Cabal Read Free

when he was indisputably in the company of others.
    The only part of the process Boone balked at was reexamining the photographs. He resisted Decker’s gentle pressure for forty-eight hours, only conceding when the gentility faltered and Decker rounded on him, accusing him of cowardice and deceit. Was all this just a game, Decker demanded; an exercise in self-mortification that would end with them both none the wiser? If so, Boone could get the hell out of his office now and bleed on somebody else’s time.
    Boone agreed to study the photographs.
    There was nothing in them that jogged his memory. Much of the detail of the rooms had been washed out by the flash of the camera; what remained was commonplace. The only sight that might have won a response from him – the faces of the victims – had been erased by the killer, hacked beyond recognition; the most expert of morticians would not be able to piece those shattered façades together again. So it was all down to the petty details of where Boone had been on this night or that; with whom; doing what. He had never kept a diary so verifying the facts was difficult, but most of the time – barring the hours he spent with Lori or Decker, none of which seemed to coincide with murder nights – he was alone, and without alibi. By the end of the fourth day the case against him began to look very persuasive.
    ‘Enough,’ he told Decker. ‘We’ve done enough.’
    ‘I’d like to go over it all one more time.’
    ‘What’s the use?’ Boone said. ‘I want to get it all finished with.’
    In the past days – and nights – many of the old symptoms, the signs of the sickness he thought he’d been so close to throwing off forever, had returned. He could sleep for no more than minutes at a time before appalling visions threw him into befuddled wakefulness; he couldn’t eat properly; he was trembling from his gut outwards, every minute of the day. He wanted an end to this; wanted to spill the story and be punished.
    ‘Give me a little more time,’ Decker said. ‘If we go to the police now they’ll take you out of my hands. They probably won’t even allow me access to you. You’ll be alone.’
    ‘I already am,’ Boone replied. Since he’d first seen the photographs he’d cut himself off from every contact, even with Lori, fearing his capacity to do harm.
    ‘I’m a monster,’ he said. ‘We both of us know that. We’ve got all the evidence we need.’
    ‘It’s not just a question of evidence.’
    ‘What then?’
    Decker leaned against the window frame, his bulk a burden to him of late.
    ‘I don’t understand you, Boone,’ he said.
    Boone’s gaze moved off from man to sky. There was a wind from the south-east today; scraps of cloud hurried before it. A good life, Boone thought, to be up there, lighter than air. Here everything was heavy; flesh and guilt cracking your spine.
    ‘I’ve spent four years trying to understand your illness, hoping I could cure it. And I thought I was succeeding. Thought there was a chance it would all come clear …’
    He fell silent, in the pit of his failure. Boone was not so immersed in his own agonies he couldn’t see how profoundly the man suffered. But he could do nothing to mitigate that hurt. He just watched the clouds pass, up there in the light, and knew there were only dark times ahead.
    ‘When the police take you …’ Decker murmured, ‘it won’t just be you who’s alone, Boone. I’ll be alone too. You’ll be somebody else’s patient: some criminal psychologist. I won’t have access to you any longer. That’s why I’m asking … Give me a little more time. Let me understand as much as I can before it’s over between us.’
    He’s talking like a lover, Boone vaguely thought; like what’s between us is his life.
    ‘I know you’re in pain,’ Decker went on. ‘So I’ve got medication for you. Pills, to keep the worst of it at bay. Just till we’ve finished –’
    ‘I don’t trust myself,’ Boone