Raucous (11 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

Roach had contacts.  They had got him in.

The studio was small, hidden away within a modern glass high-rise that had suspended concrete walkways linking the two sides of the horseshoe design. They required a three digit combination for the elevator keypad to rise to the third floor.  The elevator was a glass cylinder with steel floor.  The mechanism and cables visible as they moved up slowly.   Dr.  Michaels met them as the doors slid open.  He shook their hands in turn and asked them to follow him.

They entered the reception to his office.  It was somber, the walls a light yellow, serious original art covered the walls and the magazines on the small wooden coffee table were new and untouched.  His private work made him 180 pounds an hour.  He could afford to have an expensive office.

Charlotte imagined he volunteered for service with state patients to balance his conscious with the obscene money he made for sitting in a large leather armchair and listening to people open up. 

Dr. Michaels sat at his desk.  A glass top covered in neat piles of documents, a telephone and a single photo frame that only Dr. Michaels could see.  Charlotte and Roach sat in two functional straight-backed plastic chairs that had the expensive curved design of a bored man from Finland.

“You’re the second group to ask after him this week,” Dr. Michaels said.

“The first?”  Charlotte asked.

“You don’t know?”

“Enlighten us,” Roach said.

“Very official, all documents signed and stamped.  Doctor patient confidentiality waived.  A national level.  So I said what I could.”

“Who was the man?”  Roach asked.

“Who are you?  I see you are not a follow up team, as I wrongly assumed you to be.  Therefore I really cannot divulge too much.”

Dr.  Michaels found his ordered papers of interest and started to flick through.

“We’re his friends.”

Dr. Michaels stopped and looked up.  He shook his head.

“I have worked with him for the last ten years.  He has no friends.  He has no past.  So who are you?”

“Interested parties,” Roach said.  He showed a badge, out of date.  Charlotte hoped his bluff would play.

“That’s not enough for me to speak,” Dr. Michaels said.  “A wasted trip, I’m afraid.  I hope you didn’t travel too far.  We could have cleared this up on the phone.  Sorry for a wasted day.  Although if you ever need assistance in a professional sense, call me.  Here is my card.”

“I don’t think we’re able to afford your services,” Roach said, refusing the card.

Dr. Michaels pushed the card into Charlotte's palm. 

“Take it anyway, you appear to be people who socialize in circles with money, and I have discovered it is those circles who have most to say.”

Charlotte accepted his card; she read the details and his number.  Out of habit she flipped it over to look at the back.  There was small, immediately illegible writing.  She looked up at Dr. Michaels.

“That is all I can give you for the time being," he said.  "If you call back and confirm you have an official capacity, then I can maybe give you information you require.  Beyond that I can currently say nothing."

They stood and Dr. Michaels showed them to the door.  A man in a tweed suit was sat in the reception.  He didn't look up.

“I hope you can remember the number on the keypad," Dr. Michaels said.  "And sorry I cannot help.”

******************************************************************

Roach and Charlotte were silent as they rode the lift down to the ground floor.  They walked toward their car and Roach stopped to look up at the office they had just visited.

“Waste of time,” he said.

“Not entirely,” Charlotte answered as she passed the business card across.  “Flip it over.”

Roach read. 

“What does it say?”  Charlotte asked.

“Morning coffee, everyday, Lino’s cafe.  8.30 a.m.”

Mitch looked at Charlotte.

“We got ourselves an appointment,” she said.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

“You still like that shit at your age?” Raucous asked.

Raucous pulled up a chair from the dining table.  He sat with its back-rest facing forward, his arms folded on its top edge.  He rested his chin on his forearms and watched Ben.

Ben was sat crossed legged on the floor of Sophie's living room.  A hundred and forty pounds of comics spread around him haphazardly in a rough semi-circle.  He was wearing grey jogging bottoms and a loose sports t-shirt.  They were all on top of a large rectangle of a cheap Asian rug.

Ben nodded at the question but kept his eyes on the array of comics.  A hundred and forty pounds had bought him a month's good reading.  No need to take it slow and drag it out, this was read and read material.  Jean wanted in, the Turk had given cash.  And if this is the reward for sitting around doing little then he wouldn’t disagree.  Mitch would say more, but Mitch could wait.  Ben wanted to enjoy this moment.  He and Jean united, friends.  Probably won’t last, he thought, but I’ll ride it till the end.

