Secret Smile (32 page)

'I've heard that,' Don said, sipping his
coffee. 'The problem is that it's easier to think up ideas once the work has
started. Don't you find that?'

I shook my head.

'There's always more you can do,' I said.
'Always something else that can be fixed. What I like is getting a job
finished.'

'You don't want more work?'

'That's a funny thing,' I said. 'I have
this feeling that not only I should be working at the moment. Shouldn't you be
as well?'

Don looked a bit shifty.

'I have this problem,' he said. 'I suffer
from attention deficit disorder.'

'Is that a real illness?'

'It's more like an excuse with a long
name. This is my day when I work from home.'

'Does this count as work?'

'It's fallow time. I think and write and
make plans.'

'What do you do the rest of the time?'

'Bits of teaching, I see some patients,
other stuff.'

'You look too young for that,' I said.

'You mean "immature"?'

'You should learn to take a compliment,' I
said. 'I was saying I was impressed.'

'I think it's cleverer to be able to do
what you do,' he said.

'You don't know the half of it. Remember
Brendan, that man I told you about?'

'Yes.'

'I found his sister. She lives in a
council house in Chelmsford.'

'You went to see her?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

I couldn't think of a short answer, so I
told him what I'd done. I told him how Brendan wasn't his real name, about what
he did to his school.

'Isn't that scary?'

'Are you scared yourself?'

'Me?' I shook my head. 'This isn't about
me. This is about other people, don't you see?'

'It's hard to tell.'

'You said yourself he sounded dangerous.
And look at all the signs.'

'Maybe.'

'He set fire to his school. Would you
admit that that's a symptom of mental disturbance?'

'You didn't say what happened. Was he
charged with arson? Did he receive any kind of treatment?'

I took a deep breath.

'He was never caught.'

'Did the sister tell you he did it?'

'Reading between the lines, it's obvious.
Can't you see the pattern? Everything fits. Is it true or is it not true that
setting fires as a child is one of the earlier signs of being a psychopath?'

I'd finished my coffee and Don gently took
the mug from my hand.

'This conversation isn't going the way I
planned,' he said.

'What do you mean?'

'I was going to work my way around to
saying that it's fun having you working here and how I wondered if we could
have a drink some time. I was also going to say at the same time that you
probably get hassled all the time like this. Maybe I was also going to
apologize as well because perhaps it's difficult for a woman like you because
you can't do your job without being harassed by people like me.'

I couldn't help smiling at this.

'Instead I started going on about this
psychopath I used to know.'

'That's the thing,' said Don. 'I don't
want to offend you.'

'I'm not easily offended.'

Don paused and looked at me as if he were
trying to decide if I were telling the truth.

'I worry that you misunderstood what I
told you before.'

'Why do you worry?'

'I don't think you should have gone to see
those women.'

'You think it's dangerous?'

He took a sip of his coffee and then gave
an expression of disgust.

'Cold,' he said. 'You should be careful
about interfering in other people's lives.'

'I've told you,' I said, with a harder
tone in my voice. 'Brendan is dangerous. Do you disagree?'

'There are colleagues of mine who carry
out assessments for social workers about children who are at risk. Every so
often a child will be murdered and the social workers and the psychiatrists and
the police will be blamed in the press for having known the child was in danger
and not having acted before. What the press won't mention is the hundreds and
thousands of other children who are also in that grey area of being poor,
vulnerable, threatened, hopeless. But most of them will turn out more or less
all right. There's no magic checklist, Miranda. You wouldn't believe how many
people I see who are on the edge. You can tick all the boxes. They have been
bullied and beaten and sexually abused. Yes, they may have set fires. Whatever
the profilers say, that doesn't make you Jack the Ripper. Above all, he's out
of your life and it's not your business any more.'

'Don, if you had sold a car and then you
got a report that there was something dangerous about it, that the brakes
didn't work, would you just forget about it? Would it not be your business?'

Don looked genuinely troubled by this.

'I don't know, Miranda. I want to say that
I admire you for doing this. You're being a good Samaritan. Better than that,
you're being a good Samaritan for someone you don't know. I just want to say
two things. The first is that people aren't like cars. And the second is, what
are you actually going to do?'

'It's very simple,' I said. 'I want to
find out if he's going out with anybody else. If he is, then she will be at
risk and I'll warn her.'

'She may not be grateful,' said Don. 'A
gesture like that could be misconstrued.'

'That doesn't matter,' I said. 'I'm not
easily embarrassed.'

'And you may be putting yourself in
danger.'

When he said this, I felt a shiver go
through me. It wasn't apprehension, though, more like a surge of exhilaration.
I had a strange sense of stepping out of my life and all the things that
trapped me.

'That's not important,' I said to Don.

'Will you be careful?'

'Yes,' I said, meaning no. I would not be
careful; I would be unstoppable.

I wanted to find Brendan without his
knowing I'd found him. It was more difficult than I expected. I phoned an old
friend of Laura's called Sally, whom I'd seen at the funeral. I guessed that
she'd been in touch recently. Her tone became awkward and constrained when I
identified myself. Obviously she must have heard some version or other of the
tangled relationships between Brendan, Laura and me. Did they feel sorry for
me? Did they think I was to blame in some way? I hardly gave it a thought. I
told her I wanted to get in touch with Brendan. Was he living in Laura's flat?
She said that she didn't think so, but that I should check with Laura's
parents.

