She nodded, almost indulgently. ‘Oh, I’m experienced, Steven. I know how to proceed with care.’
I did assure her that Margaret Yang would happily attend to this matter, but she was quite resolute in her request. And so it seemed only right and proper that I grant her this. In fact I fetched the goods myself from Nurse Gardner. I passed Eloise downstairs after lunch, said ‘Are you okay?’ Again that beatific nod. In the next moment I felt a twinge of oddness for having asked, but Eloise showed absolutely no self-consciousness to speak of. And I suppose she and I know each other well enough by now.
Part III
DIABLERIE
17
Dr Lochran’s Journal
Conspiracies
September 14th
I begin to fear my boy wants me in an early grave – not from any malice, no, only because I’ve started to cramp his style, forfeit his respect. In all previous father–son spats I’ve had faith in the power of my ‘clunking fist’ to come down hard and quash the pipsqueak revolt, while avoiding any lasting sense of hurt. I thought I could freeze the air with a cold glare – and I believed, more fondly, that the kid actually hated the thought of my disapproval. Well, tonight marked a decisive farewell to all that. Moreover, not content with making me feel like a relic, Cal has also contrived to unnerve me.
I was late back from the hospital, not greatly receptive to Livy’s insistence that we needed, once again, to confront this issue of Cal’s ‘nights out’. He was in tonight, all right. And my understanding was that when he was out he was mostly with young Jennifer, doing what young men should, so long as they can. But … Livy tells me Susan has been calling her in consternation, saying Jennifer is near-confined to her bedroom in tears, initially over the cursory way Cal was treating her, then over his curtly delivered decision to ‘drop’ her. Since Olivia rates herself incapable of intervening directly in what she calls her son’s ‘love affairs’ (if only …) it fell to me to climb those stairs, rap that door.
His bedroom was dark and he lounged across the bed, watching a DVD on his laptop: The Exorcist, amusingly – the first X-rated movie I bluffed my way into. Thankfully he paused it and I cut to the chase, though I have to say I hated the sound of my own voice, all fussy and mimsy (‘Susan Wills has been talking to your mother and I …’), and I fully expected to see the same venom in Cal’s gaze that got turned on Steven at Jon’s barbecue. He was adamant he ‘didn’t want to discuss it’. What bothered me the longer I stood was that the boy didn’t look quite on top of his game – a dazedness there, an enervation. Not narcotic, I’m sure, the pupils are right-sized. But seeing his tennis racket neglected in the corner, his rugby shirt crumpled on the floor – it did occur to me that my young champion has hit an early slump.
‘Cal, since I’m told you’re not with Jennifer, I need to know where you go at night.’
‘Dad, I just get out to clear my head. Some air, some good night air. Just get into the car and drive …’
‘Where to, son?’
‘Depends. Sometimes down to Regent’s Canal. Or the old Saint Pancras church. Anywhere there’s peace. Sometimes I follow the canal route on to Little Venice, St John’s Wood. As far as Robert’s clinic.’
‘Nothing to see there, but. All locked up, right?’ He shrugged. ‘And you do these wee wanders on your lonesome?’ A nod. I suppose I should have been grateful for that much data. Still, we lapsed into silence awhile, sat on his bed, me gazing blankly at his dark and cryptic wall-posters – ‘Down’, ‘Muse’, ‘NIN’, ‘Garbage’ – while he picked at the caps of his Dunlops.
‘You know, you’ve got your mother and I a bit perplexed.’ I anticipated his wince, put my hand on his shoulder. ‘I understand you’ve your own life going on in your head, Cal, I really do. Just remember mum and I have lives too, we all have our anxieties. We worry about your godfather, you know that. Every day seems to make it worse.’
Whereupon Cal turned on me the sort of gaze I’m sure he reserves for the dullest, least able lad in his form. ‘But that’s all just a ruse, Dad. Rab’s gone off with his woman. Bet you any money.’
I met his eye, hard. ‘What woman’s that, son?’
‘Dijana. You know about her, right? She knows you …’
Abruptly I could hear myself breathing, felt that slight, unaccountable roil in my gut. By his grin he knew he’d got me, for sure.
‘Robert told you about her?’
