CHAPTER 1 #2
Pat stared at her, face purposely devoid of emotion. Her sea-soaked, wind-blown bobbed grey hair was sticking out at all angles, but her gaze was unblinking. She made sure of that. The kitchen was silent save for the quiet ticking of the wall clock.
DS Stevens smiled weakly. ‘Well, um, maybe you—’
‘To be clear. There are certain pointers for people who are at risk of taking their own lives.’ Pat’s voice was calm, her words measured. ‘Low energy, low self-esteem, a hard, critical inner voice that won’t go away.’
‘That’s as maybe,’ countered Stevens. ‘But things change, don’t they?
He was seeing someone for his mental health issues – you.
And he was in the right age group to die by suicide.
Between thirty and forty-four years of age.
Male. He fits all the statistics. We have twenty-five to forty cases of death by suicide a year round here, so we’re well used to these things.
How can you be sure he’s not one of those statistics? ’
‘People are not statistics,’ Pat replied with growing exasperation. She leant forward and pinched her hip. A bolt of pain shot down her right leg, and she inhaled sharply. ‘They don’t fall into neat categories. We are all individuals.’
‘You may say that,’ replied DS Stevens, adding a light laugh. ‘But at the end of the day, we’re also statistics.’
‘The reason why I believe he was not suicidal was because I asked him.’ Pat placed both hands on the table.
‘It’s one of the first questions you ask as soon as a client sits down.
Or at least I do. I also take a full history.
There are pointers to someone’s potential to self-harm, and Henry had none of them. ’
‘What pointers?’ asked PC Footer.
‘No previous suicide attempts, no desire to escape. Are you writing these down?’
Footer nodded.
‘Not wanting to take vengeance. He did not think other people would be better off if he was dead. No magical thinking, no self-sacrifice, no suicide ideation, no evidence of alteration of cognitive function.’
‘What?’ Footer and Stevens asked in unison.
Pat continued. ‘No aggressive or impulsive behaviour, no mental confusion. No drug-taking, no alcohol misuse, and he had no psychiatric history nor other comorbidities.’
‘It’s a tough one, though, isn’t it?’ said Stevens, standing up. ‘Come along now, PC Footer. We don’t want to waste any more of the good doctor’s time.’ She looked at Pat. ‘Thank you, though, Dr Phillips, for helping us with our enquiries.’
‘Are you speaking to anyone else?’
‘No.’ The detective shook her head. ‘The next of kin have been informed. There will be a post-mortem, but that will be fairly basic. Just a confirmation, really, of the circumstances.’
‘Which are?’
‘That Henry Clayton died by suicide.’ She nodded. ‘We’ll let ourselves out.’
The kitchen door clicked shut, followed by the garden gate, and then there was the sound of a car starting up.
Pat sat at the table, her hands clasped in front of her, seething.
Was she angry? Upset at the carelessness, presumptuousness?
It just didn’t feel right that Henry Clayton had killed himself.
It didn’t seem possible to her that he would go through with it.
He had a seven-step skincare routine, for goodness’ sake.
The two of them had laughed at the complexity of it.
No, he wouldn’t have wanted to damage himself like that.
He wasn’t planning to die. She stiffened, jaw tight with frustration.
Why wouldn’t the police listen to her? Why ask for her opinion if they had no intention of acting on it? Why contact her at all?’
She picked up a bourbon biscuit from the tin and sank her teeth into it.
‘Jesus!’ she said out loud. ‘That’s bloody disgusting!’
She leapt off her chair, ran to the window and spat the stale biscuit into the bin. How the hell could that young police officer have eaten his way through half the tin? What inner sadness was he compensating for? What void was he filling with sugar, trans fats and E numbers?
She stood at the sink, staring at her shepherd’s hut.
She’d been looking forward to talking to Henry.
She’d put the heater on especially for him before she went out for her swim.
She was used to the elements down here. She found the cold wind comforting, even the horizontal rain, and she loved the stone-grey waves of the English Channel no matter the season.
But Henry was a London lad, and she’d wanted him to be comfortable in the hut, not shivering with cold sitting in the armchair beside her desk.
Some people were a little disappointed when they first walked into Pat’s hut that she didn’t have a couch for them to lie down on when they talked to her.
That was the way it happened in the films. People were always horizontal in therapy, talking to the ceiling, or some slowly turning fan.
But Pat preferred to look at her clients’ faces.
The way they moved. The changing expressions: small self-congratulatory smiles, or narrowing eyes and lips that indicated underlying anger; steady, impenetrable gazes or sad, lonely looks; seeking or avoiding eye contact.
All these signs that she would miss if they were staring at the ceiling; and she especially wouldn’t want to miss the look of recognition when they made a discovery that helped them understand themselves and their world a little better. She called those ‘aha!’ moments.
Henry had been doing well; he’d had several ahas! He’d been frustrated and annoyed when he realised how his behaviour had been fuelling the situation he had found himself in. Pat had thought he was finally ready to make changes, get his life back on track.
She left the kitchen and made her way over to the hut.
If Henry wasn’t coming, then she should at least turn off the heater.
She walked up the three wooden steps and opened the door, letting out a guff of hot air.
The shed was positively tropical, and there was that familiar singed-plastic smell, sharp and metallic.
She left the door open, both as invitation to Dave, who had inevitably followed her, and to let the heat out of the room.
Then she sat down in front of her ancient computer, with its scruffy keyboard that bore the crumbs of a recent luncheon eaten at her desk.
The rest of the space was surprisingly tidy.
Her work area was clear, save for an old-fashioned Rolodex to the right of the computer that still contained the phone number of a gardener who used to mow her lawn when she was married to Martin and lived in Chiswick.
Martin still lived there. For some reason, he never minded the commute into his barristers’ chambers.
Pat had always loathed it. The law, the commute, the long hours.
She’d been a solicitor in a family law firm in the City before changing direction completely.
A lot of that change had been down to Sue.
Well, Sue and a desire to uproot her life and live by the sea.
Surely there was only so much family law one could engage with without wanting to get into the nitty-gritty of what was really going on?
Although Sue clearly felt differently. She was still at the coal face of law.
‘Shit!’ Pat exclaimed. She should telephone Sue. Sue was the reason Pat was treating Henry. Sue was the reason Henry was making the trip to Westlinke in the first place.
She picked up her mobile, hands shaking. She was suddenly overwhelmed with sadness. Somehow calling Sue and saying the words out loud would make the abstract concrete.
Her three o’clock was dead.