Ploughing Potter’s Field

He aped at pretending to be scared, then instantly switched to concern. ‘My life story for a few packs of fags. Bit fucking tacky, ain’t it?’

‘I don’t make the rules.’

‘What you here for, then?’

‘It’s part of my thesis. Work experience, they call it. With your permission, we’ll meet once a fortnight when I’ll ask you an assigned series of questions before asking some of my own. None of which you are obliged to answer if you don’t wish to.’ That felt better, building into a rhythm after the early derailing. I almost felt back in charge – for a moment.

‘So what’s her name, your missus?’

‘I’m not allowed to tell you anything about my private life.’

‘Yet you want to know everything about mine?’

‘I want a doctorate.’

‘Fair enough. I’ll find it all out anyway.’ Another nod towards Denton. ‘See that cunt over there? Mr fucking charm himself? Bent as a fucking coathanger, he is. He’ll tell me all I need to know. Quick poke around the guv’nor’s office, and I’ll have the lot.’

I glance at the bored warder-orderly whose eyes remained firmly fixed at his feet.

Rattigan continued. ‘Names of your kids, ages, schools they go to, boyfriends, girlfriends, I’ll know the bloody lot. Phone numbers an’ all. Maybe give you a bell from time to time. Quick chat to the wife while you’re fucking around studenting. That’s the way it’s going to be, Adrian. That’s what you’re starting with me. I’m going to crawl into your soul and …’

‘Shut it, Rattigan,’ Denton ordered, checking his watch and rising from the chair. ‘Playtime’s over. Let’s get you back to the unit.’ He turned to me. ‘Mr Rawlings, if you’d like to make your way back to Dr Allen’s office now, thank you.’

Dumbly, I complied, beginning to repack my briefcase, eyes doing their best to ignore the grinning, leering face before me.

‘So,’ Rattigan asked innocently. ‘I think that went very well, don’t you?’

‘As I understand it, the decision’s yours.’

‘I like you. Gonna tie you in knots.’

‘Perhaps. Perhaps not.’

‘Listen to the fighting talk, I love all that.’ Rattigan stood. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Ask me any damn thing you like, and I’ll give you the God’s honest truth.’

An unprofessional impulse overwhelmed me. The session had apparently ended. Now wasn’t the time to pursue anything, except a quick exit. But something in me had to ask, had to start somewhere. ‘Why Helen Lewis? Did you know her?’

The Beast waved an admonishing finger. ‘We all know Helen Lewis,’ he replied slowly. ‘Even you, fat-boy. Trouble is, you ain’t done for yours. But I have for mine. And that bitch ain’t never gonna …’ He paused, frowned slightly.

‘What?’

‘Make sure they’re Rothmans.’

2 (#ulink_034db83c-bf25-52b1-b814-4d8556332e51)

‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘I felt like he was unpicking me.’

‘He probably was.’

‘Any chance you could open the window?’

Two hours after my first encounter with Rattigan, Dr Stephen ‘Fancy’ Clancy sat in his college room pulling heavily on a slim panatella cigar. I had the beginnings of a headache, made worse by the exhaled fumes swirling within the confines of the chaotic little boxroom which laughably passed as his office.

I remembered vividly as a psychology undergrad, a mature student, thirty-two, clutching a photocopy of the Essex University humanities building floorplan, walking the humming corridors, searching for his room, buzzing with clichéd expectations of its high ceiling mounted on elegantly windowed walls groaning with dust-laden volumes offering valuable historical insights into the hidden workings of the mind. I expected a pickled brain in a bell jar at least.

But Fancy’s ‘office’ was a toilet, even by his own admission. Blind always down, desklamp permanently burning – his attempt, he explained jovially when we first shook hands, to, ‘Tardis my hutch into a tolerable space.’

He’d smiled, and I’d responded. I liked him. Still do. I began a friendship with my tutor that often included him coming over to my place for supper, or Jemimah and I visiting him and his wife Sheila in their Tudor house in Roxwell. In retrospect, I believe that the minimal differences in our ages helped forge the friendship – although at times, his devotion to the long lunch put it under certain strains. He drank – I didn’t. Not any more.

‘Sounds as if you found the trip out to Oakwood heavy going,’ the tall, permanently tanned tutor surmised. ‘From what you’re saying, Rattigan appears ready to go, and you’re the odds-on favourite stalling at the first fence.’

‘He frightened me. Really. I felt exposed.’

‘Good.’

‘Good?’

‘Adrian, he’s a convicted killer. You aren’t up there to become best buddies with the man.’

‘I just thought …’ But I was tired, the words failed me.

‘You thought you’d walk in there, and he’d spiritedly comply with your every wish, utterly in awe of your academic prowess.’

‘He called me a pedantic little twat. I felt like punching him.’

Fancy suppressed a smile. ‘He’s simply having some fun with you. Don’t get so involved. He wants to see you again, so the job’s done. He called you a few names, so what? Christ’s sake, Adrian, you’re a bloody good student. You have a keen interest in the malfunctioning mind. You wanted to meet him the moment you read the file. Positively salivating at the prospect this time yesterday.’

‘That was different,’ I wearily protested. ‘That was yesterday. I just expected something different. Less challenging. He hates me. I must have spoken to him for no more than ten minutes at the most. Came out shaking like a bloody leaf. God knows how I’m going to get through an hour of it.’

Fancy sighed. ‘Look, Adrian. No one’s expecting you to unravel the man. It isn’t possible. He’s a psychopath. You know bloody well he operates beyond the conventional norms of any coded moral behaviour. Just go there, ask your questions, ignore the insults, get out. Business done. And remember, it’s an exercise, invaluable work experience.’

He inhaled on the cigar again, a fairly pointless gesture. The tiny dishevelled room was so full of smoke, all he really needed to do was breathe in. I figured he’d unintentionally shared hundreds of cigars with me and countless other psychology students over the years.

‘I felt hopelessly unprepared,’ I admitted. ‘They just more or less left me with him.’

‘Like one of his victims?’ Fancy stood, turned his back and flipped his fingers through the yellowed Venetian blind, absorbed in the flow of laughing undergraduates passing beneath his window. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Adrian. How you’re out there, dealing with a real case. Your pivotal thesis study-piece. That I wasn’t there in the room, that I didn’t see the look in his eyes, feel the threat of his rhetoric. But you shouldn’t have been there, either. Not Adrian Rawlings. Like I warned you and warned you, you should’ve left him in Doc Allen’s office.’ He turned suddenly. ‘How is the old sod, anyway?’

‘Allen? Sent his best regards. Caustic man, isn’t he?’

Fancy smiled. ‘Same old Neil Allen. Good, reliable, jaundiced Neil Allen. Which is exactly my point.’

‘Oh?’

Fancy sat, and looked for one moment as if he was going to try to put both feet up on the cluttered desk. He opted for leaning back in the swivel chair, hands wrapped around the back of his head. A single plume of dark-blue smoke rose from his cigar, and I momentarily wondered if he might set fire to his hair.

‘Neil Allen conforms to all our expectations of him. Slightly bitter, hard-working, reliable, professionally unexceptional, and altogether notionally sane. An all-around good egg. Plays off a seven handicap, you know. Excellent long putter.’

I nodded as if I followed golf.