Disorder (Sam Keddie thriller series Book 1) (3 page)

Chapter 5

Clerkenwell, London

Sam cancelled the following day’s clients and made an arrangement to meet Kate for lunch. Despite their split some years back, they’d managed to salvage a friendship, one which he greatly valued.

   That they achieved this was quite something. Spectacular rows had preceded their rift, arguments in which their very incompatible agendas had become fatally exposed. Kate, it was evident, wanted long-term commitment and, in time, a family. Sam, as he gradually discovered over the course of the relationship, was not ready for either.

   Sam had been hoping for a long boozy lunch and, if he was honest, that his ex would take the afternoon off and come back to have sex with him at the home they once shared. He could sense from the moment they sat down in the bar in Clerkenwell that Kate was not up for it. She was in a hurry, keen to get back to her studio round the corner where she was due to take some shots of a young actress for the cover of
Red
.

   She groaned when Sam said that he hadn’t heard of her.

   ‘What’s happened to the man who used to be so on the pulse?’ she mocked.

   Sam shrugged. Being aware of the latest cultural phenomenon was, like so many of the interests he’d once shared with Kate, a thing of the past.

   ‘So what’s up?’ she asked. Her hair was cut short and croppy these days. In fact he might have struggled to recognise her compared to the long-haired woman he’d once gone out with. She’d changed a great deal – blossomed, if he was going to be truthful – since they’d split. Her career had thrived and, while she remained for the most part single, she seemed supremely content. He had no reason to resent this but it still occasionally hurt.

   ‘One of my clients committed suicide.’

   Confidentiality, as he’d told the short, bald man, was one of psychotherapy’s cast-iron rules. But this wasn’t about divulging what Scott had said; it was about how Scott’s death made him feel.

   Kate’s hand reached across the table and grabbed Sam’s.

   ‘Oh sweetheart, I’m so sorry.’

   She squeezed his hand. A waiter arrived with the bottle of wine Sam had ordered and poured them both a glass.

   Alcohol had been a regular feature of their relationship and often precipitated the fiercest of their quarrels. Sam had a sudden, discomforting memory of
how he’d broken several bones in his right hand after punching a hole in the wall during an argument over some domestic – and now long-forgotten – trifle. Later, feeling very foolish in A&E, he’d marvelled at his over-reaction, one that was vastly out of proportion with the petty matter they’d been quarrelling over.

   Kate sipped her glass tentatively. Sam took a deep gulp.

   ‘I know it’s a cliché,’ said Kate, ‘but you know it’s not your fault, don’t you?’

   Sam smiled weakly. ‘I should think that. But right now I don’t.’

   ‘I’m no expert,’ said Kate, ‘but your job isn’t to save people. If someone’s got it into their head to kill themselves, it’s never going to be easy to persuade them otherwise.’

   ‘I should have been more careful.’

   The hand slipped from his. The friendship had certain limits. And one of those was too much introspection, which Kate had grown tired of.

   Self-examination had become Sam’s obsession in the latter years of their relationship. Outbursts like the one that led to A&E had made him increasingly aware that beneath the façade he presented there lay a number of unresolved issues, damaged pieces of his psyche that had far more influence than he’d realised, let alone acknowledged.

   ‘You going to eat?’

   She shook her head. ‘I’m a bit pushed for time. I’ll probably grab a sandwich on the way back.’

   He smiled. They needed to talk about something else.

   ‘Hey,’ she said, her voice suddenly brighter. ‘You’ll never guess where I’m off to next month.’

   As Kate began talking about an assignment in the Grenadines, Sam felt himself drift, remembering a definitive row they’d had, when she’d implored him to confront his demons.

   Sam had heeded her advice, finding himself a therapist, a Jungian in Highgate, whose consulting room was filled with leather-bound volumes on Jung and Freud and shelves groaning with African masks and sculptures of stunted tribal figures.

   Sam’s early memories provided the substance that was raked over between them, the Jungian remaining aloof and mirror-like, so that Sam never really knew the man’s true reactions or feelings.

   In time, while much useful insight was gained – including the understanding that Sam was not ready for marriage or fatherhood and his career in the often superficial world of advertising was probably not the ideal choice for an introspective man – he tired of the analyst’s studied indifference. After four years in therapy, he called time on the Jungian.

