A police interrogation is a performance with three acts. The first introduces the characters; the second provides the conflict and the third the resolution.
This interrogation has been different. For the past hour Veronica Cray has been trying to make sense of Patrick Fuller’s rambling answers and bizarre rationalisations. He denies being in Leigh Woods. He denies seeing Christine Wheeler. He denies being discharged from the army. He seems ready to deny his own history. At the same time he can suddenly, inexplicably, become absorbed in a single fact and focus on it, ignoring everything else.
I watch from behind the one-way glass, feeling like a voyeur. The interview suite is new, refurbished in pastel colours with padded chairs and seaside prints on the walls. Patrick stalks the four corners with his head down and hands at his sides as though he’s lost his bus fare. DI Cray asks him to sit down. He does but only for a moment. Each new question sets him in motion again.
He reaches for his back pocket, looking for something- a comb perhaps. It’s no longer there. Then he runs his fingers through his hair, combing it back. He has a scar on his left hand, an ‘x’ that stretches from the base of his thumb and smallest finger to either edge of his wrist.
A lawyer from Legal Services has been summoned to advise him. Middle-aged and business-like, she tucks her briefcase between her knees and sits with a large foolscap pad beneath her clasped hands. Patrick doesn’t seem impressed. He wanted a man.
‘Please instruct your client to sit down,’ demands Veronica Cray.
‘I’m trying,’ she says.
‘And tell him to stop pissing about.’
‘He is co-operating.’
‘That’s an interesting interpretation of it.’
The two women don’t like each other. Perhaps there’s a history. The DI produces a sealed plastic evidence bag.
‘I’m going to ask you again, Mr Fuller, have you seen this phone before?’
‘No.’
‘It was recovered from your flat.’
‘Then it must be mine.’
‘Where did you get it?’
‘Finders keepers.’
‘Are you saying you found it?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘Where were you on Friday afternoon?’
‘I went to the beach.’
‘It was raining.’
He shakes his head.
‘Was anyone with you?’
‘My children.’
‘You were looking after your children.’
‘Jessica collected shells in her bucket and George made a sand-castle. George can’t swim but Jessica is learning. They paddled.’
‘How old are your children?’
‘Jessica is six and I think George is four.’
‘You don’t seem sure?’
‘Of course, I’m sure.’
The DI tries to pin him down on the details, asking what time he arrived at the beach, what time they left and who they might have seen. Fuller describes a typical outing on a summer’s day, buying ice-cream, sitting on the shingles and queuing for donkey rides.
It is a persuasive performance, yet impossible to believe. A dozen counties had flood warnings on Friday. There were gales along the Atlantic Coast and in the Severn.
Veronica Cray is becoming frustrated. It would be easier if Fuller said nothing at all- at least she could unpack the evidence logically and build a wall of facts to hold him. Instead his excuses are constantly changing and forcing her to backtrack.
The phenomenon is not so strange to me. I have seen it in my consulting room- patients who construct elaborate conceits and fictions, unwilling to be tied down.
The interview is suspended. There is silence in the anteroom. Monk and Roy exchange glances and lip-bitten smiles, taking perverse pleasure in seeing their boss fail. I doubt if it happens very often.
DI Cray hurls a clipboard against a wall. Papers flutter to the floor.
‘I don’t think he’s being consciously deceitful,’ I say. ‘He’s trying to be helpful.’
‘The guy is madder than a clown’s dick.’
‘It could be that he can’t remember.’
‘What a load of shite!’
I stand awkwardly before her. Monk studies the polished toes of his shoes. Safari Roy examines his thumbnail. Fuller has been taken downstairs to a holding cell.
A brain injury could explain his behaviour. He was wounded in Afghanistan. A roadside bomb. The only way to be certain is to get his medical records or to give him a psych evaluation.
‘Let me talk to him.’
There is a beat of silence. ‘What good is that to us?’
‘I’ll tell you if he’s a legitimate suspect.’
‘He’s already a suspect. He had Christine Wheeler’s phone.’
‘I want to treat Fuller like a patient. No recordings. No videos. Off the record.’
Anger ripples across Veronica Cray’s shoulders. Monk and Roy give me a pitying look, as though I’m a condemned man. The DI begins listing reasons why I’m not allowed in the interview suite. If Patrick Fuller is charged with murder, he could use my interview as a loophole and try to escape prosecution because due process wasn’t followed.
‘What if we call it a psychological evaluation?’
‘Fuller would have to agree.’
