The Mentalist Read online

  Angela wheeled and marched back into the house. A moment later a girl emerged, a day bag in one hand. Her dark hair was short and spectacularly messed.

  ‘Hello Tia,’ said Harry.

  She glared at him. ‘Nice one, dad.’ Then climbed into the front passenger seat and slammed the door.

  ‘Thanks for stopping,’ Harry whispered.

  ‘The tape was full,’ said Pickman.

  *

  A murder investigation is a machine for generating paperwork. Detectives have suspicions, of course. And maybe they can use those suspicions. But if they catch their killer and make it all the way to trial and if the defence barrister can suggest to the jury that they followed a hunch somewhere along the line — that’s when the trouble starts. What other leads were ignored? Why did the police decide to follow a prejudice instead of the evidence?

  That is why paperwork is so important. It proves to the court that all avenues were followed and that no hunches were used. Even if they were.

  As lead officer, Morgan was half-buried in paper. Two of his officers were collecting all available CCTV footage of the streets through which the victim might have walked. Two were following up people who had been at the performance, tracking them down through the credit cards they used to pay for their tickets. On top of that, the victim’s mobile phone records were being gone through, her friends and housemates were being talked to, and half a dozen other lines of enquiry were proceeding at pace. In time the computer would swallow all the information. But only as fast as the data processing staff could feed it in.

  Civil libertarians were always worried about the amount of information the state had at its disposal. Morgan believed that, given a deep enough pool of information, a state would drown itself.

  He looked up from a pile of witness reports to see one of his sergeants at the open door.

  ‘You won’t believe this,’ the man said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The victim — she was on file already. She gave a witness statement for the Swithland Woods case.’

  ‘Why didn’t we know before?’

  The sergeant shrugged. ‘Our victim and the Swithland woman went to the same church.’

  Morgan’s sciatic nerve was giving him trouble again. Little jabs of pain down his left leg. It always happened when he sat for a long time or when he got too tense. He stood up and put a hand on the small of his back. ‘Find the church they went to,’ he said. ‘Get the membership records. Cross correlate.’

  ‘Computer told us to do that already,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘And see if you can find any connections to Harry Gysel.’

  ‘He’s got an alibi.’

  ‘Has it been checked?’

  ‘I’ll get on to it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Morgan. ‘Do that.’

  *

  Peter Pickman didn’t seem to need to eat and he somehow managed to drink while filming, balancing the camera on his knees as he sipped. He didn’t even relent when Harry took him to one side, angled the lens away with one hand and begged for a few minutes alone with his daughter.

  The worst thing was Tia’s mood. On their days together she was usually angry with him at first. The handovers seldom went well. She’d shout, then allow herself to be bribed, then melt, then he’d get a hug. And finally she’d start to fuss and mother him, making comments about the contents of his fridge, the number of empty beer cans in his recycling bin.

  It was the hugs that kept him living.

  But with a camera on, she was different. She stalked around the flat, not speaking. She opened the fridge, took in the raw fruit and vegetables, closed it again and moved on without a comment. Physically there wasn’t much resemblance between them, but in character she was so like him — the way he used to be — it was terrifying.

  It was in the upstairs seating area of McDonalds that Pickman showed his first sign of human weakness. The cups of tea Harry had been feeding to him all afternoon were at last having the desired effect.

  ‘I need to… you know,’ Pickman said. He put the camera down on the table. ‘Don’t spill anything on it.’ Then he got up and headed for the toilets.

  ‘Dad, get rid of him,’ Tia hissed.

  ‘It’s difficult, love.’

  ‘Do something!’

  And then he had an idea.

  Pickman didn’t ask where they were going. Presumably that would have spoiled the documentary. He followed, still filming, as they left the golden arches behind and got into the car. He didn’t comment when they parked at the cinema complex, nor when Harry bought three tickets for the latest Disney feature.

  ‘Screen three,’ the attendant said. And then, as they tried to walk past him, ‘You can’t take that in, sir.’

