Three days later, Farrell walked stiffly into the reception area at Nithbank. He was in no mood to brook interference. He placed his warrant card face down on the desk.
‘I need to speak with Dr Yates.’
‘I’ll just check if she’s available,’ the receptionist said, eying him warily.
After a brief exchange on the phone she motioned to him to go through.
He walked through and opened her door. Clare jumped up from her desk and backed away from him. He approached her, concerned.
‘Clare, what’s wrong? Why haven’t you returned my calls?’
‘I should have thought that would be perfectly obvious,’ she replied.
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ he countered.
‘I don’t take kindly to men jumping out of bushes and mauling me.’
‘Why would you? But what does this have to do with me?’
Clare stared at him through narrowed eyes.
An iron fist squeezed Farrell’s entrails. Struggling to keep his voice level, he asked, ‘this incident, when exactly did it happen?’
‘As if you don’t know,’ she scoffed.
‘Humour me,’ he said.
‘Wednesday, around 9 p.m.’
Farrell’s legs felt weak. He slumped into a chair. The night he had blacked out or been drugged; he still didn’t know which.
‘It wasn’t me,’ he protested.
‘You left this behind,’ she said, producing his mobile phone from her pocket.
Farrell looked at it in horror. He slowly took it from her.
‘I wouldn’t do that. That’s not who I am.’
‘I didn’t think so either,’ she said, her voice softer. ‘Look, Frank. Tell me what’s going on with you. Are you getting sick again, is that it? Has the stress of these cases triggered a relapse?’
Farrell’s head was all over the place. He didn’t know what to think. If he levelled with her, she might have him carted off to the funny farm. However, on the other hand, there was no one else so uniquely placed to help him. To heck with it, he thought. Here goes.
‘You asked if I’m getting sick again? Truthfully I don’t know. Lately, I’ve been a bit lax about the lithium …’
‘You’re still on lithium?’ she interjected. ‘But you said … why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Why do you think?’ he said. ‘Because you would have written me off as a broken-down whack job.’
‘Give me a little credit,’ she said.
Farrell looked at her. She turned away, gnawing her lip.
‘All right! I admit it might have made me a little twitchy. Satisfied?’
‘Anyway,’ said Farrell. ‘None of that matters now. The night you thought I was hiding in the bushes is the night I either had a blackout or was drugged. He could have stolen my mobile phone. It went missing sometime before that night and hasn’t turned up since. I know he’s been in my house before.’
Farrell quickly brought her up to speed on the investigation, including his dramatic encounter with the abductor.
‘You were actually stabbed?’
‘It was nothing, just a flesh wound. Didn’t hit anything vital,’ said Farrell.
‘Why didn’t you tell me? I would have …’
‘What Clare? You would have done what exactly? I did try to phone, several times, but you wouldn’t even take my calls.’
Clare couldn’t meet his eyes.
‘I’m sorry. I was confused. I didn’t know what to think. You scared me.’
‘It wasn’t me!’ shouted Farrell louder than he had intended.
Clare’s eyes filled with tears.
‘You’re scaring me now,’ she said in a low voice.
Farrell took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. He was handling this all wrong.
‘The thing is, Clare, when I looked in the mirror a few days ago it suddenly hit me where I had seen the killer’s eyes before.’
‘Where?’ demanded Clare.
‘In the mirror.’
‘What do you mean? I don’t understand.’
‘That makes two of us,’ countered Farrell.
Clare stared at Farrell. He stared back.
‘That night,’ she began, ‘I didn’t see the man head on as he approached me from behind. When he put his arms round me I thought it was you. He was the same height and build. I even got a whiff of that aftershave you wear. It was you and yet it wasn’t you. I’m not making any sense, am I?’
‘Join the club,’ said Farrell. ‘Although, for what it’s worth, the aftershave disappeared around the same time as the phone.’
‘I suppose it’s possible you’re having some kind of psychotic episode,’ said Clare slowly, ‘but that would mean …’
‘That I’m the one who assaulted you the other night,’ finished Farrell.
