The Tightrope Men / The Enemy

Carey handed him the glass. ‘His mind?’

Harding sank half the whisky and choked a little. He held out the glass. ‘I’ll have water in the other half. Yes. Someone has been bloody ruthless about it. He has a week missing, and whatever was done to him was done in that week.’

Carey frowned. ‘Iredale suggested he’d been unconscious all that week.’

‘It’s not incompatible,’ said Harding. ‘He was probably kept in a mentally depressed state by drugs during the whole week.’

‘Are you talking about brain-washing?’ asked McCready sceptically.

‘In a manner of speaking.’ Harding accepted his refilled glass. ‘Whoever did this to Denison had a problem. The ideal would have been to get Denison into such a condition that he thought he was Meyrick – but that couldn’t be done.’ Harding paused for consideration. ‘At least, not in a week.’

‘You mean the possibility of such a thing is there?’ asked Carey incredulously.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Harding calmly. ‘It could be done. But this crowd didn’t have the time for that, so they had to go about it another way. As I see it, their problem was to put Denison in the hotel as Meyrick and to make sure he didn’t fly off the handle. They didn’t want him to take the next plane to London, for instance. So they treated him.’ From Harding’s mouth the emphasis was an obscenity.

‘How?’ said Carey.

‘Do you know anything about hypnosis?’

McCready snorted and Harding, staring at him with suddenly flinty eyes, said coldly, ‘No, it is not witchcraft, Mr McCready. Denison was kept in a drug-induced hypnogogic state for a long time, and in that period his psyche was deliberately broken down.’ He made a suddenly disarming gesture. ‘I suspect Denison was already neurotically inclined and no doubt there were many ready-made tools to hand – irrational fears, half-healed traumas and so on – to aid in the process.’

‘What do you mean by neurotically inclined?’ asked Carey.

‘It’s hard to say, but I suspect that he was already a disturbed man before this was done to him.’

‘Off his head?’ interjected McCready.

Harding gave him a look of dislike. ‘No more than yourself, Mr McCready,’ he said tartly. ‘But I think something had happened which threw him off balance.’

‘Something did happen,’ said Carey. ‘He lost his job.’ He took a thin sheaf of papers from the file. ‘I didn’t have time to discuss this with you before, but this is what we have on Denison. There’ll be more coming but this is what we’ve got now.’

Harding studied the typed sheets, reading slowly and carefully. He said, ‘I wish I’d seen this before I went in to Denison; it would have saved a lot of trouble.’

‘He was a film director for a small specialist outfit making documentary and advertising films,’ said Carey. ‘Apparently he went off the rails and cost the firm a packet of money. They thought his drinking had got out of hand, so they fired him.’

Harding shook his head. ‘That wasn’t what threw him off balance. The drinking must have been a symptom, not a cause.’ He turned back a page. ‘I see that his wife died three years ago. She must have been quite young. Have you any idea how she died?’

‘Not yet,’ said Carey. ‘But I can find out.’

‘It would be advisable. I wonder if it was about that time he started to drink heavily.’

‘That isn’t the present point at issue,’ said Carey.

Harding’s voice took on an edge. ‘It is for me,’ he said curtly. ‘I have to treat the man.’

Carey’s voice was soothing. ‘I know, Doctor, and you shall have all the relevant information as soon as we get it ourselves. But my present interest is in what was done to Denison and how it was done.’

Harding was placated. ‘Very well. Denison was literally dismantled. All he retained was a name and a location – and the location wasn’t very exact. Giles Denison of Hampstead. They could, of course, have induced complete amnesia, but that wouldn’t do because Denison had to substitute for Meyrick and he would need enough active personality to carry out the role. Why Denison had to act as Meyrick I don’t know.’

‘I have ideas on that,’ said Carey. ‘Go on, Doctor.’

‘At the same time Denison must not retain too much personality, certainly not enough for him to reject the persona that had been thrust upon him. He had to be kept in a sort of limbo. There were some very strong blocks inserted into his mind to the effect that he should not question his origins. In addition, to confuse the issue, he has been given selective false memories. For instance, he distinctly remembers playing a game of golf, but at the same time he knows that he has never played a game of golf in his life. So he is a very confused man and this leads to a paralysis of the will, enough to make him stay in one place – a hotel in Oslo – while he tries to sort things out.’