  ‘I’m making a documentary,’ Pickman said.

  ‘No recording devices allowed.’

  Harry raised his hands in a gesture that he hoped would seem believably apologetic. ‘I guess we’ll see you out here in a couple of hours.’

  The cinema was dark and all but empty. A slide-show of local adverts was showing on the screen. Harry and Tia took seats at the back. He was waiting for the rage to burst, but instead she gripped his arm and rested her head against his shoulder.

  ‘Why do you hate Mum?’ she whispered.

  ‘Did she say that? Did she say I hate her?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘It’s not that simple,’ he said.

  ‘That’s what you and Mum always say when you’re wrong.’

  ‘When your mum left me…’

  ‘She said you left her.’

  He stared at a slide advertising screen advertising space. The world was going mad. Sometimes he could have wished it all to hell. All but Tia.

  ‘When it happened, it shook me up. I felt very low. I had to go to someone to help me feel better again.’

  ‘A shrink?’ Tia asked, a new note of interest in her voice. ‘Mum said you went loopy.’

  ‘I was depressed. And it was a hypnotherapist. He helped me understand what was happening in my head. I don’t hate her.’

  ‘Do you love her then?’

  ‘Love and hate are brain chemistry, Tia. Endorphins and oxytocin. Understanding that helped me to be well again.’ He felt her pulling away from him.

  A couple with four children entered the theatre and took seats towards the front. The man and woman sat next to each other.

  ‘If it hadn’t been for my depression, I wouldn’t have got interested in hypnosis. If that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be a performer now. Every cloud has a silver lining, you see.’

  Tia turned in her seat and looked straight at him. ‘Mum says I shouldn’t listen when you talk about what you do. She says it’s devil worship.’

  ‘That sounds more like your mum’s husband.’

  ‘She said it too.’

  There was a long pause before he could speak again. ‘I’ve got something for you.’ He pulled a mobile phone out of his pocket and placed it in her hand.

  ‘Mum won’t let me,’ she said.

  ‘It’s so you can talk to me if you want. And she doesn’t need to know.’

  Tia’s hand closed around the phone. ‘If love is chemistry…?’

  ‘That’s what we are — machines to carry DNA. You’re my daughter. I’m pre-programmed to love you.’

  ‘But if it’s only chemistry…’

  ‘I’d die to protect you,’ he said, hoping it was true.

  Tia looked back to the screen. ‘Don’t do that Daddy.’

  *

  Ever since the phone call from Harry Gysel, Chloe had been on her guard, peering through the window before letting callers in. But this time she was late for work. The bell rang just as she was picking up her handbag, ready to run for the bus. She swung the door open without thinking, took in the two suited men, then tried to slam it closed in their faces. She would have managed but the one on the doorstep was quick enough to get his foot into the gap. His strength was more than a match for
hers. He eased the door back open and waved his ID in her face. Not that she needed to see it. A policeman is a policeman.

  ‘We’re looking for Chloe,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t have to talk to you.’

  ‘Don’t be like that. We just need to ask a couple of questions. Did you go and see Harry Gysel’s show the other night?’

  ‘Get out of my house.’

  She finally let go of the door and they stepped properly inside, their broad shoulders filling the narrow hallway. She found herself craning her neck to look up at them.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me.’

  ‘But did you go?’

  She dropped her eyes to the floor and their polished black shoes. ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘He said he came back here afterwards.’

  She shook her head. ‘No.’

  *

  The victim, Debbie, had lived in a shared house on Evington Road not far from Leicester University. She’d had three housemates, all young men. Two were science students — a bearded geologist and an acne-speckled chemist. The third wore his straw-coloured hair in a ponytail and announced that he played bass guitar in a band — which sounded to Morgan like another way of saying he was unemployed.

  Morgan stepped inside Debbie’s room, pushed the door to behind him, then stood still, eyes closed, and inhaled. Everyone has a scent. It comes from their clothes, of course, their food, their soap, their fabric conditioner and their perfume. It comes from all the things they fill their lives with.

