Delirium (London Psychic) (10 page)

"Detective, come on in. I'm Matthew." He held out his hand and Jamie shook it. His grip was firm, fingers smooth against her skin, and she noticed the slightly crooked tooth in his otherwise perfect smile. It was a chink of normality in his media-constructed image, but perhaps even that was designed. "I'll put the kettle on, and then we can have a chat about what you need."

"Thank you." Jamie followed Matthew inside, shutting the door behind her. She glanced around the flat as she walked into a large living space, leading to a small kitchen. The room was furnished in shades of champagne, a muted undertone, with furniture that looked comfortable but still expensive. The outstanding element was a feature wall with stripes of fuchsia, lemon and vermilion, hung with stunning pieces of modern art. In one, a woman's hand and the side of her head emerged from the canvas, as if she was trying to climb out of the wall behind. Another was a riot of color over a black tangle of what looked like neurons in the brain. It should have been chaotic, but there was a space in the middle of the pandemonium, an opening for calm.
 

"My sister, Lyssa, was very talented," Matthew said, emerging from the kitchen, his voice wistful. "These are just a couple from her portfolio. She could have gone so far with it, and creating the work calmed her, kept her from spiraling downwards." He paused, gazing at the woman's hand reaching out to him, as if she was calling for his help. The kettle whistled and he shook his head slightly, reverting to charm. "Now, how do you take your tea?"
 

"Black with one, please."
 

Matthew stirred in a sugar and brought it to Jamie in a blue mug with a chip in the rim. It made her almost smile to see that he was so clearly at home with imperfection. Perhaps there was more to this man than just the media profile.
 

"Now, what can I help you with?" Matthew asked, sitting on one of the chairs and indicating that Jamie should do the same.
 

"I'm investigating a homicide that occurred this morning at the Imperial War Museum."
 

Matthew's brow furrowed. "Surely not at our Fun Run? It went off without a hitch and all participants were accounted for."

Jamie shook her head. "No, actually, it was within the main building, unrelated to your event. But the victim was your sister's psychiatrist."

"That bastard Monro, are you sure?"
   

She caught a hint of satisfaction in Matthew's eyes.
 

"You sound pleased."
 

"I am. Not to speak ill of the dead, of course, but I believe his treatment only made Lyssa worse over time." Matthew looked intently at Jamie, but she could see no hint of his underlying thoughts. With so many years of hiding things, a politician was a real match for the police. "He tried her on so many drug regimes but she was afraid of needles and the experience was always terrifying. There was no spark left in her after dosage, the drugs emptied her and left her anemic and stale. As they began to wear off, she would fill that emptiness with ideas and thoughts and color, but the cyclic regime of years wore her down. Each time the colors came back, they were more muted, pastels instead of primary shades."
 

Matthew pointed at the walls. "As you can see, she hated pastels, Detective. She couldn't bear baby pink and duck-egg blue. She wanted strong bold shades, like her personality. You would have noticed her in a crowd." He pointed to a picture on the mantelpiece and Jamie stood for a better look. Lyssa had been strikingly handsome, not beautiful in a traditional sense but with strong features that drew the eyes. Her hair was cropped short and dyed a deep red, and she had tattooed eyebrows in a Celtic design. Jamie felt Matthew's analytical gaze take in her own black work-wraith uniform, her dark hair in a tight bun, her colorless skin. She suddenly felt tepid compared to this woman whose eyes were so vibrant and whose photo exuded life. Jamie felt an edge of that passion in tango, but it had become a secret part of her fractured life these days. She sat back down as Matthew continued.

"We're all coerced into uniformity but Lyssa never gave into it. Despite our lip service to diversity, society wants conformity. We frown at the misbehavior of others. That's the real reason that Lyssa was medicated … so she couldn't be remarkable. You might think the inhuman restraint, the physical violence done to the mad is over, Detective, but the restraint has just moved from the outside to the inside, and the drugs are just a replacement for the manacles of Bedlam. Perhaps the drugs were worse because they left Lyssa without the freedom of her mind."

