Sister: A Novel (26 page)

I reach the lido and sit down, legs still jittery and my chest hurting every time I take a breath. I watch children splashing in the paddling pool and two middle-aged executives paddling with their suit trousers rolled up. Only now do I dare turn around. I think I see a shadow, amongst the trees. I wait until the shadow is no more than the dappled shade of branches.

I skirt round the copse of trees, making sure I keep close to people and noise. I reach the other side and see a stretch of bright-green new grass with polka-dot crocuses. A girl walks barefoot across it, her shoes in her hand, enjoying sun-warmed grass, and I think of you. I watch her till she’s at the end of the polka-dotted grass and only then see the toilets building, a hard dark wound amidst the soft bright colours of spring.

I hurry after the girl and reach the toilets building. She’s the far side now, with a boy’s arm around her. Laughing together, they’re leaving the park. I leave too, my legs still a little wobbly, my breathing still laboured. I try to make myself feel ridiculous. There is nothing to be scared of, Beatrice; it’s what comes of having an overly active imagination; your mind can play all sorts of tricks - reassurances pilfered from a childhood world of certainty. There’s no monster in the wardrobe. But you and I know he’s real.

17

Tuesday

At the CPS I squeeze into a lift, which smells of burned rubber sweat; bodies unwillingly pressed against each other. Surrounded by people, in the bright light of morning, I know that I will not say anything about the man in the park. Because Mr Wright would just tell me, correctly, that he’s in prison, refused bail, and that after the trial he’ll be sentenced to life imprisonment, without parole. Rationally, I should know that he can never hurt me again. As the lift reaches the third floor I tell myself sternly that he is not here and never will be, that he is an absence, not a presence, and I must not allow him to become one, even in my imaginings.

So this morning is one of new resolutions. I will not be intimidated by a spectre of imagined evil. I will not allow him any power over my mind as he once had over my body. Instead I will be reassured by Mr Wright and Mrs Crush Secretary and all the other people who surround me in this building. I know that my blackouts are still happening and more frequently, and that my body is getting weaker, but I will not give way to irrational terror nor to my physical frailty. Instead of imagining the frightening and the ugly, I will try to find the beautiful in the everyday things, as you did. But most of all, I will think about what you went through - and know, again, that in comparison I have no right to indulge myself in a phantom menace and self-pity.

I decide that today it will be me who is the coffee maker. It is nonsense to think that my arms are trembling. Look. I’ve managed to make two cups of coffee - and carry them into Mr Wright’s office - no problem.

Mr Wright, a little surprised, thanks me for the coffee. He puts a new cassette into the recorder and we resume.

‘We’d got to you talking to Tess’s friends about Simon Greenly and Emilio Codi?’ he asks.

‘Yes. Then I went back to our flat. Tess had an ancient answerphone that she’d got in a car-boot sale I think. But she thought it was fine.’

I’m skirting round the issue, but must get to the point.

‘When I came in I saw a light flashing, indicating the tape was full.’

Still in my coat, I played the message, which was just something from a gas company, unimportant. I’d already listened to all the other messages, other people’s one-way conversations with you.

I took off my coat and was about to rewind the tape, when I saw it had an A side and a B side. I’d never listened to the B side so I turned it over. Each message was preceded by a time and date in an electronic voice.

The last message on the B side was on Tuesday, 21 January at 8.20 p.m. Just a few hours after you’d had Xavier.

The sound of a lullaby filled the room. Sweetly vicious.

I try to sound brisk, and a little too loud, wanting my words to drown out the vocal memory in my head.

‘It was a professional recording, and I thought whoever had played it must have put the telephone receiver against a CD player.’

Mr Wright nods; he has already heard the recording, though, unlike me, he probably doesn’t know it by heart.

‘I knew from Amias that she felt threatened by the calls,’ I continue. ‘That she was afraid of whoever was doing this, so I knew he must have done it many times, but only one was recorded.’

No wonder your phone was unplugged when I arrived at your flat. You couldn’t bear to listen to any more.

‘You phoned the police straight away?’ asks Mr Wright.

‘Yes. I left a message on DS Finborough’s voicemail. I told him about Simon’s fake project and that I’d also discovered a reason why Emilio would have waited till after the baby was born to kill Tess. I said I thought there might be something wrong with the CF trial because the women were paid and Tess’s medical notes had gone missing, although I thought it unlikely there was a link. I said I thought the lullabies were the key to it. That if they could find out who had played her the lullabies they’d find her killer. It wasn’t the most moderate or calm of messages. But I’d just listened to the lullaby. I didn’t feel moderate or calm.’

After I’d left my message for DS Finborough I went to St Anne’s. My anger and upset were visceral, needing physical release. I went to the psychiatric department where Dr Nichols was having an outpatient clinic. I found his name written on a card pinned to a door and pushed past a patient who was about to go in. Behind me, I heard the receptionist remonstrating but took no notice.

Dr Nichols looked at me, startled.

‘There was a lullaby on her answerphone,’ I said. Then I started singing the lullaby, ‘Sleep, baby, sleep/Your father tends the sheep/Your mother shakes the dreamland tree/ And from it fall sweet dreams for thee/Sleep, baby, sleep.’

‘Beatrice, please—’

I interrupted. ‘She heard it the evening she got back from the hospital. Only a few hours after her baby had died. God knows how many more times he played her lullabies. The phone calls weren’t “auditory hallucinations”. Someone was mentally torturing her.’

