Desmond Bagley - The Tightrope Men / The Enemy

‘Interesting you should say that,’ said Carey, opening the folder. ‘From what we have here it seems that Denison, if not an alcoholic, was on the verge. He’d just lost his job – fired for incompetence on June 24.’

Iredale nodded. ‘Symptomatic. Alcoholics reject food – they get their calories from the booze.’ He stood up. ‘That’s all I can do tonight, gentlemen. I should like to see Denison tomorrow with a view to restoring him to his former appearance, which won’t be easy – that silicone polymer will be the devil to get out. Is there any more?’

‘Nothing, Mr Iredale,’ said Carey.

‘Then if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go to bed. It’s been a long day.’

‘You know where your room is,’ said Carey, and Iredale nodded and left the room.

Carey and McCready looked at each other in silence for some time, and then Carey stirred and said over his shoulder, ‘What did you make of all that, Ian?’

‘I’m damned if I know,’ said Armstrong.

Carey grunted. ‘I’m damned, too. I’ve been involved in some bizarre episodes in this game, but this takes the prize for looniness. Now we’ll have to see what Harding comes up with, and I suspect he’s going to be a long time. I think somebody had better make coffee. It’s going to be a long night.’

Carey was right because more than two hours elapsed before Harding returned. His face was troubled, and he said abruptly, ‘I don’t think Denison should be left alone.’

‘Ian!’ said Carey.

Armstrong got up, and Harding said, ‘If he wants to talk let him. Join in but steer clear of specifics. Stick to generalities. Understand?’

Armstrong nodded and went out. Harding sat down and Carey studied him. Finally Carey said, ‘You look as though you could do with a drink, Doctor. Whisky?’

Harding nodded. ‘Thanks.’ He rubbed his. forehead. ‘Denison is in a bad way.’

Carey poured two ounces of whisky into a glass. ‘How?’

‘He’s been tampered with,’ said Harding flatly.

Carey handed him the glass. ‘His mind?’

Harding sank half the whisky and choked a little. He held out the glass. ‘I’ll have water in the other half. Yes. Someone has been bloody ruthless about it. He has a week missing, and whatever was done to him was done in that week.’

Carey frowned. ‘Iredale suggested he’d been unconscious all that week.’

‘It’s not incompatible,’ said Harding. ‘He was probably kept in a mentally depressed state by drugs during the whole week.’

‘Are you talking about brain-washing?’ asked McCready sceptically.

‘In a manner of speaking.’ Harding accepted his refilled glass. ‘Whoever did this to Denison had a problem. The ideal would have been to get Denison into such a condition that he thought he was Meyrick – but that couldn’t be done.’ Harding paused for consideration. ‘At least, not in a week.’

‘You mean the possibility of such a thing is there?’ asked Carey incredulously.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Harding calmly. ‘It could be done. But this crowd didn’t have the time for that, so they had to go about it another way. As I see it, their problem was to put Denison in the hotel as Meyrick and to make sure he didn’t fly off the handle. They didn’t want him to take the next plane to London, for instance. So they treated him.’ From Harding’s mouth the emphasis was an obscenity.

‘How?’ said Carey.

‘Do you know anything about hypnosis?’

McCready snorted and Harding, staring at him with suddenly flinty eyes, said coldly, ‘No, it is not witchcraft, Mr McCready. Denison was kept in a drug-induced hypnogogic state for a long time, and in that period his psyche was deliberately broken down.’ He made a suddenly disarming gesture. ‘I suspect Denison was already neurotically inclined and no doubt there were many ready-made tools to hand – irrational fears, half-healed traumas and so on – to aid in the process.’

‘What do you mean by neurotically inclined?’ asked Carey.

‘It’s hard to say, but I suspect that he was already a disturbed man before this was done to him.’

‘Off his head?’ interjected McCready.

Harding gave him a look of dislike. ‘No more than yourself, Mr McCready,’ he said tartly. ‘But I think something had happened which threw him off balance.’

‘Something did happen,’ said Carey. ‘He lost his job.’ He took a thin sheaf of papers from the file. ‘I didn’t have time to discuss this with you before, but this is what we have on Denison. There’ll be more coming but this is what we’ve got now.’

Harding studied the typed sheets, reading slowly and carefully. He said, ‘I wish I’d seen this before I went in to Denison; it would have saved a lot of trouble.’

‘He was a film director for a small specialist outfit making documentary and advertising films,’ said Carey. ‘Apparently he went off the rails and cost the firm a packet of money. They thought his drinking had got out of hand, so they fired him.’

Harding shook his head. ‘That wasn’t what threw him off balance. The drinking must have been a symptom, not a cause.’ He turned back a page. ‘I see that his wife died three years ago. She must have been quite young. Have you any idea how she died?’

‘Not yet,’ said Carey. ‘But I can find out.’

‘It would be advisable. I wonder if it was about that time he started to drink heavily.’

‘That isn’t the present point at issue,’ said Carey.

Harding’s voice took on an edge. ‘It is for me,’ he said curtly. ‘I have to treat the man.’

Carey’s voice was soothing. ‘I know, Doctor, and you shall have all the relevant information as soon as we get it ourselves. But my present interest is in what was done to Denison and how it was done.’

Harding was placated. ‘Very well. Denison was literally dismantled. All he retained was a name and a location – and the location wasn’t very exact. Giles Denison of Hampstead. They could, of course, have induced complete amnesia, but that wouldn’t do because Denison had to substitute for Meyrick and he would need enough active personality to carry out the role. Why Denison had to act as Meyrick I don’t know.’

‘I have ideas on that,’ said Carey. ‘Go on, Doctor.’

‘At the same time Denison must not retain too much personality, certainly not enough for him to reject the persona that had been thrust upon him. He had to be kept in a sort of limbo. There were some very strong blocks inserted into his mind to the effect that he should not question his origins. In addition, to confuse the issue, he has been given selective false memories. For instance, he distinctly remembers playing a game of golf, but at the same time he knows that he has never played a game of golf in his life. So he is a very confused man and this leads to a paralysis of the will, enough to make him stay in one place – a hotel in Oslo – while he tries to sort things out.’

McCready stirred restlessly. ‘Is all this possible?’

‘Quite possible. If I draw an imaginary square on the floor of this room I could hypnotize you into avoiding it by a post-hypnotic suggestion. You could spend the rest of your life coming in and out of this room but you would never walk on that imaginary square. More to the point, you would not be aware of the irrationality of your behaviour.’

McCready looked sceptical, and Harding said, ‘I’m willing to give you a demonstration at any time.’

‘No!’ said McCready hurriedly. ‘I believe you.’

Carey smiled grimly. ‘Carry on, Doctor.’

‘The mind is a self-stabilizing organism,’ said Harding. ‘If it wasn’t we’d all go crazy. And to inquire is basic. When Denison did try to delve into his past life he encountered the blocks and was so shocked at the impossibility of what he found in his own mind that he took refuge in a fugue.’ He saw the incomprehension on Carey’s face, and said simply, ‘He fell asleep. A typical hysterical symptom. He did it twice when he was talking to me. I let him sleep for a quarter of an hour each time, and when he woke up he’d forgotten the reason for it – wiped it out of his mind. It’s a self-protective mechanism against insanity, and I rather think it’s happened to him before.’