Nine Lives (2 page)

The first was the hardest. I expected that. Nothing to do with conscience or scruple. I have no qualms. It's a question of practice, I suppose. The next ones should be easier.

I was meticulous in my preparations. I rang the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy, and I told them that I needed help. I gave a false name, of course, and affected a Scottish accent. But I told them I lived in London. I am not adventurous. London is big enough for anonymity. They told me where I could acquire a list of practitioners and it was up to me to choose someone in my area. They did not ask for my address, for which I was grateful. I studied the list in the privacy of my office. It covered practitioners over the whole country. I settled on a group from the outer suburbs, far away from where I lived. Then I shut my eyes and stuck a pin into the list. It landed on one called Harry Winston. Poor bugger. But whatever he was called, he would do for starters. I rang him forthwith and made an appointment for the following Monday, giving him the name and accent I had used for the Council.

Mr Winston had a kindly voice, and I did not thank him for it. I would have preferred a gruff and grudging tone, as if he were doing me a favour. I tried to ignore it. His kindness would get him nowhere.

I had long considered disguises, and I kept the basics in my office. It was there that I stuck on a beard, and donned a trilby hat, in which I looked frankly ridiculous. And the
gloves. Most important, the gloves. I'd bought a few pairs in different colours. And then my weapon, unseen in my pocket.

I drove to Mr Winston's house, but I parked my car a few streets away. I noticed that there were few people about, it being a quiet residential area, and those few who walked the streets did not worry me. I was confident in my disguise. I carried the gloves but I did not put them on until I faced his front door. There were two bells on the panel, and I pressed the one that claimed ‘Consultant'.

‘Who is it?' came through the voice grid.

I announced myself and was ordered to the first floor. The door opened and I went through. I was suddenly nervous and I felt sweat on my forehead. As I climbed the stairs, a shadow fell across the landing, and when I reached the top, sweating and shivering, I knew I looked like a suitable case for treatment.

Mr Winston stepped into the shadow and welcomed me. I wished he had been less of a gentleman.

‘Come in,' he said. ‘Sit down. Take off your things. It's a hot day.'

‘Not the gloves,' I said. ‘Never the gloves. That's why I'm here, you see.' I had done my homework. I knew about glove fetishism.

‘As you wish,' Mr Winston said. He was smiling, clearly looking forward to a field day. He sat down at his desk.

The sweat was pouring from me now. I felt it dripping down my neck. It was too late to withdraw. I had to finish the job in hand. But his smile unnerved me and, in any case, I would welcome a delay. So I rattled on about the gloves.

‘I wear them all the time,' I said. ‘Can't take them off. I don't control them. They're like glove puppets and someone
else is pulling the strings.' I was rather pleased with my little invention and I smiled at him.

‘Someone else is in control, you say? Is that how you feel about them?'

‘That's right,' I said. I could sense that I'd opened a can of worms and that I had pleased him with the clue I had offered as to which direction he should take. But as far as I was concerned, he wasn't going anywhere, despite my signposting. Yet I was loath to get on with the job. It was fear that delayed me, I confess, and a little curiosity as to how he would exploit my clue.

‘Tell me when and where it began, when you were first aware of this control,' he said.

Well, frankly, I couldn't be bothered and, in any case, I'd run out of invention. So I crossed to his desk and took the guitar-string out of my pocket. My hands were trembling.

Mr Winston half rose. ‘What are you doing?' he asked.

I think he was suddenly afraid. I quickly placed myself behind him and forced him to sit.

‘Go away, go away,' he said. ‘You're out of your mind.'

I was able to hate him then, and it was easy to circle his neck with my string. I was not out of my mind. I was not even beside my mind. I had never felt so sane. I stood well back so that his blood could not stain me – I had rehearsed my movements often enough – and I pulled the string tight. He gurgled. I had hit the spot. I watched as the blood ran down his waistcoat and his head fell forward. Then he was still. With my gloved hand on his neck, I checked for a pulse. He was gone.

