Chapter Eight

ADAM'S Tuesday began early, as planned. By ten o'clock, he had made his rounds and seen his first patient, rescheduled from the previous day. He was ensconced in his office, reviewing his notes for a noon lecture, when the phone rang.

"I've got some news for you," McLeod said, an edge of satisfaction to his voice. "We've got a make on Lennox's phantom lady. Your suggestion that we start working backwards paid off. It turns out that the accident back in January wasn't the first Carnage Corridor fatality. There was a pedestrian incident about this time last year - man killed, woman critically injured. Donald pulled file photos, and the woman appears to match up with the phantom lady in Lennox's pictures."

"Indeed?" Adam sat forward, reaching for a pen and scratch pad. "Please go on."

"Our files give the woman's name as Claire Alison Crawford, aged twenty-seven," McLeod said. "On the night of May sixteenth of last year, she and her husband John were walking home from a ceilidh when a drunk driver ran them down. John Crawford was killed instantly, but Mrs. Crawford survived. Their address will interest you. It's about three blocks away from the stretch of road now known as Carnage Corridor." He paused to let this piece of information sink in.

"I see," Adam said as McLeod's pause lengthened. "I gather there's more to come. What happened to the driver?"

"They never caught him," McLeod replied. "The car turned out to have been stolen; it was found abandoned in a ditch about five miles north of Carnwath. The joy rider himself must have been on a right bender. The floor of the passenger side was littered with empty cider bottles."

"But there was nothing to identify the driver," Adam said.

"Nope. There were plenty of fingerprints left all over the car, but none of them checked out against criminal records. If the bastard ever commits another offense, we'll have him nailed for hit-and-run manslaughter, but unless and until that happens, he's off the hook."

"All right, back to Mrs. Crawford," Adam said, jotting down notes. "You say this incident took place about a year ago?"

"Aye."

"Where's Mrs. Crawford been since?"

"After she left hospital," McLeod said grimly, "she spent the better part of six months down at Stoke-Mandville."

The significance of the name was not lost on Adam. The Stoke-Mandville Centre had been established expressly for the treatment and rehabilitation of patients suffering from varying degrees of paralysis.

"I see. How badly affected was she left by the accident?"

"She still has the use of her arms and upper body," McLeod said, "but she'll be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life."

Adam allowed himself a heavy sigh as he contemplated the havoc that could be wrought on innocent lives as a result of one man's criminal self-indulgence.

"You say Mrs. Crawford spent six months in rehab. Do you know where she went after she got out?"

"Aye, we do. She went home," McLeod said. "She moved back into her house a few days after Christmas - not a week before the first of our current series of Carnage Corridor accidents."

After a moment's pause, McLeod asked heavily, "What are you suggesting? Could this woman somehow be responsible for causing these people to run off the road?''

Adam nodded slowly, even though he knew McLeod could not see it.

"I think it's possible," he said carefully, "though if she is, I very much doubt that she's consciously aware of what she's doing. At the same time, however, it's quite possible for unconscious rage to break loose as psychic phenomena, when the potential is there and it's fuelled by a conscious sense of grief and injustice. I can't say for certain that this is what's at work here, but it certainly warrants further investigation. How would you feel about our paying a house call on Mrs. Crawford?"

"I'd consider it a very worthwhile expenditure of the taxpayers' money," McLeod said. "When were you thinking of going?''

"The sooner, the better," Adam replied. "After lunch, perhaps? I've got a lecture just before."

"I don't foresee any difficulty there," McLeod replied. "Do we make this an official police visit?"

"Not in the sense that you should phone ahead," Adam said. "In this instance, I think it would be better if we were to take the casual approach and simply drop in. First impressions are likely to be important in a case like this. If Mrs. Crawford does have latent psychic ability, I don't want to give her time to mask her feelings."

"Good point," McLeod muttered. "All right, why don't I meet you there at the hospital around two?"

"That ought to do nicely," Adam said.

He was about to ring off when abruptly he remembered his telephone conversation with Peregrine the night before.

"By the way," he continued, "while I've got you on the line, I probably ought to mention that I had a call last night from Peregrine. Yesterday he and Julia found a dead body washed up on the beach at Mull of Kintyre."

"You don't say! What a wretched wedding present."

"I agree. Julia seems to have taken it in stride, though."

Adam went on to relate, in as few words as possible, what the young artist had told him concerning the corpse itself and his misgivings that there might be more to the incident than mere misadventure.

"He thinks he might have Seen something, without being able to make out clearly what it was," Adam concluded. "I told him I'd ask you to follow up on the case."

"I'll be glad to," McLeod agreed. "Mull of Kintyre, you say? That means the body will probably go to Dumbarton. I'll ring my friend Jack Somerville and see what he can find out. Jack and I go way back. If I tell him I'm interested in this case, he knows me well enough to not mind sharing information."

"Nobody could ask more than that," Adam said. "I'll leave the matter in your capable hands, then. See you at two."

With these words he rang off. A glance at his watch told him he still had twenty minutes before his lecture - time enough, hopefully, for what he had in mind to do. After checking his desktop directory, he punched in the number for the Stoke-Mandville Rehabilitation Centre.

"Good morning," he said to the cheery receptionist who answered. "I'd like to speak with Dr. Miles Heatherton, extension 593."

"Thank you. One moment, please," she responded.

There was a brief pause while the call was transferred. After two buzzes came the click of someone lifting a receiver.

"This is Dr. Heatherton," said a brisk baritone voice. "What can I do for you?"

Passing over the question for the moment, Adam said, "Hello, Miles. This is Adam Sinclair."

"Adam? Good Lord, this is a pleasant surprise! It seems like donkey's years since we last spoke. How have you been?"

