Director's Cut (27 page)

“The saviour delusion?”

“Jesus Christ? Too late. It’ll have to be another time.”

Anian Stanford came out of the crowd of kozzers and said abruptly,
“Can I join you, or is this private?”

Cole was caught off guard. He managed, “Anian.”

She flashed him a nervous smile, placed a glass of red wine on the
table, hooked her bag on the chair arm and slithered into the seat. She
looked from Maynard to Cole. The pause became an awkward silence
before she said, “Maybe this was bad idea.”

Maynard jumped in and smiled warmly, “We were talking business,
work from work, and you’re very welcome.”

She looked at Cole and said, “Don't let me stop you.”

As he met her gaze through a trail of smoke Cole gave nothing
away. He said flatly, “Sam said the interview was a disaster?”
“Sam was right. I wasn't there, obviously, but I heard every word.”
Maynard put in, “During your session with Lawrence what did you
discuss?”

She flashed the therapist an uncomfortable glance. Even before
their first encounter she had heard about him. Who hadn’t? People who
made a living reading between the lines were always unsettling.
Apprehension dried her mouth and she took another sip of wine. She
held on to the glass and said, “I made out I was a neighbour – a friend

– of Helen Harrison, had seen the painting he did for her and wanted
one of me. I told him it would make an ideal present for my husband.”
“I didn’t know you were married.”

“I’m not. Is it important?”

Maynard shrugged. “Maybe not, but most people can tell. And John
Lawrence knows more about psychology than most psychologists.
Don’t let him fool you. He’s as dangerous as they come. There’s only
one place for people like him and it’s not on the streets.”

Cole cut in. “I assume he was given the all clear?”

Maynard smiled. It was a psychologist’s joke. He said, “You really
don’t want to go there. A personality disorder is just about the most
imprecise term in the medical dictionary. It covers everything from the
obsessive-compulsive to the narcissistic to the paranoid to the schizoid.
You can control it, if you’re lucky, but you can never cure it. As
someone once said about X-rays, there’s no such thing as a safe dose
of radiation. The same goes with the personality disorder.” He turned
back to Anian. “Have you been involved in undercover work before?”
She shook her head.

Cole said sharply, "And as far as we're concerned she's not doing it
again.”

Maynard nodded. He’d hit a nerve. He said, “The fine line between
eliciting an admission and entrapment.”

“I know the difference," she said evasively. “Inspector Wooderson
has already pointed it out. It’s done with now so it doesn’t matter.”
Cole ground out his cigarette. “Let’s have some background, Geoff.
The original sheets leave a lot of holes.”

Maynard paused for a moment while the past flooded back and
once again he was looking for links to that mysterious agent that tipped
a man toward insanity. He said, “An only child. Until national service
his father was a local-authority driver who spent most of his time down
the bookies or in the local. When he was posted away John and his
mother were left sharing a council-house in South London with
another, equally impoverished family. But his mother was the driving
force whether his father was there or not and they formed an intense
attachment. His father was posted to Cyprus and eventually they joined
him there. In the military school in Nicosia Lawrence proved to be an
average student, and the only thing that stood him out was his
unwillingness or inability to make friends. Classmates and teachers
that we traced all mentioned that he was shy and very much a loner.”
Maynard smiled and for a moment came back from the past. “It’s
become something of a cliché, hasn’t it? Find me the loner and I’ll
show you next year’s problem.” He nodded and continued, “He went
through his school life without a girlfriend. A-level results earned him
a university place. But let’s go back to Cyprus. He was eight when his
brother arrived. Massive complications during the pregnancy resulted
in his mother coming back to the UK where she was hospitalized for
some months. Even after the birth mother and baby were in and out of
hospital and this is the first indication we have that the relationship
between Lawrence and his mother was under pressure. With children,
perceived rejection is even stronger than jealousy. In Lawrence’s case
I’m pretty certain that this perceived rejection lit the fuse. Despite two
major operations to correct a congenital heart condition, his brother
died at the age of two. His mother never got over it. Alcohol, liver
disease, premature death at thirty-nine. John was nineteen.”
Maynard looked from Anian to Cole, waiting for a response. It was
too equivocal for Cole. He shook his head and murmured, “What
else?”

“Nothing else. The trauma’s never left.”

