Tuesday's Gone

Eight

Frieda guessed it was him as soon as he appeared at the bottom of the road. He ran up the steep hill, his long, loping stride speeding up as he approached her, pushing himself harder and harder. He stopped beside her and bent over, panting heavily. The morning was bright and sunny and cold, but the man was wearing only an old T-shirt, running shoes and trainers.

‘Are you Dr Andrew Berryman?’

The man removed a pair of green earphones. ‘Who are you?’

‘I was put in touch with someone who passed me on to your boss and he told me to contact you. I need to talk to someone about extreme psychological syndromes.’

‘Why?’ said Berryman. ‘Have you got one?’

‘It’s about someone I’ve met. My name’s Frieda Klein. I’m a psychotherapist and I’m doing some work with the police. There’s a woman who’s involved with a murder and I’d like to talk to you about her. Can I come in?’

‘It’s my Friday off,’ said Berryman. ‘Couldn’t you have phoned?’

‘It’s urgent. It would only take a few minutes.’

He paused for a moment, weighing it up. ‘All right.’

He unlocked the front door and led Frieda up several flights of stairs and then unlocked another door to his flat on the top floor. Frieda stepped into a large bright room. It had almost nothing in it. There was a sofa, a pale rug on the bare boards, an upright piano against the wall and a large picture window overlooking Hampstead Heath.

‘I’m going to have a shower,’ Berryman said, and walked through a door to the left.

‘Shall I make coffee or tea?’ Frieda said.

‘Don’t touch anything,’ he shouted from the next room.

Frieda heard the sound of the shower and walked slowly around the room. She looked at the music on the piano: a Chopin nocturne. Then she stared out of the window. It was so cold that it was mainly only people with dogs who had braced themselves to go out in it. There were a few small children in the playground, wrapped up so they looked like little bears waddling around. Berryman reappeared. He was wearing a checked shirt, dark brown trousers and bare feet. He walked with a stoop as if he was apologizing for his tallness. He went through to the kitchen, switched on a kettle and heaped coffee grounds into a jug.

‘So you’re playing Chopin?’ said Frieda. ‘Nice.’

‘It’s not nice,’ said Berryman. ‘It’s like a neurological experiment. There’s a theory that if you do ten thousand hours of practice in some particular skill you attain proficiency at it. Constant practice stimulates myelin, which improves neural signalling.’

‘How’s it going?’

‘I’m about seven thousand hours in and it’s not happening,’ said Berryman. ‘The problem is, I’m not clear how the myelin is supposed to distinguish between good piano playing and crap piano playing.’

‘And when you’re not playing Chopin, you’re treating people with unusual mental illnesses?’ said Frieda.

‘Not if I can help it.’

‘I thought you were a doctor.’

‘I am technically,’ said Berryman, ‘but it was really just a mistake. I started studying medicine but I didn’t want to deal with actual people. I was interested in the way the brain works. These neural disorders are useful because they settle disputes about the way we perceive the world. People didn’t realize we had a bit of our brain that recognizes faces until patients had a headache and suddenly couldn’t recognize their own children. I’m not particularly interested in treating them, though. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be treated. It’s just that I don’t want to be the one to do it.’ He handed a mug of coffee to Frieda and suddenly smiled. ‘Of course, you’re an analyst. You’ll be thinking that my wish to turn medicine into a philosophical subject is an evasion.’

‘Thank you,’ said Frieda, taking the mug. ‘I wasn’t thinking that at all. I know lots of doctors who think everything would be fine if it weren’t for the patients.’

‘So, are you going to tell me about your patient?’

Frieda shook her head. ‘I want you to come and see her.’

‘What do you mean?’ he said. ‘When?’

‘Now.’

‘Now? Where is she?’

‘She’s in a hospital in Lewisham.’

‘Why on earth would I do that?’

Frieda drained her coffee mug. ‘I think you’ll find her philosophically interesting.’

‘Are we allowed to do this?’ asked Berryman.

‘They know me there,’ said Frieda. ‘And, anyway, we’re both doctors. Doctors can go anywhere.’

When Berryman first saw Michelle Doyce, he seemed slightly disappointed. She was sitting reading Hello! magazine with great concentration. She looked utterly normal. He and Frieda pulled over two chairs and sat down. Berryman took his heavy brown suede jacket off and draped it over the back of his chair. Outside the small window there was a grey wall. It was starting to rain heavily from a blank, low sky.

‘Remember me?’ said Frieda.

‘Yes,’ said Michelle. ‘Yes.’

‘This is Andrew. We’d both like to have a chat with you.’

Berryman looked at Frieda with a puzzled expression. She had been almost silent as he had driven her across London, and had said nothing about the case. Now she leaned across to Michelle. ‘Could you tell Andrew about the man who was staying with you?’

Michelle seemed puzzled as well, as if she was being forced to state the obvious. ‘He was just staying with me,’ she said.

‘How did you meet him?’ asked Frieda.

