Time to Kill (30 page)

‘Without involving you,' confirmed the psychiatrist. ‘Ann involved you, which is good.'

‘Why?'

‘I told you we wouldn't do joint sessions. I'd like to talk to Ann now.'

The curt dismissal was rude, decided Slater. Hillary hadn't given any indication yesterday, but it was possible that she despised him for who he was and what he had done. To feel which, he supposed, she had every right by whatever standards she chose. He certainly didn't intend losing his temper over it. ‘I'll wait.'

‘We'll be a while, if you've anything else to do.'

‘You'd like me to be here, wouldn't you?' Slater asked his wife.

‘Yes,' said Ann, at once. ‘I want you to be right outside the door.'

Slater wondered if he'd misjudged the psychiatrist: decided too soon how good she was? She was certainly a good interrogator but upon careful reconsideration of every exchange the previous day – or as much of the exchanges as he could remember, which he decided was a lot – he couldn't see what practical benefit it had been to Ann. Which was the entire purpose – the
only
purpose – of their consulting the woman. Ann's demeanour totally bewildered him, convinced as she appeared to be that they were under imminent and deadly threat from her ex-husband, insisting upon every precaution and protection, but at the same time appearing ephemerally suspended from reality. The only occasions upon which her demeanour changed, when Ann became someone he thought he knew and could recognize, were their nightly visits to David's grave when, almost as if she were discarding a disguise, she reverted to being the weeping, grieving mother as he unashamedly collapsed into being the loss-racked father. They both had to recover – adjust – from that, Slater determined, positively. Not yet. It was far too soon yet even to contemplate their not going as often as Ann chose – nightly, as she was choosing now – to mourn at David's graveside. But he shouldn't – wouldn't – allow it to become a maudlin, emotionally corrosive habit. Maybe it was something he should discuss with Hillary Nelson, despite his belated uncertainty of her methodology and ability.

‘I'm sorry if we've been too long,' apologized the psychiatrist as she emerged behind Ann; Slater realized, surprised, that Ann's second treatment had stretched over two hours. Ann was smiling, quite relaxed.

‘However long it takes,' dismissed Slater, starting to following Hillary Nelson back into her rooms. He stopped at the door, looking between the two women. To Ann he said, ‘You going to be all right, waiting so long?'

‘I'm certainly not going home by myself,' said Ann, no longer smiling.

‘I didn't mean …' started Slater, before tailing off.

‘Maybe we won't be that long,' said Hillary.

There was only one chair directly in front of her desk today but there was a rumpled rug on a chaise longue he had been unaware of the previous day. Seeing Slater looking at it the psychiatrist said, ‘How would you feel about being hypnotized?'

‘I'm relaxed enough.'

‘That wasn't what I asked you. I asked how you'd
feel
about being hypnotized.'

‘Would it help what we're trying to do for Ann?' Slater was uncomfortable at the idea, frightened of losing control and telling her how frightened he'd been of Mason.

‘I wasn't talking about helping Ann, either. I was thinking about you.'

‘I thought we decided yesterday I didn't need help.'

‘You may have decided that. I didn't say I had.'

‘I don't need any help.'

‘You think you could kill Jack Mason?'

‘What?' demanded Slater, startled by the switch.

‘That's what Ann tells me you've got to do. Kill him before he kills you.'

‘You really believe she did see him? That he has found us?'

‘I'm telling you what Ann thinks you've got to do. Could you?'

‘This is ridiculous!' protested Slater.

‘No, it's not. If you thought Mason would try to kill Ann, and you, as he might have killed David, could you kill him first?'

‘Yes.' said Slater at once. ‘I'd
want
to kill him.'

‘How well do you believe you got to know him when you were handling him?'

Slater shifted, uneasily. ‘Pretty well. As much – maybe more – through Ann than through our direct contact.'

‘Did you like him?'

‘Definitely not.'

‘Because of the way he ill-treated Ann?'

‘No. Because he was a traitor.'

