The Distance: A Thriller

by Helen Giltrow

  “You don’t think she was suicidal?”

  “I don’t think she was ever in the room,” he says.

  I gape at him.

  “Did you notice the handwriting? Too regular, throughout. The ink changes between entries, but there’s no variation in the style between the end of one entry and the beginning of another. And there should be differences. Your handwriting changes fractionally every time you pick up a pen—sometimes you write fast, sometimes slowly, and the surface you’re resting on varies, it’s early morning, it’s two in the afternoon, you’re in a hurry, you’re not, you’ve just had two cups of coffee, you haven’t stopped for lunch … Variation. His writing should change, and it doesn’t. Except toward the end—did you notice? The character size starts to fluctuate. And there are recurring phrases—he’s repeating himself. He’s coming out with clichés, almost. It’s as if he’s got tired. As if he’s been sitting at that desk for hours, he’s on a deadline, and he’s beginning to give out.” He stops.

  I can hardly breathe. “Go on.”

  “He says she’s a potential suicide. He says she talked of killing herself. But did anyone who actually knew her think she was suicidal?”

  “She was hiding it.”

  “What if there was nothing to hide? There’s no anger, there’s no self-neglect, there are no lapses in concentration. She kept her home tidy, she exercised, she looked after her appearance, she was punctual, she was reliable. Where’s the depressive? In the file.”

  “You’re saying the notes are fake.”

  “We’ve got, what? Fifteen months of appointments here? I’d say he wrote it in one sitting. All of it. He had a list of symptoms in his head and he worked through it, checking each one off. As I said: everything you’d expect to see in a potential suicide. He’s focused on delivering one message: that this woman is going to kill herself.”

  He spreads his hands—“Charlotte. I cannot be certain”—then drops them. “But on the evidence you’ve given me? She was no more suicidal than you or I.”

  Everything drops into place.

  You look at what you’ve been given and none of it makes sense.

  Because you bought the story. Like everyone else did: the police, her colleagues, her neighbors, the press, everyone except Mark Devlin. You bought the story.

  Beyond the window the daylight throbs like a pulse.

  But what if the story is a lie?

  What do we have? A missing woman and an expert witness. A set of appointments, and the notes, fifteen months’ testimony to Catherine Gallagher’s suicidal state. But no proof.

  Her neighbors hardly knew her. Her colleagues thought she was fine. Everything rests on Graves’s testimony. Take that testimony away—take the notes away—and what are you left with? A setup.

  Don’t fall into the trap of certainty. Don’t believe it just because you want to.

  But it feels like the truth all right.

  There’s no family clamoring for answers. There is no body, and there will be no inquest. Easy just to accept that she’s lying dead somewhere … What did Roberts say? It’s like her, not wanting to be found. It’s like her. But the notes are the weak link, and Graves knows it. That gesture of his—his hand splaying across the cover of the file—and that vibration in the air between us, the one I took for suspicion … It wasn’t that. It was fear.

  He thinks the police are on to him. Otherwise why would they ask the same questions they asked a year ago? Because they want to catch him out.

  So what did he give us? The safe answers, the things he knows we can’t fault. An account of an unhappy childhood, which we can’t possibly verify, and a list of symptoms: diurnal mood variations and depressive psychodementia, loss of appetite, low self-esteem. Textbook.

  That’s why he hasn’t phoned Ellis’s DCI, checked us out. He doesn’t want to raise his profile. He’s hoping that if he keeps his head down all this will go away.

  I’ve been staring into space. Stephen is watching me. His face has a look of compassion.

  “Charlotte,” he says.

  I push my hands down into my lap. “I’m all right.” And I am.

  “You said—her mother—”

  This time the lie comes out smoothly: “She’s in a nursing home. And no one else is interested. I said I’d try to help.”

  Still, he knows I’m lying. He always knows. I can see the flash of frustration before he checks it. He wants to ask again. He also knows it won’t make any difference.

