A Willing Victim (39 page)

Had he really seen all the things he’d described, or were they part of some terrible collective memory?

‘Were you in a concentration camp?’

Without looking up, Roth batted the question away with his hand as if troubled by a fly. ‘That was when the rain inside my head began again. It became very clear to me at that time that the most important thing was to find the truth and teach it to others. With truth would come justice. At the beginning, I
imagined that if mankind could be taught a new way of thinking and acting, wars and their consequences might be avoided. I saw that I could either spend my life doing that, or I could spend it in a half-sleep, getting through it as comfortably as I could. There was, of course,’ he raised his head and chuckled throatily, ‘no choice.’

‘Does Michael have a choice?’ asked Stratton.

‘Michael is young,’ said Roth, ‘but he will know what to do when the time comes. I have made sure of that.’ He averted his head, as if in dismissal. Stratton left him staring into the fire and dashed up the stairs to give a contrite PC Briggs a graphic account of what would happen to him if he deserted his post even for a minute.

When he descended again, Stratton saw that Roth had neither moved nor, apparently, changed his expression, but he felt a withdrawal of presence as evident as a drop in physical temperature, as though the door to a roaring furnace had suddenly slammed shut.

‘They’ve gone to the cottage hospital, sir,’ said Adlard, in the car. ‘Won’t take long to get there.’

Stratton sat back in the passenger seat and closed his eyes. It struck him that – whatever
he
might think of Roth – the man, like Billy Graham, understood the extent to which people might hunger after something that was greater than themselves, and how this made them behave. His own philosophy of life, in so far as he had one, was his father’s often repeated ‘do your best’. For the students at the Foundation, this clearly wasn’t enough. He could understand how such types might fall in love with someone who represented such authority and wisdom, and subjugate themselves to him to get what they craved, just as they did to political leaders. Rather, he imagined, like members of the Communist party, who despised individuality as ‘bourgeois’.

Mary/Ananda was a bit different, though. She – rather like Tynan, he thought – wanted to be both in the thick of things and simultaneously rise above them. It was also a form of superiority, of self-selection, like her claims to have been visited by ghosts.

Had Miss Kirkland been lying to him, or had Roth? If Roth had, as he’d claimed, expelled Mary/Ananda from the Foundation,
then he had no reason to protect her. Except, of course, that he did want to protect Michael, and she was, after all, his mother. ‘A duty’, he’d called it. All the same, she’d made a fool of him.

In a way, she’d made a fool of Miss Kirkland, too. Miss Kirkland, with all her certainty, who thought that individuals did not matter – but who’d been supplanted by Mary/Ananda, and who seemed to want, above all else, to please Roth. But clearly, accusing Mary/ Ananda wouldn’t please Roth, or he would, Stratton thought, have done so himself when he had the opportunity. Instead, he’d insisted that she’d made no confession.

He’d just have to hope that Mary/Ananda was in a fit state – and could be prevailed upon – to tell them herself. As for the business about Billy … Stratton opened his eyes and stared out of the window into the darkness, dazed by everything he’d seen and heard, unable to come to any conclusions.

The hospital was small, a pretty Victorian building with an ugly post-war addition sticking out on one side. Stratton was directed down a corridor where he found Ballard chatting to a uniformed policeman outside a door, as purposeful nurses with serious eyes squeaked across the new lino on brisk, rubber-soled feet. ‘In there, is she?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the policeman. ‘Quite safe.’

Ballard’s face was pale and somehow out of focus. Dazed, thought Stratton. ‘How are you?’

‘I’ll live.’ Ballard grimaced. ‘No real damage. Hell of a bruise coming up on my chest, though. Sorry about your car.’

‘We can worry about that later. The main thing is that you’re all right. How’s
she
doing?’

‘Not too clever, I’m afraid. Have a look.’ Ballard motioned him towards the small window cut into the door behind them.

Stratton looked. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected – a scene of hysterics, perhaps, or at least agitation – but it wasn’t what
he saw. Mary/Ananda, propped up by a bank of pillows, was sitting up in bed, gowned, a bandage obscuring the top of her cloud of dark hair. The rest of it massed, dishevelled, around her shoulders. She was staring straight ahead of her, slack-jawed, a nurse beside her, fingers on her pulse, peering down at the watch she’d lifted from her starched bosom. Apparently satisfied, she gave Mary/Ananda’s hand a kindly but impersonal pat, and, becoming aware of Stratton’s gaze, gave him an almost imperceptible shake of her head before moving to the end of the bed to make a note on the chart. Mary/Ananda seemed to realise that she was being watched, because she turned her head.

