The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

MANDELBROT’S PATTERNS by Keith McCarthy

He was sitting in the bathroom looking at her corpse, as if it were the most normal thing in the world…

The phone’s call was magnified by the dark of the night, a demanding intrusion that was not going to be ignored.

First there was a sigh, then a hand reached out for the phone and a deep, almost husky male voice asked, “Yes?” There was a pause. “Yes, that’s right… Where?” Another of the same. “Who?” This with some interest. “You’re sure?… Okay.” Once more, nothing was said, before, “No, don’t worry. I’ll contact her. I think she’s visiting her mother.”

The phone was placed back on its stand and there was silence again, as if the room were empty.

Then softly…

“Trouble?” This voice was female.

“Dead woman. Found in the bath. Apparently her wrists were slit.”

“Suicide? What’s it got to do with us?”

“It’s Kate Reed, the wife of Dr. Phil Reed.”

For the first time, there was a sense of interest in the room.

“Reed? The forensic pathologist?”

“The same. He was actually the one who phoned in with the call.”

After a moment, “I still don’t see why they have to phone a detective sergeant in the middle of the night.”

“They were after his detective inspector.”

“So they found her, although they don’t know that. I still don’t see why they were after either of us.”

An unearthly yowling sounded in the distance as fox called to fox between the dustbins, and with a sigh, the answer was given.

“Apparently he sat there and watched her do it.”

They spent the remaining hours of darkness at a very plush five-bedroom detached house in the suburbs, feelings of déja vu fighting with feelings of boredom. They had seen the body naked in the bath, the rose-pink water almost completely hiding her embarrassment, a pallid face showing a degree of relaxation that no living human could ever hope to assume. There was no evidence of a fight, nothing even to suggest an argument, a row, or even a small tiff. Their examination of the house had revealed no money problems, no evidence of extra-marital affairs, nothing that suggested anything other than an ordinary marriage.

“I still don’t believe it.”

“Believe it, Hannah. Believe it.”

“Phil Reed is not a murderer.”

Sam had learned to have great respect for Hannah Angelman’s abilities in the seven months he had known her, but this time he thought that she was wrong.

“But when she was found, he was sitting in the bathroom just looking at her corpse, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. The scalpel was on the side of the bath. He’d been drinking wine-had a couple of glasses. There was even a half empty glass of wine on the side of the bath by the body, as if to make out that she’d joined in.”

“But has he admitted to murder?”

“He hasn’t said anything much. He wants to talk to you.”

She leaned back in her chair, looking toward Sam as he stood in front of her desk, yet not seeing him.

“Are we sure the house was secure?”

“Completely.”

“So there was no possibility of third-party involvement?”

“None whatsoever.”

Another possibility excluded, she reflected that the options were running out for Dr. Philip Reed.

Outside the window of her office some seagulls, ranging far from their usual home around the Gloucester docks, called raucously as they hovered in the swirling spring air. As if called by them, she rose from her chair and went to stare out the window at the constant traffic of Lansdowne Road; the morning rush into Cheltenham was just beginning.

“It’s an odd way to murder someone… maybe it is suicide.”

“With him watching? Anyway, his fingerprints are all over the handle of the scalpel, which is clear evidence that he took an active part in things. I don’t know what else you need. Accept it, Hannah. He killed her.”

“Other than the cuts to her wrists, was there any evidence of trauma to the body?”

“The pathologist says the only thing he can find are two tiny puncture marks, one by each of the cuts.”

“Nothing else? No ligature marks? No head injury?”

“No.”

“That would suggest that she allowed him to do it.”

“Unless she was drugged. Perhaps that’s what the puncture marks mean; or perhaps he put something in her wine. We’ll only know for sure when we get the toxicology back in a day or two.”

Hannah turned back to him. “No, she was complicit. At worst this was assisted suicide.”

Sam snorted. “Assisted and spectated, then. She was naked in the bath, Hannah. He must have sat there and watched her die.”

“Poor sod.”

He couldn’t believe what he had heard. “Why do you say that? After what he’s just done, I don’t think he deserves any sympathy.”

“There’s a lot of history in that marriage, Sam.”

“I think he drugged her while she was in the bath-hence her glass of wine-then slit both her wrists and sat and watched her while she bled to death. That’s horrible, that’s unforgivable. No amount of history comes anywhere near to excusing that.”

“It might explain it, though.”

“I don’t see how.”

She turned abruptly around. “Why don’t we go and find out? Where is he?”

“Room three. Fisher’s with him.”

As they walked down the stairs to the interview rooms, Sam said, “He had everything. Large house, big car, beautiful wife, and now he’s thrown it all down the drain. What drives a man to do that? Surely it can’t just have been a row.”

“Which is why I’m having a problem with this. Something tells me that there’s more to this than is at present apparent.”

It was when they had nearly reached the interview room that Sam asked, “What did you mean by ‘history’?”

“They had a child, but it died after a few weeks. Internal abnormalities or something. It was a blessing, really.”

“Oh.”

“They never had any more luck. Phil and his wife had many good things in their lives, but I don’t think they ever considered them adequate compensation. I look at Phil and I see a lovely man who’s as crippled as effectively as if he were paraplegic.”

