Double Blind (7 page)

“The scandal being the issue with the vaccination?”

Eliza sighed. “Yes, of course. That scandal.”

She poured tea and milk into a couple of beige earthenware mugs and handed me one. “Let’s go sit down,” she said.

I sat on the dusty couch, while she settled into a brown velour armchair that looked like a dog with mange, mottled with worn shiny patches and unidentifiable stains.

“Do you mind?” I asked, putting my mobile on top of a book on the coffee table. “If I can record our conversation, I won’t need to take notes.”

She shrugged. “Okay.” She was tapping a fingernail against her mug. I thought she seemed nervous, so I tried to ease into a conversation.

“You have a lot of books. You must collect them.”

“Obviously.”

“Any particular genre?”

“Not really. A lot of them are medical books, boring as hell.” She pointed to the bookshelf. “But those are my favorites; poetry, novels, short stories. I can’t stand watching television, so I read instead.”

I nodded. “I don’t like television either.”

She didn’t respond. Eager to begin the interview, I checked the recorder was working and leaned back against the lumpy sofa cushion.

“Why don’t we just start with what it is that you wanted to tell Colin Butler?”

“There are some things about Simon Scott,” she said. “Things that people should know before they decide to vote for him.”

I waited but she didn’t say anything else.

“Can you tell me about them?”

“Of course. That’s why I invited you to come. But you will publish what I tell you, won’t you? I want this to be in the paper so everyone can read it.”

Although she had the impression that I worked for Colin’s newspaper, this didn’t seem like the time to clarify the situation. “All I can do is take notes,” I said. “The editor decides if and when to publish. But I have a question for you. Why aren’t you talking to the tabloids? They’d love to get their hands on rumors about Scott. You’d be sure of widespread coverage that way.”

“I’m not telling you rumors,” Eliza snapped. “I’m telling you the absolute truth. And I hate the tabloids, almost as much as I detest Simon Scott. You know what they did to me.”

“I saw the stories from a couple of years ago, yes,” I said.

“So you must see why I don’t want to talk to any of those scumbags.” She drank some tea and grimaced. I sipped at mine and it tasted fine.

“Why don’t you give me a quick rundown on everything leading up to this moment?” I asked. “It’s best if I hear it from you directly.”

She sighed. She seemed to do that a lot. “Let’s start at the beginning then, as it will make more sense that way. Scott and I were at Cambridge together, medical students. Scott was one of those golden boys, good-looking, smart, popular. You know the type.” She paused and peered at me. “Or maybe you don’t. You’re not Oxbridge, are you. Let me guess. One of the modern places in the Home Counties?”

Stung, I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. “University College London, actually.”

“Oh, well, good for you,” she replied. I was stunned at the way she threw her prejudices around so casually, but she either didn’t notice my reaction or didn’t care.

“Anyway,” she continued. “Simon was one of those. Everyone liked him. I wasn’t in his league in terms of looks and popularity, but we were in the same classes and became friends. Turned out that our fathers knew each other vaguely as they both worked in Whitehall.”

She stopped when the previously shunned cat jumped on to her lap. She let it settle in before going on. “In our final year, Simon offered to proof-read a paper for me. It was really important, so I was thrilled that he was willing to help. I wasn’t quite so happy when he pointed out what he called some specious arguments. But I knew he was right, so I made the revisions he’d suggested. That took a couple of weeks. Not long after handing it in, my professor called me to his office. He accused me of cheating.”

Eliza’s hand started shaking. She slammed her mug down on the rickety table, which trembled under the onslaught. “Cheating. Can you believe it? He said my paper was almost a copy, and not a very good one at that, of a thesis submitted the previous week by Scott. I was given a fail and that meant a couple of residency positions I’d applied for were revoked.”

She stood up suddenly, and the cat adroitly jumped to the back of the chair, where it perched with its tail bushed out in annoyance. “I’ll be back,” she said.

Alone, I checked that my recording app was still working. It was, but I considered turning it off. Everything Eliza had said sounded like the rantings of a failed scholar. This trip was beginning to feel like a waste of time.

She came back with a glass of red wine in her hand and settled back into the chair. “Want one?” she asked lifting the glass up. I shook my head.

