Resolution (The CRIME series), page 7
Switching on his computer, Lennox starts searching local land deals. One theme emerging over the last ten years is Cardingworth has bought a lot of it: he seems to be aiming to become Sussex’s very own Duke of Westminster.
Lennox’s attention wanders. He thinks about being with Carmel. They will meet after work today. Excitement grips him, before he remembers they will be with Angela and Cardingworth and he is crushed. But this deflation doesn’t last. He feels his fists clench until he is certain they will crack, as a different brand of euphoria surges through him. Vengeance’s hunger dances in his taste buds, itches in his throat. He is going to end this soon. Allows his hands to relax, enjoying the slow throb in them. Jumps to his feet, assuming a boxing stance. Fires out the sharp combinations he knows will sink a bug-eyed, open-mouthed Cardingworth to the floor with an economy of effort. Looks to the wine, wrapped up in green crêpe paper on the desk.
It is telling him there is somewhere he needs to be before he addresses the issue of Cardingworth.
12
I Talk with You in Dreams
Perhaps you believe you’re here by accident … well, I don’t think that, not for one second, oh you’ll get a shock alright, I should imagine, you see, it’s a funny old set of circumstances that’s led us to where we are and I never thought we’d end up this close again, this … I think ‘proximate’ might be the best way to describe it … not when I was, say, back in prison with dirty old Wang … ain’t told that story, have I? … yeah, I met Wang in prison, in Shanghai, after trouble with a woman in a bar, she was a whore who brought in her pimp, who I subsequently had to deal with … but the cops came and that was that … yours truly banged up in that hovel … but no regrets as I would never have met Wang and been liberated … he was the only one of those bastards worth talking to … because he showed me how it was done, what he called the lucid dreaming … well, it took me ages to get it, but then I had ages … I was going nowhere …
… I felt myself leaning into the warmth of a body alongside mine as the vehicle turned off the Hunan Road into a slum … I could feel the Chinese man next to me … crushed by my bulk against the chassis of the van, gasping for breath each time it sharply turned a corner … I didn’t care, my mouth was dry and my head pounded but you always have to prove master to your immediate needs in such situations … acknowledging weakness only saps strength … I felt my erection stir … I could hear the sly PSB men chattering in Chinese … could have been the local Wu or Mandarin or Cantonese or even bloody Greek for all I knew … at one stage a truncheon cracked my knee … I didn’t even open me eyes, but tugged gently on me wrists, to feel the tight metal cuffs that held them together … after a while, from under my half-shut lids, I studied me snared hands … they were covered in a blood which I knew wasn’t mine … events rolled back into my mind; a mouth, a sneer, a challenge, my fists and feet flying, pulverising a skull … a scene played out countless times …
… then shoved through the arsehole of a gargantuan concrete building and along underground corridors lined by dank interrogation cells … passing prisoners slumped in metal chairs visible through the gaps in doors … I was pushed by one guard who was so puny, he couldn’t even make me step backwards when I was face-on and he was shoving … I laughed and took a kick in the shins for me trouble …
… I had to remove my jacket, shirt, linen trousers and nice shoes … all this attire was covered in dried blood … another man’s, obviously … I tried to estimate the level of damage I had done to him; nose-smashing jab, jaw-breaking right, broken bottle smashed on head that would gush blood everywhere, my hands choking the living shit out of him …
… photographed against a nicotine-yellow wall, front and profile … in the cell block, they made me strip and examined me everywhere … I prised me arse cheeks apart and let rip with a fart of rotting stench from the cheap beer and putrid street food I had consumed … they threw me some cotton shoes half my size and a rancid washed-out pinky-red vest with a ‘V’ torn into its neck, and ‘Shanghai Detention Centre’ stamped on its back …
… for the interrogations I was shackled to an iron chair inside a steel cage facing a podium where two PSB men questioned me. Why was I in that bar? In Shanghai? Did I know the man I assaulted? I told them he was a thief, that he had stolen my wallet … (I never had a wallet, just a roll of notes … I gave some of them to the man in exchange for opium and a whore …) I had a feeling he wouldn’t return so I followed him down the street to another bar, where I saw him boastfully buying drinks for his cronies … of course I demanded the money back …
