Ploughing Potter’s Field
Phil Lovesey
Chilling psychological suspense novel from a brilliant new voice in crime fiction: ‘Terrific plot and a name to watch’ – Frances Fyfield, Mail on SundayThe tabloids called him the ‘Beast of East 16’. The authorities called him a dangerous sociopath. But one man called Frank Rattigan the only possible road to redemption.When Adrian Rawlings undertakes a series of interviews with an incarcerated killer, he cannot possibly realize that his encounters with the man who spent three days torturing, murdering then calmly dismembering a young air hostess ‘for fun’ in East London, will eat so deeply into his psychological neuroses and inadequacies.And as Rawlings struggles to find the vital threads to rationalize the horrifying crime, he finds himself drawn into a dark world of secret histories and hidden agendas which stretch far beyond the Beast himself.But perhaps the answers Rawlings strives for lie buried within his own childhood – a place where vulnerable minds are always prey to the evil machinations of others…
PHIL LOVESEY
PLOUGHING POTTER’S FIELD
EPIGRAPH (#ulink_9c7cf2e9-715a-58f6-a19f-40183b108ab2)
Since those times, it is only rarely that someone has talked to the angels of Heaven, but some have talked with spirits who are not in Heaven. It is with difficulty that these can be elevated. Yet the Lord does elevate them as much as possible, by a turning of love; which is affected by means of truths from the word.
Emanuel Swedenborg
(Heaven and Hell)
CLERK OF COURT: All rise. The court is now in session. The Crown versus Francis James Rattigan. Judge Richard Moorland presiding.
JUDGE MOORLAND: Francis James Rattigan, you have been found guilty by this court of the murder of Helen Julianne Lewis, and it is now my duty to pronounce sentence upon you.
Do you have anything to say before I do so?
RATTIGAN: We’re all flies.
JUDGE MOORLAND (sighing slightly): Much has been said in this court over the last thirteen days which I’m sure has both distressed and appalled all present. I myself freely admit to being utterly horrified by the nature of your crime upon an innocent, unsuspecting woman. Indeed, I would go further, and add that without wishing to reiterate any of the lurid details of what took place on those three days last September, your crimes are without doubt amongst the most brutal acts of unprovoked violence it has ever been my misfortune to sit in judgement upon.
RATTIGAN (smiling): Bzzzz … Bzzzzz …
JUDGE MOORLAND (to defence counsel): Mr Sharpe, will you inform your client that another outburst will have him placed in contempt?
SHARPE: Yes, Your Honour.
RATTIGAN (singing): Old Spanish eyes … Teardrops are falling from your Spanish eyes …
JUDGE MOORLAND: I propose to ignore your sorry little diversion, Mr Rattigan. Indeed much has been made by your counsel with regards to your enfeebled mind. I find myself extremely loath to admit that evidence submitted by both independent and the Crown’s own criminal psychiatrists forces me to uphold your plea of guilty via diminished responsibility. Though I’m sure, as I feel are many of us here today, that the legal definitions of ‘mad’ and ‘bad’ require some urgent reanalysis.
However, it’s my job to dispense the law, not examine its workings. I am fully convinced that the graphic nature of your crimes horrifically indicates your permanent danger to society, and although at times like these I wish I had recourse to more traditional measures, I am forced in this instance to sentence you to indefinite detention in one of Her Majesty’s secure mental institutions.
Take him down.
(Cheers from the public gallery, hurled insults, sobbing. Rattigan is surrounded by court officials. A scuffle breaks out.)
RATTIGAN (shouting above the din): Bitch done me down! Died too quick! Watched me die a thousand times!
Court Four, Old Bailey, London.
5th March, 1989.
CONTENTS
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PREFACE (#ulink_a8108a7b-1b61-545e-8c5e-0f1f7ab51c84)
‘How d’it start? Christ’s sake, stupid or something? Me old man gave me mum one. Nine months later, I dropped out of her cunt. Never done biology?’
The anatomy lesson you’ve just read was given to me by Francis James Rattigan during one of a series of interviews I conducted with him as a research student in September/October 1997.
Frank Rattigan – the Beast of East 16, intended original subject of my doctorate thesis in forensic psychiatry. Crude, offensive, challenging Frank. Dubbed ‘Beast’ by the tabloids – their game, not his, a circulation-inspired pseudonym, good for a couple of weeks until the next psycho arrived to darken the blood-red front pages.
Can’t remember the name? The crime? Neither could I to begin with. Perhaps cynics might argue that there are too many Frank Rattigans around these days, too many ‘beasts’ loose on the streets. Today’s psycho – tomorrow’s chip-paper.
Then I was sent a thick brown file by Dr Neil Allen at Oakwood High Security Mental Hospital, prior to my meetings, stuffed with newspaper clippings, Rattigan’s previous criminal record, crime-scene photographs, police interviews and a vast battery of psychiatric reports. After a grim few days spent digesting its often unpalatable contents, ten-year-old memories of an East End slaughterhouse resurfaced, a girl turned to porridge by a man who could offer no motive, save that he did what he did ‘for fun’.
On the last page of the dossier was a photograph, the Beast himself, face set in a challenging sneer, eyes seeming to dare me to unlock the depravity which lurked inside. But the longer I looked, the more I became aware of something hiding behind the bravado – a sadness born out of the insanity which led him to his present incarceration. And as I immersed myself deeper into his enigma, I determined that there were answers to his crime, had to be, must be. I hardly dared to think that I, a humble student of the criminal mind, might find them; but the bait was down, I’d taken it, and ironically was hooked many years ago by a past which I’d refused to ever really acknowledge.
But what benefits does hindsight ever really bring? Looking back, I see myself as incredibly naive, suddenly excited by the chance of putting textbook theories into practice. I was finally being allowed into the real world, absolutely confident I had the necessary mettle to make it. I, Adrian Rawlings, imminent Doctor of Forensic Psychiatry, would ‘solve’ Rattigan. I would find the missing motive which had baffled the experts for so long.
Perhaps my desire to succeed was born from the ashes of failure, the ruins of redundancy. Maybe forensic psychiatry became a way of reinventing myself, a chance to analyse others without ever having to look too deeply at myself. But Rattigan changed all that, as surely as holding a mirror to my face.
Parts of this journal take the form of transcripted recordings made with Rattigan over two months during my initial thesis research. I’ve concentrated on passages which I feel are relevant – to Frank and myself. In reality, over seven hours of taped conversations exist. You may wish to hear them in their entirety. But I doubt it. His voice … corrodes.
It’s almost impossible to really ‘like’ a person like Frank. His personality forbids it, couldn’t cope with the affection. But perhaps somewhere in the recesses of our lost humanity, there lurks an untapped reservoir of empathy, made stagnant by the greed of the last hundred years. And sometimes, as I found to my cost, the only way to truthfully understand the motives of another, however distasteful, is to look into that dark pool and recognize a little of their madness in ourselves.
We simply have to be honest.
Adrian Rawlings.
December 1997.
1 (#ulink_327adae3-f8b1-5ef4-9977-7e88c58621bd)
Disinfectant. Pine Fresh. Dettol maybe
Floor polish, rubber soles squeaking on its brilliant, unyielding surface, heralding my anxious arrival.
And music, piped from God knows where.
I half laughed nervously. ‘Sounds like a cheap supermarket.’
Dr Allen frowned. ‘To you, perhaps. But to us it’s a vital part of the regime. Acts like a clock. Covers of the Hollywood greats from nine till ten. Sounds of the sixties till lunch. Pastoral classical from one till three. Then a bit of New Age synthesizer to simmer things down before supper and medication.’
‘The same every day?’
‘Its purpose isn’t to entertain, Mr Rawlings.’ He walked two steps in front, as if keen to be rid of the awkward student following sheepishly behind.
‘Dr Allen,’ I tried. ‘I really would like to say once again how grateful I am that –’
‘I know.’ He stopped, turned, clearly irritated that his time was wasted talking to a nonentity like me. ‘Just don’t make too much of it. We’ve had a lot of research students in Oakwood over the years. It doesn’t always work out.’
A scream somewhere close by. I tried to appear casual, unaffected, though sensed Allen saw through the sham, caught the apprehension in my eyes, felt my fear.
‘Much of this, of course,’ he said, ‘depends on Rattigan. Don’t think that just because all the papers have been stamped that that’s the last of it.’
Another scream. Much louder, closer. A woman? A white-coated orderly ran from one end of the corridor to a door somewhere behind. Then, after a moment – just the Muzak once more.
I tried hard to concentrate on the tall, thin, bespectacled doctor. ‘Rattigan decides how far it goes. He doesn’t like the look of you – it’s off. That simple. Anytime he wants to end it, he can. He deals, Mr Rawlings, you play.’ Allen held out a hand. ‘We’ll be in touch. My staff will inform me of your progress. And give my regards to Dr Clancy at the university, will you?’
He didn’t wait for my reply, which was just as well, I had none, throat parched from fear and excitement. I tried my best to steady what fading nerve I had, standing before a stencilled door emblazoned RECREATION SIX. This was recreation? For whom? I felt myself falter, suddenly wanting to be back home, normalized, basking in the silence of an emptied house echoing to the pandemonium of the family breakfast.
But there was no time for second thoughts. This was the moment I’d waited for. Planned for. My meeting with the Beast, the man I’d done little else but read about, speculate over during the previous six weeks, the man who killed for fun.
My legs felt suddenly too light for the weight of my body. What the hell do I do now? Knock? Simply walk in? What would he look like in the flesh? What waited to greet me behind the door?
Ever the polite PhD-student-come-to-visit-an-insane-psychopath, I steadied myself, counted to ten silently, then opted to knock. Twice.
A voice answered. His? ‘Come in,’ it calmly instructed. Couldn’t have been Rattigan’s voice, surely? A beast would howl, wouldn’t it?
The door opened.
‘Adrian Rawlings?’
I nodded, watching as the big, bearded orderly waffled efficiently into a walkie-talkie confirming my visitor’s-pass details with some unseen agent deep within the hospital. The Muzak changed to the theme from Lawrence of Arabia, in any other circumstances an old favourite of mine. Here it seemed tarnished, almost obscene.
He introduced himself as Warder-Orderly Denton. There were stains on his tunic and the black boots he wore smelt strongly of polish. I tried to act as casually as possible, avoiding the urge to peer over his shoulder at the other seated figure beyond.
Finally, the checks were complete. I was ushered inside.
Which is where I met my first surprise. It was just an ordinary sunny room, bland, institutional, innocuous. Not a prison bar nor wall-mounted restraining ring in sight. Just a room, rather like any of the uni.’s study rooms in the humanities building. It didn’t seem possible. I wasn’t naive enough to expect a medieval dungeon, but I’d imagined something a little more correctional. It seemed incredible that this room also held the Beast.
Next, I found myself taking a ridiculous interest in the grey lino tiling as Denton settled into a plastic bucket seat by the wall. I simply couldn’t face looking at him, felt I still wasn’t ready for an eyeball-to-eyeball encounter. But I knew he was there, caught another glimpse of the figure slumped disinterestedly behind a large table, watching, waiting for me to make the first move.
I gave it as long as I dared, then looked up, met his amused gaze, stared into the blue-grey eyes. And … there he was – Frank Rattigan – the Beast of East 16, alive, well. Full-colour flesh-vivid, not a ten-by-eight black-and-white. My second surprise of the morning. Gone was the arrogance I’d imagined to mask some telling sadness, replaced instead by a mid-fifties man, squat, puffy face and lips, balding ginger hair, clean-shaven, waiting for me to sit opposite and begin.
Silence all around. Just the three of us, alone in the room. I sat, making a show of taking items from my briefcase, placing them on the bare tabletop.
He was so close that I caught his breath on my face. Then, the moment came. I could delay no longer. I remembered my tutor Dr Stephen Clancy’s advice – stick to the script, be in charge – and I tried to ignore my bone-dry throat and finally begin my first brush with the real world of forensic psychiatry.
‘Have you been told why I’m here?’
Rattigan smiled. A normal-looking smile from a normal-looking man. ‘Have you been told why I am?’
