by Helen Fields
Elspeth began choking again, and Meggy scrabbled to get off so she could breathe, avoiding Fergus’ fists as he hit out at whatever flesh he could find.
‘You’re dead,’ he slurred, and his voice was different, his words mushy.
She’d hurt him. The knowledge was a sliver of light in the darkness.
Skittering away, Meggy kept low on the floor so she didn’t fall. One of her knees felt like it was on fire, and there was a sticky liquid on her head she didn’t want to think about. Trying to control her breathing, she huddled into a corner. There was no light at all. Whatever he’d done with the windows in their upstairs flat, he’d repeated on the lower floors as well.
Elspeth was crying now, sobbing with her exhale then groaning on the inhale. Fergus was muttering to himself and throwing items around in the dark. Meggy kept her head down and reached out her hands. She needed a weapon. One good hit would do it. If she could just get him in the head, she could run for the door and get help.
‘Oh, Meggy, what have you done?’ Fergus snarled.
She shoved a hand across her mouth, forcing herself not to give away her position as she shifted on her knees to locate anything that might help her.
‘Do you want to know what I’m going to use to kill Elspeth with?’ Fergus said.
His tongue sounded too thick in his mouth, like he’d just been to the dentist and the anaesthetic was still in full force.
Ignore him, Meggy told herself. Keep going. He’s bluffing. He’s obsessed with Elspeth. He’ll pretend to hurt her, but he wouldn’t really dare.
The whiplash through the air changed her mind. The cable caught the outside of Meggy’s left elbow, and she gave a small cry.
‘Hurts, right? I’d never have thought of it if you hadn’t brought the light down with you, but now it only seems fitting. Do you want to listen as I strangle her with it, Meggy? I’ve got to warn you, it’ll be upsetting. Takes longer than you’d think. Minutes sometimes, as a person fights the loss of air. It’s painful, too, Nothing peaceful. She won’t pass out until the very end. Probably will scratch her own neck to pieces trying to get the cable off.’
He dragged his body across the room, and Meggy could hear him heaving himself into position. Elspeth let out a whomp of breath, and she could imagine Fergus astride her in the dark, winding the cable round and round.
‘Don’t,’ her tiny voice whined in the blackness. ‘Please don’t.’
‘Too late now. You hurt me. I’ll hurt her.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Meggy cried. ‘I didn’t mean the things I said. You can beat me or … whatever. Don’t kill Elspeth. I need her. Please?’
There was a gasping noise, the slither of cable, a satisfied hiss from Fergus.
Then the drumming of feet on the floor.
‘Please, what?’ Fergus growled.
‘Please, God, please. I’ll do anything. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’
Pathetic slaps rang in the air. Elspeth’s hands, Meggy realised, grabbing uselessly at the cord around her neck.
‘Please … Daddy,’ Fergus said.
‘Okay, okay, please, Daddy,’ Meggy cried.
‘Please, Daddy, even though I don’t deserve it.’
Meggy let out a howl. ‘Please, Daddy, even though I don’t deserve it!’ she screamed.
There was silence, a whisper of plastic on plastic, then the whoosh of air and a gasping, choking gobble of oxygen.
‘Elspeth,’ Meggy sobbed, rushing forward, hands reaching out to the source of the sound, throwing herself to the floor at the woman’s side and burying her head into her chest. ‘Please don’t die, please don’t.’
‘Say, thank you, Daddy,’ Fergus hissed into her ear.
Meggy paused. She was beaten. They all were.
‘Thank you, Daddy,’ she whispered in return.
Elspeth was gasping air into her lungs, her hands clutching her throat for support. Fergus gently took each of Meggy’s hands and drew them behind her back, finding another use for the cable, connecting wrists and ankles as he looped and knotted.
‘I haven’t forgotten you, Xavier,’ he called up. ‘I think it’s nearly time. This body won’t last much longer, and we still have things to do. I’ll be up in a few minutes. Let me see to my girls first. I can forgive Elspeth. She’s suffered enough, or she’s going to. Families make sacrifices for one another. It’ll all be worthwhile in the end.’
