The Various Haunts of Men (34 page)

How could it ever be over? He would have nothing to live for. If there was no more work to be done, there would have to be another reason for going on and he needed to go on. He needed the fix. He needed it to keep him alive and functioning,
to stop him from going mad, to help him stay in control.

He dared not take the van and he could not go in his car. Too many people knew it, knew him and might wave cheerfully to him. He would have to walk and it must be in the late evening; in daylight he would be too conspicuous. People avoided the Hill now. He knew he
ought to avoid it too because going there would be breaking every rule. He
had been able to continue with his work precisely because he knew what those rules were and had always obeyed them. He knew that most people were caught because they broke the rules and that they broke the rules because they became arrogant and careless and because they were stupid. But he was clever; he had a trained mind; he was systematic in everything he did; he had never acted on impulse, always
checked and double-checked. So why was he so desperate that he was prepared to take a risk now? He felt the need building up inside him and he understood that only this had power over him. He must ignore it, he must control it.

For hours, he thought of the Hill. For several nights he lay awake re-enacting every occasion when he had been there, ‘to work’ as he liked to think of it.

He had come
to love the place, for its sense of ancient history, its deep roots in the past, its Wern Stones on which so much superstition had been focused for so many centuries. He loved its silences and the different sound the wind made around it depending from which quarter it blew. He loved the way its furrows and shelves and stone outcrops were arranged, and the clumps of scrub and undergrowth and the
coronet of oak trees. He loved its rabbits and its rabbit holes. He had chosen it for more practical reasons, but he had come to love it for sentimental ones.

To calm himself, he drove down to the business park. It was after seven o’clock. Everyone had left, the units were locked and in darkness. He let himself in at the side door and slipped into the cool, silent building. How astonished they
would all be to discover what he had
achieved here; the men who had dismissed him and ruined him had almost certainly never given him another thought once he had left the medical school buildings, but they had lost someone who would have brought glory to the place. Why had that never occurred to them? If he had been allowed to continue and follow his chosen path, he would have been at the top
of his profession by now but they would have taken the credit for having trained him. Now, he took every last jot of that credit for himself.

He clicked on the white-blue fluorescent lighting and stood for a moment, hearing the silence of the dead. Then he walked down to the door set in the concrete wall at the back and went into the heart of his kingdom. It was so small, the back half of a garage,
but everything that mattered was here. He hesitated, his hand hovering over one drawer handle before moving to the next, but finally, it was the second on the right that he settled on. He had checked the electricity feed, the thermometers and dials, as he did every day. He was meticulous. He could not afford to be anything else.

He reached out.

Angela Randall lay facing him as the drawer came
forward silently on its runners. He stared down at her white marble face. Angela Randall. Her obsession with him had been flattering at first and when the presents had begun to arrive he had been rather pleased. No one had ever conceived a passion for him before. He had never allowed it. But after a time, the letters which gave off such a pathetic smell of desperation, the gifts, the invitations,
the pleas, had become irksome. In the end he had despised her. Not that she was here for that reason; emotion had never been allowed to influence his
work in any way. She was here because she had been the right age, sex, size at that stage in his research and because she had been easy to track down on the Hill.

He slid the drawer fully out to look at his own handiwork. He thought he had done
a better job on Angela Randall than on the others, precise, unwavering, clean. Everything had been removed, examined, dissected, weighed, recorded, before being put back. He knew her body parts as well as he knew the back of his own hand, had studied them as closely. Now she was restored, the seams pale and shining between the surgical stitches.

He wondered what she would have given him next.

Before he rechecked the electricity and the thermometers, switched off the lights and padlocked every door, he had spent some time looking at them all. He was a little dissatisfied with his work on the young man, who had been so fit, so lean and well muscled, and wondered if it ought to be repeated. But the capture had been the most difficult, the boy had struggled, he had been very strong. Not
like poor fat Debbie.

