The Torment of Others

One person hung back on the fringes of the group. DC Stacey Chen had a small, fixed smile on her face. She was the unknown quantity. These days, any major inquiry needed an officer who understood how the systems worked and who could manage the volume of information generated. Carol had asked Brandon to recommend someone, and he’d come back within twenty-four hours with Stacey. ‘She’s got a Masters in computing, she knows the systems inside out and she’s a grafter. She keeps herself to herself, but she understands the importance of being part of the team,’ he’d said. ‘And she’s ambitious.’

Carol remembered what that felt like. Ambition had deserted her along with her dignity in Berlin, but she could still recall the sharp burn of desire to be on the next rung of the ladder. Carol sidestepped Evans and offered her hand to Stacey. ‘Hi. You must be Stacey. I’m glad to have you on the team.’

Stacey’s brown eyes never left Carol’s. ‘I appreciate the chance,’ she said in a strong London accent.

Carol’s eyes swept the room. ‘We’re one short,’ she said.

‘Oh yeah,’ Merrick said. ‘DS Chris Devine. We had a message yesterday: her mother’s been diagnosed with terminal cancer. She’s requested permission to stay with the Met for the time being. The Chief agreed.’

Carol shook her head, faintly exasperated. ‘Great. We’re under strength before we even get started.’ She looked around, assessing the room for the first time. There were half a dozen desks, each with a computer terminal. Whiteboards and cork boards lined one wall, next to an overhead projector. A large-scale laminated map of Bradfield filled most of the space by the door. The windows that ran the length of the opposite wall were obscured by vertical blinds, cutting out the distractions of the cityscape. It was a decent size: not too cramped, not so big they’d feel marooned. It would do, she decided. ‘Don, where’s my office?’

Merrick pointed to the far end of the room where two doors closed off a pair of offices. ‘Take your pick. They’re both empty.’

And neither offered much in the way of privacy, she thought. She chose the one that had windows on the outside world and turned to Merrick, who had followed her down the room. ‘Call whoever’s responsible for housekeeping round here. I want some blinds for the internal window.’

Merrick grinned. ‘Don’t want us to know when you’re playing Solitaire, eh?’

‘I prefer FreeCell, actually. Give me half an hour to get settled in here, then we’ll have a briefing.’

‘Fine by me.’ He ducked out of the room, leaving her alone. It was, she thought, a relief. She switched on the computer. Seconds later, she saw Evans approaching, his arms laden with a bundle of files. She jumped up to open the door.

‘What’s all this?’ she asked.

‘Open cases–the most recent ones. They were delivered yesterday teatime. What we’re supposed to be working on while we wait for the next big thing.’

Carol felt her blood stirring. At last, something she could focus on. Something that might just lay her demons to rest. Or at least shut them up for a while.

Aidan Hart studied the man sitting opposite him with a degree of wariness. He knew many of his colleagues thought he was too young at thirty-seven to be clinical director of Bradfield Moor Secure Hospital, but he was confident enough of his skills to write off their disapproval as the product of disappointment and envy. He knew that none of them presented any professional challenge to him.

But his latest appointment was in a different league. Dr Tony Hill came with a reputation for both brilliance and awkwardness. The only rules he observed were the ones that mattered to him. He wasn’t a team player, unless the team in question was one he’d chosen. He’d won loyal respect and engendered fury in equal measures among those he’d worked with. When Tony Hill had applied for a part-time post at his hospital, Aidan Hart’s first reaction had been to refuse. There was room for only one star at Bradfield Moor, and that was him.

Then he’d had second thoughts. If Hill was only there as a part-timer, his work could be carefully channelled. His successes could be parlayed into more credit for Hart himself, the visionary clinical director who had tamed the maverick. It was a tempting prospect. He could portray himself as the man who persuaded high-flyer Tony Hill back into clinical practice. He had convinced himself that while the patients might benefit from Hill’s famous empathetic skills, the ultimate beneficiary would be Aidan Hart himself. His second thoughts had been reinforced when he’d met Hill in the flesh. Aidan Hart knew all about dressing to impress, but within seconds he realized Hill had obviously missed that particular tutorial. The little guy in the chair opposite with the bad haircut, brown shoes with black trousers and greenish tweed jacket with frayed cuffs wasn’t going to make ripples in the sort of pond Hart intended to swim in. Hill had seemed embarrassed by the high profile his work with the police had earned him and had stressed that he didn’t want to find himself in the public eye ever again. Whatever profiling he did in future would be behind closed doors and beyond distant borders. Hill’s eagerness to get back into harness at the sharp end of clinical practice was almost pathetic.