“Green Lantern, right?”  Raucous asked.

“Green Arrow,” Ben said.

“The worst of the lot.  At least go X-men.”

Ben thought, as if maybe Raucous had a point.  He shook his head slightly.

“I never could make that leap of faith into mutant territory,” he said.

“Because a guy with a mysterious past, trained up on an island and a vigilante in a big city surrounded by superheroes is so much easier to accept.”

Ben stared, unsure, believing in a set-up with a punch-line of violence.

“You sound a fan,” Ben said.

“I was when I was a boy, because it is for boys.  There wasn't so many childish reads where I was."

Ben stood in one movement, from crossed-legged to standing tall.

“I used to read all the classics," he said.  "Spiderman, Superman, Batman, you know?  But like a kid at school who discovers the Beatles first then gets annoyed because everyone else follows him and it becomes the norm, nothing new, so they look for something more obscure, something different.  They go to the velvet underground then some other never-quite-made it band in the 60s and so on, until they have to love the crap they listen to because they want to be different.”

Ben expected an answer, a sarcastic comeback or bullying insult.  Raucous stared at the floor in silence.

“That boy was Phillip Downes,” Raucous said.

“Who?”

“The boy who went Beatles, Rock, Trance and pills.  His name was Phillip Downes.”

Ben nodded.

“There’s a Phillip Downes at every school,” Ben said.

Raucous looked up like a lawyer who has just had a witness bite.

“What was yours like?”  He asked.

“Like every other.  Lessons and teachers, kids growing up, trying to be adult, hiding their fascination with childish things.”

“Got to become adult at some point, take on responsibility.”

Ben hated this argument.  He had heard it before.

“Adult model train clubs," he said.  "Rugby and Football clubs, shared emails with dirty jokes.  They’re adult, right?  But it’s the same childish shit.”

“That’s regressed men for you.”

“Women too.  Wives get together to talk about men.  Back then it’s who they fancy and what they would like to do.  Now it’s wives talking about husbands who want too much sex or none at all.  The difference is they pretend to be this concept called adult.  Reality is they know more, have bills but don’t change.”

“Adult means you have to do things to survive, get by.”

“So do kids.  Even if parents protect.”

“If you don’t have any?”

“Same as an adult.  If you have no one, you rely on the state.  But many times that fails, right?  Kids get hurt and so do adults.”

Raucous was staring now.  Not anger at the words, annoyed with the concept he had hard.  The state looking after people.

“Keep going theory boy,” he said.

“You don’t look like a man who escaped pain on either side of the adult divide.  And when is that divide?  At a certain age, at a certain level of experience?  Seems you confuse adult with getting hurt.  And anyone can see you’ve been hurt.”

Raucous stood.  “Well, you are a deeper thinker than you appear.  Certainly that night you met Sophie you were thinking of adult concepts.”

“That night was a room full of kids in mature bodies seeking childish pleasures.”

“Well, let’s go see if you can back up your theory in action.  We have an appointment with a reluctant lender.”

“That’s not until the day after tomorrow.”

“You can’t get by in an adult world working one day in three.  The appointment has been moved up.”

“By who?”

“By me.”

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

Dr. Michaels was there as he said he would be.  He sat in the corner of the bar, his back to the far wall.  He saw them enter and approach and he made to stand and leave.  He walked up to Roach as if he was going to keep walking straight through him.  Roach moved to his left to let him through, Dr. Michaels stepped right, bumped his chest against Roach.

“Make it look like you aren’t letting me leave,” he said.

Roach didn't pause, he played along.  He backed Dr. Michaels up to the table and they sat down.  The Doctor took a different chair and sat with his back hunched to the cafe window.  Charlotte sat opposite him and Roach to his side.  To an onlooker it appeared Charlotte and Roach were sat in such a way as to block any escape.

“You have a couple of minutes before a man will come and break this up.  I’ll tell you what they wanted to know and then that’s it.  They threatened my wife and I do not intend to be caught up in this again.”

The doctor looked at Charlotte, “Do you know many song lyrics?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Start reciting them, or saying something else, because I need you to look like you are doing all the talking.”

