Shatter
( Joseph O'Loughlin - 3 )
Michael Robotham
Shatter
Michael Robotham
1
University of Bath
It’s eleven o’clock in the morning, late September, and outside it’s raining so hard that cows are floating down rivers and birds are resting on their bloated bodies.
The lecture theatre is full. Tiered seats rise at a gentle angle between the stairs on either side of the auditorium, climbing into darkness. Mine is an audience of pale faces, young and earnest, hung over. Fresher’s Week is in full swing and many of them have waged a mental battle to be here, weighing up whether to attend any lectures or go back to bed. A year ago they were watching teen movies and spilling popcorn. Now they’re living away from home, getting drunk on subsidised alcohol and waiting to learn something.
I walk to the centre of the stage and clamp my hands on the lectern as if frightened of falling over.
‘My name is Professor Joseph O’Loughlin. I am a clinical psychologist and I’ll be taking you through this introductory course in behavioural psychology.’
Pausing a moment, I blink into the lights. I didn’t think I would be nervous lecturing again but now I suddenly doubt if I have any knowledge worth imparting. I can still hear Bruno Kaufman’s advice. (Bruno is the head of the psychology department at the university and is blessed with a perfect Teutonic name for the role.) He told me, ‘Nothing we teach them will be of the slightest possible use to them in the real world, old boy. Our task is to offer them a bullshit meter.’
‘A what?’
‘If they work hard and take a little on board, they will learn to detect when someone is telling them complete bullshit.’
Bruno had laughed and I found myself joining him.
‘Go easy on them,’ he added. ‘They’re still clean and perky and well-fed. A year from now they’ll be calling you by your first name and thinking they know it all.’
How do I go easy on them, I want to ask him now. I’m new at this too. Breathing deeply, I begin again.
‘Why does a well-spoken university graduate studying urban preservation fly a passenger plane into a skyscraper, killing thousands of people? Why does a boy, barely into his teens, spray a schoolyard with bullets, or a teenage mother give birth in a toilet and leave the baby in the wastepaper bin?’
Silence.
‘How did a hairless primate evolve into a species that manufactures nuclear weapons, watches Celebrity Big Brother and asks questions about what it means to be human and how we got here? Why do we cry? Why are some jokes funny? Why are we inclined to believe or disbelieve in God? Why do we get turned on when someone sucks our toes? Why do we have trouble remembering some things, yet can’t get that annoying Britney Spears song out of our heads? What causes us to love or hate? Why are we each so different?’
I look at the faces in the front rows. I have captured their attention, for a moment at least.
‘We humans have been studying ourselves for thousands of years, producing countless theories and philosophies and astonishing works of art and engineering and original thought, yet in all that time this is how much we’ve learned.’ I hold up my thumb and forefinger a fraction of an inch apart.
‘You’re here to learn about psychology- the science of the mind; the science that deals with knowing, believing, feeling and desiring; the least understood science of them all.’
My left arm trembles at my side.
‘Did you see that?’ I ask, raising the offending arm. ‘It does that occasionally. Sometimes I think it has a mind of its own but of course that’s impossible. One’s mind doesn’t reside in an arm or a leg.
‘Let me ask you all a question. A woman walks into a clinic. She is middle aged, well-educated, articulate and well-groomed. Suddenly, her left arm leaps to her throat and her fingers close around her windpipe. Her face reddens. Her eyes bulge. She is being strangled. Her right hand comes to her rescue. It peels back the fingers and wrestles her left hand to her side. What should I do?’
Silence.
A girl in the front row nervously raises her arm. She has short reddish hair separated in feathery wisps down the fluted back of her neck. ‘Take a detailed history?’
‘It’s been done. She has no history of mental illness.’
Another hand rises. ‘It is an issue of self harm.’
‘Obviously, but she doesn’t choose to strangle herself. It is unwanted. Disturbing. She wants help.’
A girl with heavy mascara brushes hair behind her ear with one hand. ‘Perhaps she’s suicidal.’
‘Her left hand is. Her right hand obviously doesn’t agree. It’s like a Monty Python sketch. Sometimes she has to sit on her left hand to keep it under control.’
‘Is she depressed?’ asks a youth with a gypsy earring and gel in his hair.
‘No. She’s frightened but she can see the funny side of her predicament. It seems ridiculous to her. Yet at her worst moments she contemplates amputation. What if her left hand strangles her in the night, when her right hand is asleep?’
‘Brain damage?’
‘There are no obvious neurological deficits- no paralysis or exaggerated reflexes.’
The silence stretches out, filling the air above their heads, drifting like strands of web in the warm air.
A voice from the darkness fills the vacuum. ‘She had a stroke.’
I recognise the voice. Bruno has come to check up on me on my first day. I can’t see his face in the shadows but I know he’s smiling.
‘Give that man a cigar,’ I announce.
The keen girl in the front row pouts. ‘But you said there was no brain damage.’
‘I said there were no obvious neurological deficits. This woman had suffered a small stroke on the right side of her brain in an area that deals with emotions. Normally, the two halves of our brain communicate and come to an agreement but in this case it didn’t happen and her brain fought a physical battle using each side of her body.
