The Red Room (7 page)

7

I woke and slept in snatches and then finally
I woke up late. I gulped some coffee as
I ran around getting myself ready. Julie came
out of her room wearing nothing except an old
jacket of mine she must have found in the cupboard
of the spare room that I had made a partial
attempt at turning into a study. Now her
room. We were going to have to have a talk about things.
She looked like a rodent that had been dragged out of
hibernation. Her hair was a mass of fluff, her
eyes narrow as if she needed to keep out of the
light. "I didn't know you were getting up so
early," she said. "I'd have made you some
breakfast."
"It's twenty to nine," I said, "and I'm in
a rush."
"I'll do some shopping," she said.
"Don't bother."
"It's no bother."

I drove back to the police station with a feeling
of ominous inevitability, like when I was fifteen
years old and taking my first real exams. I
sat very straight in the driver's seat, and 99
clenched my hands on the wheel. Every bit of my
body felt tight. My spine was like a metal
rod. My neck muscles strained. My jaw
clenched involuntarily. My head throbbed as if
someone was thrumming against my temples with their
knuckles. "Idiot, idiot, idiot," I
muttered to myself under my breath, stuck at a
traffic light that went red, green, red without any
cars moving because a tractor trailer was blocking
the road. It was raining steadily. Outside, a
few people scuttled by under umbrellas,
side-stepping the puddles and dog shit on the
pavements. Gray, clogged, mucky London.
My report lay beside me on the passenger seat.
It was about six hundred words long. Brief and
to the point. The tapes were in a plastic
shopping-bag beside it.
At the police station, I reversed into a parking
space and heard the ominous scrape of metal on
metal. The funny thing is that when it happens
to you, you almost feel it, as if the car's bodywork was
your own skin.
"Shit."
The back of my car was jammed up against the
gleaming blue paintwork of a horribly
expensive-looking BMW. I climbed out into the
downpour, and examined the long thin scratch I'd
made on the other car. My own had suffered even
more, with a light broken and one panel like
screwed-up newspaper. I fished a notebook
out of my bag and wrote a note of apology,
together with my car's registration number and my own
phone number, folded it several times to protect
it against the wet, and tucked it under the BMW'S
wipers. I'd failed to bring an umbrella and
I was already soaking. Water trickled down the
back of my neck. I picked up the report and
dropped it into my bag.
Furth was sitting at a table in the conference
room with a clipboard in front of him, but he
got up when I came in, giving a friendly nod.
With him was a woman with prematurely gray
hair and a smooth, placid face whom I had
met once before, a young beanpole of a PC, and a
bulky man with straggly hair around a bald
pate and small, shrewd blue eyes.
"Just the person," Furth said. "Were your ears
burning? Let me take your coat. Here, you know
Jasmine, don't you? Jasmine 101
Drake. And this is DCI Oban. He's my
governor. Coffee? Tea? Nothing?"
I looked at Oban with some alarm. "Don't
mind me," he said. "I was just looking in."
"No tea for me," I said, easing myself into an
orange plastic chair and putting my report,
in its blank white envelope, in front of me.
"You asked me to deliver this in person. Here it
is."
"Nice one," Furth said, with a look across at
Oban. Then he winked at me. "She looks
gentle, but you've got to watch yourself."
I slid my finger under the sealed flap and tore
it open. "Do you want this?"
"Before you start, you might like to know that we've
brought Doll in."
"What?"
"Apart from your report, things are moving ahead.
There are divers in the canal as we speak. His
own testimony places him in the area, there's his
suspicious behavior before and after, and his own taped
confession, of course. It's all bubbling away
nicely. Everything done to the letter, don't worry.
Legal aid, of course. John Coates.
He's on his way now. You must know him."
I'd met him once in here with Francis.
Nice, smiled a lot. You'd want him for your
bank manager rather than your lawyer. I looked
at Jasmine Drake, but she was doodling on her
notebook and wouldn't look up. I glanced across
at Oban and was disconcerted to find his pale,
unblinking eyes on me. I pulled out the single
sheet of paper and placed it on the table in front
of me.
"Is that it?" said Furth.
"Summarize it for us, please, Dr.
Quinn." The voice was Oban's.
"Let him go."
The room filled up with silence. I could hear
my heartbeat. It was quite steady. I felt better
with it out, now that I had crossed the line.
"What?"
"Unless there's other evidence you haven't told
me about, I don't see a case. As yet."
Furth's face flushed. That was the worst
moment. I was meant to be on his side but now it
seemed that I wasn't. "You don't know what
you're talking about," he said, not looking me in the
eye.
