Roxanne, p.25
Roxanne, page 25
Freeman wasn’t foolish enough to acknowledge any of this with her officers. She re-focused on the interrupted conversation and said, ‘I don’t imagine our two young women are early risers. Let’s give them the knock at seven thirty – getting someone out of bed always gets an interview off to a good start. Denise, I’d like you to be a part of the pick-up crew in case Trudi gets wobbly on the way back here. Clive, dig deeper into Trudi’s background – anything we can use to open her up. Chris, you’ll be watching TV with me again. Bring some popcorn if you like…’
Waters smiled but said nothing. Allen was a prig, of course, but not a fool. In office politics, he was a dangerous opponent, and it required someone very quick and light on their feet – a veritable matador in the matter of repartee – to stay clear of a savage goring. Smith could do it, but could Cara Freeman? In confronting the most senior detective at Kings Lake Central in so public a way, Waters concluded that she had possibly made a serious mistake.
Chapter Twenty-five
Dr Yelena Kaminski was the senior psychiatrist and duty manager for the next twelve hours, and this was only the third night she had been in that position. After a month in post, she still felt like a newcomer, though the support staff could not have been more… Supportive? Through the window she watched the woman park her car, a fast-looking Mazda, and then make her way towards reception. The doctor shook her head a little at her own momentary ineptitude with the language. Her English was excellent, she knew, had been told so often enough, but sometimes, in stressful moments, it could let her down. She took slow breaths, eyes closed, both slender hands resting on the file in front of her.
In a matter of seconds, the receptionist would ring and say her visitor was here – there could be no doubt that’s whom she had just been watching. Dr Kaminski evaluated her own first impressions; she had seen a woman of about her own age, slight of build, a little below the average height of the English female, more brunette than blonde, business-like in the way she walked, dressed for the office – someone who had come straight here from her work. The doctor knew what that work was because yesterday afternoon, when she had called back to confirm the rearranged meeting, the woman who answered the telephone had inadvertently told her that the detective chief inspector was engaged in interviews and could not be disturbed right now.
There had been a moment of fear. She had gone back to the files and checked that this visit was not part of an investigation – had she misunderstood? She had not, but even so, a little of the fear remained. This was from the old country where certain attitudes remain embedded deep in the psyche of the nation. Things have been different there, better, for generations now, yet she knew her family history well – knew how her grandparents had fought against one enemy in the war and how her parents had fought against another after it. They had taught her the meaning of freedom, and to value it beyond all things that can be bought with money. They had taught her to be wary of those whose authority comes from the state, including the policja.
She opened the file once more and skimmed through it again. For a young patient there were many pages, many notes, and by now this sort of thing should have been digitised. She had strong views about cases like this one, which was probably why the directors had, clinically speaking, taken a chance and appointed her. They didn’t want more of the same, another safe pair of hands; whether they would be prepared to back her all the way was another matter, of course. She already had in her mind a shortlist of patients who, with a new approach, might be able to leave Meadowlands within months, but she hadn’t shared that with Henry Giles yet, because he… The intercom buzzed and broke into her thoughts. She pressed the green button and a voice said, ‘Dr Kaminski? Your visitor is here. Cara Freeman.’
Yelena Kaminski had said no, she would prefer to be frank, to get these matters out of the way, and so she found herself explaining that she had taken her medical degree in Heidelberg and her psychiatric training after that at University College in London. She had also spent a year at Harvard, working with Alan Greenbaum, one of the world’s leading trauma psychologists. Her previous post had been senior psychiatric registrar at a London teaching hospital.
Her visitor looked around pointedly at the small office with its two antiquated metal filing cabinets and its dusty, pot-bound Fatsia japonica hanging on for grim death in the space between them, and then said, ‘So, if you really don’t mind me asking, is this a step up or a step down for you, Dr Kaminski?’
That was a very good question – one the recipient had spent too many hours pondering before she made the decision four months ago now. She had her answer ready.
‘Sideways. But with a purpose. Meadowlands is as you know a private facility. They pay a little more than the NHS but they are – behind times? My idiom isn’t always good. But one year ago the board had to make the choice for Meadowlands: modernise it or close it.’
She saw surprise on the small, intelligent face in front of her.
‘Really? I didn’t know that. Isabel has been here for almost two years. No one ever mentioned closure to me.’
The doctor said, ‘All this was before my time. But the decision was to invest and modernise. It’s a process, of course, but I think I am a part of that. I hope so!’
She smiled but saw that Cara Freeman was still intently focused on what she was being told, still working through the potential implications for the patient she had come to see. Yelena took a moment to examine the woman in front of her professionally, and concluded that a face which revealed so little possibly concealed a great deal. Eventually, there was another question – an unexpected one.
‘The American man you mentioned. You said his specialism was trauma. I assume you meant psychological trauma?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK… I’m asking because I don’t think that’s ever been explored enough in Isabel’s treatment.’
