Crisis

27

Oliver returned from seeing the foal at the stud farm near Cheveley to be met by stony silence from his wife in the kitchen. I was there too.

‘What’s up?’ he asked, sensing the cool atmosphere.

Maria remained silent so I jumped right in to insert my first thunderflash. ‘Maria is wondering why you’ve been paying five hundred pounds a month to Zoe and Peter Robertson.’

If I thought he’d flinched when I’d asked him why Ryan had broken Declan’s nose, it was nothing compared to how he reacted now.

The blood drained out of his face and he stumbled slightly, grabbing hold of a chair to lean on.

But his mind was clearly still working.

‘For my grandchildren, of course,’ he said, recovering some of his composure. ‘I can’t penalise them just because their mother was a tramp.’

But Maria was not placated in the least.

‘You bastard,’ she shouted. ‘You’ve been telling me we’re so hard up that I can’t afford even to have my hair done, and all the while you’ve been giving away our cash. Are you saying those bloody children are more important than me?’

Oliver turned to me and, for the very first time, his veneer of politeness cracked.

‘Get out of my house,’ he said angrily.

I made what ASW would call a ‘tactical withdrawal’ back to the Bedford Lodge to take stock and determine my next move.

First I called DCI Eastwood.

‘Thank you for the medical records,’ I said. ‘But is there any more? They seem incomplete.’

‘That’s what we got from her doctor,’ he said.

‘Could you check if there’s anything else? What you sent doesn’t detail anything more than ten years old. There must be some records from before that.’

I could hear him sigh. ‘I have other things to do, you know. I thought you wanted to determine if there was any remote chance that she’d dropped down dead of natural causes. Surely you have enough for that?’

‘It would be negligent on my part if I didn’t check everything that was available.’ I said it in my best courtroom lawyer voice.

‘I’ll ask my sergeant,’ he said with resignation. ‘It was he who got them in the first place.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘I’ll wait.’

I don’t think he was expecting to have to ask his sergeant straight away but I gave him little choice.

‘Right,’ he said again, with more resignation. ‘I’ll go and ask him now and call you straight back.’

Reluctantly, I hung up but, true to his word, the chief inspector called back within ten minutes.

‘It appears we do have some paper records as well,’ he said.

‘Can they be scanned and sent over?’ I asked.

‘It would seem there are rather a lot. Could you not just come over and see them here? It would save a lot of time and effort, and we are short of both.’

Limited resources again, I thought.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Where is here?’

‘The Bury St Edmunds investigation centre. We’ve closed the temporary incident room at Newmarket.’

‘I’ll come right away.’

Better to do it now before he changed his mind.

‘Ask for DS Venables. He’ll be expecting you.’

I rustled up my driver and his Mercedes and we were soon on our way to Bury St Edmunds.

I don’t know why I thought that Zoe’s medical records were important. Perhaps it was because Yvonne had told Kate about Oliver having arranged for Zoe to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act, and that it was shown in her notes.

Had Oliver lied to get Zoe put away in a mental hospital? Was that what he was being blackmailed over? But would he really pay five hundred pounds a month to keep that a secret? Surely not, not after all the years that had passed since.

DS Venables took me down a windowless corridor and into a room with a round table and four chairs. On the table was a cardboard box containing a number of special envelopes standing up side by side with open tops.

‘Apparently they’re called Lloyd George envelopes,’ the DS said flatly. ‘After the politician that introduced them. According to the doctor that sent them to me, they’ve now been superseded by computers.’

He stood to one side, leaning on the wall with his hands in his pockets, while I sat down at the table and reached for the box.

‘I don’t approve,’ the sergeant said.

‘You don’t approve of what?’ I asked.

‘My boss letting you see these records.’

‘Why not?’

‘Stands to reason,’ he said. ‘Why should we be helping the defence?’

‘I thought we were both interested in justice.’

He sniffed his disagreement. He was clearly only interested in a conviction.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Not unless I find it.’

The box contained four of the Lloyd George envelopes, each one stuffed full of folded papers. They were marked 1 to 4 and were in date order. I started with envelope 1, emptying the contents onto the table.

‘There’s no need to stay,’ I said to DS Venables. ‘I’m not going to take anything. I just want to read it all.’ I took my mobile phone out of my pocket and put it down on the table. ‘I’ll just take photos of anything I want to look at again later.’

