Eight years, and every job proof that he can look at all those tiny details—up close, across a room or in a street, close enough to hear the target breathing, or half a mile away, ten-up in the sights—look at them, and now they don’t affect him at all.
But somewhere in his head, behind that farmhouse door, Terry Cunliffe’s screaming.
After half an hour Cate’s footsteps come dragging up the stairs and go on to the room above. But he’s still lying awake two hours later, so he hears it:
A word repeated over and over again, rhythmically. Something beating against a wall. And that same small thin cry, like a child having a nightmare.
DAY 16: THURSDAY
KARLA
Ellis calls at 9:35 on Thursday morning. “Be outside Graves’s office at twelve” is all he says. He’s smug, as if he’s just got one over on someone, and he ends the call without saying good-bye.
Ian Graves shares a practice with three other psychiatrists in a converted five-story town house on a Chelsea side street. The practice draws its clientele from the ranks of bankers and brokers, lawyers and minor political figures: the unhappy rich. I wonder what drew Dr. Catherine Gallagher to him; she doesn’t seem the type.
I’m loitering in sight of the glossy black door at twelve on the dot, but there’s no sign of Ellis, so I wander down the street. It’s in a sought-after area between the upmarket stores and bars of the King’s Road and the railed green of the Chelsea Pensioners’ grounds. Most of the properties are residential. Next door to the practice, a ghost house is swathed in plastic sheeting, though there are no sounds of drilling and hammering today: someone’s expensive renovation project has stalled. Among the parked cars I pass four Mercs, a top-of-the-range Lexus, a four-wheel-drive Porsche, and an Aston before I reach the end of the street and retrace my footsteps.
Ellis pulls up in an unmarked car at fourteen minutes past twelve. I’ve changed my appearance enough to throw off a casual observer—sensible shoes, a dry-looking brown wig, dark-framed glasses—and he double takes when he sees me, then grins.
“We’re late,” I tell him, needlessly.
“Early,” he says. There’s the same unmistakable smugness clinging to him. He’s up to something.
“What?”
“Come on.” He climbs the steps to the front door and leans on the intercom button.
After a couple of seconds a well-bred female voice crackles back at him. “Hello?”
“Mr. Ellis for Dr. Graves, he’s expecting me,” he barks.
The lock releases with a buzz. Ellis puts his hand on the door. Over his shoulder he mutters, “Keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut, I’m asking the questions,” then he pushes his way in.
Inside what must once have been the front parlor a pretty, conservatively dressed woman with shiny hair looks up from a glass desk and smiles. Not the sort of smile you’d give a detective inspector on a murder inquiry; she must think one of us is a prospective patient. Probably me.
“We have a meeting with Dr. Graves,” Ellis says.
She looks inquiringly at me, but before I can say anything Ellis jumps in with, “We’re early, if it’s inconvenient we can wait,” in a tone that says, It’d better not be for long.
For a second she hesitates—it’s as if we’ve presented her with a social difficulty—but then she brightens: would we like a cup of coffee? Ellis says, “No,” and “Thank you” as an afterthought.
“Well, then,” she says, “do come this way,” and another smile ushers us into a waiting room (modern sofas, plants, a tank of darting tropical fish). She hovers for a second in the doorway—“If there’s anything you need?”—smiles again, and goes.
She’s like the idealized wife of a cabinet minister: contented with her lot, unshakably polite, one of life’s little optimists, vanilla through and through.
When the door has closed behind her Ellis says, “Our Dr. Graves is a man who prefers to be in control and doesn’t like surprises.”
“So that’s why we’re late?”
“Early.”
“So you said.”
“He said he couldn’t see us today, I said I’d be here at eleven, he says he’s got an appointment at eleven, I say twelve o’clock then, he says it’s a two-hour appointment, so I say one it is, and put the phone down.”
“So we don’t even have an appointment.”
“So why’d she let us in? He’ll see us. Nosy bastards, psychiatrists.” There it is again, that pleased little smile.
“He’ll keep us waiting.”
“Do I look like a copper?” Ellis asks. “Answer: yes.” And he does, in his leather jacket and his designer shoes: a smart young copper on the way up; or a crook. There’s that clever knowingness to him, always one step ahead of the game.
“People who come to this place don’t want it known. So they stagger their appointments, so no one’s sitting in the waiting room with anyone else. So when’s the next appointment? Half past? Twenty to? They’ll be turning up any minute, and Little Miss Perfect isn’t going to want them in here with—”
On cue, the door is opened by a thin-faced man in his fifties with a neat gray beard. Immediately Ellis is on his feet, warrant card in his hand. “Dr. Graves? DI Ellis. We’re early.” He grins. “Good traffic.”
Graves looks at Ellis as if he’s caught him practicing some sort of low subterfuge, then he turns to me. “And you are …?”
Ellis answers for me. “Elizabeth Crow.”
I’ve come prepared: an ID in that name in my pocket and a string of references to published papers inserted overnight into the Internet, a little pattern of tracks in the electronic snow. Now I smile and offer my hand—“Dr. Graves.”
