Altered States (24 page)

But I didn’t lift that gun. Didn’t pull that trigger. Just pulled on my clothes and walked away. I didn’t say goodbye. Quite simply, I was too scared.

As I made my way up through Latin American I wondered how the conflicts would develop from this point. By this time the narcotics industry was in rapid decline due to the rising popularity of legal highs. Although the drugs trade was the root cause of the troubles throughout this region, without it things were only going to get worse before they got better. Drugs were the lifeblood of this nation – they ran through its veins. They fuelled the economy. They put money in pockets and food on tables.

I wondered mostly what would happen to Maria. When her paying clients dwindled and her work dried up. Where would she go? What would she become? I hoped she would get as far as having to make these choices, but in truth I knew she would most likely be dead before long.

I shed a tear for her and then I moved on. I don’t think sleeping with a killer makes you a killer by association, but it made me feel dirty all the same. So I locked away another part of my life in a sealed box, never to be reopened.

That is why I didn’t tell Karla about my experience of Colombia.

Later that night we stumbled back to Karla’s place and sensibly turned to coffee as our beverage of choice. As we clawed our way back to a drowsy sobriety, I talked a bit more about myself. Not so much the bad stuff – the seeking out of immorals to mess with – but the good stuff, the early stuff. She already knew what I could do. That was why I had approached her in the first place, so we’d had that conversation early on. But I told her a little more about why I did it.

The thing is, what I needed more than anything right now was a distraction, and that was what Karla offered me. But what I also needed was to unburden my soul, and Karla offered me that too. I even told her about Gemma. Some of it.

It was strange that I should feel so comfortable talking to her, considering I felt so out of my depth communicating with someone I couldn’t read. I guess it must have helped; in the same way that it’s easier to talk to a pet than a person, because you can’t see the judgement in their eyes – or the pity, or the anger, or whatever emotion you may be invoking in your listener.

Whatever the reason, Karla became only the second person in my life who knew who I really was. And she was the
only
person in my life that I’d ever opened up to completely. I knew I was making myself vulnerable, but I didn’t really care anymore. I needed this release. It was cathartic. I mean in a good way. I wasn’t wallowing in self-pity, wasn’t acting hard-done-by. I was just talking as the small hours rolled by. And it was good. Everything’s relative, but it was good.

‘Because you’re not that type. I’m sorry to be blunt but you are not the do-gooder charity-worker type. If you wanted to help people then you could just volunteer at a soup kitchen, or give out aid in Africa. Hell, you could have become a doctor with your obsessive-compulsive studying. You would have helped more people that way. So why this?’

I stared straight ahead. As I contemplated the answer I felt my chest begin to tighten. I hadn’t allowed these thoughts into my consciousness for some time. My breathing began to grow laboured and I needed to stand. I walked over to the window and placed my coffee cup on the sill before planting my hands either side of it to steady myself.

The first I was aware of Karla’s movement was a gentle hand on my shoulder.

‘Hey, if you need to talk, then I’m here. If not, that’s okay too.’

She stood beside me as I stared out of the window, through my own reflection. After a moment of silence I took a deep sigh and rubbed my face in both my hands to wipe away the dew. Turning to Karla I wanted to speak but nothing came out at first. All I could manage was a pathetic silent movement of my jaw. I tried again and this time the words came. Slowly.

‘It was
me
I wanted to fix,’ I whispered glumly. ‘It’s me that’s broken.’

Uniformity

It felt odd to Conner at first: the uniform, the weight of the equipment hanging at his waist. Being an undercover detective he’d spent most of his career trying to convince people that he
wasn’t
a cop, not flaunting the fact. But he quickly got used to it again. He’d forgotten the buzz you get from walking down the street as an icon of justice; rather than skulking in the shadows.

After returning from his trip to the coast he had requested a spell back in uniform. His case on Bigby was indefinitely suspended now the Feds were all over it. The murders were still unsolved and still continuing but there was pressure to chalk them down as turf warfare. Not that this should make murders any more acceptable, but it did seem to. The general population of New Meadows are far too busy being entertained to worry about dealers popping each other off. Announce that there was an unknown serial killer in a black Mercedes shooting people dead on the street and it would be a different matter.

