Rose’s hangover is a giant, malign hand squeezing her skull in a rhythmic fashion and she’s counting the minutes until she can take the next lot of painkillers. She tries to focus on the meeting about Gregory, which takes place the next afternoon.
The bodies concerned are the Child Abuse Investigation Team and a social worker from Camden Council’s Family Services and Social Work Division. CAMHS – the Child and Adolescent Mental Health team are not present. No one is available.
‘Good job Gregory is a totally balanced kid then,’ Adam had muttered, looking angrier than Rose had ever seen him after he had tried to organize their presence. As pressures on the service stand, they were lucky to get someone from CAIT. And that was only because Moony has a contact there who organized this quickly.
Scarlett has made coffees and teas all round and is keeping a discreet distance as the others take their seats in the briefing area.
The woman from CAIT, called Zoe, is around forty, with a careworn face, short, braided hair and what appears to be a heavy cold. She disappears into a tissue to sneeze every few minutes and then apologizes, before dabbing at raw-looking nostrils. The social worker, Angela, is a woman in her fifties, who keeps looking around and blinking hard, then adjusting the floral scarf held together with a brooch at her neck.
Moony isn’t present, having been called away to something with only a vague comment about checking in later.
‘Thanks for coming,’ says Adam, kicking things off. He has a way of speaking with immense warmth in his eyes, even when he isn’t actually smiling. It’s almost unbearably desirable. Rose forces her mind back to why they are here.
There’s a murmured response from the two women, then Zoe sniffles once more into her tissue.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, ‘it’s hay fever. It happens like this every single year and makes me grim company.’
‘Worse for you though,’ says Rose and the other woman gives her a small, grateful smile.
‘So let’s get started,’ says Adam. ‘We’ve created a Merlin report about Gregory Fuller, as you know.’ Merlin is a database that’s used whenever a child becomes involved in any police business and can be accessed by various agencies, police and civilian. ‘We have been looking into reports of neighbour harassment at a property in Kentish Town,’ he continues, ‘and it came to light that the boy, Gregory, believes a “boy in the wall” is out to harm his dad.’
‘That’s Anton Fuller?’ says Angela, checking something on a sheet of paper and writing in the large notebook on her lap. ‘And I believe he has been rather accident-prone lately?’
‘That’s right,’ says Rose, and reads out the list of visits Anton Fuller has had to A&E over the last six months.
‘Could Gregory be to blame on all these occasions?’ says Zoe. ‘Because that raises a red flag for me straight away.’
‘It’s complicated,’ says Rose, with a slight grimace. ‘We have no evidence that Gregory had any role in the previous accidents and he says he really didn’t do anything then. I do believe him on that. This time, though, he admits he was trying to, well, scare his father into being ill.’
‘What does that mean though?’ says Angela. ‘You mentioned it in the report but I didn’t understand.’
‘No,’ says Zoe. ‘Me neither.’
Adam explains the basics of the nocebo effect and there is silence for a few moments after.
Zoe rubs at her nose again and sits forward in her seat. ‘So,’ she says, ‘are you saying that Gregory hoaxed his dad into feeling poisoned but Anton Fuller actually reacted as though he had been poisoned? Surely that’s just ridiculous?’
Rose has read quite a lot about the nocebo effect in the last couple of days. It seemed to explain why people who had been ‘cursed’ by Voodoo exhibited extreme physical effects. On a less sensational but even more tragic level, there was one man who died of liver cancer at the exact time doctors predicted to him, even though a mistake had been made in the diagnosis. The tumour was in fact nowhere near as deadly as they had first believed, but the man was so sure he would die in the timeframe he had been told, he died anyway.
‘No,’ says Rose, ‘it’s a genuine physical reaction. I mean, they wouldn’t use placebos in medical trials if they were worthless, and this is only the same effect, but the negative side of it. It’s a proper thing. Bodies behave as though they’re affected by something if the mind is convinced enough of it. In one case, people had more side effects if they were told a drug was stronger than it actually was. It’s very weird, but it really happens.’
‘And Anton Fuller has a bit of a phobia about accidental poisoning,’ adds Adam, ‘because of something that happened when he was a child and accidentally ate some berries. For him, this was about the worst thing he could imagine, I expect.’
‘It’s bizarre,’ says Angela, once more glancing around the room as though the next strangest thing will be found there. Maybe it will, thinks Rose, and only hopes the ghostly tea lady won’t suddenly wander in and silently offer some manner of wartime treat.
Her phone buzzes then and she glances down to see the message from a number she doesn’t recognize.
Want 2 know what happened. U made me feel like some sort of rapist. WTF?
