Nine Lives (19 page)

A few delegates had approached the platform, he was told – those with written questions – but nobody was seen to leave the hall. And no one had been acting strangely – as if such a question made any sense to a bunch of shrinks to whom everybody, except themselves, was strange and in dire need of treatment.

Wilkins fared little better below stairs. He found what he expected to find. The guitar-string garrotte. And unsurprisingly he found no prints. Anywhere. He ordered the body to be taken away for further examination, though he knew that no amount of further examination could unlock the mystery. When he heard that the victim was not even a psychotherapist, he found the news encouraging. The killer was slipping. He might never risk it again. But still he would be left with eight guitar strings on his back-burner, a severe blight on his reputation and a sure barrier to any hopes of promotion. Before leaving the hall, he went to see the grieving widow. No murder was fair game, but this one was grossly unjust. Poor Mr Quick was guilty of nothing. He was a simple dentist, and in no way qualified as a victim. But he was dead, and his wife undeniably a widow, and Wilkins was overwhelmed by the sheer unfairness of it all. He spent some time with Mrs Quick. A silent time. He was moved to hold her hand and he hoped that that gesture would do for the words he couldn't find.

As was his wont, he went to Mr Quick's funeral in the vain hope of finding the stranger. More often than not in murder cases, the killer would skirt the grave out of some ghoulish need to see his job well and truly done. But the shrink killer clearly had no such need, and Wilkins wondered what lunatic appetite prompted his carnage. If that were known, it would be a clue of a kind. If it were a simple loathing of the profession itself, he could well have planted a bomb in the symposium and killed a hundred birds with one stone. But it was more than that. It was something to do with the guitar string. That was the key. And with such a weapon, one could only kill one at a time. He thought of discussing this proposition with Dr Arbuthnot, but his
reliance on that source was fast dwindling. He decided instead to pay a visit to the United Kingdom Council of Psychotherapists and thought regretfully that he should have involved them at a much earlier stage. He didn't know what help he could expect from them, but he was clutching at straws.

The director welcomed him and wondered why his visit was so tardy.

‘I didn't think you could help me,' Wilkins said. ‘These killings are strictly police work, and often to involve outsiders clouds the issue.'

‘But we're hardly outsiders,' the director said. ‘Our whole profession is at risk.'

Wilkins agreed with him and was contrite. ‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘I should have come sooner.'

‘We want to help and we think we can,' the director said. ‘We have made a decision, that is, the board and I. It seems that this killer has had very easy access to our practitioners. He had simply to make an appointment which was granted. We have now sent out a directive to all our members to the effect that no new patients can be taken on to their lists without a written recommendation from their general practitioner. Those new patients must be examined before recommendation is put forward. We think that might help stop him in his tracks. It will at least be a hindrance.'

Wilkins considered himself incredibly stupid. It was a move that he himself should have suggested to the Council after the very first killing. ‘I'm grateful,' was all that he could say.

On his way back to the station, he mulled over their decision. But for some reason, he was not entirely satisfied. The Council's decision might well protect its own members.
But there were hundreds of unqualified therapists out there, practising all kinds of dubious therapies and they, if the killer was not too picky, would be equally at risk. He could only hope that his killer would have some respect for professional qualifications.

He reported the Council's directive to his deputy but he too, though welcoming it, had similar doubts.

‘We must press on,' he said. ‘This time the killer has slipped. He's losing his touch, and he may well be frightened. And that's how we're going to catch him. By his fear.'

Wilkins saw no sense in such an argument. He regarded it simply as a token of encouragement. ‘Let's hope you're right,' he said.

Today is visiting day …

Today is visiting day and I'm dreading it. He will have received my letter. He will have considered it, or more than likely, he will have torn it up. I'm sorry I ever sent it. You see, despite my doubts, I always look forward to seeing Donald. I miss him. He was my best friend. I miss our evenings together, when we used to sit side by side on the sofa, watching television. We never talked much. That's why he loved the box. You wouldn't notice our silences. But I never minded them. There was always somebody else around to talk to. We were happy together and that's all that mattered. Cosy. How many married couples could say that?

