Chameleon's Shadow

Thirty

ACLAND HADN’T MOVED from his place in the corner of the bed. He sat in the same position with his disfigured profile towards the door, staring at the wall opposite and apparently oblivious to the comings and goings outside. Jackson watched him for a second or two. He had a capacity for stillness that was quite extraordinary, she thought.

‘Were you born with patience or did they teach it to you in the army?’ she asked.

He turned to look at her. ‘I learned it as a child. There wasn’t much point getting worked up about sitting alone in my room when nothing I did was going to make a difference. Now it comes naturally.’

‘Did you know it was me at the door?’

He nodded. ‘I recognized your footsteps.’

She moved into the room. ‘Have you been told that Jen’s been arrested?’

He nodded again.

‘They’re waiting to interview her.’ Jackson gestured towards the end of the bed. ‘May I?’ She took his silence for assent and perched on the end, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. ‘The superintendent wants to question you first. How do you feel about that? Would you like me to stall him . . . give yourself a little more time?’

‘What for?’

‘So that you can decide how quickly you’re willing to cooperate. Mr Jones needs it all, I’m afraid – every i dotted and every t crossed – and he’ll just keep going until he gets it.’ She glanced sideways. ‘We’ve all worked out why you react so violently to being touched, Charles. I doubt you’ve many secrets left.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’

‘How many times did Jen use the stun gun on you?’

‘It depends whether you count repeated hits,’ he said. ‘If she zapped me every five minutes she could keep me on the ground for as long as she liked.’ The humour lines appeared around his good eye. ‘A man would have to be pretty stupid to get caught more than once, wouldn’t he?’

‘Is that what embarrasses you? That you think you were stupid?’

‘It doesn’t say much for my army training. Soldiers are supposed to be ready for surprise attacks.’

Jackson smiled. ‘From the enemy, maybe . . . not from friends.’

‘I didn’t even know she had it the first time she used it. She said it was an accident and only zapped me the once. The second time, I fell asleep in a chair when we were supposed to be going out. She said it was to teach me a lesson about taking her for granted.’ He fell into a brief silence. ‘It was shortly before I went to Oman and she said she only did it because she was upset about me going . . . so I took the damn thing off her and smashed it with a hammer.’

‘But she bought another one while you were away?’

Acland nodded.

‘They’re easy to come by, Charles. Daisy’s been offered several by touts in the back streets. You shouldn’t beat yourself up over it.’

He didn’t say anything.

Jackson straightened. ‘What happened?’

‘I told her I’d had time to think it all through in Oman and the engagement was over. She didn’t take it too well.’ He gave a small laugh. ‘I turned my back on her. Pretty naive, eh?’

‘How many hits?’

Acland shook his head. ‘I gave up counting. Every time I tried to get up, she used it again. The charge does something to your head . . . makes you lose coordination. Repeated charges scramble everything.’

‘Which is why they’re illegal in this country. In the hands of someone like Jen they could kill you. The body can only take so many shocks.’

‘She thought it was funny.’

Jackson heard the hatred in his voice. ‘How did you stop her?’

‘She took a phone call . . . and it lasted longer than she realized. When she came back I managed to lock on to her wrist and turn the gun on her.’ He fell into another brief silence. ‘I came damn close to killing her. I could have done it easily and she knew it.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘Because I’m better than that.’

Like your father, she thought. ‘Did Jen use anything other than the stun gun on you?’

‘Nothing I want to talk about.’

Jackson shook her head. ‘Mr Jones won’t accept that. He needs to know if she hit you with the knobkerrie.’

There was a small hesitation. ‘She didn’t have to stun me to do that. It was her favourite weapon. It started as a joke . . . a tap on the wrist if I was late. It turned nasty around July, when I told her about the month’s training in Oman. She damn near broke my arm on one occasion.’

Jackson glanced at him again. ‘When did she first use the knobkerrie? Before or after the engagement?’

‘I’m not a complete idiot. After,’ he said with another wry laugh. ‘She was fine up until then.’ He paused. ‘I thought maybe I’d pushed her into something she didn’t want to do, but it made her worse when I said we didn’t have to go through with it. I made myself scarce whenever she kicked off . . . but she didn’t like that either.’

‘At the Crown?’

He nodded. ‘I told the superintendent I never spoke to the taxi driver, but I think I may have done. I remember being given a card one time which I passed on to Jen. She goes everywhere in cabs.’ He lapsed into another silence.

‘So what makes Jen angry?’

‘The same thing that fires my mother up . . . not getting her own way. As long as you agree with her, she’s fine. It’s when you say no that the trouble starts.’

‘Some people can’t function without constant approval. Any disagreement is seen as the equivalent of rejection, and they react angrily because they feel degraded and betrayed. Does that describe Jen and your mother?’

