by Kate Simants
Mae and Kit exchanged a glance, then Mae said, ‘Yeah … there is something else, Ma’am.’
They went back down to the AV suite, Mae explaining the something else as they went.
‘Rough estimate is something like fifteen grand’s worth of equipment,’ he told her, ‘and my guy at the council CCTV puts Cox on site for between six and eight hours a day for the last month.’
‘Every day?’
‘Apparently.’
‘Recording them the whole time?’
‘Quite possibly. We corroborated that with records from his clinic – his assistant’s being rather helpful – and it checks out.’
He pushed open the double door and waited for the women to pass. Approaching the suite, McCulloch stopped, turned. ‘You’re telling me he spent fifteen large to listen to these two through the walls. Is that right? Just listening to them? There’s no visual element? Are we not thinking covert video bugs, anything like that?’
Mae had thought the same thing. ‘We’ll be checking.’
‘But what else could he have been after?’
Kit opened the door to the darkened suite. ‘I think I’ll let the recordings answer that one.’ She sat at the desk and handed her boss a pair of headphones. Off to the right they had a Civilian Support logging the sections that Cox had digitally earmarked into folders named things like ‘For Backup’ and ‘Do Not Delete’. It was going to be a long job, but from what they’d heard already, it was going to be worth it.
Kit snapped her own headphones on and got out her pad. Mae sat between them both and cued up the clip that McCulloch needed to hear.
56.
Charles Cox Psychotherapy Ltd.
Clinical audio recording transcript
Patient name: Eleanor Power
Session date: 30 September 2006
CC: So, I’d like to start this session by saying how incredibly brave you’re being. We’ve had some very tough sessions, and the fact that you’re coming back is something you should be really proud of.
EP: Yeah well. I don’t feel very brave.
CC: You don’t feel brave? Tell me about that.
EP: No, I … look. I wanted to say this in person because you’ve been really good about giving me these sessions for free and everything, but I don’t think I can come any more.
CC: OK. OK, I’m listening. Let’s talk about it.
EP: No, look, I can’t.
CC: Has something happened? Something at home?
EP: No.
[pause: 33 sec]
CC: It’s hard, coming here. Talking about this is really tough.
EP: Yeah.
CC: It’s distressing, going over it. Poking at it, raking it over. You’re questioning what the benefit is.
EP: Yeah.
[pause: 19 sec]
EP: All of that. Yeah. Look the more I have to think about her, the more she’s just there, you know? And that’s the opposite of what I wanted to happen.
CC: Can I ask how it’s been for you this week with your fugues?
EP: Two more.
CC: Two? Ah, OK. That’s … that is more regular than you had been—
EP: Yeah. That’s what I mean. And my mum’s on my back, wants to know what I’m doing all the time when she’s at work and I just really, really hate lying to her.
[pause: 40 sec]
CC: What’s the fear about that, Ellie?
EP: How do you mean?
CC: Well, you talk about your mother finding out that you’re in therapy, and you’ve talked before about this feeling that you’re betraying her by talking to me, and to Jodie as well, about your dissociation. So I suppose my question is, what is it that you’re worried is going to happen?
EP: She’d go mental.
CC: OK.
EP: I mean, we spent so long, so much effort trying to find a cure, and it just took over her life. So we promised, we made a proper promise to each other that we would stop, just try to get used to Siggy and just live with her. Going against that, behind her back, it would be … it would just be … I mean, I don’t know what she’d do.
CC: What do you fear she would do?
EP: I don’t know.
CC: I think maybe you do. What is it, what’s the worst thing that you’re worried might happen, if your mum finds out you broke that promise?
[pause: 54 sec]
EP: [Inaudible]
CC: That … sorry Ellie, say that again?
EP: That she’ll-she’ll give up on me. Kick me out.
CC: OK. Your fear is that you’ll be abandoned.
EP: Yeah.
CC: OK. What does Siggy think?