So, despite my fears, I was looking forward to seeing him. Mrs Cox too. I was sure she'd be on the ferry, despite her declaration that she would never visit her husband again. I was sorry for her. Had my husband murdered my mother, I would have washed my hands of him, but she probably thought the same of me, and wondered why I visited still. And, sure enough, she was in her usual compartment on the train and she was clearly as glad to see me as I her.

‘Here we go again,' she said. It was her customary greeting, followed by the usual rider. ‘I don't know why we keep on doing it.'

I let it lie. We were accidental friends, and such friends should waste no time in argument.

‘I've brought him a jigsaw,' she said. ‘A rose garden. He'll like that. It'll give him something to do during our visit. Instead of staring at the ceiling.'

‘And what will you do?' I asked.

‘I'll watch him,' she said.

‘You could do it together,' I suggested.

‘He'd kill me if I touched it,' she said.

And I believed her. His sentence to prison had certainly saved her life. ‘Do you write letters to your husband?' I asked her. ‘Between visits?'

‘I write almost every day,' she said.

I was surprised and slightly irritated by her submission. A daily letter was overdoing it a little. ‘Why so often?' I asked.

‘It's safer,' she said. ‘I can say what I like and he can't strike me through the post. I vent all my anger before each visit. Then I'm happy to sit back and look at him.'

It seemed to me then that her visits were punitive. Her letters were slaps in his face and she simply visited him to watch him squirm. Then I remembered my own letter, and again I was afraid.

Mrs Cox seemed to be in a very good mood, and from what she had told me I presumed that her current letters had not minced words. As we boarded the ferry, she made straight for the bar and ordered a double whisky. I stuck to orange juice. I had a feeling that by the end of the ferry crossing she would need my support. We settled ourselves by the window and watched Portsmouth recede. She was suddenly talkative. She'd taken herself to see a musical, and she outlined the plot for me, even contributing a couple of songs.

‘If I'm going to sing,' she said, ‘I need to wet my whistle,' and off she went to the bar again, returning with two glasses, each bearing a double whisky. I hoped that one of them was not for me. But I needn't have worried. She set the
two of them in front of her and once more started to sing. She refuelled herself from time to time, as her voice strayed off key, and her speech slurred. By the time we reached Fishbourne, she was legless. I helped her on to the bus. She was roaring with laughter, interrupted by attempted snatches of song. I rather hoped she might be sick, so that she could sober up a little before the visit. But she showed no signs of nausea. Indeed she became more and more merry as we neared the prison.

I dreaded our entrance. We reached the gates and she made no attempt to pull herself together. In any case, she was too far gone. And she knew it.

‘I'm drunk,' she shouted. ‘And I bloody well don't care.'

I steadied her into the visitors room where the axeman was waiting. He noted her merriment and in no way did it please him. How dare she be merry, he thought, while I'm stuck in here with no fun at all. He rose but made no move to help her to her seat, so that I had to hang on to her till the last moment. I moved the seat towards her and sat her down. Then I pushed the seat towards the table and let her get on with it. Whatever the ‘it' was.

The other inmates and visitors were staring at her and she was going to give them a run for their money.

‘What the fuck are you all staring at?' she shouted. ‘Let's all have a sing-song. Cheer up this bloody place for a bit.' Then she started on a carol as if it were Christmas. The others stared at her, marvelling or disgusted. Some of them actually joined in the singing. ‘Good King Wenceslas,' they sang and even the warder who stood warily at the door could not help but mouth
the words. And at the point when the snow lay round about, Mrs Cox shovelled it aside and threw up a glorious fountain of vomit. Its matter spread across the floor and the room was suddenly silent and ashamed. The warder crossed the floor to where Mrs Cox stood. Gently he took her by the arm.

‘Let's go now, shall we?' he said. ‘Let's get some air.' He led her outside, and shortly a cleaner appeared with bucket and mop; soon all disgusting traces of Mrs Cox's statement had disappeared.

