Alexander Mccall Smith - Isabel Dalhousie 05 (10 page)

She looked to Jamie for support, but he was looking at Eddie. The president of Bulgaria was not getting the attention he deserved. “Go on, Eddie,” said Jamie. “Hypnotise me. I'm ready. What do I have to do?”

“The president of Bulgaria,” Isabel said. “Now let's think. I know Malcolm Rifkind, and he used to be the foreign secretary. So, he may…”

“Do I just sit here?” asked Jamie. “Do we need to turn the lights off?”

Eddie shook his head. They were sitting at the kitchen table, where casual meals were taken, and the lighting was low anyway. “It's best not to be distracted,” he said. “That's why it's sometimes a good idea to turn down the lights. But it's not very bright in here.” He stood up and moved round the table to sit down on the chair next to Jamie's. “I'm going to sit here. You turn round a bit, so that you're looking at me.”

Isabel brought Jamie's cup of coffee over and put it on the table beside him. “Are you going to drink this before you go under, or afterwards?”

He smiled, but said nothing, leaving the coffee untouched. She went back to her seat.

Eddie had fixed his gaze on Jamie. He leaned forward very slightly. “I want you to listen to my voice. Just listen. Hear nothing else. All right?”

Jamie nodded.

“And as you listen to me, you're going to feel yourself getting drowsier and drowsier. Your eyelids will be getting heavier, like lead. That's it. And all the tension is going out of you. Flowing away. You can feel it going down your arms and out your fingertips—draining away like water. That's right. Don't struggle against it.”

Eddie continued in this vein for a further five minutes. Jamie remained still, and Eddie did not take his eyes off him as he talked. If Isabel had looked at Jamie, she would have seen that a smile played about his lips; it was almost imperceptible, but a sign of what he was thinking. Yet she did not see this, because her own eyes were firmly closed. She was breathing deeply.

Jamie suddenly turned his head and looked at Isabel. He signalled to Eddie, who stopped what he was saying and followed Jamie's gaze. Eddie was silent for a few moments. Then: “Isabel. I'm going to ask you to do something. Afterwards, I'm going to snap my fingers and when I do that you'll wake up. Do you understand?”

Isabel did not open her eyes, but she moved her head slightly to indicate assent.

“Right,” said Eddie, winking at Jamie. “Now when I tell you to open your eyes, you'll see somebody come into the room. This is a person you really, really want to see. Somebody you know well and you want to see again. They'll come in just to say hallo and then they'll go out again. But you'll tell us who it is. All right?”

Again, Isabel nodded.

“So,” said Eddie. “The door's opening. And your eyes too.”

Isabel's expression left no doubt that she was looking at somebody. Here was surprise, astonishment perhaps, and then an anguished cry:
John. No, don't go. Don't go.

Eddie rose to his feet. He snapped his fingers. Nothing happened. Then he snapped them again, more loudly this time. Isabel's head turned sharply.

Jamie leaned across the table and took her hand. “Are you all right?”

Isabel looked about her. “Of course I'm all right. Eddie, weren't you going to…”

“No,” said Eddie. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, glancing anxiously at Jamie, as if for reassurance.

“Some other time,” said Jamie. “Not now.” He picked up his small cup of espresso and drained it.

“I should be going home,” said Eddie awkwardly.

He said good-bye to Isabel quickly and Jamie showed him to the door. Then, returning to the kitchen, Jamie found Isabel facing him.

She looked bemused. “Something happened, didn't it?”

He looked down at the floor. He felt embarrassed to speak about it, but he could hardly refuse to answer her question. “He was trying to hypnotise me, but you somehow got in the way. You went under,” he said. “Like that. I remained wide awake, but you…It was very quick. I wondered whether to stop it, but I thought it might be risky.”

She gasped. “I went under?”

“Yes. You must be very…what do they say? Susceptible?”

“And what happened?”