At the time, Hart had been smugly satisfied that taking a chance on Tony Hill would be the best possible decision. Somehow he’d missed the penetrating intelligence of the eyes, the unmistakable charisma the man wore like a well-cut suit. Hart wasn’t quite sure how that had happened. Unless, of course, Hill had deliberately disguised it in order to make a quite different kind of impression. And that was a very unsettling thought. He liked to think of himself as the analyst. He was uncomfortable with the idea that this time, he might have been played by a higher master in the art of reading human behaviour. He couldn’t help wondering whether he was the latest object of scrutiny for those startlingly blue eyes that seemed to absorb every nuance of his body language. He didn’t like the thought that he’d have to monitor his every word and movement in his newest employee’s presence. Aidan Hart had his secrets, and he didn’t want Tony Hill probing too closely into them.

He didn’t think he was being paranoid. Hill had only been in the building for an hour, but already he’d played a blinder. He’d found out about the latest admission and now he was sitting opposite Hart, one ankle casually propped on the opposite knee, making an irresistible rationale for first crack at the new patient. It was the sort of case that led to published papers in well-respected peer-reviewed publications, and already Hill was staking a claim to territory Hart wanted for himself. ‘After all,’ Hill said, ‘since we’ve got a new admission, it makes sense for me to take the case on. That way I won’t have to go over old ground. And nobody’s nose gets put out of joint because I’m taking over their patient.’

‘It’s a pretty extreme place to start,’ Hart said, affecting concern. ‘And you have been out of the field for a while.’

Tony’s mouth twitched in a half-smile. ‘Extreme is my comfort zone, Aidan. And I do have very direct experience of dealing with people who kill for reasons that most people dismiss as madness.’

Hart shifted in his chair and spread his hands, as if discarding responsibility. ‘So be it. I look forward to seeing your initial report.’

Carol leaned against the whiteboard and waited for her new team to settle down. Then she moved closer to them and perched on the edge of a desk. ‘Before we get down to business, there’s something I have to say to you,’ she said, trying to sound more relaxed than she felt. ‘I know how rumours spread in this job and I expect you’ve all heard some version of my recent history.’ She could tell by the way the men all found something more interesting to study that she’d hit the target.

Don Merrick gazed at the floor. ‘Nobody here’s interested in gossip,’ he muttered. ‘Just results. And your record speaks for itself on that.’

The shadow of a smile crossed Carol’s face. ‘Thank you, Don. Nevertheless, if we’re going to make this unit work, we need to have an open, honest atmosphere. What happened to me happened because of secrets and lies. I’m not prepared to work in an environment like that again.’ She looked around, saw she had their attention and continued.

‘I was selected for an undercover operation that left me in a very exposed position. Because I wasn’t thoroughly briefed by my bosses, I couldn’t cover my back properly. And as a result, I was raped.’ She heard a sharp intake of breath but couldn’t identify its source. ‘I don’t expect to be handled with kid gloves. What happened to me won’t affect the way I do my job. Except that it has made me very sensitive to issues of loyalty. This squad can only function if we all put teamwork first. I don’t want any glory hunters here. So if any of you has a problem with that, this is the time to ask for reassignment.’ She looked around at her group. Stacey and Evans looked surprised, but the others were nodding their acquiescence.

Carol stood up straight and picked up the top file. ‘Good. Now, until we land our first job, we’re supposed to be looking at unsolved open cases. They’ve given us two murders, a rape, two armed robberies, a serial arson and a pair of child abductions. Over the next few days, I want you each to go through three separate files. Don, work out a rota so all the cases get looked at. Include me in it–since we’re one light, I’ll make up the numbers. On each file, I want you to list suggested actions for moving the case forward. Then, when you’ve all made your lists, we’ll sit down together, look at what you’ve come up with and see which cases offer the most promising prospects for further investigation. Any questions?’

