The Narrow Bed, page 24
Cancer patients, thought Sellers. Marion Hopwood had been murdered on a cancer ward.
‘I think the percentage must be a hundred,’ said Lane. ‘There’s a wonderful website, Boundlessconsciousness.com. It has many stories on it. Sometimes I print a particular one for a particular client, but I try to make sure I tell all the people I work with about the site, so that they can discover the wonderful stories for themselves. And I’ve put some of them on my website – with permission, of course. Have you read this one, “The Two Sisters”?’
Sellers nodded. ‘We all have. It’s funny, actually – when I first read it, I thought, this is daft. It’s trying to make out that people who fight for good causes are doing more harm than selfish, greedy people.’ And then I met Sondra Halliday.
Lane laughed. ‘It does seem upside-down at first glance, doesn’t it? But in fact, if you read it closely, the story says nothing critical about those who work hard for good causes. The world urgently needs those people – you’re one of them! Saving us from harm, keeping us safe.’
Sellers felt positively heroic.
‘What the story is saying, though, is that people who devote their energies to fighting are helping neither themselves nor others. Whereas someone who enjoys life and spends their days having fun and feeling happy – remember, in the story the words “greedy” and “selfish” are negative value judgements unilaterally imposed by the sister whose every moment is spent fighting. The other sister would probably describe herself as fun-loving and jolly – someone who makes sure to enjoy all life has to offer! Someone like you.’
Lane smiled. ‘I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but you have a strong positive energy about you. I think you’re someone with a real zest for life, aren’t you?’
‘Undoubtedly. But … well, some would say not in a good way. I don’t always … behave all that well. Anyway, I think you’re right about the moral of the story. This case has brought me into contact with a journalist who shares a personality type with the fighting, negative sister. She claims to be fighting for justice and equality, but all she does is spew venom all day long.’
‘How sad.’ Lane looked shocked, and pressed the palm of her hand flat against her collarbone. Sellers wondered if the words ‘spew venom’ had been too much for her.
‘To take your two points one by one …’ she said. ‘Nobody always behaves well. It isn’t only you. If you’ll pardon my outspokenness, I do sense that you have many clouds close to the surface, but I sense more strongly that if you could clear those clouds away, your positive energy would burn even brighter than it does at present. You’re someone who is capable of doing endless good in our world. I hope you know that. I felt it as soon as I opened the door.’
Sellers didn’t know it, and wasn’t sure he wanted to. He concentrated on sipping his water, to avoid eye contact.
‘With regard to your other point – the journalist – like so many people, she’s completely unaware of the harm she’s doing. So when she produces anger in you, or hurt feelings, try to remember that, while those feelings are valid and understandable and you certainly mustn’t judge yourself for them, what this person needs is not blame but kindness and empathy. She’s probably as she is because she was deprived of both in her earliest years. Or perhaps she suffered a trauma and could only make herself strong enough to survive it by building a shell of hate and blame. What I would say about a person like that is: there’s always hope. One day, with luck, and if she’s treated with kindness and understanding, she’ll see a better way forward and, as she stops causing pain to others, her own pain will fall away.’
To anyone else, Sellers would have said, ‘Yeah, dream on – you haven’t met Sondra Halliday.’ To Lane Baillie, he said, ‘I hope you’re right.’
Did he hope that? Did he give a toss about Sondra Halliday’s welfare? He decided to stick to the questions he came here to ask.
‘So everyone you’ve helped, all your clients, they probably know about these stories. Let’s try a different tack, then. I know you’re bound by confidentiality, and I’m not asking for a name or names at this point, but has any of your more recent clients asked you to help him or her resist the urge to kill somebody?’
Lane straightened up in her chair. ‘I’m just thinking about whether I can responsibly answer your question. Yes, if I don’t give you a name, I think I can. So … yes, that is the case. Not a current client. Someone who came regularly towards the end of last year.’
‘I assume people come to you with all sorts of problems – was this an unusual one, or do you hear it all the time?’ Don’t ask to know the name too soon.
‘Very unusual. No one has ever said anything like that to me before. I will say this, though: from the first session, I never for a moment feared there was a real danger my client would kill the person in question. I was absolutely sure sh … he or she wouldn’t. There was a real determination not to. The head was saying no as loudly as the heart was saying yes.’ Lane sighed. ‘I was sad and disappointed when the client stopped coming. A lot of help was still needed, and I … well, I was worried. I tried the number she’d given me a few times but it seemed not to be in use any more.’
‘Was the person this client was trying not to kill a journalist called Sondra Halliday, by any chance?’
Lane looked scared. ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘I hope … I don’t know what I hope, really. I was going to say, “I hope she hasn’t hurt anyone or been hurt”, but then if she hasn’t, someone has – or else you wouldn’t be here.’
This was the problem, thought Sellers. Bad things existed and always would, no matter how many smooth stones and bowls of still water you sat next to.
‘Can you answer the question? Was it Sondra Halliday?’
‘Yes, it was.’
Bingo. ‘And this former client of yours was a woman, I take it? You said “she”.’
Lane nodded. ‘Has … has something happened to the journalist?’
‘No.’