I phoned Laura's parents. I talked to
Laura's mother. She sounded tired and spoke slowly as if she had been woken
from sleep in the middle of the day. She was probably on something, the poor
woman. Like my mother. I told her my name and that I was an old friend of
Laura's.

'Yes,' she said. 'I think Laura mentioned
your name.'

'I was at the funeral,' I said. 'I'm so
sorry. It's a terrible thing.'

'Thank you,' she said, as if I had paid
her a compliment.

'I wanted to get in touch with Brendan,' I
said. 'I wondered if you might know where I could reach him.'

'I don't know,' she said.

'Is he staying in Laura's flat?'

'No,' she said. 'It's being sold.'

'I'm sorry for bothering you, but do you
have an address for him?'

'We haven't seen him. He said he needed to
go away.'

I couldn't believe that Brendan had left
his parents-in-law without even a forwarding address. What would happen with
Laura's estate? Would he get half of it? All? But these weren't questions I
could pursue with Laura's numb, mourning mother. I could think of only one
thing to do, but I felt a lurch of apprehension as I did it. I phoned Detective
Inspector Rob Pryor and indeed he sounded a long way from pleased to hear from
me.

'Don't worry,' I said. 'I've just got a
simple question. I know you've become friendly with Brendan. I need to get in
touch with him and I wondered if you could tell me where he is?'

'Why?'

'What do you mean "why"? Is it
such a big deal?'

'You told me I should be investigating him
for — what? — murder? Why do you want to see him?'

'Are you his receptionist? I just need an
address.' There was a pause. 'All right,' I said. 'I've got some stuff he left
behind in a flat he lived in.'

'Your
flat?'

'A
flat.'

'How did you get it?'

'What is all this?' I said. 'What business
is this of yours?'

'I don't know what's going on with you,
Miranda, but I think you should give it up and move on.'

'I just want his address.'

'Well, I'm not going to give it to you.'
Another pause. 'I'll tell him to call you. If I speak to him.'

'Thank you.'

'And don't call me again.'

I put the phone down. That hadn't gone
very well.

CHAPTER 35

Why do phones always ring when you're in
the bath? I left it for ages, but it went on, insistent, until at last I
wrapped myself in an unsatisfactorily skimpy towel and headed for the living
room, at which point it stopped. I swore, and returned to the bathroom where I
stepped gratefully back into the warm, soapy water and submerged myself. At
which point it rang once more. I got there quicker this time, trailing water.

'Hello?'

There was a short pause, during which I
knew for a certainty who was on the other end. I flinched and pulled my damp
towel more tightly around me.

'Mirrie?'

At his voice, just the utterance of that
single word, I felt the familiar, choking disgust. It was as if the air were
suddenly thick and dirty, and I could barely breathe. Sweat prickled on my
forehead, and I wiped it away with a corner of my towel.

'Yes.'

'It's me.'

'What do you want?'

'What do
I
want?'

'Look

'It's what
you
want, I think.'

'I don't

'Or what you have for me.'

I clutched the receiver and didn't reply.

'Rob just called me,' he went on. 'I hear
that you're looking for me.'

A kind of groan escaped me.

'You want to see me.'

'No.'

'You want to give me something. Something
I left behind. I wonder what that can be.'

'It's nothing.'

'It must be important, if you're going to
all this bother. Mmm, Mirrie?'

'A book,' I stuttered feebly.

'A book? What book would that be?' He
waited and when I didn't answer said: 'Would the book be an excuse, perhaps?
You just can't let go, can you?'

For a moment, everything went misty.

'Cut the crap,' I said. 'This is me.
Nobody else is around. You know what I know about you. You know and I know you
know and every hour of every day I think about what you did to Troy and Laura
and Kerry, and if you think . . .'

'Hush,' he said in a soothing voice. 'You
need help. Rob thinks so too. He's very concerned about you. He says that in
his opinion there's a word for what you've got. For your syndrome.'

'Syndrome?
Syndrome'?
I just want
to send you this fucking book.'

'The book,' he said. 'Of course. The one
whose name you can't remember.'

'Give me your address and then piss off.'

'I don't think so.' I could hear him
smile.

'Jesus,' I said, with a sob of rage.
'Listen…'

But I was talking on a dead line. Brendan
had put the phone down. I gazed at the receiver in my hand, then rammed it down
on its holder.

I climbed back into the tepid bath. I ran
hot water and then, holding my nose, slid under the water. I listened to the
booming of the pipes and the beating of my heart. I was so violently angry that
I felt I would fly apart.

I came up for air with a thought that made
me leap from the bath and run naked and slippery back to the phone, crouching
low as I passed the window so no one would see me. I dialled 1471 and waited
until the automated voice told me the caller's number. I'd forgotten to have a
pen ready so I held the digits in my head, chanting them as I scrambled in the
drawers looking for pen and paper. I jotted them down on a stray playing card I
found, then dialled 1471 again, just to check it.

It was a 7852 number. Where was that?
Somewhere in South London, maybe. It wasn't a code I rang often, that was for
sure. I shuffled on all fours under the window, then went to my bedroom,
yanking out the bath plug on my way. I dressed in baggy cotton trousers and a
loose top and then started flicking through my address book, looking for those
four digits, trying to find out which bit of London Brendan was in now. There
had to be a better way of doing this. I found a telephone directory and ran my
finger down the lines and lines of names looking for the area code. My eyes
were starting to swim with the effort until I found it: Brackley. That was
reasonably accessible.