The Various Haunts of Men (Simon Serrailler 1)

‘I know.’

‘By the way, has my mother rung you?’

‘About her dinner party? Yes she has and we’re going.’

‘Excellent.’

‘Do you know who else will be there?’

‘Us, Nick Haydn, Aidan Sharpe and a rather attractive detective sergeant who works with Si. Possibly David Lester, not sure. Bit of a liquorice allsorts, but you know my mother. I think she might be matchmaking.’

‘Or fundraising or trying to get up a working party for the hospice bazaar.’

‘Or just winding up Dad. He’ll hate it, of course.’

‘She never seems to notice.’

‘Oh, she notices. Her way of dealing is to bat on regardless.’

‘I’ll have been operated on psychically by then, of course.’

‘God, what a conversation stopper. And, Karin …’

‘I know, I know.’

‘The scan. This is your doctor speaking.’

‘Goodbye, Cat.’

Karin was in Starly by nine thirty the following Thursday morning. It was a day to make anyone feel better, she thought, driving through the lanes whose hedgerows were sprinkled white with blackthorn. She had been determined about taking charge of her own health, determined and positive. She believed in what she was doing. Nevertheless, in the dark watches of the night she had misgivings, when she imagined the jaws of the crab eating their way through her. Then she wondered what she had been thinking of, rejecting Cat’s advice and proven medical treatment, and fear that her delay meant that she would now be beyond help gripped her. But in the day, when she read the books so full of miracles and success stories, so bubbling with optimism and confidence, and listened to her tapes and was transported by them into realms of beauty and calm and vibrant health, everything changed; her night terrors receded into their hollow caves and she felt fit and sure of herself again.

She felt like that now as she pulled into the car park behind the market square at Starly. It was quiet, the sun caught the trunks of the trees with lemon-coloured light, and a mother with a laughing, dancing toddler and a new baby in a sling went past; she and Karin exchanged a remark about the springlike weather and the child blew a stream of bubbles from a wand and plastic tub of liquid. The bubbles drifted up, gleaming with iridescent rainbows.

Karin walked down the hill, looking in shop windows at dream catchers and jars of organic honey and small crystals. One of them, a pink quartz like a chunk of solidified rose petals, caught her eye; she felt a magnetic power emanating from it towards her. She bought it for five pounds, and when she put the package into her bag, she felt a lifting of her spirit.

She bought a newspaper and took it into the pine-tabled wholefood café, to read over a glass of home-made lemonade. ‘If life seems like a lemon, make lemonade.’ She had read that, along with a great many other optimistic little mottoes, in one of her American books, the one that also told her she should wrap herself in white light, weave her own cloth of gold and reach out every morning as she woke to touch her own rainbow. She liked the lemonade advice though.

She looked out of the café window and felt good. She told herself so. She felt happy and positive and well. She was sure of it. She was also full of foreboding about the appointment ahead. Reflexologists and aromatherapists were one thing, a psychic surgeon quite another. She curled her right hand round the mobile phone in her pocket for reassurance.

At ten past ten she walked through the door of a house at the bottom of the hill whose glass panel had ‘Surgery’ written on it in black; the word ‘Dental’ had been roughly erased. As a dental phobic, Karin was not reassured.

‘Good morning. Have you an appointment?’

The middle-aged woman in the camel-coloured jumper could have been the receptionist for a Harley Street consultant. Karin gave her name.

‘Yes, thank you, Mrs McCafferty. Would you take a seat? Dr Groatman will be with you shortly.’

‘I’m sorry?’

The woman smiled. ‘Dr Groatman. That is the name of the consultant who treats patients through Anthony.’

‘I see. And I take it this doctor –’

‘Lived in the 1830s in London.’

‘– Right.’

The woman smiled before turning back to her computer.

‘Do many people come here?’

‘Oh yes, the doctor is fully booked for some weeks ahead. People travel long distances for a consultation.’

Karin picked up a copy of World Healing, but as she looked at the cover, the inner door opened and an elderly woman came out looking confused and rather pale.

‘Mrs Cornwell? Please come and sit down for a moment and reorientate yourself. I’ll get you some water.’ The receptionist went to a cooler at the far end of the room. ‘It’s important that you drink this, Mrs Cornwell. How are you feeling?’