I nodded, acknowledging the quip. ‘My name’s Adrian Rawlings. I’m a postgraduate student currently undergoing work on my docorate thesis. My university has connections with this institution. Dr Allen passed a copy of your file to my tutor, Dr Stephen Clancy, for me to read. So yes, I’m well aware why you’re here, Mr Rattigan.’ I was pleased with the way it was going, but wondered why no one else appeared to hear the beating of my heart as acutely as I did.
Then suddenly, ‘You’re a pedantic little twat, aren’t you? A “yes” or “no” answer would’ve sufficed.’
I silently counted to three before continuing, hoping the pause would stop me from running from the room. A trickle of sweat ran down my back.
‘Good reading, was it?’ The Beast goaded.
‘Sorry?’
‘My file?’ Rattigan licked his lips, leant forward, brought himself closer. ‘You married, Mr Adrian-fucking-Rawlings? Show it her, did you?’ His voice dropped to an obscene whisper. ‘Get her going, did it, Frank’s naughty behaviour?’
‘I’m here to ask you some questions. If you agree …’
‘I’ll get some fags and a few shitty privileges from these tossers.’ Rattigan sat back, jerking his head at Denton. The cold eyes quickly resettled on mine. ‘I know the fucking score. Been done a dozen times in here. Arrogant little pricks like you come to pick our brains to try and figure us out. Only I’m a little bit smarter than the average defective they’ve got banged up in here. And the way it’s been painted to me, I’m the paymaster. I don’t like the look of you and it’s over. You have to find yourself another sicko to play with. So you’d better keep Frankie sweet, or I ain’t gonna come out and play.’
I looked briefly across to Denton, who offered no support whatsoever. ‘You are empowered to terminate the arrangement whenever you chcose. As am I.’
Rattigan smiled again, but this time his bloated lips parted to form a hideously darker, more sinister crack. ‘What you got to understand, son,’ he said softly. ‘Is that I don’t get many choices in this shitbin. I’m enjoying this. I could let you dangle for some time, couldn’t I? You think we’re getting on all right, do you? Going well, is it?’
I cursed myself for having no quick answer, feeling so easily exposed. To my right, Denton suppressed a yawn.
Rattigan sensed my hesitation, leapt on it. ‘Never answered my first question. Very rude, that.’
I was hopelessly unprepared for the speed of his attack. ‘I’m not sure I …?’
The voice rose. ‘I said are you fucking married? Hitched up?’
‘I don’t see what …?’
‘… that has to do with anything? Jesus Christ! How old are you?’
‘Thirty-nine.’
He paused to laugh. At me. I felt stung by it.
‘It was rhetorical, you cunt!’ He laughed some more. Then stopped suddenly, milked a heavy silence. ‘We have to develop a little trust, Adrian. A little rapport. I know what you want from me. The same shit all the shrinks want from me.’ He tapped the side of his fat head. ‘What goes on in here, right? What made me do what I did to the fly-girl. Now I ain’t going to give that away lightly, am I?’ For the second time his voice dropped to an acidic whisper. ‘They think I’m low risk. Pump me full of shit to keep me sweet. But they’re not there in the middle of the night. That’s when my mind begins to wander, Adrian. That’s when I want to go over stuff, know what I mean?’ A long pause. ‘No – I guess you don’t. But you want to. That’s why you’re here.’
I finally found my tongue. ‘Maybe. But …’
‘Maybe – good word that. Like “maybe” I’d like to know more about your missus. Maybe I’d enjoy spending some time imagining all sorts with her.’ He sat back suddenly. ‘She goes for all that puppy fat, does she?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘They’ve got a gym in here. You look like you could use it. Too soft. Too easy. How much do you weigh?’
‘Is it important?’
‘Close on thirteen stone: am I right?’
‘More or less.’ I hadn’t bothered weighing myself in years, but I knew he was damn close. Unnervingly close.
‘Height? About five-ten, yeah?’
Bang on the money. I attempted an unconcerned smile.
‘Know how I know?’ Rattigan asked. ‘Because it’s in me. Takes me about five seconds to suss any fucker, strengths, weaknesses. I look at you now, fat-boy, and I know all I need to know.’ He closed both eyes, exhaled, then suddenly blinked them open again. ‘Got any kids? Love kids, me.’
Denton moved slightly. ‘Less of the pantomime, Frank.’
‘Or what? Another month strapped to the fucking trolley?’ Rattigan turned quickly back to me. ‘A little trust, fat-boy, a little gesture is all I ask.’
‘The cigarettes you’ll receive,’ I replied, struggling to prevent myself from cursing back. ‘The privileges, they’re the only gestures I can give. You’re right. If you don’t like me, you can end this, but that privilege is mine, too. You abuse me too often, and I’ll inform Dr Allen.’
He aped at pretending to be scared, then instantly switched to concern. ‘My life story for a few packs of fags. Bit fucking tacky, ain’t it?’
‘I don’t make the rules.’
‘What you here for, then?’
‘It’s part of my thesis. Work experience, they call it. With your permission, we’ll meet once a fortnight when I’ll ask you an assigned series of questions before asking some of my own. None of which you are obliged to answer if you don’t wish to.’ That felt better, building into a rhythm after the early derailing. I almost felt back in charge – for a moment.
‘So what’s her name, your missus?’
‘I’m not allowed to tell you anything about my private life.’
‘Yet you want to know everything about mine?’
‘I want a doctorate.’
‘Fair enough. I’ll find it all out anyway.’ Another nod towards Denton. ‘See that cunt over there? Mr fucking charm himself? Bent as a fucking coathanger, he is. He’ll tell me all I need to know. Quick poke around the guv’nor’s office, and I’ll have the lot.’
I glance at the bored warder-orderly whose eyes remained firmly fixed at his feet.
Rattigan continued. ‘Names of your kids, ages, schools they go to, boyfriends, girlfriends, I’ll know the bloody lot. Phone numbers an’ all. Maybe give you a bell from time to time. Quick chat to the wife while you’re fucking around studenting. That’s the way it’s going to be, Adrian. That’s what you’re starting with me. I’m going to crawl into your soul and …’
‘Shut it, Rattigan,’ Denton ordered, checking his watch and rising from the chair. ‘Playtime’s over. Let’s get you back to the unit.’ He turned to me. ‘Mr Rawlings, if you’d like to make your way back to Dr Allen’s office now, thank you.’
Dumbly, I complied, beginning to repack my briefcase, eyes doing their best to ignore the grinning, leering face before me.
‘So,’ Rattigan asked innocently. ‘I think that went very well, don’t you?’
‘As I understand it, the decision’s yours.’
‘I like you. Gonna tie you in knots.’
‘Perhaps. Perhaps not.’
‘Listen to the fighting talk, I love all that.’ Rattigan stood. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Ask me any damn thing you like, and I’ll give you the God’s honest truth.’
An unprofessional impulse overwhelmed me. The session had apparently ended. Now wasn’t the time to pursue anything, except a quick exit. But something in me had to ask, had to start somewhere. ‘Why Helen Lewis? Did you know her?’
The Beast waved an admonishing finger. ‘We all know Helen Lewis,’ he replied slowly. ‘Even you, fat-boy. Trouble is, you ain’t done for yours. But I have for mine. And that bitch ain’t never gonna …’ He paused, frowned slightly.
‘What?’
‘Make sure they’re Rothmans.’
2 (#ulink_034db83c-bf25-52b1-b814-4d8556332e51)
‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘I felt like he was unpicking me.’
‘He probably was.’
‘Any chance you could open the window?’
Two hours after my first encounter with Rattigan, Dr Stephen ‘Fancy’ Clancy sat in his college room pulling heavily on a slim panatella cigar. I had the beginnings of a headache, made worse by the exhaled fumes swirling within the confines of the chaotic little boxroom which laughably passed as his office.
I remembered vividly as a psychology undergrad, a mature student, thirty-two, clutching a photocopy of the Essex University humanities building floorplan, walking the humming corridors, searching for his room, buzzing with clichéd expectations of its high ceiling mounted on elegantly windowed walls groaning with dust-laden volumes offering valuable historical insights into the hidden workings of the mind. I expected a pickled brain in a bell jar at least.
But Fancy’s ‘office’ was a toilet, even by his own admission. Blind always down, desklamp permanently burning – his attempt, he explained jovially when we first shook hands, to, ‘Tardis my hutch into a tolerable space.’
He’d smiled, and I’d responded. I liked him. Still do. I began a friendship with my tutor that often included him coming over to my place for supper, or Jemimah and I visiting him and his wife Sheila in their Tudor house in Roxwell. In retrospect, I believe that the minimal differences in our ages helped forge the friendship – although at times, his devotion to the long lunch put it under certain strains. He drank – I didn’t. Not any more.
‘Sounds as if you found the trip out to Oakwood heavy going,’ the tall, permanently tanned tutor surmised. ‘From what you’re saying, Rattigan appears ready to go, and you’re the odds-on favourite stalling at the first fence.’
‘He frightened me. Really. I felt exposed.’
‘Good.’
‘Good?’
‘Adrian, he’s a convicted killer. You aren’t up there to become best buddies with the man.’
‘I just thought …’ But I was tired, the words failed me.
‘You thought you’d walk in there, and he’d spiritedly comply with your every wish, utterly in awe of your academic prowess.’
‘He called me a pedantic little twat. I felt like punching him.’
Fancy suppressed a smile. ‘He’s simply having some fun with you. Don’t get so involved. He wants to see you again, so the job’s done. He called you a few names, so what? Christ’s sake, Adrian, you’re a bloody good student. You have a keen interest in the malfunctioning mind. You wanted to meet him the moment you read the file. Positively salivating at the prospect this time yesterday.’
‘That was different,’ I wearily protested. ‘That was yesterday. I just expected something different. Less challenging. He hates me. I must have spoken to him for no more than ten minutes at the most. Came out shaking like a bloody leaf. God knows how I’m going to get through an hour of it.’
Fancy sighed. ‘Look, Adrian. No one’s expecting you to unravel the man. It isn’t possible. He’s a psychopath. You know bloody well he operates beyond the conventional norms of any coded moral behaviour. Just go there, ask your questions, ignore the insults, get out. Business done. And remember, it’s an exercise, invaluable work experience.’
He inhaled on the cigar again, a fairly pointless gesture. The tiny dishevelled room was so full of smoke, all he really needed to do was breathe in. I figured he’d unintentionally shared hundreds of cigars with me and countless other psychology students over the years.
‘I felt hopelessly unprepared,’ I admitted. ‘They just more or less left me with him.’
‘Like one of his victims?’ Fancy stood, turned his back and flipped his fingers through the yellowed Venetian blind, absorbed in the flow of laughing undergraduates passing beneath his window. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Adrian. How you’re out there, dealing with a real case. Your pivotal thesis study-piece. That I wasn’t there in the room, that I didn’t see the look in his eyes, feel the threat of his rhetoric. But you shouldn’t have been there, either. Not Adrian Rawlings. Like I warned you and warned you, you should’ve left him in Doc Allen’s office.’ He turned suddenly. ‘How is the old sod, anyway?’
‘Allen? Sent his best regards. Caustic man, isn’t he?’
Fancy smiled. ‘Same old Neil Allen. Good, reliable, jaundiced Neil Allen. Which is exactly my point.’
‘Oh?’
Fancy sat, and looked for one moment as if he was going to try to put both feet up on the cluttered desk. He opted for leaning back in the swivel chair, hands wrapped around the back of his head. A single plume of dark-blue smoke rose from his cigar, and I momentarily wondered if he might set fire to his hair.
‘Neil Allen conforms to all our expectations of him. Slightly bitter, hard-working, reliable, professionally unexceptional, and altogether notionally sane. An all-around good egg. Plays off a seven handicap, you know. Excellent long putter.’
I nodded as if I followed golf.
‘Frank Rattigan, on the other hand, has a personality seemingly designed to tease, humiliate and ritually mentally abuse the likes of those sent to gain access to it. But I’m afraid we might be crediting him with powers of which we have no proof. We suspect he revels in some kind of game with you. Whereas the reality is more soundly rooted in the explanation that he’s completely insane. Crackers, utterly bonkers. We can’t judge him by our standards and suspicions. Remember, it only becomes a game, old friend, if you agree to play it.’
I sighed, rapidly decoding the waffle. Rattigan’s nuts – don’t make him a clever nutter. ‘Maybe.’
