The Suspect

5

As far as I can recall I haven’t been drunk since Charlie was born and my best friend Jock took it upon himself to get me absolutely hammered because apparently that is what intelligent, sensible and conscientious fathers do when blessed with a child.

With a new car you avoid alcohol completely and with a new house you can’t afford to drink, but with a new baby you must “wet the head” or, in my case, throw up in a cab going around Marble Arch.

After leaving Ruiz, I stop at a pub and have two double vodkas— a first for me. I’m trying to numb the morning’s pain. I can’t get the image of Catherine McBride out of my mind. It’s not her face I see, but her naked body, stripped of all dignity; denied even a modest pair of panties or a strategically placed sheet. I want to protect her. I want to shield her from public gaze.

Now I understand Ruiz— not his words but the look on his face. This wasn’t the terrible conclusion to some great passion. Nor was it an ordinary, kitchen-sink killing, motivated by greed or jealousy. Catherine McBride suffered terribly. Each cut had sapped her strength like a banderilla’s barbs in the neck of a bull.

An American psychologist named Daniel Wegner conducted a famous experiment on thought suppression in 1987. In a test that might have been created by Dostoevsky, he asked a group of people not to think about a white bear. Each time the white bear entered their thoughts they had to ring a bell. No matter how hard they tried, not one person could avoid the forbidden thought for more than a few minutes.

Wegner spoke of two different thought processes counteracting each other. One is trying to think of anything except the white bear, while the other is subtly pushing forward the very thing that we wish to suppress.

Catherine Mary McBride is my white bear. I can’t get her out of my head.

My office is in a pyramid of white boxes on Great Portland Street designed by an architect who must have drawn inspiration from his childhood. From ground level it doesn’t look finished and I’m always half expecting a crane to turn up and hoist a few more boxes into the gaps.

As I walk up the front steps I hear a car horn and turn. A bright red Ferrari pulls onto the pavement. The driver, Dr. Fenwick Spindler, raises a gloved hand to wave. Fenwick looks like a lawyer but he runs the psychopharmacology unit at London University Hospital. He also has a private practice with a consulting room next to mine.

“Afternoon, old boy,” he shouts, leaving the car in the middle of the pavement so that people have to step around it onto the road.

“Aren’t you worried about the parking police?”

“Got one of these,” he says, pointing to the doctor’s sticker on the windshield. “Perfect for medical emergencies.”

Joining me on the steps, he pushes open the glass door. “Saw you on the TV the other night. Jolly good show. Wouldn’t have caught me up there.”

“I’m sure you would have— ”

“Must tell you about my weekend. Went shooting in Scotland. Bagged a deer.”

“Do you bag deer?”

“Whatever.” He waves dismissively. “Shot the bastard right through the left eye.”

The receptionist triggers a switch to open the security door and we summon a lift. Fenwick examines himself in the internal mirrors, brushing specks of dandruff from the bunched shoulders of an expensive suit. It says something about Fenwick’s body when a hand-tailored suit doesn’t fit him.

“Still consorting with prostitutes?” he asks.

“I give talks.”

“Is that what they call it nowadays?” He guffaws and rearranges himself via a trouser pocket. “How do you get paid?”

He won’t believe me if I tell him I do it for nothing. “They give me vouchers. I can redeem them for blow jobs later. I have a whole drawer full of them.”

He almost chokes and blushes furiously. I have to stop myself from laughing.

Fenwick, for all his obvious success as a doctor, is one of those people who tries desperately hard to be somebody else. That’s why he looks vaguely ridiculous behind the wheel of a sports car. It’s like seeing Bill Gates in running shorts or George W. Bush in the White House. It just doesn’t look right.

“How’s the you-know-what?” he asks.

“Fine.”

“I haven’t noticed it at all, old boy. Come to think of it, Pfizer has a new drug cocktail undergoing clinical trials. Drop by and I’ll give you the literature…”

Fenwick’s contacts with drug companies are renowned. His office is a shrine to Pfizer, Novartis and Hoffmann-La Roche; almost every item donated, from the fountain pens to the espresso machine. The same is true of his social life— sailing in Cowes, salmon fishing in Scotland and grouse shooting in Northumberland.

We turn the corner and Fenwick glances inside my office. A middle-aged woman sits in the waiting room clutching an orange torpedo-shaped life buoy.

“I don’t know how you do it, old boy,” Fenwick mutters.

“Do what?”

“Listen to them.”

“That’s how I find out what’s wrong.”

“Why bother? Dish out some antidepressants and send her home.”

Fenwick doesn’t believe there are psychological or social factors in mental illness. He claims it is completely biological and therefore, by definition, treatable with drugs. It is just a matter of finding the right combination.