Dr Nichols, looking at me shocked, was silent.

‘She wasn’t mad but someone was trying to drive her mad or make everyone think she was mad.’

His voice sounded shaken. ‘Poor girl, the lullabies must have been appalling for her. But are you sure they were intentionally cruel? Do you think they may have just been a terrible blunder by one of her friends who didn’t know her baby had died?’

I thought how convenient that would be for him.

‘No, I don’t think that.’

He turned away from me. He was wearing a white coat this time, but it was crumpled and a little stained, and he seemed even more scruffily hopeless.

‘Why didn’t you just listen to her? Ask her more?’

‘The only occasion I met her my clinic was overbooked as usual, with emergencies just added with no more time allocated, and I had to get through them, keep down waiting times.’ I looked at him but he didn’t meet my eye. ‘I should have taken longer with her. I’m sorry.’

‘You knew about the PCP?’

‘Yes. The police told me. But not until after our last meeting. I told them it would cause hallucinations, probably terrifying hallucinations. And it would be especially potent given Tess’s grief. The literature says that users frequently harm themselves. The lullabies must have been the final straw.’

There was no dog in his NHS consulting room but I could sense how much he wanted to reach out and stroke a reassuring silky ear.

‘It would account for why she changed that morning from when I saw her to being suicidal,’ he continued. ‘She must have heard one of the lullabies, maybe taken some PCP too, and the combination—’ He stopped as he saw the expression on my face. ‘You think I’m trying to make excuses for myself?’

I was surprised at his first intuitive remark.

‘But there aren’t any excuses,’ he continued. ‘She was clearly having visual hallucinations. And whether that was from psychosis or PCP isn’t the point. I missed it. Whatever the cause - psychosis or a drug - she was a danger to herself and I didn’t protect her as I should have done.’

As in our first meeting I heard shame seeping out of his words.

I’d come to vent my rage but there seemed little point now. He seemed to be already punishing himself. And he wasn’t going to change his opinion. The door swung open and a receptionist with a male nurse bustled in and seemed surprised by the silence in the room.

I closed the door behind me. There was nothing left to say to him.

I walked hurriedly down a corridor, as if I could outpace the thoughts that were stalking me because now I had no purpose to distract me, I could only think about you listening to the lullaby.

‘Beatrice?’

I’d virtually stumbled into Dr Saunders. Only then did I realise that I was crying, my eyes streaming, nose running, a sodden handkerchief in my hand.

‘She was mentally tortured before she was murdered. She was framed for her own suicide.’

Without asking questions, he gave me a hug. His arms around me felt strong but not safe. I’d always found physical intimacy unsettling, even with family let alone a near stranger, so I was more anxious than reassured. But he seemed quite used to holding distressed women, totally at ease with it.

‘Can I ask you for coffee again?’

I agreed, because I wanted to ask him about Dr Nichols. I wanted to get proof that he was incompetent and that the police should rethink everything he’d told them. And partly too, because when I’d spilled out about you being mentally tortured, he‘d taken it in his stride, not showing any sign of incredulity, and had joined Amias and Christina in the very small band of people that didn’t dismiss me out of hand.

We sat at a table in the middle of the bustling café. He looked directly at me, giving me his full attention. I remembered our staring competitions.

‘Just look into the pupils, Bee, that’s the trick.’

But I still couldn’t. Not when the eyes belonged to a beautiful man. Not even in these circumstances.

‘Dr Saunders, do you—’

He interrupted. ‘William, please. I’ve never been good at formalities. I blame my parents for sending me to a progressive school. The first time I ever put on a uniform is when I got a white coat for this job.’ He smiled. ‘Also, I have a habit of volunteering more information than I was asked for. I interrupted, you wanted to ask me something?’

‘Yes, do you know Dr Nichols?’

‘I used to. We were on an SHO rotation together many years ago and we’ve stayed friends, although I don’t see much of him nowadays. Can I ask why?’

‘He was Tess’s psychiatrist. I want to know if he’s incompetent. ’

‘No, is the short answer to that. Although you think otherwise?’

He waited for me to answer, but I wanted to get information not give it and he seemed to understand that.

‘I know Hugo comes across as a little shambolic,’ William continued. ‘Those tweedy clothes and that ancient dog of his, but he
is
good at his job. If something went wrong with your sister’s care then it’s far more likely to be down to the pitiful state of mental health funding in the NHS rather than Hugo.’

Again, he reminded me of you, looking at the best in people, and as so often with you, I must have looked sceptical.

‘He was a research fellow before becoming a hands-on doctor,’ William continued. ‘The rising star of the university, apparently. Rumour had it that he was brilliant - destined for greatness and all of that.’

I was taken aback by this description of Dr Nichols; it didn’t tally with the man I’d met at all; nothing about Dr Nichols had suggested this.

William went to get milk from the counter and I wondered if Dr Nichols had played me. Had the dog and the scruffy clothes at our first meeting been carefully constructed to present a certain image, which I had unwittingly bought? But why would he go to that much trouble? Be that deceitful? Manipulative? Used now to suspecting everyone I encountered, distrust felt familiar. But I couldn’t sustain my suspicion of him. He was just too decent and scruffily hopeless to be connected to violence. The rumour of his brilliance was surely wrong. In any case, he only met you after you had Xavier, and then only once, so unless he was a psychopath what possible reason could he have for murdering you?