‘We’ve all been there, Adrian. He’s your chance to prove a hundred little theories you’ve secretly developed as a BA/MA student. Just don’t rely on a loony, that’s all.’ He smiled, extinguishing the cigar at last.
I was reluctant to admit it, but there was more than a grain of truth in what he said. Rattigan was my chance, I’d felt it as soon as Fancy’d handed me his file. A real-life case study – a mine of horror and chaos waiting for my ordered explanation – my ground-breaking thesis. But we all think like that, don’t we? We all want to make some sort of contribution, be the first to spot the obvious, develop it, redefine it, have it historically credited to our good selves. It’s called making your mark. It’s a base drive. Animal.
‘He’s bored,’ Fancy announced. ‘And the more you rise to the bait, the more he’ll taunt and tease. Just stick to the script, get the thesis done and forget all about him.’
‘What if I can’t?’
‘Can’t?’
‘What if he calls my wife when I’m out?’
‘He won’t. He’ll be pulled from the interviewing process and his cigarettes and privileges will be withdrawn. Remember this is probably the most exciting thing that’s happened to Rattigan in years. He’s going to stretch it out as long as he can. Next time remember you’re the one in charge. You can end it just as soon as he can. He’ll soon toe the line. The interviews are about the only thing that give him a little bit of temporary status in the hospital.’
‘How are they chosen?’
He stifled a yawn. ‘Oh it’s terribly top secret stuff, dear boy. Committee, proposers, seconders, Home Office types, specialists, the law, a whole plethora of …’
‘I’m being serious.’
‘OK. Basically, once a year, Neil Allen and I try to pair off a PhD student and an inmate.’
‘And did you pick Rattigan for me? I mean specifically for me?’
Fancy smiled. ‘You flatter yourself, Adrian. You suspect we, the sinister conspiratorial authorities, are at some sort of a loss to unlock the dark secrets of his mind. You see us labouring into the night, shaking our heads in weary defeat. Until … until … someone mentions Rawlings! Rawlings is the man for the Rattigan job!’
‘Piss off,’ I laughed, enjoying the energy of Fancy’s pantomime. ‘I just, you know …’
‘Neil Allen sends me a few files on selected members of his client group. I sift through them, pass the occasional one on to students I feel would benefit from the experience. It’s really that simple. Like I said, just stick to the script.’ He stood and squeezed past me to unhook his coat from the back of the door. ‘Hopefully you’ll get another set of letters after your name, after which you may be some sporadic use sat before a police computer compiling some godawful national nutter database, with which to recognize psychotic characteristics at any number of crime scenes.’ His coat was on and buttoned. ‘Now,’ he said, checking his watch. ‘They’re open. Buy me a drink and anaesthetize me before my undergrad lecture this afternoon.’
‘… and during subsequent testing and further detailed psychoanalysis, the subject retained a continuing indifference to the crime of which he is currently accused.
‘Indeed, throughout my investigations the subject proved himself an able communicator and was well acquainted with the potential outcome of his present situation. His thoughts and opinions were mostly ordered, and he showed little reticence in mentally revisiting the crime scene.
‘However, the prolonged ferocity of the attack itself, the abnormal levels of violence perpetrated on the victim point to a mental psychosis borne out by the subsequent psychological analysis.
‘Again and again the subject was confronted with the possibility that his attack was sexually motivated, which he vehemently denied in all instances. His previous encounters with women (if they are to be believed) appear to have taken the pattern of occasional congress with prostitutes.
‘The random nature of the crime of which he is accused also points to one of a number of currently understood sociopathic disorders. According to the subject, in no way did he “choose” his victim. Indeed, the very word “victim” seems entirely alien to him. By his own admission:
‘“She was there. So I did her. Could’ve been any fucker.”
‘Throughout all four interviews with the subject, he repeatedly denied any former involvement with the victim, or that any kind of selection procedure was used.
‘A look through his previous criminal record and associated life history reveals …’
‘So are you going to tell me, or not?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Adrian!’
‘What? Christ! I’m sorry.’ Ten before midnight the same day. The bedroom. I turned to my wife. ‘You’re right. I’m miles away.’ I put down Rattigan’s file on the linen-fresh duvet.
Jemimah Rawlings opted for tact, starting again. ‘I’ve waited all evening, Adrian. A word or two would be nice. You know, a brief description for the woman who’s had to bite her tongue every night for the last God knows how many weeks as you read about the secret freak you finally met today?’
‘It’s not secret, J. Just want to spare you some of the gorier stuff, that’s all.’
‘How noble.’ She went back to her reading, wearing the slightly-stung-but-indifferent expression which I always found strangely attractive. Her short pointed brown bob perfectly framed the frowning profile doing its best to ignore me. I remembered the first time I’d set eyes on her high cheekbones and deep-set brown eyes. She had the look of an Eastern European, a Hungarian noblewoman, perhaps, smuggled across hazardous borders to escape Communist authorities. A pity to have the romantic illusion shattered, then, when I learnt she’d spent most of her life in Catford.
I rubbed my eyes. ‘Want to know what he said?’
‘Look, if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. I can wait for His Master’s Voice.’
‘He said I didn’t look academic enough.’
She put down the book. ‘Well, you don’t.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Academics are supposed to look bookish and pale. You look more like a rugby player. Healthier, more well-rounded.’
I was grateful for the compliment.
‘Besides,’ she added. ‘I thought this Rattigan man was insane.’
‘Apparently.’
‘So it shouldn’t bother you what he thinks, then, should it?’
I nodded, conceding the point.
‘And what about him, then? What did he look like?’
I thought for a second. ‘Sort of normal, I guess. Not a horn sticking out of his head in sight. Which made it worse, I suppose. Knowing what he’d confessed to, and looking like the average Joe.’
‘And are you going to see him again?’
‘If he agrees.’
‘You want to?’
I closed Rattigan’s file, placed it on my bedside table. ‘I thought I did. It’s different, though, in the flesh. I was almost looking forward to it in a way. There’s so much about his story that just doesn’t make any sense.’
‘But that’s the point, surely?’ Jemimah replied brightly. ‘If he’s crazy enough to do whatever he did, then surely the motive could be just as crazy?’
‘No one really knows what he did. We only have his word for it.’
Another frown crossed her face. ‘He killed a woman, didn’t he?’
I nodded, slightly uncomfortable with the question. I didn’t want Jemimah to go too heavily into the details which had so shocked me.
‘So they would have been able to examine the body then? Find out how he killed her?’
I shook my head. ‘There wasn’t really that much left to examine.’
‘Oh.’
‘Sorry. But you did ask.’
Eventually, she broke the silence. ‘I wish to God I knew what you find so fascinating about evil bastards like him.’
‘He’s not evil, J.’
‘What, you’re defending him, now?’
‘No. I’m …’ I sighed heavily. ‘Just tired, that’s all.’
She relaxed. ‘He really upset you, didn’t he?’
‘He wanted to know all about me, whether I was married, what you were like, did we have kids.’
‘And you told him?’
‘Didn’t have to. He got it out of me. I wasn’t concentrating, I suppose.’
I felt her disappointment.
‘I’m sorry, J.’
‘Look, Adrian, this criminal stuff. It’s your choice. Just don’t involve me in anything you think I can’t handle. Insanity scares me. I get nervous if I see a wino on the street. Jesus, life’s mad enough as it is. Just please, don’t go telling this man any more about me. He’s a killer, Adrian, and I don’t want him to know I even exist. Me or the kids.’
She rolled over and I cuddled into the small of her warm back. ‘It was a dumb mistake. Like I say, he just got it out of me.’
‘Which makes me wonder,’ she said quietly, switching out her bedside lamp. ‘What else is this man going to get out of you?’
But despite her worries Jemimah was asleep long before I was, leaving me alone with the distant roar of occasional traffic and a wandering mind stuck on the last thing she’d said. When I could stand it no longer, I got up, took the file downstairs, made myself a black coffee and began reading it again. There had to be a clue in there somewhere, a pointer, the beginnings of a possible motive. Even though I’d met the man, felt his open hostility, there was still no way I could simply accept his word that he’d done what he’d done ‘for fun’. Insane or otherwise, there was something else he was concealing, I felt sure of it.
And even if that motive made no rhyme or reason to anyone else except Rattigan, I determined that night to get it from him. ‘For fun’ just wasn’t good enough, even for the most sickening demented psychopath. I felt sure it was most probably sexual – he’d spent nearly three days torturing a girl to death, after all – now all I needed was to have the theory confirmed by the Beast himself, then track the psychiatric path which took him there. Which, at three in the morning, sitting in a near silent kitchen, finishing my third coffee, I figured shouldn’t take much time at all.
The pointers would be obvious, wouldn’t they?
3 (#ulink_dedb358d-7bc7-5ffb-989d-cae6ef2fdea0)
Someone once remarked that I had a certain stillness in my eyes. And that no matter how much my face animated itself around them, it was as if they were disconnected from the surrounding expression.
The description unnerved me, partly because I was trying my best to bed the girl in question and now knew she found me to be somewhat strange and disconnected, but also because it was something I’d noticed myself as an adolescent counting spots in front of the mirror.
Another contemporary way back had told me that if you stared hard enough at your reflection, you’d find the devil grinning back. I tried – and found nothing. Just the stillness.
Others too, have sometimes remarked on my eyes. Sad, they’ve been called, empty, even vacant. I began to study eyes, staring intently with my own duff specimens at others, determined to learn their tricks, syphon some of their vitality. I became expert at eye-widening shock, practised arching my eyebrows for various different studied effects. But however I tried to mask the lifelessness, it remained.
Although to be fair, this optical handicap had its advantages. While some thought I was weird, an equal number were intrigued, or took pity, determined to unlock the secrets behind my flat, staring irises. And to a certain extent, I played along with their games, inventing a variety of instant tragic pasts to gain their sympathy, friendship, sexual favours, or all three. I was in my late teens, insecure, fuelled by hormones, so I can forgive myself for the deception.
But the eyes have stuck. Still as vacant today as when I first perceived them. But now I have knowledge. I know they weren’t always this way. They saw something which denied them their vigour. Then spent thirty years colluding with my subconscious to deny me the memory.
And when I began speaking to Rattigan, the lid to Pandora’s box began to lift a little. His taunts of ‘Fat-boy’ were the catalyst, taking me back to my schooldays, when I was frequently bullied over my weight – which I only very recently recognized was another complex psychological mechanism I’d constructed in order to forget.
For me, the term ‘hindsight’ is the cruellest of puns, but I’m forced to admit it played its part. For the first time in my life, I can really ‘see’, trace the causes of who I was, who I am now, and what happened in between. I see now what I saw then, and realize why the life drained from my eyes.
To begin at the beginning, I nearly killed my own mother before I’d even drawn breath.
Rawlings family legend has it that on the seventh of March 1958, I caused a twenty-two-hour labour, a badly administered epidural and thirty-seven stitches on the poor woman during my sweating, straining way into the world. Something about my head being too big, her feet too small, though I can’t say for certain. Mum and Dad are both dead now, and even though I was present at the birth of both of my own children, I’m still woefully ignorant of the precise biological processes which place a mother’s life in danger as she dilates, contracts and finally bears another life.
More of my mother. Gwendoline Sullivan was much younger than my father, theirs being the almost clichéd match between smitten secretary and stoical boss. She was twenty-three when she married George Rawlings – he a handsomely mature forty-two. And from what I remember, it was that most rare of combinations, a marriage which seemed to truly work. That she loved him utterly, I am totally convinced. Many’s the time I remember to this day the looks she gave, meals she tenderly prepared, dresses she wore in order to please him.
We lived in Swindon. Dad still worked as boss of a small firm of accountants where he had effortlessly wooed his future wife, while Mum stayed put to look after his son. At the time I felt the almost daily trips to his office to take his sandwiches for lunch were surely just another fine example of my parents’ devotion to each other. It was only later that I wondered if Mum was truly happy playing housewife while Dad went to work with his new secretary. Not that anything untoward ever happened, I’m sure. Dad simply wasn’t the type, but I think Mum must have had her suspicions.