There were the enormous dark eyes and sultry mouth, but she seemed oddly unrecognisable, and it took him a moment to realise why. She wasn’t looking at him, but through him, as though he were part of the small window, and her gaze seemed somehow inhuman. Turning to Ballard, he asked, ‘Is she drugged? Have they given her something?’

‘The doctor didn’t mention it – other than for the pain, that is. She was quite badly cut, and she had a hell of a bump on the head—’

‘So she’s concussed?’

‘The doctor didn’t seem to think so. He spouted a bit about delayed shock, but he obviously thinks something funny’s going on, because he’s telephoned for a psychiatrist to take a look at her. Told me he’d be along soon, if we wanted a chat.’

‘Have
you
tried talking to her yet?’

Ballard shook his head. ‘I was waiting for the all-clear from the doctor.’

The two men stood back as the nurse emerged from the room. ‘May we go in?’ asked Stratton.

‘Dr Hicks said you could have five minutes, no more.’ She glanced down at her watch in order to emphasise the exactness of this amount. ‘I shall wait here.’

Mary/Ananda was once again staring straight ahead of her and didn’t turn her head as they entered the room. ‘Good evening, Mrs Milburn. I’m DI Stratton and this is DI Ballard. Do you remember us?’ She did not move or even appear to acknowledge their presence. As they seated themselves on either side of the bed, Stratton saw that, close to, her cheekbones were as perfectly sculpted as he remembered, but there was a faint tracery of lines about her eyes and the skin of her jaw was just beginning to sag. Her hands were palm down on the bed covering, the bony knuckles of her wrists projecting like manacles from the sleeves of the hospital gown. Gazing at her, he found himself floundering, groping after words.

‘We’d like you to tell us what happened this morning, please, Mrs Milburn,’ said Ballard.

Still, she did not move or speak.

‘We appreciate you’ve had a shock,’ said Ballard, ‘but we do need you to answer some questions.’

Nothing. Stratton stared at her almost flawless profile and wondered if she were faking.

‘You have been charged with the attempted murder of Michael Milburn,’ said Ballard. ‘Several witnesses have told us that you tried to run him down in your car. What do you have to say about it?’

As the silence lengthened, Stratton suddenly remembered visiting the tramp, Shitty Sid, when he was dying in hospital. It hadn’t been anything to do with work, simply a feeling that, as the station had been unable to discover a next of kin,
someone
ought to go and see the poor sod before he pegged it. Sid had been pretty far gone, but you still knew it was him, and not just from the smell, either. It was because of something
inside
him – his consciousness of himself, Stratton supposed you’d call it. Presence, that was the word. Mary/Ananda, on the other hand, seemed to be
absent
. It wasn’t just a question of her not understanding
what was being said: her not-thereness was so entire that she might as well not have been in the room.

Mary/Ananda was going on – or rather, not going on – as if she wasn’t aware of her own existence. The contrast with their previous meeting – when she’d seemed very much aware of it – was extraordinary. He stared past her cheek to Ballard, who seemed to be mouthing something at him.

Ballard got up, jerking his thumb in the direction of the door. Stratton nodded and went to join him. ‘Hopeless,’ murmured Ballard. ‘Might as well be talking to a waxwork. What say we wait for the trick-cyclist?’

Turning in the doorway, Stratton saw that Ananda’s eyes were still fixed on the opposite wall.

Twenty minutes later the psychiatrist Dr Wardle, a large, expansive individual, emerged from examining Mary/Ananda and swept Stratton and Ballard down the corridor and into a consulting room.

‘I understand that you require an evaluation of Mrs Milburn,’ he said, parking himself behind the desk and waving at them to be seated. ‘She is – as I’m sure you observed – in a bad way, but I haven’t got a lot to go on. Perhaps you could fill me in on the details …’

It took Stratton almost half-an-hour to take Wardle through Mary/Ananda’s history, including what she’d told him about her childhood, during which the psychiatrist nodded a great deal and took copious notes.

‘Well,’ he said finally, capping his pen with a flourish, ‘one’s always wary of giving diagnoses in these situations, and obviously I shall need to observe the patient more closely …’ He paused, eyebrows raised in a vigorous dumb show, for the pair of them to acknowledge this, then continued, ‘Judging by what you’ve told me, I’d say this is a case of narcissistic injury.’

