The Various Haunts of Men (42 page)

‘National press, sir?’

‘Yes. I’m going to talk to the Super. But national press, television and radio
as of this evening. Unfortunately, all this coincides with the fact that the drugs op is moving up a gear as well. We’ve had some excellent information, as some of you will know, and we’re going to be acting on it during the next few days. We’re stretched. I’m heading up the drugs op, but I want to be kept informed about everything, absolutely everything, to do with these women. Freya, I want you
in charge for the moment. Everyone else reports to you. We’ve got to find these women and so far we have barely a clue – no sightings, no traces, no bodies, alive or dead. That in itself has to be extremely unusual.’

‘Off the record, sir, where are you putting your money?’ Nathan asked.

Simon Serrailler frowned and thought for a moment. Then he said quietly, ‘I’m afraid – and this is off the
record, Nathan, this is a private opinion, right? We have no evidence and I don’t want this getting out.’

‘Sir.’

‘Then I think we are looking at three women who have been abducted, very cleverly abducted, by someone or some people, who know how to cover their movements and leave no trace.’

‘Murder, then.’

The room went dreadfully still.

‘I’m ruling nothing out,’ Serrailler said quietly.

It was over six months before I could bring myself to tell you that I was no longer a medical student. I kept up the pretence very well. But then naturally came the question of money, as you were paying towards my fees. I wrote to you and I lied. I did not want to see you – I never wanted to see you by then – but I knew there had to be some explanation and so you remember that I said
I had been advised not to continue with my studies on medical grounds. I had always had mild asthma but it had become so much worse that it could strike at any time and a serious attack might weaken my heart.

After that you had no idea where I was for almost two years. I simply slipped out of your life, like someone diving into the sea and resurfacing thousands of miles away. I did not know what
you thought, whether you made attempts to find me, if you ever contacted the medical school. It was not you I worried about.

I spent some years trying to work out a future for myself and during that time, I simply took odd jobs
so that I could live, clerical jobs, mainly, and always on a temporary basis. I registered with an agency and there was always plenty of work. I was meticulous, reliable,
hard-working, methodical, neat, all qualities that recommended themselves to employers. I did not make trouble, I did not waste time, I did not gossip, I hardly socialised. But throughout that time, like an underground force, my mind was working on my future, trying out ideas, planning, scheming. I could not be a doctor but I had never given up the desire to work in some area of medical treatment,
and because I so loved bodies, I often toyed with the idea of simply becoming a mortuary attendant, or an assistant in some hospital path lab, probably abroad.

But I could never have played second fiddle, never have stood unable to take part, never have bowed and scraped to some ‘qualified’ pathologist, never have done the drudgery like a servant week after week, unnoticed, unregarded, because
I knew as much as they knew, I could do their job. I would have exploded with frustration.

I went through some months planning to take up my medical training again, forging references perhaps, lying about my age, going abroad, but deception was not something that came easily to me then. The only person I had ever deceived and lied to was you. I did not want to behave like some petty criminal
and if I had been discovered the humiliation would have been traumatic, more than I could have borne. I had had enough of humiliation. My hatred of those who had condemned me, poured scorn on me and made me feel small was and has remained absolute, a pure, bitter hatred, not like a poison but like an acid.

Every other medical career I considered, even to the point of reading about it in detail
in some reference library, I rejected because it was inferior, second best and with a low status. I would not become a nurse, or work in the ambulance service. Perhaps I might have taken up dentistry but I rejected it because it was too like medicine, I might have been victimised again.

I want you to know everything. There is no harm in it because you cannot react in a hurtful way, you cannot
sneer, as you so often did, you are unable to humiliate me. You wanted to be proud of me and you would be, now. Now, you are no threat to me and would not wish to be. I had to work everything out for myself, be responsible for myself and answerable to myself. I had waited all my childhood and youth for that.

