by Ann Gosslin
Vidor stuffed his hands into the pockets of his coat and tilted his head back. ‘Pity there’s cloud cover. I’ve been tracking the lunar passage and if it clears up, we’ll be treated to a glorious harvest moon tomorrow night.’ He pointed to a distant peak. ‘Pending a freak astronomical disturbance, it should rise right over there.’
‘Yes, well, I’ll leave you now.’ Gessen gave Vidor a quizzical look before hurrying away. He paused once to glance back, but Vidor hadn’t moved from his spot by the fountain. He checked his watch. Half past nine, and as the minutes ticked past, with still no word, he began to feel truly ill. The knot in his stomach tightened, and his skin felt feverish. In the privacy of his chalet, he flicked on the lights and sloshed brandy into a glass.
Normally, he waited until the weekend to indulge, preferring to keep his mind sharp, but he was sorely in need of fortification. The brandy burned his throat, but in a moment worked its magic, blunting his jangled nerves. He filled the glass again and carried it to the window. A flash of light in the mountains, followed by another, meant the search was still on. His body tensed as he waited for the phone to ring. Sipping his drink slowly, he counselled himself to breathe. When the call came in, he would need a clear head.
Fernanda, perhaps sensing his distress, rose from her bed in a corner of the kitchen and nosed around his feet. He absently stroked her head and gave her a biscuit before unfolding a detailed map of the grounds. A second printout contained a summary of the patients’ movements in the past twenty-four hours. The scattering of coloured dots, accompanied by a time stamp, corresponded to each of the patients. In a single glance it was possible to follow Ismail’s movements from the time he woke up to the moment he’d disappeared. Gessen picked up a pencil and attempted to connect the dots, as if it were a puzzle meant to be solved.
At seven that morning, Ismail was in his chalet, and at ten minutes past eight, in the dining hall for breakfast. He spent nearly an hour in the meditation hall, followed by a visit to the Zen garden, then back to his room. His last known location was a few minutes before two in the afternoon, where he’d been tracked close to the edge of the property, and near a copse of fir and spruce. A single wooden bench on a clear patch of land afforded a magnificent view to the west. A lovely place to take in the sunset, if one was so inclined.
That was the last dot. Then… nothing. As if he’d vanished into the air.
A quick survey of the other patients’ movements revealed nothing unusual. Babette was in her chalet, then the swimming pool, followed by Movement & Meditation in the afternoon. He counted the dots in the meditation hall. Three. Along with Ismail, both Libby and Vidor were missing, but that wasn’t unusual. Vidor came up with every excuse possible to miss M&M. Gessen traced the series of yellow dots with his finger. Vidor was in his room when he should have been at the session, where he appeared to have stayed until he left the chalet for dinner at six thirty. What time was it when he bumped into Vidor in the sculpture garden? He couldn’t remember now. The terror of losing a patient had clouded his mind.
He finished off the brandy and massaged the back of his neck. Where could Ismail have gone? He switched off the lights in the chalet and peered at the dark shrubbery through the window and the jagged teeth of the mountains. In a moment of desperation, he began to pray. Not to the god he no longer believed in, but to whatever deities might be dwelling in the glades. Please bring him back to us.
Alive.
28
‘We’ll be in the other room today.’ Gessen ushered Vidor into the small adjoining room that was furnished with a single straight-back chair and the black leather couch. With still no news of Ismail, he’d had a sleepless night, reaching for his phone every few minutes to check that it was working. His eyes were gritty with fatigue. Even the effort to move the muscles in his face felt gargantuan. Up since dawn, he had again gone over the staff and patients’ movements from the day before. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, though it struck him as odd that Vidor had spent an unusual amount of time in his room.
‘Perhaps we should cancel,’ Vidor said, eyeing him intently. ‘You’re looking rather peaked.’
‘No, I’m perfectly fine.’ Gessen sat up straight. ‘A little trouble sleeping is all.’
