I suddenly saw how good he was at using that mechanism in people. That need to ‘dance’ in our social interactions with others. To respond automatically and by rote in a way that finds us painting ourselves into corners, then wondering why we agreed to something we didn’t really want to do.
Even though I knew how it worked, and used it myself to gain a foothold with a patient or get an edge in an interview, it was difficult not to respond to his cues. He was skilled all right. I supposed it was something he used in his job. I looked down at my feet to break the moment.
‘You can reach me on my mobile anytime,’ he said. His warm hand cupped my chin and he turned my face towards his. I had to resist the urge to pull away. I couldn’t meet his eyes for some reason, so I closed mine.
‘Anytime, Jo.’ I heard him say. ‘I mean it.’ He hesitated for a heartbeat before adding, ‘Not just for work, either. I mean, if Callum–’
‘I know,’ I interrupted him, not really wanting to hear any more, despite the clawing curiosity about what else his ‘sources’ might have said. I couldn’t face having my illusions shattered right now. It felt as though everything I’d held on to lately, everything I’d believed was solid and real in my life was on shifting sand, and at this moment I needed to focus.
We started back to the farm and I let him carry the conversation. My mind was too busy processing the things he’d said. Sifting through the unfinished sentences and halting delivery that gave me the sense he knew more than he was sharing. Or had he designed it that way? To keep me off balance and whet my appetite? To draw me in? If so, it was a divisive technique designed to distance me from Callum. To make me question the relationship I thought we had and destroy my trust in him. Or maybe I was overthinking it? The curse of the analyst was to overanalyse everything and create shadows and hidden motives that sometimes weren’t there.
The paranoia of the professional inquisitor. Maybe everything he was warning me about was true and he genuinely cared?
‘So I’ve given notice on the flat in Salford Quays,’ he was saying. ‘Can’t see I’ll be coming back in the foreseeable future. There’s too much work back in London at the moment.’ He laughed. ‘Unless they’ve found a body in your basement while we’ve been away? That would keep me busy for a while.’
28 September
Kingsberry Farm
Thankfully there were no corpses in my basement or anywhere else for that matter, and the team were leaving by the time we got back. Callum waited by his open car door when he saw me.
‘I hope you didn’t upset George?’ I heard the serrated tone in my voice but couldn’t stop it.
It wasn’t lost on Callum either and he shot a look across my shoulder to James who had hung back. I wasn’t sure what was irritating me the most. The fact that he automatically attributed my mood to the time I’d spent with James, or the fact that he might be right?
‘He wasn’t home,’ Callum said. ‘His door was unlocked and there’d been a fire in the grate. The Land Rover was on the yard with the keys in, but no sign of him. Looked like he’d just gone out on the farm somewhere.’
That was typical of George. ‘He never locks his doors.’
Callum looked down at me as I stood by the car. ‘If you give me his mobile number, I can call him.’
‘He doesn’t own one. I’m amazed he even has a landline. I hope he’s not going to come back to a mess.’ I sounded irritable. I couldn’t help it – I was.
His expression was a mixture of exasperation and hurt that I was being like this with him. He kept glancing behind me to James, who I knew without looking, was watching us from the doorway.
‘No mess. We left a copy of the warrant on his kitchen table so he knows we’ve been. I left a card with the direct number for the enquiry team, so he can call us if he needs to.’
‘No Laundy blades or spare wombs lying around then?’ I really couldn’t help myself.
Callum sighed and got back in his car.
‘If you need anything, Jo, you know where I am.’ He sounded resigned and tired, but I was being too bloody-minded to back off. Fuming as much at myself as him, I turned and walked back to the house.
28 September, evening – Kingsberry Farm
The press were in a feeding frenzy. Apparently, in the early hours of the previous day, Sky News had received a call, purporting to be from Jack himself. He’d claimed responsibility for all three murders and gave information only the killer would know, such as taking Anne’s womb – a fact the police had held back.
All the news channels were carrying the story now and the ticker tape banner at the bottom of the screen updated hourly.
Hoyle’s face stared back at me from every TV channel, alongside the assistant chief constable. The press briefings assured the public that every resource was being given to the enquiry and that the major investigation team were working round the clock.
The murders had inevitably drawn comparisons with the Yorkshire Ripper. In this county, the press couldn’t resist citing that history. But it was an uncomfortable association the police didn’t want to encourage.
The newspapers too were full of the murders in every gory detail, with journalists hungry to track down anyone who knew the victims – no matter how tenuous the connection.
The dedicated press officer walked a very fine line between feeding a hungry press pack enough information to keep the public informed and encourage witnesses to come forward, and holding back vital facts that might compromise the investigation.
I was happy to lie low and stay away from locations where the press were gathered, which now included all three murder sites, as well as the Fordley practice and the police station. I was thankful I’d walked the Hanbury Street scene before it had become a place of such morbid fascination.
It wasn’t lost on me that it was on exactly the same date that Victorian Jack had sent his ‘Dear boss’ letter to the Central News Agency in London in 1888. That letter had been signed ‘Jack the Ripper’, giving him his legendary name.