Unfortunately, I inherited my mother’s physical genes. Dad stood well over six foot, Mum barely managing to break the five-foot barrier in high heels. I was chubby, too, having none of Dad’s lean wiry physique, and of course, after the birth episode, was destined to be an only child. Sometimes, in the darker moments, I’d lie awake wondering if my loneliness was appropriate punishment for the distress I’d unwittingly caused my mother.
However, any hopes my father had that he’d somehow sired the future heavyweight champion soon withered away as I fell victim to numerous childhood ailments. But, as most fathers do. Dad looked straight through my chubby pallid scrawn, convinced I had the makings of a professional footballer. He’d tried out for Swindon Town as a youngster, and wouldn’t accept I hadn’t inherited his own magic left foot. Most Saturday afternoons would find us at the local ground, me struggling to see above a sea of heads at the exotic green turf beyond.
They were the best of times, made better when my dad would lift me confidently on to his broad shoulders to catch key moments of the game. I’d sit there, elevated, giving my own childish commentary to the action, hands clinging to his ears and thinning hair, feeling him sway slightly if Town scored, bonded.
Often, he’d carry me aloft as we walked back home, weaving through thousands of jubilant or disgruntled fans, nodding at friends – feeling literally ‘on top of the world’.
My bedroom became a temple to the Town, covered in posters, programmes, scarves, away-ticket stubs and league tables. At the age of nine I knew no times-tables, but all of Swindon Town’s cup-winning teams by rote. Dad always put me to bed with tales of the ‘great’ games, vivid descriptions and I clung on to every word.
It was only in later life that my mother’s indifference to the Town began to make sense. I think she resented the hold it had on Dad, perhaps even saw me as a rival for his time and affection. But these are suppositions I can only make with hindsight. An attempt to understand why she appeared distant at times. Perhaps I was the son my father always wanted, which my mother dutifully supplied, who then took her place in his heart. Whatever – I’ll never know, they’re both long gone, and all I’m left with is a frustrating mix of unanswered speculation and distant memories.
I suppose my childhood split itself into two parts. The happy times up till the age of nine or so, then the confusing times after. Dad changed, became withdrawn, older, somehow more fragile. We didn’t go to matches any more, I went with friends, while he sat at home, listening to the radio. But it was no gradual slowing down, it simply happened one weekend, almost as if he’d been replaced by an apathetic, stooping doppelgänger during the night.
I continued following the often disastrous footballing antics of the Town for the rest of the season, returning home to give my indifferent dad an increasingly lacklustre match report, but to be honest, without his enthusiasm, my heart was in it even less than his. Down came the scarves, posters and wall-charts, up went Jane Fonda as Barbarella.
And I too, began to change. My weight ballooned, skin stretching under the constant ingestion of crisps and sweets. My eyes took on their now familiar stillness. I went from a slim young boy into a blob, cocooned from a terrible truth I hadn’t the will or maturity to deal with. The subconscious took over, remoulding me, distancing me from such things I hadn’t the developed intellect to face. And it’s only now, all these years later, as the terrible truth emerges blinking into the sunlight of my new reality, that the choices I have made, the things I’ve done, the hurt I’ve caused others all fit so hideously elegantly into place.
I didn’t eat three Mars Bars every day because I wanted to – it was because I needed to. The promised work, rest and play disguised a deeper, darker need – to forget. And the calories did their job, protecting me from the outside, wrapping me in comforting fat, giving me time to heal before I had the strength to go back and face what had so quickly and violently destroyed both my father’s and my own innocence.
But I digress. Back to the potted biography. Next it was eleven-plus, special tutoring and a place at the Boys’ Grammar. School caps, long lines of fragile little boys lugging briefcases designed for grown-ups, stuffed with battered text and exercise books. Eng. Lang., Eng. Lit., Geography, Art, French, German, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Latin, detention, the cane, school reports, fear, and football. I remember my dad extolling my laughably nonexistent sporting virtues at my interview as a huge ape in a Loughborough tracksuit sneered in anticipation of towel-whipping me in the showers. Which he did, many times.
As expected, I was average at just about everything, with the exception of sport. Here, I seemed to excel as an uncoordinated dunderhead, but being one of the widest, if not tallest, boys in my year, I was made substitute goalkeeper in the St Barts third team. I remember Dad would occasionally make a reluctant trip out to the school touchline, joining other rain-sodden parents jeering my efforts as the ball skidded past me into the back of the net. And always after, during the journey home, few words would pass between us, yet I sensed his disappointment. It was a world away from the distant days when he’d lift me on those once broad shoulders, now stooped and rounded by time.
Moving on, past A levels towards 1976, my first job – tea-boy in a provincial advertising agency. The name’s irrelevant, so was the job. Amazingly, I lost three stone, my virginity, discovered pot, the music of The Doors, Yes and Genesis. I wore flares and discovered a gift for mimicry and joke-telling which won me many friends my age, but few amongst the management. I had a weekly wage and all the brash confidence of youth. I was impregnable, bolstered by hormones and arrogance.
Then fired for skinning up in the toilets.
London beckoned, and I Dick Wittingtoned to its heady call, winding up as a junior copywriter in a ‘mainstream’ ad agency on Dean Street.
Jemimah Eliott arrived, full of my imagined Eastern European promise, our brand-new hotshot account handler. I wrote the copy for the ads she presented to the clients. I went to one or two of these presentations, watching her wage a professional charm offensive on our clients in order to bolster the agency’s profits. She was good, very good, young, attractive. I fancied her like mad, but thought I had no chance. But we used to laugh a lot together, swapping gossip and tall stories about the guys with their own parking spaces who were for ever offering to take her away for a ‘formative think-tank regarding agency strategy for the forthcoming new business pitch’ – adspeak for a quickie in a hotel on expenses.
The senior rejected suits had, of course, discovered the source of their failure to bed her. Jemimah Eliott was, in their hugely embittered opinions, obviously a muff-muncher, rabid dyke, prick-teaser. I remember nodding sagely, laughing inside at their broken egos.
Then one day, just another unremarkable Wednesday, she came to brief me on some job or other. At the end she asked me out. As simple as that, just went staight ahead and asked. Unbelievable – but true.
We married in nineteen-eighty – me twenty-two; her twenty-three; two young kids standing at the altar, backs to the world of temptation and drudgery which lay waiting outside the church.
We agreed I would move to another agency, figuring working and living with one another wouldn’t necessarily make the ideal platform for a successful relationship. But perhaps we hadn’t fully thought it through. Trouble was, we still worked in the same business, only now we were professional rivals. Then disaster – in April 1987, my agency lost a major bit of business to hers. Jemimah was on the pitch team. Word soon got round. I was suspected of leaking details by a paranoid management reeling from the loss of a major blue-chip account. I was history shortly after, summoned by a phone call to a meeting with the smiling executive where a lukewarm pot of coffee, my P45 and a derisory payoff were the only things on the table.
I felt numb, made completely impotent by the decision. Not that the drop in money affected J and I in the slightest – in a bizarre irony, she’d been promoted to the board of her agency as a result of winning the business I’d been unfairly suspected of losing. We were richer than we’d ever been.
At first we were cool about it, spending the redundancy and planning a heavy freelance career from the ruins of my Filofax. One or two jobs rolled in, charity from old pals, giving Adrian the odd hundred quid here or there. But I grew to hate every minute of it. My heart wasn’t in it; I couldn’t bear to think of Jemimah leaving for work, while I sat upstairs in the heavy silence, de-roled, emasculated.
Like an idiot, I began to drink heavily, from the moment J left for the station until she returned, often finding me bombed on the sofa, useless. Days, time, dates, all became irrelevant as I woke each day with the sole aim to hit the whisky hard, dull the pain of failure. A never-ending supply of child-minders and nannies looked after Juliet and Guy, our two children, while I set about following a self-indulgent path to oblivion. It was crazy – a very dark and stupid time. I did things of which I’m still not proud, which even now I can’t fully explain or understand – but perhaps this is born out of a reluctance to do so.
There are some parts of all of us, I now recognize, which are graphically revealed in a crisis, and need one hell of a lot of honesty to accept. Even now, I have problems with the swiftness of my metamorphosis from happy-go-lucky copywriter to unstable drunk. I shudder at the ease with which I was unravelled.
Then came the move to Essex. Jemimah took charge and issued the ultimatum. She’d had enough. The family was moving from London. I could go with them, or stay and drink myself to death, but without her money or support. I was devastated, and in the selfish way alcoholics have, grew to hate her for making me choose.
Friends began calling less often, nervous of my unpredictable behaviour. Letters from estate agents began arriving. I was sleeping in the spare room when I could be bothered to get off the sofa. I had nothing in my life but alcohol.
One afternoon, Jemimah arrived back to tell me she’d exchanged on a place near Chelmsford. We had a God Almighty argument. And I hit her.
To this day, I hate myself for that drunken blow. She reeled back, shock and pain writ large on her reddening face. Juliet, our eldest, began to cry. I stormed out, spent two nights with a former colleague who persuaded me to get help. Thank God he did.
The message was stark. I was an alcoholic. Always would be. In less than six months I’d gone from a bloke who could have a couple of pints and leave, to someone who couldn’t face the day unless he had three large whiskys to take the edge off it. The only solution was to deny myself the solution. Either that or lose everything.
There were others there, that night. Broken individuals with similar tales, some spanning many years – but always at the heart, I felt, was a reluctance to look inside and face a particular truth which the alcohol blurred. I didn’t have the strength to face mine, preferring instead to soak up the group support, start the road to abstinence, persuade Jemimah that I recognized the problem, had taken steps to tackle it, was convinced I would beat it.
God love her – she tentatively agreed to ‘take me back’. I began the painful process of working out what I wanted to ‘do’ with the rest of my life, finally realizing what a privileged position I was in. I could start again, a new life, new friends, new interests, a phoenix rising from the ruins of my own self-destruction. And after a few weeks settling into our new home I was off the sauce, had joined a local gym and, more importantly, had the answer to my new direction.
During the move to Chelmsford, I’d rediscovered an old hoard of crime magazines I’d collected as a youngster, sensational articles offering a tabloid insight into the minds and motives of the evil perpetrators. Rereading them, I found myself fascinated by both the crimes and criminals, wondering what lay at the heart of the human psyche. It seemed incredible to me that humanity, universally acknowledged as an exploratory creature, could put a man on the moon without ever having fully explored his mind.
What shapes the most deviant individuals – brain dysfunction, environmental factors, the past, or perhaps a fatal cocktail of all three? Or is it simply that some of us are born with a terrifying predilection for evil?
The questions fought for space in my mind, as I began to realize I was developing an obsession with human psychology. I began subscribing to modern crime mags, immersing myself in the twisted worlds of current-day serial killers and psychopaths, child-murderers, Satanists and worse. And yet it seemed to me that the more I ‘discovered’ the less I actually knew. Each publication was merely concerned with sensational grisly details to ensure higher sales. Indeed, sometimes I found myself wondering about the appetite for such bloodthirsty material, speculating that perhaps we hadn’t actually evolved all that much since thousands turned up to witness a handful of Christians thrown to hungry lions.
But I too, was hooked. I may have tried to cloak my interest in academic terms, convincing myself I had superior motives for buying the glossy mags and tabloids, but the result was the same, I paid my money – I participated in the voyeuristic merchandising of insanity and pain.
Then one day – a breakthrough. Waiting in Chelmsford Central Library to check out another volume dedicated to the ongoing mystery of Jack the Ripper, I began leafing through a local prospectus. The University of Essex offered a reasonably well-thought-of degree in psychology. Perhaps this was a start then, a move in the right direction. After talking it over with Jemimah, we agreed I should apply. She was still happy enough working at the agency, and provided I really was serious about it, she’d fund my enthusiasm. I was taken on as a mature student the following September.
I worked harder than I’d ever done, couldn’t get enough of the subject, eating up theories, devouring vast textbooks, ingesting all that was said in every lecture and tutorial. I was motivated, sober, deliriously happy with my second shot at life.
Former friends visiting the Rawlingses’ Essex retreat for dinner would often make the mistake of complimenting me on my willpower, watching as I drank mineral water while they knocked back the hard stuff. I was always quick to correct them. It had nothing to do with willpower – fear was the key. I’d already teetered at the edge of my sanity once, nothing would persuade me to do so again. Or so I thought at the time.