EP: She doesn’t care. She hates us both. She doesn’t care what happens to us.
CC: She hates you, and she hates your mum.
EP: Yeah.
CC: We need to look at that. Why do you think she hates your mum?
EP: I don’t want to look at it! Looking at it is just making it worse! I’ve been having panic attacks like every day now!
CC: OK. All right.
[pause: 22 sec]
CC: There’s a problem there, isn’t there? On the one hand, you, your dominant identity, you’re worried that if you get help, you’ll be abandoned. But the more afraid you are, the more distressed and triggered you’re going to feel, and – this is my reading of what’s been happening lately with you – the more stressed you are, the more conscious you are of Siggy, and her ill feeling towards you. And in turn that seems to be resulting in more conflict between your identities, and more regular fugues.
EP: But that’s exactly what I mean! That’s why I don’t want to come, because it’s making me worse. It feels like what you’re doing, you’re trying to make me worse! Then I’ve been thinking about that book you said you were going to write, after the session last week, you know?
CC: Well, yes, I’ve been asked to contribute a chapter, but—
EP: But it’s like you want me to be this really awful case so it makes you look good. I’m getting … it’s getting worse, like my mum said it did before, when I was little and we did stuff like this before. It’s like you’re trying to give Siggy more control by bringing it all up. But I’m really, really scared of her, you know?
[pause: 49 sec]
CC: Ellie, look: about that book. I can take it or leave it. OK? All of what we do here is for you. My only interest is you. Look at me. OK? I am not trying to make things worse.
EP: But I am worse. She’s … Siggy’s there all the time now. I just want her gone and she’s getting so … just getting more and more—
[crying]
[pause: 34 sec]
EP: I don’t-I don’t know what she’s going to do.
57.
Mae
The three of them sat listening, headphones on, staring at the waveform on the monitor ahead of them as if they expected visual accompaniment to the audio.
Ellie’s voice came through, crackly but definitely her, the angles in her voice unmistakable. ‘Mum, if you found something …’ Then Christine, the angles in her voice unmistakable: ‘I didn’t. It’s nothing.’
Ellie, saying: ‘But it’s not, is it? What if Siggy … what if it’s happened again?’
McCulloch listened with her eyes closed, her forefingers pressed into her temples and let her breath out in a long stream.
Later, Ellie: ‘Mum. Tell me what’s going on.’
‘I want to be prepared,’ was Christine’s reply. ‘They’re going to come here, aren’t they? The police. And they’re going to ask questions.’
The sound dampened and McCulloch squinted away from the desk, trying to hear. When it was audible again, Ellie was saying, ‘I’m calling the police,’ then Christine: ‘No. No. That’s not the right play. Not at all.’
Mae hit pause, then shuttled through to the timecode he’d written down on the pad in front of him.
Watching, McCulloch said, ‘And this is from the day he went missing, right?’
‘Morning of,
’ Kit confirmed.
His finger ready on the play key, Mae said, ‘And this is from yesterday.’
The recording was far from perfect, but Christine’s voice was plenty clear enough. McCulloch and Kit dipped their heads to listen.
‘Here’s what’s happened. We thought Siggy had stopped, but she hasn’t. I thought, when you were little, that if we focused on being gentle and kind and letting you express whatever part of yourself you wanted to express, that Siggy would go away.’
Christine talked about trying to control Siggy, about the sacrifices they’d made, until she got to the part that made McCulloch’s eyes go wide.
‘I’m sorry, Ellie. But this is where we are. She has got bigger and badder than we thought she could get. Jodie is dead, because of her. And now Matt …’ Christine said, and then the voice disappeared for a few seconds.
McCulloch took her headphones off and laid them down, arranging them just so. She pushed her chair back, and put her forehead on the desk.
‘Jesus.’ She straightened up, and looked at Mae. ‘She killed Jodie Arden. Ellie Power did?’