It was the tone as much as the words that impressed Sam. He asked with a slight smile that hid concern, “Have you got a thing for him, Hannah?”

She laughed. “There’s no need for jealousy, Sam.”

For Sam’s liking, this was altogether too public a place for such sentiments. “Not so loud. I thought we were being discreet. You know what this place is like. There’s always someone listening.”

“Oh, of course.” She lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “Mustn’t have a D.I. sleeping with her sergeant. The world might end.”

“It might… for us.”

She stopped quite abruptly so that he had to turn slightly to face her. She asked, “Would that bother you?”

“Of course it would.”

“I’m not just another conquest?”

He looked around, as if the painted stone walls might hide camouflaged eavesdroppers. “Of course not!”

She examined him for a brief moment, twitched a smile, then sighed, “Good.”

He stepped toward her and said in a low tone, “I mean it, Hannah.”

A nod, but one that was not as certain as it might have been. “Good.”

She began walking again and he fell into step. “So why are you so convinced about Phil Reed’s innocence?” he asked.

She had to think about that one. Eventually, all she could produce was: “I’ve just known him a long time. He’s not a killer.”

“Wasn’t maybe. He is now.”

“Is that steak okay? It certainly looks good.”

Her mouth full, Kate nodded at once. “Mmm… delicious.”

He thought, You’re beautiful. Even a blind man would be able to tell that.

“And the wine? You like the wine?”

“I certainly do.”

Reed smiled. “So I should hope, considering the price.”

He hadn’t really been able to afford the restaurant-if truth be told, he felt out of place in it-but he had things to say tonight.

“Well it’s very good… mmm… very good indeed.”

“I thought so.”

The couple at the table next to them were in their late sixties and would not have looked out of place at an imperial ball; he suspected that they were looking secretly askance at the whippersnappers so uncomfortably close to them, perhaps unable to believe that they had let people in who were not related to the Lord Lieutenant of the County.

“So what’s the excuse for such extravagance?”

“Do I need an excuse?”

“Well… it’s hardly in character.”

He pretended outrage. “How dare you! I’ll have you know, I’ve been known to spend three pounds on a bottle of wine.”

“And the rest!” Her smile gilded a lily and somehow improved it.

“Anyone would think I’m a cheapskate.”

She leaned forward conspiratorially. “Wouldn’t they just?”

“Oh! So that’s what you think, is it?” He turned his face away, corners of his mouth turned downward. If he hoped for sympathy, it was a hope that was doomed from the off.

“Me and a few thousand others…”

There was no background music in the restaurant, no violins. As he let the silence between them grow, the chattering around them intruded.

His timing was good, though.

“So you wouldn’t want to marry me?” The tone-hurt innocence-was also good.

“What?”

Feigned surprise. “You wouldn’t want to marry me. What with me being a cheapskate.”

As she realized what he had said, her face erupted with bright delight. “Oh… Oh, God…”

“Fair enough,” he went on, apparently oblivious of her reaction. “I’ll strike you off the list and then move on…”

“You mean it?”

He shrugged. “It was only an idea. It doesn’t matter.”

She reached out, grasped his hand, as if to make him realize that she had something to say. “Of course I do! My God! Of course I do. I thought you’d never ask.”

He continued in the same slightly distracted tone, “Only, now that I’ve got a consultant’s job…”

“You what?” Her voice rose appreciably, and Lord and Lady Muck next door did not like it.

“Didn’t I tell you? I’ve been appointed as consultant pathologist at Saint Benjamin’s. I start in three months.”

“That’s fantastic!”

“Is that a ‘yes’ to marriage, then?”

“Of course it is!”

He shook his head. “You just want to marry a doctor. You’re a gold digger.”

At last he smiled, and after a moment’s pause, she sighed huge relief.

“You bet,” she said.

“Interview commencing at eight twenty A.M., Friday, the seventh of June 2006. Present are Dr. Philip Reed, Detective Sergeant Sam Rich, and Detective Inspector Hannah Angelman. Dr. Reed has been cautioned but has declined to take up his right to have a solicitor present.”

Hannah smiled at the man across the desk. “Hello, Phil.”

He bowed his head. His demeanor was one of exhaustion, but his smile was genuine. “Hannah.”

I’m only the pathologist, the one who has to come face to face with whatever atrocity someone has brought upon another.”

“You know Sam?”

“I think we’ve met a couple of times.”

She relaxed back in her chair as if she were in a coffee shop, as if this were a meeting between old mates from university. “I must say, I never expected to find us in this position.”

His head bobbed from side to side. “A life without surprise would be a poor life indeed. It might, though, be marginally better than one that contains too many of them.”

“Or ones that are too big.”

He acknowledged this graciously. “Indeed.”

“How long have we known each other, Phil?”

“Oh, I suppose it must be seven, maybe eight years.”

She nodded. “I thought I knew you.”

“No human being ever truly knows another.”

“But I think I can usually tell the killers. God knows I’ve known a few.”

