Approaching Zero (20 page)

Kathy’s tongue played with the ice cream on the end of her spoon and she could see Spinoza watching every movement with a cheeky smile.

“Okay, I used to have an imaginary friend but because he was invisible I could never find him and eventually gave up on the whole damn business.”

“Very funny. Something real.”

Kathy thought again and drew a blank.

“Why don’t you tell me the truth about your job? That would be a start.”

Kathy sat up suddenly. “You’ve been checking up on me.”

“Of course I have. Why do you think I couldn’t have you signed in at the station?”

“I thought it was because of the whole psychic thing.”

“Tell me about it, Kathy. My God, it might do you good to actually tell the truth for once.”

Kathy tried to manufacture outrage, but she knew that what he was saying was true. Worse than this, the drink inside of her had caused her guard to slip and before she could stop it, the whole story was flowing out of her.

“Joseph Talbot,” she began slowly, unable to hide her disgust at the taste of his name in her mouth. “But I suppose it wasn’t just him. It had been building for some time. There were always so many Joseph Talbots and not enough of the people who genuinely needed my help, people who through no fault of their own faced daily challenges that I was equipped to help them with.”

“So what happened?”

“You know what happened.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I had been seeing Joseph Talbot for about three weeks and he wouldn’t speak to me at all. He wouldn’t say a single word. Of course I’m trained to cope with this kind of scenario, just as you’re trained not to blow your stack in no-comment interviews. The difference I suppose is that it was my job to offer some kind of therapeutic contribution.
I
had to work with him to make
him
feel better. Actually that’s not strictly true. We just had to find a way of moving forward, putting together some kind of care plan and provision for the safety of other patients at the institution, but that’s what it felt like—as if I was one step away from being asked to light some incense sticks and plait his hair.” She paused and eyed the photos of the perverts on the wall of her living room sadly.

“So?”

“So, all of this would have been tolerable if I couldn’t hear the filth going on in his mind and smell the festering evil coursing through him. He had just one thought in his mind, manipulated into different scenarios with different settings and varying levels of violence –raping me. So I lost it. I’d never done anything like it before, well, actually…” she stopped herself from confessing more and returned to her story. “I stabbed him.”

“You what?”

“Only in the arm. With a fountain pen.”

“Are you serious? That’s not what the file says.”

“Oh, yeah, that. Well, I just lost it. It’s not me, Spinoza, believe me. This is not the way I behave. It just happened.”

“But it said that you struck him.”

“Yeah, I did that, too.”

“What the f –?”

“It was handled internally. I lost my job and, well, to be honest, any job I might be thinking about doing in the future, and it never became a criminal matter. That was three years ago. I haven’t worked since.”

Spinoza guzzled at his drink, the shock clear to see, and struggled to find the words to follow this up, eventually settling on “Any other skeletons in your closet?”

“Yes,” she answered matter-of-factly. “But I know you don’t want to sit here talking all night.” She stroked his thigh as she said it.

“Are you serious? You think that…” But the sentence was easily abandoned as Kathy’s hand moved higher and higher.

“Yes, Detective Chief Inspector?” she was now speaking softly, close to his ear, allowing each word to linger. He must have been able to see through her motives, but in one dramatic movement he turned to her, took her head in his hands and kissed her passionately. Kathy realised as she felt the heat between their lips that this was what she had wanted ever since they met. When their lips parted, she took him by the hand and led him onto his feet and out of the door. They walked hand-in-hand up the stairs and into her room without another word being spoken.

