‘I read it last night, Sam. A fascinating starting-point, and I want to assure you that it is firmly my belief that this unit, and you, will put the Stamford General Trust on the map, and my aim is that it must be as good as it can be.’
‘I’ll need to liaise with social services, of course.’
‘Yes,’ said Marsh, as if he hadn’t heard, or hadn’t wanted to hear. ‘First I want to get you together with my Human Resources Manager and the management working party for the current programme of expansion.’ We were back in his office by now. ‘I want to show you the energy-flow structure I have in mind.’ He drew a triangle. ‘Now at this apex…’ His phone rang and he answered it with a frown. ‘Really?’ he said and looked at me. ‘It’s for you. A Dr Scott.’
‘Dr Scott?’ I said in disbelief, taking the receiver. ‘Thelma, is that you?… How on earth did you find me?… Yes, of course, if it’s important. Do you want to meet in Stamford?… All right, whatever you want. It’ll be your chance to see the new style I’m living in.’ I gave her an address and the elaborate directions I already had off by heart about the third exit on the roundabout and level crossings and duck pond with no ducks in it and said goodbye. Marsh was already on another phone. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got to go. It’s urgent.’ He nodded at me and gave me a brisk wave in a pantomime of being busy. ‘I’ll ring you next week,’ I said, and he nodded in response, obviously engrossed in something else.
I drove straight home. Danny’s van was still in the drive but he wasn’t in the house and his leather jacket was no longer hanging on the hook. A few minutes later Thelma spluttered up in her old Morris Traveller. I smiled as I watched her stride across to the path, her head darting around, assessing where I’d ended up. She wore jeans and a long tweed coat. Thelma could look inelegant in anything. I didn’t find her comic, though. Nobody whose research had been supervised by Thelma Scott found her comic. I opened the door and gave her a big hug, which required some dexterity as she was getting on for a foot shorter than I was.
‘I can see the house,’ she said. ‘Where are the elms?’
‘I can take you round the back and show you the tree stumps. This is the first place the beetles came when they got off the ferry from Holland.’
‘I’m amazed,’ she said. ‘Green fields, silence, a garden. Mud.’
‘Nice, isn’t it?’
She gave a dubious shrug and walked past me into the kitchen.
‘Coffee?’ she said.
‘Make yourself at home.’
‘How’s the book going?’ she asked.
‘Fine.’
‘Bad as that? Danny still around?’
‘Yes.’
Without asking, she opened the food cupboard and removed a packet of ground coffee and some biscuits. She heaped tablespoon after tablespoon of coffee into a jug. Then she sprinkled some salt on top.
‘A pinch of salt,’ she said. ‘That’s my secret for good coffee.’
‘What’s your secret for why you’re here?’
‘I’ve been doing some work for the Home Office. We’re looking at the neurological pathology of childhood recall. It’s all to do with the capacity of small children to give evidence in criminal trials.’ She poured the coffee into two mugs with a great show of concentration. ‘One result of becoming a member of the fairly great and good is that you get tickets to things you were never able to get tickets to before.’
‘Sounds nice. Are you here to ask me to the opera?’
‘Another result is that people ring you with odd requests. Yesterday somebody asked me something about post-traumatic stress disorder, about which I know almost nothing.’
I laughed.
‘Happy is the doctor who
‘Not only that, it concerned a problem that has arisen in Stamford. I was struck by the remarkable coincidence that the best person I know in the field has just moved up the road from Stamford, so I came to see you.’
‘I’m flattered, Thelma. How can I help you?’
Thelma took a bite from a biscuit and frowned.
‘You should keep biscuits in a tin, Sam,’ she said. ‘Left in an open packet, they go soft. Like this one.’ But she finished it anyway.
‘Not if you eat the whole packet in one day.’
‘We have a nineteen-year-old girl whose parents have been murdered. She was attacked also but survived.’
‘Using my famous forensic skills, I think I can guess at the case you’re talking about. This is the murder of the pharmaceutical millionaire and his wife.’
‘Yes. Did you know him?’
‘I think I may have used his shampoo occasionally.’
‘So you know the details. Fiona Mackenzie’s life is not in any immediate danger. But she is scarcely speaking. She has refused to see anybody she knows. I understand that there are no surviving relatives in Britain, but she won’t see any family friends.’
‘You mean nobody at all? It’s none of my business, but she should be encouraged to restore some sort of connection.’
‘She allowed the family’s GP to visit her. I think that’s all.’
‘That’s a start.’
‘What would you recommend for a case such as hers?’
‘Come on, Thelma, I can’t believe you’ve come up here from London for my advice about a patient I’ve only read about in the papers. What’s going on?’
Thelma smiled and refilled her mug.
‘There’s a problem. The police consider that she is possibly still at risk from the people who murdered her parents and tried to murder her. She needs to be kept reasonably secure, and I wanted some advice about what might be best for somebody who has suffered as she has.’
‘Do you want me to see her?’
Thelma shook her head.
‘This is all unofficial. I just wanted to know what your first thoughts on the subject might be.’
‘Who’s treating her? Colin Daun, I suppose.’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s all right. Why not ask
‘I’m asking you.’
‘You know what I’m going to say, Thelma. She should be in a familiar environment with family or friends.’
‘There is no family. The possibility of her staying with friends has been considered, but the matter is academic because she has rejected the idea out of hand.’
‘Well, I don’t think staying in hospital for an extended period will do her much good.’
‘It’s not practical, anyway.’ Thelma drained her coffee. ‘This is a lovely house, Sam. Large, isn’t it? And quiet.’
‘No, Thelma.’
‘I wasn’t saying…’
‘No.’
‘Just wait a moment,’ Thelma said, with a more insistent tone now. ‘This is a severely troubled girl. Let me tell you what I know about her. Then say no.’ She sat back, marshalling her thoughts. ‘Fiona Mackenzie is nineteen years old. She is academically clever, although not brilliant, and apparently she has always been eager to please and to conform. A slightly anxious girl, in other words. I gather she was quite dominated by her father, who had a very forceful personality. Since puberty, she has been somewhat overweight.’ I remembered the plump, smiling face of the girl in the news. ‘When she was seventeen she had a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized in a