I took a deep breath. "Then you 103
shouldn't have asked me for my report."
"It's your report I'm bloody talking
about," said Furth, with a sudden angry hilarity, as
if this were something that could be laughed away. "You were just
asked to assess Doll. That's all. A
simple brief. He's a pervert. Isn't
he? That's all you have to say. Anthony Michael
Doll's a pervert."
"He's a disturbed young man with violent and
lurid fantasies."
"So what--was
"Fantasies. There's a difference between the
fantasy and the act."
"He's confessed and he will confess again. You'll
see."
"No. He fantasized during sexual acts
with WPC Dawes." I looked around. That had
done it. There was silence. "Did you know? Did you
know that when she encouraged--her word for it--him
to talk, she was jerking him off, allowing him
to fondle her? Did you encourage it, without
actually spelling it out? Interests would be best
served, that sort of thing. Wasn't she getting good
enough material at first? Anyway, it doesn't
matter. It's not a confession, it's a piece of
pornography."
"Listen, Kit." His face was flushed. "I
should never have brought you in. That was my mistake.
I should have realized that after your accident your
judgement might be impaired. You're actually
identifying with Michael Doll, protecting him
in some strange way. It's like people falling in love
with their kidnappers." He stole a glance at
Oban, then turned his concerned face back to me.
"We thought we were helping you, but now I see we
were wrong. It was all too early. So maybe we
should just say thank you for your time, and we'll
reimburse you."
I said, as mildly as I could manage, "You
told Colette Dawes to solicit a confession
from Michael Doll. Did she know what she was
dealing with? Did she get carried away?"
"He's a murderer," Furth said, openly
scornful. "We know he is and you bloody well
ought to know he is. We just need to prove it before a
jury. WPC Dawes did a fine job in
difficult conditions."
I looked him in the eyes. "Was this your
idea?"
Furth made an obvious attempt 105
to speak calmly. "We've got a murderer in
there," he said. "In my opinion. We've
built a case. We've got a confession. If
we've stretched the rules a little, I'd have thought
you would approve of that, Kit, of all people.
We're on the side of the women--the one who has
been killed and the others who will be."
"I think you've misunderstood me," I said,
hearing my voice tremble. Was it nervousness or
anger? "I'm not saying that Michael Doll cannot
have killed this woman, but you've got no case.
I'm here as someone who works with the emotionally troubled
and the criminally insane, not a lawyer, but I would
guess that that tape would be entirely inadmissible
in any trial. More than that, I reckon that if
any judge heard it, he would throw the whole
case out for the most blatant entrapment." I
looked at him, his handsome face. "If I were you,
I would bury that tape in a very deep hole and
pray that Doll's lawyer never ever hears about it.
In any case, I want no more to do with the case."
"That's the first sensible thing you've said."
That did it.
"This whole thing," I said, almost gasping for
breath, "is a fucking grotesque obscenity.
And you"--this was to Jasmine Drake--"y should know
better. And I don't just mean as a
policewoman. As a bloody woman. And that
goes for you too." I turned to DCI Oban,
who was sitting apart, with a blank expression on his
large, soft, slightly florid face. I
looked furiously at the report lying on the
table, the report that was expressed in such calm and
scientific language.
Oban didn't reply to me. He stood up
and as he opened the door he looked at Furth
with a gloomy expression that reminded me of a very
old, wrinkled bloodhound. "Let him go," he
said, in a voice that was soft and almost casual.
"Who?"
"Mickey Doll. Anything else?"
Nobody spoke. Now he looked at me.
"Send us your invoice, Doctor, or whatever it
is you normally do. Thank you." But he didn't
sound very grateful. I had spoiled his day. Then
he left. Jasmine Drake followed, with a
narrow-eyed glance at me before she disappeared into the
corridor outside.
I was alone with Furth, who was sitting in
silence, staring at the wall. I got up 107
to go. The sound of my chair scraping on the floor
woke him from his reverie. He seemed surprised
that I was still there. He spoke as if he were in a
dream. "It'll be your fault," he said, "when
he does it again. He did it to you, he did it
to that girl, and outside, walking around, is someone
-comprobably, shall we say probably?--that
he'll do it to next."
"Goodbye, Furth," I said, leaving. "I'm,
um, you know ..."
"Keep an eye on the newspapers," he
called after me, having to shout to be heard. "This
week, next week--it'll be there."

