When Your Eyes Close: A psychological thriller unlike anything you’ve read before!

‘No, soup run. We’ve just finished.’ Her tone was uncertain, but at least she wasn’t mad. He couldn’t handle that.

‘Could you … I mean is there any chance you could you come over?’

A beat before she answered. ‘Okay. I’ll just go home first, get changed …’

‘No. I mean, do you think you could come straight away? There’s something I need to tell you.’

She picked up on the urgency in his tone. ‘What is it? Is everything all right?’

‘I don’t want to discuss it over the phone, how soon can you get here?’

‘I guess around thirty minutes, all being well …’

Relieved, Nick hung up and paced the room. He looked at the bottle of whiskey, but he didn’t pour another drink. He could hold out; Michelle was on her way, she could help him. He screwed the top onto the bottle and put it in the press, Tessa’s voice nagging in his head, telling him to pour it down the sink, but he couldn’t do that. Not yet. He’d do it later, after he’d told Michelle.

Johnny. What was going on? He turned his laptop on and sat at the table. He had a year now; he had names. He typed the name ‘Johnny Davis’ into Google. A number of sites came up – nothing that looked familiar. He clicked on Google Images, scrolled through looking at picture after picture – and then he saw it. A grainy black-and-white shot. A long-haired man in a black T-shirt. He peered at it but couldn’t make out if it was the same person he’d seen under hypnosis. He went back to the search engine, added the year ‘1980’ and the word ‘murder’. Hand shaking, he hit the return key and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he found himself reading the words he’d dreaded.

Three Dead in Horror Spree, Child Escapes.

Christ. He clicked the link. It was archived information from the Independent newspaper.

The bodies of a man and a woman in their early thirties were found at a house in south Dublin in what appears to have been a domestic killing. The alarm was raised by a neighbour who heard screams coming from the house at around 6 p.m. The woman has been named as Rachel Davis, who lived at the address. Police are still trying to identify the man. In what is believed to be a related incident, a car plunged off Dun Laoghaire pier at approximately 7 p.m. A five-year-old girl was saved in a dramatic rescue by a man who swam out to the car. The driver who drowned at the scene has been identified as John Davis, husband of the deceased woman. He is believed to have handed the child out through a window just before the car was submerged. Police are not currently questioning anyone else in relation to either incident.

The shake in his hand had got worse. This was all so horrifyingly familiar. He clicked on another link, saw himself, or rather Johnny Davis, and the woman, Rachel, smiling at the camera, looking very much in love. Three dead. Johnny Davis had killed himself, and attempted to take the little girl with him, but had changed his mind at the last second. The girl, the orphan, Caitlin, was that her name? He searched again, desperate for his assumption to be disproved, for there to be some other explanation for what he’d witnessed under hypnosis.

He scanned the other news stories, but none of them mentioned the child’s name. He started again, typed ‘Caitlin Davis’ into the search engine. It was a long shot; the girl would be what – forty-two now? She could be married, or if not, she could have taken the name of her adoptive parents.

There were a couple of women called Caitlin Davis on LinkedIn. Nick stared at the profile pictures and clicked to enlarge one of them. It had to be her. She bore such a resemblance to the woman, Rachel, that it just couldn’t be coincidence. He read her profile. She was the owner and editor of a woman’s magazine. He looked at her sites. She had a Twitter account. Her most recent tweet asked if anyone had a copy of a newspaper supplement about missing persons. It was probably a story she was working on, he thought.

Caitlin. Rachel. They’d existed, these women from his confabulation. What would Tessa make of that? But what about him, could he really be Johnny Davis, a jealous husband, a killer? No, there had to be another explanation. Maybe he’d heard about it, read about it somewhere, but even as he considered the possibility, he dismissed it. It was too real. He needed to go back – to be regressed again. If he could piece the whole story together, remember information that wouldn’t have been printed in the newspaper, then he would know. It occurred to him that the only person that could corroborate such personal facts was Caitlin. He looked at her Twitter profile again. Caitlin Davis. Whatever happened – he would have to find her.

CHAPTER ELEVEN (#ulink_9af53d20-b016-577f-91f1-788baab3a1b2)

Caitlin (#ulink_9af53d20-b016-577f-91f1-788baab3a1b2)

Caitlin went through the motions of playing at the gig that night. She couldn’t shake the memories of David, but then anniversaries and the days surrounding them were the most difficult, everyone knew that. Andy tapped her lightly on the shoulder with the bow from his cello as they were packing away the instruments.

‘You okay?’

She shook her head. ‘Not really.’

‘Want to stay for a glass?’

‘I don’t think so; I wouldn’t be much company.’

‘Who says you usually are?’ He swatted her. ‘Just joshing,’ he said. ‘Go on; just one. We can talk about it.’

‘All right,’ she forced a smile and snapped her violin case shut. As much as she wasn’t feeling sociable, she didn’t feel like returning to the empty house either, not yet.

She was sitting at a table in the corner of the wine bar, a tea light candle flickering on the table, when Andy returned from the bar with a bottle of Merlot and two glasses. ‘Don’t worry – you’re just getting the one. The rest is for me.’ He winked and sat next to her. ‘Now, what’s wrong, Caitie? What has you looking so glum?’