Kevin raised a hand. ‘Is this a non-smoking office?’

Paula groaned. ‘It’s a non-smoking building, Kevin.’

‘Yeah, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have smoking areas, does it? I mean, what is the point of air conditioning if you don’t make it earn its keep?’

‘It’s bad for the computers,’ Stacey pointed out.

‘We could have one corner,’ Evans said. ‘Under the air-conditioning vent.’

As the discussion rolled over her, Carol felt the first twinges of homecoming. Never mind the adrenaline of working a case, this was the kind of argument that told her she was back where she belonged. Pointless wrangling about the small issues that made life bearable, that was the hallmark of the police service. ‘Sort it out among yourselves,’ she said with an air of finality. ‘I don’t care. I’ve got a door I can close. Oh, and I’ve got a job for you, Sam…’

He looked up, surprise on his face. ‘Guv?’ He shifted in his seat, turning slightly to one side. It was the movement of a man unconsciously reducing his target area, assessing the situation before committing himself to fight or flight.

‘Pop out to the shops and buy us a kettle, a cafetière and a dozen mugs.’ His eyes hardened as Carol’s words sank in. ‘Tea and some decent coffee, milk and sugar. Oh, and some biscuits. We’re not going to win any popularity contests in the canteen, digging over what other officers will see as their failures. We might as well entrench ourselves here.’

‘Can we get some Earl Grey tea?’ Stacey Chen’s contribution sounded more like an order than a request.

‘Don’t see why not,’ Carol said, turning away and heading for her office. She’d learned something already. Evans didn’t like what he saw as menial work. Either he considered it to be women’s work or he thought it was beneath his capabilities. Carol stored the information away for future reference. She had almost reached the door when Merrick’s voice reached her in a protest.

‘Ma’am, do you know why the files on Tim Golding and Guy Lefevre are in here?’ he demanded indignantly.

Carol swung round. ‘Who…?’ She was aware of a sudden stillness in the room. Paula’s stare was wary, while the others’ expressions varied from surprised to incredulous.

Merrick’s genial face had tightened. Tim Golding’s the eight-year-old who went missing nearly three months ago. Guy Lefevre vanished into thin air fifteen months before. We turned the city upside down looking for them. We even got Tony Hill to draw up a profile, for all the good it did.’

It was Carol’s turn to feel surprise. Tony had said nothing to her about profiling, never mind profiling in Bradfield. But then, he had been uncharacteristically quiet since they’d discussed whether she should take up John Brandon’s offer. He’d encouraged her to accept the job, but since she’d told him of her decision to go ahead, his emails had been curiously bland and noncommittal, as if he was deliberately making her stand on her own two feet. ‘What’s your point, Don?’ she asked.

‘Tim Golding was my case,’ he said angrily. ‘And I was the bagman on Guy Lefevre. There’s nothing we left undone.’

‘Now you understand why we’re going to be the station pariahs,’ Carol said gently. ‘There are another half-dozen SIOs out there smarting because cases they couldn’t close have been passed on to us. I wouldn’t be surprised if Tim Golding’s case had been put in deliberately to keep us on our toes. So even though I have every confidence that you did all you could, we’re still going to treat this case just like the others.’

Merrick scowled. ‘All the same, ma’am…’

There are people in this organization who would probably be very happy to see us fail. If you let this wind you up, Don, you’re playing into their hands.’ Carol gave him her warmest smile. ‘I trust you, otherwise you wouldn’t be in this room. But we’re all capable of missing something, no matter how much we think we’ve covered all the ground. So I don’t want the officers reviewing this case to keep their thoughts to themselves for fear of offending you. Like I said earlier: no secrets or lies.’

Carol didn’t wait for a reaction. She walked into her office, leaving the door open. Was this the first sign that someone was out to undermine her squad and, by extension, their new Chief Constable? She knew she fell too easily into mistrust these days, but she’d rather be too cautious than blithely oblivious to someone putting the shaft in. After all, it wasn’t paranoia if they really were out to get you.

She’d barely settled behind her desk when Don Merrick appeared in the doorway carrying a file. ‘A word, ma’am?’

Carol gestured towards the visitor’s chair with her head. Don sat down, holding the file to his chest. Tim Golding,’ he said.

‘I hear you, Don. Hand it over.’