Three years later, the BA (hons) became an MA, with Dr Clancy telling me I had the talent to ride it all the way to PhD in forensic psychiatry if I wanted to.
I dedicated myself to finding a thesis subject. There was so much to choose from, but eventually decided to settle on the media’s easy obsession with ‘evil’, and the damage it caused to proper psychological investigation. I worked hard. Cases like the Wests’, Dunblane and numerous others seemed to spring from quiet suburban backwaters almost every month as I toiled away on my researches. And as each horrifying case broke, I found myself ever more on the ‘side’ of the perpetrators, rationalizing that there had to be some concrete reasons why they’d done whatever they’d been accused of. Concrete beyond the media’s constant assertion that they were simply ‘evil’, anyway.
Next I learnt that the Home Office had agreed to partially fund a series of PhD students through their thesis years if they participated in a national data-gathering exercise for a brand-new law-enforcement initiative identifying behavioural characteristics of incarcerated psychopaths.
Or, as Fancy put it, they’d stump up a few readies if I agreed to ask a nutter some personal questions. The programme had been up and running for a few years, and research gathered had apparently proved invaluable in lobbying the relevant parties for a change in the judicial understanding of random violence.
‘Bugger it, Adrian,’ Fancy’d said by way of explanation. ‘You only have to look at the States to see what a balls-up they’re making of it. Defence attorneys are pressing for the admission of “the crime gene” in order to get their psychos out of the death chamber. Like the murdering sods are somehow born to kill, genetically programmed, so it’s not their fault. Preposterous!’
‘And you say what?’ I replied. ‘That every lunatic is morally responsible for the actions he commits?’
‘We’re not that far, Adrian. We need more data. Will you do it? It’s bang up your street, nature of evil and all that.’
My thesis, the magnum opus – The acceptance of Evil as a resultant supernatural force actively prohibits positive psycho-social studies into the internal and external factors influencing random, unmotivated violence’ by Adrian Rawlings (soon to be) PhD.
So I agreed, both trepidacious and excited. Here was a chance to actually step inside a secure mental institution, converse with an inmate, form some kind of temporary relationship, perhaps even finally come to terms with what lured me to the analysis of violence in the first place.
It had been bothering me for some time, silently, something I tried my best to suppress, keep from friends and family. But late at night, while I worked in the gloom of a computer screen, it was always there, a warning keen to be heard and analysed, a fear which had wound its way effortlessly into my psyche, mocking my attempts to reinvent myself over the last ten years.
Maybe longer. The longer I worked at trying to understand the human mind, the more I began to analyse my own. I was finally beginning to have some understanding of my own inadequacies. The reason I had drunk so passionately was a good deal greater than simply hitting my thirties, redundant and shit-scared. No – it was for far simpler, far darker reasons. The more I drank, the less I needed to answer the real questions gently swelling and beginning their way up from deep down inside. Questions I’d buried from childhood and adolescence. Questions which the redundancy had thrown up, and which I feared would never go away.
Fancy duly put my name forward to Dr Neil Allen at HMP Oakwood High Security Mental Hospital, and after a short submission on my part detailing my willingness to compile relevant data regarding antisocial behaviour disorders, I was duly accepted and funded.
‘Game on!’ Fancy had beamed when telling me the good news. ‘A year from now and I’ll be calling the man “Doctor”.’
Fancy rang late the following Thursday night.
‘He’s gone for it, Adrian.’
‘Rattigan?’ I answered nervously.
‘Wants to see you tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Shit! So soon?’
‘Told you he would. They all do.’
‘Jesus. Tomorrow?’
‘Don’t worry. Pop into the uni. on the way. See me before ten. I’ll give you all you need to know. And Adrian?’ His voice was deadly serious. ‘Remember, you get in, you do this, you get out. You’re the boss. It only becomes a game when you agree to play it.’
‘But there’s so much about him that …’
‘Shouldn’t concern you, Adrian.’
I heard what he said, understood his warning, yet knew following the advice would be difficult, if nigh on impossible.
I was an idealistic mature student with a head full of theories and expectations. Rattigan fascinated me for one reason alone. He claimed to have killed for no other motive than his own self-satisfaction. He’d had ‘fun’ dispensing slow death.
Why couldn’t I heed all the warnings and simply accept this? What drove me to rationalize his monstrous act within my own understanding? Personal ambition? A desire to be recognized as a great forensic psychologist?
Or something else entirely?
It wasn’t that Rattigan held the answers, I did. But at the time, I was too scared to face the questions.
To date, neuropsychological studies of offenders have been blighted by small samples, lack of controls and an emphasis on institutionalized populations. However, results from such studies indicate that both poor language skills and impairment of the regulative functions controlled by the frontal lobes are consistent factors in the analysis of sociopathic antibehavioural disorders.
At present, it is almost impossible to gauge whether either factor is the result of developmental damage or neurological failure, and more work needs to be done in order to understand the complex correlation between the two.
However, current thinking suggests that many forms of sociopathic and psychotic behaviours can possibly be explained by the ineffectiveness of the subject’s ‘inner voice’, or learned morality, to temper violent outbursts.
Put simply – they appear to do what they want, to whom they like, as and when mood takes them.
Dr Neil Allen
(The Roots of Psychopathy)
4 (#ulink_9fd8667e-b870-51fb-bbfe-def6282bb2de)
Three-thirty, Oakwood High Security Mental Hospital, Cambridgeshire, RECREATION SIX.
The same three players, Rattigan, Denton and myself.
I reached into my briefcase, brought out some papers, two packs of Rothmans and a micro-cassette recorder.
Then turned to Rattigan. ‘There’s one or two things I’m obliged to explain regarding your participation in the programme.’
‘Can’t wait.’ Rattigan was already unwrapping one of the blue and white boxes.
I cleared my throat, anxious to get the script right. ‘Now that you’ve officially consented to my visits, I’ll be asking you a series of questions prepared by various agencies in order to gain a greater understanding of antisocial behavioural disorders. In addition to this, I’ll also be asking some questions I’ve formulated myself in order to help with my own studies in the field of forensic psychiatry.’
‘Blah, blah, fucking blah.’
I placed the micro-cassette on the middle of the table. ‘Are you aware of what this is?’
He looked at the black plastic box for a few seconds. ‘It’s a penguin, isn’t it? A tiny penguin with a lemon up its arse, watching Pinocchio in a large block of flats in West Croydon.’
‘Each meeting will be recorded for subsequent transcription and analysis on this tape recorder.’
At which point Rattigan lit up. ‘Just shows how wrong you can be, eh?’
I switched on the machine, relief flooding over me when I realized the damn thing was working properly. Next I reached for a green sheet of A4 headed ‘Analysis of Institutionalized Offenders – History, Profiling and Sociopathic Behaviour Traits’, and began working my way through the answer boxes.
‘Name?’
‘King of Sweden.’
I put down Francis James Rattigan. ‘Age?’
He exhaled violently. ‘You’ve got my details! Go to the fucking governor’s office and sort this shit out!’
‘Age?’ I repeated, unmoved.
‘Hundred and seven.’
I put down the pen. ‘Frank.’
‘Adrian?’
‘Refusal to cooperate will be taken as reluctance to comply with the programme.’ I was surprisingly cool, amazed the corporate bullshit came so easily. I’d done what Fancy had told me to the last time, left Adrian Rawlings in Dr Allen’s office, waiting for collection.
‘F602 GPW.’
The combination seemed familiar, but I hadn’t asked him for his number yet. ‘Age?’ I repeated, keeping up the show.
‘F602 GPW.’ His eyes scanned my face intently. ‘Yours, innit? Your motor. Dark-green Vauxhall Cavalier. GB sticker on the back. Go anywhere pleasant?’
The penny dropped. I tried not to appear unnerved. ‘I don’t see that’s relevant, Frank.’
‘Bollocks, you’re crapping yourself. Can see it, can read faces, fear. Your fucking wheels. I got your wheels. How much longer before I get your phone, fat-boy? How much longer before I’m ringing your missus up while you’re hard at work in the nuthouse, eh?’
‘Age?’
He smiled, then sighed. ‘Fifty-seven. Born twenty-eighth of March, nineteen-forty.’
I filled in the form, inwardly cursing its designers. Rattigan was right, why the bloody hell wasn’t this done before the interviews took place? And how in God’s name had he got my numberplate? The pen shook slightly. I wanted answers to these ludicrous questions, but knew the cassette was recording my performance as well as his. For some reason I couldn’t bear to have Fancy listening to an actual recording of a balls-up. Stick to the script. Stick to the bloody script.
‘Offence?’
‘Whose?’
‘Yours,’ I replied, staring at the little box, awaiting his response.
‘I chopped up some tart who should’ve known better.’
‘Better?’ I’d deviated here, drifted from the protocol, suddenly anxious to press him for more about the murder of Helen Lewis.
‘What goes around, comes around, sweetie.’
‘Meaning?’
‘She deserved it. We all deserve to die. Just got to want it badly enough.’
‘So what had she done to deserve it?’
‘More a case of what she hadn’t done.’
‘Which was?’
Rattigan looked deep into my eyes, held it for at least three seconds too long. I felt dissected, invaded, just as much his study as he was mine. When he spoke, the voice was ice-cold, devoid of feeling. Yet he smiled throughout. ‘I’d tell you, but I don’t reckon you’ve got the balls for it.’
‘Try me.’
‘Fighting talk. Like that. Always loved a tear-up. Bit of a pro in my own way.’ He paused, squinting slightly, as if the act of conversation was suddenly a leaden effort. ‘Know what I learnt from geezers who talked tough?’
I supplied the obvious answer. ‘They weren’t really all that tough inside?’
Another squint as he struggled to impart whatever ran through his ruined mind. ‘I’m mad, right? One of them psycho-whatnots. Done all the fucking tests a million times. Take more drugs in a day than the Rolling fucking Stones in a month. But that’s only ’cause I can see through people, like they’re fucking transparent or something. Just like I’m looking at you now. Trying to get all chummy with me. Talking like mates. I don’t have to tell you fuck-all if I don’t want to.’
‘So let’s just stick to the questions on the form, then, eh?’
But he wasn’t through. ‘Know why I hate wankers like you?’
‘I feel sure you’re about to tell me.’
He feigned a slow handclap. ‘You’re unnatural. Fucking freak. Should be dead.’
I struggled to grasp the concept.
He enlightened me. ‘Only the strong survive, fat-boy. Little gits like you have to lock people like me up, ’cause you can’t handle us. But you’re all fascinated. You poke us about, prod us, ask us shit – always trying to “understand”. And you ain’t never going to find any answers. We’re always going to be out there. Taking what we want. Doing what we want. That’s what we’re here for. To pass on our genes, or whatever. Fuck ourselves a stronger human race. Science is dead. Drugs won’t hold us for ever.’
I wrenched myself from his sneering gaze, turning to Denton, who sat bored by the wall. He’d heard it all before, a thousand times, maybe.
I let a few seconds’ silence pass. ‘Is that what you were trying to do to Helen Lewis, Frank? Build a stronger human race? Trying to have sex with her?’
He laughed. ‘Tinpot theory. Ain’t you done no fucking homework? Last thing on earth I wanted to do was fuck the bitch.’
‘Yet you stripped her, tortured her?’
‘Which turns you on, right? ’Cause that’s the only connection your fat little filthy mind can make, isn’t it? Just ’cause she was naked, I had sex with her, right? But that’s your interpretation, you sick piece of shit.’
‘So tell me yours.’
‘Fuck off.’
Deadlock. There was little to do but recommence the preset questions. ‘Ward?’
And in an instant the demeanour changed. His tone calmed, and we talked like old friends. I didn’t know which face frightened me more, the angry Beast, or the good-buddy Frank. ‘You see, Adrian,’ he grinned and winked at me. A shiver coursed down my spine. ‘Reckon they’re taking the piss out of both of us. We already know all these answers.’
I found myself apologetic, unravelling in my naivety. Why in God’s name wasn’t Denton being more assertive, shutting Rattigan up, making him toe the line? ‘Dr Allen and the team prepare your questions,’ I said. ‘I’m just the poor fool designated to ask them. I don’t even see them until I arrive. That’s how it works.’
