Dead Man's Grip

to change. I need a different shrink. Paulina, in my yoga class, is seeing someone who’s a lot better. Gottlieb’s useless.’
    ‘Ask him for stronger medication.’
    ‘You want him to turn me into a zombie or something?’
    Lou said nothing.

15
    Carly sat in the back of the police car, trails of rain sliding down the window beside her, tears sliding down her cheeks. They were heading up a hill on the A27. She stared out at the familiar grassy landscape of the Brighton outskirts, which were blurred by the film of water on the glass. She felt detached, as if out of her body and watching herself.
    Scared and confused, she kept seeing that cyclist underneath the lorry. Then the white van in her rear-view mirror that had disappeared, like a ghost.
    Had she imagined the van? Had she struck the cyclist? The past hour was as fogged in her mind as the view through the glass. She clenched and unclenched her hands, listening to the intermittent crackle and bursts of words that came through the radio. The car smelled of damp anoraks.
    ‘Do you – do you think he’s going to be all right?’ she asked.
    PC Pattenden replied to something on the radio, either not hearing or ignoring her. ‘Hotel Tango Three Zero Four en route to Hollingbury with suspect,’ he said, indicating left and taking the slip road.
    Suspect.
    She shivered, a knot tightening in her stomach. ‘Do you think the cyclist is going to be OK?’ she asked again, more loudly this time.
    Pattenden glanced at her in the mirror. His white cap was on the front passenger seat beside him. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, shuffling the wheel through his hands as he negotiated a mini-roundabout.
    ‘He came out of nowhere, just straight at me. But I didn’t hit him, I’m sure.’
    They were heading downhill now. His eyes were on her, briefly, again. There was kindness in them behind the hardness.
    ‘I should warn you that everything that’s said in this car is recorded automatically.’
    ‘Thank you,’ she said.
    ‘Let’s hope he’ll be OK,’ Pattenden said. ‘What about you? Are you OK?’
    She was silent for a moment, then she shook her head.
    He braked as they passed a vaguely art deco building that always reminded Carly of the superstructure of a tired old cruise ship. Several police cars were parked out the front. Ironically, she knew a lot about this building. There were photographs of it on the wall of the firm of quantity surveyors, BLB, for whom she had done legal work at the start of her career, when she’d been a trainee solicitor. The firm had managed the conversion of the premises from an American Express credit card manufacturing plant to its current use as the HQ CID for Sussex Police.
    At the end of the building PC Pattenden slowed and turned sharp left up a driveway, then halted in front of a green reinforced-steel gate. There was a high spiked green fence to their right and behind it was a tall, drab brick structure. They had stopped beside a blue sign with white lettering announcing BRIGHTON CUSTODY CENTRE. The officer reached out of the window and swiped a plastic card. Moments later the gate began sliding open.
    They drove up a steep ramp towards a row of what looked like factory loading bays at the rear of the brick building, then turned left into one of them, and into semi-darkness, out of the rain. Pattenden climbed out and opened the rear door, holding Carly’s arm firmly as she stepped from the car. It felt more like he wanted to stop her running away than to support her.
    There was a green door ahead, with a small viewing window. He swiped his card on a panel, the door slid open and he ushered her forward into a bare, narrow room about fifteen feet long and eight wide. The door closed behind them. At the far end of the room was another identical door. The walls were painted a stark, institutional cream and the floor was made of some speckled brown substance. There was no furniture in here at all, just a hard, bare bench with a green surface.
    ‘Take a seat,’ he said.
    She sat down, resting her chin against her knuckles, feeling badly in need of a cigarette. No chance. Then her phone rang.
    She fumbled with the clasp of her handbag and pulled the phone out. But before she could answer the officer shook his head.
    ‘You’ll have to switch that off, I’m afraid.’ He pointed at a sign on the wall which read: NO MOBILE PHONES TO BE USED IN THE CUSTODY AREA.
    She stared at him for a moment, trying to remember what the law