‘Well, you’ll be pleased to hear that I slept like the proverbial rock,’ Vidor said, flexing his arms. ‘In spite of having taken a long nap yesterday afternoon.’ He breathed in through his nose. ‘All this fresh mountain air knocks me right out.’
Gessen’s smile felt like a grimace. He was in no condition to lead Vidor through a session. But until Ismail was found, what else could he do but continue as usual?
‘Did they find that old gent who went missing?’ Vidor twisted the ring on his finger.
‘Who? Oh, yes. Safe and sound.’ He forced himself to look Vidor in the eye, before asking him to lie down on the couch. Afraid he might crack at any moment, Gessen didn’t want Vidor’s keen eyes searching his face. Anyone with half an ounce of intelligence would see that something was wrong. At least in here, with Gessen safely seated out of view, while Vidor lay on the couch, he could hide from scrutiny.
‘The clock is ticking, you know,’ Vidor proclaimed as he stretched out. ‘Tick-tock.’
Gessen’s tongue, dry as an old shoe, cleaved to the roof of his mouth. What he wouldn’t give to retreat to a dark corner and shut out the world. His phone remained mute. Ursula had promised she’d come to him the moment there was news.
‘And which clock would that be?’
‘The deadline for my grant application.’ Vidor crossed his hands over his chest. ‘I’ve designed an exciting set of experiments to study sensory processing in synaesthetes. You know, those unusual individuals, rare as unicorns, who can describe the colour of numbers or the shape of sounds? Crossed wires in the brain, so to speak. One of the many mysteries of sensory perception.’ He laced his fingers together and closed his eyes. ‘If I miss the deadline, it will be a tragic loss for my lab.’
Gessen said nothing. Today, of all days, he was not in the mood to be cajoled and manipulated into releasing his obstinate patient from the clinic. If Vidor only knew how serious his situation was, he might be more willing to cooperate. But there was still a risk in telling Vidor he could be charged with manslaughter – or worse. Once aware of the sword hanging over his head, Vidor could resort to all kinds of tactics to dodge responsibility for his actions.
After their last session, in the innocent time before Ismail’s disappearance, Gessen had sent Vidor away with homework. He was to imagine himself as a young boy, still living with his family in Budapest. Sift through his memories and take note of anything that came to mind. No filtering. Whatever came up, he was to write it down. Today, Gessen planned to follow up on that memory exercise with a session of free association. A deep state of relaxation often revealed a spate of interesting connections and long-buried events.
‘Did you perform the exercise we talked about last time?’ With the touch of a button, Gessen adjusted the blinds until the room was in shadow.
Vidor made a noise in his throat that Gessen took as a yes.
‘It’s strange,’ Vidor said, after a lengthy pause. ‘I hadn’t expected to remember much, but the experience was fairly Proustian. So many things I’d long forgotten about bubbled right up to the surface.’
Gessen absently touched the phone in his pocket. Still no news. Blood from his pounding heart boomed in his ears.
‘Odd that I could have forgotten this one particular memory,’ Vidor was saying, ‘because it frightened me terribly as a child. For months, I was afraid to sleep in my own bed. So, I would creep into my parents’ room and stretch out on the floor, but they always woke up, and my mother carried me back to my room. She would help me check under the bed and in the cupboard, to prove there was nothing there.’
Gessen was all ears now. ‘What was it that frightened you?’
‘A strange man. I couldn’t have been more than four at the time. Ea
rly summer it must have been, as my mother wanted to buy apricots to make a tart, and she’d brought me with her to the market. I saw the man stepping into a trolley car going in the opposite direction, but when we got to the market, there he was, standing by the butcher shop. So he couldn’t have boarded that other trolley. Unless he was a magician – or had a twin.
‘After the market, my mother and I went into a teashop with an ornate ceiling and chandeliers. She said they made the best anise biscuits in the city. While my mother poured the tea, I dropped my napkin on the floor. When I bent to pick it up, I saw the trolley man seated at the next table. He turned his head and grinned at me, flashing a mouthful of blackened teeth. His milky eyes reminded me of dead fish. I shrieked in terror, and babbled to my mother about a dead man. I could smell his decaying body and see the strips of skin peeling off him like dried paint.’
