(1998) Denial (27 page)

‘Another time.’

‘Of course. Absolutely. Any time, pop in – you’re always welcome. This is your office, after all!’ He gave a silly little laugh.

Thomas returned to his car. The box was heavier than he had expected. He was anxious to check the contents. But not here.

He put the box in the boot and checked carefully that the
lid was shut. He got back into his car, then out again, and once more checked that the boot was shut.

He checked one more time before he finally drove off.

‘You are troubled this morning, Dr Tennent,’ the old man said. ‘You are finding it hard to concentrate.’

Michael, seated in his comfortable chair in his office at the Sheen Park Clinic, stared at the former concentration-camp officer, who was sitting ramrod upright on the sofa but looking even frailer than he had a fortnight ago.

He didn’t need Herman Dortmund to tell him this. He didn’t need Herman Dortmund to be sitting in his office at all right now. He didn’t want to see anyone. Least of all this loathsome creep.

He wanted the session to finish and Dortmund to go. He glanced at his watch. Nine thirty. Fifteen minutes and he would have a gap. He would phone Amanda’s office and see if there was any news, and if there wasn’t, he’d already decided on his next course of action. His eyes were gritty from tiredness, but he was running full-throttle on adrenaline.

‘Let’s talk about you,’ Michael said, not wanting to be deflected.

Dortmund was dressed as always like an English country gentleman. He wore a Harris tweed suit that looked far too warm for this fine summer morning, a checked Viyella shirt, a National Trust tie, held in place with a discreet gold pin, and brown suede brogues.

Dortmund’s fingers were steepled in front of him, his small, cold eyes staring over the them. In his arrogant voice, with its guttural accent, he said, ‘Last time I was here I explained this ability I have to foreshadow tragedy. I told you I had known that you were going to lose a woman whom you love.’ There were beads of spittle in the corners
of his serpentine lips. And there was smugness in his tone. Satisfaction, even. ‘It is this person you are worrying about now, Dr Tennent.’

Michael studied him. As before, he did not want to legitimise this man’s warped fantasies by asking for details, yet he couldn’t ignore what he had just said. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Can you add to that?’

Without moving, without averting his stare, Dortmund said, ‘No.’

Michael had the feeling he was playing games. ‘Tell me why you think I am worrying about someone.’

‘I understood that I was paying you to help
me
, Dr Tennent.’

‘Yes, I am, but you told me originally that you had come to me in search of redemption for your time working in Belsen. And you are the one who mentioned it. So?’

‘It is not important to me. An observation, that’s all.’

Michael broke off the stare by glancing into the man’s file: he was giving Dortmund time to speak again.

The silence continued. Michael glanced at his watch. Ten minutes left.

‘I read in
The Times
that Gloria Lamark had died,’ Dortmund said, finally. ‘The actress. She used to be one of your patients – I sat with her in your waiting room one time. I remember her in the film
Double Zero
, with Michael Redgrave.’

Michael looked up at him sharply. There seemed to be reproach in the old man’s eyes – or was he imagining it? He was not going to be drawn into talking about Gloria Lamark.

‘I told her that I liked her in this film,’ Dortmund continued. ‘She was pleased. Actresses are easily pleased. You just have to stroke their egos, that is all. I am sure that is something I do not need to tell you, Dr Tennent.’

‘Did you see
Schindler’s List?
’ Michael asked.

Dortmund looked away. It was a cheap point to score, Michael knew, and a dangerous one on a man whose sanity was fragile enough from guilt over atrocities he had committed during the war. But he didn’t care. If this ageing
creep was going to read his body language and try his hand at mind-fucking him, he too was willing to cut up rough today.

Dortmund did not speak again until the session had ended. Then he gripped the polished mahogany handle of his walking stick, levered himself up off the sofa, wished Michael a terse, ‘Good morning,’ and left, like a man stepping through his own shadow.

Michael snapped his file shut and angrily replaced it in the cabinet. He would sack Dortmund, he decided. He had only kept the man on as a patient because he interested him but he was still trying to fathom out what had really gone on in Dortmund’s mind all those years back, in the Second World War.

