Deep Shelter (27 page)

“Does Hugh know someone called Michael Easton?” he asked.

“Michael? He was a patient. Hugh saw him once before he began treatment with Joseph Green.”

“Where does he keep patients’ details?”

“I don’t know.”

A phone rang and the woman answered.

“Hugh? OK . . . Well there’s another one here. Yes, a police officer . . . I don’t know. Just come home. Please.”

Belsey found himself a seat at the table and began sifting through the papers, a landscape of research on Green’s theories. The first book he picked up was Green’s own
Living with Others, Living with Ourselves
. Chapters ranged from “The Shattered Narrative” and “Fortress Personalities” to “Faith in a Future” and finally “Beyond Trauma.” Belsey turned the pages, wondering what convinced Easton that Joseph Green was the man to treat him.

We all carry trauma. Trauma is the failure of memory; it is the undigested fragments of experience where neither our waking mind nor our dreams have completed their task of processing . . .

He was still on the introduction when Hugh Hamilton walked in. Green’s disciple held a briefcase and looked feverish. A squad car pulled away, past the front window. Hamilton glared.

“You.”

“Me.”

“What’s going on?”

“Who’s Michael Easton?”

“I don’t need to talk to you.”

“Sit down,” Belsey said. Hamilton sat down across the table from Belsey. “I need to know about Michael Easton, an address to start with. Or you’re back in a police car for obstructing inquiries into a multiple-homicide investigation.”

Hamilton’s eyes widened. He pressed against his goatee as if it might fall apart and everything else would follow.

“I never had his address.”

“For Christ’s sake. You saw him, before he started with Joseph.”

“Yes. He had a consultation session with me. What’s he done?”

“Abducted someone, killed others, possibly upset the security services. I think he’s making bombs now.” Hamilton absorbed this. He looked dismayed, but not quite incredulous. “You were telling the police you had an idea what was going on.”

“I knew it would be something about Michael. I heard you say that a patient was in trouble. It could only have been Michael Easton. Joseph has had concerns for a while. I think he feels very exposed.”

“What kind of concerns?”

“That he had got it terribly wrong. That Michael was far more dangerous than he had initially realised. Michael had one session with me, but it was Joseph he wanted. Michael had read all of his work. He quoted from it. I’m sure Joseph loved that. Michael came to London for him. Because he thought Joseph would help, you see. That’s what he said. He begged me to refer him to Joseph. Joseph doesn’t usually take on new clients without a referral.”

“He thought Joseph would help with what?”

“He thought he was dreaming state secrets,” Hamilton deadpanned. “And they were placing him in danger.”

“Did he say what these secrets were?”

Now Hamilton hesitated. “Something about a forbidden place, underground.”

“Did he say where he thought it was?”

“No.”

“When did you see him?”

Hamilton checked his diary.

“April 17. I spoke to Joseph that evening and he agreed to see Michael the following week.”

“Why did he agree?”

“Michael offered to pay three times the usual fee. He was desperate. I think Joseph was . . . Let’s be generous and say he was intrigued. Concerned. But it was bound for failure—a situation like that. I know that recently there had been a deterioration. Michael wanted to terminate analysis. Joseph was concerned about this. Michael was becoming increasingly paranoid.”

“Joseph and Rebecca Green met him in a cafe on Tuesday.”

“He’d said he was done with it all. I think they were trying to persuade him to return. Not to do anything rash.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Michael had some violent fantasies.”

“No kidding.”

Belsey placed the case notes on the table between them. Hamilton stared.

“Take a look,” Belsey said. Hamilton plucked a tissue from an ornamental Kleenex holder and used it to open the notes. He read a few pages, nodded, pressed his goatee again.

“What do you make of them?” Belsey said.

“They’re what I’d expect. When he saw me he asked a lot of questions about the practicalities of psychoanalysis. How do you learn about the unconscious? How do you explore it? Is it like a place?”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said you cannot explore the unconscious itself, by definition, but you can follow its edges: the moments when memory falters, or narratives unravel. He seemed to understand. He seemed fascinated. Do you know what I think he wanted?”

“What did he want?”

