Dying to Help (Anna McColl Mystery Series Book 1)

by Penny Kline

  Chapter Thirteen

  For some reason I had failed to tell Martin about the seminar on Munchausen’s Syndrome. I wasn’t sure why, but perhaps it had something to do with the way he had responded when I told him how Owen Hughes had suggested where I might find funding for my research project. I liked Martin but he could be so negative, so cynical. It was part of his personality, nothing to do with the children keeping him awake at night. That was my considered opinion, only of course I knew nothing of what it felt like to be deprived of sleep by fractious teething babies.

  The seminar was at four fifteen so I would have to leave work early, not that Martin was likely to notice. If he did he would assume I had gone on one of the home visits he had warned me against. ‘Don’t get so involved, Anna. Accept your limitations. None of us can change the world.’ He protested too much. According to Nick he had once been more committed than the rest of us put together. Then suddenly the coin had flipped. He had burned out, given up, started concentrating on organizing the service and reducing actual client contact to a minimum. Now he was trying to stop me from going the same way. It was silly to take his warnings as a criticism.

  Once again Jenny was late for her appointment, but this time I made several visits to the waiting room and on the fourth occasion she was there, sitting in the furthest corner, head down, arms folded in self-protection.

  ‘Hallo, Jenny.’

  She stood up but didn’t look at me.

  Upstairs in my room she sat down but kept her coat on as though to signal that she didn’t intend to stay very long. After a moment or two she whispered something. ‘Sorry, I couldn’t quite hear.’

  But she wasn’t going to repeat it. She seemed depressed and it was as though the progress we had made during her last visit had been wiped out.

  ‘Want to take your coat off?’ I asked.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Not feeling too good today?’

  She chewed at her bottom lip. Her feet were squirming about on the carpet. I felt sorry for her but it was difficult to know how to make it easier for her to talk. I decided to try a different approach.

  ‘Jenny, do you keep a diary?’

  Her head shot up. ‘What?’

  ‘A diary. I wondered if you kept one. Sometimes people start at the beginning of a new year and — ’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Oh, no special reason. I just thought … I used to keep one at your age.’

  Actually it had been when I was much younger, about eleven or twelve, but I still found it difficult to remember she was nearly seventeen.

  I ploughed on. ‘Sometimes it’s easier to write things down. Easier than talking to people I mean.’

  She shrugged. ‘I can’t be bothered.’

  ‘D’you mean keeping a diary or talking to people?’

  ‘I talk to my mother.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you do. I met your mother in the park. I expect she told you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I didn’t realize she works at the Student Counselling Service. A part-time job, is it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You didn’t mind her speaking to me?’

  ‘What? I don’t understand what you mean.’

  After a short pause she spoke again in a low angry voice. ‘What am I supposed to be here for, anyway? Dr Ingram used to give me tablets. Now everyone thinks I’m funny in the head.’

  ‘No, they don’t.’

  ‘Anyway, I’m perfectly all right apart from my back.’

  ‘Your back?’

  ‘Everyone gets backache. It’s normal.’

  ‘Yes, I agree. What you mean is you feel cross that you’ve been referred to a psychologist.’

  ‘I just don’t see what you’re supposed to do.’

  ‘No, I can understand how you feel.’

  There was something intimidating about her. But how could there be? It occurred to me that she felt she had given away too much during her last visit. Now she was testing me out to see if she could trust me.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I want to get a few things straight. About your situation, I mean. Your father left a few years ago and since then the two of you have lost touch.’

  She was looking through the window. She might have nodded. It was hard to tell.

  I took a risk. ‘I’m sorry, you must feel upset about it. And quite angry, I expect.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, he’s still your father.’

  She stood up, then sat down again heavily. ‘I prefer not to talk about it.’

  ‘OK, that’s fine. Tell me about your school. Which one did you go to?’

  ‘The comprehensive.’

  ‘Did you like it?’

  She shrugged. ‘It was all right.’

  ‘You must have had friends. Anyone in particular?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I wondered if you’d kept in touch with anyone — since you became ill.’

  ‘You don’t think I’m ill.’ She was glaring at me but her hands were shaking. She pushed them under her thighs and sat up very straight, trying to keep her face as expressionless as possible.

  ‘About the diary,’ I said cautiously, ‘d’you think you could have a go at keeping one? It might help. Just write down whatever you like. Anything you’ve read, seen on television. Any places you’ve been. You don’t have to show it to me or anyone else. It’s for you.’

  ‘I haven’t got a diary.’

  ‘I could give you a notebook, if you like.’

  I opened a desk drawer and took out a lined exercise book. It was one left behind by my predecessor and the first two pages contained out-of-date lists of useful addresses. Singles clubs, dating agencies, religious communities who sometimes agreed to take in unhappy people for short weekend breaks. Recently, Nick had made a card index of such places, which he updated every few months. I tore out the first few pages and dropped them in the waste-paper basket. Then I handed the notebook to Jenny.

  ‘Will that do?’

  She took it without looking at me. ‘Shall I go now?’

  ‘Do you want to?’