The detective reluctantly pushed himself off the wall by his elbows.

‘I’ll come back in half an hour.’

‘Make it an hour,’ I said. ‘There’s a lot here. I promise I won’t wander off.’

He left the room and closed the door.

I was surprised how much information was logged in our medical records, and how they obviously follow us around from one surgery to another as we move. There were even allocated spaces on the front of the first envelope to record any such changes and, for Zoe, three different addresses were listed along with five separate doctors, together with the date of each change.

I started reading from the beginning.

Zoe Chadwick had been fifty-one centimetres long and had weighed 3.8 kilograms at birth. Every visit she made to a doctor was logged, along with such things as dates of immunisations and her weight at each postnatal clinic visit.

In all, Zoe had been taken to see a doctor thirteen times in her first year of life and ten times in her second. I wondered if that was common or if she was a particularly sickly child. However, at no point had her doctor indicated in the plethora of his notes that it was unusual.

Her whooping cough infection aged three and a half was well documented as having been quite severe. There was even a record of the antibiotic drugs given to her at the time to prevent any secondary complications such as pneumonia.

Also in envelope 1 was a letter from a minor injuries unit in Cromer that had treated Zoe for a cut left foot during a holiday stay in the town when she’d been four. It stated that the wound had needed two stitches but no further treatment as Zoe’s mother had confirmed that the child’s tetanus vaccinations were up to date.

All very mundane, and rather boring.

I decided that, at this rate, going through every envelope from start to finish, every doctor’s note, every hospital letter, was going to take me far too long.

I skimmed through the other three envelopes, looking for the notes relating to Zoe’s first psychiatric hospital admission in early 2007.

They were in envelope 4, obviously shortly before the records became computerised, and there were lots of them, including several letters from both psychiatrists and psychotherapists.

Yvonne hadn’t been quite right.

The initial letter had not been from a psychiatrist, as she had said to Kate, but from a professor of psychology at York University who stated that, at the request of her father, he had studied Zoe Chadwick’s behaviour patterns and had concluded that she was suffering from schizophrenia and should be considered at risk of harming both herself and others.

That letter had set in motion a chain of events that ended with Zoe being detained for assessment at Maudsley Psychiatric Hospital in Camberwell under Section 2 of the Mental Health Act 1983.

Not that the assessment had been clear and undisputed.

The letters flying back and forth between the hospital psychiatrists had been copied to her medical notes and I read through them all in chronological order.

The only thing the medics all seemed to agree on was that Zoe was suffering from some form of mental illness, whether it be schizophrenia or another type of dissociative disorder. What they had disagreed about was whether she had represented a significant danger to herself or others.

However, it was a single-sheet letter from one of the psychotherapists that was the real eye-opener.

Whereas the doctors were arguing about what was wrong with her, the therapists were clearly concentrating more on why she was ill, and one of them had reported that, in one counselling session, Zoe had claimed that she had been sexually abused throughout her childhood by both her father and her brothers.

What?

I read it through again twice more to ensure I hadn’t misunderstood, but there it was in black and white. No mistake.

However, it seems that it was not the first time such an accusation had been made.

‘As before’ was written in pen across the top of the letter, presumably by her then GP, followed by a dash and a single word — ‘fantasist’.

As before.

It looked like I would have to read through every one of the envelopes after all.

The detective sergeant returned as I was using my phone to photograph the psychotherapist’s letter.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

‘Fine,’ I replied. ‘But still lots to do yet. I’ll be here for another hour or so at least.’

‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ he said.

‘Any chance of a coffee?’ I asked.

I could almost see the mental process of whether he, too, should be complicit in helping the defence, even if it was just to fetch me a cup of coffee.

‘I’ll see what I can manage. Milk and sugar?’

‘Just milk, thanks.’

He disappeared and, as I reached for envelope 2, Kate called.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Where are you?’

‘At the police station in Bury St Edmunds. Going through Zoe Chadwick’s medical records.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Are you going to be long?’

I looked at my watch. It was already half past four. Where had the day gone? But, to be fair, I’d done a lot since being dropped at the hotel this morning.

‘Another hour, at least,’ I said. ‘Why?’

‘I just wondered if you’d like to meet later for a drink?’

‘How about dinner?’ I said. ‘And why don’t you ask Janie to join us?’