Our Jack was obviously a man of his time, using the power of twenty-four-hour news to capture for himself the global infamy spawned by his predecessor.
So far he was sticking to the timetable in every detail and I had no reason to suppose that would change for the anniversary of the ‘double event’ in just two days’ time.
29 September
Kingsberry Farm
I sipped my tea and looked out of the office window as Harvey bounded around outside.
It was cooler, with glowering grey skies that weren’t helping my mood.
I’d heard nothing from Callum and whilst the logical part of my mind reasoned that was down to the pace of the investigation and the hundreds of actions being generated by HOLMES, I couldn’t get James’s remarks out of my mind.
I instinctively felt a cold breeze blowing through our relationship. Callum was distancing himself and I reasoned it was because he didn’t trust me anymore.
I looked at my desk and the endless printouts I’d run of possible suspects from my clinical files. None of the profiles fitted Jack.
As I turned back to the view, my thoughts returned to Martha. There was something in our conversation that didn’t fit. An inconsistency that was nagging at me. Somehow I knew there was a clue in something she’d said, but I just couldn’t get hold of it.
I decided to do what I always did at times like this. Walk. Aimlessly and endlessly to clear my mind of clutter and talk myself along a logical, rational timeline. Going back over my conversations with Martha. Line by line. Moment by moment. Hoping that something would click into place.
Harvey ran ahead, stopping every few hundred yards to look back and make sure I was there. But my mind was elsewhere.
I was recalling my interview with Martha. Replaying it in as much detail as I could. The light, the sound, the smell of the hospital room. The grey stains of tears plopping onto her hospital gown.
She had talked about how much John had protected her. How
he had helped her get off drugs and then she’d shown me his method of ‘stroking’ her to relax her during the rattles of her withdrawal.
I focused on a point in the distance as I replayed what she’d said. It felt like I was reaching in the air for the string of a balloon floating just out of reach above my head. It was there, I could feel it. That missing piece. What was it?
I closed my eyes and listened to her small voice. The halting delivery as she relayed what John had done to help her kick the habit…
‘Yes, John did it… He said he could and he did. I don’t take nothin’ no more…’
My fingers stretched higher. I was almost touching it.
‘Yes, John did it… it worked…’
Mentally I strained to reach it. My fingertips brushed the string, focusing hard to recall every detail. Every nuance, every word.
Then I got hold of it!
‘He had to repress me ’n everything, he said he could and he did… it worked.’
That was it!
My eyes flew open as Harvey pushed his cold nose into my hand, nudging me in frustration at my lack of attention.
‘Repress!’ She said he ‘repressed’ her!
That had been the piece that jarred. At the time it meant nothing and now it meant everything.
Martha’s IQ was that of an immature ten-year-old and her vocabulary reflected it. Repression wasn’t a word she would use or even understand. Even if that had been the nature of her relationship with John, she wouldn’t have had the ability to vocalise it that way.
She had misused a word she’d heard but not understood, mixing up the context. She hadn’t meant that he’d repressed her. But if she’d meant something else entirely, then it unlocked it all.
It gave me the answer to the questions that had haunted me. How could the killer know what had been said in that room between Martha and me? How could ‘Jack’, the alter ego locked in Martha’s mind, come out to become a flesh and blood killer and commit the murders only Martha and I knew we had discussed? How could ‘Jack’ the phantom be made real?
I virtually raced back to the farm with Harvey at my heels. Barely aware of him, of anything, except the urgency to test my theory that unlocked the heart of what we were dealing with and maybe even the clue to ‘Jack’s’ true identity.
29 September, evening
I scanned my notes on repressed memory retrieval, the basis of my first book.
Lister had said what a good hypnotic subject Martha was. When John used to ‘stroke’ her to help her through her withdrawal, he was obviously inducing a hypnotic state.
Was it possible that while under hypnosis – in the fragile and vulnerable mental state that Martha’s drug withdrawal had created – John had gone even further?
I barely noticed the clattering of dishes coming from the kitchen as Jen cleared up after supper. Closing my eyes instead, I mentally replayed my conversation with Lister.
‘She was tormented by memories of a period when she believed she’d committed serious crimes. She was having nightmares and believed they were flashbacks to real events… She thought she had committed murder… more than once. She thought she had stabbed other prostitutes.’
‘Making progress?’ I was so deep in thought, Jen made me jump.
I indicated the chair opposite my desk and Jen sat down. I paused for a moment, trying to get my thoughts into some kind of logical order before pitching my theory.
‘Remember the Gail Dobson case?’
‘How could I forget? The woman was a bunny boiler.’ She frowned as she remembered the events a few years before that had landed us in the middle of a legal mess. ‘It was a complete shit-storm!’
‘That about sums it up,’ I agreed.
Gail Dobson had been a psychotherapist treating a businessman for anxiety and depression. During their sessions, she supposedly uncovered repressed memories of sexual abuse he’d committed against his daughter when she’d been just a child. The daughter was in her twenties by this time and the revelations had come as a complete shock to her as well as to the rest of his family.
