Simon Beckett - Where There's Smoke

“Even though you’ll never see the baby? Not even know if it’s a boy or a girl?” Kate felt brutal, but she had to be sure he understood.

All at once his face looked immeasurably sad. He stared at the unlit candle in the centre of the table, but Kate doubted he saw it. “I’ll know it’s there, though.”

He came to himself with a little start. “If you decide to choose me as the donor, that is. I don’t want you to think I’m taking anything for granted.”

Now Kate looked away. “I’ve been keeping you from your lunch,” she said, going back to her salad.

She asked him for his card as they left the restaurant. “I’ll phone you next week and let you know what I’ve decided,” she told him, feeling both cowardly and pompous.

He accepted that without complaint. “It’s better if you call me at night,” he said, taking a business card from his wallet. “I’m generally with a patient when I’m at work, so I wouldn’t be able to speak to you. And I don’t really want anyone there to know about this,” he admitted, apologetically. He scribbled a telephone number on the back of the card before he gave it to her. “I know you’ve already got my number, but I’ll give it you again. I’ve just moved, and I’m ex-directory now, so if you lose it you won’t be able to get in touch.”

They shook hands, both a little awkward. Kate felt the heat and pressure from his even after she was no longer holding it. She watched him walk down the street, a slim figure, already lost in thought, hands shoved casually in his pockets. Catching sight of herself in the restaurant window as she turned away, she saw she had a smile on her face.

“It looks complicated but there’s really nothing to it,” the librarian assured her. He was an earnest-looking young man, red-haired with a complexion that looked permanently windburned. His fingers produced soft clacks from the computer keys, like a stringless piano. “It’s really much easier than dredging your way through piles of books.”

Looking at the messages and text appearing on the screen, Kate doubted that. But the librarian, almost irritatingly helpful, had insisted she use CD-ROM instead of the heavy indexes. Even though it was him doing most of the using. “Okay, what name did you say it was again?” he asked, without looking up from the screen.

“Turner. Alex — or perhaps Alexander — Turner.”

Kate watched as phrases and letters appeared and disappeared from the screen with bewildering speed. She hoped that this would be the last check she would have to run. Although she knew it was only common sense to make sure that the psychologist was who and what he claimed to be, she still felt underhand for not taking him at face value. The first thing she had done when she had returned from the restaurant was to look in the phone Book. The Ealing Mental Health Centre was listed, with the same address and telephone number as on Alex Turner’s business card, although it didn’t give the names of any psychologists working there. Kate had considered for a moment, drumming her fingers on her desk. Then she reached for the phone and dialled. A woman’s voice answered. “Ealing Centre.”

“Hello, could you tell me if you have a Dr Alex Turner working there, please?”

“Yes, we do, but he’s out at the moment. Would you like to leave a message?”

“No, it’s okay, thank you.”

Kate had put down the phone before the woman could ask anything else, feeling a little thrilled and scandalised by her detective work. She tapped Alex Turner’s card on the desk, thoughtfully, then picked up the phone again and dialled Directory Enquiries. “Can you tell me if there’s an Institute of British Psychologists listed, please?” she asked, when the operator answered. There wasn’t. Kate put on her most persuasive voice and asked if there was anything similar. She waited while the operator looked. Would the British Psychological Society do? he asked. Kate said it would. She dialled the number he had given her before she had time to reconsider. A woman answered. Kate plunged straight in. “I’m trying to find out details about a psychologist. His name’s Alex Turner.”

To Kate’s relief, the woman seemed to find nothing odd in the request. “Is he chartered?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” said Kate. She wasn’t even sure what chartered meant. “Does that matter?”

“We only have chartered psychologists registered here. So if he isn’t, I won’t be able to help you.”

Telling herself she should have known it couldn’t be so easy, Kate asked her to try anyway. She spelt out his name and waited as the woman entered it into a computer. “Here we are. Alexander Turner,” the woman announced, taking Kate by surprise. She scrabbled for a pen as the woman reeled off a list of qualifications. Kate recognised some of them from his card. “And this is definitely the same Alex Turner?” she asked. The woman was apologetic. “I can only verify his qualifications. I’m not allowed to give out any addresses or phone numbers unless you’re a member yourself.”

“I’ve got his work address as the Ealing Mental Health Centre, London. Can you at least tell me if that’s the same one you have?”

Kate could feel the woman’s indecision. “Let’s say if it wasn’t I’d tell you,” she said. Kate was about to ring off when the woman asked, “Have you tried Psychological Abstracts?”

“Er... no. What’s that?”

“It’s an index that gives details of any articles a member’s had published. Or there’s the same thing on CD-ROM called PsychLIT.”

She spelt it out. “Any university library should have it.”

Kate thanked her and hung up. She had no intention of digging around in any library. She was satisfied that Alex Turner was legitimate. There was no need to waste her time on pointless exercises.

But the knowledge that an avenue remained unexplored niggled like a stone in her shoe. After spending most of the previous evening telling herself it was a waste of time, that morning she had phoned Clive to tell him she would be late. Then she set off for the university.

The librarian’s windburned face frowned in concentration as his fingers lightly patted the keyboard. “Ah. Here we go,” he said, in a pleased tone. He leaned back so she could see the screen. “He’s got eleven entries. Was it any particular title you were wanting?”

“No, not really.”

The librarian looked momentarily curious, but made no comment. He showed her how to call up a record of each article. “The articles themselves aren’t on CD-ROM, but we should have most of the actual journals on file, if you want photocopies.”

He gave up the chair, reluctantly. “If you want any more help, just ask. I’ll be at the desk.”

Kate assured him she would. She looked at the first record. Some of the information was unintelligible to her, but the title of the article was clear enough: “The role of upbringing and environment in the forming of obsessional behaviour.”

Further down the page was something called an abstract, which she gathered amounted to a brief synopsis:

Obsessional behaviour is frequently attributable to a specific event or events in an individual’s background. Frequently, memory of these has been suppressed, so that the root of the obsession is obscured. This paper suggests that the success of therapy for such obsessions may be substantially increased when these seminal events are recognised. Six patients were helped to recall these using hypnosis, with positive results.

There was nothing of interest there, so Kate moved on to the next record. This article had been published by an American journal, she saw, impressed. The title was “Blood Ties: Impulse-control disorders as an inherited trait?”