Reed closed his eyes. Sam thought that he looked ready to sleep for a thousand years. His jacket was creased and looked tired, his shirt collar grimed. He said slowly, didactically, “Killing and killers aren’t a specific type, Hannah. Even I know that, and I’m only the meat man, the poor blood infantry, the pathologist. I’m only the one who has to come face to face with whatever atrocity someone has brought upon another.”

“So what happened last night?”

He explained with brutal simplicity, “My wife died.”

“That we know. It’s what we don’t know that I need you to tell me, and you’re the only one who can.”

Sam thought for several seconds that he was showing no emotion at all, but then he realized his mistake. Reed’s eyes were aqueous, sparkling despite the gloom of the surroundings. “No one on the outside knows what goes on between four walls.”

“But you were on the inside.”

He sighed, and with perfect timing a single tear tracked down his right cheek. “Yes.”

“So tell me what happened.”

Now he drew in breath, a ragged, almost juddering sound. “I thought it would all be straightforward. I thought that it would be an ending.”

“And isn’t it?”

“No.”

Sam said in a low tone, “It was for your wife.”

Reed seemed surprised that anyone else was in the room. “Yes,” he agreed.

Hannah asked, “How do you feel about that, Phil?”

“How do you expect me to feel? My wife’s dead.”

“Who’s fault is that?”

He even managed to smile. “On the face of it, mine.”

“Is that a confession?”

At which he was given pause. “Ah, thereby is suspended a very interesting tale.”

“Did you kill Kate?”

His reply might have been to a question about the answer to number twenty-one down. “I’ve been thinking long and hard about that. I suppose, taking everything into account, I would have to admit that I bear some responsibility for her death, yes… Yet, no. There was a degree of inevitability about the events that culminated in Kate’s death.”

“So you admit that you slit her wrists?”

He took this, considered it, then admitted, “Yes, she asked me to.”

Sam was incredulous. “She asked you to? She asked you to grab hold of her hands and slice through her wrists?”

“Something like that.”

“And then you sat there? You’re asking us to believe that she was quite happy for you to watch her die?”

Reed protested. “We talked. We remembered the good times that we’d had together.”

Sam had heard stories on Jackanory that were more believable. “You’re asking us to believe that you just sat there while she sat in a bath of water, completely naked, and bled to death?”

“She was my wife. I had seen her sans culottes before.”

“You know what I’m saying.”

“Yes, Detective Sergeant, and I am asking you to believe what I’m saying. I loved Kate. I wouldn’t murder her.”

“Yet you admit that you slit her wrists.”

“That’s right.”

“What reason would she have for suicide? An attractive woman, a happy marriage… it was a happy marriage, wasn’t it?”

Reed smiled. “Are any truly happy?”

“We’re talking about yours.”

Reed looked up at him, tears still bright in his eyes. “Well, since you ask, no it wasn’t… But that wasn’t because we didn’t love each other. Far from it.”

Sam thought that he was onto something. “Why was it unhappy? Was it money? Or was she having an affair? Were you, perhaps?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Then why did you kill her?”

“I…”

Sam wasn’t interested in his protestations. “Come on, Doctor. There’s no point in refusing to tell us. You’re going to be convicted of murder whether you say anything or not. The only difference is whether you get parole sooner rather than later. The Parole Board don’t like people who refuse to accept guilt.”

Reed turned to Sam’s boss. “I didn’t murder Kate, Hannah. I loved her.”

Hannah raised her eyebrows. “So you what? Put her out of her misery?”

Reed might have been about to protest, but instead he paused, then said, “That would be a fair description.”

“But why? What misery did Kate have to be put out of?”

Reed had begun to weep again. For protracted seconds he said nothing, his head bowed low, then he said sadly, “Death.”

“That went well, I think.”

Reed, who was tired, raised a smile as he brought a tray of dirty crockery out to the kitchen. “It was superb. The desserts were brilliant.”

“Thank you. I thought so.”

“Mind you, it was obvious that Will and Ruth preferred my main.” He decided this with perfect seriousness, apparently after considered study.

Kate was outraged. “You think? You really think?”

Careful not to smile. “I know.”

She shook her head. “You sad man.”

He had put down the tray and was helping his wife unload the dishwasher. “Where does this go?”

“Don’t you know?”

“Obviously not.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself. It just goes to show how little you do around here.”

“Thank you for that. I’ll tell you what, I’ll give up the day job-and the money it brings in-and become a househusband. You can support us.”

She straightened up. She was wearing a figure-hugging bright blue, almost iridescent evening dress. “I may only be a humble publisher,” she pointed out, “but I think you’d notice it if I packed it in tomorrow.”

“I seriously doubt it.”

And, abruptly, her demeanor changed and became almost fearful. “You really think so?”

“What does that mean?”

A slight hesitation now came upon her. “It’s still supposed to be a secret, but Ruth’s just found out that she’s pregnant. She told me this evening.”

“Really?”

“She’s thrilled.”

For a moment, he was blind to her thinking. “I’m not surprised…” It was at this point that he came to realization. “Oh…”

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful? To have a baby?” Something joyous had come into her face, something that frightened him.

“Well… I suppose so.”

“Maybe twins,” she rushed on. “At any rate, we could eventually have two, or maybe three.”

