by Dylan Young
My heart slides. But Stamford has a light in his eyes. ‘But what if you weren’t a part of an organised tour? What if you had your own car?’
‘Then there’s no hope of finding anyone–’
The expression in Stamford’s face stops me. ‘That’s the thing about car hire. You need to show ID. And these days, a lot of hire cars possess navigation systems. A few, the more unscrupulous hire firms, can track where you are and how far you’ve driven their battered Yaris along the dirt roads.’ He pulls out a printed spreadsheet. ‘I’ve got to know the Turkish police reasonably well. Worked hard to gain their trust. Several bottles of Glenfiddich later they came up with a list of foreign nationals who hired cars and travelled to Cirali in the forty-eight-hour period leading up to Emma’s death.’
He takes out a sheet of paper and slides over a printed-out list of thirty names.
‘I only received this a week ago in a handwritten letter. That’s what prompted my call to you. I tried to whittle it down, take out the outliers – a couple of Japanese and the Turkish and Greek ones. Take a gander. See if anything rings a bell.’
I rotate the sheet and pore over it, but they’re just names. Black letters on a white page. Mandy has typed them out in alphabetical order.
Abbot
Ascher
Burdge
Collins
De Vries
Duchon
Francis
Ganz
Howard
Jaune…
Several have a line through them. I count twenty in all not crossed out. ‘But none of these are connected to Emma, nor to me?’
‘No.’
‘Then how do they help?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘Yet?’
Stamford doesn’t answer. His silence gives him away.
I ask, ‘What are you not telling me?’
He studies my face, his gaze unwavering. ‘Look, I have no idea if anything that I’ve told you is of significance. But the answer must be on that beach in Cirali. What made Emma leave the hotel and rush off like that? Someone else must be involved. What I’ve shown you is my way of explaining that I retain an open mind.’
‘But I still could have killed her. That’s what Harriet would say.’
‘And she does. Frequently. But the timeline of events doesn’t support that, does it? Emma could have gone anywhere to get away from you. She’d given you the slip at the bar. Does it make any sense that she’d go somewhere isolated? With no people around? If she was scared of you wouldn’t she find a public place where she could find allies, or at least witnesses? Emma was a bright woman. Hiding at the end of a beach doesn’t add up. My impression is that she went there to meet someone.’
‘But who? Who would she know in Cirali? And why would she want to meet anyone without me?’
I ponder these self-imposed questions. But they’re hydra-headed. As soon as I find an answer, another conundrum pops up in its place. What if she had set up a meeting with someone? Perhaps a quick getaway in a quiet part of the resort. A moped or a car perhaps. What if she was meeting up with a lover and they were planning to run off? What if I caught her before that could happen? I’d be angry, a little drunk, confused. All the ingredients necessary for a calm, considered, rational discussion.
Not.
Jesus.
They race around in my head, these snaky thoughts, but the chequered flag in every scenario only has one podium finisher. That’s me. Finding Emma. Challenging her. Losing it…
‘The people who told you about Emma, do you think they’ve told you everything?’ Stamford’s question puts the brake on my ruminations.
I stare at him and shrug. ‘Unlikely. My sister is overprotective. My friends… they’re not sure what to say. They’re scared of hurting my feelings. None of them understand that I have no feelings to hurt.’
‘So the name Mathew Haldane means nothing at all to you?’
I shake my head.
‘No one’s mentioned him?’ Stamford persists.
My pulse ticks up a notch and I try to recall the name from my threadbare memory banks. ‘No, definitely not. Why?’
‘Why indeed? Someone like Emma should not have had any enemies. But then the world is a strange place.’
My eyes flick from the sheet to Stamford’s face. ‘Who is Mathew Haldane?’
‘I’m going to get into trouble for telling you this. I get the impression it’s been decided you’re better off not knowing.’
‘Decided? By whom?’
Stamford clicks the video off, stands and turns to a shelf. He pulls down a box file and finds a photograph. He holds it out to me. I study a male face. A stranger’s face.
‘Dr Mathew Haldane,’ Stamford says. ‘Before they struck him off for stalking a colleague.’
When I swallow, there’s no saliva left in my mouth. Stamford puts me out of my misery.
‘That colleague was Dr Emma Roxburgh.’
34
For a moment everything freezes and the world spins.
Haldane?
I’ve never heard the name before.
As always when I’m confronted with something so big, so barn-door obvious from my previous life, doubt rears its malicious head. Could someone have told me? Shouldn’t someone have told me?
‘You okay?’
Stamford’s question drags my racing thoughts back to the starting line. I manage a muttered, ‘Fine.’
But Stamford isn’t fooled. He has a masters in reading people. ‘As I say, it’s feasible no one’s mentioned it because they wanted to protect you,’ he offers.
‘From what?’
A shrug. ‘Unnecessary pain. Your sister’s been a strong gatekeeper as far as all this is concerned.’
‘But I need to know. If it involved this man, Haldane–’
‘Whoa.’ Stamford holds up both hands. ‘That’s not what I said.’
‘Then why mention him?’
‘To illustrate the fact that we all have things tucked away in the dark crevices of our past. All of us.’
