Twisted (38 page)

‘You should have told me earlier about the journal. Now get out of my sight and I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Banging the door closed behind him, Jackson strode back into the interview room.

Two hours later, Marcus was released without charge and returned to Lena’s. He had fixed himself a tumbler of scotch and settled himself at the dining table, which was still set for dinner. By now he was totally drained and had not even turned the lights on, preferring to sit in the semi-darkness, the dining room lit only by the hall lights. He had been sitting there for some time before Lena came down from her bedroom, wearing a nightdress and matching robe.

‘I didn’t hear you come home.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t want to disturb you.’

‘Agnes got some chicken in white wine sauce out for dinner – are you hungry?’

‘No, I couldn’t eat anything.’

‘Me neither. I expected you hours ago – you could at least have called me.’

She drew a chair closer to sit beside him.

‘Have they found something? Is that why you have been so long?’

‘No, they only interviewed me, and thank God for McFarland,’ Marcus said, meeting her eyes. ‘I really appreciate you arranging for him to be with me; he calmed me down and guided me through the interview – well, if you can call it that; it was more like a bloody Gestapo interrogation by DCI Jackson. I was finding it really hard to control myself.’

‘I’ve been so worried, but I don’t really understand why they took you in.’

He sighed and sipped his scotch. He told her that Harry Dunn had found Amy’s watch in his Mini, and hidden it, and he had been arrested and questioned about it. He hesitated.

‘I maybe should have told you, because I think Amy might have left it in the car when we went over to Henley one weekend,’ he went on quietly. ‘You know how she liked to ride there. It was raining hard so she never actually rode out, but I had spare keys for Simon’s place so we had a look round – well, Amy more than myself, while I made us a black coffee to warm up.’

‘Did they think because of the watch you had something to do with her disappearance?’

‘Jackson seemed convinced Harry and I were involved, but he admitted to finding the watch between the seats in the Mini and taking it.’

‘Well he’s out of a job, the nasty little thief. When I think what I have done for him,’ she spat.

‘I never asked him to clean the Mini – that was bloody Agnes. Jackson thought I’d asked Harry to valet the car and innocently get rid of any evidence. If I’d known Amy’s watch was there I’d have told the police right away.’

‘She loves that watch.’

‘I know, also that it’s a Cartier and you got it for her birthday; anyway, they then went on to question me about . . .’ He paused, not sure how he should tell her.

‘Go on, question you about what?’

Marcus explained that there was video footage from the vice squad, and that Amy had been caught on CCTV footage and appeared to be soliciting a passing motorist for sex.

‘She was wearing her school uniform, Lena.’ He was close to tears.

‘Well I don’t believe it, it’s preposterous. This Detective Jackson is a disgusting loathsome man; he came here and I refused to even continue talking to him. I think they are trying in some ways to implicate the both of us in her disappearance. I am going to make an official complaint against him; it’s outrageous that they are treating us like this, scrabbling around in a pitiful attempt to blame us because they are incompetent. As from now I will only talk to Detective Reid.’

He reached out and held her hand.

‘It’s not looking good, Lena. I mean it’s obvious they think that she’s met with some nightmare – do you understand what I am saying?’

Lena held his hand tighter. ‘They think she’s been murdered, don’t they?’

He nodded, hardly able to accept it, and yet by Lena being so calm it somehow made it a reality.

‘They’ve a murder team handling the case now. But they still have no evidence of an abduction and . . .’ He couldn’t say it, but Lena knew what he meant, that they had found no trace of a body. She released her hand from his and leaned towards him, putting her arms around him.

‘We just have to deal with it, don’t we?’

‘How do you deal with it, Lena? It’s as if I have a gaping hole in my chest all the time and I can’t face it, because if God forbid it’s true, how do we go on?’

She cradled him and kissed him, closer now than they had been for years.

‘Listen, darling, I will make you a hot drink and you take a couple of my sleeping tablets; you’ll feel more able to cope in the morning. You go up and get into bed and I’ll bring in a tray.’