So, Conner wanted out. At least for now. And he wanted to go back to uniform. There was a straight-forwardness to uniformed policing that was particularly alluring to him at this time.

He spent his days in a patrol vehicle with a rather jolly moustached partner, attending incidents of shoplifting and assaults and traffic felonies. Then he filed his reports. Then he went home.

And the crimes did not go home with him.

This was partly due to the short-term nature of the crimes. But it was mostly because he had changed.

Conner didn’t know in what way he had changed, but if he’d visited a shrink he might have been told that it was all related to something called dissociation.

Traditionally, medical science tagged dissociation as pathological, in particular that it manifests in the experience of multiple personalities. But, in truth, this ‘split-mind’ syndrome is just one extreme of a spectrum along which
everyone
lies. Everyone has different personalities inside them, of which one can be brought out to suit the occasion. Just like popping on the gym kit or the Sunday best. Crucially, though, within this
normal
level of dissociation the personalities are not discrete. They are aware of each other; they merge and overlap; they communicate with each other.

This capability is an adaptive function of the human mind. It evolved as a defence mechanism. It allows us to function in extreme situations where otherwise we might be overwhelmed by a barrage of stimuli and the emotions they evoke. It is what enables a surgeon to dispassionately slice open a living person, and yet still be horrified if she witnesses her own son fall and split his lip. A surgeon must be able to emotionally detach such that she does not care for her patient in the way that she does for her child, but in a way that allows her to perform objectively.

Dissociation is what allows the rest of us to carry on about our daily lives, without being emotionally weighed down by the troubles and suffering of the rest of the world. A million people can be dying of starvation on the other side of the world and yet we barely look up from our choco-flakes.

For surgeons, paramedics, soldiers and so on, well-balanced dissociation is imperative. For police detectives the need is not so immediate, yet its absence is just as corrosive over time.

The events of the last few days had allowed Conner to move along his dissociative spectrum, to tease apart his personalities just a little, where before there had been only one.

He had always cared too much, been too emotionally attached to what he was trying to achieve. Now he felt farther removed; more distant. If he didn’t resolve everything right away, all by himself, then that was okay. It was all about becoming more objective. Even if there was a life or a livelihood at stake, it wasn’t
his
life or
his
livelihood, or any of his family’s.

And it was his uniform that served as the wedge that drove his two worlds apart. As soon as the uniform came off, so the killings and the robberies and the parking misdemeanours became nothing more than numbers on a page, lines on a chart. And if the lines went the wrong way one week then they might go the right way next week, and that was what it was all about. He was still going to function in his role but only when he was
playing
that role. It was a clinical approach but it was the only way to maintain any level of sanity.

For the first time in his life, he was learning to detach. And with it he was learning to engage with life once more.

His route home one day took him past a multiplex cinema and he studied the line of billboards to see what was playing. He quickly moved by the latest Sadie Winters flick. By all accounts it was causing quite a stir because her husband had a three second cameo in it. That was all that was needed to get the punters drooling at the entrance and handing over their cash. Either way it was not for him. One film did catch his attention though.

He arrived at Lisa’s doorstep straight from work and pressed the bell. Shortly, he heard Lisa inside, calling up the stairs to their son. Then the door opened.

At ten-past-nine Conner duly returned a popcorn-filled child to his mother.

‘Go clean your teeth and get ready for bed,’ she instructed to their son as she collected him over the threshold and ushered him toward the stairs.

‘Somebody made me realise that there was more to life than investigating the rug trade. That maybe it wasn’t even the right thing.’

Conner was waiting to exchange good-nights, but he realised there was something else that needed to be said – had needed to be said for some time. He faltered on his first attempt and Lisa noticed.

‘For not being there. Enough. Even when I
was
there.’

Lisa didn’t appear to know what to do with the apology. Conner understood why.

‘I
was
aware. Or maybe I wasn’t, but I am now. Looking back. Those times when we had people around for dinner, and I was supposed to be all social, and I wasn’t really
there
. I would answer questions, but I wouldn’t start conversations. Because I was always somewhere else in my head. Too caught up in some other world out there on the street. It must’ve been pretty bugging.’