‘This case is fifty years old and is one of the most famous in the study of the brain. It helped a neurologist called Dr Kurt Goldstein develop one of the first theories of the divided brain.’
My left arm trembles again, but this time it is oddly reassuring.
‘Forget everything you’ve been told about psychology. It will not make you a better poker player, nor will it help you pick up girls or understand them any better. I have three at home and they are a complete mystery to me.
‘It is not about dream interpretation, ESP, multiple personalities, mind reading, Rorschach Tests, phobias, recovered memories or repression. And most importantly- it is not about getting in touch with yourself. If that’s your ambition I suggest you buy a copy of Big Jugs magazine and find a quiet corner.’
There are snorts of laughter.
‘I don’t know any of you yet, but I know things about you. Some of you want to stand out from the crowd and others want to blend in. You’re possibly looking at the clothes your mother packed you and planning an expedition to H amp;M tomorrow to purchase something distressed by a machine that will express your individuality by making you look like everyone else on campus.
‘Others among you might be wondering if it’s possible to get liver damage from one night of drinking, and speculating on who set off the fire alarm in Halls at three o’clock this morning. You want to know if I’m a hard marker or if I’ll give you extensions on assignments or whether you should have taken politics instead of psychology. Stick around and you’ll get some answers- but not today.’
I walk back to the centre of the stage and stumble slightly.
‘I will leave you with one thought. A piece of human brain the size of a grain of sand contains one hundred tho
usand neurons, two million axons and one billion synapses all talking to each other. The number of permutations and combinations of activity that are theoretically possible in each of our heads exceeds the number of elementary particles in the universe.’
I pause and let the numbers wash over them. ‘Welcome to the great unknown.’
‘Dazzling, old boy, you put the fear of God into them,’ says Bruno, as I gather my papers. ‘Ironic. Passionate. Amusing. You inspired them.’
‘It was hardly Mr Chips.’
‘Don’t be so modest. None of these young philistines have ever heard of Mr Chips. They’ve grown up reading Harry Potter and the Stoned Philosopher.’
‘I think it’s “the Philosopher’s Stone”.’
‘Whatever. With that little affectation of yours, Joseph, you have everything it takes to be much loved.’
‘Affectation?’
‘Your Parkinson’s.’
He doesn’t bat an eyelid when I stare at him in disbelief. I tuck my battered briefcase under my arm and make my way towards the side door of the lecture hall.
‘Well, I’m pleased you think they were listening,’ I say.
‘Oh, they never listen,’ says Bruno. ‘It’s a matter of osmosis; occasionally something sinks through the alcoholic haze. But you did guarantee they’ll come back.’
‘How so?’
‘They won’t know how to lie to you.’
His eyes fold into wrinkles. Bruno is wearing trousers that have no pockets. For some reason I’ve never trusted a man who has no use for pockets. What does he do with his hands?
The corridors and walkways are full of students. A girl approaches. I recognise her from the lecture. Clear-skinned, wearing desert boots and black jeans, her heavy mascara makes her look raccoon-eyed with a secret sadness.
‘Do you believe in evil, Professor?’
‘Excuse me?’
She asks the question again, clutching a notebook to her chest.
‘I think the word “evil” is used too often and has lost value.’
‘Are people born that way or does society create them?’
‘They are created.’
‘So there are no natural psychopaths?’
‘They’re too rare to quantify.’
‘What sort of answer is that?’
‘It’s the right one.’
She wants to ask me something else but struggles to find courage. ‘Would you agree to an interview?’ she blurts suddenly.
‘What for?’
‘The student newspaper. Professor Kaufman says you’re something of a celebrity.’
‘I hardly think…’
‘He says you were charged with murdering a former patient and beat the rap.’
‘I was innocent.’
The distinction seems lost on her. She’s still waiting for an answer.
‘I don’t give interviews. I’m sorry.’
She shrugs and turns, about to leave. Something else occurs to her. ‘I enjoyed the lecture.’
‘Thank you.’
She disappears down the corridor. Bruno looks at me sheepishly. ‘Don’t know what she’s talking about, old boy. Wrong end of the stick.’
‘What are you telling people?’
‘Only good things. Her name is Nancy Ewers. She’s a bright young thing. Studying Russian and politics.’
‘Why is she writing for the newspaper?’
‘ “Knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use.” ’
‘Who said that?’
‘A.E. Housman.’
‘Wasn’t he a communist?’
‘A pillow biter.’
It is still raining. Teeming. For weeks it has been like this. Forty days and forty nights must be getting close. An oily wave of mud, debris and sludge is being swept across the West Country, making roads impassable and turning basements into swimming pools. There are radio reports of flooding in the Malago Valley, Hartcliffe Way and Bedminster. Warnings have been issued for the Avon, which burst its banks at Evesham. Locks and levees are under threat. People are being evacuated. Animals are drowning.
The quadrangle is washed by rain, driven sideways in sheets. Students huddle under coats and umbrellas, making a dash for their next lecture or the library. Others are staying put, mingling in the foyer. Bruno observes the prettier girls without ever making it obvious.
