studded with diamonds glinted in the light. ‘I found it yesterday. Along with over a thousand dollars in cash. I’m burglarizing people, aren’t I?’
Marty picked the necklace from Nick’s hand and held it up. ‘Looks expensive.’
‘I know I’m doing something, Doctor. Sometimes, I got scratches on my face and hands. Is it possible to rob people like that? What am I, some monster? But I don’t remember any of it. Only sometimes I see the inside of people’s cars or apartments. I guess that’s where I must steal these things.’
Marty Fox wrote Dissociative Identity Disorder on his pad. This guy was a potential multiple personality. Memory loss. Flashbacks. It was possible Nick had invented an alter ego. A man who gave an outlet to whatever Nick couldn’t face about himself. From Nick’s dreams, Marty guessed that this alter ego stole what he could and maybe stalked women and even mugged them. He didn’t know. This was beyond his expertise. He leaned in to Nick and spoke as quietly as he could.
‘You’re confused, Nick. Listen, it is possible that you’re suffering some kind of split personality. Sometimes a traumatic event can trigger things off, and the mind creates these alternative personalities to protect you from whatever is too difficult for you to see.’ Nick stared ahead. ‘You ever have a traumatic time, Nick, somewhere in the past?’
‘I was in love once, Doctor.’
Marty’s eyes glanced down at the personal column. He had been searching the dating ads. He couldn’t act on them any more, but he still couldn’t help himself looking. Then he looked up. ‘I like love stories, Nick — who was she?’
Nick twisted his body in his seat. ‘My first love. I was only a boy. I knew her as a friend, you know. I was a real quiet one back then. She didn’t love me, Doctor. I loved her from a distance.’
‘All sounds pretty normal to me, Nick. She was hot, was she?’
‘Like a perfect doll. But she was untouchable.’
‘So what happened with this girl?’
‘I wanted her so badly, it drove me crazy. She was just a kid, but then she started growing up herself. I couldn’t take seeing her with other boys.’
‘You were jealous?’
‘I’d say I was pretty jealous. I watched from a distance but kept it all tucked deep inside. See, she was a goddess to me. Nothing in my life was pure and perfect, Doctor. But she was.’
‘Not easy when you’re smitten.’
‘I knew the day would come. I’m not stupid. I knew that she would flower and the insects would come and feed on her. Have you ever seen how insects crawl over beautiful blossoms? I knew it would with her. I watched and things happened inside me. I couldn’t bear it.’
‘Did she date someone else, Nick?’
Nick lowered his eyes. Marty was intrigued. He liked a little je ne sais quoi in his sessions.
‘Someone took her. A young man who didn’t really care about her.’
‘What happened?’
‘On a summer day, he took her to the local spot. He charmed her. She was reluctant and scared. They were walking in the valley and I was following on the ridge above. Then he pressed her to the ground, kissing her. His hands started to touch her. All inside and out and where you shouldn’t. I watched like I was behind glass. He touched her. She called out for him to stop but he didn’t. He wouldn’t. He lifted her skirt and he put his hand right inside her skirt. She cried out “No”. She screamed it. She said “No” over and over but he said, “You want to make me happy, don’t you?” I wanted to help her. I couldn’t move. Why couldn’t I move, Doctor?’
‘Why do you think you couldn’t move, Nick?’
‘I was paralysed on the spot like some dumb staring animal. They wouldn’t call it rape, Doctor, but it was rape. It was…’
‘What?’
‘After that, I couldn’t sleep. I went off the rails.’
Marty Fox liked the story. Girl and boy making out in the grass with a fierce rival staring from the ridge. The girl gets a little hands-off when it starts looking serious. Yeah, he got that story. It was a TV movie kind of story. Marty imagined it easily. Except he didn’t identify with the boy on the ridge. He identified with the boy with his hands inside the girl’s jeans. That’s where he was in the story, not with the loser. He looked at Nick.
‘The boy who raped her, Nick. Was that you?’
Nick turned his head suddenly. ‘Me? I was watching. How could it be me?’
‘Sometimes, we do things we regret. Bad things. Sometimes, we get confused over what happened because we feel so damn guilty. Sometimes we build great big barriers and when we look at the situation again, we don’t really know what happened.’
‘I loved her. I didn’t do that. I didn’t ever do that to her.’
‘Okay, let’s calm down. Why don’t we talk about processing these past events. There are details there that need drawing out. I think we need closure on the girl.’
Nick was clenching his fists and staring down at his feet. ‘What would you do, Marty? Someone killed the girl you loved?’
‘He didn’t kill her, Nick.’
‘He did kill her, Doctor. God, I miss her. When they die, you don’t half miss them.’
Marty looked at his patient. He was shaking and holding himself. It was time to refer him. Marty didn’t like serious problems and this one was beginning to feel outside his comfort zone. He drew two red lines under the session notes and wrote a note to his PA: Transfer to Dr Bartholomew with immediate effect.
Chapter Forty-One
Upper East Side
November 22, 12.12 p.m.
The first full freeze hit the city and coated it in a fine grainy dust. It was Thanksgiving and no one felt like celebrating. The trees and street furniture were already filling up with Christmas lights all down the avenues and the shop fronts grew brighter each day. New York looked like a child’s toy sparkling with colour and light.
Harper returned home at 8 a.m. and slept for a few hours. He woke from dreams he couldn’t remember and chose to walk down towards Madison Avenue via the meer. He had a bagful of bird seed and a growing sense that he was finally getting somewhere. The birds were skating around on the surface of the frozen lake, looking confused and lost, as if waiting for someone to come and put their world right. Harper took a handful of seed and tossed it across to the stranded ducks. In the frosted branches of the trees, the blackbirds and finches looked on with interest. Harper wandered around the circumference, breathing in the chill air and crunching the icy blades of grass beneath his feet.
He recalled that Lisa had never really liked Central Park. He sensed that she was just uncomfortable in places where people’s actions weren’t predetermined. She liked order. A cop’s life was anything but, it was reactive and random. It must’ve driven her half mad. Tom realized that it was the first thought about Lisa for nearly two days. It seemed a good sign. He looked out at the frozen landscape. There were times when he could’ve never imagined letting go of her. The connection had been too deep, but now, somehow, she was starting to fade away.
He threw the last few handfuls of seeds to the birds and made his way down through the centre of the park. It was so beautiful and peaceful that his pace slowed. At around 82nd Street he peeled off and joined Madison Avenue just above the Museum of Modern Art. After the reconstruction with Denise, he’d hit the precinct and given the task of finding the shop which sold the two gold and crimson Vivienne Laurec scarves to the two FBI agents. By the time he woke up just after 11.30 a.m., they’d called. They had found the right store. It was simple, they said, but Harper didn’t mind them showing off their skills.
Two Vivienne Laurec scarves seemed such a flimsy and weightless hook to hang an entire murder investigation on, but it was all he had. There was still, in his analytical mind, a nagging doubt about the scarves and he couldn’t quite understand why he was less than a hundred per cent about what they were telling him. Maybe it felt too easy.
