“How many years ago, do you know?”
“Ages… years… can’t get it out of my head,” said Billy, his eyes burning in his thin face as the fist enclosing the piece of paper fluttered up and down, touching nose, touching chest. “They buried her in a pink blanket, down in the dell by my dad’s house. But afterwards they said it was a boy.”
“Where’s your dad’s house, Billy?”
“She won’t let me back now. You could dig, though. You could go. Strangled her, they did,” said Billy, fixing Strike with his haunted eyes. “But Jimmy said it was a boy. Strangled, up by the—”
There was a knock on the door. Before Strike could tell her not to enter, Denise had poked her head inside, much braver now that Strike was here, full of her own importance.
“They’re coming,” she said, with a look of exaggerated meaning that would have spooked a man far less jumpy than Billy. “On their way now.”
“Who’s coming?” demanded Billy, jumping up. “Who’s on their way?”
Denise whipped her head out of the room and closed the door. There was a soft thud against the wood, and Strike knew that she was leaning against it, trying to hold Billy in.
“She’s just talking about a delivery I’m expecting,” Strike said soothingly, getting to his feet. “Go on about the—”
“What have you done?” yelped Billy, backing away towards the door while he repeatedly touched nose and chest. “Who’s coming?”
“Nobody’s coming,” said Strike, but Billy was already trying to push the door open. Meeting resistance, he flung himself hard against it. There was a shriek from outside as Denise was thrown aside. Before Strike could get out from around the desk, Billy had sprinted through the outer door. They heard him jumping down the metal stairs three at a time and Strike, infuriated, knowing that he had no hope of catching a younger and, on the evidence, fitter man, turned and ran back into his office. Throwing up the sash window, he leaned outside just in time to see Billy whipping around the corner of the street out of sight.
“Bollocks!”
A man heading inside the guitar shop opposite stared around in some perplexity for the source of the noise.
Strike withdrew his head and turned to glare at Denise, who was dusting herself down in the doorway to his office. Incredibly, she looked pleased with herself.
“I tried to hold him in,” she said proudly.
“Yeah,” said Strike, exercising considerable self-restraint. “I saw.”
“The police are on their way.”
“Fantastic.”
“Would you like a cup of tea?”
“No,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Then I think I’ll go and freshen up the bathroom,” she said, adding in a whisper, “I don’t think he used the flush.”
3
I fought out that fight alone and in the completest secrecy.
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
As she walked along the unfamiliar Deptford street, Robin was raised to temporary light-heartedness, then wondered when she had last felt this way and knew that it had been over a year. Energized and uplifted by the afternoon sunshine, the colorful shopfronts and general bustle and noise, she was currently celebrating the fact that she never need see the inside of the Villiers Trust Clinic again.
Her therapist had been unhappy that she was terminating treatment.
“We recommend a full course,” she had said.
“I know,” Robin replied, “but, well, I’m sorry, I think this has done me as much good as it’s going to.”
The therapist’s smile had been chilly.
“The CBT’s been great,” Robin had said. “It’s really helped with the anxiety, I’m going to keep that up…”
She had taken a deep breath, eyes fixed on the woman’s low-heeled Mary Janes, then forced herself to look her in the eye.
“… but I’m not finding this part helpful.”
Another silence had ensued. After five sessions, Robin was used to them. In normal conversation, it would be considered rude or passive aggressive to leave these long pauses and simply watch the other person, waiting for them to speak, but in psychodynamic therapy, she had learned, it was standard.
Robin’s doctor had given her a referral for free treatment on the NHS, but the waiting list had been so long that she had decided, with Matthew’s tight-lipped support, to pay for treatment. Matthew, she knew, was barely refraining from saying that the ideal solution would be to give up the job that had landed her with PTSD and which in his view paid far too poorly considering the dangers to which she had been exposed.
“You see,” Robin had continued with the speech she had prepared, “my life is pretty much wall to wall with people who think they know what’s best for me.”
“Well, yes,” said the therapist, in a manner that Robin felt would have been considered condescending beyond the clinic walls, “we’ve discussed—”
“—and…”
Robin was by nature conciliatory and polite. On the other hand, she had been urged repeatedly by the therapist to speak the unvarnished truth in this dingy little room with the spider plant in its dull green pot and the man-sized tissues on the low pine table.
“… and to be honest,” she said, “you feel like just another one of them.”
Another pause.
“Well,” said the therapist, with a little laugh, “I’m here to help you reach your own conclusions about—”
“Yes, but you do it by—by pushing me all the time,” said Robin. “It’s combative. You challenge everything I say.”
Robin closed her eyes, as a great wave of weariness swept her. Her muscles ached. She had spent all week putting together flat-pack furniture, heaving around boxes of books and hanging pictures.
“I come out of here,” said Robin, opening her eyes again, “feeling wrung out. I go home to my husband, and he does it, too. He leaves big sulky silences and challenges me on the smallest things. Then I phone my mother, and it’s more of the same. The only person who isn’t at me all the time to sort myself out is—”
She pulled up short, then said:
“—is my work partner.”
“Mr. Strike,” said the therapist sweetly.
It had been a matter of contention between Robin and the therapist that she had refused to discuss her relationship with Strike, other than to confirm that he was unaware of how much the Shacklewell Ripper case had affected her. Their personal relationship, she had stated firmly, was irrelevant to her present issues. The therapist had raised him in every session since, but Robin had consistently refused to engage on the subject.
“Yes,” said Robin. “Him.”
“By your own admission you haven’t told him the full extent of your anxiety.”
“So,” said Robin, ignoring the last comment, “I really only came today to tell you I’m leaving. As I say, I’ve found the CBT really useful and I’m going to keep using the exercises.”
The therapist had seemed outraged that Robin wasn’t even prepared to stay for the full hour, but Robin had paid for the entire session and therefore felt free to walk out, giving her what felt like a bonus hour in the day. She felt justified in not hurrying home to do more unpacking, but to buy herself a Cornetto and enjoy it as she wandered through the sun-drenched streets of her new area.