"I know all that; now answer the question."
Steele gave her a sidelong, killer grin. "Yeah, okay. It's on a bloody plate and I'm like you. I get more satisfaction out of working for a living, which is what you're really saying. But consider this; I haven't even met this girl, yet I feel sorry for her. I don't want her to be the one who puts her away, maybe for good. Don't you think that could be true with you as well?"
"Maybe," she conceded, as the door opened and a tall man in his late twenties, dressed in a white coat, bustled into the waiting room.
"Sorry to keep you," he exclaimed extending a hand to Rose in greeting as the detectives stood. "I'm Adam Broadley, Andrea's mentor." He grinned. "Okay, I'm her shrink, but I prefer to think of myself that way. We'll talk here, if it's all right with you; we'll get more privacy here."
"Fine," said the superintendent. "I'm Maggie Rose, and this is my colleague Steven Steele. Has the probation officer explained to you what it is we want to talk about?"
"Not in detail, but enough."
"And you're okay about this, from an ethical viewpoint?"
"Sure. You're police officers so you know Andrea's history already, and you know the circumstances of her sectioning. Where I'm slightly uneasy is in talking to you without her being aware of the fact, but I'll reserve the right to stop if I feel that I'm going too far."
"That's agreed," said Rose, 'so let's get straight to it. Do you know where Andrea is working?"
"With the Church of Scotland? Yes."
"And you approve of that, given her history?"
"I don't see anything wrong with it," Broadley answered. "In fact it's probably a positive element in her treatment. She's schizophrenic, as you know; split personality in old-fashioned terms, but it's a bloody awful description. This illness can manifest itself in many ways, but in this case the patient hears voices. More and more these days, people think that their computers are talking to them. I call it the software syndrome. Andrea's experience is more of the traditional type. Her father's profession may have something to do with it, for she gets the word straight from God. A bit like Joan of Arc without the armour."
"But with twenty-first-century weaponry instead," Steele pointed out.
The young man laughed. "True. If St. Joan had had nuclear capability… it would have shortened the Hundred Years War, that's for sure. But Andrea Strachan, fortunately, is not a very determined warrior. If God was choosing someone for a mission, he'd look for someone more physically adept than her. Anyway, to answer your question, the fact that she is actually working in the HQ of an established religion is on balance good for her, in that it takes God out of her fantasy world, and puts him into her everyday life."
"What put the voice in her head in the first place?" Rose asked. "What made her attack that church?"
"Again I think her father's profession may have something to do with it. Mr. Strachan is a very conservative Christian. He does not approve of un orthodoxy in any form. It's obvious to me that Andrea's picked that up from him and that in her mind it's taken wings."
"I understand." The detective paused. "At this stage, Adam, I think it would be best if I stopped asking questions and told you something.
When The Holy Trinity by Isobel Vargas went up in flames in the Royal Scottish Academy on Saturday, Andrea was right there in the room."
Adam Broadley looked up at the ceiling, almost theatrically. "Ohhh dear!" he said, slowly.
"You think it's possible then?"
"I don't know for sure. She responded very well to her early treatment, and she's having no problems with her medication, but that sort of experience, or confrontation, would still be pretty dangerous for her. Did it happen through her work?" Rose nodded; he frowned.
"What sort of people is she working with, in that case? Didn't they know of her psychiatric history?"
"Not in that amount of detail."
"You mean her father didn't tell them when he arranged the placement?"
"No. He told them in broad terms what her illness was, but he didn't tell them about the way in which it manifested itself. And of course since the case was dealt with summarily in court, and was barely reported, there was no way in which they could reasonably have known about it, other than from him."
"Bloody families!" Broadley exclaimed. "No matter how enlightened or intelligent they are, some of them still treat this illness like it was fucking… excuse my French… leprosy. It makes me so angry."
He smacked a big fist into the palm of his other hand, then grinned.
"I'm still relatively new in my profession," he exclaimed. "I still have normal emotional reactions; I haven't become infected by my patients yet. Listen, I think I know what you want to ask me, so I'll save you the trouble. Yes, I think you should interview Andrea as soon as possible, but with one proviso; that I can be there."
Maggie Rose smiled. "That was going to be my next question," she said.
"Thanks for volunteering."
Thirty
"That's fine, Mr. Skinner, you can ease down and stop now."
Bob ignored the consultant's call; wearing only shorts and trainers, he continued to pound along on the treadmill, running on the spot, but at five-minute-mile pace.
"I said you can stop now," Peter Patience repeated, louder this time, over the noise of the treadmill.
"I'm enjoying this," Skinner replied, sounding barely out of breath. "I do at least four miles every day'
"Good for you, but can you please do the rest later. My colleague and I need to look at the print-outs from the various monitors you have attached to you, and to do that we'd like to switch the bloody things off."
"Okay." Dripping with sweat, the patient nodded, and reached out to touch a button on the control panel of the apparatus, to ease down its speed. He slowed it gradually, until, after around a minute, he came to walking pace, then stopped. He stepped off the track and allowed Hugh Hurley, the second consultant, to strip the monitor pads from his bare torso.
"Is that us, then?" he asked.
"Just about," said Patience. He pointed to Skinner's back. "That scar; is that where you were stabbed?"
"Yes."
"What about the two on your thigh, front and back?"
"They're where I was shot; entry and exit wounds."
"That's not on your medical history," Hurley exclaimed, with a hint of suspicion.
"No. It's not."
"Want to tell us about it?"
"No I do not. If there were any after-effects I wouldn't be able to run freely, would I?"
"I suppose not. Okay, we'll keep it off our report."
"You do that. Now; what sort of shape am I in?"
The two consultants exchanged glances, then smiles. "Mr. Skinner,"
Patience began, 'as you know very well, you are in remarkable condition for a man in his thirties, let alone one who's nearer fifty than forty.
You could and should have been returned to duty on the basis of the medical report which you brought back from America, and we are prepared to confirm without reservation that you are fit to resume active duty immediately. We'd be saying that if you were a soldier, never mind a senior police officer whose duties are assumed to be, in the main, sedentary."
"They're bloody not," Skinner grinned. "What else will your report say?"
"It will note that you were diagnosed, after your incident in the US, as suffering from what is commonly known as sick sinus syndrome, in which the sinus node, the heart's natural pacemaker, malfunctions, leading in your case to bradycardia… slow heartbeat… and loss of consciousness. This condition may recur, but it is quite possible that, even without intervention, you would never have had another episode. We find no sign of it today. In any event, that eventuality has been rendered irrelevant by the fitting of a dual chamber pacemaker, which is set to maintain your heart rate at a minimum level of fifty-five beats per minute, operating on demand; that is only if and when your rate drops to that level. You'll get around ten years' use out of it; when the battery runs down, a new one will be fitted.