Hunted

by Monty Marsden

  “Is that sufficient to suspect some type of mental illness though? Do you not think that he could just be pretending? It’s quite convenient for him to pretend to forget what he watched on TV – maybe he was somewhere else that night and not at home. Maybe he was busy planning his next move.”

  “I still haven’t formed an opinion about his mental health.” Somebody gave Claps a bottle of water and a plastic glass. “Do you really believe that he’s pretending?”

  Sensi hesitated for a moment, then he answered. “Yes, even if he looks like he’s being honest and even if I have never seen anyone… change suddenly like that before… I think he’s playing his cards well in order to appear mentally ill. He’s acting.”

  Claps glared at Sensi. “If you’re so sure about it, why do you still want to hear my opinion?”

  Sensi looked away. “Who’s Billy Milligan?” he asked.

  “Bear with me for a few more minutes – I’ll go and finish talking to him first.”

  “What else do you want to ask him?”

  “I want to get him to remember…”

  *

  “I can help you to relax – do you want to try?”

  Riondino made a nearly imperceptible gesture of agreement, keeping his eyes focused on a spot on the table. Claps put his hand where he was looking – it was closed in a fist, with his index finger sticking out and moving from one side to the other, like a metronome. Claps carefully observed the rhythm of Riondino’s breathing and began to speak – short sentences, a few words uttered between his breaths.

  “Now, while you’re sitting…”

  Breathing in.

  “And you’re in front of me…”

  Claps’ voice was warm.

  “And you can hear my words…”

  Breathing in.

  “And the noises in the room…”

  Claps’ finger carried on moving, maintaining a slow rhythm.

  “You might not realise…”

  Breathing in.

  “That something in you is changing…”

  Claps’ breathing had tuned into that of Riondino.

  “While you feel this change…”

  Breathing in.

  “You realise that your breathing slows down…”

  Claps’ finger slowed down.

  “Each breath calms you down even more…

  Your eyes close… like that…

  And while you feel your eyes closing…

  You can imagine becoming even more relaxed…

  Entering a cloud of tranquility…

  Being embraced by this feeling…

  You can feel your body becoming lighter…

  And slipping into a dream world…

  And you realise that you’re more relaxed than you could have ever thought…

  Now imagine you are on top of a beautiful ladder – imagine its shape and colour, try to picture the ladder being planted on the ground… and while you’re on this ladder, I will count from ten down to one, and at each number you’ll be able to imagine that you’re stepping down, a rung at a time.

  Ten – you’re on top of the ladder, ready to fall into a deep sleep.

  Nine – one step down onto a cloud of tranquility, a sweet, relaxing mist.

  Eight – further down, feeling deeper tranquility.

  Seven – that is the number of relaxation; every time that you hear it, you will relax even more.

  Six – one more step down.

  Five – almost completely asleep, snuggled in a deep feeling of tranquility.

  Four – one more step into calmness; when you’re down the ladder, you’ll be fully asleep.

  Three – waves of soft, calming emotions take you adrift, almost asleep.

  Two – falling asleep feels like one of the most beautiful things to do.

  One – you’re now completely asleep, immersed in a feeling of complete wellbeing.

  Zero – as low to the ground as possible, calm, asleep and tranquil.”

  Claps observed Riondino – he was breathing slowly, his head tilted on one side and his shoulders relaxed.

  He waited for a minute before speaking again.

  “You can open your eyes now.”

  “Do you still remember the Thursday that we were talking about earlier?” Claps’ voice was still calm but had lost its hypnotic power and had slowly become more authoritative. He had asked Riondino a question and he wanted an answer.

  “Yes…” Riondino sounded sleepy, it was almost like he was talking from inside a cave.

  “How did the first visit go?”

  Riondino didn’t answer.

  “Did you get your clients to buy some products?”

  No answer, again.

  “You’re not answering because it didn’t go well? Because you didn’t do your job well?”

  Riondino’s eyes began to move from one corner to the other – slower than he had seen in the footage. It only lasted a few seconds – the man’s torso seemed to follow the movements of his eyes. Then, all of a sudden, all the movement ended and Riondino changed posture abruptly. He was now sitting upright and his eyes were sharp and forceful. When the man spoke, Sensi was overwhelmed by a sense of pure terror.

  “There’s nobody who can do my job better than me, motherfucker.” Riondino’s voice was completely different – the tone was lower, more rigid, almost mechanical.

  Claps remained impassive. “Did the clients that you visited purchase what you proposed?”

  “You can say that again – what I proposed. In other words, what I had decided to sell to them ever since I first saw their names in the list of potential leads. Or even better, whatever gives me the best commission.”

  “I thought that you offered products according to the needs of the client.”

  “No way – money, money, money. The only thing that matters is for us to get our hands on a huge farm. A few bags of fodder in exchange for some of their milk. My job is to get a glass of milk for myself, too.

  “And did you manage to?”