‘I met her. One night at Rab’s.’
Again, that internal stab. ‘You didn’t feel like telling me?’
‘I don’t report back to you, dad. Right? You know I go there, you know Rab. And you met Dijana, didn’t you? So you know the score. Tell you what – I’d go off with her. Like a shot.’
‘What do you mean, but, “gone off”?’
He sprawled back on his bed, arms behind his head, a lazy posture I didn’t care for. ‘I just think they’ve escaped, you know? Taken off. Rab’s got that spirit in him, hasn’t he? And she’d be the kind of woman would drive you to it. To do infamous things …’ He rolled his eyes. ‘I envy them, frankly. I do.’
‘Cal, when you met Dijana – what happened? What did she say to you?’
A would-be rakish chuckle. ‘You know what? I don’t remember. It was only one drink, then I was out of there. But it’s her, uh … presence that stuck with me, I have to say. I’d doubt it’s the conversation Rab keeps her around for. She looks like she knows a thing or two, what she’s after. The way she looked at me I thought Rab would prefer I got offside. Didn’t want to be causin’ no ructions …’
For all that I was hating this teenaged affectation of the Man of the World, it seemed wisest to let him run his mouth off completely, now I’d got him talking. But a loud yawn indicated he thought we were done. ‘Anyhow. That’s how I see it. He’s found a soul-mate, and they’re off together, on a party. When he gets bored he’ll be back …’
I gave him a long, withering look. ‘Uh-huh. So, you reckon a man of Rab’s age can do that, Cal? Eh? Skip off like some college backpacker? Abandon his livelihood, his home, his responsibilities?’
‘I know he’d want to, Dad. Don’t you?’
With that Cal rose, stretched his rangy frame and sauntered over to his window, there perhaps to contemplate the moon or some shite. So he didn’t take kindly to my announcement that he was grounded until further notice. Finally I got the basilisk stare off him, and he barked that I ‘couldn’t stop him’. But whatever the diminishing of my paternal authority – or of his filial piety – I’m bloody sure that once I stood up and planted myself then the boy couldn’t see a way past me. And that’s how we’ll be doing things for a while around here.
September 15th
House chilly, silent. Cal, I know, is abed, and if by any chance he tried to ‘escape’ I’d catch him by the tail. I long, I truly long to join Livy in the warmth of our bed, because some moments ago I had what the old dears call ‘an episode’. The length of this grisly day must have told. A stunning, imperious fatigue fell over me, like a cloak heavy as tarpaulin – the strange, sudden weakness all but pressed me down by my shoulders into a chair. I felt leaden from head to foot, my breath seemed to be coming drastically slow, and I needed some moments to regain my good proper pulse. I could have been my father in his autumn years.
Steven’s long given out that if my workload doesn’t do for me first then the smokes will put the nails in my coffin-lid. Right enough, I’d be glad of my heart serviced, my blood renewed, organs cleansed, spirits lifted. But I can cope. It’s just events, dear boy, events – the unexpected. I’m just not sure how much of it one’s meant to withstand.
The work I’m drifting through, have been on autopilot for weeks. This morning, gastrochisis on two-hour-old Annabel Leigh, the simplest task to resettle her bowel. Then a hypospadias I might have done in my sleep, had it not been for the hysteria of the boy’s father (infancy the only time when dads want to be bothered by the state of their sons’ genitals). But I was in
a form of productive drift, the artist levitating serenely above his own handiwork, idly paring his nails …
Then, Steven’s incredible message: ‘Your fantôme, Grey, your Burnt Man. He’s here, I think, at Blakedene. In the woods behind the estate.’
The area had suffered freak storm conditions at the weekend, and those woods were part-impenetrable, but apparently a dog-walker’s hound had snuffled its way through the fallen branches and found the dead man – ‘some young tramp’ the initial report. Man and dog hastened round to the gate-lodge at Blakedene having called the police, and when Steven emboldened himself to pick a way out into the woods he found, slumped at the foot of a tree, a man in filthy black clothes, face badly burnt, ring and pinkie fingers missing from the left hand.
‘Was he wearing Robert’s mask?’ I asked Steven instantly.
‘No, no,’ Steven muttered, ‘I searched him, nothing.’
