‘I said, “There there, there
there.”’
‘Did he talk to you?’
‘I gave him tea. I welcomed him. I
said to him, “My home is your home,” and then I asked him not to go away, I
said “please” at the start of the sentence and at the end as well. Everyone
leaves because they’re not really here. That’s the secret no one else
understands. The world goes on and on with nothing to get in its way, just the empty
world and then the empty sea. You can feel the wind that comes all the way from the
beginning, and then there’s the moon looking at you and it takes a hundred hundred
years to see. You want a final resting place. Like him.’
‘You mean like the man on your
sofa?’
‘He just needs feeding up. I can do
that.’
‘Was there an accident?’
‘I cleared that away. I told him it
didn’t matter at all and he mustn’t be embarrassed. It happens to the best
of us. I like to help people and give them things so they might want to stay. Wash their
clothes and comb their hair. Sharing is caring. A problem halved. I could even give him
some of my things, if he wanted to stay.’
‘Did something happen when he was with
you, Michelle?’
‘He rested and I tended
him.’
‘His neck was hurt.’
‘Poor love. He was so
uncomfortable until I cleaned him up and made him better.’
‘Where did you meet him?’
‘Well, now. Dreaming all the while and
then catching fish and then, of course, it was the one who never came home
alive.’
‘This is getting us nowhere,’
Karlsson said, from the end of the bed.
‘Michelle.’ Frieda’s voice
was quiet. ‘I know that the world is a scary and a lonely place. But you can speak
to me. Sometimes talking makes things a little bit better.’
‘Words,’ said Michelle.
‘Yes. Words.’
‘Sticks and stones. I pick them
up.’ Michelle stroked the back of Frieda’s hand. ‘You’ve got a
nice face and so I’m going to tell you. His name was Ducks. His name was My Dear.
You see?’
‘Thank you.’ Frieda waited a few
seconds, then stood up and tried to pull away her hand. ‘I must go now.’
‘Will you come again?’
‘I don’t think that’s a
good idea,’ said Karlsson.
‘Yes,’ said Frieda.
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?’