Three drawers remained empty. One of them had not yet been allocated. The others were for the elderly, for Proteus and Anna. But if things continued as they were on the Hill it would be some time before he would be able to welcome them. He walked around the inner room and then the outer, pacing, frustrated, impatient. He did not lose his temper because he never had. Loss
of temper, even in minor, everyday matters, was dangerous. He would not have come so far as this in his work if he had been prone even to the smallest displays of it. But he felt like a channel that had been dammed up. This was not a delay of his own making and it was not part of the plan. Yet surely it was a weakness in him not to have
allowed for the unpredictable, simply because it was a force
in life and it was life he had to deal with first.

He walked around the building until he had his feelings under control, then left, to return home and revise his plans.

The weak afternoon sunshine had no warmth in it though it lit the surrounding fields prettily. Karin and Cat walked round the paddock in the teeth of the east wind, which bit through their thick sweaters, fleeces and supposedly weatherproof jackets. Hannah Deerbon sat on her rotund pony Peanuts, both of them smugly unaware of the cold. She had been led round three times and as they
reached the gate, Cat said, ‘OK, this is the last time and I mean it. Karin and I have no hands or faces left.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘All the same, this is it, Hanny. Karin, give Peanuts a shove up his backside to get him moving.’

Energetic movement was not part of the pony’s game plan and he treated the couple of slaps on his rear administered by Karin with contempt. She had rung Cat to say she
needed to report on her visit to Starly, but when she arrived, Cat had been getting her daughter and pony ready.

‘No school?’

‘Training day. Mum’s been here this morning. I promised I’d be back by one thirty but of course it was five
to three. Still, she knows all about that. She said she wasn’t actually expecting me until four.’

They had set off into the wind, Karin borrowing a jumper and
outdoor jacket, but it was difficult to talk out here.

Karin had woken from the deep sleep into which she had fallen after her visit to the psychic surgeon, feeling rested and slightly light-headed. The experience had seemed strangely distant and it had not been until later in the day that she had been able to sit down to go through it carefully, and form an opinion. As she did so she had become
more and more uneasy. Cat had been in mid-surgery when she had telephoned.

‘Come up for tea at home tomorrow, we’ll talk then.’

‘Move, lazy Peanuts, move.’ Hannah lifted her legs until they were almost horizontal to her body and brought them down with a smack on the pony’s sides. This time it had the desired effect. Cat and Karin found themselves running to keep up as the pony shot forwards,
and Cat struggled to hang on to the lead rein. As they reached the gate, Peanuts skidded to a halt, Cat let the rein go and slipped on her backside in the mud. Hannah sat in the saddle, cheeks pink, eyes like stars, laughing, laughing.

The whole incident tipped the three of them over into a riotous mood, from which they had not fully recovered half an hour later. Hannah had gone to watch children’s
television with her tea on a plate, leaving Cat and Karin in the kitchen.

‘This is what I miss,’ Karin said. ‘All this stuff with ponies and
Blue Peter
and school satchels and packed lunches. And don’t tell me I don’t know how lucky I am.’

Cat poured out their mugs of tea. ‘No, and I’m not going to tell you motherhood is hell because the hell is only purgatory and there are good stretches of
heaven. If I have sympathy for one group of patients more than another, it’s the women who can’t conceive.’ She looked across at Karin. ‘And for those who might have done but left it too late.’

‘It would have been tough on any children I might have had with things as they are.’

‘That’s true. OK, spill the beans.’

Karin was quiet for a moment, assembling her thoughts. The cat jumped on to the
sofa and curled up beside her.

‘It’s worrying. I think he ought to be stopped, I really do.’

‘What happened?’

Karin told her, in as much detail as she could, quoting everything she remembered that he had said to her, describing what he had done. Cat listened without a word, sipping her tea, occasionally frowning. From the television next door came the sound of a recorder band playing ‘Morning
has Broken’. Outside the wind bent the beech trees at the end of the garden. When Karin had finished, Cat said nothing, only got up to refill the kettle, before going to check on Hannah.