‘You’re crap at this.’ A two-beat pause. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘I’m …’ I shot what must have been an obvious look of desperation at Denton.
‘I find it insulting,’ Rattigan added threateningly.
‘I’m sorry about that …’
‘It’s making me feel demeaned, like some fucking performing seal. And I don’t like feeling demeaned, Adrian. I really don’t. It just pisses me off, and I do things.’
Suddenly, here it was – a break, a slip, a crack of a chance. I was on it in an instant. ‘Like what, Frank?’
He smiled, and I hesitantly returned it, knowing he was drawing me in, but somehow powerless to resist. ‘Like with the lady, fat-boy. Now we’re getting somewhere, aren’t we? Your turn.’
‘So you felt demeaned … when you …?’
‘Oh, I felt lots of stuff.’ His fat head nodded slowly. ‘Pretty as a picture, she was. Pretty as a fucking picture.’
My throat was bone-dry as I struggled to control the delivery of my next question. ‘That demeaned you? Her beauty?’
A slight twitch above his left eyebrow. ‘What are you implying?’
‘That perhaps you felt threatened by it in some way?’
‘That I’m ugly?’ He sounded ugly, too. Instantly loud and dense. His eyes narrowed to pig-slits, and his bottom jaw gaped ludicrously.
‘I’m not saying anything, I’m …’
He turned to Denton, standing and pocketing the cigarettes. ‘Take me back to the unit. I don’t have to take this shit from an arsehole like him.’
Denton stood, quickly moving between Rattigan and myself. ‘Calm down.’
‘Will I bollocks! This cunt’s a wind-up artist!’
Somehow, through my fear came another feeling – stronger, more urgent. Anger. I’d been bloody set up, I was certain of it. I sat seething, staring at the floor and shaking my head. It simply wasn’t my fault, none of it was. The whole session had got off to a terrible start with the set questions. But I didn’t decide those, Allen and his unseen cronies did. Yet I was the poor mug asking them, getting sworn at and intimidated into the bargain.
I felt Rattigan move past me. ‘I’m not a cunt, Frank,’ I said quietly.
But he simply left the room, Denton half a pace behind, leaving me with a well of hatred I hadn’t felt in years, and a conscience struggling to pull myself from his hostility.
But I also knew full well his anger was born from my delving. Questions I’d asked had rattled the ice-cool facade. His response, his anger at me, was explainable, understandable, logical, rational. Sane, almost. He didn’t want me poking, prying. Tough – I was going to upset him a lot more in future.
He felt he’d won – round one to Rattigan. Maybe, but it was going to be a long fight. I’d already beaten the bottle. There was no way Rattigan could be a worse opponent than alcohol.
Could he?
5 (#ulink_585335ac-af27-509f-81d2-65c7cc96e606)
‘Will I bollocks! This cunt’s a wind-up artist!’
Dr Neil Allen switched off the micro-cassette and regarded me cautiously. ‘I don’t want you to be put off by this, Mr Rawlings. You’re doing well. Surprisingly well.’
‘It’s “Adrian”,’ I offered wearily, slumped in one of three chairs in his surprisingly spacious office. The distant echo of New Age Muzak did little to calm me.
Allen sat behind the desk, his back towards several large charts denoting duty nursing rosters. It took me a moment to work out what was missing from the room. Windows. Working there would’ve driven me as crazy as the inmates. ‘Coffee?’
‘Thanks.’
He poured two cups from a large jug-shaped flask. Institutional black, no sugar. Hideous. ‘You’re not here to make psychiatric history, Adrian. No one expects anything from you.’ He paused. ‘Except yourself, maybe.’
He was analysing me. I resented it. ‘Oh?’
He stroked his long gaunt face quite slowly, almost caressing the pointed chin. I briefly wondered if his stark looks were in any way connected with the ugly minds under his charge, if perhaps he had started out quite rugged and handsome, then fallen physical victim to their mental neuroses, like certain owners look like the dogs they keep.
‘The way you sit there – slumped,’ he continued. ‘I can tell that it’s not turned out as you hoped. I’ve had words with Dr Clancy. He told me you were pretty shaken from your first meeting with Rattigan.’
‘He knew my numberplate, Dr Allen,’ I replied. ‘I think that gives me the right to be slightly worried.’
‘About what, exactly?’
‘Who told him, of course.’
‘You have your own theory?’
I shifted uncomfortably. But I had to voice my concerns. I was worried. ‘Rattigan mentioned something about Warder-Orderly Denton perhaps …’
Allen allowed my half-mumbled accusation to hang in the air for a toe-curling few seconds. ‘And you suspect Dr Millar is in league with Frank Rattigan?’
‘Dr Millar?’ What in God’s name was going on here?
‘Your personal assessor and bodyguard, Adrian. Dr Millar holds black belts in three martial arts. Frightfully competent man. As well as being a vital witness on all your sessions, he’ll ensure Rattigan’s in no position to carry out his threats.’
I was flabbergasted. ‘Millar’s Denton? So why the subterfuge?’
‘For Rattigan’s benefit. He assumes Millar to be another screw, so he’s more likely to open up.’
‘But doesn’t he already know Denton’s Millar, or whoever?’
‘Rattigan’s kept in the Personality Disorder Unit. It has its own staff. Your sessions are the first time he’s set foot outside for years. He sees Dr Millar dressed as a screw and obviously assumes him to be one.’
I was aware I was frowning.
‘And as for your numberplate – it’s mind-numbingly easy. Rattigan is, in institutional terms a rich man. Cigarettes buy information, Adrian. It wouldn’t take much for him to get a message to one of the inmates up on D-Wing. Their cells overlook the visitors’ car park.’
‘Oh.’
‘Shame, isn’t it?’ Allen sighed, stifling a yawn. ‘Like finding out an illusionist’s best work is done with the humble mirror. Believe me, Dr Millar has only your best interests at heart.’
‘Then why didn’t he tell me all this?’
‘He hasn’t had the chance to. Rattigan’s always around. Chap doesn’t want to blow his cover in the first couple of sessions.’
‘Even so,’ I pressed. ‘I’d quite like to talk to him at some stage. Even if it’s just to get his opinion.’
‘Maybe. He’s a busy man. Anything else that’s particularly bothering you? You don’t look very relaxed about all this.’
‘The questions,’ I said carefully. ‘They were … ridiculous. Stuff that was completely superfluous.’
Allen smiled, holding immaculately manicured hands close to his lips as if about to pray. ‘That was precisely the point.’
‘Pardon?’
‘The questions were designed to antagonize.’
‘Deliberately?’
He nodded, allowing it to sink in. ‘We need to see how someone like Rattigan interacts with a stranger, Adrian. We’re using you, quite blatantly.’
‘I’m not really with you,’ I mumbled, embarrassed.
‘The study,’ Allen continued. ‘Is as much for the benefit of my staff as it is for the forces of law and order. A spin-off, if you like. We use you in order to get to know much more about Rattigan, his triggers, length of his fuse. Remember how he reacted when he thought he was belittled?’
‘Demeaned,’ I half-heartedly corrected, determined to score at least one point. ‘But you would’ve known all about that already. Your own counsellors, access to his psychiatric record –’
‘Irrelevant,’ Allen interrupted. ‘Past history. The study of the human mind is in its infancy. We know damn-all about Rattigan, and we’ve had him here years. The best we can do is adjust his medication to keep him stable. But it’s a risky business. Ultimately, our distant aim is to have some insight into the origin of our inmates’ various psychoses. Then perhaps we can alter their behaviours therapeutically instead of medicinally. Some at the Home Office think it would be cheaper and probably safer. Certainly, it would be impressive, don’t you think? Ground-breaking, even.’
‘I’m not sure you’re not making fun of me,’ I replied, uncomfortable with the way the conversation had turned. I was still quite shocked that my old pal Fancy had betrayed my feelings about Rattigan so quickly. I thought I’d told him in confidence. I began to feel unneasy – again. ‘What do you really think?’
He laughed at my naivety. ‘The old cliché, Adrian. I’m not paid to think. I’m little more than a dispenser in a suit. They give me drugs, I prescribe them. They come up with some newfangled scheme – I’ll run with it.’
It was becoming depressingly clearer. ‘So that’s all I am – just a budgetary obligation?’
‘You get valuable experience, Adrian. A lot more than money can buy.’ He sipped loudly at the tepid excuse for coffee. ‘And now you think I’m a cynical humbug, don’t you?’
‘I don’t know what to think, really.’
‘Let me put it this way. You have an opportunity here to witness institutional life first-hand. Even if that’s the sole result of your visits here, it’ll have been worthwhile.’ He paused, pointing to the micro-cassette. ‘You’re looking for a motive, aren’t you?’
‘Sorry?’
‘A reason why Rattigan killed the girl.’
‘An insight, perhaps.’
‘From someone who’s certified insane?’
‘Too ambitious?’
‘Certainly not. Delve away. Though don’t pin your hopes on it. He’s stuck rigidly to the same story for years.’
‘That it was “fun”.’
‘Perhaps it was. His criminal history is peppered with serious violent assaults.’
‘But to simply pick on a random individual and torture, mutilate and kill them? For no reason?’
‘For fun, Adrian. Reason enough, perhaps.’
‘There has to be more.’
Allen sighed. ‘Don’t bank on it. You’re an intelligent man. Read the papers, they’re littered with Rattigans and their victims. But I wish you well. Just don’t set your heart on finding some ulterior motive for the murder.’ He stood and offered a hand. The meeting was over. He looked me in the eye. ‘Perhaps,’ he said deliberately. ‘It’s just as important to understand the reasons why you need to know.’
‘You mean my own motives?’
He held my gaze. ‘You could be doing anything, Adrian. Yet here you are, hoping to rationalize a ten-year-old murder, unable to accept the killer’s own motive. I think perhaps it might prove provident for you to understand your own agenda with Rattigan, don’t you?’
I nodded and left the office, glad of the fresh air outside the hospital. I walked quickly to the car without looking back, slapped in some Aretha Franklin and drove away with ‘Chain of Fools’ assaulting me full-blast.
The trouble was, I knew Allen was right. There was something in me which was desperate to normalize Rattigan’s crime. I’d felt it for years, pushed it under with drink, work, life. But the more I tried to uncover its dark beginnings, the less I could pin it down, as if memories had been silenced by time itself.
All I could say for certain was that somewhere within was a knot of fear and shame which was gradually unravelling, day by day, reaching out from my subconscious, readying itself to do battle with my conscience.
And it scared the hell out of me.
6 (#ulink_e6847691-35d8-5775-87df-73fdbb7cd46d)
That night I had the dream again …
The ship was listing, spilt diesel oil vaporizing on the salted air as the huge iron hulk began its obscene journey into the foaming black sea.
A lifeboat swung dangerously, tossed by storm-force winds, held by straining steel cables, a puppet boat, dooming its terrified occupants as it crashed into the dark swell below.
But I was safe, a young boy swimming powerfully, away from the sinking liner, making for stiller waters, passing weaker passengers, feeling occasional connections with tired limbs as I crashed by.
Just another thirty yards or so, twenty at the most, then I could turn, tread water, enjoy the dreadful spectacle of the fizzing, popping boat slide into the deep. Safe – beyond the fatal pull of the whirlpool which would condemn so many others to follow its huge turning propellers.
Ten strokes, now.
Nine.
Eight.
Then I heard their voices, coughing, spluttering – Mum and Dad – old, useless, tired.
Mum, hair in thick wet black ropes, struggling to reach me, my point of oceanic calm, calls out.
‘Adrian!’
Dad tries too.
But they are too far away.
‘Save us!’
How could I? They were as good as dead. To turn back and try and save them would only mean that I would perish alongside them. Lose my life. We’d all die. What point would the fatal heroics prove?
‘Save us, please!’
But I wanted to live. Let them die. Not me.
Suddenly the whirlpool catches them, and for a second their progress stops. I catch a look of complete disbelief and surprise on their faces, as the huge current begins sweeping them screaming towards the same dark sea the boat once occupied …
After, I wandered downstairs to the silent kitchen for a coffee. Jemimah’s dream kitchen, elegantly tiled and strewn with cast-iron pots and pans hanging from stainless-steel rails. I sat at the heavy pine table wondering at the laughable irony of the ad business wherein such luxury is achieved by its employees pushing tat on the masses. The result is very often a lifestyle only dreamt of by the unknowing punters.
