Free The Last Temptation by Val McDermid Page B

you, I was expecting someone more … mature, I suppose is the word. But look at you. You look more like one of my sixth-year students than a senior police officer.’
    Carol was spared from further sparring by Tony’s return. They sat around for twenty minutes making small talk, then Frances gathered up her marking and left them to it. After he saw her out, Tony came back into the room shaking his head ruefully. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said.
    ‘You can’t blame her,’ Carol said. ‘Probably just as well you weren’t showing me the view from the upstairs rooms, though.’
    It should have been a cue for laughter. Instead, Tony looked at the carpet and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans. ‘Shall we get on?’ he said.
    They’d worked on various role-plays for the rest of the evening, not even stopping over dinner. It was demanding work, taking all Carol’s concentration. By the time the taxi came to take her back to her hotel, she was worn out from the combination of exercising her imagination and exorcizing her emotions. They said their farewells on the doorstep, stepping into an awkward hug, his lips brushing the soft skin under her ear. She’d wanted to burst into tears, but had held herself tightly in check. By the time she’d returned to the hotel, she felt only a hollowness in her stomach.
    Now, as she stared out across the sea, Carol allowed herself to acknowledge her anger. It wasn’t directed at Tony; she
     
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    acknowledged he had never held out an unfulfilled promise to her. Her fury was all turned against herself. She had no one else to blame for the emotional heartburn that plagued her.
    She knew she had two choices. She could let this rage fester inside her like a wound that could poison her whole system. Or she could finally draw a line under the past and use that energy to drive her forward into the future. She knew what she wanted to do. The only question was whether she could manage it.
     
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    Case Notes
     
    Name: Pieter de Groot Session Number: 1
     
    Comments: The patient’s lack of affect is notable. He is unwilling to engage and shows a disturbing level of passivity. Nevertheless, he has a high opinion of his own capabilities. The only subject on which he seems willing to discourse is his own intellectual superiority. His self-image is grandiose in the extreme.
    His demeanour is not justified by his achievement, which seems best described as mediocre. However, his view of his capacities has been bolstered by a nexus of colleagues who, for unspecified reasons, have demonstrated a lack of willingness to question his own valuation of himself. He cites their failure in this respect as a demonstration of support for his own estimation of his standing in the community.
    The patient lacks insight into his own condition.
     
    Therapeutic Action: Altered state therapy initiated.
     
    The laden Rhineship ploughed on towards Rotterdam, its glassy bow wave barely altering as the brown river widened, the Nederrijn imperceptibly becoming the Lek, then taking in the broad flow of the Nieuwe Maas. For most of the morning, he’d been blind to the passing scenery. They’d drifted through small, prosperous towns, with their mixture of tall townhouses and squat industrial buildings, church spires stabbing the flat grey skies, but he couldn’t have described a single one of them, save from memory of previous trips. He’d registered neither the grassy dykes that obscured the lengthy stretches of flat countryside nor the graceful sweeps of road and rail bridges that broke up the long reaches of river.
    The pictures he kept seeing were very different. The way Pieter de Groot had crumpled to the floor when he’d hit him on the back of his head with the sap he’d made himself, sewing the soft chamois leather with tight stitches then stuffing it with birdshot. He couldn’t imagine himself ever doing what de Groot had done, trusting a stranger enough to turn his back on him within five