I really didn’t want to hear any more of her ramblings. The story was pathetic. A plagiarized paper from twenty-five years ago was hardly likely to deal a fatal blow to Scott’s political ambitions.

“I’m not sure I see where this is going,” I said. “Some academic cheating, even if it happened—”

“It did happen,” she said. “But that’s not the point. I told you about it to explain why I dislike Scott so much. And it illustrates his character, not that people seem to care much about character nowadays. They only care that whoever is in power promises to cut taxes and the price of petrol.”

I didn’t want to get drawn into a discussion about politics so I asked her what had happened after the debacle with her final paper.

“I couldn’t get into the cardiology residency program I was trying for,” she replied. “I ended up being a general practitioner.” She made it sound as though she’d become a child molester.

“Family care is very important,” I said. “Think of all the people you’ve looked after. I’d think that would be a wonderful way to practice medicine.”

She threw me a look of utter disdain. “Try it,” she said. “Snotty-nosed kids, obese mothers, rashes, coughs, sprained wrists. It’s not the stuff of dreams for someone who wanted to save lives in a cardiac unit.”

I shifted on the scarred sofa. Her self-pity grated on me. “I’m sure you could have worked your way into a cardiology program if you cared that much about it,” I said, then tried to soften my words. “I mean, there must be ways to do that?”

She shrugged, the movement causing wine to splash out of her glass and on to the brown velour. She didn’t seem to notice. We were losing direction.

“So—?” I prompted.

“Two years ago, I made a mistake. I gave a kid the wrong dose of a vaccine and it made him sick. Not dangerously ill, but the parents complained and the press got hold of it. Within a day, I was splashed all over the papers, made to look like a monster. They said I was a drunk and unfit to practice. I was fired, my license was taken away. That’s why I hate the tabloids. The only newspaper that gave me a fair trial was Colin Butler’s. He wrote a piece about the pressure of overworked family doctors. He stood up for me. So I want him to handle this story because I trust him to do it properly. Otherwise it will be a twenty-four hour extravaganza of tabloid sleaze that no one with any intelligence will read.”

A little shocked, both by her story and her tone, I pressed on, anxious to finish the interview and start the journey home. Self-pity is corrosive and Eliza was swimming in a deep pool of it. It was her own life she was destroying. No one else was doing it for her.

“So, is there more?” I asked.

“Yes and this is the important part.” She drained the last of her wine, but gripped the stem of the glass as tightly as a lifeline. The cat remained on the back of the chair, making her look like a witch with a demon on her shoulder. “Simon fell in love with a Greek girl, another medical student who was one year below us. Her name was Phoena Stamos. She was beautiful, exotic, and brilliant. From what I heard, her family had made big sacrifices to make it possible for her to come to Cambridge. She and Simon made a stunning couple. But when his family heard about her they told him to finish the relationship. They had someone far more suitable in mind apparently, a woman called Tiffany Holden, whose father was a Member of Parliament.

“I think Simon resisted for a while, during which time, Phoena got pregnant. At that point, Scott senior was so angry he was threatening to pull Simon out of college. Simon gave Phoena money for an abortion and that was the end of it. I know that Simon, against his father’s wishes, offered to go with her to London for the procedure, but she refused. She didn’t return to Cambridge.”

“Did you know if she was all right? What happened to her?”

“Simon told me he got a postcard from Greece saying she was fine but not coming back. Within a few months he was engaged to Tiffany. They married and that lasted about two years, I think. Just enough time for him to benefit from her father’s connections.” She leaned forward in her chair to put the empty glass on the table. “And then he dumped her.”

In the silence that followed, I heard kids laughing and talking out on the street, and the explosive sound of a motorbike revving up. My mouth was dry and my throat burned as though I’d ingested some of the acid that Eliza was spewing.

“Then as you probably know, he married Melody Blake, the heiress, which gave him the funds he needed to run for office.”

The room felt airless and close, and it was growing dark. Eliza and her story weighed on me, as though her depression was contagious. I didn’t know how much was the truth and how much was the fantasy of a bitter and vindictive woman.

“So you can get that into print, can’t you?” she was saying when I started listening again. “Let people see what kind of man their Prime Minister elect really is?”