McCready stirred restlessly. ‘Is all this possible?’

‘Quite possible. If I draw an imaginary square on the floor of this room I could hypnotize you into avoiding it by a post-hypnotic suggestion. You could spend the rest of your life coming in and out of this room but you would never walk on that imaginary square. More to the point, you would not be aware of the irrationality of your behaviour.’

McCready looked sceptical, and Harding said, ‘I’m willing to give you a demonstration at any time.’

‘No!’ said McCready hurriedly. ‘I believe you.’

Carey smiled grimly. ‘Carry on, Doctor.’

‘The mind is a self-stabilizing organism,’ said Harding. ‘If it wasn’t we’d all go crazy. And to inquire is basic. When Denison did try to delve into his past life he encountered the blocks and was so shocked at the impossibility of what he found in his own mind that he took refuge in a fugue.’ He saw the incomprehension on Carey’s face, and said simply, ‘He fell asleep. A typical hysterical symptom. He did it twice when he was talking to me. I let him sleep for a quarter of an hour each time, and when he woke up he’d forgotten the reason for it – wiped it out of his mind. It’s a self-protective mechanism against insanity, and I rather think it’s happened to him before.’

‘I don’t think I’ve got this straight,’ said Carey. ‘You’re saying that Denison is half out of his mind and likely to fall asleep – or unconscious – at any time. How do you square that with the fact that he pulled the wool over one of my people’s eyes very successfully, and that he encountered a very tricky situation which might have been the death of him and coped with it very well?’

‘Oh, he’s quite competent,’ said Harding. ‘It’s only when he tries to question his own past that he faces the impossible and goes into a fugue. Judging by what you told me of the manner in which he was wounded I’d say that he’s more competent than I would have expected under the circumstances.’

‘He’s bloody competent,’ said McCready suddenly, and Carey turned to look at him. ‘I haven’t told you this, but he’s tagged Mrs Hansen.’

‘He’s what?’

‘He knows she carries a gun – he told me so. He said he thought I ought to know.’

Harding wore an I-told-you-so expression and Carey’s face was a study in bafflement. ‘Another thing,’ said McCready. ‘Alcoholic or not, he’s on the wagon now. Mrs Hansen said he tried a whisky last night and he gave the impression that he’d swallowed prussic acid.’

‘Interesting,’ said Harding. ‘The man’s mind has been stirred like porridge. It would be remarkable if it has cured his alcoholism. However, I’m afraid the cure is much worse than the complaint. He’ll have to be hospitalized, of course. I can make the arrangements for that.’

Carey stood up. ‘Thank you, Dr Harding.’

Harding also arose. ‘I’d like to see him again tomorrow. What’s going to happen to him now?’

‘I’ll take good care of him,’ said Carey smoothly.

‘You’d better,’ warned Harding. ‘If he doesn’t get skilled attention he’s quite likely to go insane.’ He yawned. ‘Well, I’m off to bed.’

He left the room and Carey sat down again. He picked up the two photographs and brooded over them. McCready said, ‘That’s it, then; the whole thing’s a bust. No Meyrick – no operation.’

Carey did not say anything, and McCready asked, ‘What are you thinking?’

Carey said slowly, ‘I’m thinking that, while we may not have Meyrick, we’ve got a bloody good substitute.’

McCready’s jaw dropped. ‘You mean you want to hang on to him? You heard what Harding just said – the man’s likely to go crazy. It’s not what I’d call ethical.’

‘Don’t talk to me about ethics,’ said Carey harshly. ‘I have a job to do.’ He threw down the photographs. ‘Iredale wants to give Denison his face back, and Harding wants to restore his past. If we let Harding at him tomorrow with his tricky bloody hypnotism then Denison is going to pick up his marbles and go home.’

He frowned and came to a decision. ‘Take him back to the hotel,’ he said abruptly.