‘Janie?’ Kate sounded unsure.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She might need cheering up. Let’s go to that Chinese. I’ve had no lunch and I’m hungry.’

‘The Fountain?’

‘That’s the one,’ I said. ‘How about seven-thirty?’

‘I’ll book a table,’ she said, still sounding slightly tentative.

I hung up and DS Venables returned with a mug of steaming brown liquid that tasted vaguely of coffee.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘I knock off at six so you’ll have to be finished by then.’

‘Should be fine,’ I said. ‘Come back just before you go.’

The sergeant hesitated for a moment but then shrugged his shoulders and left me alone again. He was clearly fighting his natural instinct to be obstructive.

I went through everything in the notes, but found no great revelations about abuse. The only possible reference was a letter to Zoe’s doctor from an educational psychologist expressing concern that the outcome of the recent investigation by the Children’s Welfare Department had done little to improve Zoe’s state of mind or her ability to concentrate on her learning in school.

The letter was dated June 2004 when Zoe would have been fifteen.

It was in the same envelope as numerous medical reports detailing the extent of Zoe’s self-harming, specifically cutting her arms and legs with razor blades or scissors. Three times the injuries had been serious enough for her parents to take her to hospital and, it seemed, there were several other occasions when a visit to the doctor was required.

I felt so sad for her.

How dreadfully disturbed she must have been to believe she had no alternative but to slice open her own skin.

What had she been seeking? Attention? Understanding? Love?

Or was it something totally different?

I remembered back to my time as a solicitor in Totnes. The daughter of a divorce client had regularly cut her arms as a way of punishing herself, believing wrongly that it was all her fault that her parents were ending their marriage.

Was Zoe also trying to punish herself?

If so, for what?

Her medical records gave no clues.

Overall, I was surprised that, considering the number of instances of self-harming, there hadn’t been more referrals to specialist psychiatric care during her early teenage years.

In fact, the remainder of the notes mostly detailed only a diet of routine everyday non-emergency medical consultations, dealing with such unexciting problems as an outbreak of acne and a recurring sinus infection.

Indeed, the only other item of any interest I found was a letter signed by a Dr Andrews, director of somewhere called the Healthy Woman Centre in Bell Street, Cambridge, dated 8 August 2002. It was addressed to Dr Benaud, Zoe’s then GP, and it reported that the gynaecological intervention, previously discussed on the telephone, had been successfully completed that morning and the sample sent for analysis. Strangely, there was no further indication of the problem or the outcome.

I had just finished taking photographs of anything I thought might be relevant when DS Venables returned to say it was time for me to go.

‘Find anything?’ he asked sardonically as we walked back along the windowless corridor.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Could have told you that before you even started.’ He laughed. ‘I wasted my time doing the same thing last week.’

‘But it’s best to be sure,’ I said, and thought about asking him about the letter from the psychotherapist. ‘Did you follow anything up?’

‘I did try to contact one of her past doctors about her cutting her arms and stuff, but he died three years ago.’

He didn’t sound particularly bothered.

‘Nothing else?’ I asked.

‘Nope.’

He let me out and the driver took me back to Newmarket.

The food at The Fountain was all that Janie had claimed it was, with the crispy-duck pancakes going down a real treat.

‘Any news?’ Kate asked. ‘Did you find anything?’

‘Not really,’ I replied, giving her a quick ‘don’t go there’ glance.

I didn’t want to mention anything with Janie listening. I knew she was currently pretty pissed off with Ryan, but I thought she might still be loyal to Oliver. Not that that was going to stop me asking her some questions. That’s why I’d suggested that Kate should invite her in the first place.

‘Tell me more about Zoe,’ I said, rolling another pancake.

‘What about her?’ Janie asked.

‘Did she ever have a boyfriend?’

‘Not that I remember. All the boys at school tended to steer well clear of her. So did most of the girls.’

‘Did she ever talk to you about sex?’

She giggled. ‘What about sex?’

‘I thought teenage girls talk about sex all the time, just like teenage boys.’

‘Of course they do. But I don’t remember Zoe doing so. She was never “one of the girls” in that respect. Not in any respect, in fact. She was always so serious and anxious. I don’t think I ever heard her laugh.’

‘Did she talk at all about her life at home?’

‘She didn’t talk much about anything.’