I missed the hospital and the pathology lab desperately. I dreamed about it. I dreamed
of carrying out one post-mortem after another and making astonishing discoveries, solving problems, finding out bodily secrets. When I was working at one or other temporary desk, in my mind I was walking the corridors of the hospital, putting on my green gown and cap, picking up the instruments. I lived in two worlds and yet I never neglected the work I had to do, I was able to satisfy my employers
quite easily while I conducted my other life.

But after a time, I became frustrated. I had to do something, make some decision, find out the course of my life.

In the end, it happened by chance. I was asked to take on a temporary job in the head office of a company hiring out vending machines. It was some
distance away from the room I had rented, in an area I did not know. I took a train and
then walked for ten minutes, a dull walk but one which I could vary each day by taking a short cut, or a side route down one of several different residential avenues. They were much alike, but the houses were large and of varying styles and periods and I liked to speculate about their owners, wondering what occupations brought in a salary high enough to afford Aldine Lodge and Manor House and West
End and The Poplars. One house had a brass dentist’s plate. Sometimes, people were driving out as I passed, in large, comfortable, expensive cars to match the status of their houses.

I was not envious, though I would have enjoyed living somewhere less cramped and run-down than the bed-sitting room to which I was confined.

But I always knew that this was only a temporary home, like the temporary
jobs, and that my real life and destiny were waiting for me to discover them. I never despaired, and I was never depressed because of this. You would have been proud of me at this time, proud of the fact that I dressed smartly and looked after my clothes and my body and that I never lost confidence in myself.

I remember the morning very clearly. One does remember the days when destiny strikes.
I have never forgotten the decoration around one of the photograph frames in the room in which the head of the medical school dismissed me. If I close my eyes, I can still see the thin twisted rope of mock gilt.

So it is not surprising that I remember everything about the day I walked down Spencer Avenue, one of the two long, treelined roads which took me by a
slightly circuitous route to my
office. The houses were mainly gabled and mock Tudor or real Edwardian, the hedges mainly forsythia which was in full, vivid yellow bloom on this rather damp, mild spring morning. You would have liked Spencer Avenue. It was the sort of road you aspired to though you had no hope at all of achieving life in such a place. But when I was a boy and still loved you, still talked to you and told you things,
we used to go for walks rather like this one and I would point out to you the houses I might buy for us when I was a famous doctor, and you would choose the colour of the curtains and the shrubs you would grow in the front garden.

I was early. I always was. I have never been able to bear unpunctuality, in myself or in others. I did not have to hurry.

It was two-thirds of the way down, on the
right-hand side, the side down which I was walking. The house was an imposing one, though not especially attractive. It had black-and-white half-timbering and leaded light windows, which made it gloomy. It was large, the drive was immaculately gravelled, and there was a lilac tree in full bloom to the right of the house. But it was the plate attached to the gatepost which drew my attention. Another
dentist? Or a medical consultant, a gynaecologist with an extensive private practice? A psychiatrist? An ophthalmic surgeon?

I was startled when I read what was actually there, under the name, John F. L. Shinner.

I had never considered it, did not even know a great deal of what exactly it involved – there were few of us about in those days. But I stared at the plate with a sense of revelation.
I did not need to make a
note of the name and address, they were already engraved in my memory.

I began to walk quickly, not because I was late but because I was excited. I saw my life opening up in front of me. I would train, and I would practise. I would have my name on a house like this, in a treelined road. It would be very like practising medicine and I would be answerable to myself only.
For the first time, I found it hard to concentrate on the work in hand, and the moment one o’clock struck I went out to the public telephone box in front of the General Post Office, obtained the number and phoned to make an appointment. I explained that I did not need treatment but that I wanted to discuss the possibility of training to join the profession. After a moment, the receptionist put me
straight through.

‘I’d be happy to see you. I hope I might be of help. When exactly did you become interested?’