He held up his hands. “Whoa. Hang on there. We’ve haven’t decided on having one yet. We’ve only been married three years.”

“But you want children, don’t you? You’ve always said that you did.”

He felt buffeted by her passion, wanted to swim to shore. “Yes…”

“Well, then.”

He gestured with his hands that she should slow down. He was fully aware that if he just refused she would be upset, there might even be a row, and he didn’t want that. At the same time, he wanted her to calm down, think rationally, where now he was sure that she was driven by instinct. “I just wasn’t expecting things to change quite so quickly. We’ve got a good life together.”

“And we’ll have an even better one when we’re parents. You’ll see.”

“This is all a bit sudden, Kate.”

She couldn’t see it. “After three years?”

“I hope we’re going to be married a long time.”

Despite his wish to avoid confrontation, she was plainly becoming angry at his intransigence. “But what’s the point of marriage without children?”

“For Christ’s sake, marriage is more than just a means of making babies, Kate.”

“But it’s also more than just two people enjoying themselves.” Her voice was rising, a frown beginning to form on her face. “It’s more than just dinner parties, holidays, and good sex.” She stopped. Her next sentences were dug out of a very deep pit of emotion. “I want a child, Phil. I want a baby.”

And before such depth of passion he found too late that he had nowhere to swim to, no safe haven to find. Before it, he was powerless. “Oh, God… Come here, Kate.”

As they held each other, she said through tears against his shoulder, “I didn’t realize before how much I wanted children, but I’ve been unable to get the idea of babies out of my head. And then when Ruth told me…”

Even then, he knew not only that she would have her way, but also that her way would be costly.

“About five months ago, Kate was diagnosed with glioblastome multiforme.”

“And what’s that?”

Reed smiled sadly. “It’s a lovely name, isn’t it? Sounds properly scientific, suitably imposing. Much more impressive than words like cancer, or brain tumor.”

“Is that what it is? Cancer?”

He sighed. “Oh yes. It’s a brain tumor, but it’s a brain tumor and a half… a supercharged brain tumor. A really nasty, aggressive one. Down the microscope, it looks beautiful, but then all the really vicious diseases look like that. It’s one of God’s little jokes.” He paused, then with intense sourness he added, “Full of jokes, is God. Full of them. A right comedian.”

Hannah glanced at Sam, then asked Reed, “But she was being treated…?”

“She was being palliated.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s a euphemism. Have you noticed how we live in a euphemistic society? Everything has to be disguised, hidden, pushed away. Call it by another name and then all will be better. The trouble is, deep down they’re still the same. The unpleasant is still unpleasant, the vicious is still vicious, the untreatable is still untreatable.”

“She was going to die?”

“Oh yes. She was going to die, and how. Maybe in three months, maybe in six.”

Sam thought that he understood. “So you killed her.”

“So I did as she asked,” Reed said with justifiable pedantry.

Sam, though, seemed less impressed by Reed’s aspiration to mercy. “Why like that? Why naked in a bath? Why not tablets? You must have access to any number of tablets.”

“I know about death, Sergeant. It’s my job, God help me. You have to be careful with tablets. They can make you sick, they can make you fit, they can give you unendurable stomach pains. Whereas lying in a warm bath, your lifeblood slowly draining away… there is no pain or vomiting or convulsion. Just slow, lazy unconsciousness from which you never wake up.”

“You say you slit her wrists and that she was quite happy for you to do it. I can’t believe that. It must have hurt like hell. No one would willingly allow someone else-no matter how much they love them-to put a blade through their flesh.”

Reed’s demeanor suggested that he was in front of a particularly dense medical student. “You’re right, of course… unless you use local anaesthetic first.”

Hannah understood. “The puncture marks on her wrists.”

Despite everything, Reed seemed impressed by this piece of professionalism. “They were noticed? Good. Who’s your pathologist?”

“Colin Browne.”

He nodded, then said gently, “Tell him to treat her with dignity.”

“I’m sure he will.”

Sam remained untainted by sentimentalism and intruded on the moment. “Forgive me for being dense, but you’re asking us to believe that you sat there and watched her die? Isn’t that a bit ghoulish?”

“What was I supposed to do? Go and make a cup of tea? Perhaps watch Countdown on the telly?”

“But just to sit there? To watch your own wife, who you claim to love, dying?”

Reed was distracted, the last hours of his wife still playing in his mind. “She didn’t want to die alone. Who does?”

“Is that the only reason?”

“Yes. Why shouldn’t it be?”

“Because I think you enjoyed sitting there while she died.”

He shook his head. “It’s a funny thing. I know all about death. I’m totally familiar with what it does in all its forms; so much so I can work back from the traces that it leaves on the corpse to deduce what form it took when it visited. That’s my skill.” He paused, then said, “Yet I know nothing about dying. That’s as alien to me as the surface of Jupiter.”

Sam thought he understood. “So you treated your own wife’s death as some sort of peep show?”

“No, Sergeant. I did not enjoy the experience one bit.”

“I think you’re sick, Dr. Reed. I think you drugged your wife, slit her wrists, and then sat there drinking wine and enjoying her death.”

At which Reed gave up on his student. “I don’t really care what you think, Sergeant Rich.”