   ‘ – and if that works out, we could be talking American
Vogue
.’

   Sam recognised the definitive pause, the moment when a response was necessary. He was a good listener – his job demanded it – but not today.

   ‘Sounds like you’re doing brilliantly.’

   Kate gave him a suspicious look. ‘You’re not really here, are you? You’re in your bloody head again.’

   ‘Sorry. I’m a little preoccupied.’

   He watched her face flush, sensed her anger, then saw it subside.

  ‘You can see why I found you so irritating at times,’ she said.

   Sam nodded. ‘Totally. I’m a navel-gazing pain in the arse.’

   Kate smiled, then glanced at her mobile on the table. ‘Shit, gotta go.’

   She stood, gave him a peck on the cheek, then paused briefly to examine him like a concerned mother.

   ‘Look after yourself,’ she said. Then she rushed to the door.

   Sam was still in the bar an hour after Kate had left. He’d polished off the bottle, keen to obliterate the day. 

   As he left, a chill breeze hit him hard in the face and he felt twice as drunk as he had in the bar’s warm interior. Unwilling to face his home – and consulting room – at that point, he decided to take the slow way back, and walk.

   Sam drew the collar of his jacket up, walking north with little thought for the route he’d take.

   Seeing Kate was a mixed experience emotionally. It was good to have friends who knew him as well as she did – and to feel comfortably connected to the past, as he so often urged his clients – but equally, he preferred not to revisit certain thoughts too often.

   As he crossed the road from the restaurant, pausing momentarily to let a black car pass at speed, Sam wondered again whether terminating his own therapy had been wise. The presence of an irritating phobia, as well as his recurring nightmare, provided confirmation that things were far from resolved. He was middle-aged, yet still haunted by the same figure from his childhood.

*

It was dark by the time he returned to Stoke Newington. As he rounded the corner of his street, he was sure he saw a light on in his house. But as he neared it, the light went out.

   Sam tensed. Unlatching the gate quietly, he walked very slowly up the short garden path, then unlocked the door, as if in slow motion. As soon as the door edged open, Sam heard the sound of rapid footsteps at the rear of the property and the back door slamming. Sam rushed in, anger replacing the caution he’d felt as he became convinced that he’d disturbed a burglar. The small back garden was bordered by a brick wall about four feet high. As Sam reached the back door, he saw a figure – a tall man in a dark bomber jacket and jeans – disappear over the wall with an athletic movement.

   Sam ran to the wall and looked over it. The figure was already at the other side of his neighbour’s garden, about to bound over it into the street beyond. Sam attempted to leap his wall, but his hand became snagged on a rose thorn, ripping the flesh.

   ‘Fuck,’ he cried out in pain.

   When he looked up, the man had disappeared. Sam knew there was no point pursuing. By the time he’d made it over both walls, the burglar would be on the high street, blending in with the crowds.

   Sam returned to the kitchen, turning on the tap to wash his hand, which was pouring blood. Wrapping paper towels around it to stem the flow, he then walked slowly through the house, looking for signs of disturbance. Upstairs, his bedroom was untouched, as were the guest rooms and bathroom. Downstairs, the sitting room was as he’d left it. He then went into his consulting room and flicked on the light.

   It was clear that this was the place the burglar had been interested in. One of the filing cabinets had been emptied and the contents – Sam’s case notes – spread across his desk.

   Sam had a sickening thought, and rushed to the piles of paper. He leafed through them rapidly, then turned to one of the other cabinets. Within seconds – and to his intense relief – he found what he was looking for, a file with a tab entitled CSM14 – named after Charles Scott, his gender and the year. He opened the cardboard sleeves and looked inside. The notes were still there.

   To Sam, the conclusion was simple. Because he had refused to play ball, the Government employee had decided that more direct action was necessary – and an attempt had been made to steal Scott’s notes. Why else would a burglar zone in on that one place in his house?

   Sam slammed the desk with his fist in rage.

   He reached for the phone, called 999 and asked for the police.

Chapter 6

Downing Street 

Sometimes, while lying in bed in the morning, the house already buzzing with activity below him, Aidan Stirling would stare at the ceiling and compare his life with the home where he now lived.

