The Last Witness

by John Matthews

  ‘What’s that?’

  Mundy was where he wanted. Teed up and ready for the swing through. ‘I’m worried that Donatiens isn’t going to last through the programme. Only three days in, and he’s missing his fiancée like hell. The fact that he hasn’t been able to speak to her has hit him hard.’

  ‘Withdrawal symptoms – happens a lot. He’ll probably get over it in a week or two.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Him wanting to speak to her is all tied in to a sort of guilt complex over what he’s done. He feels the need to desperately explain that this has nothing to do with betraying her father; that this is all just about Roman and survival. He feels that her father was good to him, and he doesn’t want it seen that he’s let her and her father down, betrayed them. And for good measure he wants to throw in that he still loves her. Maybe he sees that as the final noble gesture: “I still love you, but look what I’m sacrificing for it.” And if he’s not going to get the chance to pass that on, get closure on the whole caboodle with her and her father, then I think the guilt’s just going to work deeper. We’ll end up with a problem – he won’t last the course.’ Michel’s voice was doom-laden as he hit the last words. Part had been passed on earlier by Chac, part he’d filled in and embellished, but hopefully the joins were seamless. Only twenty-four hours sitting on the fence, and once again he was back to steering events where he wanted them to go. The fear of possibly losing grip of the Lacailles was again running through him like raw voltage.

  ‘So, what’s the solution?’

  ‘I think there’s a way of using this situation now with his birth mother to our advantage. Killing two birds with one stone.’ Michel explained his thinking and Mundy stayed mostly silent, confirming only a couple of small points. At the end he was back again to ‘I don’t know,’ but Michel sensed that Mundy was warming to the idea, his earlier reservations were fast dying. He was eighty-percent there.

  ‘As soon as you know from Donatiens whether or not he finally wants to see her, let me know.’ Mundy exhaled like a deflating tyre. ‘I’ll give you my decision then.’

  Except for a couple of times when Lowndes looked down and shook his head, his eyes hardly left Elena’s as she ran through the whole sorry saga of the past weeks.

  ‘You mean the police are seeking you now, as we speak?’

  ‘Yes. The last four days – since we left England.’

  ‘Oh boy.’ Lowndes ruffled his hair, lightly clutching at it. ‘Some mess.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Seeing the weight of problems she’d carried with Lorena suddenly shift to Lowndes’ shoulders, she felt the need to apologise. ‘But I just didn’t see any other way through. Ryall had blocked all the routes – if I’d turned my back, she’d have been trapped there. And if I hadn’t made out I was Lorena’s mother, you probably wouldn’t have seen her. She’s the only one you’d take authority from.’

  ‘Right.’ Lowndes looked at her levelly. ‘One truth at least.’

  Elena looked away awkwardly for a second, then gestured towards the session couch. ‘And as things turned out, in the end I was right to take that action. Vindicated.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Vindicated.’ Lowndes chuckled nervously. He was quickly back to ruffling, trying to clear his thoughts. Then stopped abruptly, looking up again. ‘Look – what you’ve just told me, you never told me. Right? Otherwise it might be seen that I’ve been an accomplice in this too.’

  Elena raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘I don’t see how that’s such a problem now. I’ve got to contact the police in any case, hand Lorena over and tell all about Ryall. Given that my reasons for taking her were founded, I don’t see that they’re going to pursue it. And certainly Ryall won’t be in any position to press charges.’

  ‘True. But… but that’s not the main problem now. This really all goes back to my first concerns about False Memory Syndrome.’

  ‘What sort of problem?’ With Lowndes’ hesitance and his eyes suddenly having trouble meeting hers directly, Elena got the first warning signs that this was no light problem. One last hair-ruffle and Lowndes leant forward with forearms rested on his knees to explain.

  He’d mentioned False Memory Syndrome at the outset of the sessions with Lorena, and particularly before this last session now involving hypnosis.