  He says, “You need to go to the police with this. There could be perfectly good reasons why this has happened—sometimes people want to disappear …” An echo of Devlin’s words. But it isn’t what he’s thinking, I know it isn’t: he’s thinking that another psychiatrist has somehow colluded in the disappearance of a young woman, has engineered that disappearance to look like suicide so no questions will be asked. Maybe it’s worse when it’s one of your own.

  He’s still talking. “Charlotte? Tell me you’ll go to the police. They don’t have to know you’ve seen the notes.” He’s guessed I shouldn’t have them, then; guessed they were obtained by illicit means. “Just tell them what her colleagues said. Tell them you have an expert who’s willing to review her file and give a second opinion. Will you do that?”

  I nod. Does he believe me?

  He smiles encouragingly, as if I’m a patient. “And phone me. Tell me what they say.”

  I nod again, but when I look at him I can still see the same baffled frustration on his face. He knows he hasn’t convinced me. And he’s right.

  I’m not going to the police. I’m going after Graves.

  Common sense kicks in before I’ve even got the car to Hammersmith. Stephen’s word isn’t good enough. I need evidence.

  Oh, there’ll be more grounds for suspicion. Catherine Gallagher’s “cash payments” for treatment mysteriously missing from the practice accounts or added late, as an afterthought. Appointments always falling outside office hours—none of Graves’s colleagues, even the receptionist, will ever have set eyes on her. The appointments themselves will appear only in Graves’s personal diary … But I’ve seen Graves in action. He’ll have an answer for everything. An accounting mistake; and of course her shift patterns ruled out meetings during conventional hours, or maybe she insisted on coming at strange times because she was fearful of being recognized. The diary? I can almost hear his smooth voice: An administrative error … Why, is it important?

  If I’m going face-to-face with Graves I need something that he can’t dodge. I need proof. To place Catherine Gallagher somewhere else during some of those appointments. At the hospital or in the gym or on the Tube or accessing her e-mails or withdrawing cash from a machine—it doesn’t matter where, but somewhere she left a trail. But how long will that take to find? How long can I afford to wait? Twelve separate dates to check, and one discrepancy won’t be enough, we need two or three … What if they’ve thought of that? What if they looked for the blanks in her life and fitted the appointments into them?

  Call Ellis? See what he can find? But if Stephen’s right, Graves fixed Catherine’s “suicide.” Maybe she paid him to do it. Or maybe someone else did, and Graves can lead me to them. I don’t want Ellis anywhere near me when I find them.

  Graves has a house in Hampstead. I send Sean there, while Robbie goes to the practice in Chelsea: Graves deals with busy people, maybe he sees patients on a Sunday. Sean has the better traffic, but there’s no one home in the house by the Heath. I tell him to sit tight: Graves may return at any moment.

  Robbie phones fifteen minutes later: the practice is in darkness, and no one’s answering the door.

  I have a mobile number for Graves. Call him? I’m still staring at the handset when it rings: Sean again. He’s spoken to a neighbor. Graves is clearing his late mother’s house in Buckinghamshire.

  It takes me less than five minutes to trace the address.

  Four fifty-five on Sunday evening. Sunset outside the window. “Dr. Gra
ves … Elizabeth Crow.”

  A hesitation on the line. “I’m sorry, I don’t think …?”

  My turn to think: Liar. “I was with DI Ellis. I’m sure you remember.”

  “How did you get this number?” he says sharply.

  “Some new information’s come to light. I’m afraid we need another meeting. Today.”

  Another hesitation. What do the words “new information” suggest to him? I wish I knew. “Well, I’m sorry, it’s just going to have to wait. I’m not in London—”

  “We do know where you are.”

  “Well, then,” he says, as if I’ve proved his point.

  “You don’t want to know what we found?” Nosy bastards, psychiatrists.

  “To be honest, Ms. Crow, I think you’ve wasted enough of my time.”

  “Or you’ve wasted ours.”

  “I don’t know what you’re—”

  Play the card. “You lied, Dr. Graves, and we can prove it.”

  “Who says so?”

