Quiver (14 page)

I write down every word. And then he holds his head up, winks and laughs.

“Hypothetically, Dr. Winston, wouldn’t it be good for me if I admitted I was influenced? Had help? I’ve heard,” he hits the table with his palms a couple of times, “that it could work in my favour. Legally, you know.” He raises his eyebrows.

“Hypothetically, it would not be good for you to lie to one of your health care professionals. Especially while she’s trying to do an assessment. Lying would not reflect well on you at all.”

“Are you accusing me of lying?”

“Aren’t you?” I say sharply. I take a breath, employ my calm voice again. “Look, we’re on the same side here,” I say. “It’s in your best interests to—”

“Ooh, you sound angry. Have I annoyed you?”

“Not at all.” I manage to keep using my professional voice. “Perhaps we’ve covered enough ground for today.” I start to gather my things.

“Hypothetically, what if I wasn’t lying? What if—”

“You gave information about your accomplices? That’s a legal matter. You should take that up with your new solicitor.” I stand to go, push in my chair.

“Thank you, I will. I already have. But that wasn’t what I was going to say, Danica.”

I turn back. “It’s Dr. Winston.”

“Yes, as you like. I was going to say, hypothetically, that if I had accomplices, they would still be out there. Still meeting with each other.” He waves his hand in the direction of the front door of Stowmoor. “They would, I am sure,” he leans back and scans my legs, torso, finally stares at my face, “like to know about you.”

I look at the steady red light of the surveillance camera, think what a disaster it would be if Sloane or Abbas ever used the security footage to observe my interview skills. I’ve failed at furthering the assessment, I’ve failed at finding out anything about his thoughts regarding Báthory. Foster’s laughing at his ability to bat me around, to have me bite into whatever piece of information, whether true or false, he throws at me.

I knock on the door and Bill lets me out. As I walk down the hall, I hear Foster yell after me, “A pleasure as always, Dr. Winston.” His taunt stops my breath, a crushing weight on my chest. Don’t let him scare you, I tell myself. Or make you angry. Think clearly. If other people were involved, why wouldn’t he have brought this up before, at his trial, during his assessments, his therapies? He’s likely only saying these things now because of his new lawyer’s influence. He must be lying.

But why would he do it in such an antagonistic way? He could be bored. Or maybe he is telling the truth. Half-truths, anyway.

“How did it go this afternoon with Foster?” Abbas asks, after I run into him in the hall.

“I’m not sure it went well,” I say, searching for the most opaque terms I can use without confessing it was a total waste of time. “He was not as cooperative as in past interviews.”

“I see,” says Abbas. “Don’t be so perturbed, Danica. You look like someone’s just stolen your bicycle.”

“I’m not sure I’ll have much new material to add to my report.”

“That’s how it goes sometimes. You have to learn not to take it personally.”

“Right.”

He awkwardly pats my shoulder. “There are many reasons why an interview might not go well. It needn’t reflect on your abilities as a professional. Patients are not predictable. They have good moods, bad moods. Foster’s had a long day, met a new solicitor, and—”

“Danica!” Kelly rushes down the hall, intercepts us a few feet from my office door. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

“I was in an interview. It was in the schedule.”

“I know, but it’s urgent. We think you must have misfiled a chart—we can’t find it. It belongs to the patient Dr. Sloane is set to interview at three. His last name is—”

“Kroesen.” Sloane strides down the hallway. Her rubber-soled heels make a dull thud on the concrete tiles. She shoos Kelly away. “The file is missing, Danica, and we think you were the last person to handle the chart. The hard copy is missing from central files. The digital copy hasn’t been updated. Can you shed any light on this?”

“The Kroesen file?” I mentally scan my roster of patient files and reports. No Kroesen. I glance at the few paper memos on my desk, which I sometimes take a day or so to get to. Did I miss something there? Was there an email I didn’t get? “I’m sorry, Dr. Sloane, I’m not sure that I—”

“You’re not sure? You’re not sure if you lost a patient’s file?” She squares her hips towards me, takes a step forward.

“What’s the matter here?” Abbas asks Sloane.