“It’s bad enough that you were willing to cut your wife’s flesh yourself, but then to watch her bleed to death…”

Reed’s head was bowed, as if penitent. “I didn’t want to do it, but when the time came, she couldn’t do it herself.” In a slightly louder voice he asked, “You don’t think I enjoyed doing it, do you?”

“You were fascinated, weren’t you? A little experiment: Slit the wrists and then sit back and watch. Did you make notes? Did you get off on it? Was it worth-”

“Shut up!” Reed suddenly looked up at Sam and rose slightly from his chair, so that they were face to face in a posture of animal aggression.

Hannah said mildly, “Well, perhaps we’ve got as far as we’re going to get for now. Come on, Sam.” They stood up, then to Reed she said, “We’re going to have to charge you, I’m afraid.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll need to discuss with the superintendent whether it’s manslaughter or murder.”

“Perhaps-”

She failed to notice that Reed had something more to say. “And of course, when we get the toxicology and the full autopsy reports back, they may change matters.”

“No doubt, but-”

“Even if you were acting from the best of motives, I’m afraid that what you did was illegal. Manslaughter is the very best you can hope for.”

Reed smiled. “You think so? I would have said that the best would be redemption.”

“Redemption for what, Phil? You claim that what you did was some sort of act of kindness, don’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

“Well, then…” She shrugged. “I think you can switch the tape off now, Sam.”

But at this, Reed said suddenly, “No!”

“No? Why not?”

He took a deep breath. “I want to tell you something more.”

She looked at him, then sat back down slowly. “Really? We don’t often get such voluble people in here.”

“It’s your lucky day, then.”

“What do you want to tell us about, Phil?”

“The swirling patterns.”

This non sequitur found her lost. “I’m sorry?”

Slowly he repeated the phrase. “The swirling patterns.” His tone was dreamy, almost awe filled. “As I cut Kate’s wrists, the blood dripped into the bath water and made swirling pink patterns that faded as they curled around and around…”

She looked again at Sam, saw that he was as intrigued as she. “What about them?”

But Reed, it seemed, was in a circumlocutory mood. “It wasn’t a happy marriage-hadn’t been for some time-but we still loved each other, and as we sat together while she died, we both realized just how much.” His voice trailed away for a moment, before, “Of course, happy marriages are made, not born, and ours was made unhappy by only one thing.”

“Which was?”

“Children. When they’re born, they keep you awake at night, they scream and they puke and they dribble. The lie in their own excrement, and they live entirely for themselves. They suck you dry and then come back for more. They drive you beyond the limits that you thought you could endure, and with a heartlessness that not even the most evil dictator in the world would ever show, they come back for more of you.” And with surprise they saw that there were tears in his eyes, and more than that, for he was crying almost uncontrollably. His last words were almost lost in this flood of sorrow, were uttered in a soft moan. “And we could not have them.”

Over the sound of a late-night news program on the radio, Reed heard what might have been the sound of weeping coming from the en suite shower room. He sat forward in bed. “Kate? Are you all right?”

There was no response. “Kate? What’s wrong?”

The door opened. Kate, dressed only in a long nightdress, came out. Her eyes were red, her manner combative. “What do you think is wrong? The usual, of course. Another bloody period.”

“Oh.” He relaxed back into the pillows. As she climbed in beside him he said gently, “Don’t worry, Kate. It doesn’t matter…”

Which was precisely the wrong thing to say. “Of course it matters! It matters to me anyway.”

“And to me.”

She was on the edge of tears again, but these were not just the tears of sadness and frustration, these were also of anger and suspicion. “Really?”

“Yes, of course.”

She stared at him, examined him as if she had caught a pickpocket. “You’ve never been keen on having a baby.” This had been an unspoken accusation for some months now, the elephant in the corner that was, until now, ignored by both of them.

“Yes, I am.” He protested his innocence as vehemently as he could, but the effect was spoiled when he went on, “It’s just that I’m a bit scared. It’s a big step. And there’s a lot going on at work… I’m under a lot of stress at the moment.”

Kate pounced. “Oh, that again.” In a caricature of his voice she said, “I’m tired, Kate. I’ve had a stressful day.”

“That’s not fair.”

She grabbed hold of the duvet, clenched it as if she could squeeze from it life, life that could be poured into a child. “I want a baby, Phil. I need one.”

He reached across to her, held her. “And we’ll have one, Kate. We just need to be patient.”

She remained stiff in his arms. “We’ve been patient for two years now.”

“Well… sometimes it takes that long.”

His words had no effect. “I’m running out of time, Phil.”

“Nonsense. You’re only thirty-five.”

But she was implacable-or rather, the idea that had been growing inside of her was implacable.

“I want to see someone.”

“What?” Despite asking the question, he knew exactly what she meant. He drew back from her.

“I want to see someone. See if there’s a problem.”

“Of course there isn’t a problem.”

“How do we know that?”

“I told you, it’s just a question of time and patience.”

“But it won’t be long before we run out of time.” She changed subtly from an accuser to a supplicant. “We have to make sure that everything’s all right now.”

“Oh, Kate.”

“Please?”