Hamilton closed the notes.

“He wanted to know how to manipulate us. He wanted to be famous and thought Joseph would write him up. Joseph wrote up every other oddity that came to him. Michael wanted Joseph to disseminate his message to the world.”

Belsey considered this. The sources of crime and fame weren’t so far apart. Still, he found himself having too much respect for Easton to write him off as a wannabe. As if anticipating his objections, Hamilton continued:

“Michael is clever. He was communicating
something
. He was giving Joseph something to interpret. Because he knew how Joseph worked, you see. That’s always dangerous.”

“What was the message he wanted disseminated?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t a game I was prepared to play. Joseph . . .” Hamilton sighed. “Joseph, perhaps, is too seduced by his own powers. This is what I have always said. There is a lack of theoretical rigour to his work.”

“What were you arguing about when I arrived today?”

“Just that.”

“Brodsky.”

“Otto Brodsky. Joseph’s whole training, or lack of it; his plagiarism, his buried influences.” Hamilton seemed almost weary with his duties as iconoclast. “Joseph Green is not the infallible figure he likes to present to the world. When a reputation unravels it begins with one thread. Now Michael will do more damage than Joseph has ever had to fear from my work.”

Belsey thought of those pencils again, their torn-off erasers, and supplied his own analysis: anger. Joseph Green knew he had made a mistake and couldn’t correct it. It was a stress tell, erupting from beneath that sage exterior. Belsey imagined trying to heal someone and realising you’d been played, that your hard-won reputation was out there, murderous, running underground.

Then he thought of Centre Point. Site 3. State secrets.

“What if there
was
something to Michael’s theories?” Belsey said. “And maybe he felt this was the only way he could communicate them?”

Hamilton arched an eyebrow. He flicked through the case notes once more as if he might have missed the convincing bit.

“So you’ve been seduced too,” the disciple said.

“Maybe.”

“Michael Easton plays figures of authority: psychoanalysts, now police. It is a way of allowing small men to feel powerful. He’s sucked you in as well. Do you see?”

Belsey sat back and wondered. Then the blonde woman appeared and looked at him.

“I think somebody’s trying to steal your car,” she said.

BELSEY STEPPED OUTSIDE. HE NEEDED A LOT OF
things right now, a car thief wasn’t one of them. The man was getting busy with his passenger door.

“How’s it going?” Belsey asked. The man looked up. He was white, with short, dark hair and gym muscle under a black fleece jacket. He saw the case notes in Belsey’s hand.

“Give me the notes,” he said, calmly. Then he pulled a gun.

Belsey took a second to process this. He walked up to the man, holding the notes out. Then he tossed them onto the roof of the Skoda. Not a killer move, but confusing enough. The man glanced. Belsey punched him in the face. Men with guns don’t expect to be punched. Belsey grabbed the gun wrist and slammed his forehead into the bridge of the attacker’s nose. He steered him to the ground in standard arrest procedure, then kicked his head against the railings in a less orthodox move. The gun fell. It had a silencer. Belsey saw Hamilton watching from his window, then a reflection in the window. Belsey took the gun and turned. The second man looked Mediterranean, with a shaved head, wearing a grey Adidas sweater. He saw the gun, hesitated, then turned, walked back to the corner of the road and disappeared. There was the sound of a car screeching to a halt. A second later Belsey heard it start up again, tearing east towards the Finchley Road.

The first man was on his side trying to gather in the blood streaming from his face. Belsey sat him up, pulled his arms back and cuffed them to the railings. Blood ran from the man’s hairline into his eyes and from his nose down into his mouth. He was wearing a concealed holster, with a neat pocket for the silencer. The gun was a Sig-Sauer P226; pristine, not a convert, not second-hand. Belsey removed the clip and saw live rounds. He slipped the clip back in and stuck the barrel in the man’s eye.

“What’s going on?” he asked. The man shook his head. “Where’s Kirsty Craik?” The man licked blood from his lips. He breathed in shallow gasps.

