My mind had wiped itself clean the morning after I stumbled across Suzanne Wilkes’s body. For the first minute or two it was a normal day, with time to lie in bed before jumping in the shower. Then the memories reassembled, and closing my eyes didn’t make them go away. I saw the deep wounds on her skin, Alvarez’s frown, and Burns’s face, grey with defeat. It was a relief to hear Lola and Lars chatting in the room next door; proof that other people’s lives were carrying on as normal.
By seven thirty I was ready to leave, but my police escort hadn’t arrived. Outside the window a squad car was parked beside Will’s van, two coppers sleeping like babies in the front seats. I decided to give them ten more minutes of dream time before running downstairs and demanding my lift.
Someone knocked on the door just as I was making my packed lunch. It wasn’t my brother’s familiar rapping, loud enough to wake the whole neighbourhood, just a couple of quiet taps, like the caller didn’t really want to be heard. I checked the spy-hole then wrenched open the door. Will was talking to an invisible friend in a serious voice. He seemed to be trying to persuade him to do something against his better judgement.
‘Come in.’ I held out my arms. ‘Let’s get you warm.’
He looked straight through me, still dressed in the secondhand clothes Lola had bought him, black trousers covered in splatters of mud. God alone knew where he had spent the
last couple of nights. I rested my hand on his arm. The material of his jacket was soaked, no wonder he was shivering. He whispered a jumble of unconnected words, impossible to decipher.
‘Lola’s here. Don’t you want to see her?’ I asked.
His shoulders twitched. For a second he was with me, still staring straight ahead, but I knew he could hear.
‘She’s got a new job, singing in a bar.’
Will hummed a few tuneless notes.
‘That’s right. She’s not bad either, somewhere between Piaf and Billie Holiday.’
He gave a high squealing laugh, as if the idea delighted him. I tried again to lead him indoors, but he edged away.
‘Stay there, Will,’ I said quietly. ‘Please don’t leave.’
Back in the flat I hovered outside the spare room.
‘Lola? I need your help.’
Seconds later she emerged. Without her make-up she was pink-cheeked and freckled, about seventeen years old. She padded along the hallway barefoot, and I stepped into the kitchen to let her do her magic.
‘Sweetheart,’ she exclaimed. ‘How lovely, you’ve come to see me.’
Will’s reply was too quiet to hear.
‘Of course I’ll sing for you, darling, but only if you have breakfast with me. Look, the door’s open when you’re ready.’
Lola looked shaken when she came back inside.
‘Jesus, Al. He’s in a hell of a state,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t even know if he’ll come in.’
After a few minutes Will ventured through the door. Lola took his hand and led him to the kitchen table, while I made a pile of toast. At least it excused me from having to watch him, twitching from head to toe, muttering to himself. If he had been a patient it would have been easy. I could have observed
him calmly, written down a list of anti-psychotic drugs to try, then signed him up for the full battery of support, to keep him going until the medication kicked in.
‘You want a song before I’ve even had breakfast?’ Lola teased. ‘My God, you’re a hard taskmaster.’
She began to croon ‘God Bless the Child’. When I turned round, Will’s shaking had stopped, his gaze fixed on Lola, chin propped on his hand, as though he could listen for ever. I put a plate of toast in front of him, and he ate without shifting his attention for a beat. When the song finished he didn’t say thank you, he just carried on staring. I sat down at the table and tried to catch his attention.
‘Listen, Will. After breakfast we have to get a taxi. The police need to talk to us.’
His body language changed immediately. The conversation he had been having with himself started up again, lips moving in an urgent whisper.
‘I’ll come too, if you like.’ Lola squeezed his hand.
‘It’s not a big deal,’ I added. ‘They just want to know where you’ve been, that’s all.’
‘With my friend,’ Will said quietly. Suddenly his eyes narrowed with anger. ‘You were wrong about him, Al. He cooked for me and gave me stuff. But you never let me have friends, do you?’
‘Of course I do. I just don’t like the ones who give you drugs, that’s all. What’s your friend’s name anyway?’
Lola put her hand on Will’s collar. ‘This is all wet, darling. Why don’t I put it on the radiator?’ She slipped out into the hall, holding his jacket.
Will ignored me, slathering jam on to his toast.
‘So what’s your friend like, Will?’ I pictured a middle-aged do-gooder with a Samaritan complex, working overtime to keep his conscience clean.
‘He’s interested in me, and sometimes he asks questions about you too, Al.’ He gave me a sly look, out of the corner of his eye.
A prickling sensation travelled across my skin. ‘What does he want to know about me, Will?’
He began to hum quietly to himself, eyes fixed on the window, as if I had ceased to exist.
My legs were trembling as I left the kitchen. Lola had slung Will’s jacket across the radiator. There was a bulge in one of the pockets. Maybe his friend wasn’t a Samaritan after all. He’d given him a cocktail of new drugs to try. Slipping my hand under the flap, I expected to find a packet, or a syringe, but my fingers closed around a shaft of metal. I pulled out the flick-knife I had seen in his rucksack. It was tempting to throw it away, but he would be incensed if I stole something that belonged to him.
Lola appeared as I was trying to decide what to do.
‘What’s that?’ She stared down at the knife’s ornate silver handle. If it hadn’t been so lethal, it would have been a thing of beauty.
‘It was in his pocket,’ I whispered.
She took it from my hand before I could stop her.
Back in the kitchen Will was still lost in his own world, taking long, noisy gulps of juice. Lola settled herself in a chair and put the knife on the table beside him.
‘This fell out of your pocket, darling. Where on earth did you get it?’
Will carried on drinking until his glass was empty. ‘A friend gave it to me,’ he muttered. ‘It was a present.’