‘Thank goodness.’ Lane closed her eyes, clearly relieved.
‘Something’s happened to other people, though, and your former client is a suspect.’
‘I very much doubt … I mean, you wouldn’t try so hard not to kill the person you hate most in the world if you’re willing to kill other people, would you? It wouldn’t make sense.’
‘Did she say that she hated Sondra Halliday more than anyone in the world?’
Lane nodded.
‘Did she say why?’
‘Yes. It was because she – the journalist – was telling lies about my client. In the press: misrepresenting her character and her motivation. She didn’t say in relation to what, so that’s all I know. The client chose not to share any more details.’
I bet she did.
‘I … I must admit, I did think it might be a delusion of some sort.’
‘Sondra Halliday’s the person I was talking about before,’ said Sellers. ‘The spewer of venom.’
‘Oh!’ Lane’s eyes widened. ‘I see. Well, I told my client the same thing I told you. What Sondra Halliday needs is what we all need: love, kindness, compassion. I expect she’s not been given nearly enough of it in her life. Most of us aren’t. I’m sure that was true of my client also, though unfortunately I didn’t know her long enough to find out, really. She was reluctant to discuss feelings and preferred to talk about ideas. For example, she was fascinated to hear the … philosophical underpinnings of my spiritual practice, but absolutely unwilling to talk about how she felt.’
By ‘spiritual practice’, Sellers assumed Lane meant being an Ishaya, whatever that was. He’d have liked to ask, but was afraid it might lead to more embarrassing talk of his surface clouds or his brightly burning positive energy. He wondered if Lane had been contacted yet for a DNA sample; her name was on the list. She probably had special, glittery, spiritual DNA.
‘My client showed me no more of herself than her desire to kill this particular journalist. I learned nothing else about her life or her feelings. I was hoping I’d be able to persuade her to lower her defences, gradually, but she stopped coming, so I couldn’t.’
‘Ms Baillie, I—’
‘Do call me Lane, please.’
‘I really need to know the name of this former client. Is it any of the following: Kim Tribbeck, Isobel Sturridge, Lisa Norbury, Gisela Bloor, Muriel Pearson, Faith Kendell, Samantha Granger?’
‘I would love to be able to help you.’ Lane frowned.
‘If you recognised one of those names … I have reason to believe its owner might have committed five murders.’
‘Well, yes, quite,’ said Lane apologetically. ‘But I can’t betray client confidentiality. I’m so sorry. This is a terrible situation. I really can’t break confidentiality, but … oh, goodness, this is difficult.’
Sellers waited, confident that she’d talk herself into helping him eventually.
‘It sounds as if you don’t know for certain that this person committed these crimes?’ she said hopefully.
‘Not yet. It’s highly likely, though. And even more likely that she’ll try it again and probably succeed.’
‘Oh, dear.’ Lane looked stricken. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them a few seconds later, she smiled. All signs of distress had vanished. ‘I know what we’ll do,’ she said. ‘In situations where two opposing needs clash, there is always a solution that will satisfy both sides.’
Sellers was certain that couldn’t be true.
‘You don’t believe me? Sometimes it requires one side, or both, to realise that their prior definitions of “need” and “satisfaction” must be deconstructed and rebuilt, but … there’s always a way of getting there.’ She stood up. ‘I have to do something that will take about ten minutes. Please wait here.’
Sellers was confused. Was the something that would take ten minutes connected to their conversation or not? Did she need to use the bathroom, or ring a friend?
He resolved to stand firm. His definition of ‘need’ was, and would remain, ‘I’m not leaving this house without the name of the person in question’.
After a while, Lane returned with a grey felt bowler hat in her hand. She was holding it the wrong way round. As she walked towards him, Sellers saw that it was full of torn up bits of paper.
‘I’ve separated the first names and the surnames of several of my clients,’ she said. ‘Therefore, if you find a “Philip” or a “Jane” or a “Thompson” or a “Townsend”, it will mean nothing to you. You won’t know who it is with only one half of the name to go on, will you? Even if you have an old friend named Philip Townsend, it’s unlikely to be him that’s my client. Do you see how it works?’
‘Yes.’ Sellers was impressed. ‘Because I’m not looking for a specific Jane, she could be Jane Fonda the actress or my ex-girlfriend Jane Gregson. I don’t know it’s the one I know because Gregson could just as easily be the surname of a different client of yours. But if there’s a first name and a surname in this hat from our Billy case notes …’
‘Precisely.’
‘That’s clever.’
Lane looked delighted. ‘Thank you,’ she said, handing the hat to Sellers.
He shook out the pieces of paper and laid them out flat one by one: Judy, Sally, Annabelle, Peter, Crompton, Liz, Scott, Richman … When he saw a first name that made his heart beat louder in his ears, Sellers continued to lay out the rest in neat rows. There might not be a match. He didn’t want to get excited prematurely. He smiled to himself, imagining the joke Gibbs would have made if he’d heard that last thought.
Sellers gasped when he saw the surname he’d been hoping against hope to see. A match. And – oh, fuck – a massive oversight on the part of him and his team. Waterhouse would break all previous records on the foul mood front when he heard the news.
