by John Mead
‘Oh, that’s for sure,’ Julie couldn’t help feeling downhearted at the thought of having to speak in court about her relationship with Alima. She felt deeply embarrassed and annoyed at herself for being taken in by the woman, ‘she’s a manipulative bitch and her testimony will be convincing.’
‘No one blames you for being taken in by her,’ Merry said, thinking of his own involvement with Alima, ‘she manipulated everyone to get what she wanted, Jenny in particular. In practice she nearly got away with it, Alima was unlucky it all unravelled as it did.’
‘True,’ Swift confirmed, ‘another session or two of Hassan directing Jenny’s interview and I think we would have settled on just charging her. Our current psychiatric advisor for Jenny won’t be drawn on a diagnosis but says that even if Cowan has multiple personalities he believes Hassan was acting to confuse them. Hassan had years of experience in manipulating Jenny and her various personalities when they were in Edinburgh. She would have gotten Jenny to confess then pushed her buttons to send her into a rage so she couldn’t tell us of Hassan’s involvement.’
‘All so she could get a book deal,’ Merry stated, half incredulously, though knowing that Hassan’s motives had more to do with her humiliation over Lynsey’s rejection. ‘She’s a real chancer and simply used the opportunity the killings gave her to develop another book. I suppose a second best seller would have confirmed her reputation and set her up for a long time, people have certainly killed for less.’ Merry felt a sudden stirring inside him, sick at the thought of such a tawdry, mercenary motive for the deaths of such young women. A trade between so much grief and an easy life for the woman he’d been so attracted to, it turned his stomach. ‘I can’t help thinking she believes her own lies, so she’ll almost certainly plead not guilty.’
‘Her motives are likely to be more complex than financial gain,’ Swift disagreed with Matthew, whom he thought tended to an Occam’s razor approach when determining solutions, ‘I don’t think we’ll ever fully understand the relationship between the two but their anti-social personalities seemed to gel and feed off each other, a mix of need and abuse.’
‘Maybe,’ Merry half-heartedly agreed, no one knew better than he Alima’s need for approval but also her need to hurt and control others, attributes that typified her love making.
‘The psychiatrist said their lives would have been very different if they’d never met, this all started in Mallaig,’ Swift continued, though the more he thought about the pair’s motives the less sympathetic he became. Anger, jealousy and greed he understood and could rationalise, but this, almost motiveless crime where the victims were collateral damage to the clash between two warped personalities, simply left him cold.
‘What about Jenny?’ Lukula asked, as the other two fell silent.
‘Her defence will try for a diminished responsibility plea, but CPS are amassing counter opinions,’ Swift told her. ‘Seems that having DID doesn’t mean she is incapable of stopping herself from acting as she did. Cowan’s traumatic early childhood may have caused her other personalities to emerge but she was also a person full of rage, a sociopath, and often knowingly acted unlawfully. Whatever is determined in the end she will be under lock and key for a very long time. A least she will be spared having regular sessions with Hassan, doing her best to unravel the mind of a killer.’ Swift sucked in his breath not finding his own words particularly amusing, he added, though without enmity, ‘What a sick fuck that woman is.’
‘In a perverse way,’ Merry philosophised, ‘that makes Jackie our fourth victim.’
‘How’s that?’ Lukula wanted to know. ‘She’s still alive isn’t she?’
‘But incarcerated for a crime she didn’t commit,’ Merry explained, ‘I suspect that won’t bother the likes of John and Leanne, nor the others, but for Jackie who is social and likes to go out it will be hell.’
The other two pondered this for a moment before Julie asked what was still uppermost on her mind, ‘I suppose I will have to explain my relationship with Alima in court?’
‘Prosecution will want to use it to show she had ample opportunity to confide what she knew to the police, in your case someone she should have been able to implicitly trust. In other words, that she wilfully hid the truth,’ Swift smiled reassuringly knowing Julie would worry as no one wanted their private life paraded in court, certainly not as part of a murder trial. ‘I wouldn’t worry, it will be Doctor Hassan being painted as the villain in this and CPS have no worries that your relationship in any way undermined the case. Fortunately for Matthew it doesn’t look as if his brief liaison with Hassan will be used by either side, doesn’t reflect well for the defence or prosecution,’ he explained with a sarcastic smile, enjoying Merry’s discomfort at his words. ‘It’s the chief who’s in the shit on this one.’
‘The chief superintendent’s personal recommendation allowed Hassan access to the case,’ Merry pointed out, ‘given the doctor was involved in the murders it doesn’t look too good.’
‘Not exactly a commendation of her judgement,’ Swift turned to Lukula, ‘but the worst thing is that, as a result, all her initiatives are on indefinite hold. Which means we are stuck with Matthew as part of the team for a while longer.’
‘Well that’s pretty crap,’ Julie stated, with as straight a face as she could muster.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all those people I have worked with in the past: the many dedicated police officers, mental health care and support workers, teachers and head teachers whose stories and the work they do with vulnerable youngsters and adults have inspired this novel. The work of those in the public sector may not get the recognition it deserves in terms of monetary reward, despite the occasional cynical praise from politicians or the see-sawing commentary of the media as the under-resourced services teeter from one headline to the next. However, for those individuals they help and support these services are usually the only lifeline available. I thank them for their collective service.
I would also like to thank my wife, Susan, for her comments and suggestions on reading the draft versions of this book.
Note
I have used Dissociative Identity Disorder, DID, as a plot device within a fictional setting, the reaction portrayed of those encountering this mental health condition is more realistic of the real world than the depiction of the illness itself. Diagnosis of the condition and its causes is highly controversial. I have, therefore, trodden a cautious line in detailing its causes in the character of Jenny Cowan and the role her therapist has played in further twisting Jenny’s personalities.
If you would like to discover more about DID, including its more controversial aspects, there are innumerable books to be found, both academic and autobiographical works. However, as somewhere to start my own recommendations would be:-
The Dissociative Identity Disorder Sourcebook by Deborah Bray Haddock
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (16 Sept. 2001). ISBN-10: 0737303948
All Of Me: My incredible true story of how I learned to live with the many personalities sharing my body by Kim Noble & Jeff Hudson
Publisher: Piatkus (6 Oct. 2011). ISBN-10: 0749955902
Recovery is my best revenge: my experience of trauma, abuse and dissociative identity disorder (Collected Essays Volumes 1 & 2) by Carolyn Spring
Publisher: Carolyn Spring Publishing (1 Mar. 2016). ISBN-10: 0992961939
Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case by Debbie Nathan
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Export (12 Jun. 2012). ISBN-10: 1439168288
If you enjoyed this
book, why not try
The Hanging Women,
also by John Mead.
ooks on Archive.