Did you have to be born evil to commit evil? Or did you have to be born with the
capacity
for evil? Or did something happen to you when you were a child? Or an adult?

What was evil anyway? What was it that made it acceptable for Christians in the Crusades to have murdered Muslims in their attempt at world domination of their beliefs, yet unacceptable for Nazis to have murdered Jews, blacks and the disabled?

Did you have to be sane in order to be truly evil? Sane and weak or sane and strong?

He picked up the phone and dialled Amanda’s office. Lulu answered. She had just tried Amanda’s home number and her mobile, her sister, her mother and Brian once more, without success.

His heart was screaming, but his voice was calm. ‘Lulu,’ he said, ‘I’m going to phone the police.’

Brighton police station rises at a level angle off the apex of a steep hill. Architecturally, it could not be anything other than an institutional building of the kind found in any modernised town centre. Concrete and glass, stained by urban grime and corroded by salt from the Channel, it is neither visually appealing, nor is it an eyesore. But it is very large. It is the second busiest police station in England.

The engraved coat-of-arms over the front entrance gives it authority. There’s a wide mixture of people in this part of town. Some of them are uncomfortable walking down the street past that long wall of glass they can’t quite see into. Many avoid this street altogether.

An office of the Brighton and Hove Coroner is located on the ground floor, and has a view of the staff car park and the gymnasium.

Glenn Branson stood in the open-plan room in which the coroner’s assistants divided their time between here and their office behind the mortuary, in front of the desk of Eleanor Willow, who had been present at Cora Burstridge’s post-mortem.

‘Why exactly do you want the key?’ she asked.

‘Cora Burstridge’s daughter is coming over from Los Angeles. I thought I’d have a tidy-up, make sure there’s nothing left that might upset her,’ he lied.

She frowned. ‘Yes, OK, if you think that’s necessary.’

‘You’re not intending having SOCO go in there, are you?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to worry about prints. The pathologist is pretty happy. We’re just waiting on the stomach fluids, blood and urine analysis.’

She rose from her desk, opened a file drawer, rummaged inside it and produced a brown envelope on which was hand-written, ‘Cora Burstridge. Flat 7, 93 Adelaide Crescent. Hove.’

‘You’ll bring these straight back to me?’

‘Absolutely.’

The door Glenn had kicked in on Thursday had been repaired and there were barely any scars from the damage he’d caused. The lock sprang easily on the twist of the key, and he slipped inside, closing the door behind him, glad no one had seen him.

He did not want any interruptions, he wanted to think clearly, he wanted time,
slow time
.

He had already ascertained as best he could what had happened on Cora’s last day from her neighbour, Mrs Winston, who seemed to have kept a close eye on her. Cora had done an interview with the local newspaper, the
Evening Argus
, in the morning. A photographer had turned up while the reporter was still there. Afterwards she had gone shopping – she had told Mrs Winston she wanted to buy a little present for her new grandchild in America, something light that she could post, and Mrs Winston had suggested a small item of clothing. Cora was going to visit her daughter and see her grandchild for the first time at Christmas and she was looking forward to it. The grandchild was all she talked about. A little girl, just three months old. Her name was Brittany.

Cora Burstridge had left her flat shortly before one, and Mrs Winston, who had gone to visit her daughter for the afternoon, never saw her again.

Glenn stood still. The bad smell was almost gone, just a trace lingered, but maybe that was in his mind.

He tried to imagine he was Cora Burstridge.
Walking in the shoes
, the psychological profilers called it. He snapped shut the safety chain, which had also been fixed. Then he walked in Cora Burstridge’s shoes across the hallway, slowly. He was tired, elated from winning a BAFTA award,
but tired from the late night in London, and beyond that, he had an underlying tiredness of life.

He hated being old, he hated being short of money, he was lonely and the future stretched ahead of him like a rusted railway track into a dark tunnel.

A much younger version of himself, standing shoulder to shoulder with a young Laurence Olivier, looked down at him from the
Time and the Conways
playbill on the wall.