******************************************************************

Outside the coffee shop a man named Jobs in casual weekend clothes dialed a number on his smartphone.  It rang twice before he heard the answer.

“Speak,” the voice said.

“The woman and Roach followed him to his morning coffee, he tried to leave, they pushed him back to his table and now they are speaking,” Jobs said.

“They or him?”

“The woman continuously.  The other two have their backs to me.  But if they are speaking, she’s not listening.  Her mouth is going at speed.  What do you want me to do?”

“If she stops speaking and the Doctor starts, break it up.  The Doctor has seen you before, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Go in and make sure he sees you again.  He’s not dumb enough to try anything.  I’ll be there in five minutes.”

The phone went dead.  Jobs checked his pocket for change, realized he had enough to order cappuccino, and walked toward the cafe.

******************************************************************

The doctor saw the man called Jobs coming and spoke fast.

"Christian is a very strange case.  He has a seriously fractured personality.  From what I can gather he is divided into three distinct types.  Each with a name: Ben, Jean and Mitch.  All three are aspects of him but they will not mold back together.  They are each intelligent but each act on different impulses.  From one day to the next his response to the same situation will change.  He is a man without a childhood.  Before he came to my institution at eighteen he has no real memory.  I am sure there is something, but he never spoke, in any of his states.  And this I must stress again, he has no memory of his childhood that he has ever spoken of.  It is if he was born aged eighteen as he is now.  His different personality types have developed from there.  The trauma that caused this we know nothing about.  Where he came from we do not know, although the man who came to visit me clearly does.  He asked of possessions.  Christian had three.  A zippo, and two keys.  One for a lock and one for a car.  No idea what they are for, or even if they are relevant.  But they are in a bag.  On the floor next to your feet Mr. Roach.”

The bell on the door chimed and the Doctor turned as Charlotte continued to speak lyrics.  

Jobs saw the Doctor plead with his eyes.  He joined the three-person queue after nodding he understood the message.

The Doctor turned back to the table.

“Is he one of them?” Roach asked as Charlotte continued to recite lyrics from songs she had learnt with friends before going to school discos.

The Doctor was not going to speak any more.

“Fold your arms and sit back, Defiant,” Roach said.

The doctor followed his order and Roach reached down and pocketed the small black plastic bag. 

“We will leave now," Charlotte said. "We won’t come back.  Thank you.”

The doctor smiled.  “Go fuck yourselves,” he said.

Jobs heard and watched Charlotte and Roach walk by.

“Doctor patient secrecy my arse,” Roach said as they passed Jobs.

“What did you make of that?”  Charlotte asked as they left the café.

“The obvious conclusions.”

“Which are?”

“Two nights ago, you fucked a fruitcake.”

Charlotte turned and stared.  Roach shrugged.

“I didn’t need to be a detective to figure that one out.”    ******************************************************************

Parker pulled up and waited, watching Roach and the girl walk away.  A strange couple, he thought.  He didn’t need to rush; he strolled to the table, letting the doctor watch his every step

“What did you tell them?”  Parker asked the doctor.

“I believe I told them to perform lewd acts on each other.”

“Nothing more than that?”

“The woman kept speaking, asking questions, telling me the answers herself.  I neither said yes or no.  I don’t believe they’ll be back.”

“I don’t believe they will.  But we will be keeping an eye on you."

“None of my business, and I do not want to know.  The subject in question is no longer my patient.  You know as much as I about the man.  Draw your own conclusions.  For me this is over.”

Parker placed his hand on the Doctor’s shoulder and squeezed. 

“We’ll keep this as a victim aggressor secrecy pact.  Carry on like nothing happened and we’ll never meet again.  But we will be watching.  You know we watch.  But we will not act if you play straight.”

Parker left with the man, and the doctor leant forward and placed his forehead on the table.

******************************************************************

“You think he was straight?” Jobs asked Parker as they walked to their cars.

“No, I do not.  But I’m not killing him on a whim.  A little too high profile for the risk.  And everyone here has seen us.  He knows that, he played it smart.  Took a couple of risks, but well calculated.  But he’s covered.  The CCTV was zoomed in on that table.  We’ve been framed as it were.”

“I didn’t see that.”

“No, you did not and now they know as much as us.”