It was he who suggested I lecture- two hours a week and four tutorials of half an hour each. Social psychology. How hard could it be?
‘Do you have an umbrella?’ he asks.
‘Yes.’
‘We’ll share.’
My shoes are full of water within seconds. Bruno holds the umbrella and shoulders me as we run. As we near the psychology department, I notice a police car parked in the emergency bay. A young black constable steps from inside wearing a raincoat. Tall, with short-cropped hair, he hunches his shoulders slightly as if beaten down by the rain.
‘Dr Kaufman?’
Bruno acknowledges him with a half-nod.
‘We have a situation on the Clifton Bridge.’
Bruno groans. ‘No, no, not now.’
The constable doesn’t expect a refusal. Bruno pushes past him, heading towards the glass doors to the psychology building, still holding my umbrella.
‘We tried to phone,’ yells the officer. ‘I was told to come and get you.’
Bruno stops and turns back, muttering expletives.
‘There must be someone else. I don’t have the time.’
Rain leaks down my neck. I ask Bruno what’s wrong.
Suddenly he changes tack. Jumping over a puddle, he returns my umbrella as though passing on the Olympic torch.
‘This is the man you really want,’ he says to the officer. ‘Professor Joseph O’Loughlin, my esteemed colleague, a clinical psychologist of great repute. An old hand. Very experienced at this sort of thing.’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘A jumper.’
‘Pardon?’
‘On the Clifton Suspension Bridge,’ adds Bruno. ‘Some halfwit doesn’t have enough sense to get out of the rain.’
The constable opens the car door for me. ‘Female. Early forties,’ he says.
I still don’t understand.
Bruno adds, ‘Come on, old boy. It’s a public service.’
‘Why don’t you do it?’
‘Important business. A meeting with the chancellor. Heads of Department.’ He’s lying. ‘False modesty isn’t necessary, old boy. What about that young chap you saved in London? Well-deserved plaudits. You’re far more qualified than me. Don’t worry. She’ll most likely jump before you get there.’
I wonder if he hears himself sometimes.
‘Must dash. Good luck.’ He pushes through the glass doors and disappears inside the building.
The officer is still holding the car door. ‘They’ve blocked off the bridge,’ he explains. ‘We really must hurry, sir.’
Wipers thrash and a siren wails. From inside the car it sounds strangely muted and I keep looking over my shoulder expecting to see an approaching police car. It takes me a moment to realise that the siren is coming from somewhere closer, beneath the bonnet.
Masonry towers appear on the skyline. It is Brunel’s master-piece, the Clifton Suspension Bridge, an engineering marvel from the age of steam. Taillights blaze. Traffic is stretched back for more than a mile on the approach. Sticking to the apron of the road, we sweep past the stationary cars and pull up at a roadblock where police in fluorescent vests control onlookers and unhappy motorists.
The constable opens the door for me and hands me my umbrella. A sheet of rain drives sideways and almost rips it from my hands. Ahead of me the bridge appears deserted. The masonry towers support massive sweeping interlinking cables that curve gracefully to the vehicle deck and rise again to the opposite side of the river.
One of the attributes of bridges is that they offer the possibility that someone may start to cross but never reach th
e other side. For that person the bridge is virtual; an open window that they can keep passing or climb through.
The Clifton Suspension Bridge is a landmark, a tourist attraction and a one-drop shop for suicides. Well-used, oft-chosen, perhaps ‘popular’ isn’t the best choice of word. Some people say the bridge is haunted by past suicides; eerie shadows have been seen drifting across the vehicle deck.
There are no shadows today. And the only ghost on the bridge is flesh and blood. A woman, naked, standing outside the safety fence, with her back pressed to the metal lattice and wire strands. The heels of her red shoes are balancing on the edge.
Like a figure from a surrealist painting, her nakedness isn’t particularly shocking or even out of place. Standing upright, with a rigid grace, she stares at the water with the demeanour of someone who has detached herself from the world.
The officer in charge introduces himself. He’s in uniform: Sergeant Abernathy. I don’t catch his first name. A junior officer holds an umbrella over his head. Water streams off the dark nylon dome, falling on my shoes.
‘What do you need?’ asks Abernathy.
‘A name.’
‘We don’t have one. She won’t talk to us.’
‘Has she said anything at all?’
‘No.’
‘She could be in shock. Where are her clothes?’
‘We haven’t found them.’
I glance along the pedestrian walkway, which is enclosed by a fence topped with five strands of wire, making it difficult for anyone to climb over. The rain is so heavy I can barely see the far side of the bridge.
‘How long has she been out there?’
‘Best part of an hour.’
‘Have you found a car?’
‘We’re still looking.’
She most likely approached from the eastern side which is heavily wooded. Even if she stripped on the walkway dozens of drivers must have seen her. Why didn’t anyone stop her?
A large woman with short cropped hair, dyed black, interrupts the meeting. Her shoulders are rounded and her hands bunch in the pockets of a rain jacket hanging down to her knees. She’s huge. Square. And she’s wearing men’s shoes.
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