The Way You Look Tonight

by Richard Madeley

  The stewardess’s mouth opened wider before she prompted: ‘Go on then! Who? Who is it?’

  Stella took a deep breath.

  ‘I probably shouldn’t be telling you this but . . . well . . . it’s the Kennedys. Bobby Kennedy and his wife Ethel and their children, and according to this—’ The thin sheet of paper crackled as Stella waved it in the air – ‘Bobby’s brother JFK might actually be there too. The President! With Jackie! I don’t know who I’ll be more terrified of meeting – him, or her.’

  Cassandra gaped at her. The stewardess seemed to be struggling for words, before she finally managed:

  ‘Well, you can fly me to Timbuktu!’

  2

  Stella was disappointed that she hadn’t had the chance to explain to Cassandra why she had chosen to study Psychopathy. For some reason she would have been comfortable confiding in the young stewardess.

  Most people were curious to know why she had chosen to follow such a challenging path, especially as a woman. Psychology and psychiatry were still overwhelmingly a male preserve. But things were slowly changing, and anyway the science of the mind was becoming increasingly fashionable. Reflex suspicion of ‘trick cyclists’ was fading as the bright new decade got underway. Many were willing to accept and even embrace a discipline that their parents had dismissed as being little more than witchcraft.

  It was true that Hitchcock’s 1960 film Psycho had a lot to do with changed perceptions. When it was released two years earlier, Stella was one of the first in the queue to see it at the cinema in Cambridge.

  She had thought it crude and rather silly in its jumbled, sensationalised depiction of certain clinically recognised mental conditions. But, she reflected, as her plane droned on through the gathering Atlantic darkness, Hitchcock had certainly put psychopathy on the map.

  Her own private interest in this extreme corner of the human zoo was anything but modish. Stella had been fascinated by the dark backwaters of the human psyche for years; ever since she was ten, in fact.

  Because long before Hitchcock’s fictional motel-owner had become a byword for murderous depravity, she had encountered a real-life psychopath of her own.

  He was, like Bates, superficially charming, persuasive, and credible.

  Like Bates, he was extraordinarily dangerous.

  He was Stella’s father.

  ‘Three hours to go!’

  Stella jumped as the air stewardess flopped back down into the seat next to her.

  ‘Sorry, dear. Did I startle you?’

  ‘A bit,’ Stella admitted. ‘I was miles away.’

  ‘Penny for them?’

  Stella hesitated. She’d read about this syndrome somewhere recently; the compulsion to unburden oneself to a fellow passenger, a complete stranger, on a long flight – particularly at night. Cassandra wasn’t a passenger but she was a girl of about Stella’s age and she was bright and friendly. Her uniform gave her a touch of authority, too, and even her name added a certain distinction. Suddenly Stella laughed to herself.

  ‘Seer and instant therapist,’ she muttered under her breath.

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘Instant therapist,’ she repeated, more distinctly. ‘I read an article the other day saying that strangers tell each other all sorts of private things on aeroplanes. It’s something to do with a journey into the unknown, and the fact that when you’re up here, you’re sort of . . . well, nowhere. I think the headline was “Instant In-Flight Therapy”, something like that, and I was just thinking—’

  ‘That I’m your therapist! How funny, considering, you know, what your degree is in . . . but it’s true, people do tend to open up between continents at twenty thousand feet.’

  Cassandra leaned her head conspiratorially towards Stella’s. ‘We see all sorts of heart-to-hearts going on between passengers who’ve only just met. The other night coming back from New York I found myself virtually taking confession from a man who told me he’d been cheating on his wife.’

  Stella laughed. ‘Oh, I don’t have any admissions like that,’ she replied. ‘I don’t even have a boyfriend to cheat on.’

  ‘Watch out for JFK at the barbecue on Sunday, then.’ They both laughed.

  The stewardess lit two cigarettes and handed one to the girl next to her. ‘So what is it you want to tell me? Don’t worry. I’m good at keeping secrets. Anyway, no one believes what I tell them. I’m Cassandra, remember?’ She smiled.