Chapter Thirty-Three
‘What do you mean, they won’t accept my profile?’ Connie demanded.
Baarda sat on the edge of a desk in the incident room and glared at the few other police officers until they decided it would be politic to leave.
‘The superintendent had to run the profile past some other people. One of them is a psychiatrist who regularly works with the police. He apparently did some research of his own and found that Cotard’s syndrome is something of a fallacy, because it doesn’t appear in the International Classification of Diseases register as maintained by the World Health Organization.’
‘That doesn’t mean it’s not documented elsewhere.’
‘It’s also not mentioned in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is the reference point for many pharmaceutical companies and legislature. The feeling was that if a court wouldn’t accept the existence of such a disorder, then it was a waste of time to base a profile on it when resources are so short.’
‘So they think this is some sort of Wild West quackery from the crazy American?’
‘No one doubts your experience or your qualifications, Connie, but we’re trying to present them with a disorder that goes by the alternative name walking corpse syndrome. They’re struggling with the science, not you,’ Baarda said.
‘That’s bullcrap, of course this is about me. I’ve been brought in from the outside, and I’m advocating for psychological profiling when half of them are still stuck in the 1970s. Would they rather have nothing to go on at all?’
‘It’s not a complete dead end. They’re continuing to attempt to track the murderer by traditional means. They’ll be filming a reconstruction of the attack on Xavier, which will air as soon as the edit is complete, working around the clock, and they’ve drafted in every spare officer from other Police Scotland areas to provide backup. In the meantime, we’ve been invited to present the Cotard’s syndrome theory to MIT as a whole and to the powers that be.’
‘By then, we’ll have lost valuable hours, when we could have had every medical professional in the area checking their files and compiling a list of possible subject matches. That’s great.’
‘The superintendent’s view was that asking medical professionals to report any male from his twenties to his forties with a history of hypochondria and weight loss might be such a broad outline that we’d receive too much information to process.’
‘It’s not just that. We have a rough image of him, height, weight, he’s Caucasian, Scots accent. We even have some information about his car to cross-reference possible suspects. Cotard’s syndrome is very psychologically specific. Any decent medical practitioner would have picked up the uniqueness of his presentation.’
‘Maybe, if he weren’t being dealt with by an overstretched National Health Service, but the reality is that he may rarely have seen the same doctor, nurse or psychiatrist twice, and he could well have described different symptoms on each occasion.’ Baarda sighed. ‘Connie, I’m on your side, but these people need persuading and not without cause. We’re asking them to put all their eggs in one basket. This is more than just a generic profile. It’s a diagnosis based on a practitioner’s instinct when she hasn’t even come face to face with her patient. It’s no good just stamping your feet and telling me they’re all idiots. They were hoping for a profession, an address, a social group, a list of his likely hobbies. Instead, they got something that sounds like it came out of a movie.’
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Connie muttered, glaring at the ceiling. ‘Fine. If they want persuading, then
that’s what I’ll have to do. But we’re going to need help. How long do we have?’
‘Two hours,’ Baarda said.
‘So let’s use it. We need your car, my laptop, and some private information about a government employee. Can you get that?’
‘Do I have a choice?’
‘No,’ Connie told him. ‘Let’s go.’
It was dark by the time they knocked on the door of the Edwardian town house. Connie had rung the doorbell three times before there was any sign of life at the property. It had taken several phone calls, and a trip to the city mortuary, followed by a lengthy pleading session with the on-duty assistant before they got Ailsa Lambert’s home address, and only then with some extremely creative definitions of an emergency.
‘An emergency here usually comes with a body attached,’ the assistant pathologist had said. ‘This sounds like something that can wait until morning.’
‘If Dr Lambert doesn’t help us, there’s a real possibility that people will die,’ Connie had countered.
‘Well at that point the chief pathologist might come in handy, but until then, I’m not convinced.’
