Robin said nothing. The impact of what she’d just read wasn’t easily dispelled. Margot Bamborough had become real to Robin, and she’d just been forced to imagine her, brutalized and bleeding, attempting to persuade a psychopath to spare her life.
“Creed got transferred to Belmarsh in ’83,” Tucker continued, patting the papers still laid in front of him, and Robin forced herself to concentrate, “and they started drugging him so he couldn’t get a—you know, couldn’t maintain…
“And that’s when I got permission to write to him, and have him write back to me. Ever since he was convicted, I’d been lobbying the authorities to let me question him directly, and let him write back. I wore them down in the end. I had to swear I’d never publicize what he wrote me, or give the letter to the press, but I’m the only member of a victim’s family he’s ever been allowed direct contact with… and there,” he said, turning the next two sheets of paper toward Robin. “That’s what I got back.”
The letter was written on prison writing paper. There was no “Dear Mr. Tucker.”
Your letter reached me three weeks ago, but I was placed in solitary confinement shortly afterward and deprived of writing materials, so have been unable to answer. Ordinarily I’m not permitted to respond to inquiries like yours, but I gather your persistence has worn the authorities down. Unlikely as it may seem, I admire you for this, Mr. Tucker. Resilience in the face of adversity is one of my own defining characteristics.
During my three weeks of enforced solitude, I’ve wondered how I could possibly explain to you what not one man in ten thousand might hope to understand. Although you think I must be able to recall the names, faces and personalities of my various “victims,” my memory shows me only the many-limbed, many-breasted monster with whom I cavorted, a foul-smelling thing that gave tongue to pain and misery. Ultimately, my monster was never much of a companion, though there was fascination in its contortions. Given sufficient stimulus, it could be raised to an ecstasy of pain, and then it knew it lived, and stood tremulously on the edge of the abyss, begging, screaming, pleading for mercy.
How many times did the monster die, then live again? Too few to satisfy me. Even though its face and voice mutated, its reactions never varied. Richard Merridan, my old psychiatrist, gave what possessed me other names, but the truth is that I was in the grip of a divine frenzy.
Colleagues of Merridan’s disputed his conclusion that I’m sane. Regrettably, their opinions were dismissed by the judge. In conclusion: I might have killed your daughter, or I might not. Either I did so in the grip of some madness which still occludes my memory, and which a more skillful doctor might yet penetrate, or I never met her, and little Louise is out there somewhere, laughing at her daddy’s attempts to find her, or perhaps enduring a different hell to the one in which my monster lived.
Doubtless the additional psychiatric support available at Broadmoor would help me recover as much memory as possible. For their own inscrutable reasons, however, the authorities prefer to keep me here at Belmarsh. Only this morning I was threatened under the noses of warders. Regardless of the obvious fact that a cachet attaches to anyone who attacks me, I’m exposed, daily, to intimidation and physical danger. How anyone expects me to regain sufficient mental health to assist police further is a mystery.
Exceptional people ought to be studied only by those who can appreciate them. Rudimentary analysis, such as I’ve been subjected to thus far, merely entrenches my inability to recollect all that I did. Maybe you, Mr. Tucker, can help me. Until I’m in a hospital environment where I can be given the assistance I require, what incentive do I have to dredge my fragmented memory for details that may help you discover what happened to your daughter? My safety is being compromised on a daily basis. My mental faculties are being degraded.
You will naturally be disappointed not to receive confirmation of what happened to Louise. Be assured that, when the frenzy is not upon me, I am not devoid of human sympathy. Even my worst critics concede that I actually understand others much more easily than they understand me! For instance, I can appreciate what it would mean to you to recover Louise’s body and give her the funeral you so desire. On the other hand, my small store of human empathy is being rapidly depleted by the conditions in which I am currently living. Recovery from the last attack upon me, which nearly removed my eye, was delayed due to the refusal of the authorities to let me attend a civilian hospital. “Evil men forfeit the right to fair treatment!” Such seems to be the public’s view. However, brutality breeds brutality. Even the most dim-witted psychiatrists agree, there.
Do you have a merciful soul, Mr. Tucker? If so, the first letter you’ll write upon receiving this will be to the authorities, requesting that the remainder of my sentence will be served in Broadmoor, where the secrets my unruly memory still holds may be coaxed to the surface at last.
Ever yours,
Dennis
Robin finished reading, and looked up.
“You can’t see it, can you?” said Tucker, with an oddly hungry expression. “No, of course you can’t. It isn’t obvious. I didn’t see it myself, at first. Nor