‘I’ll talk to his lawyer.’
Fuller’s Legal Aid solicitor listens to my arguments and we agree on the rules of engagement. Nothing her client says can be used against him unless he agrees to be interviewed on the record.
Patrick is brought upstairs again. I watch from the darkness of the observation room as he walks carefully across the interview suite, turns and retraces his steps, trying to put his feet on exactly the same squares of carpet. He hesitates. He has forgotten how many steps it is to get back to where he started. Closing his eyes, he tries to picture his steps. Then he moves again.
I open the door and startle him. For a moment I am too much to fathom. Then he remembers me. His concern is replaced by a series of small covert grimaces, as though he’s fine-tuning his facial muscles until he’s happy with the face he shows the world.
The Legal Aid solicitor follows me into the room and takes a seat in the corner.
‘Hello, Patrick.’
‘My dog.’
‘Your dog is being looked after.’
‘What did you see on the floor a minute ago?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You didn’t want to step on something.’
‘The mousetraps.’
‘Who put the mousetraps on the floor?’
He looks at me hopefully. ‘You can see them?’
‘How many can you see?’
He points, counting. ‘Twelve, thirteen…’
‘I’m a psychologist, Patrick. Have you ever talked to someone like me before?’
He nods.
‘After you were wounded?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you have nightmares?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘What are your nightmares about?’
‘Blood.’ He takes a seat and stands again almost immediately.
‘Blood?’
‘First I see Leon’s body, lying on top of me. His eyes have rolled back in his head. There’s blood everywhere. I know he’s dead. I have to push him off me. Spike is trapped underneath the chassis of the troop carrier, pinned by his legs. No way we can lift it off him. Bullets are bouncing off the metal like raindrops and we’re scrambling for cover.
‘Spike is screaming his head off because his legs are crushed and the carrier is on fire. And we all know that when the flames reach the arsenal the whole thing’s going to blow.’
Patrick is breathing in rapid, truncated gasps and his forehead is beaded with sweat.
‘Is that what happened in real life, Patrick?’
He doesn’t answer.
‘Where is Spike now?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘Did he die in the contact?’
Patrick nods.
‘How did he die?’
‘He was shot.’
‘Who shot him?’
He whispers. ‘I did.’
His lawyer wants to intervene. I raise my hand slightly, wanting just a moment more.
‘Why did you shoot Spike?’
‘A bullet had hit him in the chest, but he was still screaming. The flames had reached his legs. We couldn’t get him out. We were pinned down. We were ordered to pull back. He screamed out to me. He was begging… dying.’
Patrick’s facial muscles are twisting in anguish. He covers his face with his hands and peers at me through the splayed fingers.
‘It’s OK,’ I tell him. ‘Just relax.’ I pour him a cup of water.
He reaches forward and needs two hands to raise the cup to his lips. His eyes are watching me as he drinks. Then he notices my left hand. My thumb and forefinger are pill rolling again. It’s a detail he seems to register and store away.
‘I’m going to ask you some questions, Patrick. It’s not a test, but I just need you to concentrate.’
He nods.
‘What day is today?’
‘Friday.’
‘What is the date?’
‘The sixteenth.’
‘Actually it’s the fifth. What month?’
‘August.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘It’s hot outside.’
‘You’re not dressed for a hot day.’
He looks at his clothes, almost surprised. I then notice his eyes lift and move slightly to focus on something behind me. I keep talking to him about the weather and turn my head far enough to see the wall at my back. A framed print is hanging beside the mirror- a beachside scene with children playing on the shingles and paddling. There is a Ferris wheel in the background and an ice-cream barrow.
Patrick constructed his entire alibi from a single scene. The picture helped him fill in the details that he couldn’t remember about last Friday. That’s why he was so sure it was a hot day and that he took his children to the beach.
Patrick has a problem with his contextual memory. He retains snippets of autobiographical information, but cannot anchor them to a specific time or place. The memories drift loose. Images collide. That’s why he tells rambling stories and avoids eye contact. He sees mousetraps on the floor.
Reality is under constant review in his head. When a question comes along that he feels he should be able to answer, he looks for clues and creates a new script to fit them. The photograph on the wall gave him a framework and he spun a story around it, ignoring anomalies such as the rain or the time of year.
If Patrick were a patient, I’d make an appointment schedule and ask to see his medical records. I might even organise a brain scan, which would probably show a right hemisphere brain injury- some sort of haemorrhage. At the very least he is suffering from post-traumatic stress. That’s why he confabulates and invents, constructing fantastic stories to explain things that he can’t remember. He does it inadvertently. Automatically.