He pulled it even closer to him. ‘It’s just that…’

‘I know. If anybody’s going to poke their nose into your case, you’d rather it was me than one of the new faces.’ Carol reached a hand out.

Reluctantly, Don shifted forward in his seat and extended the file towards her. ‘We couldn’t have done more,’ he said. ‘We just kept hitting brick walls. We couldn’t even give Tony Hill enough to go on to make a profile worthwhile. He said himself it was a waste of resources. But I couldn’t think of anything else to try. That’s why it’s ended up as a cold case this early on.’

‘I wondered about that. It seems very soon to consign it to the back burner.’

Don sighed. There just wasn’t anywhere else for us to go with it. We’ve still got a couple of DCs keeping an eye on it, feeding the press whenever they decide to take another crack at it. But nothing active’s happened for at least a month.’ Don’s misery was written all over him, from the hangdog eyes to the slump of his shoulders.

It provoked a sympathetic echo in Carol. ‘Leave it with me, Don. I don’t expect I’ll see anything you’ve missed.’

He got to his feet, a rueful look on his face. Thing is, ma’am, I remember when I was working the case that I wished you were around. Just so I could run it past you. You always had the knack of seeing things from a different angle.’

‘What is it they say, Don? Don’t wish too hard for what you want because you might get it.’

Tony Hill leaned forward and gazed intently through the observation window. A neat, balding man sat folded in the chair bolted to the floor. He looked somewhere in the region of fifty, though his placid expression went some way towards erasing the lines etched into his face. For a fleeting, incomprehensible moment, Tony thought of a child’s lollipop, tightly wrapped in cellophane, Sellotape wrapped around the stick.

His stillness was preternatural. Most of the patients Tony encountered had difficulty with immobility, never mind tranquillity. They twitched, they fidgeted, they chain-smoked, they fiddled with their clothes. But this man–he checked the notes–this Tom Storey had an almost Zen-like quality. Tony glanced through the notes again, refreshing his memory from the previous evening’s reading. He shook his head, fighting his anger at the stupidity of some of his medical colleagues. Then he closed the folder and headed for the interview room.

He felt the spring in his step, even in that short journey. Bradfield Moor Secure Hospital wasn’t generally associated in people’s minds with the notion of contentment, but that was precisely what it had given Tony for the first time in months. He was back in the field, back in the world of messy heads, back where he belonged. In spite of his constant efforts to assume a series of masks that would help him blend in, Tony knew he was an outsider in the world beyond the grim institutional walls of Bradfield Moor. It was a feeling he did not care to examine too closely; it said things about him that he wasn’t entirely comfortable with. But it was impossible to deny that the exercise of empathy was what gave meaning to his days. There was nothing quite like that moment when the tumblers of someone else’s brain clicked into place for him and allowed him to penetrate the knotted logic of another mind. Really, truly, nothing.

He pushed open the door to the interview room and sat down opposite his latest challenge. Tom Storey remained immobile, only his eyes shifting to connect with Tony. In his right hand, he cradled a heavily bandaged stump where his left hand had been until a few days previously. Tony leaned forward and arranged his face into an expression of sympathy. I’m Tony Hill. I’m sorry for your loss.’

Storey’s eyes widened in surprise. Then he gave a small snort. ‘My hand or my kids?’ he said sourly.

‘Your son and your daughter,’ Tony said. ‘I imagine the hand feels like a blessing.’

Storey said nothing.

‘Alien Hand Syndrome,’ Tony said. ‘First recorded in 1908. A gift for horror-film scriptwriters: 1924, The Hands of Orlac- Conrad Veidt played a classical pianist who had the hands of a killer grafted on after his were destroyed in a train accident; 1946, The Beast with Five Fingers, another pianist; 1987, Evil Dead II– the hero takes a chainsaw to his possessed hand to stop it attacking him. Cheap thrills all round. But it’s not so thrilling when you’re the one with the hand, is it? Because when you try to explain what it feels like, nobody really takes you seriously. Nobody took you seriously, did they, Tom?’

Storey shifted in his seat but remained silent and apparently composed.

‘The GP gave you some tranquillizers. Stress, that’s what he said, right?’

Storey inclined his head slightly.