“I thought you said yourself that no one values character any more,” I said carefully. I didn’t want to offend her, but I wasn’t going to encourage her illusions. “And to be honest, I’m not sure why anyone will give a damn about something that happened all that time ago. He was just a kid, really. I’m sure there are plenty of fifty-year old men with errors in their pasts, like broken relationships and unintended pregnancies. This may not have the effect you are looking for.”

Besides, I thought, Scott’s aura means he has far bigger issues to deal with than an old romance gone bad — but I couldn’t tell Eliza that.

She reached out to switch on a floor lamp that stood at a tilt next to her chair. The lamp- shade was stained and the weak bulb threw a puddle of thin light on the velour chair. I imagined her sitting there in the evenings, reading a book, nurturing her grudges and resentments. I felt sad for her, but frustrated too. The cat opened its eyes and looked at me for a few seconds before jumping to the floor and stalking out of the room.

“I want you to promise that you’ll write it up,” she said, standing up.

“I’ll do my best,” I said, turning off the recorder application on the phone and pushing myself up from the couch.

“You have to do better than that.” She raised her voice. She was almost shouting. “I’m counting on you. It’s not fair that a liar and a cheat gets to be Prime Minister, don’t you see?”

“I do.” Picking up my bag, I made my way out of the room, stepping around piles of books on the floor. I couldn’t wait to get outside.

“If you don’t get this done, then I will,” Eliza said, lowering her voice to a whisper that felt more threatening than the yelling. “If I have to, I’ll take this into my own hands.”

The hair rose on the back of my neck. Was she the threat to Scott? She was obviously unbalanced. She walked me through the hallway that was now murky with the gloom of early evening. When she closed the front door behind me, I stood on the step for a few seconds, breathing in fresh air and enjoying the tingling sensation of rain on my face.

The street lamps flickered on, their orange light dimmed by mist and rain. I walked quickly, anxious to put some space between me and Eliza’s dreary house. The road was surprisingly quiet, unlike London at this time in the evening, when the pavements were crammed with commuters. I missed the feeling of being part of a bigger entity, and felt a pang of nostalgia for the tube trains crowded with wild and assorted representatives of humanity.

This glimpse into Eliza’s life had been a stark reminder that I wasn’t making the most of my education or my skills either. My life as a freelancer was beginning to feel less entrepreneurial and more unemployed. Protecting my phone from the rain, I called Alan Bradley, and left a voicemail, asking if I could talk with him about coming back to work.

I left a voicemail for Colin Butler too, to say I’d met with Eliza and would send him more details later. By the time I reached the station, I’d decided to call the police as well. I’d start with the detective chief inspector who’d headed the investigation into my friend’s death the previous year. I wouldn’t tell him about the auras. I’d just pass on the information Eliza had given me and let him take the next step.

***

In the early evening, back at home, I sat at my computer, sifting through dozens of websites, looking for information that would verify Eliza’s version of events. The first searches brought up the stories in the tabloids two years earlier. I wondered what it would be like to see your name plastered across the papers, every sordid detail punctuated with exclamation marks and bad photographs. I reread the piece that Colin had written, which was measured and reasonable, extending sympathy to the parents of the child, but also suggesting that they perhaps overreacted.

My searches for Phoena Stamos didn’t bring up anything. There were, as I’d imagined, thousands of people with that surname in Greece but nothing on Phoena, so it was possible that she had married and changed her name. I wondered what had happened to her, and whether she had taken up her medical studies somewhere else, in Athens perhaps. I hoped that she was a happy and successful doctor now, as she had dreamed when she went up to Cambridge.

Closing my laptop, I leaned back on the sofa, thinking about Simon Scott. I hadn’t found anything that linked anyone else to his aura. The only clear threat was Eliza; she obviously loathed him. I picked up the phone to call Clarke again. This time he answered; we exchanged pleasantries and checked on each other’s health before he asked what I wanted. I explained it all as succinctly as I could, without mentioning Scott’s aura. Clarke might have guessed that an aura had been the catalyst for my call, but he didn’t say anything. In fact, he seemed unimpressed by my story. “I can’t investigate everyone who disagrees with a political candidate,” he said. “But thanks for the call.” The line went dead.