Anian’s eyes narrowed in concentration. “I don’t buy it. You don’t
go attacking people because of childhood rejection.”

“Some people do. There’s not enough weight given to rejection at a
certain age. Think of the crimes of passion in the adult world. The
suicides. There is nothing more devastating than rejection.”
Cole lit another JPS and through smoke asked, “What became of
his father?”

Maynard nodded. “Good question. He left the forces on

compassionate grounds, obviously, and a couple of years after
Lawrence’s mother died he married again. This was in the mid-sixties
when Lawrence was at university. After that they met only a handful of
times. His father, complete with new family, emigrated to Australia.
He came back for the trial and there were a couple of photographs
taken outside the Bailey but that was about it.”

Cole said, “Earlier you mentioned Jesus Christ. What were you
getting at?”

“We were discussing motives. I was convinced there was a
religious connection.”

“Knifing women?”

“Pregnant women. I was thinking about the massacre of the
innocents, one of Herod’s moments of infanticide – and there were
many. But that was to do with the death of male children and when
Lawrence carried out his attacks he couldn’t have known the sex of the
unborn child. Even if he had the medical records back in seventy-six
sexing was not the general rule. Even then, he was clever enough to
have made the distinction.”

Cole said, “So, you've changed your mind?”

“I still think there's a religious connection.”

“So, religion. What else?”

“Sex, obviously, and its result, pregnancy, and then the slaughter.”
Cole said, “But against the child, not the woman?”

“That’s where I was going. But it was a long time ago.” He turned
to Anian. “If you meet him again, don’t mention you’re pregnant.”
“I'm not.”

“Don't mention it anyway."

She laughed. Then realized Maynard was serious.

Cole said pointedly, “She’s not going to meet him again, Geoff.”
Maynard watched them, fascinated by the strange chemistry of
attracting opposites.

Cole continued, “She’s going to stay right out of the way.”
Maynard smiled as though he knew something that Cole did not.
“Of course she is,” he murmured. “It was just speculation.” He glanced
again at Anian and in that fleeting exchange, her tell-tale eyes betrayed
her.

Geoff Maynard hoped that he was mistaken and that she had indeed
called a halt to the sittings, for he knew without a doubt that she
wouldn’t stand a chance with Mr John Lawrence.

Before he slept Cole thought about the woman. He wondered whether
there was any truth in the rumour that she had kept Jack Wooderson
busy for a few months. Perhaps it was the ambiguity that he found so
unsettling, the element of uncertainty, that she could be frivolous and
irresponsible and yet, a moment later, quite cold and relentless.
Somewhere there, lay the appeal.

In the next room where the windows and curtains were fully opened,
where the lights from the traffic came in with the chilled air and skirted
over the flower-patterned wallpaper – a reminder that Cole had once
been married – Geoff Maynard was thinking about another woman
If indeed it was a woman.

She's new in town, he thought, she had to be, and yet her knowledge
of the area indicated otherwise. But people didn’t recognize her and, what was
more, she had no fear of confrontation with the competition. So if she was local
could it mean…

Maynard’s frown became almost painful.

…that she was dressed as the tom no one recognized!

Belle de Jour?

In this case the shrinking violet dressed up like a temptress? Able to
go so far but no further and then, out of frustration, attacking the
person she actually wanted to be.

Could this be something as simple or as complex as genophobia?
Maynard tried to shake the thought from his head.

Start again. People don't start this way. They start in little ways and
while they are learning they leave behind a little form. The learning
curve. Antisocial behaviour, shoplifting, minor infringements that
carried nothing more than a warning. So where did she come from?
Where was she staying? The answer lay in the Square, on that kerb of
crawlers.

Maynard found sleep difficult at the best of times, but during a case
it was almost impossible. He worried it until it was done. That was
why after HOPE he had given it up and gone back to therapy.
Interaction was where it mattered, where you could rebuild a shattered
life. The people who shattered the lives came at you like waves on a
spring tide and like Cole had said earlier, he wasn’t King Canute. You
could get one or two but there would always be more stacking up
behind. They rolled in, wave after wave, bringing with them acts of
depravity and wickedness that the civvies – the good citizens of this
green and pleasant land – could not even imagine.

We see things that no one should see. We hear things that no one
should hear.

