The Genesis Secret

10

DCI Forrester sat back on the sofa. He was in a cosy sitting room just off Muswell Hill, in suburban north London. He was seeing his therapist.

It was kind of cliched, he supposed. The policeman with the neuroses, the fucked-up cop. But he didn't mind. The sessions helped.

'So how was your week?' His therapist was sixty-something, Dr Janice Edwards. Posh in a nice way. Forrester liked the fact she was quite old. It meant he could just spill the beans, achieve catharsis, talk without any emotional distraction. And he needed to talk. Even if it cost fifty pounds an hour. Sometimes he talked about his job, sometimes about his wife, and sometimes about other stuff. Darker stuff. Serious stuff. Yet he never really got to the heart of it. His daughter. Maybe one day he would.

'So,' Dr Edwards said again, somewhere behind Forrester's head. 'Tell me your week…'

Staring at the window, blankly, his hands resting on his stomach, Forrester started telling his therapist about the Craven Street case. The caretaker, the mutilation, the weirdness. 'We've got no witnesses. They got out clean. They used leather gloves but Forensics can't find any DNA. The knife wound is useless. A standard blade. We didn't lift a single print.' He rubbed his head. The therapist murmured interest. He carried on. 'I did get excited when I found out the cellar they dug up was once…well they found some old bones there years back…but it wasn't really a lead, it was just a coincidence, I think. But I still have no idea what they were looking for. Maybe it was a prank, just a student prank that went wrong, maybe they were high on drugs…' Forrester realized he was meandering, but he didn't especially care. 'And that's where I am. I've got a guy with no tongue in hospital and the trail has gone cold and…well anyway that's been my week, a pretty shit week, and that's all really…you know…' He tailed off.

Sometimes in therapy this was what happened. You didn't say much of importance, and then you dried up. But then Forrester felt a surge of grief and anger-from nowhere. Maybe it was the darkness falling outside, maybe it was the quietness in the room. Maybe it was the thought of that poor man beaten and abused. But now he really did want to talk about something much deeper, something much darker. The real stuff. It was time. Maybe it was time to talk about Sarah.

But silence filled the room. Forrester thought about his daughter. He closed his eyes. He lay back. And he thought about Sarah. The trusting blue eyes. Her giddy laughter. Her first words. Apple. App-ull. Their first child. A beautiful daughter. And then…

And then. Sarah. Oh, Sarah.

He rubbed his eyes. He couldn't talk about it. Not yet. He could think about it: he thought about it all the time. But he couldn't talk about it. Yet.

She had been seven years old. She'd just gone wandering off in the dark, one winter night. She'd just gone wandering off, out of the door, no one was watching. And then they'd searched and they searched, and the police and the neighbours and everyone searched…

And they'd found her. In the middle of the road, under the motorway bridge. And no one knew if it was murder or if she had just fallen off the bridge. Because the body was so mashed. Run over by so many cars in the dark. The lorries and cars probably thought they were driving over a tyre.

Forrester was sweating. He hadn't thought about Sarah this deeply in months, maybe years. He knew he needed to release this. To get it out. But he couldn't. He half turned and said, 'I'm sorry, Doctor. I just can't. I still think about it every hour of every day, you know? But…' He gulped. The words wouldn't come. But the thoughts were racing. Every day he wondered, even now: did someone find her and rape her and then drop her off the bridge or did she just fall-but if she just fell how did it happen? Sometimes he thought he knew. Sometimes in his heart of hearts he suspected she must have been murdered. He was a cop. He knew this stuff. But there were no witnesses, no evidence. Maybe they would never know. He sighed and looked across at the therapist. She was serene. Serene and sixty-five years old and grey-haired and smiling quietly.

'It doesn't matter.' She said. 'One day…'

Forrester nodded. He smiled at their catchphrase. Maybe one day. 'I just find it hard sometimes. My wife gets depressed and she turns away at night. We never have sex from one month to the next, but at least we are alive.'

'And you have your son.'

'Yes. Yes we have him. I guess sometimes you have to be grateful for what is, rather than what isn't. I mean. What do alcoholics say in AA? You got to fake it to make it. All that bullshit. I guess that's what I've got to do. Just do that. Pretend I'm OK sometimes.' He stopped again and the silence echoed around the warm sitting room. At last he sat up. His hour was up. All he could hear was traffic, muffled by the windows and the curtains.

'Thanks, Dr Edwards.'

'Please. As I said, call me Janice. You've been coming here six months.'

'Thanks, Janice.'

She smiled. 'I'll see you next week?'

He stood. They shook hands, politely. Forrester felt cleansed and slightly lighter in spirit.

He drove back to Hendon in a calm and pleasantly pensive mood. Another day. He'd got through another day. Without drinking or shouting.

The house was full of his son's noise when he keyed the door. His wife was in the kitchen watching the news on TV. The smell of pasta and pesto wafted through. It was OK. Things were OK. In the kitchen his wife kissed him and he said he'd been to a session and she smiled and seemed relatively content.

Before supper Forrester went outside into the garden and rolled a tiny spliff of grass. He felt no guilt as he did it. He smoked the weed, standing on his patio, exhaling the blue smoke into the starry sky, and sensed his neck-muscles unknotting. Then he went back into the house and lay on the floor of the sitting room and helped his son with a puzzle. And then there was a phone call.

In the kitchen his wife was sieving the penne. Hot steam. The smell of pesto.

'Hello?'

'DCI?'

Forrester recognized his junior's slight Finnish accent immediately. 'Boijer, I'm just about to eat.'

'Sorry, sir, but I got this strange call…'

'Yeah?'

'That friend of mine-Skelding, you know, Niall.'

Forrester thought for a moment, then he remembered: the tall guy who worked on the Home Office murder database. They'd all had a drink once.

'Yeah, I remember. Skelding. Works on HOLMES.'

'That's right. Well he just called me and said they've got a new homicide, the Isle of Man.'

'And?'

'Some guy's been killed. Very nasty. In a big house.'

'Long way away, the Isle of Man…'

Boijer agreed. Forrester watched his wife sauce the penne with the vivid green pesto. It looked slightly like bile; but it smelled good. Forrester coughed impatiently. 'As I said, Boijer, my wife's just made a very nice dinner and I-'

'Yes, sorry, sir, but the thing is, before this guy was killed, the attackers cut a symbol into his chest.'

'You mean…'

'Yes, sir. That's right. A Star of David.'