Every instinct told him that this was a mistake, that he was heading for consequences that he would regret.

But he loved her. Loved her more and more as the anguish within her grew.

After a long while, he said, “Okay, okay. You win. We’ll see someone… make sure everything’s all right.”

“So we went to a specialist. Professor Carter. Nice chap. Bumbling and hearty. Should have been an oncologist-no one would have minded the bad news hearing it from him. I certainly didn’t.”

Hannah asked, “What was the bad news?”

“Kate’s ovaries were misfiring badly. She wasn’t producing many eggs, and even if by some chance she managed to throw one down her fallopian tubes, it was extremely unlikely it would do any good. You see, I’m not up to scratch. I can stand to attention when required, but my little chaps, my storm troopers, are not of the best. A sick and weedy bunch, not at all the kind of recruits who held the British Empire together for so long. I am, to use Professor Carter’s oh-so-charming expression, subfertile.”

“So?”

“So we couldn’t have children, not without help.”

Sam asked tentatively, “But I thought-”

“That we had a child?” Reed’s question was sour enough to scald.

“Yes.”

“We live in a modern society, Sergeant. There are always ways and means, if you have enough money.”

“IVF.”

Reed nodded just once. “In vitro fertilization.” He laughed, this time shaking his head. “Do you know what that entails, Hannah?”

“Tell me.”

“Pots and pots of money, for a start. And pain-mustn’t forget the pain. Injections, examinations, operations. Then there’s the humiliation. Oh, there’s a great big, excruciating, toe-curling dollop of that; it doesn’t stop, either. You think you’re over the worst, and then they find some other way to make you feel like a laboratory rat, like the useless excuse for a man that you really are.”

“But you were successful,” she pointed out.

Reed, though, wasn’t listening. “And even that’s not really the worst.”

“What was the worst?” she asked, although she might just as well have not bothered.

“Five times we went through it. For two long years we counted out our lives with injections and blood samples and disappointments, soaring to the summit of expectation, then plunging into the deepest and darkest of despairs. That was the worst. The continual disappointments.”

“Eventually it worked, though.”

“Yes.” He paused, then sighed. “Eventually we had a child.”

Reed only remembered to ring at the last moment. He had his overcoat on as he waited for her to answer.

“Kate? Listen…”

But Kate had news of her own. “No, Phil. Listen to me. I’ve got-”

“Kate? I’m sorry. I haven’t got much time. I’m afraid I won’t be home until late tonight. They’ve found a body in Nettleton Woods. A teenage boy, and he’s naked.”

Reed’s growing reputation as a forensic pathologist meant that occasions like this were becoming increasingly common. He was aware that it was impinging on Kate, hoped that she understood.

“But-”

“I’m on my way there now, and the police want the autopsy done tonight, so I’ll be lucky if I’m home much before two tomorrow morning.”

He was sure that she understood. The income was not inconsiderable, after all.

“Oh, but-”

“I know, I know. I’m sorry, but it can’t be helped. I really am going to have to go now. Bye, love.”

“But I’ve got some news, Phil-”

Reed, though, was already out of the office, the line already dead. Slowly, Kate pulled the phone away from her ear, then looked at it. In a low voice she said sadly, “Wonderful news… I’m pregnant.”

“We rowed the next day. No, we battled. Nuclear warfare broke out. I was tired-knackered-and Kate, not surprisingly, was crushed. She had planned a big celebration, which I had ruined. Yet how was I to know that she had bought champagne, that for her she had achieved the ultimate, that her sole ambition had been realized? I tried to explain, and then I tried to apologize, but I couldn’t get the tone in my voice right; no matter how hard I tried, it always sounded petulant, defensive, even to my ears. Eventually, of course, my reserves of compassion ran out, and I entered combat. I said that she was being pathetic, that it didn’t matter which day we celebrated. And, in turn, she questioned my commitment to parenthood, said that I had never really wanted a child.

“We sank deeper and deeper into the fray, rummaging into the far corners of our arsenals for older and older weapons to use, ancient slights and mistakes real and imagined resurrected.” He paused for a moment, then as if he had been drinking in a well of memory, he went on, “It lasted all day, and I think that that was the point at which our marriage started to perish, a fruit that had lost its bloom, that had gone beyond the point of maximum sweetness, had slipped into sourness… And you know the worst of it?”

“Tell me.”

“She was right. The news that she was pregnant made me realize that I didn’t want a child. I had enough responsibility in my life, without the worry that a newborn would bring. It had always been Kate’s desire, not mine, and I had deceived myself into thinking that it was a wish that we shared because I loved her, because I wanted to please her.”

“That’s only natural.”

“Maybe, but it’s not enough. I appreciated consciously then for the first time that a baby would only widen the crack that had been gradually appearing between us. I think it was at that moment that I realized how bleak our future was together.”

Sam asked, “So you killed her?”

Reed was tired of Sam’s hostility. “Is one of us being stupid? I told you-she had an incurable brain tumor. That’s why I helped her to die.”

With unmistakable sarcasm, Sam said, “Oh yes. I forgot.”

Hannah asked, “Did you ever come to blows?”

“Never.”

“But the marriage broke down.”