  There’s only bluffing left. “Care to guess?”

  Some silences are empty, they’re voids. This one blooms on the line between us, opens up like a flower or a drop of ink in water.

  I don’t know what answer his mind’s supplied. All I know is that I have him.

  “Please stay where you are.”

  Another silence. What’s he going to do? Put the phone down? Run?

  “A car is on its way—”

  “Will there be uniforms?” Suddenly his voice is tight, tremulous. I hear him swallow.

  “You’d prefer not?” He’s thinking of the neighbors, the public humiliation … “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I’ll need protection,” he says. He’s afraid. Good. Let him be afraid.

  “That can be arranged. Just be there, Dr. Graves.”

  Five minutes past five. Should I send Robbie to babysit Graves? Robbie’s closer than I am, so’s Sean: if the traffic’s good, either of them could be there within an hour. But Graves won’t run, not if he thinks we have proof: Graves is either going to roll or stand and fight. And I’ve met enough violent men to know when I’m at risk. He might try argument or even threats, but not physical violence: he’s not the type. I don’t want either Robbie or Sean exposed. If this goes the way it might, the fewer of us he sees, the better.

  Instead I phone Robbie and tell him to get hold of an unmarked van, switch plates, and await further instructions. We may need to move Graves out of there, to a safe house.

  And all the time: You think you can bluff your way through this? What happens when Graves realizes you don’t have enough?

  Twenty past five. I leave on foot with an overnight bag: Charlotte Alton going to visit friends. A taxi and then a five-minute walk to the block of garages where we keep our backup vehicles: the black four-wheel-drive’s parked there. In the back of the garage I change into Elizabeth Crow’s dowdy skirt and coat, her flat shoes and her dark wig. One last subterfuge … The charade of my “professional” status has almost reached the end of its usefulness—before the evening’s out Graves will have realized I’m not what I said I was—but by then it will be too late.

  It’s 7:17 and dark when I drive through a small village in the Chilterns. Houses straggle down one side of a twisting rural road. A couple of them are chocolate-box quaint, but much of the village is newer, and unspecial. Even so there’s money around: a Jag facing out of one drive, a Porsche Cayenne with tinted windows pulled up on the side of the road. On the other side of the road, the four-wheel-drive’s headlights pick out a blighted winter field and a dead tree. There’s no pavement and no streetlamps.

  I drive through the village. The houses thin out. The turning I’m looking for is no more than a gap in an overgrown hedge. I slow the car. Through the gap, beyond an area of weedy gravel, a low, white thirties house squats against a background of dark trees. There’s a pair of dormers in the eaves, like eyes: one of them shows a light behind it, as if the house is winking. There’s a light on downstairs, too, but the curtains are closed. A car is parked in the drive; the plate matches a vehicle registered in Ian Graves’s name.

  Graves’s mother passed away two months ago, at the age of eighty-eight, after a short spell in hospital; utility bills suggest the house has been empty since then.

  I park thirty meters beyond the entrance to the drive. As I walk back up the dark road toward the house, the only sign of life is a woman in a Barbour who passes me walking a fat black Labrador.

  I turn into the drive and crunch across the gravel. It’s a windy night: beyond the building, the trees toss and hiss at me.

  I press the doorbell. An electronic chime sounds inside. And movement, was that movement? I wait for approaching footsteps, the outline of Graves’s trim figure in the ribbed glass of the front door. Nothing happens. After twenty seconds I press the bell again. It’s a small house: he must have heard me. Maybe he’s in the bathroom.

  Another minute passes. Still nothing.

  I step back and look up at the lit dormer window: all I can see is an angled patch of ceiling, with a pool of light cast upward from a table lamp. No movement. The downstairs curtains don’t twitch.