  ‘The reason that I emphasised it again is that hypnosis is seen as highly prone to suggestion. That’s why I was reluctant to use it, particularly in a potential child abuse case. But, as you pointed out, it was likely the only way to draw Lorena out. And you were proven right on that front. We succeeded there, and we have every right to feel happy with that success.’

  Lowndes paused and drew a long breath. ‘But unfortunately it could all too easily end up a hollow victory.’ Lowndes went on to explain a case a couple of years back involving a close colleague in Montreal. A similar child abuse claim where the main evidence was gained on the psychiatrist’s couch. The father screamed ‘False Memory Syndrome’, said that the psychiatrist had planted the idea in the child’s mind, and he got off. ‘There’s been a half-dozen or more such cases nation-wide the past five years, and all of those just involved conventional therapy. With hypnosis, where possible suggestion is already seen as a strong factor – one of the reasons in fact why it has become outmoded – the chances of the FMS flag being raised are even higher. It depends how hot on the ball the stepfather is – this Mr Ryall?’

  ‘He’s a pretty high-profile businessman,’ Elena said vacantly. It probably came across as a surrender flag, but all Elena felt was numb. She was still assimilating what Lowndes was saying: no clear thoughts yet either way. Then she remembered from the adoption files: ‘Oh, and he used to be a barrister.’

  ‘Oh.’ The single exclamation was like a pistol-shot, echoing and ricocheting round the room: No chance, no chance, no chance.

  In the silence following, as the prospects of a doomed case against Ryall settled like a grey shroud where only moments before Elena had seen nothing but bright hope, it suddenly dawned on Elena that Ryall had probably seen this last contingency from the outset. The chances of his secret being discovered were slim enough, but this was the final safeguard: even if it was, he’d known all along that FMS would be his get-out. All of her efforts and the dramas of the past weeks had in the end been for nothing. He’d covered every possible option. Controlling men. Story of her life.

  ‘No, no!’ She shook her head. That couldn’t be the final note; she couldn’t let it be. ‘Surely Lorena can’t just go back to him. The police can’t possibly let that happen.’

  ‘No. But you probably know how these things works as much as me. Lorena will go to foster parents for a while until this whole wrangle is sorted out. But I wouldn’t hold your breath on this one going against Ryall. She’ll probably end up having to go back to him – and the best you can do is try and complicate the legal process as much as possible to delay that inevitability.’

  ‘Delay?’ Elena jumped in. Only moments ago Lorena in her mind’s eye had been free of Ryall forever, now she was reduced to desperate bargaining for time. ‘How long do you think we could play things along?’

  ‘A good lawyer should be able to spin things out for a year, eighteen months. But don’t forget Ryall is going to be pushing just as hard to cut that time back, short-circuit things. And I don’t think you’ll have helped your case any by taking Lorena from her home in order to bring her here. Abduction, probably arguing that the evidence shouldn’t even be considered because it was gained under forced, criminal circumstances. If Ryall’s lawyer push all the right buttons, they could get it thrown out in a preliminary hearing within only a few months.’

  ‘Right. I see.’ Elena blinked slowly. The abduction she recognized as an obvious strike against, but she hadn’t realized that it might also get the main evidence thrown out. The chances of nailing Ryall were slipping further away by the minute. She’d hardly had a chance from the start, let alone the half-crazed woman she was now: her nerves shot from the stream of valeri
an pills, the pressure-cooker anxiety of running hide-and-seek from the police, and only a few hours sleep grabbed in days. She felt strangely pathetic, that somehow she could no longer get anything right: wrong about her father, and while she’d been right overall about Ryall, she’d read everything else wrong; in the end she’d been ineffectual, unable to change anything. Michel Chenouda would probably phone her that night and tell her ‘no go’ on that front as well. Dead-ends at every turn.

  Maybe they should be glad of small mercies: six months respite, perhaps even a year or more. But the thought of Lorena having to go back to Ryall after that time, fully knowing that he was molesting her, was somehow even crueller, more unacceptable. She voiced that thought. ‘…I couldn’t possibly let her go back knowing that. I’d do again what I’ve done now – abduct her.’