Caitie. Andy was the only one who ever called her that, and it always brought back memories of her father who’d never used her full name. ‘The anniversary,’ she said. ‘Can’t believe it’s been a year.’

Andy put a hand on her arm and squeezed it. ‘I tried calling you on Monday.’

‘I know, I got your text. I was with Gillian. God, it was an awful day. I’d just got home, and I got this call … a man telling me that David was alive. I thought it might be something, a real lead, but it turned out to be a hoax after all. Some sick fuck who’d seen David’s name in the paper.’

‘Oh God. I’m sorry, Cait. Any ideas why now?’

‘The Sunday World ran a supplement last week about people who’ve gone missing.’

Andy sighed. ‘Have you thought about changing your number?’

‘No! What if someone really had information … what if David …?’

‘I know, but you should let the guards deal with it, Caitie. What if this person, or someone like him, finds out where you live … have you thought about that?’

‘He won’t. We’re not in the directory. Thank God, David talked me out of that.’

They finished the wine, and then ordered another.

By the time they left the wine bar Caitlin was feeling light-headed. It wasn’t an altogether unpleasant feeling. Andy guided her, hand under her arm, out the door and onto the street. It was a quiet night in the city. They walked towards the main street where she waved down a cab. Andy hugged her tight, then pulled back and tucked her hair behind her ears.

‘You can be sure of one thing, Davis,’ he said. ‘David didn’t up and leave. He’d have to be mad to do that to someone like you.’

She smiled and extricated herself from his embrace. There were moments when she thought that Andy Quinn wanted to be more than her friend; it was evident in the way he looked at her. He’d been brilliant since David’s disappearance; he continued to listen when everybody else had grown tired of it, letting her talk it all out without chiding or judging her. She’d gladly do the same for him, he was a wonderful friend, but she hoped he knew it would never grow into anything more.

It was dark when Caitlin stepped into the hall, but a bluish glow illuminated the living room; she’d left the computer on. She really ought to leave on a light when she was out late; Gillian was always warning her about that. She kicked her shoes off and sat down at the computer. She shouldn’t have drunk so much wine; she’d pay for it the next morning. Already there were only six hours until she was due at work. She’d just check her emails and fall into bed.

There was nothing interesting in her mail, except a notification to say that darbryan1 had sent her a message on Twitter. Curious, she opened the website and logged on. There was a short message and a document he’d scanned, a newspaper article about a missing girl, which she skimmed through quickly before reading the message.

@darbryan1: Hi Caitlin. It occurred to me I should have told you my story. Maybe you’re not interested or will think I’m odd telling you, a stranger, but I have a feeling that you’ve been through the same thing. If you want to talk, message me. And if not, best of luck on your own quest. I know I’ll never give up mine. Lisa was my girlfriend, she vanished after a night out with her colleagues almost six years ago.

Caitlin clicked on the article again and read it in detail. Lisa Hunt, it said, had last been seen leaving O’Grady’s bar at around 1.30 a.m. on the morning of 5th September 2011. There had been an unconfirmed sighting of a woman of Lisa’s description getting into a dark-coloured car, possibly a Nissan. After that there was nothing. Lisa, it said, was a twenty-seven-year-old special needs assistant in St Malachy’s Secondary School. A picture inset showed a slim dark-haired girl with a beautiful smile. Caitlin sighed. This girl had vanished in the early hours of the morning, more than likely picked up by a predator. Most people would conclude that the girl had been raped then murdered and her body disposed of in the mountains. The least she could do was sympathize with darbryan1.

@caitlindavis: Hi Dar. I’m so sorry.

… for what? For your loss? That was as good as saying your girlfriend was murdered. She’s not coming back. Okay, she wasn’t a man who had disappeared in the middle of the afternoon, but she could still be alive, couldn’t she? She thought of that case where the woman had been a prisoner in a basement for fifteen years. She’d fallen in love with her captor, mourned him when he died. For most people it was incomprehensible. For Caitlin it was less so: she continued to love her father even after what he’d done. To begin with, people had told her it was an accident. She was five years old, she wouldn’t have understood. When she was older, she’d read the truth – how her father had killed her mother and the man, and then, unable to bear it, had collected Caitlin from a friend’s house, where she’d been playing, and had driven them both off the pier. At first when she’d read this, she had been sure it was lies. She had no recollection of the incident. Had no memory of the car plummeting into the water, or of the stranger who had rescued her. And yet she remembered everything from her life before. She remembered how happy they’d been, the three of them together. Those memories were as clear now as they had been back then.

Caitlin shook herself from the past and started to type:

@caitlindavis: Darren/Daryl? Thank you for sharing your story. You’re right, I do understand. A year ago, my husband walked out of the house and never returned. A police investigation and the hiring of a private detective led nowhere. Only my instinct tells me that David is still alive. I’m so sorry about Lisa’s disappearance. I know the pain you’re feeling and hope that someday, we’ll both find out what has happened to our loved ones. Best, Caitlin.

She was surprised when a few minutes later, she got a reply.

@darbryan1: Caitlin. I’m so sorry. I figured David must be your husband. It’s incredible to think that someone can simply disappear. The pain of wondering if you’ll ever see them again never stops, I know … And yeah, it’s Darren by the way…