I turn away from her and unlock my office door. “Why don’t we discuss it in here? I can take a look at my files, but I’m quite sure I wasn’t assigned to that patient.”

She walks in and leans against my desk. Abbas follows. “Look,” Sloane says, clearly still annoyed, but more restrained, “I’ll get Kelly to reschedule the interview until tomorrow. But please look into it as soon as possible.”

“We’ll sort this out, not to worry,” says Abbas. “Kelly can search again. Danica will keep looking here, too, I’m sure.”

He steps out of my office into the hallway and Sloane moves to join him. She leans in as she passes me. “Interesting chart, Danica,” she half-whispers, half-growls in my ear. I glance at my desk; I’ve left a copy of my Foster bar chart by the printer. Her shiny teak ponytail brushes my shoulder as she sweeps by, sidles up to Abbas. He makes placatory hand gestures. She shakes her head.

I set Foster’s file on my desk, try to relax my shoulders. Swing my door shut, pull down the blinds. Under the buzzing fluorescent light, I close the filing cabinet and sit down. Kroesen. I flip through the memos I ignored. Nothing. I have no memory, no record that I was ever involved with that file. But of course Sloane would go out of her way to accuse me of messing up, and in front of Abbas and everyone. I shove the memos to a corner of my desk; it doesn’t matter if I know what’s going on or file everything perfectly. Sloane will never accept me as a colleague.

I pull up my pie chart, the timeline, delete them all. All my preparation for today was a waste of time. To keep my mind off Foster, I go through my files one more time to try to find the Kroesen file, even though I’m almost positive I was never responsible for it.

The more clinical work I do, the more I know that I got into this profession for the wrong reasons. When I started studying psychology, it was out of prurient curiosity. I could take classes where I learned about bizarre patient histories, deviant behaviour, violent criminals. I took every abnormal and forensic psych class I could. The case studies we read, the theories we learned, seemed dynamic, even glamorous.

And I did very well in those classes. I started to listen to my classmates, my TAs, everyone who told me I was so talented, that I could be so successful. So I kept studying, went to graduate school for clinical psych. Started working with Carl, winning grants, publishing articles. And when I began to hate all the paperwork, to realize I didn’t even really like being a clinician, I kept listening to everyone who told me I had such potential, had already come this far. When I actually started
doing
therapy, clinical work—I knew I wasn’t drawn to it. It was dreary, repetitive work, usually carried out in small, dank rooms in outdated mental health facilities. I asked the same questions, in the same way, over and over. There was nothing glamorous about it.

I had a professor who once said being a clinical psychologist was a calling, like the priesthood. Everyone in class nodded enthusiastically, believing, or pretending to believe, that they thought the same thing, that they had all heard a call. I nodded too, even though I knew I was a fake. But I kept on the path. I thought it would get better at some stage, that I’d start to be better. After this interview today, I know I’m not. I accomplished nothing of clinical worth in that interview. I tried to indulge my own interests and failed even at that; now I’m confused, slightly paranoid and, for the first time, a bit frightened.

“Just arrived. I’m heading in now.” He pushed against the glass door with his shoulder, the phone to his ear in one hand and a long carrier tube in the other.

“Yes, I checked it. Exactly what we ordered,” he said to the person on the other end. “...Yes, she is. I’m lending her the car on Wednesday to pick him up.”

He stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the sixth floor. “...I know she is. She’s just worried about it, but it’s fine, it’s at her place now...All right.” The door opened. “I’ll be there soon.” He flipped the phone shut.

“Excuse me,” he said to the receptionist. “Can you see that Mr. Lewison gets this parcel?” He set the tube on her desk.

“Who is it from?”

“He’ll know what it’s regarding.” The man tucked his phone into his suit pocket, then returned to the elevator and descended to the lobby.

It was nine p.m. and finally the firm was quiet, the receptionists had gone home, phones were dead in their cradles. He stepped into his office, closed the thick oak door. The parcel was by the door, a two-and-a-half-foot-long tube with a silver plastic cap on one end. A white ribbon tied around it. A deep-red card with black cursive writing:
For the office. An addition to your collection. To a prosperous beginning.