  Lowndes shrugged awkwardly, glancing towards the reception room where Lorena waited on them. ‘The thing is, she doesn’t know that yet. It was all under hypnosis. And if the tapes were entered in-camera, she never would get to know. Unless of course you won the case.’

  Elena considered the option for only a second before discarding it. She shook her head, cradling with her left hand as she gently massaged her temples. Another secret hidden, more shadow games; already she’d spent too much of her life playing them.

  Seeing her so forlorn, the storm clouds settling heavy in her face, Lowndes felt the need to reach a hand out. She thought she’d reached the last hurdle, and now he’d suddenly put another half dozen in front of her. ‘Maybe I’ve painted too dark a picture, but I didn’t want you to get carried away with false hope. And that’s only how I see it from the Canadian perspective; things might be completely different in England. When you speak to the police, the best thing is get their view. They might well see a brighter and better way through.’

  Curiosity. In the end that’s what won through.

  Everything else all but cancelled out. On one hand the fact that she’d left him alone without any attempt at contact for all these years; on the other that she’d obviously gone to considerable trouble to make contact now: search agencies, the trip from England, finally the orphanage. She’d let him be given away, unforgivable; but then she’d been so young, the father domineering. Left to her and perhaps a couple of years older, it sounded like she wouldn’t have let him go.

  Chenouda said that she’d blotted it out, too painful. What did that mean? That she thought of him frequently but blotted it out? Or that she blotted it out from the start and rarely thought of him? How much thought, how much blotting out? With her work with the child agency, certainly it looked like the guilt had stayed with her. Thought, blotting out, guilt? With each passing minute that Georges pondered and paced on the safe-house veranda, the questions multiplied. He’d only get so far quizzing Chenouda; probably already he’d passed on most of what he knew. For the rest, the only way would be to meet her face to face.

  Then there were the many gaps to be filled in on his own life. One that already sat comfortably was knowing that Nicholas Stephanou wasn’t his real father. He’d always found it hard to accept that that spineless wonder, consumed only with burying his own misery at the bottom of a whisky bottle, selfishly and heartlessly giving him away to an orphanage so young – when he too was blinded by grief from the loss of his mother – could possibly be the same blood.

  His mother? But at the same time he’d revered what he thought was his mother: so beautiful, died so young. She too was a victim, just like him. He’d touch her photos longingly in the dark days in the orphanage, and dream about her. Think how nice it would be to feel her hug and hold him tight, feel the soft press of her lips against his cheek. Now too those fond memories would be sacrificed, and that he didn’t feel so comfortable about. In the balance. It was difficult.

  But the action of Nicholas Stephanou and the orphanage had left by far the biggest shadow on his life. His memory of Maria Stephanou had been little more than a fragment, fading fast with the years: in the end it was more what he hoped or imagined her to be like from her photos than the brief reality he recalled before the car accident.

  Shadows that plagued him for years with his second family – or was it now the third? – the Donatiens, Claude and Odette. They loved him, doted on him, but Claude Donatiens’ business ups and downs through the years meant that often things had to be cut lean. A small jobbing builder, whenever there was a property slide their own home fortunes slid with it.

  They weren’t able to have children of their own and there’d been another adoption planned, a baby sister for him, but in the end tight finances put pay to that too. But despite the see-saw problems, Claude Donatiens always managed to bravely smile his way through. He never let them drag him down, in any way overshadow his affection for him as a child, or hide in a bottle like Nicholas Stephanou; or at least he never showed it. Odette too was amazingly supportive throughout. She never balked or swayed from Claude’s side.

  Though it was many years before he saw those attributes as in any way positive. When the problems hit, his predominant fear was that once again he’d be given away. The financial pressure would crush Claude, or Odette would leave him because it was finally one crisis too many, and in the melee he’d be given away.