‘Drakes and … and …’

‘What? What do you mean?’

‘And … and … boats.’

Frieda looked at Andrew, then asked, ‘And what did you do for him?’

‘I looked after him,’ said Michelle.

‘Because he was in a bit of a state,’ said Frieda.

‘He was,’ said Michelle. ‘He was in a state.’

‘He needed looking after.’

‘I made him tea,’ said Michelle. ‘He needed tidying up. He was messy.’ She paused. ‘Where is he? Where’s he gone?’

‘He had to go away,’ said Frieda. She looked at Andrew. He gave a cough and stood up. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s been nice meeting you both but I’m afraid …’

‘Hang on.’ Frieda turned to Michelle. ‘Can you excuse us for a moment?’

She took Berryman’s arm and led him a few yards away.

‘What do you make of her?’

He shrugged. ‘Seems lucid enough to me,’ he said. ‘Mildly dissociative. But not worth coming to Lewisham for.’

‘That man she was talking about,’ said Frieda.

‘Yes?’

‘When a social worker called on her, the man was sitting on her sofa. He was naked and he was dead and in an early state of decay. She had been living with him during that time. So?’

Berryman was silent. Then a slow smile spread across his face. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right.’

‘My first question,’ said Frieda, ‘is that this is so weird, so completely off the wall, that maybe she’s faking. She could have killed the man. She probably did kill him. And now she’s pretending to be crazy.’

‘She’s not faking.’ Berryman’s tone was almost one of admiration. ‘Nobody could fake that.’

‘We still don’t know the identity of the man, whether he was a friend or relative of hers, or whether she even knew him.’

‘Who cares about that?’ Berryman wandered up the ward to where some people were sitting, watching TV. Frieda saw him leaning over a bed. When he came back he was carrying a small brown teddy bear.

‘Did you ask if you could borrow that?’

Berryman shook his head. ‘The woman was asleep. I’ll put it back later.’

He walked over and sat down in front of Michelle. He put the bear on his lap. ‘This is a bear,’ he said. She looked puzzled. ‘Where do you think he lives?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know about them.’

‘If you had to guess,’ he said. ‘Do you think he lives in a forest or a desert?’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said. ‘He lives here.’

‘And if you had to guess, what do you think he eats? Little animals? Fish?’

‘I don’t know. Just what people give him, I suppose.’

‘I think that’s a good guess.’

‘Is he hungry?’

‘I don’t know – what do you think?’

‘He doesn’t look hungry, but sometimes it’s hard to tell.’

‘You’re right, it is.’ He smiled at her in delight. ‘Thanks very much.’

Then he got up and walked along the ward, tossing the bear from one hand to the other.

‘Excellent,’ he said, as he returned to Frieda. ‘What I’ll need to do is pop her into the MRI but I think I can guess what I’ll find. There’ll be lesions of some kind in the inferior temporal cortex and the amygdala and –’

‘Sorry,’ Frieda interrupted. ‘What’s this about?’

Berryman looked around, almost as if he’d forgotten Frieda was there.

‘She’s terrific,’ he announced firmly. ‘We just need to get her into a laboratory.’

‘No,’ said Frieda. ‘What we need to do is to cure her, then find out who the man is and who killed him.’

Berryman shook his head. ‘It won’t be curable. Steroids may relieve some cranial pressure.’

‘But why is she behaving like that?’ Frieda asked.

‘That’s the interesting bit. Have you heard of Capgras Syndrome?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘It’s brilliant,’ he said. ‘I mean, unless you get it. People start believing someone close to them, like their wife or husband, has been replaced by an impostor. Did you ever see that movie Invasion of the Bodysnatchers? Like that. The point is, when we look at someone we know, our brain does two things. One bit recognizes the face and another bit tells us that we have an emotional bond to that person. If that second bit doesn’t work, the brain decides there must be something wrong with the person because we’re not feeling anything for them.’

‘But that’s not what Michelle Doyce is doing.’

‘No, no,’ said Berryman, gesturing towards Michelle as if she were a wonderful exhibit. ‘She’s better. There’s an even rarer syndrome that Alzheimer’s patients sometimes – well, hardly ever – get, in which there’s an emergence of delusional companions. It means they invest objects with life, just as Michelle Doyce did with that teddy bear. But she’s even more interesting than that. You know how toddlers, all toddlers, start out as animists –’

‘Which means?’

‘That they don’t make a distinction between their sister or their doll or even the wind blowing or a stone rolling down a hill. For them a leaf is falling because it wants to fall. As they grow up, the brain develops, and we can only interact with the world by making constant subconscious decisions about what in our environment is like us and is responsible and makes decisions, and what doesn’t. If I twisted your ear, you’d make a screaming sound, and if I scrape my foot on the floor it’ll make a screaming sound. You and I know that there’s a difference. I’d guess that when someone gets Michelle into a lab …’

‘I’m not sure that will be possible.’