Every afternoon (he doesn’t work before midday) patients march one by one into his office, answer a few perfunctory questions before Fenwick hands them a scrip and bills them £140. If they want to talk symptoms, he wants to talk drugs. If they mention side effects, he changes the dosage.

The strange thing is that his patients love him. They come in wanting drugs and they don’t care which ones. The more pills the better. Maybe they figure they’re getting value for money.

Listening to people is considered to be old-fashioned nowadays. Patients expect me to produce a magic pill that cures everything. When I tell them that I just want to talk they look disappointed.

“Good afternoon, Margaret. Glad to see you made it.”

She holds up the life buoy.

“Which way did you come?”

“Putney Bridge.”

“It’s a good solid bridge that one. Been around for years.”

She suffers from gephyrophobia— a fear of crossing bridges. To make matters worse she lives south of the river and has to walk her twins to school across the Thames every day. She carries the life buoy just in case the bridge falls down or is swept away by a tidal wave. I know that sounds irrational, but simple phobias are like that.

“I should have gone to live in the Sahara,” she says, only half joking.

I tell her about eremikophobia, the fear of sand or deserts. She thinks I’m making it up.

Three months ago Margaret panicked halfway across Putney Bridge. It took an hour before anybody realized. The children were crying, still clutching her hands. She was frozen by fear, unable to speak or nod. Passersby thought she might be a jumper. In reality Margaret was holding up that bridge with sheer willpower.

We’ve done a lot of work since then. She carried the life buoy and has tried to break the thought loop that accompanies her irrational fear.

“What do you believe is going to happen if you cross the bridge?”

“It’s going to fall down.”

“Why would it fall down?”

“I don’t know.”

“What is the bridge made of?”

“Steel and rivets and concrete.”

“How long has it been there?”

“Years and years.”

“Has it ever fallen down?”

“No.”

Each session lasts fifty minutes and I have ten minutes to write up my notes before my next patient arrives. Meena, my secretary, is like an atomic clock, accurate to the last second.

“A minute lost is a minute gone forever,” she says, tapping the watch pinned to her breast.

Anglo-Indian, but more English than strawberries and cream, she dresses in knee-length skirts, sensible shoes and cardigans. And she reminds me of the girls I knew at school who were addicted to Jane Austen novels and always daydreaming about meeting their Mr. Darcy.

She’s been with me since I left the Royal Marsden and started in private practice, but I’m losing her soon. She and her cats are off to open a bed-and-breakfast in Bath. I can just imagine the place— lace doilies under every vase, cat figurines and the toast soldiers in neat ranks beside every three-minute egg.

Meena is organizing the interviews for a new secretary. She has narrowed them down to a short list, but I know I’ll have trouble deciding. I keep hoping that she’ll change her mind. If only I could purr.

At three o’clock I glance around the waiting room.

“Where’s Bobby?”

“He hasn’t arrived.”

“Did he call?”

“No.” She tries not to meet my eyes.

“Can you try to find him? It’s been two weeks.”

I know she doesn’t want to make the call. She doesn’t like Bobby. At first I thought it was because he didn’t turn up for appointments, but it’s more than that. He makes her nervous. Maybe it’s his size or the bad haircut or the chip on his shoulder. She doesn’t really know him. Then again, who does?

Almost on cue, he appears in the doorway, with his odd-legged shuffle and an anxious expression. Tall and overweight, with flax-brown hair and metal-framed glasses, his great pudding of a body is trying to burst out of a long overcoat made shapeless by its bulging pockets.

“Sorry I’m late. Something came up.” He glances around the waiting room, still unsure whether to step inside.

“Something came up for two weeks?”

He makes eye contact with me and then turns his face away.

I’m used to Bobby being defensive and enclosed, but this is different. Instead of keeping secrets he’s telling lies. It’s like closing the shutters in front of someone and then trying to deny they exist.

I take a quick inventory— his shoes are polished and his hair is combed. He shaved this morning, but the dark shadow has returned. His cheeks are red from the cold, but at the same time he’s perspiring. I wonder how long he spent outside, trying to get up the courage to come and see me.

He walks into my office and stands in front of my bookshelves, perusing the titles. Most of them are reference books on psychology and animal behavior. Eventually he stops and taps the spine of a book, The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud.

“I thought Freud’s views had been pretty much discredited these days.” He has the faintest hint of a northern accent. “He couldn’t tell the difference between hysteria and epilepsy.”

“It wasn’t one of his best calls. Where have you been Bobby?”

“I got scared.”

“Why?”

He shrugs. “I had to get away.”

“Where did you go?”

“Nowhere.”

I don’t bother pointing out the contradiction. He’s full of them. Restless hands look for somewhere to hide and escape into his pockets, pushing them out of shape.

“Do you want to take off your coat?”

“It’s OK.”

“Well at least sit down.”

