Phil Lovesey - Ploughing Potter’s Field

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.

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.’