"Very well, thanks," Adam responded cordially. "What about you and your expanding clan? Last I heard, you and Lorraine were well on your way to parenting your very own rugby team."

"Only half a rugby team!" Heatherton protested with a rueful chuckle. "I'm beginning to think the only way we're ever going to get ourselves a daughter is to adopt one. But what about you? Are you still keeping company with that exceedingly fetching American lady you introduced me to at the Birmingham conference?"

"I'm afraid she's back in the States at the moment," Adam said, "but I'm hoping to lure her back here, once her commitments there are at an end. Look, Miles," he continued before Heatherton could question him further, "I've got a lecture in a few minutes, but I need some information. I wonder if you can tell me anything about a woman who was admitted to the institute about a year ago - a Mrs. Claire Crawford. She was - "

"Claire Crawford?" Heatherton interrupted. "I know exactly who you mean. She was one of my patients. If you don't mind my asking, what's your interest in her case?"

Adam had anticipated the question, and said easily, "Oh, just academic curiosity. I'm hoping to put together an article on the long-term emotional consequences of disability. I heard about Mrs. Crawford through a police contact of mine, and thought she might be a good subject for research."

"Well, there's no doubt about that," Heatherton said, in a tone that conveyed more than a hint of reservation. "How much do you know already?"

"Only the barest essentials," Adam replied. "That she was admitted to the institute on a referral from Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. That she stayed six months before being released. What I need to hear from you is an account of her progress, together with your evaluation of her psychiatric state when she left."

Heatherton's immediate response was a dissatisfied grunt. "I wish I could say she was one of my success stories, but that would be telling a lie. I don't know whether the problem was me, or whether the complications of the case were simply too severe. All I know is that successful psychiatric counselling is a matter of give and take. If your patient doesn't choose to cooperate with you, for whatever reason, there's not a whole lot more you can do."

Adam pricked up his ears. "We've all encountered patients like that at some time or other. I'd still be very much obliged if you could give me chapter and verse where Mrs. Crawford is concerned."

"Chapter and verse? All right." Heatherton paused for breath before launching into his narrative. ' 'If ever I saw an individual in need of professional counselling, this woman was the one. For her, the problem of learning how to deal with being paraplegic was severely compounded by bereavement. If you've read the police reports, you'll have a fair idea of the kind of emotional trauma we're dealing with here. There is something ultimately unjust about having your husband wiped out of existence by some drunken lout you didn't even know."

"Indeed," Adam concurred soberly. "Murder with a motive might almost have made more sense. Even a bad reason for something happening is better than no discernible reason at all."

"True enough," Heatherton agreed. "Anyway, all these people we deal with here at the institute are challenging cases. Most of them are angry; some are suicidal. It isn't enough to teach somebody how to cope with a crippling disability; in some cases you've got to convince the individual that it's worth trying to find a reason to keep on living. Some people find it; some don't. I can't honestly say I'm surprised that Mrs. Crawford turned out to be one of the latter. She didn't even have the consolation of seeing her baby survive."

"She lost a baby?" Adam was genuinely shocked at this revelation.

"Didn't the police reports mention that? Claire Crawford was seven months pregnant at the time of the accident. The trauma sent her into premature labor. The baby was born alive, but died a couple of days later of respiratory complications. As far as she was concerned, that was the ultimate cheat of her entire existence.''

Adam found himself recalling his vision of the previous night with fresh and discerning clarity. The flames he had seen raging within the Akashic chamber of record constituted, he saw now, a far-reaching destructive force. How he was going to deal with it was going to depend on what further information he could glean from his colleague.

"What was Mrs. Crawford's state of mind when you first met her, Miles?"

Heatherton's own unhappiness over his patient's welfare was plainly audible in his voice.

"She was completely withdrawn when she arrived. It was a month before anyone could get her to speak. And when at last she did break silence, it was like a volcano erupting. It wasn't anything in the words she said, but being in the same room with her was like being out in a hurricane. You felt as if you were being psychically battered about from all sides.

"Eventually the storm seemed to blow itself out of its own accord," he continued, "but I'm not sure whether it actually subsided or simply changed form and went underground. Either way, Mrs. Crawford eventually checked herself out of the centre. At last report, she'd gone back to her home in Scotland."

"Then you didn't actually discharge her?"

"By no means." Heatherton was vehement. "If I could have found a way to keep her here, I would have done so. Not that I could boast that we were doing her any good," he added gloomily, ' 'but at least here, she was assured of a stable environment with somebody keeping an eye on her to make sure she didn't try to take her own life."

"Do you think that a likely possibility?" Adam asked.

Heatherton sighed gustily. "I only wish I knew. Most of the resentment and hostility she displayed here was outwardly directed, but now and then, during our sessions, she would let fall a remark that gave me cause to suspect she was angry with herself as well. There's no doubt in my mind that she has enough poison in her soul to kill twenty people. If that poison ever boils over, what outlet it will find is anybody's guess."

The other's statement only served to reinforce Adam's worst misgivings. Carefully masking his own feelings, he said, "I gather you haven't heard anything further about her progress since she left?"

"Not much, I'm afraid," Heatherton said. "About three months ago, I had a routine report kicked back to me by the Social Works Department, but I can't say I found it terribly illuminating. Let's face it, very few district nurses are qualified to deal with psychiatric disorders of the kind we're talking about here."

"No, that's quite true."

Heatherton coughed a little nervously, then said, "Adam, I realize that your interest in this case is purely academic. I will, of course, be quite happy to furnish you with transcripts of my case notes, subject to all the usual restrictions regarding confidentiality. At the same time, it would ease my mind considerably if I could persuade you to go and talk to this poor woman - maybe see if you could breach the wall of anger she's built around herself since the accident. Who knows, you may be able to succeed where I failed."