Lethal Intent

Four

Neil McIlhenney sat bolt upright. The room was cool, yet he was perspiring, and breathing hard. He felt his heart thumping, seeming to play a rapid, but thankfully steady tattoo against his ribcage.

Louise stirred beside him, but did not waken. He slipped out of bed and went into their bathroom, feeling his way in the darkness and not switching on the light until the door had closed behind him. He stared at his naked self in the mirror, then rubbed the stubble on his chin, as if he was reassuring himself that he was still in the world, that he could still experience ordinary sensations.

As he looked, he saw that his arms and shoulders were glistening, and that the hair on his chest and belly had spun itself into damp curls, black but heavily grey-flecked. He picked up a towel and dried himself off, then brushed his teeth and rinsed his mouth with cold water. When he felt sufficiently composed, he yanked the cord to turn off the mirror's illumination and opened the door once more.

His wife was sitting up in bed as he stepped back into the room. Her reading light was switched on and she was looking at him anxiously, her arms wrapped round his pillow, pressing it to her breasts. 'What's up, love?' she asked, quietly. 'This is damp. Are you feeling ill?'

He shook his head. 'I'm fine: bad dream, that was all. I shouldn't have had that cheese.'

She grinned, reassured. 'When I was a kid, my poor old dad used to warn me, "Eat cheese for supper and you'll see your granny", meaning you'll have dreams. My granny died when I was five and I missed her like hell, so I used to sneak into the kitchen before I went to bed and pinch a big lump of Cheddar, or whatever else was in the fridge. It didn't work, though: I never did see her.' She paused as he slipped back under the duvet. 'Did you?'

'Did I what?'

'See your granny?'

He reached out and ruffled her hair, then took the pillow from her. 'Both my grannies are still alive,' he reminded her. 'I don't need to use dairy products to conjure up visions of them.'

'What did you see, then?'

A corner of his mouth twisted in a slight grimace. 'I don't think I want to talk about it'

'Scary?'

'Weird.' He gave a shiver, remembering the coldness.

She dug him gently in the ribs with an elbow. 'Go on, tell me. You'll feel better. I used to go to this shrink who made me tell him all my dreams.'

As he looked at her, a broad, incredulous smile spread across his face. 'Why the hell did you need to go to a shrink?'

Lou McIlhenney gave a small frown. 'For the same reason most people go: my head was messed up. It was after my first marriage went down the toilet. I was depressed, lonely, and drinking a bit. My work suffered in the process. For a while I tried to rebuild my confidence with casual affairs, but I found I couldn't do casual.' She shrugged her shoulders. 'So I did what any self-respecting actress would do in the circs: I got the name of a Harley Street psychiatrist from my doctor, and I went into therapy.'

Neil smiled again. 'It worked, that's for sure.'

She snorted. 'Two years and God knows how many thousand quid later it worked. The gremlins were gone and I started to do my best work.' And then she smiled. 'I still suffered from occasional self-doubt, though. Do you know when I realised for sure that I was cured?'

'Tell me.'

'The day I met you: when I went to dinner at Bob and Sarah's and you were there in the fourth chair, I said to myself, "Louise Bankier, this is your moment. You're going to have him." And I did.'

He laughed at her honesty. 'You were that sure of yourself?'

'He really was a very good shrink.'

'And he made you tell him your dreams?'

She nodded.

'All of them?'

'Every one, in all the detail I could remember.'

'Pervert.'

'That thought did cross my mind, but after a while I could tell him the most intimate things without bothering about it.'

'Did you ever worry about your dreams winding up in the Sunday scandal sheets?'

'No. He taped all our sessions but he only worked from notes. He gave me all the tapes; it was his way of making me sure he'd have nothing to gain and everything to lose by leaking to the press.'

'I can see that,' Neil conceded.

'So tell me your dream. I promise I won't sell it to the Sunday Mail.'

'They wouldn't buy it. Just your common or garden nightmare, that was all.' The vision was still vivid in his mind; he recounted it for her, step by step, until the moment when he snapped awake.

'I see,' she murmured, thoughtfully, when he was finished.

'So what's your verdict, Dr Lou?'

'Did you ever have any experiences as a child that related to the dream?'

His forehead wrinkled for a second or two, and then his eyebrows rose. 'Now you mention it, yes,' he conceded. 'When I was a kid, like six or seven, we had a very big snowfall and it lay for a while. My pals and I decided we'd build an igloo in my back garden, as you do. It was a real pro job, just like the Eskimos have, only it wasn't quite as good as we thought. I was inside it on my own when it collapsed. I was buried in snow and ice and I thought I was going to suffocate in it. Maybe I would have too, but my dad saw it happen and he hauled me out.'

'There you are, then,' said Louise triumphantly. 'Classic case: I'm pregnant, and you're worried about something like that ever happening to our child. No doubt about it.'

'Mmm.' Neil scratched his chin. 'A couple of small doubts, maybe. I've already got two kids, and I never had that dream or anything like it when Olive was pregnant with either Lauren or Spencer.'

'No, but…'

He held up a hand. 'Something else,' he said. 'And this is the scary bit. The woman in the car, the woman driving: it was Olive. It was my first wife, and she took me up there and left me to my death.'