Antman

by Robert V. Adams

  G

  * * *

  For a while, Helen couldn't place this man who was entertaining them and promising them that Tom would arrive any minute. The uncertainty was enough to prevent her running away with the children.

  When she heard that radio news item about the former technician at the University being wanted to help police with their enquiries, she put two and two together and her panic knew no limits. By the time she realised, they were captive, locked up in the cellar. It was ages later before she remembered the mobile in her bag. It was so stupid, a detail which could have saved any further hassle. She could have phoned Laura, Robin, the police, anybody.

  * * *

  How Helen escaped, she couldn't remember. Perhaps she ran up the steps and through the door which the man hadn't intended to leave unlocked and unguarded. Perhaps there were other steps and a trapdoor leading directly to the outside. Had he done this deliberately? Helen was muddled. She wasn't where the man said. She was in another part of the garden, her head still fuddled. She felt drugged, but couldn't recall how it could have happened. She wanted desperately to find her way to the children. Where were they? She called their names, softly at first, then louder and more anxiously. There was no reply. She ran this way and that, calling their names repeatedly. After what seemed like eternity, she heard their sobbing. Somehow, she found herself next to the outer passage of the maze, calling 'Sarah, Matthew!'

  The almost total darkness made it impossible to make out anything beyond the faint outline of the hedging. Strange shapes and outlines like gargoyles rose from the creepers and bushes all around. The huge creepers created a monstrous topiary, huge and overhanging, like ghosts crowding in, dark and silent at every turn she took.

  Helen heard a totally different sound, the sound of children screaming. The screaming went on for a long time. The screaming was coming from inside her head. Then she realised it was her own voice. She was screaming again and again and again.

  * * *

  The wind was starting to blow, hard enough to agitate the tops of the trees and shake the lower branches. Tom was in a panic. He looked out of his window, his guts in turmoil as though he'd swallowed the most nauseating potion. Below him in the campus grounds, the contrast was incredible. Ducks swam quietly across the placid waters of the sheltered lake to the rear of the building. Its surface rippled slightly in response to the gathering wind. The sun was low in the sky, visible through the cloud as a glowering purple globe.

  There was a knock at Tom's half-open office door.

  'Mr Fortius?'

  'Yes?'

  A young man with short cropped hair wearing a smart jacket and immaculately pressed trousers pushed the door open and stood hesitantly just inside. 'Sorry, sir, the door was open. I came straight along the corridor.'

  Tom's stomach gave a sickening lurch. Detectives wore the unmistakable uniform of police officers despite their plain clothes.

  ‘What is it?'

  DC Moran stepped forward, held out his identification card and another officer appeared behind him. 'Detective Constables Moran and Lounds, sir. I think we've met when you visited DCI Winchester.'

  His stomach still churning, Tom waved them inside and closed the door behind them. He recognised them from his visits to the Station. They walked with that terrible inevitability policemen in particular have of placing their boots on soft carpeting when bearing bad news. He had a terrible premonition it was more bad news about the children. He stood by his desk and tried to keep control as he faced them.

  'No sign of your children yet, sir, but we're doing everything we can.'

  Tom couldn't stop himself exploding. 'Everything you can is no bloody good if you haven't found them.'

  'No, sir. They aren't at home or at school,' continued the imperturbable Moran. ‘We've been in constant touch with Mrs Fortius. She hasn't seen them today. They may have simply gone on an outing.

  'We have no reason at the moment to believe they have come to any harm.'

  'No reason to believe?' Tom's thoughts spun wildly out of control. 'They should have been safe. They were with the nanny.'

  'Your nanny wasn't in the picture, sir. Your friend Mrs Lovelace has disappeared as well. She may have gone with them, or she may have gone somewhere else, but she may have a clue as to their whereabouts.

  'We don't know at this stage. We are considering the hypothesis she may be implicated in their disappearance.'

  'Hypothesis? Implicated? She's Laura's best friend for God's sake. What is this, a bloody Agatha Christie guessing game? My children's lives are at stake.'

  'I'm sorry, sir.'

  'Sorry! It's absurd. Helen would never do anything like that. She'd have no reason to.'

  Moran shrugged. 'Let's say we have an open mind at present.'

  'I've had a call from a man claiming to be responsible, and so has my wife,' said Tom.

  Moran's manner changed. 'You what, sir? Who did you tell?'

  'I haven't told anybody,' said Tom belligerently. 'It would be a calamity if it reached this man that I've told the police.'

  Moran looked worried. ‘With respect, sir, you should have got straight onto DCI Winchester.'

  ‘With respect, you should have found my children by now.'

  'Just a minute, sir.' Moran fumbled for his mobile. Tom paced about while Moran stepped to a corner of the office and dealt with the call. When he'd finished, Tom had more questions.

  ‘We're doing all we can,' said Moran. 'Sorry, sir. I know this has come as a shock.'

  'Never mind wasting time consoling me. How long have the police known?'

  Moran didn't know where to put himself. 'I can't say for sure, sir.'