Coming back was personal, nothing to do with Cole or Baxter or
the closure of HOPE, his old department. If Cole knew why he had
come back he would have laughed out loud. Everyone had secrets.
Didn’t they just? This wasn’t about the challenge. This was about selfharm.
The dawn stole in from an overcast sky and set the day. Sam Butler
was well aware that time was running out. What had seemed like
crucial breakthroughs were simply not delivering and a sense of panic
gnawed at his gut. He said, “They've held on to it since seventy-six?”
Anian shrugged and bony shoulders ridged her thin shirt. “It was
high profile. And they still use it at Hendon. It was quoted verbatim in
one of those true-crime books called…”

He was standing over her. A button was undone and he caught sight
of some blue bra. Without looking away he said, “
The Underground
Slasher
.”

“Absolutely. Guess who wrote it?”

“Wouldn’t be a guy named Maynard, would it?”

Anian threw him a flirty smile. She bent slightly forward – he was
sure it was unintentional – and showed him some more of the vale.
“I read it,” Sam Butler said, trying to pull back a memory, but the
view was in the way and it wouldn't come. He shook his head – the
vale of tears was right, he thought – and went on, “Crime does pay.”
“It paid even more than that. It was serialized in the Sundays.” She
pressed play and the voice of John Lawrence came through. Not as
resonant but unmistakable.

“I was a gentle child and so quiet that people would say I wasn’t
there when in fact I was. It got me into trouble on more than one
occasion when my parents would ask how I had behaved at a particular
function only to be told I wasn’t there. I was very shy and you would
always find me in a corner, hiding. It was only later that it came to me
I didn’t have to hide, that in fact, no one noticed me anyway.
“My father was in the army. We were posted to Cyprus. It was well
before the country was partitioned but even then Makarios was causing
trouble. He was a dangerous man. We lived in Nicosia in a white villa
next to a dried-up riverbed. I remember we used to find a lot of dead
cats in Nicosia. Wherever you went you came across dead cats and that
was strange. The point? Yes, the point is that this is the riverbed where
I used to catch lizards. Some of them were up to a foot long. Before
that, when I was even younger, I used to make Plasticine models of
chickens complete with their lungs and hearts and gizzards and, once
I'd made them I would slit them open to extract their innards. It
fascinated me. Even though I’d put them there and knew exactly what
I’d find, it was still a moment of huge excitement. I never knew why.
Now, a little older, I had the lizards. Using drawing pins, I crucified
them on little crosses I knocked together. I’d put three of them on a
little mound of sand. It wasn’t a green hill but probably closer to the
truth. Have you been to Jerusalem? There's not much green. And there
wasn’t in Nicosia either. But there were lots of red anemones. I
remember them well. But they didn’t last long. Just three days at
Easter time and then, they died. Perhaps that is why they have become
associated with Jesus. I used drawing-pins at first, until I got some tiny
little tacks that would go through their hands and feet. They were
better. More realistic. More like nails. You had to bang them in, like
the Romans did. Hands? Do lizards have hands? Well, they did for me.
If you slice off their tails before you put them on the cross they look
quite human. They sort of moved, like Jesus might have done. You
know? In agony. Or ecstasy. And they bled. But their blood was fatty,
watered down. Not rich red, like ours.”

Anian recalled Maynard’s account of Lawrence’s early life, the
birth of his brother, his mother’s hospitalization and his rejection.
What was it the psychologist had said? It lit the fuse?

The tape continued. “After a while, about a month or so, that got
boring, so I used to slit them open with a razor-blade. I'd sit for hours,
watching the pale blood dry in the hot sun. When I stood up I'd get
quite dizzy. A kind of religious experience. Point is, when I slit open
one belly, a big white egg fell out. I say white. It was mostly white, but
there was pus and green strands on it. Not much blood. But after that, I
went after the females. At first you couldn't tell the difference until you
slit them open. But after a while I learned. It wasn't only the swollen
belly but the skin as well. Even the eyes seemed different. They hung
there, on their crosses, with their mouths wide open and their little
round eyes glazed over, but they didn’t cry out. They made no noise at
all. But finding an egg, watching it fall out while they were still
wriggling, that was special. After that I started cutting open the eggs,
finding the little brown tadpoles inside. Even in the burning sun some
of them lived for more than a few seconds.