Belsey searched him: no ID, no wallet, not even house keys. He took the clip back out of the Sig, placed the gun at his attacker’s feet, went to the Skoda and saw he’d succeeded in getting the door open. Belsey took the notes from the roof and chucked them in, then checked for brake fluid on the road, tools left lying about, any signs of tampering. He crawled underneath the chassis. There was a tracker on the driveshaft, size of a cigarette packet, magnetic. Belsey tore it off. He walked back to the injured man, forced the tracker into his mouth. Then he climbed into the Skoda and drove fast.

THROUGH MAIDA VALE TO
the Harrow Road. He parked at the back of a derelict MOT garage now being used as a Pentecostal church. The sign was up:
New Hope Ministries
. Hymns escaped among stacks of tyres and a burnt-out Ford Focus.

Give me the notes
. That was clear enough. Well spoken even. Belsey took them out and searched for whatever it was they wanted so badly.

Session 7

Dreams. London is often empty and he must walk for miles before finding someone to ask about this. The person he finds is a young girl. M describes her as like a sister. She tells him: they are not missing, you are missing. She points up and M sees that there is no sky. He continues to walk, trying to understand where he is. He is underground. But there are streets, streets and houses. Then there is nothing any more.

Between 6 May and 13 May Easton started having nightmares that involved loved ones trapped and dying. Their cries came from cells and holes in the ground. When Easton heard them he realised, to his horror, that he had thought they were already dead. In fact, this was the problem: he had locked them up and then forgotten to release them. His premature grief was forgetfulness of the worst sort. So he would race to let them out before it was too late. He would be trying to get back to them when he woke. These dreams troubled him to the extent that he stopped going to bed. He spent the night walking the city.

On 15 May, Session 12, the guilt-dreams ceased. His own visions went underground again. He walked past subterranean shops and schools and gardens, into a home, the occupants decomposing in front of a television. Up, past the corpses, to a bathroom where he stood before a mirror and saw that he was in uniform. This was a shock.

And then, as soon as he had woken, it felt to M like a revelation. A past life in the military would explain everything. And now he claims he can recall details of this life. He can smell the wet canvas in the bases and taste the army food. M’s theory now—he was involved in a secret mission. He was involved in army communications. What if, as a signals engineer, he devised a way of communicating that could project classified information into the future, to be picked up at a later date? These messages are the dreams. The dreams are military signals he has sent to himself. Asks whether I think this is possible.

Signals engineer. Why did that ring a bell? Belsey found the copy of
Military Heritage
. He turned through the pages until he saw the one it had been opened to: the adverts, the black and white photograph that took up half the page. It showed around thirty uniformed men and women, but mostly men, standing in front of a bar.

Were you here? Did you or any family members serve in the 2nd Signal Brigade, 81 Signal Squadron between 1979–1983? Please get in touch. Reunion planned South-East, weekend of 8–9 November.

If it weren’t for the uniforms they could have been any gathered pub crowd, one of the women acting as barmaid, laughing. The pub was ornate, its Victorian bar partitioned with screens of etched glass. They were gathered for the start of something: uniforms crisp, smiles fresh. It clearly belonged to the era in question: 1979–83. There was a large radio cassette player on the bar. The hairstyles were short but not shaven on the men, a little long at the back. Moustaches were popular. The women wore their hair scraped back under berets.

He looked across the faces in the advert. Then one face made him feel very cold. The man stood just to the right of centre. He had his shoulders back, a tankard held at waist height. The posture suggested he was about to laugh or say something, but that wasn’t what the face said. His expression was wary. Belsey stared at the face and tried to remember Easton in the unforgiving light of St. Matthew’s Hostel, on the Costa CCTV: the cheekbones, the half-smile.

It was him in the photograph.

Which was impossible. Belsey got out of the car. The congregation in the garage was speaking in tongues. He took a deep lungful of air and tried to remember when he last ate or slept. He retrieved a warm bottle of mineral water from the back seat and poured it over his head. He’s infected me with his madness, Belsey thought, dripping into the faded oil stains. He wondered about the Site 3 pill bottles and exactly what he’d taken.

Then he looked at the picture again. It was still Michael Easton. With a group of army personnel sometime between 1979 and 1983.