John Harvey - Lonely Hearts

This, though, was different. She felt-understanding what she was feeling, the seductive danger of it-more at home here. Remembering where the cat food was kept, Rachel spooned some into their respective bowls. There was only an inch of milk in the fridge, Charlie would probably bring some in with him when he arrived. Dizzy had bolted most of his own food already and was stealing Bud’s; when she tried to budge him away, he arched his back at her and hissed. Oh well, Rachel thought, not my business. She opened the nearest cupboard and put the keys inside.

The sergeant on duty at the station told her he was sorry but there was nobody in CID at the moment, he could transfer her to Central Police Station if she wanted. Inspector Resnick was who she wanted. The sergeant didn’t know if the inspector would be back, but if he came in then the message would be relayed. Good evening, madam.

Rachel left the phone off the hook.

“Sir! Sir!”

The yellowing eyelids flickered, stilled, flickered again; finally, Sally Oakes’s eyes stayed open and slowly tried to focus.

“You must be careful,” the doctor warned, touching Resnick’s arm as he went forward. “She’s in a critical condition.”

Resnick nodded. He sat opposite Lynn Kellogg, both of them watching anxiously as Sally Oakes’s eyes fixed first on one, then the other. Recognizing them, she began to cry.

Rachel was leaning back on the settee, stroking Bud and reading through some typed pages she had found on the table, somebody’s notes about Professor Doria, an explanation, of sorts, of a lecture he had given at the university.

Excess is essential in literature, in art as well as society, because of its power to challenge from the inside and help to dismantle traditional and hidebound structures. It is for this reason that Repression, with its opposition to Excess, is always to be fought against and denied.

She felt the cat tense against her hand and a moment later the knock at the door.

Oh, come on, Charlie! Give me your spare keys and then forget your own.

“Excuse me, little one,” Rachel said, depositing Bud on the back of the settee, “I’ll be back in a minute.”

The slight hesitation of warning that Rachel felt as she was turning the handle was too little and too late.

“Miss Chaplin. Rachel. Such a surprise.”

“Professor.”

He already had one foot across the threshold. “I called to speak with the inspector.” His eyes were reaching past her. “He’s here?”

“Is it important?”

“Oh, yes. Yes. I’m afraid it is. Otherwise…” He placed his hand against the frame of the door. “…one doesn’t like to call unannounced.”

Rachel’s mind was racing too fast for her to think with any clarity. “If you wouldn’t mind call back later. An hour perhaps.”

Doria’s face slid into a lingering smile. “An hour, Rachel. What difference would an hour make now?”

“We were just going to eat.”

“He’s here then. Call him. No need for good food to go cold and spoil.”

Rachel brought the door back towards her and then pushed it forward fast, throwing all her weight against it. Doria’s arm braced and slowly started to straighten: he was surprisingly strong.

Resnick knew that within minutes the doctor would insist on their leaving and there would be nothing he could do to resist. A nurse sat with her arms behind one of the pillows, holding Sally so that her back was clear of the bed. Lynn Kellogg held a notebook in front of her, Resnick steadied the pencil as she struggled to write.

Sounds came intermittently from behind the wired jaw but unintelligibly. All they could do was share the girl’s pain as she forced letters through their crazed journey across the page.

The first Resnick understood immediately, watched with impatience as Sally’s fingers forced down on the book.

DORIA

She began to write her own name then, partway through, the pencil slipping with a thick stroke diagonally across the page. Her eyes found Resnick’s, willing him to understand. He nodded, waiting for her to continue. Again a line through her name, an emphatic dropping of her head that made her moan and had the doctor stretching past Resnick with concern.

“You’ll have to leave.”

“One more minute.”

“Tomorrow, when she’s rested.”

“Look, there. She wants to say something.”

Sally tapped pencil against paper, her eyes moved imploringly towards Lynn Kellogg, the doctor, back to the paper. Falteringly, her fingers shifted their grip and began another word.

R

Me, Resnick thought, she’s going to write my name?

RA

What’s going on?

RACH

“Rachel!” Resnick said, face close to hers. “Is that it, Rachel?”

Sally Oakes’s eyes moved up and down inside their sockets, saying, yes, yes.

“What about her, Sally? What about her?”

“Inspector! You must leave the girl alone.” Resnick shrugged away the doctor’s hand. Sally Oakes was willing him to look at the pages on which she had written. Her eyes were beginning to close though. The doctor signaled to the nurse, who carefully began to lower the pillow back down against the others.

“Doria and Sally,” Lynn Kellogg said. “Then why somebody else, why…?”

Resnick was staring at the lines the girl had scored through her own name before writing Rachel’s in its place.

“When this happened,” he said, leaning now right across the bed, “he wasn’t doing it to Sally, he didn’t call you Sally, but Rachel. Is that it? Is that what you’re saying?”

Yes, said Sally Oakes’s eyes, just once before they closed. Yes.

Resnick was already running down the ward, Lynn Kellogg in his wake.

Rachel was backed up against the empty fireplace. The sound of her breathing was unnaturally loud, lips slightly parted. If she made a dash back towards the front door, to her right in the direction of the kitchen where she might find a weapon with which to defend herself, she knew that Doria would attack.

Whereas now he sat on the arm of a comfortable chair, that confident smile across his face and the teasing quality in his voice that was clear to her from the disguised call to her office.

With one hand he was loosely holding Patel’s notes, while the fingers of the other pushed into Dizzy’s fur, the cat purring with pleasure.

“It seems I misjudged him, this young man from the great subcontinent, there are errors here, naturally, but for one new to the subject, he shows a good understanding.” The smile froze, the fingers ceased to move and the cat went up on to its hind legs, pushing his head against Doria’s hand. “Deconstruction, possibly you have a little knowledge of it yourself? No? Ah, well. It seems there are others who do. More understanding than I might have wished. Yourself, for instance, the nature of your profession-understanding. Wouldn’t you say?”

Rachel nodded.

“What you and your kind like to call the weaknesses of others. To be treated with compassion, therapy. Not like the answer our mutual friend, the inspector, lives by. Punishment. Incarceration. Repression.” Dizzy nuzzled against him again and smartly, with the back of his hand, Doria knocked him away into the center of the room.

The cat squealed, spat, and ran.

Rachel gasped and made half a move forwards.

“He does know, doesn’t he, your inspector? He does know.”

“Yes,” Rachel breathed.

“And you,” said Doria. “You know.”

Rachel ran for the kitchen. She heard him behind her, glimpsed him from the corner of her eye. With a slam she threw two doors closed and each, in turn, was pushed open. She banged her hip painfully against the table, jerked open a drawer, another, too far, the contents spilling out around her feet and across the floor.