… he sealed his own fate with his dismissive attitude and laughter … his head cracked off the bar … then I went to work … the PSB men told me he was dead … I felt no emotion other than the obvious mounting concern for my personal liberty …
… after ten months without trial in the detention centre, I finally went to court, where I was charged with the murder of a Chinese citizen … took them twenty-six minutes on the shabby digital timer in the ugly courthouse to find me guilty … well, I knew that going out drinking could lead to all sorts, but well, we do, don’t we? There you are …
… at Qingpu Prison a shaven-headed Vietnamese lifer met me at the gate and assisted in the carrying of my prison bags … this impressed me … he looked a sad specimen but claimed he was cell block 8’s ‘king rat’ … I just called him Rat …
… the nick itself was a dozen concrete blocks with barred windows, an office, a kitchen, a boiler house and a factory, and some nice things too, like a theatre, tended gardens, camphor trees, a football pitch and a parade ground … a gleaming, razor-wire-topped perimeter wall patrolled by armed guards … Cell block 8 was for foreign men, the adjacent block for the locals …
… they issued me the fetching summer attire of blue-and-white-striped shorts and a white short-sleeved shirt with blue tabs, and a number, 57829, before taking me to my cell … a skinny feller but with a massively distended stomach over tartan boxer shorts opened the door … the smell of farts and body odour, the racket of snores and mumbles from the dozen inhabitants of iron bunks with wooden planks and a foam mattress, less than two inches thick, covered with a rough striped sheet … ‘sleep there’, never seen the likes, me, and I’d done nicks all over, I had …
… Tartan Shorts dumped a filthy quilt on a tight spot between a disgusting toilet and a snoring bald man … how could I sleep? I lay with me eyes closed trying to tune out the teeming vermin around me … it was moving into autumn and getting so cold … and the snores of this old hairless coot … then suddenly it was light outside too … it must have crept up as slowly as I finally dozed off, but morning came as a shock, announced by a low-pitched horn it was … bodies sprang up … warders on the corridor banging on the bars, ‘Qilai, qilai’ … you knew what that meant …
… my teeth banging together as I regarded the bald old Chinaman next to me, for some reason domiciled in our foreigners’ block … still in deep slumber, seemingly oblivious to the chaos around him … then his eyes snap open and he’s wide awake, refreshed, a cheesy grin on his face … I dislike him less than the other inmates …
… Oscar, a wiry young Nigerian drug smuggler, serving a life sentence … his big eyes constantly scanning me, then whipping away when I met them … like a comedy routine … he sensed my racism straight away, I make little attempt to hide this … I’ve always regarded the white man as superior to the black man and the yellow man … I offer only the evidence of history … Oscar was one of the main men in the cell … the others were two Chinese-born inmates who held foreign citizenship … Zhang from Germany was doing a long-term stretch for people trafficking; Chin, based in Singapore, was here for corporate fraud and embezzlement … this trio spoke English … they were an obvious cut above the others in brainpower …
… then I met Wai for the first time … the head warden on the block, they all feared him … his crew cut with the big ears sticking out and slightly protruding upper teeth giving him a somewhat comical look … the meanness in his eyes … well, I know damage when I see damage … how could I not with my old nan and Baxter … dubious sorts … but there they were … looking at me … the humiliation of him blinking first … oh I knew he would take a special interest after that, you see … it came in the form of some warm powdered milk we were issued in the canteen in a battered aluminium cup, him telling the Vietnamese orderly to piss in it … Rat took out his dick, a long, thin toothpick, and urinated into my cup with a big smile … handed it to me …
‘Drink,’ Wai commanded. ‘All of it …’
… I took a mouthful, as hot and acrid as expected … then I opened my flies, withdrawing my own penis from those rough, chafing linen shorts … told him this piss was too weak … blasted my waste into the overflowing tankard … glugged it back … ‘This is a man’s urine,’ I declared … watched the Vietnamese Rat crumble dramatically, buckling as if he’d been shot, but from Wai, nothing other than a trace of a cold smile … I grinned back in much the same way …
… we both knew this would get interesting …
