lamark’s case it might have gone further than that.
Gloria had always told him that Thomas was perfect in every way. It was inevitable she should think that. It would have been inconceivable to her that she might have produced a son who was less than perfect. In his mind Michael had an image of a meek, inadequate, brow-beaten weakling.
He wondered how the poor man was coping now.
Chapter Four
This place. The stairwell. The multi-storey car park. Grey precast concrete. Used syringes and torn burger wrappers. The smell of urine. Ceiling lamps squeezing out feeble haloes of light through filters of dead flies and dust.
Tina Mackay did not have a problem with this place in the mornings when there were always people around and daylight enough to read the graffiti, but at night, in dusk or darkness, it hot-wired her imagination, firing up all kinds of thoughts that she really did not want to be having.
The door slammed behind her, silencing the snarled traffic on High Holborn and replacing it with a hollow reverberating boom as if she was standing inside a vast drum. Then, shadows jumping around her, and newspaper headlines of dismembered torsos on her mind, she began to make her way up the five flights of steps. This was the one part of her journey home that she hated. But tonight she was distracted.
Tonight she had a date!
Her mind was on what she was going to wear, whether she should wash her hair (not enough time, so not an option). Shoes. Lipstick. Perfume.
Handbag?