He gave this deep consideration. “No, not really. It just changed. The reality hit me. If I wanted Kate, I would have to accept a baby as well. Without a baby, there would be no Kate.”

“Did that upset you?” This from Sam.

“You keep trying to suggest that Kate and I lived in some sort of conflict, but we didn’t. I had no hatred for Kate, never did have.” He turned to Sam’s superior. “I loved her, Hannah. Surely you understand that?”

Sam pointed out, “Most people who love someone don’t help them to die.”

“There is no greater love. I gave away that which I prized above all else.”

“Which is a jolly useful excuse for a killer.”

Reed made a disgusted noise at the back of his throat, refusing to respond. It was Hannah who asked, “What happened when you realized that things had changed?”

“For the next six months a kind of truce prevailed; no written terms, but in the back of our minds, I think, was the fear that another such skirmish and we might go too far for redemption. For my part, at least I knew that I still loved Kate with just as much conviction as before, and after last night, I know that she still felt the same about me. It was just that we had different needs, wanted different things from our relationship.

“Then her water broke just before Christmas. She was only twenty-five weeks. Until then we had dared to hope that everything was going to be all right, that we would at least be spared a difficult pregnancy.”

“But you weren’t,” guessed Hannah.

“Fat chance.” He took a long breath. “She had to be induced, for fear of infection. What came out was a girl, not obviously deformed…”

“But?”

“Alice was a weak and pathetic thing, which made it worse. The intensity of Kate’s love for her was difficult to witness…”

“Why difficult?” Sam’s question interrupted his intense reverie.

“Have you ever been in love, Sergeant?”

“Well…”

“Of course you have, and you should appreciate this terrible thing called jealousy. Jealousy, not envy, although perhaps there was some of that as well.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Envy is the desire to possess. Jealousy is the fear of losing something precious. When I looked at Kate, at how she became completely encased by her relationship with Alice, I saw no room for me, saw that I had lost her. In turn, I envied the love that Alice received, wanted a share, thought that I was entitled to one.”

“Yet you’ve stayed with Kate, even after Alice died.”

“Oh yes. You see, jealousy is born of love; the stronger the love, the greater the jealousy. When Alice died, only the jealousy was gone.” He paused to reconsider. “But not, I see now, the guilt.”

“Guilt?”

But Reed did not hear. “It soon turned out that Alice had terrible internal abnormalities. Her lungs failed to develop as they should, and she was functionally blind, probably also deaf although they could never be sure. She had cardiac abnormalities too. She could breathe, but only on near-pure oxygen. She had one kidney, and most probably malformation of her genital tract… In the six weeks that she lived, she had five bouts of pneumonia.”

“Is that what killed her?”

Once more, Reed failed to hear, or at least react. “I knew the neonatologist in charge of her care-have done since medical school. I could see that when he took me to one side, sat me down in his office, he was having a hard time. His voice trembled slightly as he told me that he doubted Alice would live much more than another four weeks, that even if God granted us a miracle, Alice’s quality of life would be intolerable…” Reed seemed to become lost in the past. Certainly he seemed to be disoriented because his next remark was disjointed. “It was the swirling patterns, I remember best…”

Sam breathed. “Swirling patterns again.”

Hannah silenced him angrily, but it didn’t matter because Reed wasn’t listening. “I know the reason for them. It’s because you’re mixing two liquids of different densities and one flows through the other for a short while before they become totally and perfectly mixed. But it’s the beauty of the patterns that I can’t get over. Benoit Mandelbrot described it mathematically, talked about partial dimensions, fractals, making it sound like science fiction, as if there were creatures from another place doing something to make them.”

“What about the swirls, Phil?”

But Reed was a long way back in his past.

The music of critical care, symphonic variations on life and death, on dying and surviving, on fading into and coming out of a coma. He’d never felt comfortable in an intensive therapy unit, even one decked out with tinsel and with a Christmas tree in the corner. As a pathologist he was of the opinion that what the medical staff did was too far removed from normal medical and nursing practice. Here, it wasn’t patients that were treated, but measurements; they worried about the central venous pressure, the blood gas levels, blood biochemistry. The patients were often deliberately sedated, the victims of multiple puncture wounds where tubes entered wounds in the neck and the feet and even in the groins. The patients became not human, but manufactured entities, biomedical organisms, human fused with machine. In a neonatal intensive care unit, however, the victims fought back. Despite being almost overwhelmed by the enormity of the medical intervention to which they were subjected, their humanity was, if anything, magnified. They evoked even greater compassion because they were so small, so apparently incapable of overcoming this adversity.

Alice was intubated again because of the pneumonia, her breathing dictated by a machine. She was still so small, still so sickly, so raw. The nurse and doctors were at a hand-over session, their attention as usual on readouts and test results.

Reed stopped in front of the incubator, a small bag of saline dripped slowly into a tube extending from his dying daughter’s right ankle. It was nearly nine o’clock at night, and as far as Kate was concerned, Reed was working late, another bloody postmortem.

He looked around. No one was paying attention to him-they were used to one of them (usually Kate) hanging around, getting in the way, unwanted but unassailable, given their part in the drama-and it was all over in ten seconds.