Tony smiled, encouraging. They didn’t work, did they? Just made you feel sleepy and out of it. And with a hand like yours, you couldn’t afford to relax your vigilance, could you? Because there was no telling what might happen then. How was it for you, Tom? Did you wake up in the night struggling for breath because the hand was round your throat? Did it smash plates over your head? Stop you from putting food in your mouth?’ Tony’s questioning was gentle, his voice sympathetic.

Storey cleared his throat. ‘It threw things. We’d all be sitting eating breakfast, and I’d pick up the teapot and throw it at my wife. Or we’d be out in the garden and the next thing I’d know, I’d be picking up stones from the rockery and throwing them at the kids.’ He leaned back in his chair, apparently exhausted from the effort of speech.

‘I can imagine how frightening that must have been. How did your wife react?’

Storey closed his eyes. ‘She was going to leave me. Take the kids with her and never come back.’

‘And you love your kids. That’s a hell of a dilemma for you. You’ve nothing to fight back with. Life without your kids, it’s not worth living. But life with your kids places them in constant danger because you can’t stop the hand doing what it wants. There’s no easy answer.’ Tony paused and Storey opened his eyes again. ‘You must have been in complete turmoil.’

‘Why are you making excuses for me? I’m a monster. I killed my children, that’s the worst thing anybody can do. They should have let me bleed to death, not saved me. I deserve to be dead.’ Storey’s words tumbled over each other.

‘You’re not a monster,’ Tony said. ‘I don’t think your kids are the only victims here. We’re going to run some physical tests. Tom, I think you may be suffering from a brain tumour. You see, your brain comes in two halves. Messages from one part reach the other across a sort of bridge called the corpus callosum. When that’s damaged, your right hand literally doesn’t know what your left hand is doing. And that’s a terrible thing to live with. I can’t blame you for being driven to the point where you thought killing your children was the only way to keep them safe from whatever you might do to them.’

‘You should blame me,’ Storey insisted. ‘I was their father. It was my job to protect them. Not kill them.’

‘But you couldn’t trust yourself. So you chose to end their lives in the most humane way you could. Smothering them while they slept.’

Storey’s eyes filled with tears and he bowed his head. ‘It was wrong,’ he said, his voice choking. ‘But nobody would listen to me. Nobody would help me.’

Tony reached across the table and laid his hand on the bandaged stump. ‘We’ll help you now, Tom. I promise you. We’ll help you.’

Carol arched her back and rotated her shoulders, swivelling round in her chair to stare out of the window. Across the street stood a white Portland stone building with a fine neoclassical portico. When she’d last been in Bradfield, it had been a bingo hall. Now it was a nightclub, its cold neon tubes spelling out ‘Afrodite’ in fake Greek script. Buses rumbled past, advertising the latest movies and console games. A traffic warden stalked the metered parking, his computerized ticket machine held like a truncheon. A world going about its business, insulated from the unpleasantness that was her stock in trade. She’d read the material on Guy Lefevre and now she was close to the end of Tim Golding’s file. The words were starting to blur. Apart from a half-hour break for lunch, she’d been reading solidly all day. She knew she wasn’t the only one. Every time she’d raised her head, the rest of the squad had been equally engrossed. Interesting how their body language seemed to reveal so much more of their personalities than the slightly awkward and guarded conversation over the lunchtime sandwiches Stacey had fetched from the canteen.

Don sat hunched over his desk, one arm round the file like a kid who doesn’t want anybody copying his work. He wasn’t the quickest wit Carol had ever worked with, but he made up for it with his stolid persistence and total commitment to the team. And if there was one person whose loyalty she could depend on without question, it was Don. He’d proved himself in the past, but she hadn’t realized until this morning how important that knowledge was to her.

Kevin’s wiry body sat erect in his chair, papers neatly aligned. Every now and again he would pause and stare into the middle distance for as long as it took to smoke a cigarette. Then he would scribble something on the pad next to him and return to his reading. Carol remembered how he’d always seemed so buttoned up. It had made it all the harder to believe when he’d gone off the rails. But like most repressed individuals, when he had finally broken the rules he’d been more reckless than the wildest risk taker. And it had led him into betrayal. Carol told herself that he’d never make that mistake again, but she was still reluctant to trust. She hoped he couldn’t see that in her eyes.