Gordon Ferris - Truth Dare kill

“Do you hit women who mess you around?”

“No! Once. I’m not proud of it. But a slap in anger is a long way from sticking a blade in someone. Isn’t it?”

Was it? Always, always there’s the naked body with the hole punched in the back of her head and a red pool around her like a bloody halo. And I’m standing holding a bloody blade… I cut off the image, scared what else I might see.

“Do I mess you around?”

“God, no! Don’t even think it! You’re different. Not like other girls. But I don’t mind that. I like seeing you. I’m happy that we’re pals. I’d like it if we were something… more. But we know where we stand, don’t we? Or where we stood,”

I added with a hint of desperation.

“Nothing’s changed. ’Cos I don’t believe it,” she said defiantly.

A wave of relief swept over me, but it was only temporary. I shook my head. “I can’t prove it. Not with Caldwell dead. I can’t very well go back to France and poke around, can I?”

She shook her head. “You can and maybe you should. But shouldn’t you see your trick cyclist first? “My…? Oh right. I’m due for my monthly session anyway in a couple of days.” Then I stopped.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I’m scared, Val. Really scared. What if I tell him and he thinks I might have done it?”

She was quite firm. “You didn’t. That’s all. So go see him. And in the meantime, I’m going to look after you till you’re properly on your feet. And then…”

“Then?”

“Then I think you need to ask Miss Kate Toffee-nose for an explanation. What were Caldwell and her up to, that’s what I want to know?” “Me too, Valerie. Me too.”

Val came and went. I was mobile but stiff and it was good to have company. Apart from her and the cat, I only had visits from Mrs White who muttered and mumbled to herself as she took my dirty clothes away and returned them clean and pressed within an inch of their lives. She affected not to see Val, having on more than occasion voiced her thoughts on post-war morality and boys and girls living up with each other without the blessing of a minister on their union.

We just talked, Val and me. I told her how my mother used to read to me and my dad some evenings, her soft low voice making pictures in my head, and how it had started me off. That was it; Val wouldn’t rest till she had me reading to her.

We raided the Camberwell Green library. I gave her stories of Africa from Rider Haggard and tales of spies and British bravery from John Buchan. And I sent her mind flying high with notions of time travel from H G Wells. Sitting there, in front of a flickering fire, with her curled up on the rug, big-eyed like a child, I felt a contentment so rare that at times my voice caught and I had to hide behind a swig of whisky.

She came with me to the hospital to get the stitches out of my face, and lied when she told me how much better I looked. She left me each night and came back each morning for four days, until the day of my monthly trip to see Doctor Thompson.

The peace and calm Val had induced in me lasted for most of the train journey to the hospital. I’d begun to enjoy these trips when the Doc told me they wouldn’t be doing any more shock therapy. Now they seemed like wee holidays and Doc Thompson usually helped me see things better, get things in perspective. But by the time I got to Didcot, Caldwell’s written accusations were haunting me. I was in a blue funk and thinking seriously about catching the next train straight back. But the taxi was waiting, so I climbed in and sat jolting in the back as we made our way into the cold grey hills around Cirencester.

“I can’t answer that, Danny, other than to say that we are all capable of doing bad things. But in normal circumstances, for a person brought up within the constraints of civilised society, we choose not to.”

He was sitting in a chair just to my right and behind me. It was the way he operated; he explained it was to avoid making this debate between him and me. It should be between me and the other me; my journey. He didn’t know I was a bad traveller. Doc Thompson said he only provided the vehicle and greased the wheels. I think he laid the tracks too.

“But if the circumstances are abnormal?” I asked.

“Then we lose many of the markers, the touchstones for our behaviour. And we sometimes do things that may seem alien to us. But let’s be clear: we don’t fundamentally go against the grain of our character. It’s like hypnotism; I can’t tell you to do something that is ninety degrees away from your essential personality.”

“How about forty-five degrees?”

“Under certain circumstances, we are capable of surprising acts. Bravery, for example. Men giving up their lives for others in the heat of battle…”

“Murder?” I’d told him everything.

“Perhaps. But Danny, please remember that we are dealing here with hearsay. The only evidence…” I could hear the quotation marks in his voice. “… for this so-called murder is Major Caldwell’s report. We don’t know – a, if there was one; b, whether it was an accident; c, if you had anything to do with it, and d, if a woman was killed and you did it, whether you had been provoked in some way.”

I turned to him. He was sitting forward in the hard chair, his big eagle nose jutting out over his notepad that he clutched in both hands. His fair hair hung over his forehead at the best of times but one slice of it was falling into his right eye. He sat up straight and pushed it back.

“What about the memories I have? Holding the bloody bayonet? How do you explain that away? “An image in your mind doesn’t have to be a memory. It could be a composite of several memories. You’re a soldier. You used a bayonet? In earnest?”

“Once. Near Tobruk. We had to go into the trenches after the Italians. I blew it, thank god. The man dodged me and I only hit his arm. It was enough.”

“That would do. You could be feeling guilty about not killing him. It was your duty, after all.”

That made me think. It made me think these quacks always had an answer for everything. How did you ever get to the truth? “Doc, you said there might have been a provocation. Is there any provocation that would justify murder?”

“That wasn’t what I meant. Nothing justifies murder. But aren’t there different shades? Premeditated, an act of revenge, say? Crime of passion, as the French have? Cold-blooded, sadistic…” he began to tick them off on his fingers.

“What about these murders of prostitutes in London?”

He sat forward again. His face took on an eagerness, as though filled with professional fascination for the slaughters. “Ah. We are clearly dealing with a psychopath, someone who has no human compassion, does not empathise with the rest of us. Doesn’t have the same moral code. Freud would see a sexual motivation here too. Perhaps someone getting revenge on a woman: a cruel mother or a woman who rejected his advances.”

“He?”

“It’s usually a he. Men are by nature more violent.”

My silence stopped his flow. I gathered myself to ask the big question, the one that was making me sick. “Doctor, do you think – from what you know of me – that I am capable of murdering this woman in France?”

His face took on a guarded look, and he rubbed his pointed chin with his knuckle before answering. “The trouble is, Danny, I’ve been treating you for the effects of the bash on your head. I’ve been trying to help you make sense of the trauma and piece together the fragments of your memory. If this dreadful act took place, and if you were involved in some way, it happened before your skull fracture.”

That wasn’t the resounding vote of confidence I wanted to hear from my quack.