Phil Lovesey - Ploughing Potter’s Field

‘That was different,’ I wearily protested. ‘That was yesterday. I just expected something different. Less challenging. He hates me. I must have spoken to him for no more than ten minutes at the most. Came out shaking like a bloody leaf. God knows how I’m going to get through an hour of it.’

Fancy sighed. ‘Look, Adrian. No one’s expecting you to unravel the man. It isn’t possible. He’s a psychopath. You know bloody well he operates beyond the conventional norms of any coded moral behaviour. Just go there, ask your questions, ignore the insults, get out. Business done. And remember, it’s an exercise, invaluable work experience.’

He inhaled on the cigar again, a fairly pointless gesture. The tiny dishevelled room was so full of smoke, all he really needed to do was breathe in. I figured he’d unintentionally shared hundreds of cigars with me and countless other psychology students over the years.

‘I felt hopelessly unprepared,’ I admitted. ‘They just more or less left me with him.’

‘Like one of his victims?’ Fancy stood, turned his back and flipped his fingers through the yellowed Venetian blind, absorbed in the flow of laughing undergraduates passing beneath his window. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Adrian. How you’re out there, dealing with a real case. Your pivotal thesis study-piece. That I wasn’t there in the room, that I didn’t see the look in his eyes, feel the threat of his rhetoric. But you shouldn’t have been there, either. Not Adrian Rawlings. Like I warned you and warned you, you should’ve left him in Doc Allen’s office.’ He turned suddenly. ‘How is the old sod, anyway?’

‘Allen? Sent his best regards. Caustic man, isn’t he?’

Fancy smiled. ‘Same old Neil Allen. Good, reliable, jaundiced Neil Allen. Which is exactly my point.’

‘Oh?’

Fancy sat, and looked for one moment as if he was going to try to put both feet up on the cluttered desk. He opted for leaning back in the swivel chair, hands wrapped around the back of his head. A single plume of dark-blue smoke rose from his cigar, and I momentarily wondered if he might set fire to his hair.

‘Neil Allen conforms to all our expectations of him. Slightly bitter, hard-working, reliable, professionally unexceptional, and altogether notionally sane. An all-around good egg. Plays off a seven handicap, you know. Excellent long putter.’

I nodded as if I followed golf.

‘Frank Rattigan, on the other hand, has a personality seemingly designed to tease, humiliate and ritually mentally abuse the likes of those sent to gain access to it. But I’m afraid we might be crediting him with powers of which we have no proof. We suspect he revels in some kind of game with you. Whereas the reality is more soundly rooted in the explanation that he’s completely insane. Crackers, utterly bonkers. We can’t judge him by our standards and suspicions. Remember, it only becomes a game, old friend, if you agree to play it.’

I sighed, rapidly decoding the waffle. Rattigan’s nuts – don’t make him a clever nutter. ‘Maybe.’

‘We’ve all been there, Adrian. He’s your chance to prove a hundred little theories you’ve secretly developed as a BA/MA student. Just don’t rely on a loony, that’s all.’ He smiled, extinguishing the cigar at last.

I was reluctant to admit it, but there was more than a grain of truth in what he said. Rattigan was my chance, I’d felt it as soon as Fancy’d handed me his file. A real-life case study – a mine of horror and chaos waiting for my ordered explanation – my ground-breaking thesis. But we all think like that, don’t we? We all want to make some sort of contribution, be the first to spot the obvious, develop it, redefine it, have it historically credited to our good selves. It’s called making your mark. It’s a base drive. Animal.

‘He’s bored,’ Fancy announced. ‘And the more you rise to the bait, the more he’ll taunt and tease. Just stick to the script, get the thesis done and forget all about him.’

‘What if I can’t?’

‘Can’t?’

‘What if he calls my wife when I’m out?’

‘He won’t. He’ll be pulled from the interviewing process and his cigarettes and privileges will be withdrawn. Remember this is probably the most exciting thing that’s happened to Rattigan in years. He’s going to stretch it out as long as he can. Next time remember you’re the one in charge. You can end it just as soon as he can. He’ll soon toe the line. The interviews are about the only thing that give him a little bit of temporary status in the hospital.’

‘How are they chosen?’

He stifled a yawn. ‘Oh it’s terribly top secret stuff, dear boy. Committee, proposers, seconders, Home Office types, specialists, the law, a whole plethora of …’

‘I’m being serious.’

‘OK. Basically, once a year, Neil Allen and I try to pair off a PhD student and an inmate.’

‘And did you pick Rattigan for me? I mean specifically for me?’

Fancy smiled. ‘You flatter yourself, Adrian. You suspect we, the sinister conspiratorial authorities, are at some sort of a loss to unlock the dark secrets of his mind. You see us labouring into the night, shaking our heads in weary defeat. Until … until … someone mentions Rawlings! Rawlings is the man for the Rattigan job!’

‘Piss off,’ I laughed, enjoying the energy of Fancy’s pantomime. ‘I just, you know …’

‘Neil Allen sends me a few files on selected members of his client group. I sift through them, pass the occasional one on to students I feel would benefit from the experience. It’s really that simple. Like I said, just stick to the script.’ He stood and squeezed past me to unhook his coat from the back of the door. ‘Hopefully you’ll get another set of letters after your name, after which you may be some sporadic use sat before a police computer compiling some godawful national nutter database, with which to recognize psychotic characteristics at any number of crime scenes.’ His coat was on and buttoned. ‘Now,’ he said, checking his watch. ‘They’re open. Buy me a drink and anaesthetize me before my undergrad lecture this afternoon.’

‘… and during subsequent testing and further detailed psychoanalysis, the subject retained a continuing indifference to the crime of which he is currently accused.

‘Indeed, throughout my investigations the subject proved himself an able communicator and was well acquainted with the potential outcome of his present situation. His thoughts and opinions were mostly ordered, and he showed little reticence in mentally revisiting the crime scene.

‘However, the prolonged ferocity of the attack itself, the abnormal levels of violence perpetrated on the victim point to a mental psychosis borne out by the subsequent psychological analysis.

‘Again and again the subject was confronted with the possibility that his attack was sexually motivated, which he vehemently denied in all instances. His previous encounters with women (if they are to be believed) appear to have taken the pattern of occasional congress with prostitutes.

‘The random nature of the crime of which he is accused also points to one of a number of currently understood sociopathic disorders. According to the subject, in no way did he “choose” his victim. Indeed, the very word “victim” seems entirely alien to him. By his own admission:

‘“She was there. So I did her. Could’ve been any fucker.”

‘Throughout all four interviews with the subject, he repeatedly denied any former involvement with the victim, or that any kind of selection procedure was used.

‘A look through his previous criminal record and associated life history reveals …’

‘So are you going to tell me, or not?’

‘Mmm?’