‘That was actually the first time we used Fosters,’ Jen recalled. ‘Marissa put us on to them when Dobson tried to sue us!’
‘It wasn’t James Turner, though. It was before his time at the firm. Can’t remember the guy we used. Think he’s retired now, anyway.’
I’d initially been called in by the man’s wife and daughter, who were adamant that the abuse had never happened. But the businessman was so wracked with guilt once the memories had been ‘unlocked’ that he’d made a full confession to the police. Gail Dobson had given police statements that supported his claim.
We’d become engaged in a battle between the poor man’s own confession and the ‘victims’ – who were fighting to prove his innocence.
I assessed him privately and the report I produced meant the CPS dropped the case before it went to court. The family took out a private prosecution against Dobson, but she didn’t go down without a fight and actually tried to discredit me during the case. She lost and was eventually struck off.
For months afterwards, we got anonymous hate mail and a sustained vitriolic campaign on social media.
‘With the help of Marissa’s technical wizard, we eventually traced the hate campaign back to Dobson and handed the case over to the police.’
‘I remember it, but what’s this got to do with anything?’ Jen frowned.
‘I think the boyfriend installed false memories into Martha. To make her believe she’d committed those murders in Manchester,’ I said, as if that explained everything.
‘Why?’ Jen asked, going straight to the heart of it. ‘To what end?’
I might be the clinician, but Jen had spent her entire career working with some of the best forensic psychologists in the field. She may not have the qualification, but she knew more about the subject than some ‘specialists’ I’d met in my time.
I valued her input and her opinion, which was why I bounced my theories off her. If she thought I was wide of the mark, she’d tell me and, just as she had now, she would pin me down until my logic passed her scrutiny. It was a great method for testing our argument before presenting evidence at trial. We’d perfected it over the years and I knew if my theory stood up to Jen’s devil’s advocacy, then I could confidently face any QC in court.
‘For some reason, “Jack” wants me as a central player in all this, which is why he’s staged his crimes here and not in London. I think Martha was the bait to draw me in.’
‘So he’d planned all along to leave her at Westwood Park? And called us to make sure you knew she was there?’
I nodded, watching her expression as she thought it all through, testing it from all the angles.
‘Lister said they’d tried to regress her back to the time in Manchester,’ I carried on. ‘But every time they got near, it triggered her severe abreaction.’
‘So?’ Jen probed.
‘So, when he installed the false memory, he put a tripwire in there so that as soon as a clinician tried to probe into those events using the usual techniques, she’d freak out and they’d not get past it. By calling me and getting me to see her, he was banking on the fact that I would be able to bypass the abreaction and uncover the “repressed memory” of her “crimes”.’
‘Rewind,’ Jen said. ‘So far so good. He’s baited the hook with an intriguing case that gets you to see her at Westwood. Let’s say you’re right and he’s installed a tripwire to trigger an abreaction that probably only you can bypass. But you said Martha was like a child. I mean, would she have had the mental capacity to pull it off?’
‘That’s just the point, Jen. Martha wasn’t complicit in the deceit any more than our businessman was. She wasn’t trying to pull anything off – she truly believed she’d committed the murders, just like the businessman was convinced he’d abused his daughter. You remember how he was after that whole thing, Jen? Even after I’d proved to him that it had never happened – he
clung on to it. He needed months of reconstructive therapy to rationalise that what he’d experienced was “false memory installation” by Dobson.’
‘Hmm – like brainwashing.’
‘In the Dobson case, the father was a highly suggestible subject,’ I said, looking at my notes on the laptop. ‘As a teenager, he’d fantasised about having sex with young girls. He wasn’t a paedophile – it was adolescent fantasy. He never acted on it and he outgrew it. But when the therapist “uncovered” the event, he was convinced he might have given in to those early sexual drives.’
‘Felt he could have been capable of it?’
‘Exactly. There are three factors needed to successfully install false memory,’ I said, as much to run through it for my benefit as hers. ‘The subject has to perceive the event as plausible, just like our businessman did because of his fantasies. Then the installer has to make them believe it’s likely to have happened. And thirdly, they have to interpret the event as actual memories, which can be done by an authoritative figure claiming to know it actually happened. In his case, that was Dobson.’
‘Were those ingredients present in Martha’s case?’
‘Yes. The boyfriend picked Susie Scott to groom her for the role as “Jack’s” first victim. He changed her name. Exploited her vulnerability while she was in withdrawal from heroin, and her memory lapses fell right into his hands. He installed false memories of “murders” she’d committed. Lister said the boyfriend was an authority figure to her. She looked up to him. If he’d said he knew she’d done it, then she would believe him. She knew it was plausible or even likely she’d stabbed someone to death because she’d been arrested for stabbing her pimp, so it would have been easy to manipulate her. He created himself as her rescuer, who would get her off drugs, get her away from Manchester and cover up her crimes. Give her a new life here in Fordley.’
The Murder Mile Page 21