He’s a slight man, trim and carefully dressed in the sort of colors you’d struggle to remember. He shakes my hand, his gaze fixed on my face. “Not a police officer, then?”
“A consultant,” Ellis says.
Graves is still gazing at me. “And your expertise …?”
“Women who vanish,” I say quickly, before Ellis can open his mouth.
“Well,” he says, “do come through.”
None of us mentions the absent eleven o’clock patient.
He shows us into a paneled study overlooking a tiny back courtyard. A gauzy blind pulled halfway down the window cuts out the view of the buildings that back onto this one. Across the room a double-fronted bookcase houses professional journals and reference works behind a latticework of polished wood and diamond panes. In one corner there’s a couple of armchairs and a small table with a box of tissues, a potted African violet, and a pair of coasters for coffee—that must be where he sees his patients—but he maneuvers himself behind a big Victorian desk, waving us into the upright chairs opposite. He wants a barrier between himself and us. A green cardboard file lies on the blotter in front of him. The name on the cover is Catherine Gallagher’s.
As he seats himself, he takes up a pad that he balances on his knee, below the level of the desk and out of our view, and he picks up a pen.
He looks straight at Ellis. His voice is soft and calm and musical. “Are you in charge of this investigation?”
“Yes.”
“And you report to?”
Ellis gives the name of his DCI without flinching. I think Graves writes that down, but like me he’s learned to write without looking directly at the paper, and the desk hides the pad from view.
“And a contact number for her?”
My heart rate rises a notch. Graves will call to check, he’s the type. Will he do it right now, while we’re sitting here? If he does, will Ellis’s boss back him? What about me? But he doesn’t reach for the phone or rise to leave the room.
As I pull out my own notebook Graves sits back with his head tilted to one side. “Can I ask why you’ve reopened the case?” He looks at each of us in turn.
“It was never closed,” Ellis says.
“But after a year, surely …”
“It’s just rout
ine.”
Graves waits to see if he’ll add anything more, but Ellis says nothing.
“I first saw her over two years ago.” Graves glances down at the green file on the desk in front of him, but he doesn’t open it. His gaze levels back up at us. “September, it would have been September.”
“Who put her in touch with you?” Ellis asks. “Her GP?”
“She was a private patient, a self-referral.” He pauses. “She was very guarded, initially.”
“In what way?”
“Well, for instance: she booked the appointment under a false name.”
“Is that unusual?”
“It happens sometimes.”
“And why might she do that?”
Very patiently Graves says, “She didn’t want anyone to know that she was seeking help. She was afraid it might come out. For the same reason she refused me permission to contact her GP.”
“But later she gave you her real name?”
“And, as it turned out, her real address. Not everyone does.”
“So you met her. Here?”
“Yes.”
She must have sat in this same room: the suit, the guarded smile … Did he get past that smile? If he did, will he tell us?
“Describe that first meeting,” Ellis says.
“The format’s the same with every patient. An initial consultation takes two hours. In that time I try to establish a patient’s life story. We talk about their problems and how those problems affect them.”
“And what were Catherine’s problems?”
Graves pauses again, as if he’s thinking through his answer, though maybe he’s making another note to himself. He says, “You are aware of the issues of patient confidentiality?”
“Yeah,” Ellis says. “Tell me, does it apply to the dead?”
Graves purses his lips.
“Or maybe you think she might still be alive,” Ellis adds.
Graves’s eyes say she’s dead.
Ellis presses on. “So she told you …?”
“That she was finding it difficult to function: she felt burned out, she had no energy. And she was very anxious. Anxious about making mistakes.”
“What sort of mistakes?”
“Mistakes in her work.” Again, as if he’s stating the obvious.
“Had she made mistakes in the past?”
“I asked her that. She could only talk about a few tiny errors that she corrected almost immediately, before any damage was done. Nothing of any significance. It was the potential for catastrophe that troubled her. The what-ifs.” Another thoughtful pause. I’m getting used to these pauses, they’re part of his style. A professional device? Leaving space for the patient to interject? Or is he making another note?
Graves says, “Of course, at the time I thought she worked in advertising. She didn’t tell me she was a doctor.”
“Would it have made any difference if she had?” Ellis asks.
“Naturally, and as a doctor she would have known it. She was in an important position, caring for vulnerable patients. I would have had to inform her employer.”
“Was there a risk to her patients?”
“With hindsight? No.”
I jump in. “You’re sure about that?” Beside me, Ellis twitches slightly.
Graves turns his gaze on me. “Depression can impact on concentration—as I say, she was anxious about making mistakes … but I felt she posed a greater risk to herself.”
Ellis asks, “Did she tell you that?”
“No. I asked if she had any thoughts of harming herself—it’s a standard question—and she said no.”
“But you didn’t believe her.”
“I felt she was filtering her responses,” Graves says reasonably. “If she’d said yes, that would have required admission—inpatient treatment—again, something she would have known. Also, I think she found it hard to acknowledge her condition. To admit that she wasn’t coping.”
“She came to you for help. Wasn’t that an acknowledgment?”