Oh God, that Ewan bloke. Rose’s cheeks flush and she turns her phone to silent, then places it so she can’t see the screen. She’s going to have to block him. Adam is speaking but his eyes are on her, a slight frown wrinkling his brow.
‘… crucially though,’ he says, ‘Gregory appears to be doing this with good intentions. He said he wanted his father out of the house and this felt like a safe way of doing it without seriously hurting him. I’m not exactly sure whether he intended the effect to be quite so severe.’
‘What is he like, this Anton Fuller?’ says Zoe, looking down at her notes.
‘He’s a teacher at a posh school,’ says Rose, dragging herself mentally back into the meeting. ‘He clearly rules the roost at home. Gregory’s mother seems totally under his dubious spell. It’s all rules and regulations and no telly. I don’t think there are a lot of cuddles in case they interfere with study time. That sort of house.’
Zoe makes a face and writes something down. ‘Do you suspect any actual abuse, of Gregory, I mean?’ she asks, eyes moving between Rose and Adam, hand poised over her pad.
‘I think we’d have to leave that to you to ascertain,’ says Adam, ‘but apart from being tutored and coached to within an inch of his life, he seems like a reasonably cared-for child. I mean …’ he pauses ‘… as Rose said about Gwen, I’m not sure Gregory is exactly put first in that house. But I don’t think he’s in any danger from his parents. I think he really believes someone is haunting him.’
Angela looks from Zoe, to Rose, to Adam.
‘Look,’ she says, ‘can you explain again what your actual remit is here?’
Adam pauses long enough for Rose to realize it’s her turn. It’s probably about time she forced herself to actually say the words.
‘We look into what we call uncharted crimes,’ she says. ‘So anything that doesn’t have an obvious explanation is part of our remit. And there are enough odd details about this case for us to be interested.’
Angela grimaces and pulls her scarf closer around her throat. ‘Is that why you’re in this spooky old building? I’ve had a funny feeling about it since the moment I walked in here.’
‘It’s an unorthodox department,’ says Adam, saving her. ‘But we’re essentially all on the same page here, which is making sure a child isn’t in danger.’
‘Now, only a psychiatric assessment will help us to determine whether Gregory has an actual psychosis and believes he is seeing ghosts,’ says Zoe. ‘But as you said, Adam, the fundamental purpose of all this is to work out if he is at risk. If he isn’t and is acting out because his dad makes him work too hard, well, I’m afraid there are many, many more deserving cases on which we have to stretch increasingly limited resources.’
Adam and Rose exchange slightly desperate looks. It feels as though this is all slipping away from them by the minute.
Zoe closes her notebook. ‘I’m going to be meeting with Gregory this afternoon and I’ll get back to you.’
Angela begins to gather her bags. ‘I think we’re done?’ she says. ‘I’ll also be starting a file on the family, but in all honesty, this isn’t going to be getting a lot of attention when there are so many pressures on our resources, as Zoe said.’
Rose accompanies the two women back to the main reception area, down the corridors with their painted brick and signs that are older even than Angela.
When they get to the door, Zoe makes her farewells, and goes, sneezing, to her car.
Angela hesitates and turns to Rose.
‘I heard about this department once,’ she says. ‘But I didn’t really believe in it. Sounds a bit too much like …’
‘… The X Files, yes I know,’ says Rose, managing to hide the weariness. ‘But it really isn’t like that here. We have to be open to less obvious explanations for crimes, that’s all.’
Angela gives her a pinched look. ‘I wasn’t going to say that,’ she says. ‘I was going to say, a bit too much like a daft rumour with no basis. Well, I was wrong about that.’
‘Seems you were,’ says Rose.
‘Look,’ says Angela, more quietly. ‘I am a lot more open-minded than you might think. I grew up in a house where I would sometimes see a young woman holding a baby on the landing. Terrified the life out of me at first; then I found her sort of comforting. I told my parents but no one believed me, of course. I have sympathies for what you’re doing here. And I have a lot of sympathy for this boy, Gregory, whether or not he is having a psychotic breakdown, is simply acting out like a kid who doesn’t get enough attention, or whether he really does sense something in the house. I’ll let you know how it goes as soon as I can, okay?’
‘Okay, thank you,’ says Rose, surprised and grateful.
She gives one last uncomfortable look behind Rose and hurries out to her car.
Rose sighs then walks back down the echoey corridor, the heels of her boots tapping. Maybe Gregory will need to have some sort of therapy for whatever it is that’s driving him. But something isn’t right. She feels it. And it isn’t only her unwanted awareness of the dead that’s driving her on in this case.
It’s her instincts as a policewoman.