Like This, for Ever

14




‘COULD YOU TELL me what they did to you?’ asked the counsellor.

‘I assumed you’d read the files,’ replied Lacey. ‘That you’d already know.’

‘I’ve read all the files on the Cambridge operation. But this isn’t about what I know or don’t know, it’s about whether you’re strong enough to talk about it yet.’

The small room in Guy’s Hospital was windowless and Lacey could never quite remember whether she’d pressed the lift to go up to one of over thirty floors, or down into the basement. She could be underground, she could be fifteen storeys up. Once in the room, there was no way of knowing.

And the corridor outside was always so silent; as though no one but she ever walked it, no one but she ever came to this small, square, dimly lit room, in which sharp edges probably existed but faded to ambiguous shadings in the gloom. There was a couch, two semi-comfortable chairs and a desk. A reading lamp was the only source of light. Lacey sometimes wondered if the woman she came to see twice a week was nocturnal, unable to face sunlight, even bright artificial light. Perhaps she was doomed to lead a sub-terranean existence, dependent upon the needy and the disturbed for her interaction with the outside world.

Lacey watched the second hand glide round the face of the wall clock. Two pounds a minute, this woman’s time was worth. Every thirty seconds, ching, another pound gone. It was worse than being in a black cab stuck in traffic. Thank God she wasn’t paying the bill herself.

And once again, she was expected to talk about the time, not much more than a month ago, when she’d come up against a new kind of evil. A depravity in which victims were stalked relentlessly, tortured with their own worst fears, before being thrown headlong into a downward spiral that ended only in self-destruction. She’d come so close to being one of those victims and now this woman, who knew nothing about real evil, was interpreting her reluctance to share details as weakness.

‘I’ll have to say it all in court,’ Lacey said at last. ‘I’ll have to spell out every last detail in front of a hundred strangers. I think that will probably do me.’

She could never bring herself to lie on the couch. Having to talk about herself made her feel vulnerable enough; doing it prone would be a step too far. So she sat, in the chair directly facing the counsellor. Sometimes she and the counsellor held eye contact for long seconds without speaking.

‘Well, that won’t be easy,’ the counsellor said, after the better part of a minute. ‘It might help to go through it with me first.’

‘I had to make statements from my hospital bed,’ said Lacey. ‘Then, when I got out, I had to go through it all again, just in case there was any question of statements made in hospital somehow being inadmissible. I’ve done it twice already, I think a third time should pay for all, don’t you?’

The woman glanced down at her notes, as though to check which of her pre-prepared questions she’d reached. ‘Are you ashamed of what happened?’ she asked.

The counsellor’s eyes were grey, like her hair and her clothes. She was a grey lady, but her skin was too pink to belong to a ghost. ‘I’m not sure I understand,’ said Lacey, although she understood perfectly.

‘Do you feel embarrassed? Weak? As though your colleagues are judging you?’

‘Are they judging me? Is that in the file too?’

It was a game they played, twice each week. The counsellor asked questions and Lacey dealt with them, just occasionally, when she judged the moment was right, giving a little bit more away. She’d played the game before, years earlier, trying to convince police counsellors she was fit to be a police officer. Strange that it should be so much harder, convincing them that she wasn’t.

‘You were sent in to investigate, you became one of the victims. Some people might consider they’d failed.’

The woman was trying to get a rise out of her. Did she really imagine it would be that easy?

‘I’m still alive. Most of the other girls aren’t. I’d say that makes me a survivor, wouldn’t you?’

The counsellor pulled one of her rare smiles out of the ration-book. She wasn’t unfriendly, Lacey had decided at one of their earlier sessions, just one of those people who didn’t smile easily.

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘I would. And you caught the people responsible. From what I understand, they’re all going to prison for a very long time. Not that you can always prejudge these things, of course.’

Time to give a little. Lacey gave a deep sigh, dropped her eyes to the carpet. ‘I never think about it,’ she said in a low voice. ‘About what they did to me that last night. If I catch myself on the verge I have to push it right away, because if I let all those thoughts in, I think my head might explode.’

The other woman was leaning forward in her seat, the way she always did when she felt she was getting somewhere. ‘Go on, Lacey,’ she said.

‘I have to keep active,’ Lacey went on. ‘I wake up and go running, two hours every morning. In the afternoons I go to the local pool or out for a bike ride. I have a gym at home and I use it most days. In the evenings I walk, sometimes for miles, and when I get in, even though I’m exhausted, I stay up till about two in the morning watching romantic comedies and sitcoms. Nothing dark, because if I think about anything even remotely unsavoury then I can feel it, everything that happened, hammering on the door. I’m living in a La-La land of my own making, wearing out my body and flooding my brain with fluffy pink crap.’

‘Because you can’t allow yourself to think about anything real?’

Lacey dropped her head forward into her hands. Between her fingers she saw the counsellor’s hand stretch out and leave a box of tissues within reach on the carpet. Lacey pressed one to her face. A second later, she crumpled it to hide the fact that it was bone dry.

When she looked up, the counsellor’s face had softened. Christ, it was almost too easy. Come in edgy, difficult, have a bit of a sparring match and then let something get to you. Break down and give a bit of information. It never failed because, luckily, counsellors employed by the Met just weren’t bright enough to spot what you were up to.

‘Tell me more about Mark Joesbury,’ she asked Lacey.

On the other hand, maybe this one was brighter than she looked.

‘He was my senior officer on the Cambridge case,’ said Lacey, knowing she wasn’t going to get away with that. ‘And I worked with him last autumn, on the Ripper murders. Do you remember?’

‘Who doesn’t?’ replied the counsellor. ‘And you became close?’

Not by choice, they hadn’t. And yet there was no denying Mark Joesbury had got a lot closer to Lacey Flint than she’d allowed anyone in a long time. He was the one who, albeit for just a second, had seen through the mask …

‘DI Joesbury was suspicious of me from the start. When we met I was soaked in another woman’s blood.’

The mask that was Lacey Flint, the mask that her true self hid behind, the mask that could never be allowed to slip again.

‘For a while he thought I was the killer,’ Lacey went on. ‘I’m not sure he’s ever really learned to trust me. Even when he sent me to Cambridge, it was against his better judgement.’

‘I read the transcript of what happened on the tower.’

That bloody tower! ‘I remember very little about the tower,’ said Lacey. ‘They’d pumped me full of LSD, I was away with the fairies.’

‘He told you he loved you.’

Lacey forced a smile. ‘He was on quite a lot of medication too, from what I understand.’

‘You think he didn’t mean it?’

Every word I said on that tower – I meant it.

‘I think he would have said anything in the circumstances.’

‘Well, either he meant it, or he knew it would mean something to you. Either way, it seems significant to me.’

Much brighter than she looked. Not stupid at all.

‘Are you worried about getting involved with another police officer?’

‘I just don’t want to get involved with anyone right now.’

‘When were you last involved with someone?’

‘It’s been a while,’ said Lacey, thinking that never probably qualified as ‘a while’.

‘Months? Years?’

Jesus, was it not enough that they’d pulled the insides right out of her body? Did they have to hang them up for all to see and let them scorch in the sun for good measure?

‘I’m leaving the police.’

The announcement seemed to hang in the air between them.

‘This is a little sudden.’

‘Not really, I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I’ll wait till after the Cambridge trial, of course.’

‘Have you told anyone?’

Lacey shook her head. How could she have done? She’d only made the decision ten seconds ago. ‘I just can’t do it any more,’ she said.

‘Can’t do what, exactly?’

‘I can’t look into people’s eyes and see the dark.’