  “Of course – I’m the best, I told you.”

  “You sound pretty confident.”

  “I am.”

  “This surprises me a little, you know – you sounded a little insecure, weak, a few minutes ago…”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  Sensi had remained speechless; Claps, on the other hand, still looked impassive. “You’re not Mr Riondino?”

  “That’s the name I use to sign my clients’ invoices.”

  “The person that I spoke to a few minutes ago said that he’s called Riondino…”

  “That’s his official name.”

  “Where has he gone now, then?”

  Riondino smiled ominously with one corner of his mouth, then he put a hand on his chest. “Here.”

  *

  Today.

  The Audi was northbound, racing through the Apennine section of the motorway. At the end of a straight road between two tunnels, the lights of a service area appeared in the distance.

  “We can’t keep travelling in Matteo Contri’s car – how long will they take to find the bodies of those two motherfuckers? It won’t take them long to find out that we’re using Matteo’s documents and his car, after that.”

  “Fox – if we change the car now and bump into another roadblock, we won’t have the right documents to show them – if the police know about the car, surely they’ll know about Matteo Contri as well.”

  “True… but how long do we still have to travel?”

  “We’ll be at our destination in two and a half hours at most, Fox.”

  “Too long… the police will find their friends dead before then. It’s a risk even if we change cars, that’s for sure. But if the policeman who checked us in Florence remembers us after reading the new details, they’ll know where to find us – we’ll find patrol cars around every corner.”

  The Audi began to slow down.

  “Perhaps changing vehicle is the lesser evil.”

  The
car slowed down on the road that led to the service station. “You’re wise, Fox – you surprise me.”

  “I just always try to keep my brain active – I don’t fancy going back to jail. Now find a car parked in the dark and stop next to it. Between the car and the service station. There – that station wagon is perfect.”

  Riondino turned the lights off when he was a few metres away from the car and let the Audi slide next to the station wagon slowly, making sure he left its owner enough space to get inside.

  “Alfa station wagon,” Riondino said with a sinister smile on his face as he turned the engine off. “It looks like the perfect car to get us to Milan.”

  “Hurry, the car’s owner could be here any time. Wake up Hannibal! Your work isn’t over yet today! Please don’t use the knife…”

  *

  Seven years earlier.

  “Here,” Riondino had said as he put his hand on his chest.

  “He’s asleep now.” He added.

  “Surely you two must each have a different name.”

  “He’s the Wimp; you can call him that.”

  “And you?”

  “It doesn’t matter, but if you really want to know… you can call me Fox, even if I’ve never liked this name.”

  “I’ll carry on calling you Riondino then, if that’s alright with you.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Do you know why you’re here, Mr Riondino?”

  “Of course.”

  “It wasn’t the Wimp who killed those women, right?”

  “Of course not, he doesn’t know anything about it.”

  “Was it you?”

  “No, I’m not interested in that kind of stuff – violence isn’t my idea of fun.”

  “Who was it then? Do you know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Hannibal – that’s what we call him.”

  “Do you know where he is now?”

  Riondino closed his eyes. The sinister smile appeared on his face, again. He laid his hand on his chest.

  “Here,” he said. “He’s asleep just like the Wimp.”

  8

  Today.

  Greta had listened to Claps’ story – she was sitting in complete silence, nervously upright.

  “You knew that Riondino had a serious multiple personality disorder, right?”

  Claps swallowed down the last sip of rum, tasting the full flavour on the back of his tongue. Then he spoke. “When Sensi showed me the footage where Riondino… switched personality… I remembered a similar case from a few years earlier1. The same nystagmus, the same body movements right before the personality change.”

  “Billy Milligan.”

  “Yeah, he was arrested almost forty years ago, in 1977, in Ohio. He kidnapped, sexually abused and killed three uni… university students.” Claps held onto his glass more firmly. “His behaviour was unusual from the very beginning,” he added. “He rejected all the accusations with extreme certainty; even when there was no doubt that he was the murderer.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “A psychiatric evaluation was requested by his duty solicitor; the results were unexpectedly unusual and difficult to believe. There was no one Billy Milligan. In his mind, there were ten different personalities that lived together with Billy. It was like ten different people co-existed in his body and discussed things with each other and took charge in turn and decided for him in… whatever he was doing.”

  Greta ran her fingers through her hair. “I remember that Riondino’s lawyer told Billy Milligan’s story in great detail to demonstrate that Riondino didn’t deserve a harsh punishment.”

  “Ten different personalities. Each one with their own unique memory and will. Some of these personalities weren’t even aware of the existence of the others. Billy was twenty-six years old, but there was also Arthur, twenty-two years old, a rational, cold blooded Englishman who was able to read and speak Arabic fluently; Ragen, twenty-three years old, a strong, violent Slavic man, an expert in weaponry and martial arts; Danny, fourteen years old, a shy little boy who loved painting; Martin, nineteen years old, an arrogant snob from New York who was both greedy and lazy.”