‘Patrick,’ I say gently, ‘if you don’t remember what happened last Friday, just tell me. I won’t think you foolish. Everybody forgets things. A phone was found in your house that belonged to a woman who was at Leigh Woods.’
He looks at me blankly. I know the memory is there. He just can’t access the information.
‘She was naked,’ I say. ‘She was wearing a yellow raincoat and high heel shoes.’
His eyes stop wandering and rest on mine. ‘Her shoes were red.’
‘Yes.’
It’s as though the wheels of a fruit machine have lined up inside his head. The scattered fragments of memory and emotion are falling into place.
‘You saw her?’
He hesitates. This time it will be a genuine lie. I don’t give him the opportunity.
‘She was on the path.’
He nods.
‘Was she with anyone?’
He shakes his head.
‘What was she doing?’
‘Walking.’
‘Did you speak to her?’
‘No.’
Did you follow her?’
He nods. ‘That’s all I did.’
‘How did you get her phone?’
‘I found it.’
‘Where?’
‘She left it in her car.’
‘So you took it?’
‘It was unlocked,’ he mumbles, unable to think of an excuse. ‘I was worried about her. I thought she might be in trouble.’
‘Then why didn’t you call the police.’
‘I-I-I didn’t have a phone.’
‘You had hers.’
His face is a riot of tics and grimaces. He is on his feet, pacing back and forth, no longer avoiding the mousetraps. He says something. I don’t catch it. I ask him to say it again.
‘The battery was flat. I had to buy a charger. It cost me ten quid.’
He looks at me hopefully. ‘Do you think they’ll give me a refund?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I only used it a few times.’
‘Listen to me, Patrick. Focus on me. The woman in the park, did you talk to her?’
His face is twisting again.
‘What did she say, Patrick? It’s important.’
‘Nothing.’
‘Don’t shake your head, Patrick. What did she say?’
He shrugs, looking around the room, trying to find another picture to help him.
‘I don’t want you to make it up, Patrick. If you don’t remember, just tell me. But it’s really important. Think hard.’
‘She asked about her daughter. She wanted to know if I’d seen her.’
‘Did she say why?’
He shakes his head.
‘Is that all she said?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What happened then?’
He shrugs. ‘She ran away.’
‘Did you follow her?’
‘No.’
‘Did she have a phone with her, Patrick? Was she talking to someone?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know. I couldn’t hear.’
I carry on with the questioning, trying to build a framework of truths. Without warning, Patrick stops and gazes at the floor. Raising one foot, he steps over a ‘mousetrap’. I’ve lost him again. He’s somewhere else.
‘Maybe we should give him a break,’ says the lawyer.
Outside the interview room, I sit down with the detectives and explain why I think Patrick confabulates and invents stories.
‘So he’s brain damaged,’ says Safari Roy, trying to paraphrase my clinical descriptions.
‘Doesn’t make him innocent,’ adds Monk.
‘Is this a permanent condition?’ asks Veronica Cray.
‘I don’t know. Patrick retains kernels of information but he can’t anchor them to a specific time or place. His memories drift loose. If you show him a photograph and prove to him that he was in Leigh Woods, he will accept it. But that doesn’t mean he remembers being there.’
‘Which means he could still be our man.’
‘That’s very unlikely. You heard him. His head is crowded with snatches of conversations, images, his wife, his children, things that happened before he was injured. These things are bouncing around in his head without any sense or order. He can function. He can hold down a simple job. But whenever his memory fails him, he makes something up.’
‘So we won’t get a statement,’ says the DI, dismissively. ‘We don’t need one. He admitted to being at the scene. He had her phone.’
‘He didn’t make her jump.’
DI Cray cuts me off. ‘With all due respect, Professor, I know you’re good at what you do but you have no idea what this man is capable of.’
‘You can think I’m wrong, but that’s no reason to quit thinking. I’m giving my opinion. You’re making a mistake.’
With an air of finality the DI straightens a stack of papers and begins issuing instructions. She wants the manager of the mobile phone shop and his assistant brought to the station.
‘Patrick locked her car,’ I say.
Veronica Cray stops in mid-sentence. ‘What does that have to do with anything?’
‘It just strikes me as an odd thing for a killer to do.’
‘Did you ask him why?’
‘He said he didn’t want anyone stealing it.’