  Stella paused. She didn’t have to do this . . . suddenly, she made her decision.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘It’s just that, before, you were asking how I became interested in the human mind . . . but we were interrupted by your boss – she is your boss, isn’t she?’

  ‘The Wicked Witch of the West? Oh yes. She’s been on my back all night. Says I forgot my comfy shoes on purpose so I could swank about in heels. As if! I’ll be hobbling for days . . . anyway, go on. I think you’re the first woman psychologist or psychiatrist or whatever you are that I’ve ever met.’

  Stella sighed. ‘I told you, I’m neither . . . well, not yet, anyway. I just study the field. But as to why I chose to do that . . . the honest truth, I suppose, is that I was scared into it.’

  The air stewardess tucked her legs comfortably underneath her. ‘Really? Who by?’

  ‘My father. Or rather, what he was . . . what he did.’ Stella hesitated again. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

  But Cassandra’s next remark could have been no clearer sign for her to continue. ‘I never knew mine – my father, I mean. He was killed in the war. Went to sea to sink German submarines before I was born but they sank him first.’

  Stella stared at her. ‘How extraordinary! My father died in the war before I was born, too. He was a fighter pilot. He was shot down and killed over France.’

  Cassandra arched her perfectly pencilled eyebrows. ‘Then how could he have scared you into anything? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Because he wasn’t killed at all. He certainly vanished – but the RAF jumped to completely the wrong conclusion: missing, presumed dead.

  ‘In fact he bailed out of his aircraft just before it crashed, and promptly deserted – spirited himself down to the south of France and was never heard of again. Well, not for ages, that is. My mother eventually remarried and, as fate would have it, we went to live with my stepfather near Nice.’

  The air stewardess gave a knowing nod. ‘Oh, don’t tell me. One day out of the blue you—’

  ‘Bumped into my father. Yes. Or rather, my mother did first. She . . . well . . . she had an affair with him, to be honest, a very brief one, before she discovered he was a gangster – a killer, too. He ran a really vicious protection racket in Nice.’

  ‘Wow. This is one hell of a story, Stella. You should write the book.’

  ‘Maybe one day I will. Anyway, to cut a long story short, my father tried to extort money from my mother. When she wouldn’t play ball, he tracked me down. I knew him the moment I set eyes on him.’

  ‘How? You’d never met him!’ Cassandra suddenly put a finger to her lips and got to her feet. ‘Hang on, Stella: don’t answer that question before I fetch us both a drink. This is so fascinating that I reckon we’re in gin and tonic territory now for sure.’

  She vanished to her galley and returned with two brimming glasses.

  ‘Cheers. Right. Continue.’

  Stella sipped her drink. ‘I recognised him from the photo I’d kept on my bedside table since I was tiny. Obviously my mother put it there so I’d know who my father was, what he looked like. He was so handsome, Cassandra, in his RAF uniform. The picture was taken about a month before he was shot down but when I saw him in the flesh ten years later, he’d barely changed.’

  The stewardess stared at her. ‘My God. You must have thought you were seeing a ghost.’

  Stella gave a short laugh. ‘Some ghost. The bastard kidnapped me – his own daughter. I was held for two days in a grotty flat before my grandfather, my mother’s father, fl
ew down from London with the ransom. Then we went straight back home to England and I never saw my father again.’

  Stella looked out of her window at the blackness outside and for a while neither of them spoke. Eventually Cassandra ventured: ‘That’s an incredible story, Stella, but forgive me . . . I can’t quite make out how this awful man forced you to study psychology.’

  Stella turned to face her new friend. ‘He didn’t, not directly. But a few years later, when I was sixteen, my mother sat me down and told me everything she knew about him. How before the war he’d seduced her and manipulated her and lied to get her to fall for him and marry him . . . then in Nice years later he admitted to her that he was only ever interested in her father’s money . . . and she told me the terrible things he’d done on the Riviera, about the people he’d killed, or had had killed . . . he was an absolute monster. A true psychopath. Charming on the outside, empty and cold as ice on the inside. And as dangerous as they come. That was my father.’