The woman took out a handkerchief and wiped her face. ‘A bit faint.’

‘That’s quite usual. Just drink the water slowly and don’t get up. Have you any discomfort?’

The woman looked up in surprise. ‘Well, no. I haven’t. None at all. Isn’t that odd?’

The receptionist smiled. ‘It’s usual.’

Then the door opened again and a man came through and went straight across to the desk without looking at either woman. He was slight, with sandy hair and an unmemorable face. He entered something on to the computer, typing with two fingers, then looked briefly at a folder on the desk, before walking back across the room and closing the inner door behind him. There was silence. Mrs Cornwell sipped her water and wiped her face and continued to look bemused, the receptionist returned to her work. Karin opened the magazine again.

A buzzer sounded.

‘Would you go through please, Mrs McCafferty?’

Karin’s legs felt weak and her throat dry. It was exactly like the dentist. She didn’t want to go. She wanted to turn round and get out, now, while she could.

The receptionist was smiling. Karin looked at the other patient. What happens? What is it like? What does he do? What are you here for? How do you really feel? The questions tumbled round her head.

‘Straight through the door. Dr Groatman is waiting.’

Oh God, I must be mad.

She wished Cat had come with her. She went slowly across the room.

The man was very bent and walked with a pronounced limp. He wore a caliper and one shoulder was slightly higher than the other. His hair was the same sandy colour as the man who had walked through the reception room, but tousled and sticking up from his head. He wore a white coat and stood by an examination couch. The room was lit dimly, with slatted blinds shielding the window. There was a sink with a tap. A bare vinyl floor. Nothing else.

‘On the couch, please. What is the name you use?’ His voice was gruff with a slight accent she could not place.

‘Karin.’

‘Lie down, please.’

Karin lay. He stood above her and passed his hands rapidly over her body without touching it.

‘You have cancer. I feel your cancer in the breast and the glands and spread to the stomach. Please unbutton your shirt but do not remove and do not remove the clothing or the underclothing.’

Now the accent was definitely foreign, perhaps German or Dutch. While she unbuttoned her shirt he looked away.

‘I should remove this growth here in the neck gland. This is the core tumour. We get rid of this, others will shrink and disappear. They feed off the parent tumour.’

Everything in her wanted to shut out the sight of him. He needed a shave, though his skin and hands seemed clean. He reached under the couch and swung out a tray of instruments. She heard the sound of a bucket being moved. Karin forced herself to watch, to observe everything as closely as she could, remembering his face, his hands, his body. He took an instrument from the tray and seemed to fold his hand over it.

Then he reached towards her neck.

‘You need not be afraid, nothing to fear. Look at your heart rate, far too quick, ridiculous. Calm down. I am making you well. The tumour will go, you will be well, what is there to be afraid of?’

Then the hand moved swiftly and she felt him take a fold of the flesh in her neck, low down, then a curious sensation, as if something were being drawn across her skin, and the hand twisting and moving within her neck. She watched his face. He had his eyes half closed, but she knew he was aware that she was looking at him. The twisting movement sharpened, she felt a stinging pain, and a wrench.

‘Ah. There. Good.’

His hand moved swiftly away from her and down. Something dropped into the bucket at his feet. When his hand came up the fingers were bloody. Now his hands were hovering just above her again, and he was mumbling what sounded like an incantatory prayer.

‘You are in God’s hands, Karin. Safe now. You will be fully well. You need to rest and you should eat well, do not starve, do not deny your body. Give it what it asks for when it asks. Drink water, plenty of water. Rest. Goodbye.’

He stood motionless. Karin lay, slightly light-headed, slightly bemused, but after a few seconds, she swung her legs off the couch and got up unsteadily. Dr Groatman neither helped her nor spoke and his facial expression did not flicker. She thought he was the man in the sports jacket who had come through the reception room, that he had twisted his body, padded his back and shoulder, mussed his hair – thought, but could not be sure.

As she put her hand on the door leading back into the reception office, he said softly, ‘Mistrust and suspicion are dangerous companions. Keep an open mind and a generous heart, Karin, or you will negate my healing work.’ His voice was unpleasant and whatever accent there had been was quite gone.

Karin almost fell into the outer room.

Two people were waiting.