‘Poor woman,' I said to Donald. And I did indeed pity her. Mrs Cox was a prim lady, middle class and respectable, her mouth a stranger to blasphemy. Her swear-laden discharge was a cry for help, and she had had to drink herself into a stupor in order to utter it. I wondered what state I would find her in when the visit was over.

The visitors room was unusually quiet. Mrs Cox's outburst seemed to have stunned them all into silence. Remembering my letter, I was glad of it, and I hoped that Donald would make no mention of it at all. Then out of the silence, and as if it came from another place, I heard, ‘I got your letter. And your PS,' he added. ‘It doesn't matter why I did it,' he said. ‘At least not to anybody else. It only matters to me. And that's why I'm innocent.'

I didn't know how to respond. But I knew I couldn't let it lie.

‘Why doesn't it matter to me?' I asked. ‘I'm your wife. Surely I'm entitled to know.' I felt the interference of that assertive ‘Verry' and I knew that there would be a price to pay.

‘You are not entitled to know,' he shouted.

It was the first time I could ever remember that Donald
had raised his voice to me. A vein of rage throbbed in his forehead.

‘You are
not
entitled to know,' he said again. ‘It was
my
crusade and you had no part in it.'

How often he had used that word during his trial. ‘My crusade', or sometimes, he varied it with ‘my mission'. What it meant was nobody's business but his own. It encapsulated the whole of the ‘why', the ‘why' of his total innocence. I had been given my answer, which was no answer at all, and I had to be satisfied.

‘I'm sorry I shouted at you,' he said, and he squeezed my hand. ‘But I want you to understand, sweetheart. My crusade was sacred to me. Holy almost, and its cause can never be shared. Because of its cause, I am innocent. And I ask you to believe me.'

‘I do,' I said helplessly, but I'd have been happpier if he'd given me just one simple reason to believe that he was not guilty. I had hoped to find it in the ‘why', for that's where it undoubtedly lay, but I was clearly not to be privy to it.

I felt he was anxious to change the subject, so I asked him about the mural.

‘I've started,' he said eagerly. ‘At least, I've done a rough design on paper. The Governor has seen it and he's given the go-ahead. Verry,' he said, squeezing my hand once more, ‘I'm so happy.'

I wondered whether he had ever been so happy in the whole of his life and the thought caused me to ponder whether he needed me in his life any more. Whether he, like his two sons, had put the past behind him and found a different way, as they had done. And where did that leave me, with no role at all, except that of a sad observer waiting
in the wings for a change that would never occur? And like Mrs Cox, I asked myself whether there was any point in visiting him at all. But without my visits, my life would have been stripped of its punctuation, and Mrs Cox's likewise, and together we would travel the train, the ferry and the bus, if only for the sorry sake of grammar.

‘Tell me about the design,' I said.

‘It's dominated by the sea, of course. I think water will resonate for all of us here. We live on an island and the sea is our only escape. It is also our confinement. So we are obsessed with it.'

He smiled at me. ‘D'you understand?' he said.

‘Of course,' I said. And I did. Every syllable of it. He was going to paint his childhood at the sea and it was only of secondary importance that it would be meaningful to others. It was
his
childhood, as it had been
his
mission,
his
crusade. He was a loner, my Donald. Through and through, and I wondered whether ever in his life he had shared himself with anybody. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him. In my bones, I felt it would be a clue to the ‘why'. But I'd learned my lesson and I held my tongue. But I did dare to ask whether there would be people in the mural.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘But just vague figures. Just suggestions of faces. They won't have any prominence.'

That made sense, I thought. For Donald, other people were mere gestures.

Then, as always, I was relieved when the bell rang the end of visiting time. I was uncertain of my place in the scheme of things. Of them all, Donald and my boys, I was the only one who had not found an alternative way. I was miserable, and the sight of Mrs Cox, hiding in the back of
the bus, in no way cheered me. We were a wretched and silent pair all the way back to London. Occasionally she muttered ‘never again' but it had become a mantra recited on all her return journeys.