Slowly, Sellers bent to pick up the only two pieces of paper on the floor that mattered.
The name on the first was Faith.
The second: Kendell.
An hour later, having apologetically postponed his meeting with Joshua Norbury’s sister Lisa, Sellers was in the cancer ward at the RGI talking to the hospital’s head of oncology, Radimir Nowak. He was a tall, thin Polish man with the neatest haircut Sellers had ever seen – almost like a graph in haircut form.
‘You’re absolutely positive?’ Sellers asked him.
‘I am positive, yes. We know our patients and we know their families – we pride ourselves on keeping a record of all such information. Otherwise, we would not be able to monitor—’
‘Thank you, yes, I understand,’ Sellers cut him off. The list of things on which Radimir Nowak prided himself was long, and the doctor seemed determined to talk Sellers through it item by item. For example, there had been his insistence that everybody – especially a policeman who must have touched many guns and criminals – disinfect their hands at the mobile handwash station in the ward corridor. Then there were Nowak’s exemplary colleagues, the well-run ward. Not quite exemplary and well run enough to prevent a patient from being murdered, Sellers had thought but not said.
‘So no one by the name of Faith Kendell had a mother in this ward, being treated for cancer, on Tuesday, 6 January?’
‘Definitely not.’
‘And no one called Faith Kendell was a patient here herself on that day?’
‘No, there was not. I mean she was not. I apologise for my flawed English.’
‘It’s all right – my Polish’s nonexistent.’
‘I would not have expected it to be otherwise,’ said the doctor.
Sellers thanked him and left.
There were no two ways about it: this was a cock-up of heinous proportions. Everybody had forgotten all about Faith Kendell as soon as it had emerged that the ‘Death devours all lovely things’ book had been found in Marion Hopwood’s bed.
At that point, Faith had become, in all their minds, just someone who happened to be at the RGI because her relative was sick. No one had checked.
Faith Kendell, who also happened to start a conversation with Kim Tribbeck outside the hospital, one that made Kim decide she liked this stranger rather a lot …
Alone in the lift on the way down to the ground floor, Sellers kicked the mirror and swore.
They’d all been so busy trying to cast Faith Kendell as Billy’s fifth victim, then rejecting her when someone else came along and claimed the part, that they’d failed to audition her for the role of murderer.
Not that she needed them to do that. She’d given herself the part; her schedule of lethal performances had begun long before any of them knew her name.
There was no point regretting the past – Sellers imagined Lane Baillie would impress this upon him if she were here. The important thing now was to move fast and get some answers. Who was Faith Kendell, and why was she killing people?
When the lift doors opened on the ground floor, Sellers pulled out his phone, took a deep breath and rang Simon.
14 January 2015
Dear Sondra
You haven’t read the books I sent, have you? You’ve had no time. I know this because I’ve been watching your activity on Twitter, and it’s clear that you spend the majority of your time exchanging insults with those you perceive as your enemies. Or if you’re not scrapping on Twitter, you’re writing your articles for Lifeworld, in which you say the same thing over and over again.
Your confusion about the nature of reality is severe. There’s no shame in that. I used to be as deep in the dark as you are. Now I can see the light even if I can’t reach it myself, and, surprisingly, that’s good enough for me. It’s a huge step forward. Perhaps you could make similar progress?
Since you’re probably never going to stop tweeting ‘Fuck you, misogo-splainer’ for long enough to read Beloved or Jude the Obscure, I thought I’d try something quicker and more fun: a quiz. Lane showed me something similar the first time I went to see her. I kept it because it made such an impression on me, and I’ve adapted it below for you, to reflect your interests. Don’t worry if you get all the answers wrong. Read the correct answers I’ve provided underneath each question.
HOW ENLIGHTENED ARE YOU?
1. Which statement is most accurate?
a) Men and women are not two separate groups.
b) Men and women are socially conditioned to behave differently.
c) Men and women are biologically and psychologically different.
d) I refuse to pick any option that puts ‘Men’ before ‘women’ in the word order. That’s a syntactical reinforcement of oppressive gender structures.
Answer: a. ‘Men’ and ‘women’ are irrelevant categories the human mind has created. Every man, woman and child on the planet is Awareness, irrespective of his or her bodily configuration or set of opinions. The people you attack on Twitter are you, and you are them, because at the level of the true self, we are all that same Awareness or Consciousness with no limit, beginning or end.
2. You, Sondra Halliday, insult and Twitter-block dozens of people every day because:
a) They are abusive misogynists who deserve it.
b) Women shouldn’t have to repress their feelings to placate the patriarchy.
c) You are fighting for a fairer world, which means you can’t always be nice.
d) You have a pool of unhappiness inside you that has nothing to do with what anybody tweets to you, and that is easily triggered.
Answer: d. The objects of your anger tap into a discontent – or rage, or pain – that you carry around with you as a result of your misunderstanding of the nature of reality. The source of negative emotion is always the belief that one is small, separate, inadequate and incomplete. It is never what the other person has done that has made you angry or upset. Once you understand that your essential self is limitless Awareness that cannot be harmed, you will cease to be angry or miserable.