She got up and went to the kitchen, taking a pan and heating up some milk to make him a hot chocolate. She noticed the two cartons of food and the note from Agnes on the draining board. It made her laugh that the ever-efficient Agnes had forgotten to label something. Lena wrote on the note that both cartons were in the fridge and then buttered two slices of bread without the crusts and cut them into soldiers.

Lena carried the tray into her bedroom, but Marcus wasn’t there. She left the tray on the dressing table and looked in her en-suite bathroom but he wasn’t there either. She went into the guest bedroom and could see by the light from the bathroom that he was taking a shower.

‘Marcus, I’ve made you a hot chocolate. It’s in my bedroom.’

He came out wrapped in a big white bath towel, his hair dripping.

‘Can you bring it in here? I’m just going to see where Agnes has put my clothes.’

‘They’re in my room, so you can have it in there.’

‘No, Lena, let me just have a really good night’s sleep in here. Let’s not use what’s going on as anything we will regret later. I’m sorry if you got confused about my being here, but I had nowhere else to go.’

She walked out and returned a short moment later with the tray, the bottle of sleeping tablets and his pyjamas, bade him a curt goodnight and left him to it, closing the door. He sighed; at least she had appeared to take it calmly, but he really did not feel like sharing her bed, not this night or any other. Marcus intended to go through with the divorce and was concerned that Lena obviously thought otherwise. He took three sleeping tablets and drank the hot chocolate, but found the bread and butter soldiers unappetizing, as if she was treating him like a child. He threw back the bed cover and changed into his pyjamas before drawing the curtains, already feeling the effect of the tablets. He locked the bedroom door and snuggled down beneath the fresh pure cotton sheets and the featherweight duvet, with hardly time to even think about the events of the evening before falling into a deep much-needed sleep.

Lena was wide awake, and even though she had taken the same amount of tablets as Marcus, didn’t feel drowsy. She had hoped to lie in his arms, to be comforted by him, but instead she was restless and angry with herself. She wanted to go next door and slap him, because after all she had done for him she believed that they could be reunited. He obviously had no intention of them getting back together, and she felt not only foolish but infuriated that she had misunderstood his return. She now had to face the fact that he was only in the house because he had nowhere else to go, and her anger built. Throwing the bedclothes aside, she got up and started to pace around the room, resisting the urge to go into the bedroom next door and confront him. She began hurling his clothes from the wardrobe onto the carpet, kicking out at them, losing her control as she attempted to rip them apart. She got a pair of scissors and cut the sleeves off his freshly laundered shirts, and then she attacked the collars, working herself up into a frenzy until she rocked back on her heels, exhausted.

‘Stop it, stop it, stop it,’ she muttered to herself as she slowly crawled back to her bed and curled up like a child. As the pills at last began to take effect she was already reprimanding herself for her behaviour. If she wanted to get Marcus back this would not encourage him to stay, it would do the exact opposite. What she had to do was stay calm, be in control, and without any obvious persuasion make him want to be with her. This was the first night she had not been haunted by Amy, and in her own confused way she was actually coming to terms with the awful prospect that her daughter was never coming home. Life without Amy would be heart-wrenching, but without Marcus it would not be worth living. Tomorrow she would tidy up the cut clothes, and she would buy him a new wardrobe of designer shirts. With these thoughts she eventually fell into a deep exhausted sleep.

Chapter 28

R
eid was already at the incident room by seven. He’d written up his own very lengthy report on his meeting with Professor Cornwall and the research he had done about DID, spending virtually the entire night on it. The team were not due in until nine for a meeting, so it gave him the opportunity to catch up on everything. Details of the arrest, interview and release of Harry Dunn, plus the transcripts from the interview with Marcus Fulford. He guessed that Jackson must have been working at the station until late and noticed the copy of the journal he had left on the DCI’s desk was not there. From the interview transcripts, he realized the importance of the missing Cartier watch had been resolved and was now effectively a dead end as Amy might have dropped it in the Mini or it had unknowingly slipped off her wrist. If she told Serena she was going to her dad’s to collect it, then it seemed she must have lost or misplaced it.