  Nicholas Stephanou and the orphanage had left him with deep-rooted insecurities that had hung over him most of his life. Even in his teens when abandonment no longer held the same threat, he still harboured resentment, viewed his stepparents’ problems with disdain. Probably what had made him so driven to end up in finance and banking. He wouldn’t make the same mistakes.

  That didn’t change until he’d been through his first yuppie years in banking and had a bellyful of shallow people who chased money to the exclusion of all else – including loved ones and family. Possibly they even viewed him as one of them, didn’t realize that to him family was vitally important, with the money mostly as a means to that end. It was only then that he finally started to appreciate his stepparents: despite their financial problems, they’d always put him first, kept the family bond strong. Now he’d seen the other side of the coin: money dividing families. Battles over estates and wills, money all too often taking pole position over a child’s welfare in divorce battles, or them cast aside and forgotten in the rush as one partner found a better financial match somewhere else.

  In comparison, Claude and Odette had suddenly shone through as heroes. Champions of how to survive business crises and still cling on, hold body and soul and family together. Most other men would have long ago been trampled under, but Claude had this amazing bounce-back quality; he’d have probably made a good spokesman at a small business survival conference. And with a little financial help and guidance from Georges, business had been good these past five years; perhaps that gentle touch on the rudder had been all that Claude needed all along.

  But still on occasions it was laid at his door that his attraction to the Lacailles was because of his own past family insecurities: that he saw in Jean-Paul a strength and security that had been lacking in both Nicholas Stephanou and Claude Donatiens.

  And all of that as a result of one abandonment – now there was meant to be two. Maybe that’s why the insecurity had wormed so deep: a part of him had always known that it had happened twice.

  Elena Waldren. He uttered her name on a slow breath, watched thoughtfully the vapour drift and disperse in the cool air. She could probably fill in a lot of the gaps in his life, shades that had never been fully clear. But having spent so long coming to terms with what he thought was his life to date, he wasn’t sure he was ready to have it upended yet again. He was curious, curious as hell. But was he ready for the Pandora’s Box that might be opened up?

  He was still pacing and rolling the pros and cons on his vapoured breath when twelve minutes later Chac knocked on the glass behind him.

  Chac waved him in as he slid back the veranda door. ‘Michel on the line for you.’

  THIRTY-TWO

  John Lowndes leant forward a
nd stopped the tape is it came to the end.

  At the other end of the line, DS Crowley stayed silent a moment longer before he asked whether that was it. The wavering in his voice was discernible. The tape had unsettled him. ‘Is that all of the session?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, that’s it.’

  Elena had asked Lowndes to set up a conference call to play the tape, so that he was there for confirmation and any psychiatric related questions she couldn’t answer. Crowley merely clarified a few points about the total number of sessions and the dates, asked if he, Dr Lowndes, could confirm that what he’d just played was an accurate recording of his last session with Lorena Ryall – then asked to be put back on to Elena.

  Elena had already flagged Lowndes’ concerns with FMS, now she explained in more detail. ‘…Now I don’t know how that sits with you, Sergeant Crowley – but it sits very badly with me. In fact it makes my flesh crawl thinking that in the end Lorena might have to go back to Ryall. So please tell me some good news.’

  ‘I don’t know. In a way what Dr Lowndes says is right, and things run pretty much the same here as Canada – there’s at least a couple of similar cases that I can recall. But that by no means makes it an impossible or hopeless case – just that the odds of successful prosecution might only be thirty percent or so. If we could get anything else, say like Mikaya Ryall coming forward. Some extra testimony that wasn’t purely gained under hypnosis – that could increase the chances.’

  ‘My husband went to see her.’ Elena sighed heavily. ‘She was a stone wall, didn’t want to even talk about it. And she might be just the same a Lorena – doesn’t recall anything while awake.’

  ‘True.’ Crowley was at the same time filling in some of his own gaps: he’d been curious what had happened at Gordon Waldren’s meeting with Mikaya. ‘But an official visit from us and some extra pressure might just open her up. It’s worth a try.’