8

As I reached the street I was trembling with
suppressed emotion. I wanted to do something
extreme and violent, like throwing a large object
through a shop window or leaving the country, assuming
a new identity and never coming back to Britain as
long as I lived. I would settle for going
home, locking the door and not emerging for a week.
When I got back to my car, the BMW was
gone. Doubtless I would soon be hearing from an
insurance company. "We have been notified by our
client ..." A scrape along two panels.
How much would that cost?
My flat had a wonderful clattery
emptiness about it. Julie wasn't home. This was
a precious opportunity. I ran a bath,
poured some exotically and absurdly named salts
into the water, grabbed a newspaper and a magazine
and slid into the water like a walrus. I quickly
tossed aside the newspaper and read the
magazine: I read about the five best
country-house weekend getaways for under a
hundred pounds, I learned seven ways to shock
your man in bed and I answered a questionnaire
entitled "Are You a Homebody or a Party
Animal?" It turned out that I was a party
animal. Why did I so rarely go to parties?
Finally I tossed aside the magazine as
well and slowly slid down the bath until only
my nose and mouth protruded above the surface
of the water. Unconcerned, I heard the phone
ring, once, and the intervening beep of the
answering-machine. I imagined lying in a flotation
tank. A saline solution adjusted to give you
perfect buoyancy, maintained at the 109
same temperature as that of your body. Darkness.
What was the point? were you totally detached or
totally absorbed? I knew that either a very short
time felt extremely long or else it was the
other way round.
I felt a succession of thumps and the slamming
of the door. Julie. It sounded as if she had
kicked the door shut. Time to get back into the
world. I dried myself slowly as if to delay the
inevitable, then wrapped the towel around my body
and stepped out.
"Fantastic," said Julie. "Bath in the
daytime. That's the way to live."
"It feels a bit illicit," I
admitted, though at the same time I felt
irritated at being teased for self-indulgence
by somebody who had spent years drifting around the
world.
"Don't worry about supper," she said
brightly. "I was looking at a couple of your
cookbooks and I went out and did some shopping.
Are you in this evening?"
"Yes, but I hadn't really planned--was
"Great. Let me take care of you. It's a
secret but don't worry about it. It's all very
light. Very healthy. By the way there's a message
for you on the answering-machine from someone called
Rosa. Sorry, I didn't know you were here and
I was expecting a call. I'm not sure if I
pressed the right button. I might have erased it
by mistake."
She had. I went and got dressed very quickly and
simply. I wasn't going out. I pulled on
some white jeans and a pale blue sweater. I was
tempted to ignore Rosa's message. I
couldn't think of any good news it could possibly
be. But I counted to ten and dialed.
"We need to meet," Rosa said immediately.
"What for?"
"It's to do with the police. I understand you didn't
follow my advice. It's not exactly a
surprise, but it would have been nice to have been
told."
"Oh," I said, with my heart sinking. "Right.
Shall I come in sometime tomorrow?"
"I'd like to see you today. Is it all right if
I see you at home?"
"Why? I mean fine," I said.
"I'll be about an hour," Rosa said, and
hung up. 111
I began a farcically ineffectual attempt
at tidying the living room to the slightly alarming
sounds of Julie doing things in the kitchen. In
fact, it was barely forty-five minutes before there
was a knock at the door.
I ran down the stairs and opened the door with a
rehearsed cheery greeting that froze as I looked
out on the step. "Oh," was all that I could
manage, which I think was what I had said to Rosa
on the phone.
"I'm not alone," she said.
She wasn't alone. Standing beside her was
Detective Chief Inspector Oban. Behind
him was a car. A BMW.
"I'm sorry about the car," I said. It was
all I could think of, but as I said it I realized
that if you can only think of one thing it doesn't
mean you have to say it. It may be that the one thing you can
think of is the very worst thing to say. "It was
completely my fault. I'll pay for it at
once. I know that the first rule of crashing is never
to admit responsibility but it was completely my
responsibility."
Rosa looked puzzled and Oban gave a
faint smile. "A parking problem," he said to her
in explanation. Then he looked back at me.
"That was you, was it? There was a note, but it had been
rained on. Don't worry, I think the damage
will be treated as having happened in the course of
duty."
"Which it did," I said. "In a way."
I had run out even of foolish things to say, so
I held open the door and stood aside as they
made their way past me. At first I'd thought, in
some paranoid way, that it was because of the damage to the
car, leaving the scene of a crime, or something like that.
But it clearly wasn't that, so what was going on?
Had some sort of official complaint been made?
I followed them up the stairs. As we reached the
living room, Julie came out of the kitchen
looking rather striking in a striped butcher's apron,
my apron. She looked surprised. I
introduced everybody.
