TWENTY SIX
I’ve always liked trains and boats. My dad took me by train to Millport on the Ayrshire coast one day. He let me stick my head out the window. I got off with my face speckled with black measles and my nostrils filled with the smell of the steam. As if that hadn’t been the best trip of my young life, I nearly exploded with excitement when we walked on board the SS Waverley, a great white paddle-steamer. I ran up and down every ladder on the boat, as tireless as a yo-yo. We sailed down the Clyde estuary like kings, the wind whipping my face and the sun burning my bare arms and legs. A cloud of greedy gulls hovered over our wake, raucous courtiers to our royal passage.
Today the Channel winds tossed spume against my face as I stood on the prow. And later I sat sedately in my window seat as we chugged through the French countryside towards Paris. I changed at Gare du Nord and found I’d forgotten all my French; either that or everyone was talking faster here in the capital. I resisted the temptation to become a tourist in Paris, even though the April weather tried to woo me; a day like this in Glasgow would be counted as a heatwave.
I had a funny moment at the south-bound Gare d’Austerlitz. It was the noise and the steam and the whistles of the guards sending trains off into the southern sunshine. The queuing people sprang yellow diamonds on their chests and arms, and the porters and guards took on grey coats and rifles. For a daft moment I thought they were going to herd me back into the cattle truck. I stopped and smoked a fag till the panic attack was over. Doc Thompson said there could be more to come.
I’d seen him twice since Caldwell’s death. I was still getting the headaches, but they weren’t lasting as long or coming as often. Resolution he called it.
And the memories that I was left with after each episode seemed to be infilling rather than pivotal. Like discovering an old reel of film and playing it and finding holes in it, but not enough to obscure the story.
The Doc had all sorts of explanations for what had happened but I know what I saw. Though I’m not sure what Caldwell saw. After only three months, the fog of that night was beginning to blur the memory of it.
I bought a paper at Austerlitz and waited till we were chugging out of Paris before opening it. I could understand the written word better than the jabbering back at the station. It seemed they were facing the same aftermath as us: lack of food, coal and work. But from what I could see, Paris had hardly lost a chimney pot during the war. And there was no sign of gratitude from De Gaulle for what we’d done for them.
I thought of the papers at home, in the week after that night. I went from villain to hero in five days. Despite what they found on the bomb site – Caldwell’s hand was stiff round his gun by the time they arrived – and despite Kate supporting my version of events, I was hauled off as the Ripper and the attempted murderer of a brave policeman, injured in the line of duty. It was my second time in the cells in a month. This time they treated me with kid gloves.
Wilson, the said brave policeman – damn his black heart, I should have let him bleed to death – survived his encounter with the chair leg, though minus a kidney. But to show his spleen was still in good order, he accused me from his hospital bed of trying to kill him. Fortunately he was too ill to come and beat a confession out of me, and gradually something of the true picture began to emerge as Kate, Liza and I stuck to our story. Of course, we didn’t tell the boys in blue everything. Who needed to know about Kate’s little stint as a Soho tart for example? Or the first murder in France. And I decided not to reveal her knowledge of the London murders. What was the point? To see her pretty neck stretched on the gallows? Though in truth, with what I saw in her eyes, hanging might have been a mercy.
I’d left Kate in her car while I walked off to find a phone box and call the police. They took a while, long enough for us to hammer out our script.
Eventually, even the papers managed to get a fairly consistent version of the same tale we’d spun. That war hero Caldwell had come back changed from his harrowing experiences working with the Resistance. That he’d begun killing while the state of his mind was unbalanced. That he’d tried to blame it on me, his old comrade-in- arms, until in a showdown he’d admitted his guilt and had taken his own life in remorse for his terrible deeds.
Though Kate still didn’t understand exactly what had happened to Tony at the end, our views were close enough, she and I agreed. Especially when she confessed over a shared cigarette while we waited for the police, that she’d set Tony up.
“I didn’t want this to happen, you know.”
“But you set me loose, Kate. In my office, that first night.”
“You knew?”
“Your show of concern was unconvincing. And when I told you Tony was dead, you didn’t even pretend to be sorry. You meant me to come after him.”
Her bleak eyes searched some inner distance. She nodded, reluctantly. “I didn’t know how to stop the game. You did.”
“You must have known something like this would happen?”
“But not to end like…” She shivered and waved her hand at her brother’s body lying on the cold ground.
Wilson backed off, though I heard he was still angry at me, despite saving his worthless life. Seems the lack of a kidney had put an end to his drinking. But as his booze-soaked brain began to dry out, he began to see it was in his own interests to run with my version of events. Especially as it kept his own rancid involvement with Caldwell out of it.
Doc Thompson was asked to add his pennyworth to the profile the police had of me. I doubt if it was very flattering but at least it didn’t condemn me. When I caught up with him, he was even more excited than usual about my case. It was as though he couldn’t wait to write up the paper on me for the Psychologists Monthly or whatever these characters read for fun.
“It was a cathartic experience, Danny. Like the equivalent of a bloodletting for you.”
“That’s not a helpful image Doc, if you don’t mind.”
He seemed pretty pleased with his idea. “No, no, you see your brain has been healing from the physical trauma for a year now. Maybe assisted by the EST. The severed synapses will have been trying to re-lay themselves. Like roads washed away in a flood. All the memories you had were still there. But cut off. Now they’re reconnecting.”
“You’re saying the brain re-grows?”
“We’re not sure, to be honest. But it seems remarkably resilient. Even if there’s no new growth, it seems capable of some re-routing.”
“So. I’m back to normal, am I, Doc?”
I wished he hadn’t hesitated. “As normal as me. Hah, hah, hah.”
There was no real answer to that. I raised the big question. “What about Valerie? How do you account for that?”
“Tell me, Danny, on all the occasions you think you saw Valerie, can you recall anyone else seeing her talking to you? “Why sure. The first night we were in a pub celebrating New Year’s Eve. There were masses of folk around us…” My voice trailed away. Did the two of us have a conversation with anyone? I thought of our day out in the park; people were looking at us, amused at the sight of lovers, weren’t they? Maybe all they saw was a demented man talking to himself, sucking his own fingers and drinking two cups of tea.
“Did you ever touch her? Kiss her?”
“She was shy, going through a tough time with a bloke. It wasn’t that sort of relationship.” I shrugged helplessly.
He waved his hand and went all hearty on me, so I knew he was making it up.
“Very normal, Danny. The mind tries to deal with something shocking and finds a way of rationalising it. Children often have imaginary friends. Particularly if they are imaginative and lack real friends.”
So he saw me as a lonely kid. Terrific. He went on hurriedly.
“But in adults, we see the same symptoms and call it schizophrenia. In your case, while you are evincing all the classical signs of schizoid delusions, I think they have been caused by actual physical damage to the brain. Which is remarkable. It confirms the growing view that brain chemistry and make-up are the defining factors in perception. Rather than some non-physical mental flaws.”
“Should I feel better or worse at that?”
“Oh, better! Your delusion has gone, now the threat has gone.”