“Rationally, she knew she had to do something. But emotionally, instinctively … You know about her parents?”
“Mum’s in a care home. Dad’s dead.”
“I meant her childhood.” Another pause. Another note on his pad? “She felt her father judged her only by her achievements; in her accounts he emerges as a demanding man. Her mother seems to have been somewhat disengaged, colorless; present but emotionally absent. She may have been a depressive herself: it often runs in families. Both were what we might term emotionally unavailable. In modern slang, they weren’t ‘there for her.’ No one was. That early emotional experience formed her expectations of others; she transferred it to everyone else she met. No one would be there to help her; she would always be required to cope on her own. That extended to me. She knew she needed help but emotionally—instinctively—she didn’t believe I could give it. She didn’t believe anyone could. My task was to change that view.”
“And would you say you failed?”
Ellis is trying to provoke him, but Graves just tilts his head sympathetically. “My duty was to try.” His voice is sorrowful but also soothing. This must be how he presents himself to patients: a benign presence but also shadowy, indistinct … His gaze flicks from Ellis to me and back again, observing us. The hand holding the pen glides over the pad, out of sight. He might be interviewing us. We can’t get anywhere near him.
“So you tried to help her,” Ellis says flatly. “How?”
“Initially she just wanted medication. Something to help her function.”
“Which you prescribed?”
“No. She could have been on other medication. And drug interactions can be problematic. Normally a patient’s GP would advise—”
“But she wouldn’t give you their name.”
“So in her case I’d have been prescribing blind. It wasn’t worth the risk.”
“It worried you, that she was holding so much back?”
“Of course; but it was in character. That habit of secrecy, again: not wanting people to know.” Another pause. “I was keen to refer her to a psychotherapist for a talking treatment. Someone who could help her get to the root of her problems, modify her behavior and her assumptions. She refused. She wasn’t ready for that level of exposure.”
“But you continued to see her yourself.”
“Yes. I normally see a patient again three weeks after the first appointment, to monitor the effects of any medication—”
“Which she wasn’t taking.”
Graves ignores him. “Then every six weeks after that. She was what we call a ‘good’ patient. Punctual. Cooperative—at least as far as she’d allow herself. She said it helped. And I felt that at some point there might be a breakthrough. In the meantime I could offer her a safety valve: a chance to talk.”
I spot an opening again. “What was she like?”
This time there’s a small pause, as if he’s assessing me, before he answers. “In her way, a classic depressive. She had a very poor view of herself, despite her achievements. Her sleep was quite disturbed. Early morning wakefulness, a common symptom. Diurnal mood variations: her mood was bleak in the mornings, better later in the day, but bad at night, again because of the sleep problems. She suffered depressive psychodementia—a loss of concentration and with it the anxiety that her memory was failing. Hence the fear of making mistakes.”
Ellis jumps back in. “What about other fears? Did she ever talk about enemies? People who hated her, or might have wanted to harm her?”
Graves frowns. “Are you asking whether she suffered from a paranoid personality disorder?”
“I’m asking if she felt threatened.”
“Catherine wasn’t paranoid. She thought that people didn’t like her, but that was part of the depression. As I say, she displayed many of the classic symptoms: isolation, loss of appetite, loss of self-esteem. Feelings of worthlessness, anxiety, guilt. Not paranoia.”
“Why would she feel guilty
?” Ellis asks.
“She believed she was fundamentally unlovable. Her father had taught her to value herself only through her achievements. Her mother offered nothing to counterbalance that view. Without constant achievement she felt she was worthless. Place that in the context of her work. Every week she saw good people, people with spouses and children, people who were loved and valued, dying in her care, because she was unable to save them. Do you still wonder why she might feel guilty?”
I’m in again. “But not because of anything she’d done?”
Graves says carefully, “She didn’t need to have done anything. The guilt-depressive’s experience isn’t rational.”
“What about what she might have done, what she was capable of?”
Graves blinks at me. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Ellis says, “And when she didn’t turn up for that last appointment—how did you feel?”
It’s an obvious jab, too obvious: Graves isn’t going to talk to us about his feelings. He gives Ellis that look again, that pursed reprimand that says, I know all the little tricks.
“I believed something was wrong,” Graves says coolly. “She’d never missed an appointment before. And consider her personality type: she would have written a note, left a message for me. Missing an appointment would have been a significant failing in her eyes.”
“She had to be perfect,” Ellis says.
“Quite. As I say, I had her home address and her home phone number. I tried to contact her. When that failed I went straight to the police.”
“You thought she’d tried to kill herself?” Ellis asks.
“I thought it was highly possible. And when I learned she was a doctor—”
“That made a difference?”
“In an ICU she would have had access to some extremely powerful drugs. Diamorphine, for instance, a very strong pain reliever. Barbiturates: phenobarbital—it’s an anticonvulsant, often used with head-injury patients. They’re controlled drugs, kept under lock and key—she would have needed authorization to draw them—but with sleight of hand, over a period of time she could have built up a significant stock for her own use, with minimal risk of detection.”
The Distance: A Thriller Page 21