‘Please sit down and drink a glass of water, Mrs McCafferty.’

‘No, I have to go, sorry …’

‘You really must. You need to centre yourself. Please.’

Trembling, she sat and sipped the paper tumbler of water; the woman was right, she needed it, she was thirsty and unsteady. The buzzer sounded for the next patient.

‘Do I pay you now?’

‘Yes please. Take your time; wait until you feel quite calm again.’

‘I’m fine. Thanks.’ Karin stood. She did not faint. The room remained still. She crossed to the desk and the smiling woman handed her a small card. Mrs K. McCafferty. For treatment: £100. Please make cheques payable to SUDBURY & CO.

She came out into the fresh air, doing sums furiously. She had been in the consulting room perhaps ten minutes, no more. But say one patient every half-hour, allowing for the waiting, from nine till five – sixteen patients a day, with an hour for lunch, fourteen patients, fourteen at £100 = £1,400.

Back in the wholefood café, she sat at a window table in the sun, and over tea and a carrot cake which was rich and delicious, she wrote pages in the loose-leaf notebook she had brought while the visit was fresh in her mind – smells, sights, sounds, what he had said, what she had felt.

Back in the car, she rang Cat.

‘Dr Deerbon is out on an emergency call. Can I take a message?’

Karin left her name, and asked Cat to ring her that evening at home.

She drove back slowly to Lafferton, delighting even more in the sunshine, feeling released and relieved and trying to put the morning’s experience out of her mind. She had planned to spend the afternoon in the garden clearing space for the seed potatoes. She went into the house, took the mail from behind the door, and went into the kitchen to put the kettle on before changing into her old jeans, jacket and boots. The sun was shining through the huge vase of daffodils on the table, making them blaze. Karin took the mug of tea over to the sofa with her letters. Five minutes later she was asleep. She neither stirred nor dreamed and when she woke, over two hours later, lay still, feeling an extraordinary sense of peace and refreshment. The sun had moved across the room and was making oblong blocks of brightness on the white wall. Karin stared at them. They seemed to radiate energy and to be beautiful beyond explanation or words.

She remembered the morning – Starly, the strange consulting room, the man with the bent back and lame leg, his odd accent, his brusque remarks. She had been nervous and suspicious, relieved to get away. Yet now, lying looking at the white wall, she felt full of strength and well-being, as if something within her had indeed changed and her spirit been renewed. She wondered what she could say to Cat Deerbon now.

Twenty-Nine

He wanted to know what was going on. There had been reports on the radio and in the local paper, which had been picked up, although only in small paragraphs, by some of the national press. The place was buzzing with talk. Worry. Speculation.

It would be too dangerous to go in the van.

He had spent the previous evening with Debbie Parker. He had written his post-mortem report and filed it and then she had to be restored, the organs replaced, wounds sewn up. He liked to think he always did an immaculate job, and that he was respectful, always respectful. They had taught him that. There was often crude humour in the mortuary and at the post-mortem table, especially when the police were present; it was their way of dealing with what they witnessed and keeping the horror at bay, but he had never approved of it, and certainly had never joined in, and now that he was alone, he worked in silence, or occasionally, to music. For Debbie he had played Vivaldi.

When he had finished, he sheeted her and slid her body into the cold store beneath the others. Each drawer had a label but the names were what he chose for them, not their own, and he gave each one careful thought.

Achilles.

Medusa

He had written Circe neatly in black ink and slipped the card into the slot on the drawer containing Debbie Parker. Then he had unzipped his green lab suit, stepped out of it and put it into the washing machine before dressing in his own clothes and locking the unit, each section separately with its own double padlock, and going out by the side door, which rolled down and bolted to the concrete floor.

He left the van in the car park of a public house and walked in the pleasant early spring evening towards the Hill.

It was still cordoned off with police tape and warning signs were placed at every entrance point. No one was about. The police and their vehicles and equipment had all left.

He walked round the perimeter path, looking up at the deserted slopes, the undergrowth, the Wern Stones, to the crown of oaks at the top. There was no indication of how long the police would keep it closed, but even when the Hill was reopened it would take a long time for people to return as normal there. They would be anxious now, rumour would feed on rumour, no one would feel safe, everyone would be watched and the police would patrol visibly and regularly.