‘Apart from the things you’ve left out.’

‘Like what?’

‘The fact that they live in fantasy worlds about how sweet-natured and beautiful they are . . . The fact that the more approval they’re given the worse they get . . . The fact that they don’t give a shit about anyone else—’ He broke off on a sigh. ‘Jen wasn’t always like that, you know. She was great at the beginning.’

‘And probably still is when she wants to be,’ said Jackson calmly. ‘People with personality disorders don’t lack charm. They employ it whenever they want to manipulate a situation to suit themselves . . . particularly if they think of themselves as special in some way.’

The humour lines appeared around Acland’s eye. ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

‘All right,’ she agreed. ‘Your father deserves your admiration and not your scorn. From what you’ve told me, he seems to have gone to immense trouble to break the cycles of abuse within your family, both by controlling his own responses to your mother’s aggression and by shielding you from the worst of it. That’s not an easy thing to do.’

The humour vanished. ‘It didn’t work, though, did it?’

Jackson eyed him thoughtfully. ‘You tell me. I know of only two occasions when you retaliated against Jen – the last time you went to her flat and the day she visited you in hospital. Were there more?’

‘Three, if you count turning the stun gun on her.’ He squeezed one fist inside the other. ‘If I’d been more like my father, those men would still be alive. The dates all fit.’

‘That doesn’t make you responsible. It’s just as likely that having you helpless on the floor gave her a perverted sense of power and she re-enacted it because she enjoyed it.’ She watched his writhing hands. ‘You said I shouldn’t bet on knowing all your secrets. What else did she do to you?’

He avoided a direct answer. ‘Jen wouldn’t have taken the knobkerrie with her if she hadn’t meant to humiliate those men.’

Humiliate...? ‘How?’

His expression was bleak. ‘The same way she humiliated me,’ he said.

*

Jones and Beale listened to Jackson in silence. ‘He told us last night that he buggered her as punishment,’ Jones remarked when she’d finished. ‘It makes more sense now. Was that his real reason for going back to her flat? To pay her out in kind?’ ‘I suspect it was six of one and half a dozen of the other. He says he sent her a text warning her to make herself scarce, but I’m sure he knew she wouldn’t take any notice of it.’ ‘Is that why he feels responsible?’ asked Beale. ‘I imagine so,’ said Jackson with a touch of sarcasm. ‘He didn’t become a monk for religious reasons.’ She paused. ‘One way and another, he has a lot on his conscience.’ ‘The deaths of three men,’ agreed Beale drily. ‘Two,’ she corrected him. ‘His troopers . . . and that’s all in his head anyway. I don’t believe he’s remotely to blame for Peel, Britton and Atkins. He could never have predicted that Jen would take out her anger on strangers.’ ‘He still played a part,’ said Jones, ‘even if unwittingly.’ ‘You could say the same about Harold Shipman’s wife. Being in a relationship with a disturbed personality doesn’t mean you set them on the route to crime.’

Jones acknowledged the point with a nod. ‘But something Charles did seems to have a triggered a psychotic reaction. All three murders followed a meeting with him.’ He paused. ‘Do you have an opinion on that?’

‘Why do you care what I think if you have a Cracker on tap?’

‘You’re closer to Charles than the rest of us.’

‘Even if that’s true, it’s Jen you need to understand, and I don’t know any more about her than you do . . . except what Charles has told me.’

‘I’m listening.’

Jackson shook her head. ‘I’m a bog standard locum, not a specialist in forensic psychology.’

‘If there’s anything bog standard about you, then I’m in the wrong bloody job,’ said Jones sarcastically. ‘It’s your impressions I’m after, Doctor, not a thesis on sociopathy.’

Jackson grinned. ‘I might do that rather better.’ She raised her hands in a pacific gesture. ‘OK, OK!’ She thought for a moment. ‘The obvious trigger is that he kept rejecting her . . . but she was also excited by having a man helpless. She used the stun gun on him twice before, so she clearly enjoyed the power it gave her.’

‘He should have left her after the first occasion.’

‘Do you think Charles doesn’t know that? Everything’s so damned easy with hindsight. He’s extremely ignorant about women. The only thing his upbringing taught him was not to get into arguments with them . . . and nothing could have suited Jen’s personality better. In some ways he was the perfect partner for her.’

‘Would she have recognized that?’

Jackson shrugged. ‘Probably. I suspect her feelings for him were a lot stronger than he realized.’

‘So why attack him in the way she did?’

‘During the stun gun episode? Because he’d given her her marching orders and she wasn’t prepared to accept them.’

Jones looked sceptical. ‘And she thought ramming a knobkerrie up his backside would persuade him to change his mind?’

