forty-five

The receptionist at Cornmarket Psychotherapy ignored Danny in favor of beaming her smile at O’Neil. “Dr. Browne is with a patient at the moment, but she can see you after her session.”

Danny wandered to the windows and gazed down at the Clare People newspaper office across the street. He pulled out his mobile, checking for a message from the hospital about Ellen’s transfer back to Ennis. The roundtrips back and forth to the Limerick hospital were killing him. He tried to keep up with the paperwork for the investigation after the children went to bed but found himself nodding off at the kitchen table. This morning he’d studied the bags under his eyes in the mirror and for a moment entertained the idea that he was going mad like Nathan.

“Dr. Browne will see you now,” the receptionist called.

She led them out of the reception area and down a corridor with in-session signs hanging on several doors. Eileen Browne met them in her antechamber. Soothing choral music played on a hidden sound system and a deck of playing cards sat on a side table, ready for nervous fingers.

Without word, the doctor beckoned them into her inner sanctum, where a couple of ergonomically correct chairs stood in front of her desk. She tucked stray hairs into the braids that encircled her head and considered them with a neutral expression.

“Thank you for seeing us on short notice,” Danny said.

“You’re fine. I keep Saturday mornings free for emergency appointments. This counts.”

“As I mentioned on the phone, we found your weekly appointments listed in Annie Belden’s calendar. Why was she seeing you?”

Browne’s professional expression broke. She grabbed a tissue from a box on her desk and dabbed her nose. “You don’t need me to answer that question.”

“How do you figure that?” Danny said.

“Her journal. It’s all there, I’m sure.”

Danny glanced at O’Neil. He shook his head, his puzzlement evident.

“We didn’t find a journal,” Danny said.

Browne crumpled her tissue. “That’s odd.” She twirled her chair so she faced the window and blue sky that peeped through rainclouds. “Or maybe it isn’t. Do you have a cause of death yet?”

“Not yet, but soon. She looked peaceful though.”

“Indeed. As she would.”

Danny leaned forward with waning patience. What was it with medical professionals? They spoke in half thoughts and left the most important bits of thought out of the equation altogether. “Come on, then,” he said. “Say what you mean.”

Browne tapped her fingers on the desk. “There’s a confidentiality issue here, as you know.”

Danny clamped his mouth shut and let O’Neil take over. Danny knew when to unleash O’Neil’s natural lady charms.

“We encountered a couple of oddities when we arrived at Annie’s house,” O’Neil said. “And now there’s the missing journal to consider. We’re hoping you can help us sort through what might be happening. It seems that you were as much a friend as a therapist. We could use your insights.”

Browne threw her tissue into a wastebasket. “I hate that Annie died. She wasn’t meant to. She was meant to live. In many ways she was improving.” She rose. “Please leave now. I’ll meet you at Charlie Stewart’s on along Parnell Street. Give me twenty minutes.”

Out in reception, Dr. Browne shook their hands. “I’m sorry I can’t help you. You’ll need to go through the courts like everyone else.”

 

Dr. Browne arrived at the pub on time to the minute. She sat down without removing her coat. “There’s an unofficial truism in therapy circles: Don’t trust depressives when they’re past the worst. Why? Because that’s when they’re most vulnerable to suicidal ideation. They have the energy to follow through on it, you see?”

“Suicide,” Danny said, testing the notion.

“Annie was diabetic,” Browne said. “An overdose of insulin would look peaceful, indeed.”

“Ah,” O’Neil said. “I’d best let Benjy know to check for insulin.” He pulled out his mobile and excused himself to make the call outside.

“We found syringes in the house, unused, but no medications,” Danny said. “Was she on any other medications?”

“Antidepressants.”

“Did Annie talk to you about what she wrote in her journal?” Danny said.

“Not always. I often recommend that patients write as if they’re talking to me, which is self-serving. I find that if they’ve pretended to talk to me in their journals, they’re more apt to talk to me in reality.” She smiled, showing dimples that turned her face impish. The smile fell as soon as it had risen. “Annie was too smart to fall for that trick.”

“Why is that?” Danny said.

“She worked as a psychiatric nurse in Dublin before moving here. Fleeing here, more like, to begin fresh.”

“Why isn’t it odd that her journal went missing?”

“She would have destroyed it. That I can say with certitude.”

Danny thought about the missing journal, about what it contained that Annie might not want anyone to read, and likewise what it contained that another person might want to read.

O’Neil slipped back into the pub and sat down. Outside, a laden raincloud parked itself over Ennis and began emptying itself out. The rain tap-tapped against the windows. Browne tapped her fingers in a similar rhythm.

“Annie worked in Dundrum,” she said. “The big psych hospital in Dublin. Harrowing work, to hear her tell it. Acute care, mind you, for the mentally ill and criminally insane. She had one patient on her watch, a man named Cedric Gibson. You’ve heard of him?”

“Vaguely,” Danny said.

“The north-end kidnapping, on the quays,” she said. “Cedric Gibson was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He played a pretty game of it with his claims of diminished capacity. Fooled the lot of them, and he was young, too. Nineteen at the time. A mad genius, really, landing himself in the psych hospital. Should have been life in prison, full stop.”

Danny remembered the case now. Gibson kidnapped the daughter of a Swiss diplomat after stalking her for months. She died while tied to a chair in an abandoned warehouse. According to his defense, he hadn’t meant to hurt her. He’d only wanted to know her better. He would have let her go. The usual shite. She’d died of heart failure, a fatal combination of terror and a congenital defect.

“You’re saying that his insanity was a load of bollocks?”

“He knew what he was about. He was that sane he could have won a political election, or maybe that’s a bad example. He knew how to play his game, anyhow. In Dundrum, he was a model patient, working through his anger-management issues and his mommy issues and his substance-abuse issues and taking his meds.” She shook her head. “Along the way, he hooked poor Annie well and good. She became his number-one supporter for the review boards.”

“Please don’t tell me she fell in love with him.”

“She did, unfortunately. He was assigned to her because she was the most senior psych nurse on staff. She saw him in session almost every day. I suppose it started there, the slow squirreling into her fond graces. But Jesus.” She shook her head again. “Have you been?”

“To Dundrum? No.”

“The place is grim, might as well be in the Middle Ages. We’ll see what the coming mental health reform does.” She sipped her beer. “Right, then. Annie. She advocated for Cedric Gibson to the review boards, swearing by all that was good and right that his years in the hospital had worked wonders on him. He was fit for the life outside, first at a residential outpatient home, and then another year later as a free man. She fought hard, and she believed his line all along.”

Browne pulled off her coat and fanned her flushed face with a menu. “What’s the first thing Mr. Cedric Gibson does as a free man?”

Danny shook his head.

“He abducted Annie,” she said.