‘Do you know if she got on well with her brothers?’ I asked.

‘I don’t recall her getting on well with anyone. She used to make things up about them all the time.’

‘What sorts of things?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I don’t know. Half the time she would praise them for being so brilliant and then she’d accuse them of being cruel towards her or the horses.’

‘Did the social services ever get involved?’

‘I know they did at least once,’ Janie said. ‘Two women turned up at school. But Zoe wouldn’t help them. In fact, she accused them both of lying and trying to put her into care. That was typical of her. Just when you tried to help her, she’d go and blame you for something you hadn’t done.’

‘Like cutting her arms?’ I said. ‘Kate told me.’

‘Exactly,’ Janie said. ‘She told a teacher I’d done it. All complete twaddle, of course, she did it to herself, but nevertheless it caused me all sorts of problems at the time. Stupid girl.’

‘I’m surprised the teacher believed her,’ I said.

‘I don’t think she really did but, you know how it is, everyone covers their own back, just in case. So the teacher simply passed on the accusation to her boss and it just spiralled out of control.’

‘But it was all right in the end?’

‘Yeah,’ Janie said. ‘Eventually. But not before I’d been given the third degree. I never trusted her again. No one did — not the kids, nor the teachers.’

‘Or believed her?’

‘Yeah, especially that. She used to invent stuff about people that was more and more weird. She’d accuse everyone of bullying her, which they probably did, but she’d make up awful things about them and then swear blind they were true. Mind you, she’d been doing that since primary school.’

‘St Louis Roman Catholic Primary School?’ I asked.

She looked at me strangely as if wondering how I knew.

‘It was in the medical records,’ I said, even though that was a lie. It had been in the Simpson White report. ‘Was Zoe a Catholic?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Janie said. ‘But I’m not one either. Only about half the kids at St Louis were, even though we all had to go to the Catholic church for school services.’

‘So was Zoe odd right from the start?’

‘I can’t really remember,’ Janie said. ‘I think so. She always seemed to live in her own fantasy world.’

Fantasist.

And no one would have believed her even if some of what she’d said had been true.

Our main courses arrived and the three of us talked about other things for a while but, eventually, I couldn’t resist returning the conversation to the Chadwicks.

‘Do you happen to know how old Ryan was when he left home?’ I asked.

‘Left home?’ Janie said. ‘Do you mean Castleton House?’

I nodded, popping a piece of beef in black bean sauce into my mouth.

‘He was still there when I arrived,’ said Janie. ‘But by then he was living in one of the flats above the old yard. The one that burned down, in fact. He only finally moved out when he got married.’

Eight years ago. He’d been thirty-four.

‘How about Declan?’ I asked.

‘He’d gone before I started. But only just, I think.’

Odd, I thought, for Declan not to have flown the nest sooner, considering the animosity between him and his elder brother.

‘Oliver’s very keen to keep his boys close around him. He’s always saying that he is head of the Chadwick dynasty, one that will dictate the direction taken by horse racing for decades to come.’

‘Has he been in touch with you again since this morning?’ I asked.

‘I’ve had a couple of missed calls on my mobile from the stable office number,’ Janie said. ‘I didn’t answer them on purpose. Let them stew for a while.’ She smiled at me but it wasn’t the real McCoy. It didn’t make it all the way to her eyes.

‘You’ll go back, then?’ I said.

‘Yeah. Probably.’ She sighed. ‘What else can I do?’

‘I’m sure there are other stables that would love to take you on.’

‘Better the devil you know,’ she said.

‘But make sure you ask for that raise,’ Kate said.

‘And compensation for hurt feelings,’ I added.

We completed our dinner in happy companionship.

‘Are you going home tonight?’ I asked Kate as we stood up to go.

‘Not unless you force me to,’ she said. ‘My bag’s in the Mini.’

I smiled at her and she smiled back at me.

‘Oh my God!’ Janie said with a laugh. ‘You two lovebirds. It’s enough to make me vomit.’

The three of us walked out of the restaurant door onto Newmarket High Street.

‘Have either of you two ever heard of a place in Cambridge called the Healthy Woman Centre?’

Both of them laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’ I asked.

‘The name,’ Kate said. ‘It’s so misleading.’

‘Why?’

‘Because everyone knows that the Healthy Woman Centre is just an abortion clinic.’