   Like him, the house suggested familiarity from the outside, yet inside, was more complex. It was a building where rooms led to more rooms, where concealed staircases took you from one place to another, bypassing other areas to deliver you, as if teleported, to a completely different part of the house. 

   He’d read about its history and it fascinated him to think of the place at the turn of the 20
th
Century. Then it had been close to falling down, its floors buckling and walls cracking because of the soft soil and shallow foundations below. Now concrete held the building up, subsidence a thing of the past.

   The concrete’s effect was comparable to the Valium he was often encouraged to take.    In the house’s case, it had clearly worked. This place wasn’t going anywhere. In his case, however – if he was to believe his parents and the professionals they’d taken him to – there was still movement.

   But of course that was the problem. He never believed anything his parents said. Why would he take them seriously when they could never be relied on to deliver what they promised?

   As a child, Aidan remembered overhearing his father – on the rare occasion his parents were conversing and not arguing – referring to him as ‘an awkward little shit’. Quite how he’d drawn this conclusion when he’d hardly spent any time with his son was beyond belief. And yet that definition had stuck in Aidan’s mind. That he was not a child, or a son, but an inconvenience.

   He had heard a lot worse in the last few days. Uncle Charles’s death had stirred things up.

   Aidan had seen less and less of Uncle Charles as he got older – and his godfather became busier. But he remembered him as a thoughtful man. Someone who could always be relied on to remember birthdays, to show kindness whenever they were together.

   But then he remembered the last time he’d seen him. Aidan suddenly felt every ridge and fold in the sheets and mattress below him. He turned on to his side to study the poster on the wall of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most famous building, Falling Water. He focused on the image, the concrete terraces seemingly hovering in space over the waterfall, the rectilinear shapes contrasted with the soft woodland, the feeling of perfect balance.

   His breathing slowed. The bed softened beneath him.

   Like never before, there was a sense that architecture gave his life structure and meaning. That he’d nearly lost that career, by continually missing lectures and arguing with tutors – scraping a 2:2 on his BA – worried him. But all too often the confrontations at college were because he fundamentally disagreed with something a tutor had said. Wasn’t that what college was about – challenging as well as learning?

   Now he was doing his professional experience at a firm in Islington. He got on OK there, and had even managed to make friends – or at least that’s what he thought he’d made; he could never be sure what actually constituted friendship – but again he was finding it hard not to disagree with some of the opinions the partners expressed.

   Now he was on semi-permanent sick leave, a situation that was deeply frustrating. But he was sure he’d return. That he’d qualify and set up his own practice. And that, in time, he’d design buildings that would leave people breathless.

Chapter 7

North London

Sam cancelled his clients again the next morning, aware that he was in no fit state to offer empathy or that other mysterious pre-requisite for good counselling, unconditional positive regard. The fact was, he was angry, and he knew it would show.

   He sat at his kitchen table, drinking coffee after coffee as he raged at the events of the previous evening.

   The police had arrived quickly enough, but as he attempted to explain what had happened, he soon realised how flimsy his story sounded, and their interest rapidly waned.

   The trouble was, he’d been reluctant to tell them about Scott, not just because of the confidentiality he’d been so keen to impress on the Government employee, but also just in case one of the attending officers decided to make a little money by telling a newspaper that the dead Minister had been seeing a shrink.

   It meant that everything he did tell them sounded slightly hollow. He explained that one of his clients had recently died and that he’d had a visit from someone concerned about what the dead man might have revealed about his work. Sam told them how he’d refused to talk about it and how, a day later, his house was broken into and the case notes targeted.

   ‘So what you’re saying,’ said the interviewing officer, a man in his early 30s with tightly cropped hair and a goatee beard, ‘is that you believe this man –’ he paused then to consult his notes, ‘ – or someone in league with him, broke into your house to steal your client’s notes.’

   ‘Right.’

   The policeman ran a hand across his head. ‘I’m sorry to tell you this Mr Keddie, but your story is a little light on leads. We could attempt to trace this man, maybe see if we can find a match for any prints in your house. But there’s little to link one event with the other – the men you describe are, as you say, physically quite different – and nothing has been stolen.’

   ‘Because I interrupted the burglary.’

   The policeman grunted in agreement.

   ‘So basically,’ said Sam, ‘if you can’t find the man, or any prints, there’s nothing you can do.’