Hillary didn't try to prevent the disbelieving laugh. ‘But that's what you wanted him to be! What your job was, in Washington! Handling – managing – a traitor.'

Slater shook his head. ‘I know what my job was, running Mason. That, as well as other things, was my profession. But no professional intelligence officer
likes
another professional officer who goes over to the other side. I know it sounds illogical, to anyone else, but that's how it is. It's an expedient act as I told you yesterday, I was trained to lie and deceive. That was my job, my profession. I knew, for every hour of every day after I defected and went through all the debriefings, that every other intelligence officer who dealt with me and got everything they could out of me despised me as they did so.'

‘Did you despise yourself?'

Slater considered the question. ‘Yes. Again, as I told you yesterday, I don't remember feeling any guilt but I despised myself. Which is different.'

‘Why is it different?'

‘I stayed honest to myself.'

‘Do you think Mason despised himself?'

‘No,' said Slater, immediately. ‘I think Mason enjoyed being turned. I think he despised everyone else at Langley, thought they were inferior to him for not knowing what fools he was making of them. And I think he probably despised me, too.'

‘I looked up the archival material last night, as you suggested. At the trial he was described as an outstanding intelligence officer.'

‘He was,' agreed Slater, at once. ‘Again, as I told you yesterday, I had to be trained to lie. I don't believe Mason needed that training. Lying came naturally to him. He was
born
to be a spy, for whatever, and whoever was prepared to pay him. Jack Mason had only two interests: money and women.'

‘Was he born to be a killer?'

‘I don't think so. Almost everything came easy to him; he was one of those sort of guys. But I never thought of him as someone who could kill …' Slater paused. ‘Every national intelligence agency has those types of people. They're attached to specialized divisions, those people who don't have any problem killing someone they're ordered to assassinate. They're psychologically trained, brainwashed, if you like, that their victims are enemies of the state and that their deaths are justified. The KGB called authorized killings “wet jobs”. The CIA referred to them as “terminating with extreme prejudice”. But you'd surely know better than me that a person would need a special mentality, a twisted, psychotic mentality, to kill to order.'

‘Ann thinks he'd be capable of killing.'

‘He certainly physically attacked her,' conceded Slater. ‘But hitting a woman is surely different from finding it easy to kill!'

‘And he'd have a reason – a self-justification – to attack her and you again after all that you made happen to him, wouldn't he? You told me, less than an hour ago and without needing to think about it, that
you
could kill
him
. Does that mean you think you're a killer?'

She'd out-argued him, Slater accepted. ‘It would be self-protection. Doesn't the law allow someone to protect themselves?'

‘But you don't think he's a killer – capable of being a killer?'

She was tying him up with his own words. ‘If I'm wrong and he tried to harm Ann or myself, I'd kill him.' He wasn't being honest, Slater admitted to himself. He did think Mason would be capable of killing him and Ann if he found them. How else was he not being honest? By not admitting at last, now, that he'd always been terrified of Mason, he answered himself.

‘Are you going to buy a handgun? Ann tells me she wants you to.'

‘If I thought there was a need.'

‘For self-protection?'

‘Only for self-protection,' insisted Slater, exasperated.

‘Ann told me she wants a handgun, too. Are you going to get her one?'

‘I haven't decided the need, not yet.'

Slater sat regarding the psychiatrist steadily, wanting to twist her reasoning as she was twisting his. ‘Do you believe that Ann saw Jack Mason outside her gallery?'

‘I believe that
Ann
believes she saw him.'

‘So, she has a problem?'

‘I didn't say that,' denied the woman. ‘I have found nothing, not even under hypnosis, that gives me any cause to think or diagnose that Ann is suffering any sort of mental difficulty. Most certainly she does not have, in my opinion, any hallucinatory difficulty. After the life she led with Jack, and after that going into a protection programme with you, and then suffering the trauma of David's death, in my professional opinion it's quite remarkable that she's as stable as she is.'

‘She's different from how she used to be,' insisted Slater. ‘She seems …'He stopped, groping for the words to express himself. ‘She seems to be floating above everything.'

