‘I don’t want to hear this, Lawler. Stop there!’
‘But you must, doctor,’ hissed Lawler. ‘You’re a cold, dispassionate scientist, remember? You have to hear it or you’re no longer a genuine investigator. You’ll be a fraud. You’ll be leaving out the bits that YOU have decided should not be recorded. You’ll be left with flawed data, doctor. FLAWED DATA, the enemy of science.’
Lawler took Barrowman’s nervous swallow as acquiescence and continued as if he’d only been momentarily distracted. ‘Where was I? Ah, yes, pain, I was coming to pain. Drugs are fine but they are as nothing compared to the high you can reach in the presence of someone in complete and absolute agony... Mona Styles for instance.’
Barrowman knew that Mona Styles had been one of Lawler’s victims and had read with horror what had been done to her. He had no wish to hear the perpetrator go through it in detail, but Lawler had engineered the situation perfectly. He couldn’t get up and leave without losing credibility. FLAWED DATA, the enemy of science.
Barrowman fought the urge to vomit as Lawler guided him through a tale that touched the outer limits of depravity.
It was obvious to him that Lawler was feeding off his disgust, stage-managing his revelations with the deliberate introduction of pauses which forced Barrowman to fill in the blanks for himself before trumping him with yet more horrendous details.
‘The moment when she realised there was yet more to come, doctor.... yet another level... of exquisite agony to encounter... Let me tell you, I touched the stars...’
Lawler relaxed his grip on the chair arms and closed his eyes, leaning back to relive the moment as if caught up in some hellish rapture.
Barrowman sat, immobile and wide-eyed like a waxwork, waiting for Lawler to return to the present before steeling himself to say in as controlled a fashion as he could, ‘I’ll take your blood sample now, Mr Lawler.’ He managed it without a quaver in his voice, a triumph of self-control over utter revulsion.
The merest suggestion of doubt appeared in Lawler’s eyes. He had been expecting a different response, some overt sign of disgust, at best a complete collapse of professional demeanour, perhaps even a descent into abusive rant, but it didn’t happen.
Two nurse/attendants came into the room, opened the mesh barrier and stood by while Barrowman took a blood sample from Lawler’s arm before thanking him as matter-of-factly as he could. He left the room and paused while the door was closed behind him before half running, half stumbling along the corridor to the staff toilet where he threw up helplessly into a wash basin. Every thought of what he’d heard resulted in yet another retch until the pain from his stomach muscles made him wince. He was still holding the plastic blood sample tube in one hand as he struggled to turn on the taps with the other to wash away the mess and the smell... the smell of fear, Doctor, an aperitif.
The sound of Groves’ voice behind him startled him. He hadn’t heard him come in.
‘I understand our Mr Lawler has been entertaining you with his trips down memory lane, doctor...’
Barrowman shook his head, risking taking it out of range of the basin to stand up and turn around. ‘I’m sorry, that was... unprofessional.’
A slight smile appeared on Groves’ lips. He said, ‘The day when feeling like a decent human being is less important than being professional will be a very sad one indeed. I keep a decent malt in my desk drawer for when things just become... too much. Join me?’
Back in his office, Groves handed Barrowman whisky in a glass tumbler with a chip out of the rim. ‘Do you really think this is going to be a worthwhile exercise?’ he asked.
Barrowman examined his glass in silence. It seemed to match his surroundings perfectly, he thought, noting that the rim on Groves’ glass had more than one chip out of it. There was an awkward moment when he raised the glass to his lips and the strong aroma of the whisky threatened to provoke another protest from his fragile stomach, but the moment passed and the fire in his throat from his first sip seemed to signal an end to the nightmare. ‘God, that’s good,’ he exclaimed.
‘Ardbeg,’ said Groves. ‘A reason to live.’
‘In answer to your question, I wasn’t counting on what happened today. That was something else. but I’ve been getting some interesting data from Lawler’s blood results. I have to stick with it.’
‘You don’t think you just might end up with a new label for someone like Lawler?’
‘That would be the very worst thing that could happen. Labels are pointless in my book: They don’t change anything. Learning that the man who’s just murdered your daughter suffers from a condition involving twenty-three syllables and a silent “p” doesn’t change a thing. She’s still dead and that bastard killed her.’
Groves tipped his glass slightly in agreement. ‘There are those in my profession for whom labels are an end in themselves and then of course, there is the legal profession.’
Barrowman smiled. ‘Who will extend proceedings as long as possible to accommodate long-winded and often contradictory expert opinions.’ He declined the offer of the whisky bottle and shook his head. ‘I have to drive.’
‘There does seem to be a reluctance among both professions to acknowledge even the possibility of the existence of evil,’ said Groves.
‘But you do?’
‘I’m surrounded by it. Evil has a presence, doctor... a very real presence.’
The look in Groves’ eyes asked a question which Barrowman answered with a slight nod. He knew exactly what Groves meant. He’d started to feel it too. His mind had filled with disgust, terror, but with a degree of alertness he’d never experienced before.
The drive back to London left him feeling all over the place. He had completely failed to compartmentalise Lawler — something he’d always managed with the other killers he’d dealt with. There seemed to be nothing he could do to escape from what he’d heard from Lawler and it left him feeling exposed and damaged in terms of self-confidence. Despite that, he could appreciate the irony in Lawler having been the one who’d reminded him of the cold, dispassionate nature of science when, here he was, floating like a cork in a maelstrom of mixed emotions. He detested Lawler yet was still transfixed by him. He felt sorry for Groves and understood his decline into self-defensive cynicism, joking about he and Lawler being locked up together. But it was no joke. It was so evidently true and, what was worse, Lawler had got the better of the deal.
It had gone five when Barrowman drew into the university car park and people were leaving. He planned to do exactly the same after putting away Lawler’s blood sample in the lab fridge, but he met one of the junior technicians, Molly Bearsden, on the stairs.
‘Hi Owen, Dorothy was looking for you earlier. I think she’s still in her room.’
The prospect of a debriefing session with Dorothy Lindstrom when he desperately just wanted to go home did little to fill him with joy. He even considered slipping away after he’d stored the blood, but then thought better of it, He went along the corridor and knocked on Dorothy’s door.
‘Come on in, Owen. Sit down. How was your day?’
Barrowman struggled for words. His reluctance to relive the interview with Lawler was overriding everything else. He shook his head and gestured with his hands to suggest he didn’t know where to start.
‘No matter,’ said Dorothy, ‘You’ve obviously had a long day. We can talk about it tomorrow. What I did want to tell you is that I had some rather wonderful news today.’