  I pull out my torch, switch it on. A path runs along the side of the house. I make my way down it. In a side window the curtains are only half drawn: inside, light spilling in from a hall through an open doorway shows a bed with ornaments strewn across it—little blue-and-white Wedgwood trinket boxes and bud vases and pin trays, tiny china flower arrangements—and a cardboard box on its side as if it’s been emptied hastily. I edge round, peer sideways to take in more of the room. A chest of drawers stands in a shadowy corner, the lower drawer open with clothing spilling out over the sides, the upper drawer pulled right out and upended, as if someone’s been through the contents in a hurry, looking for something.

  Another sound, close by. A door, closing softly?

  I grip the torch, walk round to the back of the house. No one in sight. The trees rattle in the wind. I stare toward them. Nothing. Then turn again to the house.

  Patio doors with the curtains closed, the room beyond in darkness. A lit window with a blind pulled down, and beside it a back door with more ribbed glass in the upper panel. I wad my hand with a handkerchief and try the door. It’s unlocked.

  It opens onto a kitchen: shabby Formica units, vinyl flooring.

  I step inside, close the door behind me. No sound. “Hello? Dr. Graves?”

  Across the kitchen, to the hallway. There’s the door into the bedroom, standing ajar, and this must be the bathroom—

  He’s wedged between the toilet and the wall. His eyes are open, and his face has an expression of mild protest. Whoever killed him used a knife: his clothes—no longer colorless—are the sticky dark red-black of blood.

  Time hangs, suspended. I don’t know how long for. And then—

  Oh Jesus.

  Suddenly I want to run. Run and hide. Drive fast and drive a long way, put as many miles as possible between myself and this, bury myself where it can’t find me—

  Stop.

  Back it comes. The sense of movement within the house just after I pressed the bell. A moment later, a door closing—

  Are you alone? Listen.

  There’s no controlled breathing from the next room, no creak of floorboards. Yes.

  But they knew you were coming.

  Did they bug Graves’s phone? Were they listening when I rang him?

  I told him I was sending a car; when they knocked, he’d have thought it was the police. How many standing on the doorstep when he opened the door? One? Two? And he’d have felt a little stab of relief: plainclothes, they sent plainclothes after all.

  Poor bastard. Poor stupid bastard.

  Or did he panic? Did he call someone to warn them it was all about to unravel?

  I should have sent Robbie. No—I should never have phoned. I should have just come here, confronted him on his doorstep, proof or no proof. I should never have given them th
e chance—

  A sound cuts through the house, insistent, staccato: a mobile ringtone.

  It jars me into action. Down the short hallway and right, into a darkened living room: the phone’s screen shines blue from the floor. I scoop it up. The screen shows a mobile number.

  A beat, then I press the answer key, hold the phone to my ear. Four seconds of silence, and the line goes dead.

  I pull the phone away from my ear, stare at the little screen.

  Focus. You don’t have much time.

  I access the call log. Go into the received calls: top of the list is that last call, timed at 19:34, from a mobile number, six seconds duration. Second on the list: UNKNOWN NUMBER. My own landline call to Graves, secure and untraceable, logged at 16:55.

  I go into the dialed calls, and there it is. At 17:08—moments after I hung up—Graves called that first mobile number, a call that lasted less than two minutes.

  Was he panicking? Warning someone? Begging for help? And now whoever’s on that number has phoned back. Checking he’s okay? Checking he isn’t? Checking that the job’s been done? Checking for me?

  They could have called from miles away. Or from the end of the garden, by the trees—

  A lurch of panic. Stop it.

  Memorize the number. Repeat it back. Got it? Good. Now switch the phone off. Don’t drop it. Put it in your pocket. You’re ahead of the police right now. See if you can keep it that way.

  Now move. Move.

  I walk back up the hallway. Part of me doesn’t want to look, wants to pretend the thing in the bathroom isn’t there. Part of me has to see him again. To be sure?

  Everything’s unchanged. It’s only in your nightmares that the dead move. Still, I can’t take my eyes off him: I have to back away across the kitchen, stopping only when I bump into the sink.

  Get out of here.

  And if they’re outside, waiting?

  I open the back door using the handkerchief. Pause on the threshold, straining into the dark. Nothing. No dark shape, no sudden onrush.