Lynda La Plante - Twisted

Reid still gave no answer, knowing that Jackson wouldn’t listen anyway, as he appeared more interested in stuffing his mouth with the meat pie he’d ordered. He spat out bits of crust as he continued. ‘It’s going to be a real lesson in diplomacy getting ourselves out of this mess, never mind explaining the overspend on the budget. The way out for a quiet life is to have her deemed unfit to plead, we bury the whole fucking mess and she can rot in the nuthouse where she belongs.’

Reid downed his pint and carefully placed the glass onto the beer mat on the counter. As he had paid for the first round, and the meat pie, he felt he could now leave, but Jackson dug into his arm.

‘Same again, Vic?’

‘No thanks, I’ll get off home. Tomorrow I’ll make out a list of questions that Cornwall can use.’

‘You think we’ll get answers?’

Reid sighed. ‘I’m not like you, sir; what I just witnessed will give me nightmares as I have never experienced anything like it.’ He shook his head. ‘At the same time, no matter how much I pity Lena Fulford, I also feel that her victims deserve justice, and I can’t walk away from knowing what happened to her daughter. If we do get closure and discover that she poisoned Simon Boatly, Harry Dunn, and her husband, that’s three murders, and it’s possible Marcus Fulford was innocent.’

‘They’re fucking dead,’ Jackson snapped.

‘I cannot and will not agree to this case being put to bed. For me, burying it is nothing more than a cop-out.’

Jackson grabbed hold of his coat sleeve and pulled him closer.

‘Maybe it’s not just a suggestion, Vic, but an order. I am up for retirement in six months and I am not going to let this screw my pension, because I am warning you, if this whole shambolic investigation becomes public it’ll be your career blown along with mine. People died because you didn’t read the recipes in the back of the journal at the get-go.’

‘Well, I’ll just have to learn to live with that, won’t I?’ Reid said and eased his arm away. He brushed his coat sleeve down and walked out, leaving Jackson seething and staring into the dregs of his pint.

Back at home Reid sat up most of the night going over the entire investigation. When had Lena Fulford made the decision to poison her so-called enemies? How had she done it, and had she conspired with her husband to kill their daughter? Where was Amy’s body? Buried or dismembered? He underlined this query as being the most important. By the time he was ready to go to bed, all he could think about was what he had seen at Cornwall’s hypnotherapy session with Lena and what Jackson had said about their careers being over.

He slowly ripped up the lists of questions and felt totally and utterly drained, and so tired his head ached. In the morning he would have to complete his report of the search at Lena Fulford’s house. He was ashamed because although he had made a decision that he would make himself available to watch the forthcoming sessions between Professor Cornwall and Lena, in the interim he could do nothing further. It was as if the investigation was as good as over.

Lena Fulford had four further sessions, in which her alter personalities were gradually brought to the surface by Cornwall. Only with their protection had she been able to exist as a child and a teenager. For years she was forced to remain under the dominant controlling influence of her sexually abusive father. She had only been released from her torment when he had begun drinking to excess. This was the first time she had started to take control of herself, aided by her ‘army’ of personalities, and she admitted that she had often used some of her mother’s medication, which was left in the house, to doctor her father’s bottles of alcohol. By making him dependent on drink, she had found a small sense of freedom. At university she met Marcus and she had explained in detail how kind and thoughtful he was, never aggressive, but always understanding of her nervousness in having sexual inter course.

Marcus had proved to her that she could be loved without demands and threats and she realized that for the first time in her life she was happy. Her temporary separation from him when she went to Harvard was a severely depressing time and the fact her father accompanied her to America terrified her as she feared that he was seizing the opportunity to once again abuse her. When she returned to the UK and eventually married Marcus it was if she had finally been set free from her father.

Professor Cornwall was slowly reducing the amount of medication, so that they were able to actually have a therapeutic interaction. Lena had remained constantly sweet-natured and friendly with the staff and Cornwall found her delightful, intelligent, and keen to answer truthfully, as if wanting his encouragement to continue to help her understand herself.

She talked of her jealousy of her husband’s relationship with Simon Boatly, and her attempts to dissuade Marcus from seeing him. She recalled meeting him on one particular occasion at his Mayfair flat, but said it was not productive and she behaved foolishly, which she regretted. She became uneasy when describing the birth of Amy, as it triggered feelings of despair, and she added that she had been diagnosed with ‘baby blues’, but nothing seemed to lift her depression.

Cornwall was interested to find out how she had reacted to her father being around when Amy was born. Lena said it sent her on a downward spiral, during which she had become aggressive and abusive. The ‘Boss’ character would emerge to swear, curse and scream and it was this alter who had made her prepare the dosage of hallucinogenic mushrooms to put in her father’s drink when he had visited.

She was calmer as she described the relief when he had died, because it meant Amy was safe from him. She was also safe from him ever telling anyone about their relationship and the fact she had smothered her mother with a washcloth in her mouth.

Throughout all this, Cornwall made copious notes and recordings. He observed that her mother’s death brought Lena relief, as if she had rid herself of the stench of her mother and being forced to nurse her. She had therefore found it relatively easy to also get rid of her father or at the very least advance his death. The sessions after this period were often lighter as she described her joy at being with Amy. She explained it was only when it was becoming obvious that her daughter was not only beautiful, but clever, and that her husband doted on her, that the manic depression periods returned.

Lena confessed that she was not only feeling envious of her daughter’s relationship with Marcus, but also his still ongoing friendship with Simon Boatly.

All at once she reverted to a hideous snarl as she grimaced that she had discovered that Boatly was homosexual, and had been in a relationship with her husband. She went into a tirade of bitter hatred against Boatly and how she had been envious of their closeness. She had forced herself to be friendly towards Simon, flirted and been eager to make Marcus jealous, but he only pretended to like her and was determined to break them up and have Marcus for himself. She was sitting up on the couch and wagging her index finger in anger, and her voice was high-pitched. ‘I knew then, I knew I had to watch him, that he was trying to get Marcus to leave me, and Amy was behaving like a silly bitch, all hissy and moody; it felt as if all three were against me.’

She flopped back and he was stunned when the low voice whispered, ‘I knew he had to go, but it was a question of when and how.’

This time Reid was in the viewing room alone, as Jackson could no longer be bothered to be present. Hour upon hour he had religiously sat listening and taking notes. He had even got used to hearing all the different voices and characters that Lena would become. It fascinated him to begin with, but now it was often quite tedious, as Cornwall never put any pressure on her. But at last she had now admitted what she intended when she had said of Simon Boatly, ‘He had to go.’