Val McDermid - The Last Temptation

There was a moment of silence, electric and pregnant. Then Tony jumped to his feet and said, ‘More coffee. I need more coffee. And then we need to plan what we’re going to do next.’

‘Next?’ Carol said, following him into the hall.

‘Yes. We haven’t got much time. We need to start role-playing right away.’

Before Carol could answer, there was the unmistakable sound of a key turning in the lock. They both swivelled round to face the front door, their faces rigid with surprise. The door swung open to reveal a trim woman in her late thirties. She pulled her key out of the lock, giving them both a smile whose warmth evaded her eyes. ‘Hi, you must be Carol,’ Frances said, pushing the door to behind her, stuffing her keys into her pocket and holding out her hand. Her eyes were scanning Carol from head to toe, taking in the short skirt with a slight raise of the eyebrows.

Carol shook it automatically.

‘Carol, this is Frances,’ Tony gabbled.

‘Why on earth are you hanging around in the hall?’ Frances asked.

‘We were going to make more coffee,’ Tony said, backing into the kitchen doorway.

‘I’m sorry to butt in,’ Frances said, steering Carol into the living room. ‘I feel so stupid about this. But I left a pile of fourth-year jotters that I was marking last night. I was in such a rush, I clean forgot them this morning. And I need to give them their essays back tomorrow.’

Yeah, right, thought Carol, watching with a cynical eye as Frances picked up a pile of school notebooks tucked away round the far side of the sofa.

‘I was just going to sneak in and fetch them. But if you were breaking for a cup of coffee, I might as well join you.’ Frances turned and fixed Carol with a sharp stare. ‘Unless I’m interrupting something?’

‘We’d just reached a natural break,’ Carol said stiffly. She knew she should say something along the lines of how pleased she was to meet Frances, but while she might have what it took to go undercover, she still didn’t feel comfortable lying in a social situation.

‘Tony?’ Frances called. ‘I’ll stop for a quick coffee, if that’s OK.’

‘Fine,’ came the reply from the kitchen. Carol was reassured to hear he sounded as enthusiastic as she felt.

‘You’re not at all how I’d imagined you,’ Frances said, chilly dismissal in her voice.

Carol felt fourteen again, snagged on the jagged edge of her maths teacher’s sarcasm. ‘Most people don’t have much idea about what cops are really like. I mean, we’ve all been to school, we know what to expect from teachers. But people tend to rely on TV for their images of police officers.’

‘I don’t watch much TV myself,’ Frances said. ‘But from the little that Tony has said about you, I was expecting someone more … mature, I suppose is the word. But look at you. You look more like one of my sixth-year students than a senior police officer.’

Carol was spared from further sparring by Tony’s return. They sat around for twenty minutes making small talk, then Frances gathered up her marking and left them to it. After he saw her out, Tony came back into the room shaking his head ruefully. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said.

‘You can’t blame her,’ Carol said. ‘Probably just as well you weren’t showing me the view from the upstairs rooms, though.’

It should have been a cue for laughter. Instead, Tony looked at the carpet and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans. ‘Shall we get on?’ he said.

They’d worked on various role-plays for the rest of the evening, not even stopping over dinner. It was demanding work, taking all Carol’s concentration. By the time the taxi came to take her back to her hotel, she was worn out from the combination of exercising her imagination and exorcizing her emotions. They said their farewells on the doorstep, stepping into an awkward hug, his lips brushing the soft skin under her ear. She’d wanted to burst into tears, but had held herself tightly in check. By the time she’d returned to the hotel, she felt only a hollowness in her stomach.

Now, as she stared out across the sea, Carol allowed herself to acknowledge her anger. It wasn’t directed at Tony; she acknowledged he had never held out an unfulfilled promise to her. Her fury was all turned against herself. She had no one else to blame for the emotional heartburn that plagued her.

She knew she had two choices. She could let this rage fester inside her like a wound that could poison her whole system. Or she could finally draw a line under the past and use that energy to drive her forward into the future. She knew what she wanted to do. The only question was whether she could manage it.

Case Notes

Name:Pieter de Groot

Session Number:1

Comments:The patient’s lack of affect is notable. He is unwilling to engage and shows a disturbing level of passivity. Nevertheless, he has a high opinion of his own capabilities. The only subject on which he seems willing to discourse is his own intellectual superiority. His self-image is grandiose in the extreme.

His demeanour is not justified by his achievement, which seems best described as mediocre. However, his view of his capacities has been bolstered by a nexus of colleagues who, for unspecified reasons, have demonstrated a lack of willingness to question his own valuation of himself. He cites their failure in this respect as a demonstration of support for his own estimation of his standing in the community.

The patient lacks insight into his own condition.

Therapeutic Action:Altered state therapy initiated.

The laden Rhineship ploughed on towards Rotterdam, its glassy bow wave barely altering as the brown river widened, the Nederrijn imperceptibly becoming the Lek, then taking in the broad flow of the Nieuwe Maas. For most of the morning, he’d been blind to the passing scenery. They’d drifted through small, prosperous towns, with their mixture of tall townhouses and squat industrial buildings, church spires stabbing the flat grey skies, but he couldn’t have described a single one of them, save from memory of previous trips. He’d registered neither the grassy dykes that obscured the lengthy stretches of flat countryside nor the graceful sweeps of road and rail bridges that broke up the long reaches of river.

The pictures he kept seeing were very different. The way Pieter de Groot had crumpled to the floor when he’d hit him on the back of his head with the sap he’d made himself, sewing the soft chamois leather with tight stitches then stuffing it with bird-shot. He couldn’t imagine himself ever doing what de Groot had done, trusting a stranger enough to turn his back on him within five minutes of meeting. Anyone that careless of his safety deserved what was coming to him.

More thrilling pictures. The panic in the heartless bastard’s eyes when he’d come round to find himself bound naked to the top of his own desk. Curiously, his terror had subsided when the bargee had spoken. ‘You’re going to die here,’ he’d said. ‘You deserve it. You’ve played at being God. Well, now I’m going to teach you what happens when somebody plays God with you. You’ve fucked up people’s heads for too long, and now it’s your turn to get fucked up. I can make it fast because, believe me, you don’t want it to be slow. But if you scream when I take the gag out of your mouth, I’m going to hurt you so much you’ll be begging to die.’ He’d been surprised by the reaction. His first victim had struggled, refusing to accept it was pointless. That, it seemed to him, was a natural response. It had irritated him, because it had made his work more difficult. But he’d respected it. It was how a man should behave.