  Tom saw he was up against the solid wall of the man's ignorance of the wider situation.

  'Okay, how long have you personally known?'

  'Me, sir, only since I came on duty.'

  ‘When was that?'

  'Last night.'

  Tom clenched both fists. Chris had known at least since last evening and hadn't rung him.

  'Carry on with the search and don't come back till you've found them.'

  'If you're all right, sir, I'll be off now. Goodbye.'

  'No, hang on. Where is Chief Inspector Winchester?'

  'She'll be at HQ I expect, sir.'

  'Are you returning there, Sergeant?'

  'I expect so, sir.'

  'I'll come with you. No, dammit, I can't. I'll have no transport. A taxi.' Tom felt in his pockets to see what loose change he had. 'It's okay, Sergeant. Car's broken down, you carry on.'

  The two officers turned back towards the office and Moran spoke. 'Sir. If you want me to pass on a message to DCI Winchester –'

  'No message,' he called. And then, when they were out of the door, he said to himself, 'Tell the Chief Inspector to go to hell.'

  He watched from the office window as the sergeant's car coasted slowly out of the car park towards the main entrance at the junction with the main road.

  'They say the police look after their own,' he mouthed. 'Carry on doing it in your way, and I will in mine.'

  * * *

  The temporary secretary from the agency wouldn't be in yet. Tom went through the stack of mail, as yet unsorted. He was in such a state that he knocked the entire pile onto the floor, together with his desk diary. He bent down, picked up his diary which he wanted to take with him, and as he scrabbled to pick up the letters and packages, flicking through them for anything urgent, a small envelope fell out from among the large brown packages. A distinctive collage of newspaper fonts composed his name and address. He tore the envelope open.

  Dear Professor Fortius.

  'Fucking bastard!' Tom shouted, clenching his fist. He read on.

  First, let me thank you for the information about the nun. She had a lot to answer for. You should have seen her face. I got through to her. A hundred thousand ants achieved more contrition in a few hours than all those years of Hail Mary's.

  Now to the major po
int of this letter. It was so easy. I had time to plan it so carefully.

  And so on. There was much more in similar vein. Tom felt physically sick. Who hated him at work? The one person he hadn't considered yet: Apthorpe. He had a sudden urge to confront Apthorpe and see how he reacted. Events took over for the next few hours and his suspicion had to stay on the back burner.

  * * *

  When Chris reached Wawne Road Police Station there was a message from Sheila. She dialled Sheila's direct line. 'How busy are you?' Sheila asked.

  'Averagely at my wit's end, I guess.' Chris's voice was flat. She felt completely at sea with the case. To make matters worse, her personal life was in a mess. She knew things were all wrong between her and Tom, but hadn't time to sort that out at present. 'To be frank, I don't know where we're going on this case. What can you offer?'

  'I've been looking back at all the material he's written. There are at least two, possibly three, personalities involved. Given what we have, we can try to predict the nature of the fragmentation of his personality which may be occurring. There's a chance we can guess his next move from whichever persona seems most of the time to be dominant or uppermost.'

  Sheila knew this was highly speculative. She hoped she could reassure Chris, offer a lifebelt.

  ‘We can guess from the written material what stage he's reached in the projection of his fantasies. I judge he's reaching, or has reached, a crisis of some kind. It's represented for him in an externalisation of the labyrinth of his brain, which he can't fathom, and from the inside of his head, in his fantasies about the mass of insects populating it and threatening to overwhelm him.'

  Chris sighed and didn't say a word.

  'You're wondering where this connects with the need to apprehend him.'

  'I am.' Chris sounded tired. She felt wrung out. She didn't believe in God. But she found herself praying out loud, as a last resort, to the only person outside herself she could think of as remotely able to help: 'Please don't let me be wrong.'

  'Bear with me a moment. I've been thinking about masks. I think our killer is adept at using them.'

  'You don't mean literally?'

  'Metaphorically. He's probably good at disguising himself. In a particular personality, he assumes what we would call a disguise. He would regard it at that point as simply himself.'

  There was a sound in the background. Sheila was distracted momentarily.

  'Just a moment,' she said. 'Someone at the door. I'll send them away.'

  She was back in a few moments.

  'You've come across the mask of Demetrios?'

  'Remind me,' said Chris, who had only a vague memory of this.

  'It's the Janus-faced or two-faced mask widely used as a symbol for dramatic performance.'

  'I remember, we printed it on the front of the programmes for our school drama productions.'

  'It’s very likely widely used by drama groups. We discussed this on the recent away-day. Think of the characters of the play, with our murderer playing many, possibly all of the parts. Inside the mask there may be not two but any number of different characters. I've seen case studies of more than a dozen. The psychiatrist may try to penetrate the fragmented personae presented by a patient suffering from MPD, without encouraging it. The difficulty often reported is that by recognising and engaging with the symptoms, the questioner reinforces the existence of a particular personality, or encourages new ones to form. Imagine trying to hold a conversation with up to a dozen people at once, possibly more.'