… Wai was notorious for instigating conflicts that led to prisoners getting a beating before being dragged off screaming to solitary, which everyone feared … not really a cheerful sort … he summoned me several times a week for a ‘talk’ even though he barely spoke English, in fact ‘cocksucker’ (which he seemed to find funny) and ‘spy’ (considerably less so) were the main words he directed at me … he got right in my face, attempting to provoke my anger, ordering me to undertake piffling tasks, threatening me with an extended sentence or solitary if I refused … instigating all manner of petty humiliations … but Wai meant nothing to me …
… however, I did grow fascinated with bald old Wang, how he took every opportunity to sleep … constantly out for the count … I had never seen anyone slumber so long and deeply … would wake only for food and to shit and piss … only sparingly used the stingy, precious recreation time to walk around the yard and stretch out … and his face when he slept: so many expressions pulled … I realised that in some way I couldn’t quite understand, this was a man who was free …
I obviously sought his counsel … lucid dreaming was his skill … I was a keen pupil … it quickly became apparent to me that I had to sleep through my sentence … I’d always been prone to vivid dreams and found the ones in waking hours particularly wet in their nature, delivering erotic release …
… I invested more, indeed everything, into the lucid dreaming … after all, it became abundantly clear that my own government had little interest in me, just a common citizen in trouble … a journalist was sniffing around but evidently my backstory wasn’t regarded as conducive enough for public sympathy back in Blighty … I was entitled to consular visits, but nobody came … I was hung out to dry … so I pressed on with my lucid dreaming studies and practice … I would even wake old Wang up, he wasn’t keen on that!
Furthermore, I’d threaten to keep tearing him from his constructed utopia unless he gave me more instruction … but he recognised my serious intent, seemed glad he had a disciple … well, they can take their virtual reality and stick it where the sun don’t shine … techno peasants …
… the ceiling light was kept on all night … at first it was a horrendous distraction, but old Wang taught me how to master it … the more distractions I could train myself to sleep through, the stronger my powers would become … but we had the harsh wake-up of the alarm and the obnoxious rattling wardens every morning at six …
… I resented this wake-up call more than anything as my skills at sleep and lucid dreaming progressed … I was always more in command of my material in the light sleep and REM sleep hours of morning … but Wang insisted food was paramount … you could literally die in your sleep believing you were satiated by the huge banquets you had consumed in the lucid dream state … and not always luxury stuff, sometimes a nice cheese cob did the trick … but they triggered the muscle memory in empty guts that lay heavy with phantom food, while furnishing me with zero nutrients … so it was essential to rise for a breakfast of plain rice congee or a steamed bun with salt pickles … every Sunday we were offered a boiled egg, regarded by the others as a luxury, but an irrelevance to me …
… before breakfast, in an open-air yard half the size of a football pitch, there was half an hour of exercise … again, I was assured that this had to be undergone to prevent muscles atrophying … I punished myself dementedly with push-ups and squats until the guard blew his whistle to tell us the time was up … then I walked straight back to the cell, the thin foam mattress and pillow …
… in my waking moments I was taking instruction from Wang, or we were comparing what we had done in our dream states … I asked him who he made love to (Can we call it love? Can we? I think we can!) and he smiled and told me all the things he had done with those beautiful women who would never look at him in the conscious world … when I asked him how he hurt them, his eyes would fill with fear and a strange despair … but it’s all about getting inside their minds, you see, and now that you’re intruding in my business … I will get inside your mind, if it’s all the same to you, and even if it isn’t, young Raymond Lennox …
13
Psycho Therapy 1
Elaine Rodman’s clinic is in Bedford Square, traditionally one of Hove’s finest Regency addresses. It’s now a mixture of permanent and transient wealth; residents enjoying the grand, high-ceilinged, sea-view dwellings vie with workers in converted office space and student flats and tourists in Airbnb accommodation. A Christmas wreath decorates the front door. Elaine Rodman lives in the ground-floor flat, but Lennox heads to the basement one which is her workplace. He rings the bell at 13.57, observing in satisfaction he’s three minutes early for his scheduled appointment.