Promptly at nine o’clock, with the entire team assembled, Jackson made his appearance, a thick file and the copy of the journal under his arm. He bellowed for everyone’s attention, and there was a scramble to get seated.

‘Right, I have read most of this copy of the journal belonging to Amy Fulford and to say the least it’s full of some pretty vitriolic and nasty stuff. I’m no expert in psychology, but DI Reid took himself off yesterday to consult a forensic psychiatrist, so I’ll let him tell you exactly what the shrink had to say.’

Reid was not expecting to be put in the spotlight like this in front of the experienced officers on the murder squad, and had wrongly thought Jackson would speak to him one to one first. Not wanting to step down, he decided to seize the moment, picking up a marker pen as he went over to the large whiteboard. Before writing anything, he explained he had read the journal and felt that the assistance of an expert might reveal lines of enquiry and things about Amy and her family they had not so far considered or discovered.

Reid said he would refer to the notes he made of his conversation with Dr Elliott Cornwall and his own research. Using the black marker he wrote ‘Dissociative Identity Disorder’ on the board and DID in brackets beside it.

‘Dissociative Identity Disorder was previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder. Your sense of reality and who you are depend on your feelings, thoughts, sensations, perceptions and memories. If these become disconnected from each other, or don’t register in your conscious mind, your sense of identity, your memories, and the way you see yourself and the world around you will change. This is what happens when you dissociate,’ Reid said and, looking round the room, could see many confused faces.

He then wrote ‘Mild Dissociation’ on the board. ‘Everyone in this room has probably experienced Mild Dissociation at some time or other . . .’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Styles said, which caused a ripple of laughter and some smirks round the room.

Reid wrote ‘daydreaming’ on the board. ‘In simple terms, just for you, DS Styles, mild dissociation is daydreaming or getting lost in the moment while working or doing something.’

‘That’s definitely DS Styles,’ a detective said, causing more laughter.

Jackson slapped the palm his hand on the desk. ‘Enough of the jokes, now shut up, you lot, and listen to what DI Reid is saying and you might actually learn something.’

Reid nodded his thanks to Jackson and continued. ‘Can anyone give me an example of what mild dissociation is?’ There were still puzzled looks on many of the detectives’ faces.

‘Come on, surely one of you can think of an example,’ he said encouragingly.

There was a pause while they all glanced at each other and thought about the question, then a young detective spoke up. ‘Sort of like driving to work and not remembering the journey or what you were thinking about along the way.’

Reid noticed there were some looks of doubt from some of the team, while others nodded in agreement.

‘Good examples,’ Reid said and wrote the word ‘Coping’ on the board. ‘Now I’m sure many of you in the room have been to some of the most horrendous and unimaginable crime scenes, and they can leave a lasting impression on your mind, especially if the victims are children. But how do you deal with it . . . how do you cope?’

‘We deal with it because we are murder squad detectives. It’s our job to cope and get on with the investigation, so we don’t have or show any emotion,’ Styles said in a matter-of-fact way.

Reid said nothing but he could sense from the shaking of heads and expressions of disdain that many in the room disagreed with this macho cop attitude.

Reid wrote on the board ‘Trauma and Stress’. ‘The reality is, trauma and stress are often very difficult for us to handle or talk about. We may like to think of ourselves as tough police officers, but sometimes we dissociate ourselves from a traumatic or stressful experience that’s difficult for us to deal with. Anyone know why we do that?’

‘As a form of defence or coping mechanism,’ Jackson said.

Reid knew Jackson had undoubtedly seen and dealt with many horrific cases in his long career on the murder squad, and probably more than anyone in the room could relate to what he was saying about trauma and stress.

‘DCI Jackson is quite right. We suffer from natural human reactions and emotions just like everyone else and dissociation is how we, even as police officers, deal with a violent, traumatic or painful incident.’ Reid could see that everyone in the room was interested in what he had to say. He knew he’d hit a raw nerve with many of them, and now they would be able to better grasp and understand Amy Fulford’s state of mind.