Chapter 19

Kathy was making a habit of hiding behind her eyelids. At the hospital, after knocking down Malcolm Scott, and on the floor of Miles Denver’s flat, regaining consciousness after being hit on the back of the head, she had kept her eyes closed as long as she could, desperate for what lay beyond to be something other than her own battered body or a sledgehammer to crack her skull open. This morning, once again, Kathy was awake a long time before she opened her eyes, only now the reason wasn’t life threatening as such, but it flipped her stomach into knots. Had she really slept with Spinoza? That really wasn’t part of the plan. Worse still, had she really told him about Joseph Talbot? She had decided not to tell another living soul about that if she could get away with it. Of course Brady knew, but she didn’t count and this was different. Why did she have to drink so much? The thought brought a more physical stirring inside of her and she just knew that she couldn’t stay in the same position much longer. The hangover was tearing its way through her insides and the fact that she had been kicked in the stomach the day before was giving it carte blanche to wreak havoc. She also felt now as if Miles Denver had actually hit her with the sledgehammer and she felt the back of her head for the lump from his earlier blow. As her fingers glided over it and the scab from the attack, her eyes had no choice but to ping open. She needed to get to the toilet quickly. She was going to be sick. She burst out from under the duvet, through the door and just made it to the loo. The strain of managing the weight of her own head as she held it over the toilet bowl was too much for her and she was forced to lean her forehead on her arm. When she had emptied herself of wine-coloured puke, she climbed back onto her feet, using the sink for support, and stopping halfway to douse her face with cold water and slug back as much of the stuff as she could manage. She then opened the medicine cabinet and popped two Paracetamols onto her hand and down her throat. She gagged a little, but once they were inside her she felt just a little bit better; the troops had been sent in and hopefully it wouldn’t be long until the hangover was in hand. She closed the mirrored cupboard and her face appeared, but she turned away immediately. She didn’t need the sight of herself adding to her troubles.

Out in the hall, she held her ear to Suri’s closed door and heard silence beyond. The thought of Suri made her stomach churn again. She strained further to see if she could hear any sound and when the silence was absolute she moved on to her own room. She poked her head around the half-open door and there was Spinoza, on his back with the duvet pulled up to his middle, revealing a waxed chest, his loose hair gathered around his shoulder and a content relaxation on his face as he lightly snored, oblivious to the hangover forming in him that Kathy was sure would be every bit as bad as hers.

Kathy withdrew from the room and quietly pulled the door behind her. Not quite knowing what to do now, she reverted to habit once again. She grabbed her robe from the bathroom and wrapped it around her, then made her way down to the kettle to fix herself a cup of tea. Although it was Saturday and although her head and stomach were still punishing her for the day before, as always, there was work to be done and as much as she tried, she couldn’t shake thoughts of the daisy skull from her mind—the way it had appeared from nowhere and slammed down on her access to Miles Denver’s thoughts like a portcullis. She battled her thoughts and drew blank after blank as her body automatically concluded her morning ritual by opening the laptop. There was something equally automatic in her typing, which took her immediately back to the website of Aadidev Bhat before she had consciously decided that that was what she wanted to do. She didn’t need to refer back to the note that she had made about him and pinned to the wall. Memory took her straight back to the Indian healer’s site and she read through once again, unable to shake the feeling that it was more relevant than she had first thought. However, the quality of English and an evasive tone meant that she couldn’t gauge more about how psychic intervention can be blocked remotely in the way that the daisy skull was blocking her, other than the fact that he was able to do it and he alone possessed this skill. He revealed none of the techniques involved with this, but his services were available in the capacity of consultation.
Would it be worth contacting him?
she wondered and again noted his website on her pad although she clearly didn’t need to. She then took her research a step further and typed Aadidev Bhat’s name into Google. The first web entry was the website that she had just left. However, there were news items for the man:

Guru, arrested on suspicion of child molestation, released today without charge. Aadidev Bhat was also held for questioning regarding unsavoury and harmful ingredients found to be used in his remedies. Support for the guru has been overwhelming.

Beside the web address on her notepad, Kathy wrote,
paedophile. Unsavoury and harmful ingredients in remedies,
underlined it, and marked it with a dark question mark. She then realised that she was being watched.

“So this is how you spend your Saturday mornings?” smiled Spinoza. “You drank so much wine I’m surprised you can see the screen.”