‘The way they’re talking about it, it sounds like it happened when Ellie was – wasn’t Ellie.’
‘Dissociative fugue,’ Kit said.
McCulloch sighed heavily. ‘OK. God, all right. Nothing yet from your patrol?’
‘Christine and Ellie aren’t at the flat but we’re on it. Christine was there a couple of hours ago. They’ve been cooperative so far.’
McCulloch stood. ‘Right. I want updates on the half hour.’
‘Yes, Ma’am.’
Mae’s phone rang as the door closed behind his boss. He conducted the call with minimum input, his tight mouth spreading into a grin as he listened, his eyes on Kit. He grabbed his jacket from the back of a chair, mouthed let’s go. He shoved the door open and waved to her to follow.
‘What we got?’ she asked in the corridor the moment he hung up. She was jogging ahead of him now, through the double doors and out into the yard.
‘Cox. His Corsa’s been picked up by ANPR.’
‘But we should be on Ellie and Christine, surely? That tape, it’s as good as an admission of guilt.’
But it wasn’t as simple as that. ‘We’re spinning plates. Ellie must have known about Cox’s pictures. Possibly Christine, too. There’s got to be a reason they’re keeping his secrets for him. Sooner we can get to him, the better.’
The Focus they’d been using was still in its spot, and still smelt of her discarded churros when he buckled up beside her, taking the passenger seat so he could work on the way.
‘Where’s the ping?’ Kit asked, sparking the ignition.
‘Garage near Teddington.’ He closed his eyes for a moment, summoning a mental map and trying to spot how it fitted in to what they knew of him.
Kit twisted in her seat for the A to Z on the back seat and started riffling the pages. ‘Teddington … OK, here,’ she said, finding the page. ‘So what’s he doing there?’
Mae glanced over and it clicked straight away.
‘He’s doing yoga.’
‘Yeah right,’ Kit said, smirking.
‘It’s true: my CCTV guy said he’d logged the van in East Molesey: same place that Lucy Arden said she’d followed Cox to. His mother lives there, she’s got some kind of yoga centre.’
‘Right then. Let’s go.’
While Kit headed up to the flyover, Mae dialled Rod for the exact address he’d logged Cox at. Rod answered instantly, and within half a minute he’d brought up the postcode.
‘It’s not just one address though,’ Rod said, accompanied by the sound of proficient touch-typing as he looked for what Mae wanted. ‘Guessing wherever he goes, there’s only on-street parking, but I can narrow it to a couple of blocks.’
Noting down the postcode, Mae thanked him, hung up, and wanged it into the satnav, taking the A4-then-South route instead of risking the rush-hour inertia of the smaller roads.
‘Who covers East Molesey?’ Kit wondered. ‘Surrey force. Think it’s Elmbridge nick?’
A quick check, and it turned out she was right. She put her phone into the holder and talked to the handsfree to find the right number. As it rang, she said, ‘I’ll get them to send round a uniform, shall I? Watch the place?’
Kit spent a few minutes talking Surrey command into sparing someone to keep an eye on the place until they got there, weaving north-west through the early-evening traffic as she spoke. While she spoke, Mae searched the internet for a definite connection between one of East Molesey’s yoga venues and a Mrs or Ms Cox.
It didn’t take long. On the homepage of the Gayatri Institute there was an image of a healthful, tanned woman in her seventies outside a handsome stone building, surrounded by a small handful of Lycra-clad devotees. Closest to her side, though, was a beaming, bearded Cox, taken maybe a few years previously.
He gave Kit the address just as the traffic miraculously cleared. She accelerated hard onto the Great West Road, then straightened her arms against the wheel and flashed him a look.
‘Tell me you’re not going to bitch like a grandma about my technique the whole way there.’
But he wasn’t complaining. ‘Go for your life.’ The way Kit floored it, they might even get there first.
58.
Ellie
The tracks of the District line clattered beneath my feet. It was dark, and if the train was supposed to be heated it didn’t seem to know about it.