This time the surprised face was on the other side of the desk. Preparing for this visit, Yelena had spent time with the patient yesterday afternoon, and this morning, after giving herself time to reflect, she had made some notes; if she opened the file on the desk those notes would be the first thing she would see. The language in them was professional and technical but the meaning was identical to what she had just heard her visitor say.
Yelena said, ‘One of my tasks is to conduct reviews, so…’
She opened one hand, the palm upwards, the long fingers curled, as if she held in it an invisible sphere of possibilities. Still the intent, searching look – she wondered what sort of police work this woman did. She said, ‘My research, my area of interest, is where the two disciplines meet. The interface. As knowledge of the mind grows and drugs become more sophisticated, we can target treatments better. Everything in medicine is becoming more personalised, tailored to the individual. Old barriers are breaking down. Meadowlands tell me this is what they want, to become a beacon. Of course, how far they will back me when they see what that might mean I don’t know.’
She tried the smile again, and this time got something in return, a nod and a half-smile, as if Cara Freeman recognised that situation. And then, ‘I’m sorry if I ask too many blunt questions. Force of habit. How is Isabel doing?’
‘Too soon for me to say. I’m getting to know her, though. I think she is an interesting person.’
This was the right approach, she could see that immediately.
She continued, ‘We will go see her together. But first, I am hoping you are going to return a favour to me. I have a few questions of my own,’ and then she pointed to the file.
‘All right, ask away.’
Yelena opened the file, flicked past her own notes and the policy material until she reached a page that Freeman would have been able to see was headed Contacts. She might also have seen that pencil marks had recently been made in several places on the page.
‘In different places you are different things to Isabel – I mean, your relationship. Some places you are “step-sister”, other places “half-sister”. This makes a difference in law. This should have been clarified before, so I’m sorry. But it can affect what I am able to share with you.’
Freeman said, ‘We’re half-sisters. We have the same father.’
‘OK. Well, that is better. If it is needed, you can prove this. You have documentation.’
Not phrased as questions but this produced the first genuine smile from her visitor, and the doctor grasped why – asking a senior British police officer for evidence, for proof, of identity seemed a little crazy. Freeman said, ‘It does so happen that I have Isabel’s birth certificate. After the… When it happened and she wasn’t able to go home, I collected her personal stuff from her flat, and I’ve kept it for her. My own birth certificate might be more of a problem.’
The doctor made a note in a margin – tiny writing, smaller even than Tom Greene’s – and Freeman thought this must be a good omen; Yelena Kaminski was unlike anyone else she had met since Isabel went into the care system. For a start, she seemed pretty intelligent.
The doctor said, ‘OK… Please forgive me. I say OK a lot. It is a coping mechanism. Let’s do all these legal things upfront. Mention here of a Lasting Power of Attorney for you. But this was never done? Never completed?’
‘No. I decided against it. I thought it was too final.’
‘Too final how?’
Freeman thought this over, and said, ‘It would have implied we were accepting she’d never get out of care, never cope on her own again. I’ve always believed she could. And she should.’
Yelena turned another page. ‘You are the only visitor since Isabel came to Meadowlands, in almost two years. Her mother? Her – your father?’
Freeman said, ‘Isabel was estranged from her mother in her teens. As far as I know they haven’t spoken in ten years. I’ve never met her and wouldn’t know where to find her. The same applies to our father. Last heard of heading for India.’
There was something dismissive, offhand, almost comical in the way this had been delivered. The doctor looked up, waiting for more because that amount of wreckage in family relationships isn’t usual, even today. Nobody walks away from such car crashes unharmed.
Freeman saw the look and said, ‘Our father was what people once called a lovable rogue. People a hundred years ago. He always had a new scheme, a new passion, a new brilliant idea. When you were four, it was wonderful. When you were fourteen, not so much. Not that he was around very often by then. He was very clever and terminally unreliable. My mother had thrown him out years before I realised it. He’d disappear for months on end. When she stopped funding his escapades, he stopped coming altogether.’
The doctor looked at the file and said, ‘Isabel. She is younger than you by…’
‘Ten years. She was the result of one of his I presume many extra-marital affairs. We met for the first time when she was twenty-two – I didn’t know she existed before that. I’d done a bit of investigating and found out about her. I made contact and we met up about five years ago.’
More notes in that tiny writing, before the next question – ‘Where was Isabel living then, when you first met?’
‘London. Camden. She was living the Camden life. I don’t know whether you’ve ever been there, but it’s quite a scene. Crazy. Surreal.’
‘OK. Now you mention this, I have to ask. Because it is relevant. Doing drugs?’
Up to that point the answers had been delivered with professional promptness, but now there was a moment of hesitation or perhaps of reflection. Yelena Kaminski watched the small, neat mouth working – the detective seemed to have that habit of nipping the inside of her cheek with her teeth.
Freeman said, ‘Possibly. Probably. But I’m sure it was occasional and recreational if she was. She did a good impression of the wild child, especially when we first met, but she was surprisingly together when you got past that. After I got to know her I realised we were more alike than either of us would’ve imagined. I’m a control freak, but I expect you’ve already figured that out.’