The past. Those days were gone and they weren’t coming back. You got your BAFTA Lifetime Achievement Award, you said your piece, and then you were supposed to get out of everyone’s face and go home to die in quiet obscurity. If you were lucky, and didn’t leave it too long – until no one was left who remembered you – you might get a memorial service in a smart London church.

So now he had his BAFTA award. He went home. Money was running out, not even enough to pay for a decent nursing home. He had the option to go to California, live with his daughter, growing decrepit in a city where he might have been loved once, but now was just another has-been.

Not many friends left.

The only jewel in his life now was the grandchild, Brittany, he hadn’t yet seen, seven thousand miles away. His best way to celebrate his award was to buy a present for Brittany.

So where was it?

He walked through to the drawing room. Bright sunlight filled the place. It glinted at him off the deco frame of a mirror. It dazzled him from a silver cigarette box on the coffee table. A red light was flashing. The answering-machine on the bureau in the recess near the window. He walked across to it. Eleven messages on the counter. He hit
PLAY
and listened to them.

The messages were in addition to the ones he had heard on Thursday but left on the tape. Requests for interviews and more congratulations from friends, all of these during Thursday night before the news had hit the press. There
was one message timed at earlier this morning, a sales call from Brian Willoughby of Everest Double-glazing wondering if she would like to take advantage of their low midsummer offer.

It was hot. Double-glazed windows. She already had double-glazed windows. A lorry accelerated along the seafront. The double-glazing muted the sound but did not keep it out. It kept the blowflies in. A solitary fly was batting against a pane. Several more lay dead on the sill. Jesus, he was glad he had come: he could at least spare Cora’s daughter those.

And the blowflies still bothered him.

He stared out, across the wide, busy road, across the promenade, the pebble beach, at the wet sand. Breaking waves. Low tide. Shallow water. He remembered his grandfather.
The shallows
.

The roughest water is in the shallows. The dangerous rocks are the ones in the shallows, just below the surface, not the ones you can see but the ones you cannot see.

What was in here that he could not see?

He put himself back into Cora Burstridge’s mind.

Had it been this hot in here last Tuesday afternoon? Would I have opened a window? He tried but the glazing unit was bolted shut with a window lock. Where do I keep the key?

She was security-conscious. Some elderly people felt the cold badly and didn’t mind heat like this. He would check the windows, but first,
Did I buy a present? Where did I put it? Did I mail it before I killed myself
?

Then he saw the carrier bag. A large, elegant, dark blue plastic bag, clipped shut at the top. Hannington’s was printed on the side.

Glenn opened the bag. Inside was a pink Babygro. He lifted it out, unfolded it, held it up. Tiny arms, tiny legs. The word
CHAMP
! embroidered across it in bold lettering.

He put it back in the bag. Hannington’s was the best department store in Brighton. Of course, nothing but the best for Brittany. Grandma’s prerogative to spoil Baby! He’d
had plenty of experience of that. Ari’s mother was nuts about Sammy.

He walked back over to the window and now his brain was motoring. I’m Cora Burstridge, I’m depressed, and I’m going to kill myself. Last night I win a BAFTA award, I buy a Babygro to celebrate and I’m going to mail it to my granddaughter, Brittany, in their nice house on Palm, north of Wilshire, in Beverly Hills. I imagine Brittany in it, I try to think what she looks like.

I come home. Why do I kill myself before mailing it?

This does not make sense.

He glanced behind him, looked at the dark passage down to her bedroom and shivered suddenly, as his brain presented him with a snapshot of what he had seen down there last Thursday.

Then the whole atmosphere of this flat got to him. The silence. The sense that Cora Burstridge had vacated this place – and yet had somehow not gone. Not yet. Spirits hung around, people said. They hung around until the funeral. Then they went over to the Other Side.

Shadows everywhere. Was one of them Cora’s?

Was she angry with him for being here?

I’m intruding into someone else’s life, someone else’s death and I’m only doing this because I’m nosy, because I want the chance to snoop around the great actress Cora Burstridge’s home
.

Not true!

I’m doing this to help you, Cora
.