He looks at the chair suspiciously and then folds himself down into it, with his knees facing sideways toward the door.

Apart from my own notes, there is very little paperwork in Bobby’s file. There is a letter from a GP in north London who first picked up the case after Bobby complained of “disturbing nightmares” and a sense of being “out of control.” He was then sent to Jock Owen, one of London’s finest neurologists and my oldest friend. Jock did all the scans and could find nothing wrong, so he referred Bobby to me.

His exact words to me were: “Don’t worry, he’s insured. You might actually get paid.”

The notes tell me that he’s twenty-two years of age, with no history of mental illness or habitual drug use. He has above average intelligence, is in good health and lives in a long-term relationship with Arky, his fiancée. Apart from that I have a basic history— born in London, educated at government schools, O levels, night classes, odd jobs as a delivery driver and clerk. He and Arky live in a tower block in Hackney. She has a little boy and works at the candy bar in the local cinema. Apparently it was Arky who convinced him to seek help. Bobby’s nightmares were getting worse. He woke screaming in the night, hurtling out of bed and crashing into walls, as he tried to escape his dreams.

Before the summer we seemed to be getting somewhere. Then Bobby disappeared for three months and I thought he was gone for good. He turned up five weeks ago, with no appointment or explanation. He seemed happier. He was sleeping better. The nightmares were less severe.

Now something is wrong. He sits motionless, but his flicking eyes don’t miss a thing.

“What’s happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Is something wrong at home?”

He blinks. “No.”

“What then?”

I let the silence work for me. Bobby fidgets, scratching at his hands as though something has irritated his skin. Minutes pass and he grows more and more agitated.

I give him a direct question to get him started.

“How is Arky?”

“She reads too many magazines.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She wants the modern fairy tale. You know all that bullshit they write in women’s magazines— telling them how to have multiple orgasms, hold down a career and be a perfect mother. It’s all crap. Real women don’t look like fashion models. Real men can’t be cut out of magazines. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be— a new age man or a man’s man. You tell me! Am I supposed to get drunk with the boys or cry at sad movies? Do I talk about sports cars or this season’s colors? Women think they want a man but instead they want a reflection of themselves.”

“How does that make you feel?”

“Frustrated.”

“Who with?”

“Take your pick.” His shoulders hunch and his coat collar brushes his ears. His hands are in his lap now, folding and unfolding a piece of paper, which has worn through along the creases.

“What have you written?”

“A number.”

“What number?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Can I see it?”

He blinks rapidly and slowly unfolds the page, pressing it flat against his thigh and running his fingers over the surface. The number “21” has been written hundreds of times, in tiny block figures, fanning out from the center to form the blades of a windmill.

“Do you know that a dry square piece of paper cannot be folded in half more than seven times,” he says, trying to change the subject.

“No.”

“It’s true.”

“What else are you carrying in your pockets?”

“My lists.”

“What sort of lists?”

“Things to do. Things I’d like to change. People I like.”

“And people you don’t like?”

“That too.”

Some people don’t match their voices and Bobby is one of them. Although a big man, he seems smaller because his voice isn’t particularly deep and his shoulders shrink when he leans forward.

“Are you in some sort of trouble, Bobby?”

He flinches so abruptly that the legs of his chair leave the floor. His head is shaking firmly back and forth.

“Did you get angry with someone?”

Looking hopelessly sad, he bunches his fists.

“What made you angry?”

Whispering something, he shakes his head.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that.”

He mouths the words again.

“You’ll have to speak up a little.”

Without a flicker of warning he explodes. “STOP FUCKING WITH MY HEAD!”

The noise echoes in the confined space. Doors open along the corridor and the light flashes on my intercom. I press the button. “It’s OK, Meena. Everything’s fine.”

A tiny vein throbs at the side of Bobby’s temple, just above his right eye. He whispers in a little-boy voice, “I had to punish her.”

“Who did you have to punish?”

He gives the ring on his right index finger a half turn and then turns it back again as if he’s tuning the dial on a radio, searching for the right frequency.

“We’re all connected— six degrees of separation, sometimes less. If something happens in Liverpool or London or Australia it’s all connected…”

I won’t let him change the subject.

“If you’re in trouble, Bobby, I can help. You have to let me know what happened.”

“Whose bed is she in now?” he whispers.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The only time she’ll sleep alone is in the ground.”

“Did you punish Arky?”

More aware of me now, he laughs at me. “Did you ever see The Truman Show?”

“Yes.”

“Well sometimes I think I’m Truman. I think the whole world is watching me. My life has been created to someone else’s expectations. Everything is a façade. The walls are plywood and the furniture is papier-mâché. And then I think that if I could just run fast enough, I’d get around the next corner and find the back lot of the film set. But I can never run fast enough. By the time I arrive, they’ve built another street… and another.”