‘You did what, Steve …?’
This, only the first sign of Steven’s current confusion, his worrying drift from the port of good sense. I called Hagen, left a message saying I was headed directly into Berkshire, my intention to see this body with my own eyes, and that if he hadn’t heard the news then he’d do well to get onto Thames Valley police … Presumptuous of me. Once I got clear of the London orbital the drive felt like no time, but as I came down under the tree-lined lane toward the Blakedene gates I saw Hagen had beaten me, his unmarked Passat lined up alongside the big chequered police wagons, behind forty yards of roadside cones and fluorescent orange DO NOT CROSS tape.
A brisk WPC escorted me on foot from the ‘outer circle’ cordon to the lodge, whereupon an affable moon-faced security guard named Goran (from Dubrovnik, he told me) drove me by golf cart through the grounds to a heavy-bolted door in the back wall. We came out onto a scene of considerable police activity in a clearing of twenty yards or so. Thick tufted grass led to the shade of the path into the woods, this also cut off by a cordon of tape.
Steven stood in conference with a couple of constables and a burly bloke I took for CID. Shoulders hunched, arms folded in spite of the afternoon’s warmth, Steve threw me a plaintive look. Bill Hagen hovered nearby, hands thrust into his black mackintosh, flanked by young Goddard. He came over to me, sotto voce. ‘We’re treading lightly here, doctor. Another force, their patch, some diplomacy needed. Not really an all-guns-blazing matter for them if some rough sleeper beds down in a wood and doesn’t wake up.’
The burly CID, Franklin by name, sheared away from Steven’s group toward Hagen, and my presence was negotiated – I heard myself introduced, ‘like Dr Hartford’ as ‘a close associate of Dr Robert Forrest, missing from home this past month’. Indeed, by Franklin’s sceptical scowl one could tell there was no pressing sense that the human wreckage in the woods was any kind of criminal genius.
With a nod Hagen lifted the cordon and motioned me to follow him down a trail of duckboards, under the wood’s canopy and into the dark shrouded hush. The tent was set up about seventy yards in, at the foot of a willow tree. A good deal of white-coated industry went on around it – a thoughtful photographer selecting angles, ponderous shufflers bagging and tagging soil, a frowning woman stooped over a plaster casting. Hagen held the flap of the tent for me. The pathologist was still bent over the dead man, attended by some crazed kamikaze flies. The corpse’s contorted pose spoke of rigor mortis, his mutilated hand visible on the end of an arm thrown out stiffly to one side. That ruined face was drained of colour – its ridged pallor putting me oddly in mind of a snake’s shed skin – but the hard eschars of his burns were only the more pronounced. No peace in death, for sure, after a life of evident hardship, marked on the body. A pitiful end. And seeing him now – some mother’s son – my feelings were uneasy, conflicted. Had I really imagined him to be so menacing, a phantom? What was your business with me, my friend?
Finally I nodded to Hagen, we exited, were silent for a while as we picked our way back to the daylight.
‘No question that’s the fellow confronted you?’
‘No. Now he’s dead, forty miles away. Do you have a theory?’
‘Well, one could be tempted to say he came in search of your associate …’
We were of the same mind, but now rejoined the group of Thames Valley coppers round Steven, who was pulling on a cigarette. Clearly in all this turmoil tobacco has got him by the lungs again. ‘Is it him?’ Steve demanded of me with surprising vehemence.
‘Dr Lochran’, Hagen announced to the party, ‘recognises our man as the same fellow who assaulted him in London four days ago.’
‘Right,’ said DI Franklin, visibly none the wiser. ‘How’s he got himself out here? And why?’
One of the constables spoke up. ‘If we find out who he is then maybe this is his neck of the woods, as you’d say.’
Franklin fixed on Steven. ‘Doctor Hartford, who’d have the use of these woods ordinarily?’
‘Very few. Lawrence here, for one.’
The group had been joined by Steven’s ‘head of gardens’, Lawrence Banner, a man with unkempt dark hair and pensive hooded eyes. Worriedly he confirmed Steven’s assessment. ‘Your people are gonna find traces of me all over the patch, my old boots and that …’
‘As I understand,’ Steven added, ‘you’ll get the odd group of bird-watchers now and then. John Teacher, the farmer, he’s in there for wood once in a while. Then the occasional guest from John’s holiday cottage across the fields. But I’ve never thought of these woods as populated. Unvisited, rather.’