Kathy barely looked up. “Take a look at this, Spinoza,” she said seriously and clicked back onto Bhat’s website. “Apparently he can block psychics remotely. It’s something I’ve never heard of before, but I’m thinking about the daisy skull. Now look at this.” She returned to the news of Bhat’s arrest.

“Kathy,” Spinoza didn’t finish his sentence until Kathy was looking at him. “Is this really what you want to talk to me about this morning? I mean, after last night…”

“This is important, Spinoza. I think this is
something
.” She was glaring at the screen again, rolling downwards to see if there was more to the story.

“Right, well, I should probably go.”

Kathy stopped and looked at him, actually seeing what was in front of her this time. He looked tired and hung over, but the smile had now gone and he was clearly desperate to leave.

“Well, take this,” she told him and ripped the note off her pad. “You never know; it might lead somewhere.”

“Right.”

“Look, this was what it was. We both know that, don’t we?”

Spinoza didn’t answer that right away then simply held up the note as in thanks and said, “I’ll see myself out,” before disappeared out of the door.

Kathy considered going after him, but what would she say? And anyway, there was work to be done.

***

A few hours later, when Kathy’s hangover had all but gone, leaving only the very real but manageable symptoms of Miles’s violent attack, she finally heard stirring in the room above her and immediately closed the laptop. She had journeyed into a few new research avenues and padded out the details of a few more names on her list and together with what she had discovered about Aadidev Bhat, she felt happy enough to abandon work, even if it was only for a few hours. By the time she could hear Suri’s footsteps on the stairs, the frying pan was crackling in her hand with an egg hissing away in the centre, toast was slowly browning under the grill and she had loaded a mug with spoonfuls of hot chocolate, waiting for the kettle to boil. She had no idea if Suri liked hot chocolate, but it was the most special drink she could come up with as she peeped into her largely bare cupboards.

“I’m making breakfast,” she called. “Make yourself at home.”

When everything was ready, she loaded it all onto a tray and brought it out to Suri, whom she found perched on the edge of the sofa. “It’s egg sandwiches again, I’m afraid, but we can go shopping later and find some of the things that you like to eat. I made you hot chocolate too, but there’s tea or coffee or… water.”

“This is lovely, Kathy. Thank you very much,” Suri beamed. “This is more than I could have expected.”

“Suri,” Kathy began seriously, seating herself beside the young girl. “I’m so sorry. I haven’t been much of a host to you and you saved my life yesterday. You’re very welcome here and I don’t want you to feel otherwise.”

Suri’s smile grew with every word Kathy spoke, but there was something lingering behind it that Kathy couldn’t quite put her finger on. She was going to ask if she was unwell, but her curiosity about the day before took over. “I still don’t understand how you even managed to call Spinoza yesterday. You didn’t know the address or that Miles was going to follow.” But then Kathy smiled at her own silliness and brought her hands down on her thighs. “Of course, you’re psychic. I didn’t realise you can tell the future, though.”

Suri laughed. “I cannot, Kathy. I was just worried about you going. You looked… I do not know what the word is. I heard the man say address when he talked to hospital lady. I found Spinoza in your mobile phone. I call just before I came to your car.”

“It’s quite lucky that it did all kick off,” Kathy mused, “because I would have been seriously pissed off with Spinoza turning up otherwise.”

“I do not understand.”

“Don’t worry about it. Eat! It’s good.”

Suri looked to the sandwich expectantly then smiled at Kathy and bit deeply into the white rounds.

“Hang on, aren’t those the same clothes you’ve been wearing since you got here?” Kathy suddenly asked.

“Erm,” Suri’s face flushed a little. “They are all I have.”

“But you had a suitcase.”

“It was for a show, Kathy. I had to leave too quickly to bring my things.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Suri looked down at her hands holding the sandwich over the plate.

“It’s okay, we’ll go shopping today. We’ll have a girl’s day. We’ll get you some clothes and fill up the food cupboards and even see a film if you fancy it.”

The mention of the film had a definite restorative effect on Suri.