He looked embarrassed, and she caught her breath. “Do you really want to know?”

This, she thought, is how a drunk must feel when he wakes up the next morning and has no recollection of the night before. What did I do? She felt instinctively for her clothing; it was still there. And surely Jamie would not have allowed anything untoward to happen; he would have stopped her from disgracing herself.

“You saw John Liamor,” he said quietly. “You saw him come into the room and you cried out to him.” He could tell that she was aghast. “No, you didn't say very much. You just shouted out his name and told him not to go. That was all. Then Eddie clicked his fingers and you came out of it. Nothing more than that.”

She leaned forward, head in her hands. She had tried so hard to forget John Liamor, the man she had married; the man who had broken her heart, once, twice, over and over again. He meant nothing to her now, nothing—at least consciously.

“I'm not still in love with him,” she muttered.

Jamie came to her and put his arm about her. “Of course you aren't. Of course.”

He had Cat to forget; he knew what an effort it cost. “Let's think of the president of Bulgaria,” he said.

CHAPTER NINE

N
OT THINKING
about something can be hard, as Isabel discovered the next day. She had decided to put the incident in the kitchen out of her mind, but it kept coming back. Did she really want to see John Liamor again? Did he still mean something to her? Did what one said under hypnosis have anything to do with what really was going on in the subconscious mind? Surely the mind was full of all sorts of old memories that were really of no significance for how one felt; they merely knocked about in some deep region, like the detritus at the bottom of a lake. And if they surfaced from time to time, that did not mean very much.

At first it was awkward with Eddie. He avoided her when he came into the delicatessen the next morning, but Isabel made a point of speaking to him. “Eddie, what happened last night is nothing. I don't feel bad about it, and neither should you.” She took his arm. Again that feeling of thinness. “Don't look away from me, Eddie. Come on now.”

“I'm really sorry,” he mumbled.

She reached out and put her hand against his cheek. He looked at her in surprise. “Come on, Eddie. You don't have to be sorry about anything. John Liamor was my husband. I shouted out his name because I obviously still think about him subconsciously. Maybe I still care for him. I thought I didn't.”

She moved her hand away, and she felt him relax. She let go of his arm. Holding Eddie was like holding a cat who does not want to be held.

“I'm still sorry,” he said. “They told us that we should be careful about what we did with it.”

She laughed. “Well, that's one way of learning that. And there was no harm done anyway.”

He rubbed the place on his arm where she had held him, as if he had been bruised. “You seemed very upset about seeing him. About seeing John What's-his-name.”

“He hurt me,” said Isabel.

Eddie looked up sharply. “Beat you?”

“Not that. No. But there are lots of other ways of being hurt. And they can be as bad.”

Eddie was silent. I could say something now, she thought. I could say to him: I know that you've been hurt too, badly. But she did not. Instead, she said, “Are you all right, Eddie? You know that I'm going to go down to the bank today.” She looked at her watch. “In fact, I've got two things I have to do. Do you mind being in charge for a while a bit later on?”

He did not. But he did not say anything about the bank, and so Isabel persisted. “I'm going to get that money I promised you. Remember?” She paused, watching him. He bit his lip. “You said you were in trouble, Eddie. Are you sure that you don't want to tell me what it is?”

“I don't,” he muttered.

“All right. You don't need to. But if you change your mind about that and want to talk to me, I promise you that I wouldn't tell anybody else. All right?”

He nodded his assent and crossed the room to get his apron from its hook. One act, she thought; one act of violence, one act of callous gratification, and a young life was made into this.