And so was I. Swiftly down the stairs and out the way I came. As I walked towards my car, I began to shiver. The sweat still poured from me, but I was cold. I passed a group
of schoolboys, too busy with their quarrelling to notice me. I was tempted to run, but that might have drawn someone's attention. My car seemed a million miles away. Once there, I sank into the seat, breathless, and I started to drive straight away, unwilling to give myself time to think. The next one will be easier, I told myself. And the next. And so on until I have completed my mission. I kept reminding myself of the whys and the wherefores I had become a murderer. The reason, the motive, all that made me feel a little better. By the time I reached my office, I was myself again.

ONE DOWN. EIGHT TO GO.

Mrs Penny Winston …

Mrs Penny Winston was a primary-school teacher, and every Monday she was free after three o'clock. Her boys would not be home from school until five, so she had time to do the week's shopping. It was her Monday routine. She trundled her trolley around the supermarket, and she considered herself a happy woman. Two well-adjusted sons, Paul and James, diligently at work for their exams. Soon both of them would be at university and would probably have left home. And then there would be just herself and Harry and she looked forward to that, for their partnership was a solid one that over the years had grown in affection and respect. ‘I'm a lucky woman,' she said to herself, and tried not to feel smug.

The boys were home from school when she returned and they helped her offload the shopping. She set about preparing supper. Harry's last patient would be gone by seven. Then he would come downstairs and join her in a pre-prandial cocktail. A martini. Every evening at seven. The boys went to the nearby park to play tennis, also part of the routine but they would return in time for supper and homework thereafter. I run a tight ship, Penny thought, a little disturbed by her own conceit. Such ideas tempted the gods and the evil eye. But all that was nonsense, she told herself, as she liquidised the broccoli soup for their first course.

Shortly before seven, the boys returned and set to laying the table. Meanwhile, Penny prepared the cocktails and set the tray on the drawing-room side-table. A small bowl of nuts completed the picture, as the church clock struck seven.

Penny sat down and waited. She listened for Harry's tread on the stairs, and was faintly unnerved by the sudden silence in the house. She couldn't understand it. Every evening at seven, Harry's footsteps chimed with the church bell. He was meticulous in his timing. His last patient must surely have left by now. Yet she was reluctant to call him. He was possibly catching up with paperwork and it was an unspoken rule in the house that he was never to be disturbed. She waited until seven-fifteen, then she poured herself a martini to steady her nerves. Paul and James crept into the drawing room. Why this tip-toeing, she wondered. And why this terrible silence?

‘Where's Dad?' James whispered. ‘He's late.'

Which indeed he was, and would never be later. They held on to the silence until seven-thirty. And then Penny said something that in future she would live endlessly to regret and would forever punish herself for the damage she had caused to her deeply loved sons.

‘Go and see what he's up to, James,' she said.

‘Why me?' James asked. He knew his father's rule of privacy.

‘I'll go,' Paul said. ‘If you come with me.' It was as if he was volunteering for the dark and was frightened.

‘Fair enough,' James said, and they crept up the stairs, dodging each other, neither of them willing to go first.

They arrived together at their father's door. And together they knocked. And waited. After a little while, they knocked again.

‘He's not there,' James said, anxious to make a hasty retreat. ‘He must have gone out.'

‘I'm going to open it and see,' Paul said. ‘You're coming in with me. Dad?' he called out, giving him a last chance to respond. So they opened the door to break the silence.

Downstairs, Penny heard the screaming. Later on she would wonder why she didn't respond immediately, why she took time to finish her martini and even to nibble a few nuts. As she stood up, her knees melted, and she hobbled to the staircase. ‘I'm coming,' she said, and she didn't recognise her own voice.

The boys stood in the doorway.

‘Don't go in,' James whimpered. ‘It's terrible.'

But she pushed past them and greeted the scene in dumbfounded silence. She crossed over to his desk and stroked his hair.

‘Don't touch anything,' Paul said. ‘We must call the police.'

She went on stroking as the tears rolled down her cheeks. She was tempted to lift his head, but she dreaded what she would find. The boys put their arms around her and led her away. Their oh-so-bright futures were blighted and they would need someone of their father's calling to comfort them. Or not. One who would, according to his or her personal hang-ups, presume they thought of themselves as killers, and would go the long road over many years to convince them that they had not murdered their father, when such a thought had never crossed their minds in the first place. Such a technique could also pass as comfort, but God knows to what horrendous ends.

