You Are Dead (10 page)

Hastily, he looked up the man's name and the referral letter from his family GP, a Dr. Edward Crisp in Brighton. The letter was short and terse and the first referral he'd ever had from this doctor. Harrison Hunter was suffering from anxiety, with frequent panic attacks, and Dr. Crisp believed him to be delusional. Van Dam pressed his intercom button and asked his secretary to show him in.

Instantly, for reasons the psychiatrist could not immediately define, this new patient simultaneously both excited and intrigued him—but also sent a wintry chill through his bones.

Van Dam stood up to shake his hand then ushered him to sit on one of the two hard, leather-cushioned antique chairs in front of his desk. For a moment they were forced into silence as an emergency vehicle siren screeched by outside. As the siren faded the only sound for some moments was the hiss of the gas fire in the grate.

Harrison Hunter's body language was extremely awkward. Fifty-five years old, according to the referral note, he looked pleasant enough, conservatively dressed in an off-the-peg business suit, dull shirt and clumsily knotted tie, tinted aviator glasses and sporting a mop of floppy blond hair rather like the style of the politician Boris Johnson. The hair did not match the man's eyebrows and he wondered if perhaps it was a wig.

His new patient moved his hands from his thighs to his knees, scratched both of his cheeks, then the tips of his ears, then patted his thighs and shrugged.

“So, how are you hoping I can help you, Dr. Hunter—may I call you Harrison?” the psychiatrist asked. It was his customary opening line for his first consultation with any new patient. He glanced briefly down at his notes, then placing his elbows on his desk, he steepled his hands, rested his chin on them and leaned forward.

“Harrison is fine.”

“Good. Are you a doctor of medicine?”

“I'm an anesthetist. But a rather unusual one.” Hunter smiled. He had a dry, slightly high-pitched voice that sounded distinctly neurotic.

They were both forced into silence as another siren screamed past, followed by a third. When it faded the psychiatrist asked, “Would you like to tell me in what way you consider yourself to be unusual?”

“I like to kill people.”

Van Dam stared at him with an expressionless poker face. Anesthetists could occasionally be quite spiky, believing their role was as important as the surgeon's, yet they were getting paid less. He'd had one tell him that it was the anesthetist who held the power of life over death in the operating theater and who described surgeons dismissively as nothing more than butchers, plumbers and seamstresses. He had heard most things during his career, and patients often said things calculated to shock him. He remained silent, studying the man's face and body language, then looked straight into the man's eyes. Dead eyes that gave nothing away. He held his silence. Silence was always one of his strongest tactics for encouraging people to talk. It worked.

“The thing is, you see,” Harrison said, “I work in a busy teaching hospital, and I'm expected to lose an average of eight to nine patients a year through adverse reactions to the surgery or anesthetics—from syndromes such as Malignant Hyperthermia. I'm sure you are well aware of the dangers of anesthesia?”

Van Dam continued to fixate on him. “Yes, very aware.”

The anesthetist finally cast his eyes down for some moments. “Every now and then I kill an extra one, and sometimes two, each year, for fun.”

“For fun?”

“Yes.”

“How does this make you feel?”

“Happy. Satisfied. Fulfilled. And it is fun.”

“Would you like to tell me about the kind of
fun
you experience when you kill someone?”

Harrison Hunter balled his fists and raised them in the air. “Power, Dr. Van Dam! It's my power over them. It's an incredible feeling. There isn't any greater power a human being can have than taking the life of another, is there?”

“Not such
fun
for your patients, though.”

“People get what they deserve, don't they? Karma?”

“Some of your patients deserve to be killed?”

“This is what I need to talk to you about—it's why I'm here. Are you a religious man, Dr. Van Dam, or a Darwinian?”

