‘Then try,’ Fraser insisted.
Grant clenched his.teeth, his malevolent gaze swinging round to focus on the investigator.
‘I told you, I can’t remember,’ he said, the anger seething in his voice.
‘Are any of the thoughts to do with your wife and son?’ Kelly enquired.
Grant looked momentarily puzzled.
‘Why should they be?’
‘Look, if you keep answering a question with a question,’ said Fraser, ‘we’re going to be here all day.’
Kelly shot her colleague an irritable glance while Grant rounded on him once more.
‘What is this, some kind of fucking interrogation?’ he snapped. ‘You asked me to answer some que’stions, I’m trying to do that but you keep interrupting me.’ His voice had risen in volume.
‘Are any of the thoughts to do with your family?’ Kelly asked him again.
Grant shook his head.
‘Do you ever think about your wife and son when you can’t sleep?’ Kelly persisted.
‘I just told you, no.’
‘Come on, that’s not natural. You mean to say you’ve wiped them from your memory?’ said Fraser, a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
Grant brought his fist crashing down on the table top, his voice rising to a shout.
i DON’T THINK ABOUT THEM.’
Fraser regarded the man warily. He was becoming a little nervous of Grant’s aggression.
‘Have you ever wanted to kill your wife and son?’ Kelly asked.
‘Kill them? Why?’ Grant demanded.
‘That’s what we’d like to know,’ said Fraser.
‘Why should I want to kill them?’
‘Because there may be a part of your mind which wants you to,’ Kelly informed him. ‘You’ve had a series of nightmares, in each one you kill your wife and son.’
‘So what?’ Grant snapped. ‘What’s so fucking important about a nightmare?
Everyone has them.’
‘You and your wife had experienced some problems hadn’t you?’ Kelly said.
‘Marital problems.’
‘What if we had? What’s that got to do with this shit about nightmares?’
demanded Grant, angrily.
‘Would you like to kill your wife and son?’ Fraser wanted to know.
Grant got to his feet.
‘This is some kind of fucking game you’re playing with me,’ he growled, pointing an accusing finger at the investigators, both of whom moved back slightly from the table.
‘Tell us the truth,’ said Fraser. ‘You want to kill them, don’t you?’ ‘No, you bastard.’ ‘You’ve told us.’ ‘No.’
‘You want to murder them,’ Fraser said, a little too forcefully.
‘No. NO.’ The shout became a scream of rage and Grant suddenly grabbed the heavy tape-recorder, lifting it from the desk, raising it above his head. The plug was torn from the wall, the spools falling uselessly from the machine.
Kelly and Fraser jumped back hurriedly as Grant spun round and, with demonic strength, hurled the recorder at the large window. There was an ear-splitting crash as the glass exploded, huge thick shards flying out like crystal javelins. ‘Get help, quick,’ Fraser snapped as Grant turned on him. As Kelly bolted for the door, Grant flung himself at Fraser. He hit the table on the way and the two men crashed to the ground amidst the shriek of snapping wood.
Fraser tried to roll to one side but Grant fastened both hands around his neck and began throttling him. Fraser felt his assailant’s fingertips gouging into his flesh and he struck out with one hand, catching Grant a stinging blow across the temple. This only seemed to inflame him more for he straddled the investigator and began slamming his head against the floor.
Fraser looked up into the face of his attacker, the eyes blazing wildly, spittle dotted on his lips as he continued to bang his victim’s head against the ground with gleeful force. Fraser gripped Grant’s wrists and tried to prise open the vice-like grip but the relief was only momentary. He felt himself losing consciousness.
Then suddenly, the pressure on his throat eased and through pain-clouded eyes he saw two men grab Grant and pull him to his feet. Kelly was there too, so was Dr Vernon. He held a hypodermic needle in his hand.
Things seemed to swim before him as he rolled to one side, massaging his throat, the hot bile clawing its way up from his stomach.
‘Strap him down,’ Vernon urged, watching as the other two men dragged Grant towards the EEG. They forced him on to the trolley and swiftly fastened thick leather bonds
around his wrists and ankles securing them. Grant had, however, begun to calm down somewhat and as the electrodes were attached to his head he seemed to stop thrashing about, content instead to eye his opponents with fury. His teeth were clenched, a thin, silvery trail of saliva dribbling from one corner of his mouth.
Kelly crossed to Fraser who was lying amongst the wreckage of the broken table, trying to clamber upright. She knelt beside him and offered a hand but he refused her help, struggling precariously to his feet, one hand still on his throat. He coughed and tasted blood. Vernon gave him a cursory glance then turned his attention back to Grant. The electrodes were in place on his forehead and temples, he was motionless but for the heaving of his chest.
One of the other investigators, a man with a button missing from one shirt cuff, stood beside the machine waiting. Kelly recognized him as Frank Anderson, a powerfully built man in his early forties.
Vernon nodded and Anderson flicked a switch which set the EEG in motion.
The five pencils swept back and forth across the paper as it left the machine, each one an indication of the brain waves picked up from Grant.
The fifth pencil, however, barely moved. Anderson noticed this and directed Vernon’s attention to it. The older man looked puzzled.
‘What the hell does that mean?’ said Anderson but Vernon did not answer.
Kelly joined them, leaving Fraser to stagger over to the broken window where he gulped down lungfuls of air, still wincing in pain each time he swallowed.
‘Could it be the area controlled by the subconscious?’ Kelly said, directing her question towards Vernon but gazing at the virtually dormant line on the read-out.
Vernon didn’t answer.
‘Surely it must be,’ she insisted. ‘Theoretically, there should only be activity in that part of the brain when he’s asleep. Put him out. This could be our chance to find out.’
Vernon did not hesitate. He rolled up Grant’s sleeve, found a vein and ran the needle into it, keeping his thumb on the plunger until the last drop of Tubarine had left the
slender receptacle. Then, they waited.
They waited.
For ten minutes they waited. The only sounds in the room were the ticking of the wall clock and Grant’s increasingly laboured breathing. Kelly stood over his immobile form and lifted one eye-lid, noticing how the pupil was dilated.
‘He’s asleep,’ she said, softly, as if standing over a child she did not wish to wake.
Another five minutes and she noticed movement beneath the closed lids. The unmistakable motions of REM.
‘He’s dreaming,’ she said, almost excitedly.
Vernon seemed not to hear, his eyes were riveted to the EEG read-out.
Four of the tracer lines were barely moving but the fifth was hurtling across the paper with frightening speed. He called Kelly to look at it.
‘It certainly looks as if that fifth line denotes the area of the brain which controls the subconscious mind,’ she