  She nodded, rolling the notebook into a tube, then stood up and fetched her anorak from the hook on the back of the door. When she turned round her lips were pressed together and she looked angrier than I had ever seen her. She waited by the open door, gazing at me for a moment with a look of contempt — or was it desperation? Then she left without saying goodbye.

  *

  I reached the Research Unit just after four and this time I managed to discover an office with two secretaries seated behind a glass door. They were both busy at their word processors. When I knocked one of them looked up and waited for me to enter.

  ‘Excuse me. The seminar. I was wondering which room … ’

  ‘Seminar? Oh, the seminar. In the seminar room — down the end of the passage. You’re not Dr Zeal are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I just wondered. I don’t think she’s arrived yet. I expect her train was late.’

  I left the office and walked slowly down the corridor. I had arrived in plenty of time, now I was afraid of being the first person there, in which case I wouldn’t even know if I was in the right room. I could go and look for Owen Hughes but he hadn’t suggested I meet up with him and I didn’t want to interrupt his work.

  When I cautiously opened what I thought was the right door the room seemed to be filled with equipment. Trailing wires, electric plugs, metal filing cabinets with their drawers half open.

  I closed the door and tried the next one, which turned out to be the coffee room, still with its semi-circle of metal chairs. While I was wondering what to do next a group of students came in and started moving the furniture, lifting down more chairs that were piled up round the side of the room.

  ‘Excuse me, I’m looking for the seminar room.’

  ‘You’ve found it.’ The man had short bristly hair and looked about twenty-two or three.

  ‘Oh, good
. Thanks.’

  ‘Are you a new postgrad?’

  ‘Me? Oh, well not exactly. I’m hoping to do some research part-time — with Dr Hughes.’

  ‘Rather you than me.’ He grinned but the remark had not been intended as a joke. ‘Have a seat.’

  ‘I’ll help you if you like,’ I said, preferring to arrange the chairs rather than sit on my own doing nothing.

  ‘Right. It’s always left to the last minute. Nobody’s really in charge in this place. Still, I guess that’s better than running it like some high-powered business.’

  The room was filling up. More postgraduate students and others who I assumed must be members of staff, all men except for one woman, the one who had directed me to Owen Hughes’ room the first time I visited the unit. She was dressed in a multi-coloured skirt and a white sweater. She glanced at me but showed no sign of recognition. Owen Hughes was nowhere to be seen.

  At four twenty the door creaked open and a man and a woman entered. The woman, who turned out to be the visiting speaker, had white hair and was dressed in a black skirt which reached almost to her ankles and a white blouse held at the neck by a large cameo brooch.

  She was introduced by the scruffy-looking man who had escorted her into the room.

  He cleared his throat, held up his hand, giggled slightly, then began.

  ‘We’re very grateful to Dr Zeal for coming all the way from Leeds to talk to us. Dr Zeal is on a visit from Ohio, where she has carried out an extensive study of Munchausen’s Syndrome. Some of you may know very little about this syndrome. I’m one of those — something to do with wanting to be sliced open, I believe — but I’m sure during the next hour or so Dr Zeal will put us all straight. Dr Zeal?’

  There was a ripple of self-conscious laughter, then Dr Zeal stood up, placed a tidy pile of paper on the table in front of her, and started speaking without the help of her notes. I was surprised that she had no trace of American in her voice. Her accent was English with perhaps a touch of German or Austrian. She looked like the archetypal psychoanalyst but, as far as I knew, she was not a practising psychotherapist.

  ‘Munchausen’s Syndrome,’ she began, ‘has sometimes been thought of as a bizarre form of malingering. I see it a little differently. Most such individuals are regarded as suffering from a personality defect and it’s true that at first sight their behaviour seems inexplicable. Who would want to present himself to a hospital, seeking admission for an unnecessary operation? But perhaps the profusion of scars on the abdomen may be seen as indicative of deeper psychological scarring.’

  Someone at the back of the room yawned loudly. Others turned round and glared. Already the room had divided into two camps.

  The lecture was interesting, especially the case studies, but it would be easy for the sceptics in the audience to say they had learned nothing they did not know already. Dr Zeal’s tentative explanations as to how people might acquire the syndrome were fascinating but open to the usual criticism that they lacked experimental evidence to back them up.

  Owen Hughes must have slipped in late. He was sitting near the door with his arm resting along a large old-fashioned radiator. He had run his fingers through his hair so that it stuck out above one ear. I tried to catch his eye but he seemed absorbed with own thoughts. Occasionally he studied the sleeve of his jacket and picked at a loose thread.

  During ‘questions’ I glanced in his direction and noticed that he had taken off his wristwatch and was polishing the glass. Once he looked as though he was about to raise his arm, then he changed his mind and lowered it again.

  Dr Zeal answered each question politely, refused to be provoked, accepting the need for evidence to back up her theories but apparently unruffled by the more facetious remarks of some members of staff.