‘I did three and a half years of medical training but I failed one set of exams and almost immediately afterwards I became quite seriously ill. I’m well now, it was some time ago, but by then I was unhappy with the way I was being trained. I became very interested in some of the alternative
ways of treating the sick.’ I found that I believed passionately in what I was saying, even as I heard the words that came out of my mouth.

‘Have you talked to other therapists?’

‘I looked into the possibility of homeopathy.’

‘And?’

‘I was never interested in pharmacy. Chemical treatments and homeopathy seem somewhat akin. I find it hard to explain but homeopathy seemed too cerebral to me.’

Mr John F. L. Shinner chuckled. ‘Our training is very rigorous – just as much as orthodox medical training. But I would not call the discipline too cerebral. It is about whole-patient assessment, treatment and care. You are dealing with people, not just symptoms.’

‘I am not interested in “just symptoms”.’

‘Then come and see me. If I can be of help, I will.’

I could not sleep that night. In
the end, I went out for a walk at two thirty, through the narrow, run-down streets, where lilac trees and forsythia and the set-back houses of Spencer Avenue might have been a thousand miles away and yet were so certain a part of my future that they were more real to me than the streets down which I walked. I noticed nothing, only smelled the rancid frying of fat from a fish and chip booth and the
smell of diesel from the arterial road nearby. I had an absolute certainty about everything, as if I had been guided towards Spencer Avenue, and the brass plate of John F. L. Shinner which marked my destiny. It was strange, this feeling of fate. I was not familiar with it but for the time being, I allowed myself to succumb to it.

I do not know why the attraction to my future career was so strong,
so compulsive, for I knew very little about it or how long it would take me to study, how much it would cost, where I would have to go. But uncertainty over these matters was trivial, and with time everything would become clear. I had no doubts, none at all. But I knew that I would tell you nothing, that I would not communicate with you until I had achieved it all.

I have never regretted anything
or looked back or
been in doubt for one instant. I knew that I was right and so it proved.

As for the other matters – I believe they were always there, lying below the surface of my mind. I was to be fulfilled and satisfied in a career I was good at but the old needs had not been defeated. I had been cut short before I had done what I must do, wanted to do, and there would have to be another
way of accomplishing it, but it could wait. In the end, it had to wait for years, but that did not matter. I have succeeded in the end, haven’t I? I have done everything.

John Shinner was most helpful. I made an appointment to go to the house after he had seen his last patient and after my own working day. I walked down the avenue with an extraordinary sense of elation.

He was a small, tubby
man, and although his name was apparently English, he was clearly partly Oriental.

‘Our discipline originates in China,’ he said. He was showing me the room in which he practised, and which I took immediately as my model, it was so orderly, so sterile, so neat. There were no superfluous decorations, no pictures, nothing save what was directly relevant to his work. The walls were painted cream,
the leather of the treatment couch and of his working chair was black. There was a wonderful calm and harmony about that room which I have always tried to emulate. My patients have told me that they are aware of it and that it adds to the efficacy of the treatment I give.

‘There are few regulations governing complementary therapies,’ Mr Shinner said. ‘Anyone can set up in practice, without training
or qualifications. Would
anyone set up as a dentist or an orthopaedic surgeon without training and qualifications? Of course they would not, yet nothing is done and the public can be put at risk. Ours is an ancient and proven discipline. You will study for accreditation with our national institute. You will study hard and you will never stop learning, even after you have practised for years. I
learn every day. Yet we are disregarded by the medical profession, disapproved of, treated with disdain and contempt, laughed out of court. Have they observed our operations – the removal of organs, Caesarean sections – carried out on patients who are wide awake and can be seen talking, laughing, quite without pain or discomfort throughout the procedure? Our critics dismiss us as liars. But of course,
most of our work is nothing like so dramatic. We help, we give hope, we sometimes heal entirely, we give pain relief, we ease chronic symptoms of incurable conditions. We affect body, mind and spirit, we touch the deepest parts of the psyche as well as the most superficial areas of the body.’