         

THE BANK WAS
the simple part. They had the money ready for her in a white envelope and slipped it to her across the broad wooden desk. She wondered whether people who worked in banks thought about what their clients did with their money, or whether such interest quickly faded. Money was very mundane, really, and the question of who had what was hardly riveting. Or did she feel that way, she asked herself, because she had more than most? She felt no envy when she read, as one occasionally did, of people earning large salaries or bonuses. But others hated this, and muttered darkly about higher taxes and obscene profits. What was obscene about earning a lot of money? One could not put that reaction entirely down to simple envy; there must be something more to it. Unfairness, perhaps. It was unfair that one should have so much when so many had so little. And it was, she thought. In which case, should she divest herself further? She gave a lot to various causes, and one of these charities had written to her recently in a way which spoke of an appeal—a very tactfully put appeal, but an appeal nonetheless.

She caught a taxi in Charlotte Square and gave the address of the Café Sardi, a small Italian restaurant in the university area. It had been convenient for the old medical school before it moved out to the new infirmary, and there were still some doctors who used it to meet for lunch. He had to be in town, he said, and they could meet there.

She was the first to arrive, and was led to a table near the window that gave her a view over the road to Sandy Bell's. She looked up. There was a picture of Hamish Henderson on the wall of the restaurant; he had been an habitué of Sandy Bell's all those years ago and must have eaten here too. She had heard him singing in Sandy Bell's from time to time, that tireless collector of Scottish folk songs with his great lumbering frame and his toothy smile.

She tried to invoke the memory. Yes, the first time she had heard him he had sung “Freedom Come All Ye” and she had sat at her table at the back of the pub with her friends, utterly arrested, unable to do anything but watch that curious rumpled figure and hear the words that cut into the air like the punch of a fist: “Nae mair will our bonnie callants / Merch tae wer when our braggarts crousely craw.” No more will Scottish boys march off to war to the skirl of the pipes. And at the end she had cried; she had been unable to say why, beyond feeling that what she had witnessed was a heartfelt apology for what Scotland had done to the world as part of the British Empire, for all the humiliation of imperialism.

She was thinking of this when Dr. Norrie Brown came in. She knew it was him from the way he hesitated at the door, looking for someone he did not know; and he knew it was her from the way she sat there, waiting for somebody similarly unknown to her.

“Isabel Dalhousie?”

She reached out and shook his hand. He sat down opposite her and looked at her appraisingly. There was no attempt to conceal what he was doing; he was taking her measure. She blushed.

“I'm terribly sorry,” he said. “Tactless of me. I can't help it, I'm afraid. When I meet somebody for the first time, I've got into the habit of looking at them as if they're a new patient. I don't quite take the blood pressure, but I do sum things up.”

She smiled. There was a pleasant frankness about the way he spoke, and she liked the look of him too. He was in his mid-thirties, she decided; open-faced, uncomplicated. A straightforward doctor.

“Oh well,” she said. “We all look at others according to our calling. I have a lawyer friend who immediately examines people as if they're in the witness box. And my hairdresser looks out of the window and comments on the hair of people going past. Bad hair day. That sort of thing!”

He reached for the menu. “I assure you, you look quite well. And so I conclude that you don't want to consult me professionally.”

“Certainly not.”

He glanced at the menu. “So? Do you mind if I ask why you got in touch? You said it was to do with a mutual friend.”

“Yes,” she said. “Marcus Moncrieff.”

He replaced the menu on the table. “Oh. Marcus.”

“Yes. I know his wife, you see. Not very well, but enough to know that she's terribly worried about him.”

He watched her as she spoke. The openness she had detected earlier on was being replaced, she thought, by a marked guardedness.

“Marcus is pretty low, is he? I haven't seen him for a month or so; I must go round. I take it that it's the…”

“Disgrace?”

“You could call it that. And I suppose that's what it was.”

The waitress came and took their order. Norrie, she noticed, chose a salad and a diet drink. “I'm training as a gastroenterologist now,” he said. “I see what people put in their stomachs. It's enough to put one off eating altogether.”

She smiled. “But you won't disapprove of what I have.”

He laughed. “Probably. But I won't say anything. An Italian diet is reasonably healthy, anyway. It's the stuff they eat in Glasgow that does the damage. The fries. The red meat. The fried fish. My cardiac colleagues could keep you entertained for hours on the subject.”