“What was over?” Hannah could sense something terrible and needed to break through Reed’s cage of recollection.

“I was planning to turn, walk out at once… certainly not hang around…”

“What was over?”

“They caught my eye. They were so beautiful, I had to stop and watch them…”

“What was over, Phil?”

“It’s obvious when you know. Two liquids of different densities…”

“What did you do?” She remained patient, though God knew that it was difficult.

“So beautiful, yet so deadly.” His voice had taken on a singsong quality.

“Was it the bag of saline? Did you do something to that bag of saline?”

He came to, saw her again. “She was going to die, Hannah, and her death would not have been good. She had nothing to look forward to, no memories to comfort her. She was in limbo…”

“What did you put in the bag?”

But Mandelbrot’s patterns had caught him again. “The patterns were translucent, like liquid crystals, precious jewels that were slowly dissolving as they moved, dissipating, becoming another small part of the whole.”

“I know why, Phil. I need to know how.”

“And having done it, I walked away. I went to the desk, told them how grateful I was, told them to ring if anything happened, then walked out, past Alice’s incubator, past the bag of saline, now looking as clean and pure as it had before… I hated myself for that, for the hypocrisy and the lies that I had to tell those doctors and nurses, for pretending not to know what I knew.” He paused for breath, then, “The phone call came an hour later, and all hell broke out…”

Hannah would have kept asking the question until doomsday. “What was it? What did you put in the bag of saline?”

He looked at her, challenged her almost. “Potassium chloride. Just a 20 ml ampoule, but quite enough…” He frowned. “We need potassium, but not too much. A dangerous thing to play with. Too much and the heart stops. No PM will find it, not given those clinical circumstances, and there was no puncture mark, at least none that the medical staff hadn’t made.”

She asked her next question with studied calm. “You know what you’re saying, Phil? You’re admitting to the murder of your baby.”

“I admit that I gave peace to Alice, Hannah, but I didn’t murder her. To murder, you have to take life and Alice never had any. No power on Earth was ever going give her that.”

Sam said sarcastically, “Another doctor playing God.”

“Another father having to do something terrible for the greater good.”

“Who’s good? Yours?”

“No,” contradicted Reed. “Kate’s.”

“You’re kidding! You did it for yourself. You’ve admitted to being jealous of your own child.”

“You don’t understand, Sergeant, and perhaps you never will. Just pray tonight that you’re never in a similar position.”

“I know that I won’t commit murder, and I know that I won’t destroy my wife’s life.”

“Do you think that I enjoyed what I did? That I took some sort of pleasure in seeing Kate’s distress? Yet all the while I knew also that what I had done hadn’t caused it; what I had done had only brought it forward, and at the same time I had ended Alice’s awful life.”

“You needn’t have told us, you know.”

“All these years I have wanted to confess to Kate, but never dared. What would have been the point? As she lay there and died, I nearly said something maybe half a dozen times, but held back. I wanted her last hours on Earth to be as happy as possible.” He suddenly straightened up in his chair, assumed some dignity. “And I think that I would have continued the silence had I not seen the blood drop into the water, had I not seen it swirl down into nothingness. Dr. Mandelbrot has a lot to answer for, you know.”

Hannah sounded almost depressed as she said, “We’ll almost certainly have to charge you with murder.”

“You think I care about that? You think I care about anything anymore?”

She shook her head. Sam just stared at Reed, who in turn had his head bowed. She said in a formal tone, “Interview terminated at ten thirty-six.”

Then she stood up, Sam following her lead. “I’ll pray for you, Phil, but they’ll roast you alive. They’ll chew you up, spit you out, and then smear you into the pavement.”

And all Reed said was, “Do me a favor, Hannah.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t pray for me. Pray that there’s no afterlife, that after death, there’s nothing.”

“Why?”

“Because if there is something that follows life, if by the slightest of chances there is a heaven or hell or something like that, then Kate’s there now. She’s there even as we speak, and she knows.” He suddenly shivered, as if a cold wind had blown past him, as perhaps it had. “She knows, Hannah. She knows what I did. I can’t cope with that thought.”

“Don’t count on me in that quarter, Phil. I’m sorry.”

She walked to the door, then turned. “We’ll be back shortly.”

As they walked back to Hannah’s office, Sam said quietly, “He deserves everything he’s going to get.”

“Probably.”

He was surprised by the doubt in her voice. “Probably?”

They were on the stairs before she spoke again. “Do you love me as much as that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you love me enough to do what he did?”

He couldn’t see what she was talking about. “He murdered two people. You want me to copy him?”

She halted, turned to him. “Sam, he threw away his soul-and not just his soul, his whole earthly being, as well-for the woman he loved. Would you do that for me?”

“Don’t be stupid, Hannah. He just did what he did for himself.”

“You think so?”

“How else can you explain it? You surely don’t believe that crap he fed us about loving her.”

“Hatred’s not the only reason for killing… in fact, it’s quite a rare one. Love’s a far commoner motive.”

“I’d never kill for love.”

She looked at him long and hard, then continued walking up the stairs. There was a small smile on her face.

“No,” she said. “I can see that you wouldn’t.”