‘Knives give me the spooks.’ She gave a mock shudder. ‘Why don’t you leave it here? You could hurt yourself with the nasty great thing.’
Will nodded obediently, and I marvelled again at Lola’s power to make men do exactly what she wanted. If I’d tried to confiscate it there would have been an all-out war.
‘Now, I’ll put some clothes on and we’ll get going. Okay?’ Lola stooped to kiss Will’s forehead and he closed his eyes in rapture.
The peace didn’t last for long. While Lola was in the bathroom, Lars wandered in as I made coffee. He was in his usual state of undress, bare-chested, with a towel wrapped round his waist. Will’s whole body tensed, like a child when a stranger gets too close.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
Lars smiled and held out his hand. ‘Lola’s boyfriend.’
Will jumped up so quickly that his chair fell backwards, clattering on the floor. Yelling after him was no use. The knife had disappeared from the table, and his feet were already pounding down the stairs.
‘Fuck,’ I muttered.
‘That didn’t go so well, did it?’ Lars treated me to another effortless smile.
Burns was not impressed when I rang him from my mobile. I tried to explain that I had planned to bring Will to the station myself, in case he panicked, but his voice was thick with sleep and outrage. Tooley Street went by in a blur. The policemen had finally agreed to run me to work. I could hear Burns grinding his teeth at the other end of the line.
‘Just so you know, Alice, forensics are starting work on your brother’s van today.’
I took a deep breath. ‘You’re not seriously telling me Will’s a suspect, are you?’
There was a long pause. ‘Better safe than sorry, that’s all.’
‘I don’t fucking believe this.’
‘It’ll be better for him in the long run.’
‘Why, Don? Why will it be better? He hasn’t done anything.’
‘Calm down, Alice. The sooner we check him out, the sooner he gets on with his life.’
On this occasion Burns’s accent, with its blend of Scotland and Thames estuary, had lost its power to calm me down.
The policemen dropped me at work just after nine, which meant that I had to jog up the stairs, rather than pace myself. Hari was standing by the reception desk when I arrived, chatting to one of the mental health nurses like he had all the time in the world. He gave me a grave smile, and asked me to join him in his office. It was easy to forecast what he was going to say. Go home, rest, look after yourself.
‘Sit down, please.’ He nodded at the chair his patients always sat in.
‘I don’t need a therapy session, Hari, honestly.’
‘Maybe you do.’ He studied me carefully, as if all my secrets were visible. ‘You’ve witnessed something terrible, Alice.’
‘Not really. What about the soldiers we treat? They’ve watched hundreds of people die.’
‘But you’re not a soldier. You’re a psychologist.’
‘I know. Believe it or not, I hadn’t forgotten.’
Hari appeared to be searching for the best way to share bad news. ‘You haven’t been yourself for the last few months, Alice. You’ve seemed distracted, maybe even depressed.’
‘You would say that. It’s your specialism.’
He studied me for at least a minute, without moving a muscle. ‘The thing is, you have a high pain threshold, don’t you?’
‘Meaning?’
‘You know exactly what I mean. You internalise it. You don’t offload enough on to your friends or colleagues, even during supervision.’
I looked out of the window. ‘And what would you put that down to?’
‘Witnessing too much suffering as a child, maybe.’ His chocolate-brown eyes settled on my face.
‘But I’m a grown-up now. It’s behind me.’
Hari looked amazed. ‘Nothing’s ever behind us, Alice. You know that as well as I do.’
‘Patients to see, but thanks for the warning about my latent depression.’ I got to my feet.
‘One more thing.’
I paused by the door, expecting another warning about my fragile mental health.
‘Dinner, tomorrow night, eight o’clock.’
‘Try and keep me away,’ I smiled.
I gave myself a break from email that day, making a policy decision to avoid frustration. If someone wanted me badly enough they could phone, or send a letter.
The morning was crammed with appointments. My chat with Hari made me fifteen minutes late for my first consultation, so it was a game of catch-up, trying not to keep people waiting. The most interesting person I saw was a man suffering from hysterical blindness. Under stress, he lost the ability to see, or imagined he did. Either way it made his life impossible. He couldn’t trust himself to drive, in case the lights went out suddenly on a busy road, with his kids in the back seat. We agreed he would keep a diary, pinpoint the triggers for each attack, increase the amount of exercise he took, begin twelve weeks of therapy.
After lunch I went to see Laura Wallis. She was curled up on her bed, leafing through a novel with a bright pink cover. I perched on a visitor’s chair.
‘Good book?’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘Not really, it’s a bit too soppy.’
I glanced at the cover. ‘Mills and Boon.’
‘Mum loves them. She’s got hundreds at home.’
I remembered Mrs Wallis’s anxious expression. The poor woman must be desperate for a world where things ended happily.
Laura’s chart showed that she had gained another pound. ‘You’re doing great. Soon you’ll be on target.’
She beamed, as though she’d been given a gold star. ‘I have to be home for my birthday.’
‘When’s that?’
‘A week on Monday.’
‘Better start asking for double portions of pudding then.’
She screwed up her face in horror, as if she had been told to eat a domestic animal.
When I got back to my office the city had disappeared, nothing there except a layer of fog, smothering my window like a sheet of grubby cotton wool. I was about to get on with a list of GP referrals when the phone rang.
‘Alice, can you get down here, pronto? There’s a car waiting outside.’ Burns’s voice sounded urgent, even more out of breath than usual.
They must have found Will, and by now he’d be bouncing off the walls of his holding cell. I let the phone drop back on to its cradle before Burns could finish his statement, sprinting down fourteen flights of stairs before I remembered that my coat was still hanging behind my door. But by then the momentum was driving me. There was no option but to carry on.