He leaned the tube against one of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases that lined the walls. Hung his blazer on the back of the leather-upholstered desk chair. He tossed the card on the shiny walnut desk, grabbed the decanter of sherry with his big, pale hand and poured some of the liquid into a lead-crystal glass. He held the glass to the lamp, watched the crystal pattern split the warm light into seven colours against the backdrop of dark sherry. Cross and olive. His doctor warned him about lead seeping into his drinks, but who could sip from a plain glass? Besides, he craved a little lead. There should be more lead, more dirt, more risk in this world, he thought.

At the funeral, he’d known right away that they would bring him risk. He was acquainted with almost everyone else at his father’s wake except these people. Yet they had the air of being important, of having known something intimate about the deceased. They stayed knotted in a corner, sipping wine, professional mourners in their expensively tailored suits, black dresses.

“We knew your father well,” said one of the men, shaking Lewison’s hand. “A real pillar for our organization.”

“He was integral,” said one of the women. She held his thick hand between her two slim, soft ones. “Such a loss.”

He surveyed the small group. They seemed aware of each other’s movements, statements. They were a unit, a swarm of gorgeous black beetles. His father had had many interesting clients, but he’d never mentioned anyone like these people.

“Yes, thank you. I’m taking over a number of my father’s clients. If I can be of service...” He handed the woman his card.

She tucked it inside her small black purse and snapped the clasp shut.

They had money. Some from sources he would need to keep anonymous, some from sources that were anonymous even to him. Only a few people knew where it all really came from, but he was getting closer; he would prove himself further, and then he would know. He’d manage the spreadsheets, keep the accounts offshore, keep them off the financial grid. Soon he’d be integral.

They paid well, but that wasn’t what excited him. They had history, heft, a purpose. And now he did too. Theirs was a noble sort of blood sport.

His shelves were filled with books about war, dynasties, invasions, occupations. He’d been collecting them since he graduated with his law degree, almost twenty years ago. On his walls hung maps of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, the Han Empire, the Roman Empire and the great Mongol Empire. The maps were sentinels of the office, watching over him as he worked, as he conquered, controlled, won.

He picked up a pair of scissors and sliced the white ribbon, then wedged one of the metal blades between the cap and the tube and popped it open. He slid a thick scroll of parchment out of the tube and unrolled it. Another map: the Ottoman Empire during the late 1500s. Suleyman’s Turks pushing west, the Hungarians pushing back. And on this map, certain castles marked in black calligraphy: Ecsed, Beckov, Sárvár, Čachtice. The manor house in Vienna. Her birthplace in Transylvania. A geography of Báthory, where she lived, where she killed.

The castles, the houses, dotted the border of Ottoman/Hungarian control. She lived amid constant threats of conflict and invasion. But instead of succumbing to fear, of acquiescing to helplessness and uncertainty, she built her own empire on the threshold of precarious boundaries.

He stood back and stared at the new map. He would do more than his father. He would keep the money hidden, but he’d also move ahead with their other legal issue, as they’d put it last night over drinks. There was no denying it would be a challenge. Even if he called in every favour he was owed, it might take years to obtain parole. There was no guarantee he could make any improvement on Foster’s behalf, and also, it was a risk to be publicly, officially tied to him. But he knew a couple of people inside Stowmoor who could be useful. He sipped sherry from his lead crystal. He’d make some calls tomorrow.

I’m too late to make the five o’clock train and have to take the 5:45. This wouldn’t usually be a problem, but I’m supposed to be ready to leave for a party with Henry at 7:30, and at this rate I’ll only just make it home by then. I sent him a text before I got on the tube at Ealing Broadway, but I’ve had no reception since.

I step onto the Shepherd’s Bush platform at 7:20, race up the left-hand side of the seemingly never-ending escalator, pass the park and breathlessly turn the latch on our door at 7:35. Henry is on the phone, pacing the room.

“She just walked in,” he says into the receiver as he gives me a
where the hell were you
look. I mouth the words
I’m sorry.
“Yeah, ten minutes is great,” he says. “We’ll be out front.”

He hangs up and interrupts my stream of explanations. “It doesn’t matter right now. Wilson is coming to pick us up in, like, ten minutes.”