Oban shook hands with Julie slightly
awkwardly. "You're, erm--was he said.
"Julie's staying here for a few days," I
interrupted.
What was he talking about? Then I looked at
Julie, tall, tanned, Amazonian. Oh,
God, he probably thought this was some 113
sort of gay thing. I considered trying to explain
our relationship, then couldn't really see the point.
"I'm just making our supper," Julie said,
sounding horribly domestic. "Do you want
to stay?"
"It's just a work meeting," I said hurriedly.
The thought of Julie and me starting to entertain as a
couple made me shudder.
"You're really a detective?" Julie said
to Oban.
"I really am," he said.
"That must be amazing."
"Not most of the time." Oban looked toward
Rosa, who had picked out a book from a shelf and
was flicking through it with a frown of concentration. "Could
you excuse us?" he said, with careful politeness
to Julie.
"What? Me?" said Julie in surprise.
"I'll get back to the kitchen."
She scuttled away. When she was gone,
Rosa pushed the book back into the shelf and
turned to me.
"Please sit down," I said.
We all sat, slightly awkwardly, with
Rosa and me side by side on the sofa, while
Oban pulled over the chair so that he faced me.
"Dan Oban phoned me this morning--was
"Rosa," I interrupted, "I know I should have
..."
She held up a hand to silence me. "Wait,"
she said. She turned to Oban. "Dan?" They
obviously knew each other well.
"I'm sorry about all this," I charged in again,
before he could speak. "I was in a bit of a state
anyway, and I was so cross about the entrapment, the
whole idea of it, that I couldn't stop myself. But
it was unprofessional and ..."
"You were right," Oban said.
I couldn't see his expression because as he
spoke he was leaning forward, rubbing his eyes. He
was tired.
"What?"
"The whole idea was disastrous. You were right.
I've been talking to some people in Legal and, as you
said, it's likely that the tape would be totally
inadmissible as evidence. That poor girl was
leading Doll by the nose. As it were." He
gave a sheepish grin toward Rosa, which he
suppressed immediately when she frowned back.
"So," I said, with a shrug. "Good." 115
"That's not what I was coming to say. I rang
Dr. Deitch because I want you back."
"Back?"
"That was good, clear-headed work. I want you on
the investigation."
"I don't think that's a good idea."
"Why?"
"Lots of reasons. For a start, can you imagine
me working with Furth again? He was steaming."
"Furth's my problem. He is no longer in
charge of the investigation, anyway. I am."
"Oh," I said. "But, still, I don't think
I've got anything to offer. I haven't done much
of this sort of thing before. Any, really. I just work
with men like Doll. I've got no ideas."
Oban stood up and paced toward the window, then
turned. "This is a simple case," he said.
"This is the most basic, horrible murder. Find
a woman in a lonely place, kill her, run
away. He's still out there. We just need to get a
bit lucky. Just a little bit and we'll get
him."
"Why did you ring Rosa?" I said
suspiciously. "Why not me?"
"Because he wanted to know what I thought," Rosa
said.
"You mean whether I'm crazy?" I said.
Rosa couldn't keep a straight face. "I
wouldn't presume to comment on that," she said. "He
wanted to know if it was fair to ask you."
"And you said?"
"That he should ask you."
"You mean ask me whether it was fair to ask
me?"
She shrugged.
"What do you think?" said Oban.
"I'll think about it," I said tamely.
"That's good," said Oban. "I just want you
aboard. You name the terms. You've got a free
hand. I'll give you whatever you need."
The door burst open and Julie appeared.
She was carrying a tray. Where the hell had she
found that? On it were three dishes.
"Before you say anything," she said, "this isn't
supper. It's just a snack. You'd like some,
wouldn't you, Mr. Detective?"
"Very much," said Oban, looking at the tray
eagerly. "What is it?"
"They're the simplest things. This is some ham
and figs, this is an artichoke salad and 117
this is just a little omelette made with zucchini.
I'll get some plates."
She returned, not just with plates and forks but with
glasses and an opened bottle of red wine. A
very expensive bottle of wine belonging to Albie
that he had forgotten to collect but would remember
sometime in the future. So Julie was good for something
after all. She generously topped up our
glasses. Both Oban and Rosa helped themselves
to all three dishes.
"This is very good, Julie," Rosa said.
"Delicious," said Oban. "I must say, this
seems a very good arrangement. How long have you and
Kit, you know, er ..."
"Oh, just a couple of weeks," said Julie
brightly.
I drained my glass in one gulp.