Jamie thought of Polly in the last days before her death, surfing the internet and learning new things, desperate to suck everything she could from life. Her body had been twisted and malfunctioning, but her mind remained clear and curious until the end.

"I'm sorry for your loss," Jamie said. She had spoken those words many times over the years, but now she actually understood them deep within. "But without the drugs, surely Lyssa may have ended up self-harming even more. Perhaps the chemical restraint helped in some way."
 

There was a flash in Matthew's eyes, something Jamie couldn't quite identify. He tamped it down quickly, returning his face to the politician's equilibrium.
 

"That's the opinion of many, for sure." His words were curt, ending that thread of conversation. "Now what exactly can I help you with, Detective?"
 

"I need to know where you were last night."
 

Matthew grinned, the charming smile that housewives all over the nation doted on.
 

"Oh, I'm a suspect. That's a new one."

"Not a suspect as such. I'm just following up on leads from the workplace of the deceased, and of course, you were at the museum this morning."
 

Matthew nodded. "Of course, it's no trouble and I'm always happy to help the police with enquiries." He took a sip of tea. "This morning I arrived at the site early, around nine, but I wasn't the first, and I wasn't anywhere near the main museum. I parked on Lambeth Walk near the London Eye Hostel, which I'm sure you can check. Last night I was out to dinner with a fellow MP. She'll certainly support that. We parted ways at around ten-thirty and I was tucked up in bed by eleven. But I do live alone, Detective, and despite what the press may speculate about my love life, I actually live a quiet, private existence. You won't find scandal here. Lyssa lived with me for a time … but of course, she can no longer speak on my behalf."

Jamie could hear the grief in his voice, and a tinge of guilt at his sister's death. She had thought life would be impossible without Polly to come home to, so perhaps Matthew Osborne felt the same. He had constructed a life that was impenetrable because of his grief, and Jamie knew she pushed others aside when they tried to come closer. She thought of Blake Daniel, and how she kept him at arm's length. Was this how Matthew Osborne behaved, too?
 

"I'd like to know more about Psyche," she said. "What do you want to achieve with the charity?"

"An end to the stereotypes," Matthew replied. "An admission that madness is a spectrum and we're all on it somewhere. No more us and them, just a continuum of the amazing human mind with all its complexity. We can't do a blood test and say for sure whether someone is crazy, and we can only diagnose Alzheimer's accurately after death. So is madness in the physical brain or all in the existential mind? And where is the line crossed?"

Matthew's eyes shone with passion and he clenched his fist as he spoke, clearly used to engaging hostile opponents in the political arena.

"Does Lyssa's experience drive your campaign?" Jamie asked, watching him soften a little at his sister's name.
 

Matthew nodded. "She started suffering a mood disorder in her teens, and I was always her champion big brother." He tapped his front tooth with an elegant fingernail. "This crooked one is the result of a brawl defending her against school bullies. I keep it unfixed as a reminder of the intolerance that the mentally ill suffer at the hands of those who don't understand them. Psyche has developed over time, an attempt to take this beyond one individual, and as Secretary of State for Health, I'm in a prime position to make the so-called mad my life's work."
 

"Is the word mad appropriate?" Jamie asked, wondering at the stigma of its use.
 

Matthew smiled. "Oh, yes. These days language is reclaimed. I support a less extreme viewpoint, but Lyssa was a member of Mad Pride, focused on taking control of madness and accepting it. The prison others build can become a fortress of strength. For that reason, Lyssa always loved the Tower of London, with all of its mad connotations. We used to stand on the arches of Tower Bridge looking down into it when we first moved here." Matthew's voice was wistful with memories of happier times. He stood and walked to the artwork on the wall, staring at it as he spoke, as if he saw beyond it to other realities. "Madness is not an aberration, Detective. It's not abnormal. It's just part of the spectrum of the human condition. Most hide their little crazy moments, but they happen to us all." Jamie's thoughts flashed once more to the pills in her medicine cabinet.
 