Isabel steered the conversation back to Marcus. “The incident,” she began. “The incident that led to the complaint. Do you think it was his fault?”

Norrie said nothing for a moment, but fingered the stem of an empty glass in front of him. When he eventually spoke, he seemed to be choosing his words with care. “The finding against him was clear,” he said. “He was negligent. The figures of the dosage were far too high. He should have checked. He didn't.”

“Where did those figures come from?”

“From the lab.”

Isabel watched Norrie carefully. His manner was very matter-of-fact, as if he were relating everyday events, rather than ones that had brought a career to an end.

“And what did you think? What did you think of the figures?”

Again he took his time to answer, and again, when he did, his words were careful. “I just took note of them and passed them on.”

“That's all?”

He held her gaze. He neither blinked nor looked away. “It wasn't for me to say anything. I was—am—a junior doctor. I came to medicine late, you see. I did a degree in engineering and then changed my mind. It's going to be some time before I catch up.”

“It wasn't for you to say anything?”

“No. That's what I've just told you.”

She persisted. “Even if you thought they were high?”

His self-controlled manner slipped a little. “Listen,” he said, an edge appearing in his voice. “I didn't have a clue.”

She made a calming gesture with a hand. “All right. Sorry, I'm not accusing you of anything. I just think that Marcus may have been harshly treated. I was hoping that we could find out something which puts him in a better light.”

This remark seemed to take him by surprise. “Harshly treated?”

She explained that she felt that a momentary lapse of judgement should not, in her view, end a career. Anybody could make a mistake—indeed everybody made mistakes. But that did not make them culpable. “So,” she concluded. “I was wondering whether I could come up with something that could help him to establish that he was not blameworthy. I wondered if I could get him off this awful hook of blame.”

Norrie stared at her, almost incredulously. “You want it reopened?”

“Yes,” said Isabel. “If need be.”

The waitress now brought his salad and Isabel's pasta, and laid the plates before them. Norrie took up a fork and began to pick at the meal. “If I were you,” he said quietly, “I'd leave well enough alone. Don't try to open anything up. Just don't.”

Isabel speared a shell of pasta with her fork, and then another. “But if there is anything which could help him,” she said, “surely it should be brought up.”

Norrie seemed to weigh this for a while. “All right,” he said at last. “If I tell you something, will you give me your word that you won't use it publicly in any way?”

She considered this. It would not be easy to give an assurance of confidentiality if he was going to come up with some information that could exculpate Marcus. But if she did not agree, then she would not hear it. She decided that she had no alternative.

“Very well. I give you my word. Even if it's going to hamper me.”

“It won't hamper you,” Norrie said quickly. “And it won't be to Marcus's disadvantage. Quite the opposite.”

“I don't see—”

But he cut her short. He had abandoned his salad now, and there was light in his eyes. “Marcus Moncrieff is even more guilty than you imagine. He got off lightly.”

She sat back in her seat. “I don't see—”

“No,” he said quickly. “You don't, do you? You don't because you don't know the first thing about it. Sorry to be so frank, but these things are very complex. The truth of the matter, you see, is that
I
warned him that the figures were high.
I
said to him that he should go and check the figures and see whether they really reflected what that patient had taken. And he didn't. He said no, it wasn't necessary. And then I spoke to him a second time, and asked him to note my reservations, but he told me not to be such a fusspot and he didn't note anything.”

He attacked his salad. “So, you see,” he said. “Not so simple. If that had come out at the enquiry it would have looked even worse for him.”

“But you didn't mention it?”

“No. I wasn't even asked to make a statement. I kept quiet. I didn't want things to get even worse for him. He's a good doctor, you see.”

“You protected him?”

He stared at her. “You could put it that way. But let me say something else. If you mention this at all, and in particular if you suggest to anybody that I protected him, I shall simply deny that this conversation took place.”