  Stella closed her eyes. ‘The thing is, Cassandra, I began to become fixated on the idea that psychopathy might be passed on in some way. That I might have inherited it from my father . . . even my grandfather. A psychological ambush from both sides of the family, as it were.’

  Cassandra blinked. ‘Your father, yes, I can sort of understand that. But your grandfather? Why? Is he psychopathic too?’

  Stella shook her head quickly. ‘God no. He’s a wonderful man. Kind and generous and funny. But he has certain . . . capabilities. Something frightful happened the night the ransom was paid, and we left Nice at dawn the next morning. But I can’t say any more.’

  For the first time, the air stewardess reached for Stella’s hand, and squeezed it reassuringly. ‘Of course not. Families must keep their secrets. You’ve told me a packet already. But I don’t understand your fears for yourself.’ She smiled. ‘You’re obviously not crackers, Stella.’

  The other smiled thinly in return. ‘Really? How can you be sure? Psychopaths like my father can be very good at concealing their true natures. For all you know, I’m a charming killer, like him.’

  ‘Rot. But finish your story. Why did you decide to study psychology?’

  Stella took a long swallow of her drink before answering.

  ‘Know thine enemy,’ she said at last. ‘I realised the best way of laying my fears to rest was to confront them. And what’s that old Greek proverb? “Know thyself.” The more I learned about psychology and the human mind, the more I gradually became reassured that I was within the bounds of what might be loosely described as normal. Of course I’m not a psychopath. But I’ll tell you this, Cassandra – I’ve become fascinated by them.’

  Stella gently stirred her gin with the silver swizzle-stick Cassandra had put in it along with ice and lemon. ‘They’re nothing like you and me, you know,’ she continued after a pause, ‘nothing at all. They’re like creatures from a parallel world; human, yet not in the least human. When I get to Smith, my project will be to research if people are born psychopaths, or if they become so as they grow up. You know, the nature-versus-nurture thing.’

  Cassandra slowly finished her own drink before speaking again. ‘And what’s your current assessment of the question? Your best guess, as it were?’

  Stella shook her head. ‘There’s no place for gut instinct in science. But if I allowed myself that luxury, I’d say . . .’ She turned back to the now total darkness outside the window. When she spoke again, it was with her face still averted.

  ‘I’d say they come straight from Hell.’

  3

  The battered Ford pickup most probably belonged to her boyfriend, he decided. Miami Dolphins bumper stickers and a tangle of fishing gear in the back made it obvious that she was using a guy’s car.

  He’d been parked up all morning outside one of the brand-new Kmarts, keeping an eye open for the peaches – he’d thought of them as peaches as long as he could remember – when he saw her pull in to one of the green-shaded parking lots kept back for employees, and jump down from the cabin.

  She looked exactly like a college girl should, he thought – high-top sneakers, blue pleated skirt, short-sleeved white cotton blouse. Bubble-gum lipstick and long blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail.

  Likely enough, Kmart had given her a summer vacation job. And, when he strolled into the supermarket ten minutes behind her, there she was sitting at one of the checkouts, smiling at a customer as she gave change.

  He’d tracked her easily since then. She lived with her parents and brother in a pink-and-white clapboard one-storey conch house. It was on a quiet street just off the Overseas Highway, the road that ran all the way down from Miami and across arching bridges linking the islands of the Keys, right down to Southernmost Point on the last one in the chain, Key West.

  Gumbo Limbo Drive lay on the Atlantic side of Key Largo, and as he drove past the house, he caught glimpses of sparkling ocean between palms and bougainvillea-covered porches.

  Now he figured it was the brother’s car she drove to work each day. There didn’t seem to be any special guy hanging around; he’d followed her on her dates and all of them turned out to be with girlfriends.

  He was ready.

  That afternoon he had deliberately queued at her aisle in the store, so she could be the one to sell him the knife he’d just picked out especially for her. He thought that was pretty neat. He almost laughed when she smiled up at him and asked if he would be using it for fishing or hunting, but he managed to hold it together. Jesus, it was fucking funny though.