  'It sounds a nightmare,' Chris reflected. ‘Walters, Thompsen, or someone else. I'm uncertain which of these is or was our man.'

  Sheila took a deep breath. 'That's it, that's MPD. You switch from one identity to the next, sometimes so fast you don't just confuse other people but yourself as well. It's complicated. He's putting the record straight, emotionally speaking. Different fragments from his past and present are triggered by, or trigger, different responses. We're dealing with all these personalities in one. Walters is dead. Part of the time – whether he's Thomsen or somebody else – he wants to communicate with us. He may display other personae, of which we know nothing because they don't have that need, that urge. You're wondering where this leaves us.'

  'It does seem pretty hopeless.'

  ‘We have to assemble all the information we possibly can, cross-referencing the incidents and constructing the fullest life story.'

  'You're joking. There isn't time. We must find the latest people he's abducted, before they – before he –' She couldn't say it.

  ‘We must have this information, to maximise the chance of predicting where he is.'

  Chris took a deep breath. She had to calm down. 'You mean the killings and,' she hesitated, 'the latest abductions of the two children of Professor Fortius.'

  'Yes. It's like identifying a spot on a map, using grid references. We must see where the lines cross and whether there are points of convergence. The next stage –'

  Chris clenched her fists. ‘We haven't time. There'll be more victims. He's becoming more desperate. He's accelerating. His personality is fragmenting.'

  Sheila spoke with greater emphasis.

  'It's the only way to find him. The next stage is to cross-check through the people at that point. We have to be particularly careful over identities. Remember, we're looking for somebody playing more than one role. We may find the person is known by different names in different reference groups. Third, if possible we must avoid interacting with him. That might only lead to further fragmentation of his personality.'

  Chris's nerves were worn to the wire. There was no alternative. She wasn't sure she understood, but she knew what she had to do. First she rang Tom's number, intending to ask how the letter was signed. There was no reply, so she left a message on his voicemail.

  I need some space, Chris thought. Some time with Regel was overdue. It had saved time to offer to bring him to Hull, but she couldn't keep the situation going much longer, even though she still hadn't a clear idea how he could help, beyond filling in background details. Well aware that this elderly frail man couldn't be left alone in that strange hotel she had sent Morrison to sit with him. Morrison would be able to chat and might even elicit some useful information.

  She rang Morrison. Regel was coping, and according to Morrison had been talking, almost to the point of chattiness. It was as though he was fed up with being on his own and welcomed the stimulus of the stay in the hotel and the investigation going on around him. She instructed Morrison to spend time with Regel, take him out if it would help, and build up a picture of his life from the point where he'd first come into contact with Blatt and his sons.

  Having settled Mr Regel into his hotel near the railway station, Morrison became aware of how pent up the old man was about his former stay in the resettlement camp at Hessle, and offered to drive him up there immediately.

  'It'll only take us an hour or so,' said Morrison. He would make sure he stopped for a cool drink and sandwich.

  'Ooh, I don't think I could stand an hour's driving.'

  Morrison laughed. 'Five minutes each way, if it's busy. The rest will be you and me nosing around. You can show me your old haunts.'

  They made an incongruous pair, Morrison, youthful and upright, Regel frail and stooping, walking with difficulty, stopping every few paces to catch his breath. An onlooker would have surmised they were grandfather and grandson.

  In contrast with his appearance, Regel was becoming more animated by the minute. They walked up the track off Heads Lane in the rural district of Hessle, overlooking the town of Hull three or four miles away.

  'This was the entrance to the camp,' said Regel. 'These beech and larch trees look as though they've been here forever, but they must have planted them after we left and they demolished the buildings.'

  They walked up the lane and Regel dived into the wood, nearly tripping over some brambles. Morrison lurched forward and rescued him. Regel bent and started scratching with his fingers at a p
atch of bare soil.

  'Hang on,' said Morrison, looking around for an implement. A chunk of metal was lying on the verge. He used this to scrape away the surface material. It was surprisingly loose, composed of rubble and a coarse mixture of grit and soil.

  Regel was watching as a flat block of concrete came into view.

  'This was the cookhouse.' He brushed his sleeve across his eyes. 'There's one of the hearthstones. Over there were the rows of huts where we lived and slept. They took people from here straight to the docks for repatriation. At about the same time, some of us were discharged for other destinations. You needed documentation to support an application to stay. I travelled south. My longstanding friend Marko offered to put me up and organised an interview for a teaching post. I was successful but a dreadful calamity occurred the day after I gained the position. Marko died of a heart attack. I found out he had no relatives and had left the house and all his personal effects to me. It was only after I began to teach at the school that I found out the war had vanquished the Nazis but not prejudice against Poles resembling German Jews.'

  Later, Morrison dropped him back at the hotel. Regel was very excited at the prospect of exploring the town and gentrified docks district.

  'He's eaten his way through two brunches and I left him planning his evening meal,' said Morrison when he reached Wawne Road Police Station.