The room has dark rose walls and a black marble fireplace. A small Christmas tree, tastefully lit, sits in the corner by the bay window as another grudged concession to the season. Lennox feels his feet sink into a lush, burgundy-patterned Axminster carpet. The room is furnished with two large brown leather chairs and a long couch, which Lennox always lies on as it relaxes him. But this time he opts to sit in one of the chairs. He takes position opposite Elaine Rodman, under the huge print of what he thinks looks like a Picasso, but he isn’t sure. Wonders if Carmel would know.
Elaine Rodman wears a white buttoned-up blouse and a long black pencil skirt, her legs crossed inside it. Her dark brown hair is cut shorter than he recalls, in a neat fringe, her face rounder and less gaunt. She often wore red-framed glasses, but she evidently has her contacts in, as the specs sit in a case on the table beside her. What has been preserved is the demeanour of contained intensity, as if the psychotherapist is about to burst out of her skin and the act of not doing so requires robust concentration. She regards Lennox, her brows rising a little as if to urge him to speak.
Lennox expresses his gratitude that she can see him at such short notice.
— You’re fortunate that I had a cancellation, she says.
He wonders if that will prove to be the case.
Realises she can hear him thinking this, as she scoots forward in the chair. — It’s been a while since you’ve been here.
Lennox blankly nods in agreement at this observation.
— What has occasioned this visit? Rodman asks, clasping her hands together on her lap.
— Well, unsurprisingly, it’s to do with the tunnel incident.
— Right … She raises her eyebrows again. — How so? she gently asks.
— Well, I’m still confused as to what I saw, or what I remember. Sometimes I feel that I just don’t know any more.
— O-kay … Rodman’s smile is tight and wry. — Let me elaborate: memories aren’t perfect reproductions of the past. Recalling a past event is a coalescence of processes, the blending of a profusion of separate details, before making inferences to fill in the gaps in order to create a coherent whole. Such processes generally serve us well, allowing us to make fast, accurate decisions about what we’ve seen and done. However, a system based on inferences can never be completely true.
Lennox crosses his own legs as he experiences this spiel as a stinging personal critique. He did the same as a police officer: hid behind cop speak. You told yourself it was about setting boundaries. That putting up barriers was what other people did. He realises how much he hates professional people.
The psychotherapist continues. — This inferential process, of creating what we remember, is fundamentally distorted by our current urges, biases, stereotypes and expectations. While we tend to permit that our more mundane memories sustain this kind of warping, most of us cling to the idea that traumatic events are different, somehow protected from this sort of remembrance distortion.
The faces in the tunnel: three men. But why can you only see Cardingworth now? They all have his face. He can’t have been all three of those men. But which one, and who were the other two? Their voices … only two you can remember … one was Scottish, but maybe not … and not Edinburgh … not Glasgow … the other … English?
Open yawr mouth or I’ll carve yawr fookin face up.
His thoughts compete in rattling internal cacophony with the therapist’s observations to the extent Lennox has to work hard to focus on her, and tune out his own roaring imperative. — If we can’t remember important stuff, what chance have we got!
— Well, current evidence does suggest that in traumatic experiences, a single event like a sexual assault is as vulnerable to memory distortion as a recurrent stressful experience that might involve multiple traumas, like war, Rodman contends. — But that doesn’t mean we disregard memory.
— Right.
— Because … Rodman rubs her skirt at the knee, perhaps brushing something off, — traumatic memory distortion often follows a particular pattern, where people can remember experiencing even more trauma than they actually did. This can translate into more severe PTSD symptoms over time, as the remembered trauma grows.
