“So she was made to do this— to cut herself all those times? Apart from her face there are no signs that she was bound, gagged, restrained or compelled to cut herself. Can you explain that?”
I shake my head.
“Well you’re the psychologist! You’re supposed to understand the world we live in. I’m a detective and it’s beyond my fucking comprehension.”
5
As far as I can recall I haven’t been drunk since Charlie was born and my best friend Jock took it upon himself to get me absolutely hammered because apparently that is what intelligent, sensible and conscientious fathers do when blessed with a child.
With a new car you avoid alcohol completely and with a new house you can’t afford to drink, but with a new baby you must “wet the head” or, in my case, throw up in a cab going around Marble Arch.
After leaving Ruiz, I stop at a pub and have two double vodkas— a first for me. I’m trying to numb the morning’s pain. I can’t get the image of Catherine McBride out of my mind. It’s not her face I see, but her naked body, stripped of all dignity; denied even a modest pair of panties or a strategically placed sheet. I want to protect her. I want to shield her from public gaze.
Now I understand Ruiz— not his words but the look on his face. This wasn’t the terrible conclusion to some great passion. Nor was it an ordinary, kitchen-sink killing, motivated by greed or jealousy. Catherine McBride suffered terribly. Each cut had sapped her strength like a banderilla’s barbs in the neck of a bull.
An American psychologist named Daniel Wegner conducted a famous experiment on thought suppression in 1987. In a test that might have been created by Dostoevsky, he asked a group of people not to think about a white bear. Each time the white bear entered their thoughts they had to ring a bell. No matter how hard they tried, not one person could avoid the forbidden thought for more than a few minutes.
Wegner spoke of two different thought processes counteracting each other. One is trying to think of anything except the white bear, while the other is subtly pushing forward the very thing that we wish to suppress.
Catherine Mary McBride is my white bear. I can’t get her out of my head.
My office is in a pyramid of white boxes on Great Portland Street designed by an architect who must have drawn inspiration from his childhood. From ground level it doesn’t look finished and I’m always half expecting a crane to turn up and hoist a few more boxes into the gaps.
As I walk up the front steps I hear a car horn and turn. A bright red Ferrari pulls onto the pavement. The driver, Dr. Fenwick Spindler, raises a gloved hand to wave. Fenwick looks like a lawyer but he runs the psychopharmacology unit at London University Hospital. He also has a private practice with a consulting room next to mine.
“Afternoon, old boy,” he shouts, leaving the car in the middle of the pavement so that people have to step around it onto the road.
“Aren’t you worried about the parking police?”
“Got one of these,” he says, pointing to the doctor’s sticker on the windshield. “Perfect for medical emergencies.”
Joining me on the steps, he pushes open the glass door. “Saw you on the TV the other night. Jolly good show. Wouldn’t have caught me up there.”
“I’m sure you would have— ”
“Must tell you about my weekend. Went shooting in Scotland. Bagged a deer.”
“Do you bag deer?”
“Whatever.” He waves dismissively. “Shot the bastard right through the left eye.”
The receptionist triggers a switch to open the security door and we summon a lift. Fenwick examines himself in the internal mirrors, brushing specks of dandruff from the bunched shoulders of an expensive suit. It says something about Fenwick’s body when a hand-tailored suit doesn’t fit him.
“Still consorting with prostitutes?” he asks.
“I give talks.”
“Is that what they call it nowadays?” He guffaws and rearranges himself via a trouser pocket. “How do you get paid?”
He won’t believe me if I tell him I do it for nothing. “They give me vouchers. I can redeem them for blow jobs later. I have a whole drawer full of them.”
He almost chokes and blushes furiously. I have to stop myself from laughing.
Fenwick, for all his obvious success as a doctor, is one of those people who tries desperately hard to be somebody else. That’s why he looks vaguely ridiculous behind the wheel of a sports car. It’s like seeing Bill Gates in running shorts or George W. Bush in the White House. It just doesn’t look right.
“How’s the you-know-what?” he asks.
“Fine.”
“I haven’t noticed it at all, old boy. Come to think of it, Pfizer has a new drug cocktail undergoing clinical trials. Drop by and I’ll give you the literature…”
Fenwick’s contacts with drug companies are renowned. His office is a shrine to Pfizer, Novartis and Hoffmann-La Roche; almost every item donated, from the fountain pens to the espresso machine. The same is true of his social life— sailing in Cowes, salmon fishing in Scotland and grouse shooting in Northumberland.
We turn the corner and Fenwick glances inside my office. A middle-aged woman sits in the waiting room clutching an orange torpedo-shaped life buoy.
“I don’t know how you do it, old boy,” Fenwick mutters.
“Do what?”
“Listen to them.”
“That’s how I find out what’s wrong.”
“Why bother? Dish out some antidepressants and send her home.”
Fenwick doesn’t believe there are psychological or social factors in mental illness. He claims it is completely biological and therefore, by definition, treatable with drugs. It is just a matter of finding the right combination.
Every afternoon (he doesn’t work before midday) patients march one by one into his office, answer a few perfunctory questions before Fenwick hands them a scrip and bills them £140. If they want to talk symptoms, he wants to talk drugs. If they mention side effects, he changes the dosage.
The strange thing is that his patients love him. They come in wanting drugs and they don’t care which ones. The more pills the better. Maybe they figure they’re getting value for money.
Listening to people is considered to be old-fashioned nowadays. Patients expect me to produce a magic pill that cures everything. When I tell them that I just want to talk they look disappointed.
“Good afternoon, Margaret. Glad to see you made it.”
She holds up the life buoy.
“Which way did you come?”
“Putney Bridge.”
“It’s a good solid bridge that one. Been around for years.”
She suffers from gephyrophobia— a fear of crossing bridges. To make matters worse she lives south of the river and has to walk her twins to school across the Thames every day. She carries the life buoy just in case the bridge falls down or is swept away by a tidal wave. I know that sounds irrational, but simple phobias are like that.
“I should have gone to live in the Sahara,” she says, only half joking.
I tell her about eremikophobia, the fear of sand or deserts. She thinks I’m making it up.
Three months ago Margaret panicked halfway across Putney Bridge. It took an hour before anybody realized. The children were crying, still clutching her hands. She was frozen by fear, unable to speak or nod. Passersby thought she might be a jumper. In reality Margaret was holding up that bridge with sheer willpower.
We’ve done a lot of work since then. She carried the life buoy and has tried to break the thought loop that accompanies her irrational fear.
“What do you believe is going to happen if you cross the bridge?”