   The policeman sighed. ‘This is a break-in,’ he said, his voice lifeless. ‘Of which there are plenty round here. We will investigate it, but I can’t promise anything.’

   Sam could see the man thought he was a time waster, an impression that merely compounded the frustration and anger he felt.

   These thoughts were still tormenting him when, around lunchtime, he decided to go out to clear his head.

   He walked up to Church St and crossed the road to the entrance of Abney Park Cemetery.

   Sam liked the cemetery. In an area that had become increasingly gentrified, this was a place of genuine natural wildness. While there were some memorials that were well maintained, for the most part the vegetation had run riot: statues of angels strangled by ivy, headstones collapsed and crumbling into the graves of the men they were meant to commemorate, mausoleums where the rain had found entry and the tombs within had become dank pools of fetid water.

   While others might have found the rampant nature rather upsetting – and unsettling – Sam found it comforting. It seemed to offer confirmation of something he knew only too well.

   Even though death was all around, the place made him think of life. How it was not a tidy process and anyone who tried to con themselves into thinking they could control it was a fool. As his own experience – and those of the hundreds of people he’d treated – had taught him, life could not be lived neatly. He was reminded of all those clients with apparently orderly façades – the tailored City boy who despised his job and had murderous thoughts about the other traders in his office, the middle-class mother who’d been sleeping with a teenage friend of her son. Eventually our true feelings and desires had a habit of coming to the surface. In this way, most people were no different to a crisp new headstone that, before long, is overcome by nature.

   Sam had wandered deep into the cemetery. There was a sudden rustle of leaves and a snap of twig. It made him jump, which annoyed him because he knew his anxiety was only heightened because of the burglary. There was no reason to be spooked. There were a number of broad, well-maintained paths in the cemetery. Other people were bound to be around.

   Just to put his mind at rest, he turned round. There, no more than ten metres behind him, was a tall figure dressed in a dark bomber jacket and jeans. Sam felt a chill run through him. The burglar – what little he’d seen of him – had been similarly built and dressed.

   He berated himself. There were loads of tall men dressed like that in London. Sam looked back again. The man was moving faster.

   Sam began to run, urged on by an instinctive feeling that he was now in danger. As he picked up pace, he could hear the man doing the same.

   There was a clearing ahead, an area where a disused chapel stood. The surrounding lawns and gardens were often busy, a peaceful haven close to the cemetery’s east gate.

   Sam turned. The man had begun to close the distance between them. His face was gaunt, with pale skin and narrow, hard eyes.

   Sam accelerated. Suddenly he was out in the open, the chapel standing before him. There were, just as he’d hoped, more people around. An Asian couple – him bearded, her in a hijab – seated on a bench and cooing over a pram; an elderly man walking, his arm steadied by a middle-aged daughter.

   Just then, the man who’d been chasing him burst from the path. He took in the scene around him – Sam and the others – and appeared to make a quick calculation. And then Sam saw something glint, and his blood ran cold. A knife, held tightly in the man’s right hand, was stuffed into a coat pocket and, as quickly, the man withdrew the way he had come.

   Sam was rooted to the spot as he rapidly processed what he’d just witnessed. Had that man intended to scare him into talking? Or silence him forever?

   Sam’s thoughts came in quick succession. Were the police an option? Perhaps. But again, unless he was prepared to speak about Scott, he could imagine his story being met with incredulity. Besides, he thought, with rising panic, even if he did decide to talk about Scott, would the police offer any protection? As the men targeting him had demonstrated, the law was no barrier.

   An image entered Sam’s head, one that made his stomach contract – his pursuer now heading for the house, breaking in by the back door to surprise Sam on his return and finish the job.

   Sam felt his body go rigid. How had all this happened? In a matter of days, normality had been replaced by this. He thought of clients whose lives had been turned upside down by an unexpected event – a bereavement or job loss – but none who’d suddenly found themselves in grave danger.

   Even in his confused, frightened state he knew one thing. It wasn’t safe to go home.

   With trembling hands, Sam checked his pockets. He had his phone and wallet, enough cash in the bank to get by. And something else that he’d taken the precaution of folding into his jacket pocket before he left the house. The case notes.

   Sam needed to find somewhere safe. Somewhere he could think straight and work out why the content of Charles Scott’s sessions was worth killing for.