Equinox

Chapter 6

Later, Philip would say that he could remember almost nothing of the journey to the hospital that took them through the near-silent night. But his mind was racing, pumped-up with anxiety and spliced through with bad memories.

It had been over twenty years ago that his father Maurice had died in a car crash, and that had been the most profound, life-changing event of Philip's life, an event that had altered radically the direction in which he was heading. He was twenty-two and had learned two weeks earlier that he had won a First. On the day of the graduation ceremony he was having breakfast with his housemates in their ramshackle house off Cowley Road when the phone rang. It was his Uncle Greg, his father's brother. His father's car had collided with a truck that had jumped across the central reservation. It had hit Maurice head-on, killing him instantly.

Philip had believed that he did not really love his father, that he would not miss him whenever the time came for him to die. He had too many sour memories of the man. He couldn't forget his father's bullying ways, the fact that he had made his mother's life a misery and then turned in upon himself, pulling down a veil of silence the moment she walked out on him.

Philip had done everything he could to please his father. Before going to university he had been a keen photographer and had won awards for his work — he had even started to sell a few pictures. But it was an aspect of his life that his father had constantly belittled, telling him that he could never make a fortune from photography. So Philip had put away his cameras and gone up to Oxford to study PPE, suppressing his own hopes and ambitions to follow a path that his father had laid out before him.

And as Philip had stood over his father's open coffin in the funeral home on the day of the burial, all he could think about was the irony of it all. All his life he had sought this man's approval; then, on the day of Philip's greatest triumph, the bastard went and got himself killed. It was almost, he thought in his most irrational moment, as though his father had done it deliberately to spite him.

But later, when he could think straight, Philip began to understand that there was more to it than this simple emotional judgement. The man had been a bully but he had also been an obsessive with an exaggerated need for privacy. He had harboured a paranoid belief that the world was prying into his life. As Philip had stared down at the husk of a human being, he couldn't shake the thought that here lay the man who had trusted no one, who had shredded his correspondence before putting it in the trash, the man who had triple-bolted his house each night. Yet now here he lay, on show, all dignity stripped away.

It was this more than anything that had convinced Philip to begin afresh. All his life he had been in thrall to his father, but deep beneath the surface he knew that in character he was far closer to his mother, Joan. Joan Bainbridge had once been Joan Ghanmora, one of the most successful artists to come out of the Caribbean. Her black father had disappeared when she was young and she had been raised by her Scottish mother, Elizabeth, and encouraged from the age of six to be a painter. She had met Philip's father when he had been invited by his boss to Joan's first exhibition in New York in 1957. Philip never understood what his mother had seen in Maurice. He had been a businessman with no real understanding of art — or of anything cultural, come to that. His entire life had been dedicated to numbers on a ledger sheet, whereas Joan was the very opposite, a free spirit who had no interest in money, or even in fame.

Philip had kept in touch with his mother and visited her occasionally in Venice where she had lived for twenty-five years with her second husband, an opera singer. But he had refused to be drawn into Joan's world even though he found it immensely seductive. With Maurice's death a series of doors in Philip's mind had suddenly become unlocked. Within a few months of gaining his First in PPE he had discarded all the plans his father had set in train for him. Eschewing the City and a promised six-figure salary, he picked up his camera again and vowed to make photography his life.

But the changes went deeper still. Philip had never shown the slightest interest in anything to do with the paranormal, but by the end of the year he had became fascinated with the concept of the aura and Kirlian photography. He read every book on the subject that he could find and attended workshops and courses. But then, after two years of submersing himself in this world, he stopped abruptly. He had never consciously thought about why he had left this all behind to concentrate on photographing crime scenes and corpses. To Philip it was merely a way to pay the bills while he continued with his creative work, exhibited and dreamed of international recognition. For many years those close to him had understood his motives, but they had chosen to keep their theories to themselves. By photographing corpses, they realised, Philip was somehow trying to find something he had been unable to see in the body of his dead father. Some semblance of a soul.

It began to rain again as they neared the hospital and this snapped Philip out of his reverie, bringing into focus the cold moment. They pulled into the hospital grounds and after parking in the first available space they ran to the brightly lit reception area, neither of them noticing the gorgeous red splash of the sunrise ahead of them.

The call had come from one of Jo's friends, Samantha, who had been in the car with Jo and Jo's boyfriend Tom. Samantha had only received cuts and bruises herself but had no idea what condition the couple were in. They met her at reception; she was talking to a young doctor who led them along a corridor to a small room containing four beds. Jo was in the end one, curtained off from the rest.

Laura and Philip were relieved to see her sitting up. She had a nasty cut above her right eye and her arm, lying over the top sheet, was bandaged to the elbow.

‘She's suffered concussion,' the doctor said, looking at Jo's chart. 'But a CT scan was clear. She needed a few stitches, but I think she'll live.'

Laura hugged her daughter gently and Jo smiled up at Philip who was standing beside the bed.

'My God, Jo,' Laura said. 'I thought. .'

'No, mom, I'm still here,' Jo whispered and touched Laura's cheek.

'Is your friend Tom OK?' Philip asked and turned to the doctor.

'He was very lucky too. A couple of cracked ribs, two broken fingers and more cuts and bruises. He's along the corridor, getting patched up.'

'So what the hell happened, Jo? Tom wasn't drinking, was he?'

'No, mother, he doesn't drink,' Jo replied and flashed her mother an irritated look. 'Actually, / was driving.'

Laura looked surprised for a moment, then gave her daughter a wan smile and held her hand.

'We were just going along St Aldate's, heading back to Carfax, when a car pulled out of a side road. I guess I overcompensated, swerved and skidded across the wet road. The car hit a lamp-post.'

'A lucky escape.' Philip sat down with a sigh on the other side of the bed from Laura.

'But mom, aren't you supposed to be on your way to Heathrow?'

Laura looked at her daughter as if she had recalled something lost in the mists of time. She rubbed her tired eyes. 'Well, that plan's shot. I certainly won't be leaving England until you're fully recovered.'

Jo made to protest, but she was interrupted by the ring tone of Philip's mobile.

Philip looked quickly at the doctor. 'God, sorry. I should have turned this off. Won't be a second.' He walked over to the window, speaking quietly into his phone.

The doctor looked irritated. Turning to Jo, he said, 'You're free to go as soon as you feel well enough.' 'What about Tom?'

'I think he may be in for a couple of hours. We need to run a few more tests, but you can see him if you like.' And he headed towards the door. Catching Philip's eye, the doctor made a cut-throat sign. Philip nodded sheepishly and quickly wound up the call. Walking back to the bed, he said. 'I'm afraid I've got to go. There's been another murder.'