“I’ve heard of this,” Morgan said. “It’s like being possessed by different people. I saw a film once.”
“Exactly. Fertile material for Hollywood, but no entertainment at all if you happen to suffer with it. The disturbance is real and frightening. A subject can take on any number of personality states, each with its own self-image and identity. The identities act as if they have no connection with each other. My job is to deconstruct them and ultimately unite them into one individual. Jon and Nathan will become Jonathan.”
“Neat.”
“It may sound neat, but it’s a long process.”
“It’s neat for me,” he said. “I wasn’t sure which of the two guys is the killer. Now I know there’s only one of them, I’ve got him, whatever he calls himself.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” I said.
He shot me a foul look.
“The therapy requires me to find points of contact between the alter-personalities. When you came to me with this double murder, I could see how disturbing it would be for Jon. He carries most of the guilt. But this investigation of yours could be a helpful disturbance. It goes right back to the trauma that I think was the trigger for this condition, his ill-treatment at the hands of foster-parents who happened to own a dog they pampered and preferred to the child.”
“My heart bleeds,” Morgan said, “but I have a job to do and two people are dead.”
“So you tell me. Jon thinks he may have murdered them, but he didn’t.”
“Come off it,” he said.
“Listen, please. Nathan’s story was true. He really did have that experience with the balloon and the little dog and falling in the pond. For him — as the more positive of the identities — it was one more entertaining experience to relate. But for Jon, who experienced it also, it was disturbing, raising memories of the couple who fostered him and abused him. He felt quite differently, murderous even.”
“Hold on,” Morgan said. “Are you trying to tell me the murders never happened?”
“They happened in the mind of Jon and they are as real to him as if he cut those old people’s throats himself. But I promise you the old couple are alive and well. I went to Steven Street at lunch time and spoke to them. They confirmed what Nathan told me.”
“I don’t get this. I’m thinking You’re nuts as well.”
“But it’s important that you do get it,” I told him. “There’s a third identity at work here. It acts as a kind of conscience, vengeful, controlling and ready to condemn. It, too, is convinced the murders took place and have to be investigated. Recognizing this is the first step towards integration. Do me a favour and have another look at Jon’s face. It’s still on the screen.”
He gave an impatient sigh and glanced at the image.
“Now look at this, inspector.”
I handed him a mirror.
Window of Opportunity
“There is a window in your life. All you have to do is open it and let the sunshine in.”
Nikki listened, fascinated. She’d come here expecting a con, but the man spoke like a prophet. He had his audience enthralled. He was a brilliant speaker. Looks, perfect grooming, charisma. He had it all.
“How many times have I heard someone say, ‘You should have been here yesterday. It was glorious’?” He smiled. “A comment on our English weather, but it sums up our attitude to life. You should have been here yesterday. My friends, forget about yesterday. We are here today. Seize the day. Open that window and let the sunshine in.”
The applause was wild. He’d brought them to a pitch of excitement. And this wasn’t evangelism. It was about being effective in business. The setting was Lucknam Park in Wiltshire, where the government held its think-tank sessions. Companies had paid big bucks to send their upcoming executives here. Lives were being changed for ever. Not least, Nikki’s.
This was her window of opportunity. She’d been sent here for the weekend by the theatrical agency to help with the role play. Inspired by what she had heard, she was about to act a role of her own. She stepped to the front, scythed a path through the admirers and placed a hand over his arm. “If you don’t mind, Julian, there’s someone you should meet upstairs, in your suite.” To his adoring fans she said, “He’ll be back, I promise.”
It worked. In the lift, he said, “Who is it?”
“Me.”
His amazing blue eyes widened. “I don’t understand.”
“I’ve seized the day.”
The moment he laughed, she knew she’d succeeded. He was still high on the reception he’d got. When they entered the suite, she put the do not disturb sign over the doorknob. The sex was sensational.
They had a weekend in Paris and a Concorde trip to New York. Nikki found herself moving in circles she’d never experienced before. Royal Ascot. Henley. Her drama school training came in useful.
They married in the church in rural Dorset where her parents lived. She arrived with Daddy in a pony and trap and after the reception in Dorchester’s best hotel, she and Julian were driven to the airport in a stretch limo. The honeymoon was in Bermuda. Julian paid for almost everything. Daddy couldn’t have managed to spend on that scale.
“It’s no problem,” Julian said. “I’m ridiculously well off. Well, we are now.”
“You deserve to be, my darling,” Nikki said. “You’ve brought sunshine into so many lives.”
They bought a huge plot of land in Oxfordshire and had their house built to Julian’s design. As well as the usual bedrooms and reception rooms, it had an office suite, gym, games room and two pools, indoors and out. A tennis court, stables and landscaped garden. “I don’t want you ever to be bored,” Julian said. “There are times when I’ll be away.”
Nikki was not bored. True, she’d given up her acting to devote more time to homemaking, but she could not have managed both. When Julian was at home, he was forever finding new windows of opportunity, days to seize. His energy never flagged. He got up at five-thirty and swam a mile before breakfast and made sure she was up by seven. Even in her drama school days she hadn’t risen that early. Actors work to a different pattern.
He had each day worked out. “We’ll plant the new rockery this morning and clear the leaves out of the pool. This afternoon I’ll need your help fitting the curtains in the fourth bedroom. This evening the Mountnessings are coming for dinner and I want to prepare an Italian meal, so we’ll need to fit in some shopping.”
Nikki suggested more than once that most of these jobs could be done by staff. They could afford to get people in.
“That goes against my principles,” Julian said. “There’s immense satisfaction in doing the jobs ourselves.”
“One day I’d like to sit by the pool we keep so clean,” she said.
“Doing what, my love?”
“Just sitting — or better still, lying.”
He laughed. He thought she was joking.
In bed, he showed no sign of exhaustion. Nikki, twelve years younger than he, was finding it a trial to match this energy.
At such a pace, it didn’t take long for the house to be in perfect shape, all the curtains and carpets fitted, the pictures hung. Nikki had looked forward to some time to herself when the jobs were done, but she hadn’t reckoned on maintenance.
“Maintenance?”
“Keeping it up to the mark,” Julian explained. “We don’t let the grass grow under our feet.”
In the middle of their love-making the same night, the thought occurred to her that he regarded this, too, as maintenance. From that moment, the magic went out of their marriage.