Baarda had stepped in. ‘Dr Lambert would want to help. She’s familiar with the case, so she has a stake in ensuring that this killer is brought to justice. If it could wait until morning, I promise you we wouldn’t be here.’
He’d kept his voice low and intimate, letting the concern show in his face. Connie decided the way the assistant pathologist was looking at him probably didn’t do them any harm, either. Baarda had rediscovered himself.
‘She’s been on call for twenty-four hours now. Dr Lambert needs some sleep. It doesn’t seem fair …’ the assistant’s voice had dwindled.
‘I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t vital and from what I’ve seen of Dr Lambert, I’m guessing if she feels I’m wasting her time, she’ll send me off pretty quickly with a flea in my ear.’
Baarda had given a gentle smile, in response to which the assistant’s skin darkened a fraction of a shade. She’d been blushing. Connie watched Baarda grow in stature at the reaction.
‘All right, I’ll give you the address, but please be respectful. Dr Lambert isn’t as young as she used to be. For God’s sake don’t tell her I said that.’
‘I won’t,’ Baarda had said, taking the slip of paper from the assistant pathologist’s hands. ‘And thank you. Dr Lambert is lucky to have you.’
The door opened wide, no hesitation. Dr Lambert had been expecting them.
‘In you come, both of you,’ the pathologist instructed. ‘I find the kitchen the best place for late-night business. I take it neither of you is injured?’
‘Um, no,’ Connie said.
‘I have to ask. It’s happened before. Usually someone has something to hide. Sit yourselves down, and I’ll put the kettle on.’
Connie looked around. The house was grand in an understated way. Old money. It reminded her of her grandmother’s place – perfect taste, sparse but immaculate pieces of art, lush rugs, and cream wallpaper. Ailsa Lambert would fit right in with the Boston elite.
‘Sorry to disturb you,’ Baarda began.
‘Nonsense, I sleep very little. When you’re staring down the barrel of old age, the last thing you crave is to lie alone in the silence and darkness for hours. So, what do you need? You didn’t come here at this time for tea and biscuits.’
‘Validation,’ Connie said. ‘You’ll need time for research. Sadly, that’s now limited to …’ She checked her watch. ‘Forty-five minutes.’
Ailsa raised her eyebrows and dumped several spoonfuls of loose-leaf tea into the pot.
‘That sounds more fun than sleeping. Detective Inspector, would you mind making the tea, please? I believe your colleague requires my full attention.’
The briefing room should have been full of people rubbing their eyes. The small hours was far from the ideal period to be imparting information and attempting to engage minds, but Connie had spent enough time with police forces to know that lethargy was best countered with an endless supply of strong, hot coffee, and as many sugary baked goods as could be consumed.
Detective Superintendent Overbeck was sat within a circle of unimpressed faces in the centre of the room.
‘Dr Woolwine,’ Overbeck began, bringing the room to a tense hush. ‘You have fifteen minutes to persuade us that your theory holds water. After that, the team will need to continue pursuing other avenues.’
Ailsa Lambert walked through the door, familiar black bag in hand, raincoat still on, as if she had been called in to give her opinion on a corpse. This, Connie had not asked her to do, but it was a subliminal stroke of genius. Present herself as the known element, the trusted, the authority. Much harder for her words to be ignored against such a backdrop.
The pathologist deposited her bag on a desk, shed her coat and began talking immediately.
‘In 1880, a 43-year-old woman presented to her doctor, describing herself as without a brain, a chest, or nerves. She claimed to be made entirely of skin and bones, and immortal. Since that time, cases of Cotard’s syndrome have been well-documented …’
‘One moment, please,’ Overbeck said, standing up. ‘Dr Lambert, while I’m sure we all appreciate your time and assistance, I wasn’t aware that this was your area of expertise. We certainly wouldn’t want to be keeping you from your other valuable services to our community.’