The boys brought their mother back to the drawing room. Paul poured her another drink while James went into the hall to phone the police. The door was open, so his message could be heard. ‘Come quickly,' he whimpered. ‘Our father's dead.' He included Paul in his loss. ‘Murdered,' he said, after a pause, and in one muffled syllable. ‘Come quickly,' he said again, as if their speed
might resuscitate his father. He gave the address nonchalantly as if, compared to his loss, its location was irrelevant. Then he returned to the drawing room. Paul was drinking the second martini as though he'd already replaced his father.

The police came quickly and discreetly. Just two of them at first. In plain clothes, and in an unmarked car. Not sufficient cause to merit the raising of net curtains in the close. James opened the door for them and motioned them up the stairs. He was reluctant to lead them, but they found their way.

The door to Harry's consulting room was wide open. Aghast.

Downstairs, the family could find no words. It was too soon for speculation, too soon even for anger. The time was ripe only for disbelief. And silence. A silence sometimes broken by footsteps overhead and the sudden ringing of the doorbell. Then hasty footsteps down the stairs, and the opening of the front door and the tread of several feet to the first landing. Paul poured his mother another martini and one for himself. This was not routine. There would be no seven o'clock supper tonight. There would be no homework after the uneaten meal. Routine was shattered and their lives would never be the same again. And still the silence and bewilderment that could not find words. Broken at last by a knock on the door.

It was a policeman. ‘My name is Detective Inspector Wilkins,' he said as he entered. ‘I am very sorry.' How often had he used that phrase, he wondered. And did he still mean it after all its frequency? But in this case, children were involved and he meant it well enough, for how could they survive such a horrendous legacy?

‘How did he die?' Penny had at last found her voice. Wilkins had dreaded that question, for its true answer would in no way ease her sorrow.

‘Strangled,' he said. It was a half-truth. But ‘garrotted' was unpronounceable and smacked of medieval cruelty. ‘Death was immediate,' he said. ‘He didn't suffer.' Another phrase he had used often enough and never been too sure of its truth. But true or not, it was standard procedure.

‘The pathologist hazards the death at four o'clock. Was anybody at home at that time?'

They shook their heads.

‘I was at the supermarket,' Penny said. ‘And the boys were at school.'

‘We've looked at your husband's diary,' Wilkins said. ‘His last patient at four o'clock was a Mr George Pendry. No address is given. Do you know that name, Mrs Winston?' he asked

‘No,' Penny said. ‘I had little to do with my husband's profession. It is one of confidentiality, you know.'

‘I understand,' Wilkins said. There would be little help from that quarter, he knew, and that oath of secrecy in the profession could hinder his investigation further. He had more questions to ask, but he sensed that this was no time for investigation. ‘We have to remove your husband's body,' he said. ‘We shall do a post-mortem.'

It was that word that brought the truth to the three of them. Disbelief dispersed and together they began to weep, holding each other in their sorrow.

‘I'm sorry,' Wilkins said again. He backed towards the door. ‘I'll be in touch. We'll find whoever did it,' he said. ‘I promise you.'

But he knew he was in no position to make such a
promise. There were no fingerprints, no signs of a break-in. No disturbance. Only a body with a guitar string around its neck. He shuddered as he recalled it. Garrotting was rare, and never left clues. It was a distant manoeuvre. Safe. A non-touching crime, executed from behind. Gruesome. He opened the front door and took a gulp of fresh air. He would wait for the ambulance to arrive. When it came, sidling slowly into the kerb, the net curtains found a cause, and all over the close they were raised in curiosity tinged with pleasure. There was no movement around the vehicle. It looked patient, parked there, un-urgent, which indeed it was, for the dead were in no hurry. The neighbours waited too, and were shortly rewarded with the sight of two men with a stretcher who alighted from the van and went to open the back doors. And, what's more, to carry the stretcher between them, which they took into the house. The neighbours waited and shortly the stretcher reappeared, covered with a black cloth. Then it was loaded into the van, which drove away as silently as it had arrived. The show was over, but they had only viewed the final act. In time, they would learn of the drama behind the scenes.