  Things had gone much better this, his second time. She’d lasted twice as long as the first one and she’d made some really exciting noises, pretty loud ones, too. He was far enough down the little-used salt creek for that not to matter and anyway the skiff he’d stolen was fairly high-sided, so most of her racket was diverted straight up into the night sky. The noise of the drumming of her heels against the deck had transferred straight down into the water. No one but him was any the wiser.

  And when it was over, only he could hear her special song, the verse he would always sing to them when it was done.

  He was annoyed that the newspapers hadn’t reported his personal sign-off after the first one, but to be fair to them the cops had probably held it back. Some dumb cat-and-mouse game or other. But he had the feeling that this time they’d want everyone to know about his signature. It showed that he was no random killer and the cops would get that now, however stupid they were. The papers, too; they loved that kind of angle.

  And you had to admit it – as signatures went, this one looked pretty damn cool, even if it was going to cost him a fortune in knives. He bought only the best; he felt he owed them that.

  He took one last look at her as he prepared to slip out of the boat and begin wading back up the channel. But he knew that the image, striking though it was, would begin to fade soon enough.

  Next time he’d make sure to bring a camera.

  4

  ‘That’s not a car, Professor Rockfair. That’s a big boat on wheels.’

  The woman standing beside Stella in Logan Airport’s passenger pick-up zone laughed.

  ‘It’s a Lincoln Continental Convertible, my dear, Jeb’s pride and joy, especially since he heard that President Kennedy took delivery of exactly the same model last month for his official motorcades. With the top down like that it does have the look of a motor-launch, I agree. But it’s such a lovely day we thought you’d like the sun on your face and the wind in your hair on the drive back home.’

  Jeb Rockfair was carefully nosing the gleaming silver open-topped sedan into the parking bay. Once he was satisfied, he looked up and gave them both the A-OK circle of forefinger and thumb.

  ‘Welcome to New England, Stella,’ he called to her. ‘Hop in! I know it’s a bit of a squeeze, but we’ll manage somehow.’

  Stella giggled. ‘I’ve never seen a car as big as this in my whole life. Oh my goodness! The doors are on backwards!’

  Jeb h
ad opened the rear door closest to the kerb. ‘Yup. The back doors swing open towards the front. Neat, huh? Just like the old stagecoaches. Let me get your bags for you.’

  ‘Thank you, Professor.’

  Jeb Rockfair glanced meaningfully towards his wife as he swung Stella’s two suitcases into the trunk. ‘She been calling you that too?’

  ‘She certainly has, ever since the arrivals hall.’

  ‘Right.’ He ushered Stella into the back of the car and got behind the wheel, his wife sliding onto the leather-covered bench seat beside him.

  ‘Now see here, Stella,’ he said, once he’d started the engine and pulled out onto the airport’s exit lane. ‘Dorothy and I don’t have many Rockfair rules but here’s one you’ll break again at your peril. No “professor” this or “professor” that from here on in, OK? It’s Jeb and Dorothy, period. I mean, Jeez, were you planning on calling our daughter “Miss Sylvia”?’

  Stella gave a passable imitation of the Queen. ‘Neow, it was going to be Miss Rockfair, eactually,’ she said in a nasal, clipped tone. Her hosts roared with laughter.

  ‘You’re a chip off the old block – that’s just the kind of stunt your mother might pull!’ Jeb said when he’d caught his breath. ‘You’re quite the mimic, Stella . . . Dottie, we’re in the presence of royalty! The Queen of England is in the back of our sedan! How’d you learn to do that, honey?’

  ‘Oh, almost anybody can do the Queen,’ Stella said, beginning to enjoy herself. ‘It’s easy, I’ll show you. What do you breathe?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Come on, it’s simple. What do you breathe?

  ‘OK . . . air,’ they replied together.

  ‘And what’s on top of your head?’

  ‘Hair.’ Dorothy started to laugh. ‘I think I can see where this is going, but then I do lecture in linguistics.’

  ‘One more,’ said Stella. ‘A fox hides in its . . . ?’

  ‘Lair!’ Jeb shouted after a moment, as he signalled right onto the freeway out of town.