‘You’re not, Superintendent. And I’m very well qualified in reading medical journals and applying the expertise gained therein to current cases. As both Angela Fernycroft and Danny Taylor are currently open cases in my district, I judge myself to have a compelling reason for being here tonight.’
Overbeck gave the sort of smile that Connie thought was usually reserved for a prison yard shortly before a nasty fight but sat down again, crossing her long legs in a gesture that was pure female dominance. Ailsa smiled with victorious warmth.
‘Cotard’s syndrome is hard to classify unambiguously owing to the crossover with depression, suicidal thoughts, and psychosis. Often, the aspects of the disorder that delineate Cotard’s are secondary to the more obvious disorders. It is, however, not difficult to diagnose, given its entirely unique presentation. My research from established and respected medical journals has shown that sufficient cases have been studied over the past century to be clear about the primary delusion. The belief that one is dying or dead. In the most comprehensive studies, sufferers were fairly evenly split between males and females. Most cases were in adults. The vast majority were found to have had an underlying brain injury, disease or pathology that could explain the delusion.’
‘With all due respect,’ Overbeck interjected, this time without troubling herself to stand first. ‘We’re not dealing with someone who is simply deluded about their own existence. This is a dangerous predator who has killed twice to our knowledge, and who is holding other victims hostage who might be dead or alive. This man is not depressed. He’s clearly a psychopath.’
‘I’m not a psychiatrist, Superintendent, so I can’t answer to that. I can tell you, however, that I’ve researched cases of Cotard’s syndrome, and I find myself compelled to believe that it is a properly documented, real disorder that offers a credible explanation for the murders and kidnappings in this case.’
‘Could you give us another example of a case of Cotard’s syndrome, Dr Lambert?’ an officer called.
‘Certainly, there are plenty to choose from.’ Ailsa opened a filed and scanned the page. ‘Here we are, a female – twenty-four years of age – in Perth, not far away at all, suffered what appeared to be nothing more than a concussion in a car crash. Soon thereafter, she began experiencing episodes of depression. Her self-care suffered. Her hygiene was found to be lacking by her mother, who tried to care for her daughter and finally took her to the doctor. She reported a sense that there were parts of herself missing. The doctor prescribed antidepressants. The girl had to cease work. Six months later, she was dramatically losing weight. Wrongly di
agnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, she was sent for counselling. Her therapist became concerned when the young woman began to express the idea that her organs were failing and that her death was imminent. She was referred to a psychiatrist who ordered scans, and a lesion was found in her brain. Various attempts at treatment were made, but the young woman eventually died from heart failure having lost so much weight that her body could no longer tolerate the stress it was under.’
‘So, can you point us towards any cases where someone suffering from Cotard syndrome ended up killing or seriously harming another person?’ Overbeck asked.
Ailsa glanced sideways at Connie. ‘I cannot,’ she said. ‘That does not mean it has never happened; nor does it mean that this must be the first case of its kind.’
Connie got to her feet. ‘That’s all right, Dr Lambert,’ she said. ‘I’ll take it from here.’ She waited for Ailsa to sit, then took centre stage. ‘We know more about our killer than we realise. We have a good physical description. But we also know that he’s single.’
‘We haven’t established that,’ someone shouted.
‘Actually, we have. He was obsessed with Angela, who was the model wife. He didn’t want to kill her. That wasn’t part of his plan. When he found out that Elspeth had been unfaithful, he was distraught. He talked about Elspeth as if she were his wife. As if she’d been unfaithful to him personally. If our killer had a wife, or was in a successful relationship, he wouldn’t need to abduct a woman to play that role. He might be physically off-putting to women, which fits with being emaciated and perhaps having poor hygiene, or he might make them instinctively feel ill at ease. Either way, it fits with Cotard’s syndrome. Furthermore, a close-knit family might well have reported their concerns by now to a doctor, or even to the police. So we can also assume he lives alone, has accommodation that he doesn’t share, has access to a vehicle that he doesn’t share, and has an income that doesn’t require him to work.’