A sleepy voice from somewhere behind. Jemimah, dressing gown open, yawning. ‘Can’t sleep?’
I shrugged.
She joined me at the table. ‘Bad dreams?’
I nodded.
‘You saw Rattigan again today, didn’t you?’
‘Uhuh.’
‘Don’t want to talk about it?’
‘That’s part of the problem, J. I don’t know what I want.’
Middle of the night’s a bad time to brood, I know that much.’
‘Maybe it’s the best time.’
‘What’s wrong?’ she playfully chided. ‘Has that nasty man been calling you names again?’
‘He’s not the problem. I think I am.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘Something someone said to me today. Saying I should take a long hard look at the reasons why I’m doing this.’
‘The PhD?’ she replied, then smiled. ‘Because you’re going to make the best forensic psychologist the ad business ever fired. Because you believe in yourself. Because I do.’
‘Thanks, J. It means a lot.’
She reached out for my hand. ‘Let me in, Adrian. I can’t help if you bottle it all up.’
‘Jesus, I’d love to.’
‘Then do it.’
‘Problem is, I can’t even get there myself.’
She half frowned. ‘I’m not sure I …’
‘Remember when I hit you?’
She withdrew her hand, avoided my gaze. ‘Adrian, you don’t have to …’
‘But I do,’ I persisted. ‘It’s all tied in.’
‘And it’s history. Bad history. We’ve moved on.’
‘But I did it. We can’t just ignore it.’
‘You were pissed. Weren’t yourself.’
‘But what if …?’ I started.
She shook her head, reading my thoughts. ‘Don’t go down this road, Adrian, please.’
‘Maybe I’ve got to.’
‘Why?’
‘To face up to it. To me.’
‘But it wasn’t you, don’t you understand? It was drink. And now I’ve got you back. We’ve moved on. Why the analysis? Why now, for heaven’s sake?’
‘Because I think I know why I did it.’
She was becoming unsettled, nervous. ‘You were bloody drunk. End of story.’
‘But I remember the feelings,’ I replied. ‘And perhaps the booze simply let them slip through. Surface.’
She said nothing, waiting.
‘I remember bits of it. I remember you telling me you’d exchanged on the house. Then there was this … awful pain …’
‘Can’t we just forget the whole thing?’
But I couldn’t. ‘It was raw, J. Familiar almost. Like some kind of replay from the past. I felt like I was being abandoned. It was terrifying. It all welled up, sort of roaring, overwhelming. Next thing I remember, I’d hit you. But I don’t remember doing it. It had happened. Like I wasn’t even there.’
‘As I said,’ Jemimah quietly replied. ‘You weren’t yourself.’
‘Then who the hell was I? A fucking wife-beater? But I have no memory of it, can’t tell you where the rage and the pain came from, except it’s there, real. Inside me.’
‘You’re spending too long on this. It’s not good for you. Or us.’
‘Listen, J, please. I know enough about the subconscious to realize that those feelings are still there, still have the power to race right up and overwhelm me again.’
‘Oh for God’s sake, Adrian. We’ve all got a temper! Right now, you’re really beginning to test mine.’
‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘But you wouldn’t hit me, would you? Then have no recollection of doing so. This is more than temper, J. This is about something I’ve buried as neatly as the time when I hit you. Something happened, I’m sure of it, a long time ago. It left me with the anguish I felt when you said you were moving. It’s still there, and it frightens the life out of me.’
‘So, get help,’ Jemimah frostily replied. ‘You’re a bloody psychiatrist. Get one of your student friends to recommend a good shrink. Hypnotherapy, regression, or whatever the hell you call it.’
‘Maybe.’
She stood. ‘I’m tired, I’m going back to bed.’
‘Sure.’
‘You coming?’
‘In a moment. I’m sorry.’
She stood by the door. ‘What for?’
‘Bringing it all up again.’
‘Yeah,’ she replied, turning. ‘So am I.’
‘Do you know what really frightens me?’
‘I’m not sure I want to.’
‘I’m meeting with a man who claims to have killed for fun. It’s his sole motive. According to him, he just went ahead and did it, because he wanted to. Yet I find myself wondering what is it about him that obsesses me? And it all comes back to me. He did something, grotesque, irrational, something I can’t possibly make any sense out of. Just like I did – when I hit you.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Adrian …!’
‘I think … I fear that in some senses Rattigan and I are possibly the same,’ I whispered. ‘We’ve both harmed others without a real motive. Perhaps that’s why I’m so hellbent on finding his. Because if I did it’d give me some kind of chance to apply it on myself. I don’t know, make me less of a monster than him.’
She’d had enough. ‘Christ’s sake, Adrian! Listen to yourself. You’re not thinking straight. You’re not a monster, you haven’t killed anyone, and you’re putting far too much of you into the whole stupid business. Honestly, it’s like comparing a petty shoplifter with the Great Train Robbers. You’re talking crap. I’m going upstairs.’
Which she did.
PC KILLER TO HANG
The trial of Joseph Attwood Rattigan concluded yesterday, when Judge Andrew Beaumont Clarke pronounced the death sentence for the silent defendant found guilty of the murder of PC John Scrimshaw, after a late-night brawl during January.
The jury deliberated for less than an hour before returning their unanimous guilty verdict, leaving Judge Clarke with no option but to don the black cap as he passed sentence.
Throughout the nine-day trial, the defendant had refused to take the stand, offering a plea of diminished responsibility and manslaughter, subsequently refused by the court. Upon sentencing, Rattigan silently shook his head, before being taken down.
The guilty verdict comes as no surprise to many who have followed the case. Evidence offered by the Crown during the trial supported its contentions that PC Scrimshaw had been mercilessly attacked while about his duties on the night of January 15th, 1949. Witnesses were able to testify that Rattigan had been seen drinking heavily in a series of public houses found on the Mile End Road, when, stumbling upon PC Scrimshaw about his duties, he proceeded to enter into a drunken verbal exchange with the 22-year-old police officer.
An altercation ensued which rapidly developed into a violent assault on the officer, resulting in Rattigan pushing Scrimshaw through a plate-glass window of a grocery shop. PC Scrimshaw was later identified as dead at the scene of the crime, his throat fatally cut from injuries sustained during his fall through the shop front.
It was only the selfless action of three brave passers-by who managed to manhandle the fleeing Rattigan to the ground as he sought to escape, so bringing the cowardly killer swiftly to justice.
At no point during the trial was Rattigan prepared to offer any motivation for his crime, leaving the jury with little option but to conclude that the defendant’s actions were the result of overintoxication due to drink.
In passing sentence, Judge Clarke stated, ‘It is the intention of this court that your punishment serve as a warning to all others foolish enough to consider assaulting officers of the law as legitimate sport, following reckless drinking of the sort you were undoubtedly involved in immediately preceding Officer Scrimshaw’s untimely demise. Let no one be in any doubt – the law has only one response to perpetrators of this vile, increasing crime. Police officers of any rank will be protected by the law, using its ultimate sanction. And those of us empowered to dispense the righteous justice of retribution will not cower from the responsibilities of our office.’
Solicitors representing Rattigan thought it unlikely he would appeal, as the condemned seemed fully resigned to his fate. At no stage during interviews with arresting officers did Rattigan ever express remorse for his crime, or give solid reasons for his unprovoked attack on PC Scrimshaw.
The Times, Wednesday, 2nd April, 1949.
7 (#ulink_fa5c408c-8f32-5d48-b958-ee2681b0f27e)
Forty-eight hours later, I found myself back in the smoky, pokey office of Dr Stephen Clancy once more. He had in front of him a thin manilla file entitled HMP Oakwood High Security – Graduate Training Programme. My name had been crudely added to the cover.
I had no idea why he’d asked to see me.
‘Come in, sit down,’ he gushed. ‘Glad you could come.’
‘Is there some sort of problem, Steve?’ I asked.
‘Problem? Good heavens, no. Just thought maybe we should have a little chat.’
‘Could’ve used the phone, surely?’
He shifted a little. ‘I wanted to talk face to face, Adrian. Clear the air, perhaps.’
‘Go on.’
He chose his words with care. ‘I gather from speaking with Neil Allen that you expressed some surprise that I kept him so closely informed of our conversations.’
‘I can’t remember saying anything at the time.’
Another long draw on the cigar. ‘He sensed it. He’s a master of body language.’
‘Now that you mention it, I was a little taken aback.’
‘Don’t be. It’s perfectly standard. I’m more or less obliged to report back, so to speak. It’s nothing personal. Just the form.’
‘The form?’
‘Procedure, dear chap. Let’s just say that one has to exercise great caution when allowing research students to meet with inmates. The experience can prove … a little upsetting to those with sensitive dispositions.’
I began putting the pieces together. ‘And neither Oakwood or the university would want any adverse publicity should something go wrong, right?’
He smiled. ‘You probably think we’re all being dreadfully paranoid, but we have good reason. Very occasionally, exposure to Rattigan and his like can have unforeseen consequences. A similar scheme in Cumbria nearly came unstuck two years ago. The student in question, a woman, I believe, jumped from a tower block midway through her thesis researches.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
Fancy held up a hand. ‘Now, I’m not saying there was any connection between her death and the work at the hospital, but it could’ve turned nasty. I mean, for all we know, the woman’s love life was probably in a damn mess.’
‘You’re all heart, aren’t you?’
‘I’m merely saying it doesn’t do to make any assumptions. You only have to cast your mind back to the field day the damn press had with the balls-up at Ashworth to realize the Home Office is rather keen any whiff of scandal emanating from Her Majesty’s secure hospitals is kept to an absolute minimum.’
I well remembered Ashworth, the catalogue of damning allegations made by an inmate concerning visits by children to suspected paedophiles. ‘You say don’t make assumptions, Steve, yet you assume I’m a candidate for the suicide-watch, too?’
He laughed, stubbed out the cigar. ‘Good God, no. It’s simply that I know you far better than Allen does. And if it looks like the pressure’s getting to you, I’m duty-bound to inform the old sod.’ He passed the file over. ‘This is yours. Inside you’ll find a transcript of every interview, together with an assessment of your performance. You can copy all the material inside for use in your thesis should you wish, but you must ensure you return the file for updating at every interview.’
‘Right. Thanks.’
‘Hope you don’t mind, but I’ve taken a peek. Seems you’re still keen Rattigan tells you more about the girl.’ He leant forward. ‘Just don’t pin your hopes on anything.’
‘So everyone keeps telling me.’
‘With good reason. Besides, what if he tells you something astonishing? Could you ever trust him to tell the truth?’
‘He’s sitting on something, Steve. I’m sure he is. He keeps letting things slip.’
‘Maybe he’s doing that deliberately. I suspect you’re legitimate sport as far as he’s concerned. “Fun”, even.’ He stood, made for the door, putting on his overcoat. ‘You still got that Aretha Franklin tape in the car?’
‘Yes?’
‘Grand. Shake a leg. We’re going for a drive. The good Dr Allen’s arranged a little surprise for you and Aretha’s just the dame to serenade us on our journey.’
‘Bingo!’ Fancy exclaimed. ‘We’re here.’
Twenty minutes later we drew up in front of the Essex Police Headquarters, just five hundred yards from Chelmsford Prison, me still none the wiser as to what the hell we were doing there.
Throughout the journey, Fancy had playfully resisted all my questions, until I grew tired of asking. I contented myself with following his occasional directions, trying desperately to ignore his tuneless warblings.
We parked before a huge complex of grey concrete buildings and playing fields. Stepping from the car, I noticed the tired rows of nearby semidetatched houses, looking as if they clung to the place for the security offered by the Essex home of law enforcement.
A group of young recruits struggled to complete the required number of press-ups barked at them by a muscular intructor, and I found myself cringing at the effects institionalized buildings and their occupants had on me. Just like Oakwood, everything had been seemingly designed for the single purpose of intimidation, the faceless architects responsible having no ethical dilemma over form versus function. Likewise the inhabitants themselves, uniformed, regulated, cracked, all empathy syphoned off by the real brains of the machine – ancient laws and flawed systems laid down by our long-dead forefathers. Difficult to believe these men were all cooing babies once.