‘But–’
‘No. No buts. What happened between Emma and Haldane was bad, but–’
I cut him off. ‘In what way?’
Stamford closes his eyes. I can see he’s refereeing a mental battle between telling me unpleasant truths and wanting me to tell him what I can remember.
Quid pro quo, baby. I hear Josh’s voice clear as day in my head.
Stamford decides. ‘This all took place years ago. Emma’s first junior post. She could not have been more than twenty-three or four. It turned very nasty. She was the innocent party, he was her senior and, it turns out, a card-carrying… weirdo.’
I suspect that Stamford would prefer to have used an alliterative four-letter word in lieu of weirdo. But we don’t know each other well enough for that. There’s such a thing as decorum.
He barely pauses while I register this, before pressing on. ‘There was nothing between them. But in Haldane’s mind she was the one for him and he became obsessed. It ended up with him being prosecuted under stalker laws. He also lost his licence to practise and ended up in jail.’
‘So was it him in Turkey?’
Stamford let’s his head drop before bringing it back up to contemplate me with a wry smile. ‘No. There’s a restraining order against him still being anywhere near Emma or the family. He’s still not allowed to leave the country. Believe me, if I thought he had anything to do with it I’d have dragged him kicking and screaming from whatever stone he lives under. I’m telling you about him only because if you dig, you’re bound to come across his name.’
I should be grateful. I gaze again at the long-shot list of people that hired cars and realise it’s incomplete. Some cars might not have had satnav. Not been tracked by GPS. I check the Hs. There’s a Howard but no Haldane.
Something else catches my eye. Underneath the list separated by an inch of white paper is another name.
Berend Rusink.
‘That shouldn’t be there. That’s the Flames Bar’s owner. The Dutchman.’
Perhaps the shock of learning about Haldane is what jolts my subconscious. But I’m aware of a new thought emerging. Synapses fire, a pathway opens, a connection is made.
‘Do you have a photograph?’
‘Of who?’
‘Rusink.’
Stamford shifts the mouse, clicks a few times, calls up his albums on-screen. More clicks and I’m looking at the image of a tall, rangy man with dirty-blond hair and a light stubble. He’s lounging in a chair, eyes squinting into the sun. Sand and sea provide the background. He’s very tanned. I suspect that the blond tips in his hair did not come from a bottle, but from the bright sunlight above. His shirt is open to the navel showing a big gold chain…
‘Rusink,’ I say. ‘Sounds a lot like Russian.’
‘Does it?’
‘To a damaged mind it might. I know this man. I speak to him two or three times a week.’
‘Really?’ Stamford sits up.
‘Don’t get excited. All this happens here.’ I tap the side of my head. ‘I must have met this bloke. Knew his name. Ivan.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘In my fugue I visit a place that’s a figment of my imagination. A bar. The same bar every time. A rooftop bar. I’ve concluded my fugue is an amalgamation of recollections. It must be the Flames Bar but my brain has moved it somewhere else. A rooftop. Somewhere high like the top of the cliffs you were standing on with your camera.’
‘He’s not Russian,’ says Stamford. ‘He’s Dutch. At least he was. He died last year. Cancer of the lung.’
Another ghost.
‘But his name was Rusink,’ I say. ‘Ivan is Berend Rusink, the manager of the bar. My brain has taken his name, twisted it, and moulded him into a stereotypical Russian drunk.’
‘Does knowing that help?’
‘Perhaps. Another part of the jigsaw. Only even more cryptic than I thought it might be.’
‘But progress, right?’
I don’t answer. I watch Stamford’s video again. It triggers nothing new. No more synapses fire up or hold hands to make a connection. When it’s finished, I ask for a copy of his hire car list of names.
He hesitates. ‘How is that going to help?’
‘I could do some digging.’
Another wry smile. A Stamford trademark. ‘Ah, that’s where we need to draw a line. This is sensitive information. The data protection people would have my head on a pike if I let this out of my sight. They’d have yours too. So no can do the list. Best that enquiries all come from me because I can function under the radar.’
I start to object but decide he’s right. Best I leave that side of things to a professional. But I’ve seen the list, stared at it. Impossible to unstare.
My coffee has gone cold, but I turn down Stamford’s offer of another.
‘It’s been edunational,’ I say.
He doesn’t correct me. He gets it. ‘Glad I could help.’
‘I’m not sure you’ve done that. But it’s made me think.’
We shake hands. Stamford does his thing with the hand sanitiser and offers me a blob. I accept. I’d forgotten. He doesn’t do elbow touching, thank God.
When I get back into the street the sun is brightening the day, and I wish I’d remembered to bring my sunglasses. I squint, breathe in diesel-perfumed air and retrace my steps back to New Cross station. I get back to my flat half an hour later. My stomach says lunchtime, but this is no time for food. I sit at my desk and open up my weapons cache. Laptop, mouse, Google.
While I wait, I open my notebook and write down as many of the uncrossed-off names from Stamford’s list that I can remember. I get eighteen.
Then I open up a search engine and type. One name.
Mathew Haldane.