Gessen waited as the silence thickened between them. What an interesting story. A scary man, so telling in the details. Was this sudden outpouring of memory the result of Ursula’s newest strategy? Suggesting to Vidor that he invent a fake childhood trauma to throw Gessen off the scent. A case of good cop, bad cop. An unsavoury tactic, Gessen believed, but at this point, trickery might be the only way to break the deadlock. And fake memory or not, buried in a lie was always a glimmer of truth. Even if the ‘scary man’ story was nonsense, it had come from the depths of Vidor’s subconscious, where the real problem, yet to be revealed, lurked in the shadows.
‘How frightened you must have been,’ Gessen said, pausing to look at his phone. Still no word. ‘Any idea who the man might be?’
The couch creaked as Vidor shifted his legs. ‘My mother said no one was there. But I saw him, and I couldn’t have imagined it, because I distinctly remember his smell. Like a rotting corpse.’
The tip of Gessen’s pencil scratched the notepad. Scary man, anise cookies, putrid smell.
‘It occurred to me,’ Vidor said, slowly, as if trying to give extra weight to his words, ‘that the sight of that man entering the hall in Copenhagen might have triggered my long-buried childhood memory. When I attacked that poor man – wholly unaware, of course – perhaps I was avenging my younger self against a similar man who’d terrorised me as a boy.’
Gessen suppressed a smile. Vidor’s ‘surprise epiphany’ was straight out of Psychology 101. ‘It’s an interesting theory,’ he said, with a note of gravity in his voice, ‘and something I’d like to pursue in greater depth at our next session, when we’ll attempt to get at the heart of what that man represents in your psyche. Age regression analysis might be just the thing for teasing out the details of that particular memory.’
His palms were damp with sweat. Still no word about Ismail. He checked his phone to be sure it was switched on.
Vidor sat upright and beamed.
How easy it was for Gessen to read his thoughts: That Dr Lindstrom sure is a genius. A brilliant idea to tell Dr Gessen exactly what he wants to hear. All done and dusted. In a week’s time I’ll be back in Cambridge.
It was time to burst his bubble.
‘I hadn’t wanted to show you before,’ Gessen said, scraping back his chair. ‘But I believe you’re ready to see for yourself what happened in Copenhagen. With your childhood memories beginning to surface, the face of the man you attacked might remind you of someone from your past.’
Vidor’s chin jerked up. No wonder he felt skittish, Gessen thought, as he eyed him closely. With unusual skill, he’d managed to sidestep any acknowledgment of the violent assault that had landed him in Gessen’s clinic. Seeing that video would certainly come as a shock. It might even release the storm of pent up emotions sure to be lurking under the surface of Vidor’s cool and courtly façade. And who could say where that might lead? He would have to tread with care.
Gessen beckoned Vidor to follow him into his office. ‘I’ve got the video of the ceremony on my computer. Why don’t we have a look at it now?’
29
The shriek of the telephone jolted him awake. As the news filtered through Gessen’s brain, a darkness, terrifying as the shadow of a manticore, threatened to choke him, and the bitter taste of bile rose in his throat.
Ismail was dead.
Mountain Rescue had found him at the bottom of a deep crevasse not more than fifty metres from the clinic’s northern boundary. His neck had broken in the fall. As soon as the local police and coroner were finished, they would strap Ismail’s body to a stretcher and haul him up the mountain. Gessen had passed a restless night, slipping in and out of disturbing dreams. Twice he’d lurched from the bed to pray to whomever might be listening that the boy was found alive. Now, with the immutable fact of Ismail’s death, he dropped his head in his hands.
With the clumsy gait of an accident victim in shock, he stumbled into the bathroom and splashed his face with cold water. Staring back at him from the mirror was his father’s face, ravaged by cancer. Not his real father, a man he’d scarcely known, but the taciturn man who’d raised him as his own son, concealing Gessen’s origins as his mother wished. It wasn’t the cancer that killed his adoptive father in the end, however. Not long after he’d received the news that nothing more could be done, his car plunged off an icy road in the Dolomites. A timely accident. Or was it suicide? He would never know. Both fathers, long dead. Their disappearance from his life should have set him free, but such was not his fate. The two men lived on in his blood and bones. And ever since, he’d carried their ghosts on his back, and with them the long trail of the dead.