‘She was angry and she wanted to hurt him. Logic goes out the window when a red mist descends.’ Jackson shrugged again at Jones’s expression. ‘Look, what the hell do I know? Maybe Charles is right and her fantasies are all about humiliation.’

There was a short silence.

‘The two views aren’t mutually exclusive,’ said Beale. ‘Rage usually takes the form of putting an opponent down . . . either verbally or physically.’

‘So why didn’t she go the whole hog with the lieutenant when she had him at her mercy?’ Jones asked. ‘Why let him live?’

‘Because she loved him,’ said Jackson. ‘The dynamics of domestic abuse are as much about powerful attachment as they are about control and manipulation.’

‘You seem very convinced Jen’s feelings were genuine. Does the lieutenant agree with you?’

‘No. He thinks she saw him as a meal ticket.’

‘Why doesn’t that persuade you?’

‘Because Charles was the one who cooled. He wanted an equal partner – the opposite of what he perceived his parents’ relationship to be – and he started to lose interest when he realized how demanding Jen was. That’s when her aggression surfaced. She was more intent on keeping him than he was on staying.’

‘Perhaps her real character only came out after she had a ring on her finger,’ said Beale.

Jackson nodded. ‘That, too . . . and the drugs wouldn’t have helped. It’s possible she made an attempt to kick her habit at the start of the relationship, then slipped back when she began to understand the reality of a soldier’s life. Charles being away for long stretches of time wouldn’t have suited a woman who craves constant attention. I’m sure her visit to Birmingham was about proving to him that he couldn’t live without her. She must have believed it herself or she wouldn’t have gone. I can’t imagine hatred was the response she was expecting.’

‘He demonstrated hatred when he raped her,’ Jones pointed out.

‘You and I might think so, but I doubt Jen would. It was a sex act and that’s an area she knows well. You need to put yourself in her mindset. She’s beautiful and desirable and Charles showed he still wanted her. He wouldn’t have been able to achieve an erection otherwise.’

‘He said he paid for it.’

‘That doesn’t make her any less desirable. Some men will have paid a lot more to sleep with her.’

‘Not recently,’ said Beale. ‘We can find only one agency still advertising her through their website and they’ve had no requests for her for weeks. Word gets round, apparently, and she has a bad reputation with clients. Light-fingered and not compliant enough.’

Jackson frowned. ‘Charles said he saw her with a Japanese.’

‘We did, too . . . probably the same one . . . but it’s almost certainly a private arrangement, a man who’s employed her before. We think most of her work is coming that way at the moment. Her drug dealer says her earning capacity has taken a dive in the last six months.’

‘Then perhaps Charles is right. He’s convinced the only reason Jen went to the hospital was to get her hands on his disability compensation.’

‘Why doesn’t that persuade you?’ Jones asked again.

‘It might have done if she’d turned up in sackcloth and ashes with tears running down her cheeks, begging for a second chance. Instead, she came as her favourite fantasy, even to the extent of wearing the same outfit she wore the day she used the stun gun on him.’ Jackson arched a rueful eyebrow. ‘And the knobkerrie wasn’t the worst of Charles’s problems, you know. For most of the time, she was holding a bread knife to his penis and threatening to castrate him.’

‘Go on.’

‘The only meaning I can take from that is that Jen thought Charles had been as excited by her dominatrix act as she was.’

Jones smiled cynically. ‘That’s a big leap of imagination.’

‘I’m not saying it’s rational, Superintendent. I’m saying it’s what an intensely egotistical woman might think.’

‘Yet according to Dr Campbell, Jen told Charles’s psychiatrist in Birmingham that she hoped his amnesia covered the end of the relationship. She sent him a series of love letters that didn’t even mention the rape, let alone how close he came to castration.’

‘But he didn’t read them and he didn’t reply.’

‘So?’

Jackson shrugged again. ‘If you were Jen what would you take from that?’

‘That the letters never reached Charles.’

Jackson nodded. ‘And what do you take from the fact that the contents were anodyne and only mentioned how good the relationship was?’

‘That she hoped he’d forgotten?’

‘Or she was afraid a nurse would have to read them to him because she didn’t know what his injuries were.’ She paused. ‘The more interesting question is why Charles was willing to hand them unopened to his psychiatrist when he was so resistant to revealing anything about the relationship.’

‘Go on.’

‘He knew Jen would do what his parents have done all his life . . . keep their secrets under wraps. He prefers it like that. The only way he knows how to deal with pain is to absorb it.’ She sighed. ‘He’s said all along you were out to crucify him . . . and that’s what you’ll be doing if you force him into court to support a prosecution. He’s carrying too much baggage to cope with having all this dragged into a public arena.’

Jones shook his head. ‘You underestimate him, Doctor. If I’ve learned anything about the lieutenant in the last few days, it’s that he’s a great deal more determined to face his fears than you and I are.’