At Hammersmith I changed for the Piccadilly line, sweeping up northwestwards. When the train emerged from underground it passed right beside the big yellow plastic-clad storage facility I was headed to. I got off at Hanger Lane and headed over, thinking how I’d need a whole load of the luck I was owed, just to get inside. People who used places like this wanted their stuff kept secure. My mother, if I knew anything about her at all, would be no exception.
From the street, the building was vast and overwhelming, but inside, the reception was just a greyscale office like any other. A faint smell of cigarettes came from the young man behind the desk who looked up briefly from his screen as I walked past. I lifted my hand loosely in a greeting but I didn’t stop.
‘Hold on,’ he said.
Shit.
My heart thrashing under my ribs, I turned.
‘Unit?’ he said.
I made a silly me face and dug the slip from my pocket. ‘Zero-zero-three-twenty-seven,’ I told him, flattening the letter onto the counter.
He put the number into his keyboard, didn’t look up. ‘Name?’
‘Christine Scott,’ I said without hesitation.
He held his hand out. I looked at it, then at him.
‘ID,’ he said.
The lifts were just ahead of me. Just there. Could I make a bolt for it? I could probably get a head start. But then what?
I leaned over the desk. I was going to do this. I could do this.
‘Look, I’ve just lost my handbag. All my ID, everything.’
‘I’m sorry, but—’
‘Please. I know it’s not the way we usually do things, but, please. Just this once.’ I gave him a pleading smile.
He narrowed his eyes and tapped the end of his biro against his lip. ‘Look, I’m not allowed to—’ he started, but he was interrupted by the suddenly trill of the desk phone. ‘Just hold on.’
As he went to answer it, I mouthed please? again and made a praying gesture. As he lifted the receiver he rolled his eyes, broke into a grin, and waved me on.
I climbed six short flights of steel steps, my footsteps reverberating all the way up and down the stairwell. I emerged onto the third floor. Sensing me there, the lights along the corridor flicked on, and I headed to the far end.
The little code box on the door of our unit asked for my four digits. Above it was a sign: NEED HELP? SEE RECEPTION. 1-hour lock-out after 3 incorrect attempts.
I blew out a breath. Three goes. OK.
My birth date. It seemed like the obvio
us one would be my birthday. I punched in the four digits, day and month, Siggy tightening with anticipation in my head when I pressed the green tick.
The line of asterisks encoding my digits disappeared and INCORRECT PIN flashed on the display.
I swore and walked away, then turned to watch the door from halfway along the corridor, biting the corner of my thumb. Whose birthday, then, if not mine? Not her own. Definitely not, too easy, too stupid. But it would be a date. She was big on anniversaries of events, the markings of years passed since landmarks in our lives. Because she was a journalist in more than just training, she kept records, she knew when things happened, and she worked out why.
I leaned against the opposite wall, eyeing that little box on our door, daring me to get it wrong again. It would have to be a big thing, something important.
That was it. I bounced myself straight and strode down the corridor, completely confident. It was the day everything changed. The event of our whole lives. The day Jodie died. I tapped the number in: 0211. Second of November.
INCORRECT PIN.
I smacked my hand against the cold metal door, then leaned in, my forehead squashed against it. Come. On. Siggy was still there, I could feel her like a coat, like a film on the inside of my skin, but she was passive. Watching me. Letting me do what I had to do.
I opened my eyes, thinking, Siggy.
I didn’t even pause when I pressed the buttons. I’d been looking at it wrongly: the catalyst wasn’t the day we became fugitives. It was the day we’d assigned to the thing that triggered all of it.
Cherry Tree Day.
An innocuous beep of acceptance from the box. The click of the door unlocking.
I was in.
59.
Mae
They’d covered all of four miles before the fuel alarm beeped. Swearing, Kit swung across all three lanes and just made the slip road to Heston services before the chevrons ran out.