Yelena acknowledged that with a smile, and said, ‘Give me an example of Isabel being “surprisingly together”.’
Thorough – checking the evidence, not taking my word for it, thought Freeman. We’d probably enjoy a drink together if we’d met some other way.
‘She’d done two years of an art and design course in Chelsea before she dropped out. But she’d talked her way into a good job, and she was taking that seriously.’
‘What was the job?’
‘She was training as a buyer for a Mayfair store. Wanderers. It’s an upmarket fashion place. A month’s salary for a handbag – that sort of thing.’ And then, as that too was being noted, Freeman said, ‘Why did you ask about her drug use?’
Two more pages of the file were turned before, ‘When I called your office yesterday to confirm this meeting – it was a police station, yes?’
Freeman nodded and Yelena said, ‘I don’t know what sort of police work you do. Do you have knowledge of ketamine?’
‘Some.’
A one-word answer ought to be impossible to mis-interpret but Yelena looked up then – the one word means not much, a little, but something else was going on here. She was being watched intently, and chose her next words with some care.
‘OK. So we know it was involved in what happened. Clinically, it would help to know whether Isabel had used ketamine before – I mean regularly, because-’
‘She hadn’t. Not ketamine.’
‘You seem very sure. I-’
‘She didn’t use it that night either. It was given to her, without her knowledge. Just to be clear.’
The doctor nodded slowly, maintaining eye-contact rather than making more notes. Freeman said, ‘I do have some knowledge of this stuff – drugs, I mean. And I knew Isabel pretty well by then. She’d have done a line at a party, she’d have dropped E at a rave, but she was a weekender. Ketamine would not have been her style at all.’
Another page was turned but the doctor had put down her pencil now. She said, ‘This is useful to know. There was a significant amount involved, the blood tests next day showed it. Ketamine is powerfully dissociative. People lose touch with what we call reality. I heard someone say, you are in the world but no longer of the world. Heavy doses and you can go into what they call the K-hole. Then you are completely cut off. Confusion, hallucination, euphoria and terror, all beyond any control.’
The face in front of her had become locked again, listening intently still but allowing nothing else to show. The doctor picked her way forward with care.
‘So. Dissociation is a central part of Isabel’s diagnosis, which is why I mention this to you. In reviewing any case, I have to go back to the beginning. Longer term psychological problems usually arise from persistent use but a single heavy dose could leave behind some psychosis. And some element of schizophrenia, which has also been tentatively diagnosed here.’
Still otherwise motionless, Freeman said, ‘And, of course, she was also viciously attacked. I suppose that might have caused some psychological problems as well…’
Irony is often a defence mechanism – a means of deflecting emotional pain into dark humour. A very English characteristic, thought the doctor, but there was also sarcasm here, something with a sharper edge; we say now, the elephant in the room, and it was true that she had so far avoided the worst aspects of what had happened to Isabel. She said, ‘Of course you are right. Most likely that is the primary cause, especially if Isabel had no serious drug dependence. Did you ever see her depressed before the attack?’
‘No. If something was bothering her, she’d take some sort of action. She wouldn’t sit around dwelling on it.’
‘OK. And did she know the men who attacked her?’
Cara Freeman said in a level voice, ‘You know that no one was ever charged, right?’
‘No. I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.’
‘Not your fault. It was a poor investigation but we don’t need to go there. I asked a lot of questions myself. I spoke to her friends, people she was with that night. Isabel didn’t know those men. She met someone new in a bar, and he was involved. Where the others came into it, God knows. It’s my guess that it was planned. She’s very attractive, and she always stood out in a room. She was a target.’
Yelena closed the file. Then she placed the pencil, which was an ordinary one, the sort you can buy in packets of ten in any stationer’s shop, above it. The pencil lay on the desk, exactly central to the width of the file, and exactly parallel to it. These things don’t happen by accident, thought the detective chief inspector as she waited.
‘When I was in America, I spent some time observing Alan Greenbaum working with rape victims. It is the most damaging of assaults. So much so that almost all specialists in this field are women, yes? Alan is an exception, but that’s not important here. I heard victims say they wish they had been killed because of the anguish left behind. Other victims do take their own lives, sometimes years later. Looking at those statistics, this is one way we can measure the pain and the damage done.’
She paused and watched, but this was not a typical relative – the eyebrows were raised, waiting for her to continue the point.
‘OK, so the pain and damage are terrible to bear. One response is to step away from… No, to step outside that reality. To say in your head, OK, I hate it here. I will go and live somewhere else. Somewhere else in the head. Clinically, we call this dissociation. It protects the sufferer from pain but can make a normal life impossible if you can’t or you choose not to come back. That has been Isabel’s diagnosis, and I have seen nothing to make me think it is a wrong one.’
‘Admirably clear, doc. How are you planning to treat it?’
Yelena smiled and won something similar in return. She said, ‘We know a lot more about dissociation now. Some psychiatrists are even using it as a treatment tool, something called neuro-linguistic programming. This involves a kind of re-training of the mind along recognised pathways. We have possibilities with Isabel, I think.’
