‘Dissociative...’
‘It’s one of a number of dissociative disorders, which also include multiple personality disorder. Which was interesting, given your account of the patient having spent eighteen months here pretending to be someone else. Dead or otherwise. I’m not so sure I would go so far as to say he was suffering from MPD, but he does display some elements of OCPD.’
Gunn frowned. ‘Which is?’
‘Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. Which you mustn’t confuse with OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, which is anxiety-based. The patient in this case shows a certain preoccupation with orderliness and perfectionism. Excessive attention to detail. He would want to be the boss in any given situation, but would not make a good team member.’
‘What does any of this have to do with losing his memory?’
‘Well, I explain all that in my report, Mr Gunn. But it’s all associated.’ He grinned. ‘Or, in his case, dissociated.’
Gunn looked lost.
Doctor Kimm said, ‘A joke.’ He leaned forward. ‘We had a good long chat, Detective Sergeant, your suspect and I. I learned a lot. Not his name, or his job, or where he lives. But about him. His personality. Who he is, in that sense. He displays mild symptoms of OCPD and anankastic personality disorder. That doesn’t make him mentally ill. Lots of us show those kind of symptoms to a greater or lesser degree. But it’s his very personality that has forced him to shut out the events that led up to, and caused, his memory loss. A trauma of some kind, that he is simply unable to process in relation to himself. So he has just removed, or dissociated, himself from it. And the only way he has of doing that is by blocking his memory of it. And himself.’
‘You mean he’s doing it on purpose?’
‘No, no, no, no. It’s quite involuntary.’
Gunn scratched his chin. ‘No chance he’s faking it?’
The doctor shook his head. ‘Impossible to rule it out, but I don’t think so.’
Gunn leaned back in his seat and sighed. None of this was going to be easy, and he found himself almost glad to be able to hand over accountability to the CIO. ‘Do you think he killed that man out on Eilean Mòr?’
‘I have no idea, Mr Gunn. You might have evidence to suggest that he did, but I suspect that you don’t, since you are asking for my opinion.’ He smiled, and rubbed his hands together, as if washing them of all further responsibility. ‘But here’s the interesting thing.’ He reached for his helmet and stood up. ‘The patient himself believes that he might have done it. In fact, he is scared that he did. Which might very well be what is blocking his memory of the whole thing.’
Gunn stood up, too. ‘Will it ever come back to him? His memory.’
‘It could come back in the blink of an eye, Mr Gunn. Or it might never return. Or he might start remembering bits, fragments, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, which will eventually enable him to put together a picture of what happened.’
‘Treatment?’
The doctor shrugged. ‘None, really. Hypnosis might help. It might not. But I can’t give him a pill that will restore his memory, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s his subconscious that has turned the key in the lock. And it’s only his subconscious that can unlock it again.’ He beamed. ‘Interesting case.’ And he glanced out of the window. ‘Sun’s shining. It’s going to be a lovely ride down to Harris.’
The CIO was younger than Gunn. He had been a newly promoted Detective Constable at Inverness when Gunn first met him. A smug little bastard who was going places and knew it. Though Gunn, then his senior officer, had still been tasked with drying him behind the ears and preventing him from getting unwittingly tangled up in the ropes. But Gunn’s ambitions had never extended beyond returning to his native Stornoway and providing a safe and stable environment for raising a family. And so, while Gunn remained a Detective Sergeant, Jimmy ‘The Hammer’ Chisholm, as he became known, leapfrogged him up the ranks and was now his senior officer. Which Gunn found quite hard to swallow. Although Chisholm himself had no difficulty in hammering the point home.
He looked up from his desk as Gunn came in. There was no smile, no acknowledgement that they had not seen each other for nearly two years. His face was leaner than Gunn remembered, his nose more bladelike. And Gunn was pleased to see that he was losing his hair while Gunn’s still grew in thick abundance.
‘George.’ It was DCI Chisholm’s only acknowledgement. And even that rankled. He had once been Jimmy to Gunn’s sir. Now it was the other way around. The desk in front of him was strewn with reports. ‘Clear enough from the pathologist that it was murder,’ he said. No preamble. ‘We still don’t know who he is?’
‘Afraid not, sir.’
‘What are we doing to find out?’ Meaning, what was Gunn doing.
‘As you know, sir, his photograph has been in all the dailies, as well as on BBC and STV. It’ll be in all the periodicals before the week’s out.’
‘And down south?’
‘Crimewatch is running an item this week.’
‘Nothing from fingerprints or DNA?’
‘I think I might have told you if there were, sir.’ Gunn beamed as if he was making a joke, but Chisholm’s glare made it clear he recognised insolence when he heard it.
Gunn said, ‘We’re still awaiting a report back from the lab to learn if the victim had any skin from his attacker under his fingernails. If there is, then we’ll know soon enough if there’s a match with the suspect.’
Chisholm leaned back in his seat, stroking his chin with pensive fingers, and looked at Gunn reflectively. ‘Why do I have the feeling you don’t think there will be?’
Gunn lifted his eyebrows in surprise. ‘I have no idea, sir.’
‘DC Smith seemed to think you were quite sympathetic to our suspect’s story.’
‘Oh, did he?’ Gunn filed that one away for later retribution. ‘I just happen to think he’s telling the truth, as far as he knows it. But that doesn’t mean he’s not our killer. Borne out by the report from the psychiatrist.’
Chisholm looked up, interested. ‘You’ve spoken to him?’
Gunn nodded and dropped Kimm’s interim report on Chisholm’s desk. ‘That’s a holding report on his findings.’
Chisholm opened the folder and ran his eye down the first page. Gunn saw his jaw clench and eyes widen almost imperceptibly before he looked up. ‘Tell me what’s in it.’ And Gunn was glad he had persuaded the psychiatrist to delay his run down to Harris for the verbal briefing.
‘According to Doctor Kimm, he’s suffering from dissociative amnesia.’
‘And what’s that when it’s at home?’
Gunn said smugly, ‘It’s one of a group of disorders, sir. Psychological. There’s no physical reason for his memory loss. No injury. The psychiatrist believes that he is blocking a trauma of some kind.’
‘The murder of our man on Eilean Mòr.’
‘Very possibly. The suspect has no memory of committing the murder, but is afraid that he did. The memory loss is a way of dissociating himself from the act. Assuming that he did it.’
Chisholm looked almost impressed. ‘And do we think that he did?’
‘Well, that’s the problem, sir. We have no physical evidence to tie him to the murder. We can’t even prove that he was on the island at the time, although he himself admits it’s a possibility.’ Gunn sucked in air before he continued. ‘As you’ll see from my report, he was living down on Harris under an assumed identity for eighteen months prior to the murder. The identity of a dead man, as it turns out. So neither he, nor I, have the least idea of who he actually is.’