Fancy spoke as we neared the entrance. ‘DI Russell’s your man. He knows you’re coming.’ He stopped. ‘I’ll maybe catch you for a drink later in the week, eh?’
‘You’re not coming in?’
‘I’m not invited, dear chap.’
‘You’re going to wait out here, then?’
‘Heavens, no. I’ll ring a cab, pop back to the uni. Thanks for the ride. That Aretha’s a gem, isn’t she?’
‘Steve, what’s going on?’
‘You’re here to learn a little more about Rattigan. Allen’s been in touch with the Met; they’ve rushed the stuff up here for your delectation.’
‘What stuff?’
‘The original file you were given was just a taster. Now Allen feels the time’s right for you to know a little more about the kind of man you’re dealing with. A sort of unexpurgated version.’ He looked me straight in the eye. ‘You’re going to find out what he did to that girl. Word for word.’
‘This DI Russell’s going to tell me, is he?’
‘No,’ Fancy replied. ‘Rattigan is.’
I waited ten minutes in reception before I met with DI Russell. Six-two, wiry, regulation haircut, black shoes, grey trousers, white shirt, brown tie, no jacket – introduced himself as Dave, before taking me up to the second floor into a small side office.
Next he brought in a tape recorder and a box of cassettes. ‘Had this sent up from the Met. All the tackle they have on your man Rattigan. Gave it a listen myself last night. Quite a headcase.’
‘He has his moments.’
‘I’m sure he does, sir.’
‘Excuse me,’ I asked a little nervously. ‘Don’t get me wrong but is this normal?’
‘Normal, sir?’ He had a practised way of saying ‘sir’ which ironed all the respect out of the word. I imagined he perfected the technique interviewing suspects. His cold professionalism chilled me.
‘I feel like I’ve been thrown in at the deep-end, rather,’ I said, miserably failing to befriend him with a smile. ‘These tapes, who asked you to get them for me?’
‘Shrink up at Oakwood,’ he confirmed.
‘Dr Allen?’
‘That’s the one. He rang my guv’nors, who put a call through to the boys at the Met. They fished it out and sent it over. Saves you a trip to Scotland Yard, doesn’t it?’
‘Yeah. Thanks.’
‘Pleasure, sir. That answer your question?’
I nodded. ‘Here I was thinking I was a special case.’
‘’Fraid not. Done this sort of thing before for you’ – he savoured the word – ‘students. Part of the data-gathering programme we’re all involved with, constabularies, prisons, judiciary. Lets us have a little peek into these people’s brains, or what’s left of them. Supposed to save us a lot of time when we’re messing around with offender profiling.’ Then he smiled. ‘I think it’s a load of old cobblers myself, but if it keeps the guv’nors happy, then I’m a happy bunny too. I’ll leave you with it. I’m in room nine if you need me.’
He left, barking orders at some poor recruit loitering in the corridor outside. I stared at the small black machine on the desk in front of me, and the box of cassettes, each carefully labelled and dated. Here they were, then, the initial interview tapes taken during Rattigan’s detention immediately after his arrest for the murder of Helen Lewis.
I cleared my throat, before rubbing both sweating palms along the seams of my trousers. Did I really want to hear it, any of it? After all, I’d studied the file, night after night, read the grim criminal history of the man, from petty offender to institutionalized tramp. Knew as much as I needed to know, surely, about that final explosion of unrestrained violence on an innocent young woman. However …
Taking a notepad and pen from my briefcase, I slotted in the first tape and pressed the button marked ‘play’.
A man’s voice, procedural, contained. Introduced himself as DI Shot from Bethnal Green nick, then announced – for the benefit of the tape – that he’s there with his colleague, DS Williams, to interview Frank Rattigan in connection with the murder of Helen Lewis, on the 14th September, 1988.
Enough. I turned the machine off. It was all too real. I suddenly couldn’t bear to hear his voice, his whines, his sickness.
I sat breathless in the tiny room, staring at the tape recorder, wishing I could run, but knowing I had to stay, had to endure it …
Play …
SHOT: Care to tell us, then, Frank? Care to tell us what the bloody hell happened in there?
RATTIGAN: You don’t know?
WILLIAMS: We want to hear it from you.
RATTIGAN: Hear what?
WILLIAMS: For God’s sake! We pick you up in Helen Lewis’s house, and there’s bits of her all over the shop! You topped the poor cow, didn’t you?
RATTIGAN: Why have you got your cock out, Sergeant? I’m not going to suck it, and I know that’s what you want me to –
SHOT: Shut it, Frank! You’re doing yourself no favours. Don’t play games with us, pal.
RATTIGAN (calmly): All I’m asking is that Sergeant Williams puts his penis away.
SHOT (irritated): For the benefit of the tape, Sergeant Williams is fully dressed.
RATTIGAN: He’s playing with it!
WILLIAMS: I’ll start playing with you in a minute, you murdering bast – !
SHOT: OK, Sergeant, that’s enough! (Pause, during which Rattigan is clearly heard sniggering in the background.) Let’s recap a little, shall we? Eleven-twenty this morning, we get call from a Mrs Anne Lewis concerning her daughter. She’s worried, hasn’t been able to contact her all weekend. Apparently the phone’s not working. We decide to investigate. Upon arrival at her address, a uniformed officer gets no response from the front door, so checks round the back. He peers through a set of French windows and sees what he initially suspects is a bloodstained corpse lying on the sofa. It’s you. He calls for backup, which arrives, breaks into the premises, and discovers that you are very much alive. The same, however, could hardly be said of Miss Lewis. With me so far?
RATTIGAN: What more do you need to know? I mean, how fucking dense are you?
SHOT: You’re saying you killed her, are you?
RATTIGAN: You’ve got to be as thick as pigshit to think anything else, right?
SHOT: Just you? On your own, killed Helen Lewis?
RATTIGAN: And the team.
SHOT: Team?
RATTIGAN: Arsenal. Very good, those lads. Very professional. Lot of kicking went on, you see. Took nearly four hours just to get one leg off …
SHOT (sighs): OK. This interview suspended at … two-twelve, p.m. pending psychiatric investigation of the suspect.
There was a twelve-second pause on the tape, before the interview restarted with the same formal introductions. Four hours had elapsed. This time, Rattigan appeared more subdued, and another officer, DCI Moira, had joined the team.
MOIRA: Recognize this, Frank?
RATTIGAN: Envelope.
MOIRA: Want to know what’s in it?
RATTIGAN: Money.
MOIRA: Two out of two, clever boy. Now, before we go any further, would you tell me if you see any one of the officers present with his penis out?
RATTIGAN: You’re starving me!
SHOT: The money. Yours, is it?
RATTIGAN: Friend’s.
SHOT: Looking after it for someone, were you? Lot of loot, Frank. Nearly a grand in there.
WILLIAMS: What friend? Another one of your ‘mates’ from the Arsenal?
RATTIGAN: What’s he talking about? Dickhead!
MOIRA: He wants to know … we all want to know, how a shabby dosser like you ended up with all that cash in your coat pocket.
RATTIGAN: Seems fair.
SHOT: Well?
RATTIGAN: Someone gave it me.
SHOT: Helen Lewis? That what you’re saying, is it, Frank? She give it you, did she? Eventually?
RATTIGAN (laughing): She gave me nothing. But I really gave it to that bitch, didn’t I? Didn’t I, eh? Really gave it to her.
MOIRA: What do you know about her, Frank?
RATTIGAN: I know how her insides work. How they used to.
MOIRA: Why her?
RATTIGAN: Feed me.
MOIRA: Why her!
RATTIGAN (suddenly animated): She was there, right. I’d had a look at her gaff, thought I might pile in there and squat it out for a week or so. Looked like the place was unoccupied. Next I know, the fuckin’ front door’s opening, and the bitch just calmly walks in. No alternative, really. Just went to work on her.
MOIRA: She was an air hostess. Did you know that?
RATTIGAN (angrily): You think I fucking care! You think I give a shit about the stupid tart?
SHOT: What we’re saying, Frank, is that Helen Lewis had a good job. Few bob in the bank. Nice house. You break in, and next we know she’s dead, and you’re found with nearly a grand in cash.
WILLIAMS: You tortured her, didn’t you? Tortured the poor girl so’s she’d tell you where her money was, right? What happened first, Frank? Good-looking girl, she was. Fucked her, did you? Fancied a quickie before you started hunting for the cash?
MOIRA: How long were you in the house?
RATTIGAN: Three days.
MOIRA: During which time you killed her, right?
RATTIGAN: She killed me years ago.
MOIRA: You knew her, then, did you, from years ago? You sought her out?
RATTIGAN: Christ’s sake! You arseholes are so stupid. You don’t get it, do you? I didn’t have to find the bitch. She’s always been around. Smiling at me. Know what I’m saying? (Pause) I mean, it’s no good, is it, eh? To smile like that, and then … do nothing.
SHOT: I don’t know, Frank. Maybe you can tell us what you mean. I’m confused. What makes a smile useless? I don’t have a problem with a pretty woman smiling.
RATTIGAN: It was the first thing that went, you know, her fucking smile. (Laughs) They say, don’t they, ‘Just wipe that smile off your face’? I did the next best thing, didn’t I? Couldn’t be doing with all those screams. Found them, have you, the lips?
SHOT: Not really our job, Frank. We’re looking for something else. The reason. Your motive. You going to tell us?
RATTIGAN (laughs again): What, and end all the fun? Just when we’re all getting on so fucking famously? But from where I am, you clever boys seem to have it all worked out, don’t you? The money, isn’t it? Bit of rape, then I kill her for the cash. Sounds very plausible to me. Highly likely. Hurrah for the police! Trebles all round!
Moira suspends interview.
8 (#ulink_be1c5deb-248c-5629-adcc-bdfd72e69742)
The tape rolled on, turning slowly in the black machine on the cigarette-burnt table. Outside, suburban birds tried their best to divorce me from the tinny voices, a natural melody of harmless song inadequately competing with Rattigan’s sickening confession. But there was no comfort to be had from their happy twittering. Birds go on, regardless. Birds sing before every execution.
I began to see Allen’s purpose in sending me there a little more clearly. I had the benefit of a better insight, now. Rattigan had told me everything, and it chilled me to the bone. A significant part of me wanted nothing more to do with the Beast of East 16, leave him and his mind and motives be – as if I’d opened an abandoned manhole cover and found it clogged with all the shit from humanity.
However, another equally significant part urged me on, directed me down into the stinking mess of the man with dark, whispered promises of what lay waiting there. Truth was, the more I knew about the man the less it all made sense; the more I felt there was to discover. About him. And perhaps myself into the bargain.
I hated myself, but was honest enough to admit I was hooked. Addicted – as surely as I’d been to the booze.
Here’s a condensed version of what I heard that morning, taken from my own notes written at the time.
There are seven interviews in all, taken over a period of three days after Rattigan’s arrest. As each is terminated and another begins, new pieces fall into the puzzle as the investigation gathers momentum. A total of six officers and three psychiatrists take part at various times, each determined to make some sense of Helen Lewis’s apparently needless death.
And always the repeated question: ‘Why?’
And Rattigan’s ‘answer’: “Cause she was there. Pretty as a picture.’
… Police at Bethnal Green (headed by DCI Moira) quickly establish the previous movements of Frank Rattigan prior to the attack. An address found on the suspect’s clothes links him to Welland Farm, Suffolk, where further enquiries reveal he was working (cash in hand) as a fruit-picker during the week before the murder.
Two other pickers are tracked down and interviewed, when, in exchange for anonymity from the DHSS, they not only confirm Rattigan’s whereabouts, but go on to add that whilst picking plums, a green Jaguar XJS drew into the farmyard. The driver seemed anxious to speak to Rattigan in particular. The farmer, a Mr Bob Jenkins, verifies the incident, but cannot say whether the Jaguar’s driver sought out Rattigan specifically. It was Friday the 9th September, 1988.
In response to this, Rattigan would only say that the driver was lost and needed directions. He had no idea who the man was, and only sought to offer what help he could in the circumstances. However, both pickers were under the impression that the driver knew Rattigan personally. The suspect and the driver spent several minutes in conversation among the farm’s outbuildings, before the driver left the scene.
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