  He opened his eyes and looked. A poster of an angel suspended in the night sky above some trees. A mosaic of cards, photographs and newspaper cuttings around the edge of the dressing table mirror and on the wall behind it. Images of rock bands, crop circles, Celtic crosses and a picture of the Buddha.

  He now knew that the ‘church’ the other two victims had attended was an informal gathering of spiritualists and faith healers. He wondered how those beliefs compared to the beliefs implied by the pictures on the wall.

  There were a couple of gaps where photographs might once have been. He peered into the narrow gap behind the dressing table to see if any had fallen. Finding nothing, he lowered himself onto a plastic chair, keeping his spine upright and his shoulders back. Even so, he felt his leg twinge. A tired man stared back at him from the mirror.

  He slid a drawer open and breathed her scent again, stronger this time. Socks, pants, tights — all stuffed and jumbled together. He closed the drawer and opened another. A brush still tangled with hair, a dryer and plastic clips, a packet of auburn dye.

  He sat in silence for a moment, then turned to look at the door through which he’d entered. There was a gap at the bottom. He could see a thin strip of sunlight shining through from the hall. And a shadow. The shadow moved.

  ‘Why don’t you come in,’ Morgan said, keeping his voice easy.

  There was a pause before the shadow shifted again. A moment of decision, perhaps. Morgan watched as the door opened and one of Debbie’s housemates stepped inside. It was the musician.

  ‘What do they call you?’ Morgan asked.

  ‘Diablo,’ he said. ‘I’m David, see. Di. It’s a kind of joke.’

  Morgan gestured to the bed. ‘Sit.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem right,” Diablo said, but he sat anyway.

  ‘Do you believe in all this — angels and stone circles?’

  Diablo’s eyes jumped to the poster. ‘Not like Debbie. She was… she was really into it.’

  ‘And you’re not?’

  ‘The band is. It’s our image. We’re the Witch Kings.’

  Morgan felt as if he was expected to recognise the name. ‘Do you have a record? An album, I mean.’

  ‘We sell downloads.’

  ‘You’ve heard of Harry Gysel?’

  Diablo nodded.

  ‘Do you think he’s a genuine psychic?’

  ‘Well he’s got to be, right? After what he did.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t believe in that sort of thing.’

  ‘Not all of it.’

  ‘But…?’

  ‘Harry Gysel — he’s different.’

  ‘You’ve seen him then?’

  Diablo rubbed his forehead, as if trying to ease a headache. Then Morgan’s phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket, standing up as he put it to his ear.

  ‘Sir, I checked Gysel’s alibi.’ It was one of the sergeants speaking. ‘We went to see the woman he said he spent the night with.’

  Morgan’s eyes were fixed on Diablo. ‘And?’

  ‘She says she hasn’t seen him.’

  Sometimes you hope for a bit of news so much that when it comes, you can’t trust that you’ve heard it right.

  Morgan swallowed. ‘Say again please.’

  ‘She won’t back up Gysel’s story. But I think there’s a reason, sir. She gave a false alibi for a boyfriend once before. She’s got a conviction for perverting the course of justice. I think maybe she’s scared.’

  Diablo kept still. Could he hear the other side of the conversation? It didn’t matter now. Morgan was sure he had his man.

  ‘I’ll be back at the station in 30 minutes,’ he said. ‘Have someone bring Gysel in for questioning.’

  When Morgan arrived at the station he was handed another gift — news of two connections that had previously been missed in the mass of paperwork. They must have seemed irrelevant in the earlier murder investigations, but reading them now, Morgan felt the skin on the back of his neck tingle.

  He was standing in the corridor outside the interview room, armed with two photographs. To make an arrest he needed ‘reasonable suspicion’— something more than the growing list of circumstantial evidence connecting Gysel to the murder. A lie perhaps. Then he could sweat his suspect in a cell while they searched his flat and his car. They’d turn up something. He was sure of it.