‘It would be a crime not to,’ said Berryman. ‘And when she’s investigated, I’d bet that she’s either been a chronic drinker or drug addict, or that she’s suffered a severe head injury or, most likely, she’s got a brain tumour. So whoever’s investigating her probably needs to get a move on.’

‘She’s a person. A suffering person.’

‘A very interesting suffering person,’ said Berryman. ‘Which is more than you can say for most people.’

‘So her evidence, all the statements she’s made, are just gibberish.’

Berryman thought for a moment. ‘I wouldn’t say that. She doesn’t see the world the way we do. There’s probably not much point in asking whether she killed that man because she doesn’t know the difference between being dead and being alive, but she felt to me like someone who was trying to tell the truth as she saw it. I’d guess it’s pretty frightening. It must feel like she’s been born into a different, very strange kind of world. You could try paying attention to what she says about it. And that’s what you do, isn’t it?’

‘And you don’t?’ said Frieda.

Berryman’s expression hardened. ‘I sometimes feel like carrying around a little card, which I’d give to people like you. It would say that a lot of the science that ends up helping people is undertaken by men and women who are doing it for its own sake, and that going around weeping for those who suffer doesn’t mean you’re actually doing anything to help them. Except that that’s a bit too much to fit on a little card, but you know what I mean.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Frieda. ‘You came all this way with a strange woman on your day off. That was a good thing.’

His expression relaxed. ‘I think she should be moved to a ward by herself.’

‘Do you?’

‘Certainly. Being surrounded by people will not help her one bit. She needs quiet.’

‘I’ll ask,’ said Frieda, doubtfully.

Berryman waved his hand. ‘Leave it to me. I’ll see to it,’ he said airily.

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’ He considered Frieda for a moment. ‘You’re working with the police?’

‘At arm’s length.’

‘How did that come about?’

‘Some other time,’ said Frieda. ‘It really is a long story.’ She turned to look at Michelle Doyce, who hadn’t picked up her magazine and was staring in front of her. Then Frieda thought of something quite different. ‘That syndrome,’ she said.

‘Which one?’

‘The one where they think someone they love has been replaced.’

‘Capgras Syndrome.’

‘It must be terrifying,’ said Frieda. ‘I mean, so terrifying that we can’t really imagine how terrifying.’

As they entered the lobby, she stopped him. ‘Can you wait for me for just a couple of moments?’

‘Do I have a choice?’

‘Thanks.’

Frieda went into the hospital shop. There were racks of magazines, shelves of crisps, sweets and unhealthy-looking drinks, a paltry collection of shrivelled apples and dried-out oranges, books of Sudoku and, in the corner, a basket of toys. Frieda went over and started rummaging through them.

‘Can I help you?’ asked the woman at the desk. ‘Are you looking for anything in particular?’

‘A teddy bear.’

The woman’s face softened. ‘You’ve a child in there,’ she said. Frieda didn’t contradict her. ‘I’m not sure we have actual teddies, though. There’s a very popular doll that cries when you sit it up.’

‘I don’t think so.’

Frieda pulled out a green velvet frog with protuberant eyes, then a rag doll, with long, spindly legs, and a small, shabby-looking snake. Near the bottom of the basket was a squashy dog, with soft floppy ears and button eyes. ‘This will do.’

She ran up the stairs to the ward and stopped at the desk.

‘Do you think you can give this to Michelle Doyce in bed six?’

‘Don’t you want to give it her yourself?’

‘No.’

The nurse shrugged. ‘All right.’

Frieda turned to go, but at the double doors she stopped. Out of sight, she saw the nurse hand the dog to Michelle. Frieda watched intently: Michelle sat the dog beside her on the pillow and nodded at it respectfully. Then she put out one finger and touched its nose, smiling shyly; she picked up her glass of water and held it under its snout. Her face wore an expression of tender solicitousness and anxious happiness; it had taken that little. Frieda pushed the doors and slipped through them.

Some days she slept. It was wrong, she knew, but torpor would settle on her and she would curl herself up into a ball of body and thick clothes and damp hair and close her sticky eyes and let herself go, drifting down through murky dreams, green weeds and silky, shifting mud. She was half aware that she was asleep: her dreams would get tangled up with what was going on around her. The footsteps on the towpath, the rise and fall of voices, shouted instructions coming from the rowing boats that passed her boat.

When she woke, she would feel thick and stale with sleep. And guilty. If he could see her, he would be angry. No, not angry. He would be disappointed. Let down. She hated that. She remembered her mother’s slumped shoulders, the brave smile that wavered and disappeared. Anything was better than disappointing people.

On this day she had let herself sleep, and when she jerked awake, she couldn’t remember where she was – saliva on her chin, her hair itchy and her cheek sore from the rough fabric of the seat where she lay. She couldn’t remember who she was. She was nobody, just a lumpy shape without a name, without a self. She waited. She let herself know herself again. She pressed her forehead against the narrow window and stared outside at the shifting river. Two grand swans sailed past. Vicious, vicious stares.