35
Haldane’s image is all over the internet. I click on a few. He is tall with boyish features, and in most of them he sports a fashionable stubble that lends him a scruffy vibe. In profile his nose is bigger than it looks straight on, slightly hooked. It reminds me of a bird. Nothing majestic; more vulture than hawk. There’s a variety of candid snaps. Some with him in tennis or squash gear, some of him with a stethoscope slung around his neck in a jaunty, badge-signalling, look-at-me way. And one, more tellingly, of him leaving what might be a law court looking older, drawn, guilty.
But when I pull up the lurid press reports, Haldane’s true nature is revealed as the headlines glare back at me. There are red tops and broadsheet reports. But I plump for a reputable online medical journal for the facts.
Surgeon struck-off for sending over 300 messages in one week to a junior doctor. His ‘relentless obsession’ led to prolonged sexual harassment.
Mathew Haldane was today found guilty by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal after the panel heard how the 35-year-old locum senior registrar bought his victim some tea on her first shift and immediately suggested that sleeping with him would ensure she got the best rotation.
The victim, who cannot be named, was subjected to repeated unwanted physical abuse, having her bottom squeezed on several occasions and repeatedly being touched by Haldane in situations where it was difficult to escape.
General Medical Council lawyer, Jane Smedley, explained how Haldane was in a position of some power when the victim began her first job at the Royal Infirmary in Bristol.
She admitted that she had been warned about his lecherous approaches but explained how she thought that his blatant propositioning was nothing more than a prank to begin with. ‘It was so over the top, it could not have been real,’ she said. ‘But then the texts started coming through. Even though I told him over and over I had a boyfriend and was not interested.’ When she eventually reported the harassment which took place over an eight-day period she had become too unwell with anxiety to work.
But Haldane was relentless in his pursuit, Smedley explained. He was overheard on more than one occasion asking the victim, ‘How much do you want to get naked with me?’ Things escalated when his continued texting became explicit and he sent a video of himself in a shower performing a sexual act.
Haldane, who studied medicine in Birmingham before progressing to his position one rung down from being a consultant, showed little remorse. During the hearing, he told the panel he was convinced that what took place was nothing more than a ‘consensually flirtatious relationship. I was popular. She knew a good thing when she saw it’.
After Haldane, originally from Upton in Gloucestershire, was struck-off, the chair of the tribunal, Michael Linklater said, ‘Mr Haldane demonstrates a complete lack of appreciation of the effect his extreme behaviour had on the victim. A lack of understanding of the power imbalance in the professional relationship and of how this severely limited the response of the victim is evident. She was a completely innocent party to his predatory behaviour, even when she repeatedly declined his advances and explained that she was in a relationship. She did nothing to encourage him, contrary to his obviously misguided appreciation. Added to the almost unbelievable number of lurid texts he sent her, it cannot be denied that Haldane’s behaviour harassed the victim both sexually and professionally. His judgement is patently impaired and there is a strong likelihood of repetition of his behaviour. His professional and clinical misconduct are fundamentally incompatible with continuing to practise as a doctor.’
I scroll down another page and find a report of a court case. This time on the website of a national broadcaster.
A surgeon who made ‘sexually motivated’ advances to a fellow doctor has been given a suspended sentence for stalking
Mathew Haldane, who sent over 300 text messages to another doctor, some of them sexually explicit, was simply ‘flirting’, Bristol Crown Court heard. The doctor, a woman, had only begun working as a junior house officer a few days before Haldane began his texting and aggressive behaviour. She contacted hospital authorities who referred the case
to the police.
Haldane admitted the charges on the third day of his trial in December 2011.
Prosecutor Denis Axon told the jury that Haldane ‘has abused his position as a mentor to the trainee doctor and persisted in his harassment despite repeatedly being told to stop by the woman’. Haldane, from Upton in Gloucestershire was a locum general surgeon at the Bristol Royal Infirmary in 2010 when the offences took place. During the trial the court heard how the woman suffered great distress and became too ill to work as a result of Haldane’s actions. He was found guilty of stalking, causing harm or distress and received an 18-month suspended sentence.
His case has also been referred to the General Medical Council and a tribunal will sit to consider his fitness to practise. The female victim needed six months off to recover before she could recommence her career.
I push back from the screen, my scalp crawling. I was not the boyfriend she’d tried to fend this prat off with. Not then. I first met Emma when she was twenty-seven. What I’ve read is horrific for all kinds of reasons. First, that Emma had to suffer all this. Second, that someone like Haldane got into a position, a senior medical position, without someone finding out what kind of predatory monstrous arse he was. And third, perhaps most important of all, is the fact that until today, I had no idea this had happened.
I recall Stamford’s placating words: ‘It’s feasible no one’s mentioned it because they wanted to protect you.’
I don’t like it, but I understand because it smacks of Rachel’s modus operandi. As my guardian angel, she would have considered telling me and thrown the consideration out as not helpful. After all, this was history. Years before I met Emma. Still, it rankles.
Especially given what Stamford has told me. He’s a no-stone-unturned type of bloke. What he’s explained, the way he’s investigating the case, has given me a lot to weigh up. Not least of which are the things he didn’t say.
Namely, that all the theories he’s discussed are based on the fact that someone else was involved.