  He checked his watch. Gysel had been waiting for ten minutes. He snapped the door open, marched inside, took a seat opposite the suspect and placed the photos face down on the table.

  Gysel leaned forward. ‘Where’s my daughter?’

  ‘There’s nowhere safer than a police station.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Sitting by the front desk.’

  ‘I’d like her brought here.’

  ‘This won’t take long,’ Morgan said. ‘The desk sergeant will keep an eye on her. You know why you’re here?’

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘You said you were psychic.’

  ‘I said I read minds.’

  ‘So you don’t have supernatural powers?’

  ‘I can leave, right, if I want to?’

  ‘Well, let’s get to the point, then. Where did you go on the night Debbie was killed?’

  ‘I’ve told you already.’

  ‘You told us you spent the night with…’ he took a notebook out of his jacket pocket and leafed through the pages.

  ‘Chloe,’ Gysel said.

  ‘Chloe. Thank you. How did you meet her?’

  ‘Davina introduced us. They’re friends.’

  ‘Chloe says she doesn’t know you.’

  Gysel’s mouth gaped. ‘I was with her!’

  Morgan turned the two photographs over. Each showed a face. ‘Do you know either of these women?’

  Gysel glanced down then shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘Would you swear to that?’

  He looked again, for longer this time, and Morgan wondered if lying was something that Gysel was good at from childhood, or if he had practiced in order to do the stage show convincingly.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘No. Never.’

  ‘This one…’ Morgan said, tapping the photo on his left, ‘…was a fan of yours. She went to three of your performances two years ago. Another of your groupies?’

  ‘I… no… I can’t remember every face from every audience.’

  ‘And this one…’ Mogan rotated the second photo for a moment so he could look at it the right way up, then tw
isted it back and pushed it forward till it was right in front of Gysel. ‘We know she telephoned you.’

  Gysel’s face was screwed up with denial and apparent confusion. ‘When?’

  ‘This time last year.’

  ‘I don’t know her. A wrong number, maybe.’

  ‘She phoned you four times on four consecutive evenings.’

  ‘I get… sometimes I get crank calls.’

  ‘Why didn’t you report it?’

  Gysel pushed the photograph back towards Morgan. ‘I’ve never met her. Ask her yourself.’

  ‘She’s dead. They were both murdered.’

  Harry’s face went slack. He stood. ‘I’m going. I need to see Tia.’

  ‘No,’ said Morgan. He didn’t have enough but he couldn’t let him go. ‘Harry Gysel. I am arresting you on suspicion of murder…’

  *

  Twelve hours later, Harry had been bailed and released. Eight of those hours he’d spent looking at the wall of a cell. The other four he’d spent sitting next to a solicitor in the interview room, answering the questions of a series of detectives.The same questions each time. Where was he last October? Where was he the October before? He’d been performing in and around Leicester, he told them. No, he didn’t need to check. He began and ended each year of touring here in his home city. Always in October. Yes, he did sometimes get obsessive fans. Yes, they were usually women.

  When he finally emerged from the police station, Peter Pickman was waiting, camera at the ready. Strangely, Harry felt grateful.

  ‘I need a shave,’ he said.

  ‘Was that really bad?’ Pickman asked. It was the first time Harry had heard him speak other than about the documentary.

  ‘Really bad,’ Harry said. ‘Did you see who came to take Tia?’

  ‘Your ex-wife. I’m sorry.’

  Harry wanted to drive across town straight away, to get his daughter back. He still had another half day of access time. But Pickman suggested a detour. Home for a shave and a fresh shirt. Time for a cup of coffee on the way.

  Perhaps it was the enormity of what was happening to him, or perhaps it was Pickman’s ability to be there without drawing attention to himself, but Harry caught himself not minding the camera any more.

  ‘How did Davina find you?’ he asked.

  ‘She didn’t,’ Pickman said, still looking through the viewfinder. ‘I approached her.’