‘It's her way of coping. She surely deserves that?'

‘She drinks!'

‘No, she doesn't, not unless you can convince me otherwise. She drank when she was with Jack. She's been quite honest with me about that. It was another way of coping with the circumstances in which she found herself. And she had
a
drink or two, when you got the letter about Jack. She's been quite honest about that, too, even admitted that's how she came to miss most of what she says was on the CCTV loop. But she hasn't drunk since. Or has she?'

‘No,' admitted Slater. He came forward in his chair, towards the woman. ‘I do need your help. I need you to tell me what to do about Ann, about her thinking,
believing
, that she saw Jack.'

Hillary's shoulders rose and fell in a gesture of helplessness. ‘I've gone through all the logic with her, after speaking to you. Talked about how secure Witness Protection Programmes are supposed to be and how unlikely it is that Jack would have been able to find you, particularly as I understand it was so soon after being released from a penitentiary. She's still adamant it was him.'

‘What can I do?' pleaded Slater.

‘You went to Washington, to see the man who wrote you the letter about Jack. Couldn't you find out Jack's whereabouts from him? If Jack's on the other side of the country – not
in
the country even – that could possibly reassure her. So might buying her a handgun.'

‘You're actually suggesting I buy her a gun!' exclaimed Slater.

‘It's not against the law. And if you're right she's never going to have to use it, is she? If she had a gun and learned how to use it, it would give her more reassurance, wouldn't it?'

‘I'm not sure,' said Slater, perfectly describing his mindset. Was it he who needed the help that Hillary Nelson had consistently offered? According to the psychiatrist, Ann was suffering no mental imbalance, but was convinced beyond persuasion to the contrary that she had definitely seen her ex-husband just yards from her gallery within days of his release from a reduced twenty-year imprisonment, and that he should try to discover from God knows who – the CIA, presumably – Jack Mason's whereabouts, and in the meantime buy her and have her trained in the use of a gun!

‘You don't think I have been – am being – much help, do you?' openly challenged the woman.

‘No, I don't,' agreed Slater, at once, angrily. Still held by the anger, he went on, ‘I came to you for help, about Ann's illness, her delusions. And got nothing!'

Spacing her words, as if doubting Slater's comprehension, Hillary Nelson said, ‘Ann doesn't have a mental illness! I've told you she's remarkably, surprisingly, stable. It's you who is insisting she's deluded about seeing Jack. I'm not going to tell you that she's deluded. I've no way of deciding if she is or if she isn't, apart from taking your word, and to take your word that Jack hasn't found you I'd need some proof to the contrary – and I don't have it any more than you do. I've given you all the advice and help I can. Bizarre though it might be, like a lot about this is bizarre. You want recommendations to other psychiatrists, I can give you as many as you need. I can't do any more, suggest or advise any more.'

‘I'm sorry,' apologized Slater. ‘I didn't mean to be rude. It's just …' He broke off again, searching for the words. ‘I don't know what to do …'

The woman stared at him across her desk, waiting. When he didn't continue she said, ‘I think Ann should come back in, don't you?

Slater shrugged. ‘If you say so.'

As the psychiatrist talked, encapsulating her opinions, Slater acknowledged that she was summing up their sessions and their conversations with complete, objective honesty and total impartiality. She described both of them as being remarkable and insisted it was a natural reaction that they should both feel the need to visit David's grave as often as they were doing, which reminded Slater he'd forgotten to mention it to the woman. He presumed Ann had. Ann's only objection came when the psychiatrist gently pressed her to accept she might have been mistaken if it were proven that Mason was nowhere in the vicinity of Frederick when she'd believed she'd seen him on the CCTV loop.

‘What would you accept as positive proof?' Ann demanded suspiciously, speaking for the first time since she had joined them.

‘That's more a question for you to answer,' replied Hillary, still gently. ‘But Daniel's going back to the man who wrote you the release letter, people he's still got numbers for at Langley, aren't you Daniel?'