"And, of course," Matthew continued, "without the mad, Shakespeare would be without his tragic heroes who teach us so much. Surely Hamlet was clinically depressed, Ophelia to the point of suicide, and of course, there's demented Lear, howling against the storm with Tom of Bedlam for company as he raved against his daughters. The way families treat the mad is perhaps part of the truth of Lear. And look at Macbeth. Surely there was a hint of paranoia in his murderous behavior?"

"But don't some people really need help?" Jamie said. "The world is hard enough to manage for people in full possession of their faculties. The forms we have to fill in, the bureaucracy, the rules we have to obey to live in society. These must be difficult things for people whose reality is skewed."
 

"But who's to say that their reality is any less valid than our own?" Matthew asked.
 

"I guess the government, the police, the rules of our society say that a certain reality must be upheld."
 

Matthew threw his hands up with exasperation. "But look at this world. Every day, we hear of human depravity on the news. Of parents beating and starving their children, of countries spying and stealing secrets, of torture, mass murder, incoming disasters both natural and manmade. This keeps people on the edge of their own madness, controlled by fear of what may come if they don't obey. Surely this is why we are so medicated? The number of people on prescription drugs for anxiety and depression is out of control. Our society is wrecked, for 'those who the Gods wish to destroy, first they make mad.'"
 

Jamie raised a questioning eyebrow.
 

"Attributed to an anonymous source or sometimes Euripides," Matthew said. "The Greek tragedies were filled with the mad. My sister was delighted when she found out that Lyssa was the goddess of frenzied madness. She had been known by the name Mel all our childhood, but she embraced the name Lyssa after she studied Greek myth. I'm not sure what came first, her name or the madness that took her.
 

"You're right, though. Lyssa was medicated because her mania took her to the edge of danger, and her depression took her over it." Matthew ran a finger gently down the curve of the woman's arm as she emerged from the artwork. Jamie could almost feel his touch on her own skin. "She walked the line successfully for so many years, but then, of course, she went over the edge. On the drugs she tottered like an old woman along well-worn paths, panting and wheezing to achieve anything small. Without them, she ran and laughed and danced along the cliff's edge, creating masterpieces, but she was always in danger of falling."
 

Matthew spun back to look at Jamie, his voice impassioned. "But isn't it better to live your life like a comet, blazing across the sky, rather than suffering this dull bus ride of normality? Of course I wanted a lifetime with my sister, but not with the dull, medicated version. She wasn't Lyssa then – perhaps she was plain old Mel, the compliant, good child my parents always wanted. Like I am, perhaps, like all who subscribe to the normal and expected way of life. But aren't the mad, the crazy, actually the ones who work at a job they hate, with people they can't stand, digging themselves deeper into debt, medicating themselves daily with food and TV and alcohol? Who's to say that isn't the more damaging way to live?"

Matthew's eyes met Jamie's, his gaze penetrating.
 

"Let's be honest, Detective, you don't look well. As someone who's lived alongside depression, you exude its dark energy right now."

Jamie met his eyes as she took another sip of tea. His suggestion disarmed her and his ability to see what she hid with a veneer of normality was uncanny. She wore no makeup to work, and her eyes were shadowed with dark rings. Her skin was too pale and she was too thin. Self-harming wasn't just for those diagnosed as mentally ill. She met Matthew's eyes.
 

"It's not your concern, but I do understand your perspective. I've lost someone too."
 

"And is grief a form of madness, Detective? In the DSM, the psychiatrist's manual for diagnostics, it only becomes depression after several months of suffering. Before that, grief is just grief, but then somehow it crosses some designated line and becomes something you can medicate away. I embrace it because it drives the passion for my work. When Lyssa was alive, I fought to claim her equal rights in the mind of society, and now she's dead, I work to establish the continuum of the mad and stop the abuses before they become too great.

"People forget that it was the Americans in the 1920s who started the enforced sterilization of the mentally ill based on the assumption of bad breeding. Hitler only followed their example, targeting the mentally ill before the Jews or gypsies. The mad were the first to be slaughtered, and there is still considerable prejudice against them. It wouldn't take much to tip people back into the old ways of thinking. I have my suspicions that Monro wasn't too far from those thoughts."