All he had left were his two surnames, one given at birth, the other later bestowed upon him, as if meant to wipe out the original sin. He’d seen those two names written together only once, on a memorial to the dead in a village in Baden-Württemberg. He’d come across it while walking in the Black Forest, not long after he discovered who he was. Stunned that a small village could furnish such an endless list of names, all snuffed out in the camps. As he read down the columns, he’d been startled to see, nearly side by side, the name he’d been given at birth, and the later one, Gessen, from his adoptive parents. A monstrous pairing. Together in life, joined in death. After falling to his knees, he’d vomited his lunch in the dirt.
And now, the reckoning had come. A patient under his care, a talented young man with a bright future ahead of him, lay bloodied and broken at the bottom of a ravine. He had failed before to ease a patient’s suffering or to help them flourish. But not once had a patient died on his watch.
He dried his face and dragged a comb through his hair. The family must be contacted at once, and he would have to inform the staff and patients. With one of their number dead, and the police asking intrusive questions, the calm, healing atmosphere of the clinic would be torn to shreds.
* * *
Gessen jumped at the knock on his office door. Ursula slipped inside, looking as rumpled and miserable as he felt. Her skin was dull, and her hair bundled hastily in a ponytail. In her tired eyes rose a question she had no need to ask.
When he tried to speak, it came out as a croak. ‘They’ve found him.’ It wasn’t necessary to say that Ismail was dead. The slump of his shoulders was enough. What next? He couldn’t think what to do, other than to lie down in the dark and pray it was all a bad dream. Together, they would have to coordinate the news of Ismail’s death, as well as cope with the ensuing fallout. As the clinic’s director, he would inform the family, while Ursula told the patients, one by one, with Gessen providing any follow-up if needed.
As they huddled together in the grey light, they agreed for now to say it was an accident. But the patients would surely wonder how it was possible for Ismail to have wandered off. They might even start questioning the security arrangements and worry about their own safety. Or – worse – demand the freedom to wander about as they chose, regardless of the risk.
Had Ismail been so desperate to return to his studies, and the girl in England he wished to marry, that he’d endanger his life? A bitter taste rose in his throat. Too
late to admit he’d been wrong to agree with Ismail’s father that his son needed treatment. The boy had been mildly depressed, there was no question of that, but his earlier, half-hearted attempt at suicide was more likely an act of desperation than a sign of severe illness. Locking him away from his studies and the girl he loved was cruel medicine. With each passing day, Ismail must have felt the mountains closing in on him, and the walls of his prison driving him to madness. Escape, whatever the cost, the only way out.
A contest of wills between father and son. An eternal tale that often ended in tragedy. Oedipus. Zeus. Ram. Had he learned nothing from the exploits of the ancients he’d devoured as a boy?
After Ursula left, Gessen switched on his computer and pulled up the map of the grounds. A dotted red line indicated the electronic periphery of the clinic. Normally, if a patient crossed this boundary, clearly marked by a chest-high wooden fence, an alarm would sound in the operations centre, and a member of Security would rush to the site.
Somehow, Ismail had breached the boundary undetected. Was there a short circuit in the system? When his body was found, the digital monitor was still strapped to his wrist, though it appeared to have been damaged in the fall. In the twenty-four hours prior to his disappearance, Ismail’s movements would have been tracked. Each position recorded on his personal log, along with his sleeping patterns, blood pressure, and heart-rate. With any luck, the data would provide some clues.
Gessen opened a window, but the bracing air did little to revive his spirits. He couldn’t put it off any longer. First, he would speak to Ismail’s bodyguard, and then inform the family. He picked up the phone and called Sendak. No response. With a twinge of apprehension, he summoned his head of Security.