‘Meaning?’ asked Stratton.

‘In psychiatric terms, narcissism can be seen as a self-perceived
form of perfectionism. It’s not just a matter of liking to view oneself in a mirror – although that may come into it – but of having an elevated sense of self-worth, so that the sufferer believes him, or in this case,
her
, self to be more important than other people. These sorts of individuals can sometimes – although by no means always – have immensely fragile self-esteem and be unable to tolerate any form of criticism. Their grasp of reality is, therefore, somewhat tenuous. They tend to pursue selfish goals and exploit others for their own ends. This can, as you’ve mentioned, sometimes taken the form of fraudulence or deception. At the same time, they tend to require constant praise, attention and often, sympathy. Reinforcement, if you like. Those individuals who are not, for whatever reason, able to collude with the narcissist, or to be useful to them, are often perceived as worthless.’

‘Surely,’ said Ballard, ‘that doesn’t include their own children?’

‘In a severe case, yes. As to the boy …’ Wardle glanced down at the notes he’d made, ‘Michael … he appears to be an important source of self-esteem for his mother. Very often, a narcissistic parent requires, shall we say, a specific
performance
from a child in order to aggrandise him or herself, and that would seem to be the case here. Such people often object when the child begins to develop independently of themselves – attempting to cut the boy off from the outside world would seem to be a symptom of that, although there were some other factors in this case – related, of course … Failure on the child’s part to respond adequately – as they see it – may give rise to anger, criticism, attempts to instil guilt, and so on. Or, in some cases, outright rejection.’

‘Or attempted murder?’ asked Ballard.

‘It’s unusual,’ said Wardle, ‘but not unknown. But remember,’ he raised a warning finger, ‘we are talking hypothetically here.’

‘I’d say you were spot on, so far,’ said Stratton.

‘Oh, good.’ The psychiatrist sounded faintly sarcastic. ‘Now,
touching on what you’ve told me about Mrs Milburn’s own childhood – the matter of the mother’s disappearance, and the behaviour of other family members, particularly the uncle. Assuming that this is to be believed, it sounds as if she was the victim of emotional and sexual injury at a young age, which may well be linked to her subsequent behaviour.’

‘What about the state she’s in now?’ asked Stratton.

‘Based purely on what you’ve told me, I’d say that it’s a drastic reaction to a situation in which she feels both rejected – by the people at this Foundation – and humiliated by being ‘found out’ by them, and also, of course, by you yourselves. A psychic blow – on top of which, of course, there are the physical effects of the car accident. It’s a defence mechanism. In some cases, it takes the form of anger – irrational accusations and so on – and in others, complete withdrawal from something that cannot be faced. What it comes down to is that she can’t square her reality with your reality, and her ego will not allow her to make a compromise between the two.’

‘Will she recover?’ asked Stratton.

Wardle gave an open-handed shrug. ‘Impossible to say.’

‘Well, what’s the likelihood?’

‘That, I don’t know. I’m a psychiatrist, Inspector, not a bookie.’

‘Pretty accurate, I thought,’ said Ballard, as Adlard drove them away from the hospital. ‘Have you got a cigarette on you? I can’t find mine – think they must have fallen out of my pocket when I pranged your car.’

‘Here.’ Stratton lit two and passed one over his shoulder.

‘Thanks.’ Ballard inhaled gratefully. ‘I needed that. You know, I’d swear she recognised me when she was lying in the road. She looked up at me and said, ‘Oh, it’s
you
,’ as if she’d expected somebody else – you, I suppose. But when we were in the ambulance, she got downright weird.’

‘Did she say anything?’

‘No. It wasn’t just that, though – to be honest, it reminded me of that film,
Bride of Frankenstein
. Elsie Whatsit. You know, married to Charles Laughton.’

‘Elsa Lancaster. Something like that, anyway. What about her?’

‘When she’s first brought to life by the doctor and she doesn’t know where she is or anything, and she’s looking round all sort of twitchy and jerky with her eyes blazing. That’s what she looked like – as if she’d been electrified or something, and she had no idea who anyone was, or even why she was there. When we got to the hospital and they opened the doors, she just sort of stopped moving, as if the current had been turned off, and she was … Well, you saw. How did you get on?’