‘You don’t see much human traffic yourself?’
‘There’s no decent view of the woods from our premises. You see the height of our pine trees, the seclusion they give …’
‘Right. Not an accessible spot. We found that out from having to get our vehicles round through Mr Teacher’s property.’
Steven nodded. ‘Worse because of the storm, I imagine.’
‘Hairy for you too, that, was it?’
‘We took some damage, and it alarmed some of the patients, so I had the place on lockdown, effectively, through the evening and overnight. The grounds were off limits. And have remained so, while we’ve been repairing …’
Steven tailed off as the pathologist Seymour-Ure was stalking toward us, peeling off his gloves. He didn’t look like one who wished to be detained further. ‘He’s movable now. Body temperature and the eyes tell us he died within the last thirty-six hours. There’s no blood, no defence wounds to suggest he fought anybody off. From head to toe he’s a veritable canvas of historical drug use. Track marks, the sort of cuts and scratches you’ll get if you’re living rough and not keeping the very best company. Whole universes under his fingernails …’
‘So what did for him?’ DI Franklin ventured.
‘Oh, hard to see past hypothermia. We’ll see what’s in his blood but I strongly doubt he was leading an abstemious lifestyle. The weather’s been extreme, obviously, cold overnight, he’d been soaked, his clothes are still damp …’
Hagen frowned. ‘The woods wouldn’t have given him some shelter? Is he lying where he fell, do you suppose?’
‘Oh I’d say so, detective. Not dragged, anyway. And you’d struggle to get him over your shoulder …’
As Seymour-Ure hastened away Franklin fixed on Steven again. ‘Is anybody else in your building acquainted with these woods, doctor?’
‘As I say, you’re looking at them,’ Steven gestured as to include himself, Banner and the loyally silent Goran. ‘And we’ll cooperate in any way you see fit. I’m happy to make a room available for you on our premises.’
Hagen, having been sunk in thought, looked up. ‘Thank you, doctor. I’ll want to speak again to Miss— Keaton? Who was Doctor Forrest’s patient?’
Everything in Steven’s expression tightened vividly. ‘I will need to be present for that, I’m afraid. Miss Keaton has only just emerged from a very demanding, very draining course of therapy for a serious depression, I’d have to ask that you resp
ect my concern for her welfare.’
This might have daunted a lesser individual, but I can’t say Hagen looked convinced. ‘Let’s see how she’s feeling, shall we?’
Steven, unhappy, tramped off with his staff and the local constabulary, back across the ragged grass through the gate into Blakedene. Hagen had stepped aside, muttering into his phone. Now he drifted back to me, albeit peering still at his screen. I found my voice.
‘Something else I wanted to make you aware of.’
‘Oh aye?’
‘The other night I learned from my son, Calder, that he’d also met the Vukovara woman – at Robert’s, prior to the disappearance.’
‘Uh-huh. Naturally. And?’
‘I think he formed the same impression as me, that she was a dubious character. Who could easily have had something to do with Robert’s vanishing.’
‘Other than enticing him to run off with her?’
‘Well, what are you thinking at this point, detective? About this chain of events we’ve got?’
‘My problem, doctor, is seeking the linkage from one to t’other. Can you make one out?’
‘You said it yourself. Steven and I are Robert’s closest “associates”. I think anyone could consider it plausible to say we’re both of us being … targeted, somehow.’
‘Evidentially, Doctor Lochran, we’ve still got just the one felony in all this. That’s the break-in to Dr Forrest’s home, plus the assault made on DS Goddard. And we would believe that perpetrator’s no longer with us. Whatever else … right now you can only call it coincidence.’
‘But the sort you’d have to call meaningful. Come on, you know that. “Coincidence”? It has more the look of conspiracy.’
He laughed softly, shook his head. ‘Conspiracy to what? I take your concern, believe me; Doctor Forrest has been gone for twenty-eight days now, the chief inspector will have to review the file to date.’
The Possessions of Doctor Forrest Page 17