The psychiatrist stared back at him in silence for some moments, blinking. Another emergency service siren dopplered past. Heading to a crime scene? One of this strange man's victims? He picked up his pen and held it with the forefinger and thumb of each hand, focusing on the black barrel and silver cap for some moments. “This consultation is about you, Harrison, not about me and the views I hold. I'm here for you. And before we go any further, I must remind you that I am bound by the requirements of the General Medical Council. I'm not bound to protect a patient's confidentiality if I believe him or her to be a danger to society, these days. The reverse is in fact the case, I am duty bound to report that person. So from what you are telling me, I am duty bound to inform the police about you.”

“But first, Dr. Van Dam, you would have to get out of your office alive, yes?”

Van Dam smiled back at him. He tried not to show his discomfort, but there was something intensely creepy about this man—although at the same time, fascinating. He exuded a deeply troubled darkness. On occasions in his past, working at Broadmoor, he had encountered similarly disturbing people. But he could not remember the last time he had felt himself in the presence of such feral evil. Dr. Crisp had written that his patient was delusional. Was this one of his delusions?

“True, Harrison,” he replied, with a half-hearted laugh. “Oh yes. Yes, of course.”

“You are not going to go to the police, Dr. Van Dam. Firstly, I think you would hate to lose me as a patient. And secondly, I sense that although the law has changed, you don't agree with the change. You're a pretty old-fashioned guy, with old-fashioned views about the sacrosanct right of confidentiality between a doctor and patient. I read a paper you published in the
Lancet
over a decade ago. You put forward a very cogent argument for maintaining it.”

“I wrote that a doctor should not be under a legal obligation, only a moral one. But let's talk more about you. Why are you here, what are you expecting from me? How are you hoping I might be able to help you?”

His patient looked at him with a curious expression. It felt to the psychiatrist that the man was staring right through his soul. “I need to cope with my guilt.”

A number of thoughts went through the psychiatrist's mind. People did die every year from allergic reactions to anesthetics—a tiny percentage of all those who had operations. It was a tragic fact that every anesthetist would lose a few patients over the course of his career. Was this simply Harrison Hunter's way of coping with his guilt, to confess to killing them deliberately? Or was Hunter a fantasist?

Or was he, as he said, really a killer?

The psychiatrist decided to humor him. “I'm not sure I believe what you told me about you killing people deliberately,” Van Dam said. “When you qualified as a doctor of medicine, surely you agreed to be bound by the basic ethics of medicine,
Do no harm.
So tell me why you are really here?”

“I've just told you.” He was silent for some moments, then he said, “There's a local newspaper published in the Brighton area called the
Argus.
Take a look online, later. You'll see a story about skeletal remains of a woman discovered yesterday in a small park close to the seafront, called Hove Lagoon.”

“Why do you want me to look at this story?”

“Because I know who killed her, and why.”

The psychiatrist studied him for some moments, watching his chaotic body language. Then he said, “Have you told the police?”

“No, I haven't.”

“Why not?”

“Because, Dr. Van Dam, you and I need each other.”

“Do we? Can you explain that to me?”

“There's another story in the
Argus
today. It didn't make the printed edition this morning, but you'll be able to read it online. You have a niece, Logan Somerville?”

Van Dam stiffened, visibly. “What about her?”

“Are you very fond of her?”

“I don't discuss my private life with my patients. What does my niece have to do with this?”

“You haven't heard, have you?”

“Heard what?”

“About Logan. She disappeared last night.”

Van Dam blanched. “Disappeared?”

“There's a manhunt going on all over Brighton for her. For your niece. Logan Somerville. You need me very badly.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I'm the only person who may be able to save her life.”

 

23

Friday 12 December

Roy Grace pulled up outside the Chesham Gate apartment building, behind a white Crime Scene Investigation van, a marked police car and two unmarked police vehicles. A short way along, the silver Specialist Search Unit van was straddling the curb in order not to block the narrow street. A small knot of curious onlookers were standing around watching, and a youth was taking pictures with his phone.