  I was enjoying myself, especially this question and answer session, but all the talk of hospitals had reminded me of my mother and my thoughts kept wandering back to her last operation. She had coped with being in hospital, as she coped with everything else, by remaining exceptionally cheerful. Chatting with the patients on either side of her bed, taking an interest in their husbands and children, their jobs, where they lived, where they liked to go on holiday. Later, when she was feeling stronger, she had helped with the tea trolley or sat in the day room listening sympathetically to a thin ugly woman who had managed to alienate nurses and patients alike.

  David never met my mother. I wondered if she would have liked him, fallen for his charm, been amused by his funny stories. Even if she had disliked him intensely she would have kept her feelings to herself. ‘It’s no good giving people advice, Anna. They always do exactly the opposite — especially if they’re your nearest and dearest.’

  I thought of my father preparing for his visit to Australia. During our phone-call my mother had not been mentioned at all. Just air fares and the fact that he was going to reach Sydney in the middle of the Australian summer and would need some lightweight clothes. I asked him to take photos of Steven and Jane and the children and he said he was hoping to take a trip to Phillip Island, where the penguins come out of the sea at dusk and waddle up the beach. We both laughed and it had seemed a suitable point at which to end the conversation, wish him bon voyage, and ring off …

  The questions were over and the scruffily dressed man was thanking Dr Zeal for her fascinating paper. Everyone started filing out of the room and I joined the throng by the door, passing quite close to Owen Hughes, who nodded briefly but made no attempt to start a conversation.

  My car was parked some distance away. As I walked down the hill I thought about the seminar and wondered if I could integrate some of what I had heard into my research into frequent attenders. Munchausen’s Syndrome seemed like the logical end to a person’s attempt to gain care and attention by presenting their unhappiness as medical symptoms.

  Was that what Jenny had done; and if so why hadn’t Dr Ingram referred her to the Psychology Service long ago? I felt depressed that the morning session with her had gone badly. I had asked her to tell me about her father before she was ready to talk about it, put too much pressure, forced her back into her shell. But perhaps I was being too hard on myself. After all it was common for clients to start talking, then panic a little and retreat into their former wary state. Next time I saw her there might be a genuine breakthrough.

  I passed a map of the university painted on a large wooden board and lit by an overhead bulb. Pausing to get my breath back, I studied the map, looking for the Research Unit in order to get my bearings. As I traced my finger along the network of connecting roads and cul-de-sacs I noticed a large building which seemed to be further down the hill from where I was standing, and up one of the turnings on the left. In brackets after the name of the building were the departments it housed. Mathematics, Statistics and Operational Research, Computer Science.

  It was raining again, cold sleet that stung my face. Earlier when I arrived for the seminar the temperature had felt reasonably mild and I had left my coat in the car.

  I paused, shivering a little. It would be far more sensible to go straight home but having got this far it seemed a waste not to carry on.

  The first road on the right had a notice painted on the wall with an arrow pointing to ‘Student Counselling Service’. Outside the building I could just make out a figure climbing into a white car. I wondered if Martin had ever had any contact with the Counselling Service. Surely some of their clients were referred to us, or did they send the difficult cases to a psychiatrist?

  Taking the second turning on the left I found myself staring up at a tower block that was far taller than any of the other buildings on the campus, about twelve storeys high. I checked the noticeboard to make sure I had reached the right place, then walked quickly up a dozen concrete steps and tried to push open one of the swing doors. It was locked. As I stood there wondering what to do next two middle-aged men came through the foyer of the building and let themselves out. One of them glanced at me suspiciously.

  ‘C
an I help?’

  ‘I was looking for one of the students.’

  ‘They’ll have left by now, apart from one or two postgrads. Who is it you wanted?’

  ‘Her name’s Fleur Peythieu. She’s doing Computer Science.’

  The second man stepped forward. ‘Are you a relative?’

  ‘A friend,’ I said confidently, ‘but it’s important I find her.’

  The man hesitated. ‘You’re not a journalist? Not that you’d admit it even if you were.’

  ‘Do I look like a journalist?’

  ‘Who knows?’ He laughed and turned to his companion. ‘D’you know where Fleur moved to? She’s one of yours, isn’t she?’

  The other man made an effort to remember. ‘One of the halls of residence,’ he said, and then, when my face looked blank, ‘They’re dotted all over the place but I’ve a feeling she’s in the one up near the Downs.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  When I thought about Fleur Peythieu I imagined a sensitive, anxious kind of person, someone who would have been totally traumatized by the murder — but who wouldn’t have been? Someone who would run a mile if she was asked to go over it in detail yet again. And besides, what right did I have to question her?

  I approached the entrance to the Hall of Residence, a grey concrete building with six floors and a mass of small windows. If I stepped inside I might be asked to prove my identity. Hundreds of students must go in and out every day but perhaps the hall porter could spot a stranger. Odd people hang about student lodgings. Flashers. Voyeurs.

  As it turned out the entrance hall was thronged with people but there was no porter in sight.

  I approached a small thin girl, dressed in baggy trousers and a striped jacket. ‘Excuse me. Do you know a student called Fleur Peythieu?’

  ‘No, sorry.’ She started walking away but I called after her.