Karin waited. She envied Cat not only her children but something indefinable about her house and her family life, a warmth and a happiness, together with a confidence in the future, which affected the spirit
of every visitor. Whenever she left here, in spite of the times she had seen Cat white with exhaustion at the end of a punishing day, or with anxiety about a patient at the same time as one of the children was ill or had some problem at school,
Karin had still taken away something that healed and refreshed her from the atmosphere in this house. Since her own change of career and her satisfaction
in what she was doing, she had known some of the same deep-seated contentment in her own life, which at times came close to making up for the absence of children in it. Everything had clicked into place at long last. She had vowed never to say, never even to think, ‘It’s not fair,’ and ‘Why me, why now?’ about the cancer.

Cat returned and dumped Hannah’s plate and mug on the draining board.

‘OK, I’ve taken it in. I’m horrified. This man is dangerous, you’re right, though I’m not sure if he is doing any physical damage and it sounds as if he was very careful not to ask you to undress or to touch you in any way or place that could lay him open to a charge of assault. You’re quite sure about that? Because if he did, then we’ve got him. I can pick up the phone to my brother now.’

Karin
shook her head. ‘It was uppermost in my mind from the minute I walked into the room. He was very, very careful.’

‘Of course he would be with a woman who was obviously watchful and intelligent. Would he behave so impeccably with a young girl, or even a child … does he see children?’

‘I don’t know. The people waiting were all older.’

‘The wickedness is the deception, of course … and the fact
that he gives people false hope with this pantomime. He will also convince at least some of them that they are cured and don’t need proper medical treatment, which is the worst of it.’

‘I found it quite frightening.’

‘I bet you did. Dear God, imagine if you were old and
frail and you actually believed he was cutting you open and taking bits out of you – you could perfectly easily die of shock.
I wonder if anyone ever has.’

‘To find that out you’d need to discover where he came from, where he’s worked before.’

‘I’m going to do some research when I have half a moment.’

‘I can help there. I’ll trawl the Internet and I’ve a friend on the
Sunday Times
I might ring. They’re good at digging up people’s unsavoury pasts. They might even do an investigative report.’

‘Good idea. We’ve a meeting
of this new committee of doctors and complementary therapists. I’ll report to that. The trouble is it all takes time. And I’m on call tonight. It’s the one thing I’d cheerfully give up, and yet it’s often when you get to know your own patients best – when the chips are down at four in the morning.’

‘You’re a national treasure. I hope you know that, Dr Deerbon.’

‘No. I haven’t succeeded with
you.’

From the television room the hornpipe marked the end of
Blue Peter
.

Karin stood up. ‘Thanks for the tea. I’ll leave you to enjoy some quality time with your daughter.’

Cat made a face.

Outside, the wind cut across the garden, slamming the car door out of Karin’s hand. She looked back at the lighted kitchen window, watching Cat lift Hannah up on to the worktop beside the sink, both of
them laughing. Yes, she thought. Children. But the check she kept on herself came at once. ‘Don’t whinge.’ Self-pity and dissatisfaction ate into the spirit, which she was determined would remain positive, optimistic and thankful.

As she reached home, her mobile rang.

‘It’s Cat. I’m going to check out this guy for myself. Can you text me his number?’

‘What if he susses you’re a doctor?’

‘He
won’t. And anyway, so what?’

‘You might have to wait a bit, he claims to be very booked up.’

‘Give us both time to do some digging. I want to go there knowing every last thing I can find out about our psychic surgeon.’

It was almost midnight when Cat telephoned her brother.

‘I didn’t think you’d be tucked up.’

‘I’ve only been in half an hour.’

‘And I’m on call so there’s never any point
in going to bed early – or going to bed at all come to that. Si, have you anything doing up at Starly … officially?’

‘Sort of. We did a house-to-house the other day, trying for info on the missing girl Debbie Parker. Drew a blank though.’