  “There were some female personalities as well, right?”

  Claps felt overwhelmed. He nodded wearily. “April, nineteen years old, and Christine, a five year old dyslexic girl… and Adalana, same age as April, she wrote poetry and loved cooking.”

  “That’s so odd, it’s difficult to believe.”

  “It’s so difficult to believe that this illness was acknowledged and added to the official register of mental illnesses only in 1994, under the name of multiple personality and identity disorder. There were some other cases, like that of Shirley Mason, but nowhere near as remarkable.”

  “Shirley Mason – they made a film about that story, I seem to remember?”

  “Yeah, with Jessica Lange. Not only a film – there’s also a TV series with Sandra Bullock.”

  Greta pushed the glass of beer away from her, it was still half full. “Billy Milligan got away with it because of the multiple personality disorder, right?”

  “That was the first time that anyone in America took that decision… and that was about fifteen years before this type of illness was officially acknowledged.”

  Greta looked thoughtful for a while.

  “It’s the same judgment that was given to Riondino.”

  Claps nodded. “It was a long fight at court. A lot of people thought that he was f… faking it. People wanted a severe punishment and the media echoed people’s opinion.”

  “The TV channel that I was working for back in the day also supported the theory that he was faking it.” Greta frowned bitterly. “There was no other choice to make if you wanted to please your audience – you have to echo the voice of the people. I was one of those who thought that he deserved a severe punishment. But some of the latest medical findings supported Riondino and he was allowed to take a psychiatric test.”

  “It was paramount – an experiment conducted in the Netherlands which clearly demonstrated that some kind of functional CAT scan could allow one to see whether patients are affected by multiple personality disorders…”

  “Hang on a minute,” Greta broke in. “What’s a functional CAT scan?”

  “It’s a scan that allows one to see cerebral activity in various areas of the brain – in other words, the stimuli that cause our behaviour are activated by specific areas of our brain. In this case, the experiment showed that in patients affected by multiple personality disorder, memory activity was greater in specific areas of the brain than those who only pretended to be mentally ill. Riondino undertook the test and the results were incredible – the Fox and Hannibal were not just being acted… out.”

  “The decision of the judges was deeply affected by that.”

  “He was not punished because he was mentally ill, as you know. He was sent to a secure psychiatric unit… Montelupo Fiorentino.”

  Greta remained silent, immersed in her thoughts for a while.

  “After six years,” Claps carried on, “he was deemed harmless and transferred to a psychiatric hospital.”

  “I didn’t know – I didn’t follow the story towards the end.”

  “He ran away from there, the hospital was low security, he killed two nurses who were with him.”

  “Hannibal,” Claps muttered to himself, his fingers were holding the glass tightly.

  For at least a minute, neither of them spoke.

  “Riondino had three different personalities, right?” Greta asked. “Two of them were unaware of the existence of the others.”

  “Hannibal, the murderer; the Wimp, the man who was arrested; and the Fox, the personality that came out when Riondino was hypnotised.” Claps hesitated a little and then he carried on. “I’m pretty sure that there was at least… another one.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The Milligan case. Some of his personalities emerge
d only later on over the years – they had kind of been… kept at bay… they only resurfaced in specific situations. David, an eight year old boy, was the so-called guardian of pain – his job was that of absorbing and carrying the burden of all of the other personalities; Tommy, a sixteen year old, a magician with a passion for elec… electronics, would kick in when Billy wanted to free himself from the straightjacket. With all these people, there had to be a director, somebody who shared traits with all of the other personalities and who shared memories with some of the characters… somebody who, if I may say, directed the traffic.

  “The true Billy Milligan.”

  “This personality appeared only later on and he introduced himself as the Master. He used to say ‘This is Billy, all in one’.”

  “Do you reckon it’s the same for Riondino?”

  “If we consider that Hannibal only appears sporadically and exceptionally, the Wimp and the Fox only take up partial spaces in his life. The Wimp goes to work and to the supermarket; the Fox makes sure that the work is productive… but then what happens throughout the day?”

  “There has to be a master, an all in one type of personality… is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “Yeah… maybe other personalities surfaced later on, but like I said, I didn’t keep up to date with the unfolding of events.”

  Greta shook her head. “I’m still struggling to believe that anything like multiple personality disorder exists… and that it’s not just a pretentious way for psychiatrists to get their names known in the field.”

  “It’s a rare condition and I see where you’re coming from… but I can give you some scientific information, if it helps. Recently, researchers have found out that there is an anatomical predisposition in the brain which makes people more susceptible to its onset. People with a smaller hippocampus and amygdala and a greater neural connection between thalamus and insula are more likely to develop this illness.”

  “Thanks for the lecture – you’re speaking a language that’s foreign to me.”

  “Hippocampus, amygdala, insula – they’re all areas of the brain closely connected to emotions and self-awareness.”

  “And they’re smaller than usual when patients have this illness?”