On his way here, from the Lagoon, he'd had an idea for the brief, but very emotional speech he had to make on Monday, at Bella's funeral. He jotted it down, then he climbed out into the cold, blustery wind.

Fluttering crime scene tape sealed off the entrance to the car park. The gates were open and a PCSO scene guard stood in front with a clipboard. She directed Roy Grace to the van to suit up. He entered and shared some banter with two search officers, the highly experienced POLSA Sergeant Lorna Dennison-Wilkins and a recent recruit to her team, Scott, who he had not met before, who were having a coffee break.

As he wormed his way into a protective oversuit for the second time this morning, he asked Lorna what was happening and where the Crime Scene Manager, John Morgan, was.

“Lots of pissed-off residents who can't get their cars out, sir. And another bunch who can't get their cars in. You might like to have a word with some of them. John Morgan's in a stroppy mood this morning and not being at his most diplomatic.”

Morgan was good at his job, but not always known for his tact. Protection of a crime scene was vital to prevent contamination, but when it inconvenienced the public, as was often the case, it required a delicate hand to explain the reasons. Mostly the public were understanding and helpful, but some were anything but—those who hated the police, and those who were just plain selfish or bloody-minded.

He signed the scene log and walked down the ramp into the underground car park in his clumsy, ungainly protective blue oversuit and shoes. A wide variety of cars were parked in the bays, including several sleek shapes beneath covers. There was a sharp, dry smell of engine oil, paintwork and dust. Several search officers, similarly clad, were on their hands and knees, shoulder to shoulder inside a taped-off area. Further along he saw another officer from the unit, on top of the SSU's portable scaffolding tower, checking behind a roof-light fitting.

The stocky figure of John Morgan appeared from around a corner and greeted him with a surly but polite, “Morning, boss!”

“What do you have, John?”

The Crime Scene Manager shook his head. “Something that might be of interest—a footprint in a patch of engine oil.” He led Grace over to an empty parking bay next to where the Fiat had been parked, where there was a small pool of black sludge on the ground. “Looks like a male, because of the size. There are several weaker prints heading across toward the far end of the car park, but that's it.” Then he pointed up at a CCTV camera. “If that had been working, we might have got a lot more that could be useful.”

Accompanied by Morgan, Grace walked around the entire car park, noting the fire escapes, the lift and the main steps up beside it. Plenty of ways in which someone could enter pretty much unnoticed except by cameras. Then the caretaker took them to the couple's flat, where Grace had met the boyfriend last night. Morgan told Grace that Logan Somerville's laptop and mobile phone had been taken across to the High Tech Crime Unit for a high-priority examination. In particular they'd be looking at recent calls, her e-mails and social networking sites to see if there were any clues to her disappearance there.

The boyfriend was lined up for a 1 p.m. appeal on the local news, with Grace. Meanwhile the police CCTV camera footage around the city was being examined for any sightings of Logan Somerville, or the estate car that had been seen in the area.

The good news was that most of the mispers reported annually in the UK turned up within a few days, and there was always a raft of different explanations for their absence.

Was Logan Somerville going to turn up within a few days, with a perfectly plausible explanation for her absence? He had a bad feeling about this particular young woman. The report by her fiancé of her screaming. The vehicle coming out of the underground car park at high speed around the same time. Despite Jamie Ball's alibi that would appear to eliminate him from suspicion, Roy Grace was not happy about this man. No one at this stage would be eliminated entirely. He'd be in a better position to decide on the young man after he had been interviewed, and in particular, after his performance at the televised appeal, later. Would he be shedding real or crocodile tears?

He looked at a photograph of the pair in cycling outfits; then at another of them lying on a beach. A young, attractive, happy-looking couple, like a thousand other young lovers, seemingly without a care in the world. Except, in his jaded cynicism, he didn't believe there were many people who genuinely could say they didn't have a care in the world. Everyone had some kind of a problem they had to deal with.

His phone rang. He answered it, looking down at the signal on the display which showed just one dot. “Roy Grace.”