‘You mentioned DC McLeod was with you up at the convent. Did she see you and the abductor at the same time?’
Farrell thought back, replaying the whole terrifying scene in his mind. He shook his head decisively.
‘She only heard his voice. She didn’t get a look at him. I think she said he had a Glaswegian accent.’
Another uncomfortable thought occurred to him.
‘Wait a minute, I’ve remembered something. She said there was something familiar about the voice but she couldn’t place it.’
Farrell jumped up and started to pace round the room.
‘Clare, I don’t suppose, you don’t think …?’
Farrell’s breath became ragged and the room began to recede. All he could hear was the sound of his own blood pounding in his ears like a river in spate. He felt a cool hand take hold of his hot one and gently lead him to the chair he’d recently vacated. Feeling like a fool he obeyed her instructions to place his head between his knees. Gradually the room swam back into focus. He pushed himself upright. Their eyes met and his slid away in confusion.
‘I’ll be honest, Frank. I don’t know what to think,’ Clare said carefully. ‘You’ve certainly had a psychotic episode in the past but after all this time a recurrence is unlikely. I don’t like the fact that you’ve been haphazard with your lithium. It muddies the water a little,’ she said looking worried.
‘There’s no way I’m behind these abductions,’ said Farrell. ‘I know myself better than that. Plus, I would have to have stabbed myself as well. That’s a whole different level of crazy. There’s got to be another explanation.’
‘Like what?’ asked Clare.
‘Hell, I don’t know!’ exploded Farrell. ‘Some kind of doppelganger? The whole thing’s ridiculous. Forget I said anything. I’ll figure it out,’ he said as he got to his feet and turned towards the door.
‘Could someone be deliberately impersonating you?’
Farrell paused and looked at her like he thought she’d taken leave of her senses.
‘To what end?’
‘Trying to frame you, exact revenge for a past grievance?’
‘Jason Baxter is the only person I can think of down this neck of the woods that has a grudge against me.’
‘Well?’
‘Well, nothing! He’s an old guy with a big belly, not to mention the wrong height. You’d have sussed the difference immediately.’
‘I don’t know …’ she said, the corners of her mouth twitching.
‘Very funny.’
‘I don’t know what else to suggest,’ said Clare. ‘To all intents and purposes it was you but not you.’
‘If it was just your experience alone I would be more likely to think it was someone pretending to be me, but you’re forgetting I looked into his eyes. They were my eyes, I know it!’
‘Frank, you have blue eyes. The person who abducted the boys has been variously described as having green or brown eyes.’
‘Coloured contact lenses, probably, so we don’t really know.’
‘Let’s just put it behind us and move on. Whether it was you or not, it doesn’t matter. I’m fine and you seem your normal self now. Either it was you or it was someone with the same physical build trying to impersonate you. There are no other possibilities.’
‘Unless I’ve got a twin brother, a mirror image?’
‘Frank,’ Clare said, looking concerned. ‘I don’t think …’
‘I can’t be adopted. I’ve got my mother’s eyes and she also gave me these dimples, for my sins.’
‘And your father?’ she asked, clearly trying to humour him.
Farrell paused before answering, feeling a familiar emptiness. How could he continue to mourn someone he had never known?
‘My father died when I was a baby,’ he said. ‘He was a fireman and suffered smoke inhalation after rescuing a family from a burning tenement in Glasgow.’
‘It can be tough having a parent die so heroically. People around you place them on a pedestal. It makes it harder to gain a realistic sense of who they were, warts and all.’
‘I’m pretty sure my father was wart free judging by the way my mother used to go on about him when I was growing up.’
‘Wait a minute, I thought you grew up in Dumfries?’
‘We moved not long after the funeral. Too many memories, my mother said. Maybe I had a twin that was adopted?’
‘That wouldn’t make any sense,’ said Clare.
‘Nothing about this makes sense. A twin brother makes a lot more sense to me than that I assaulted you the other night. That just couldn’t have happened, mad or not.’
‘If you were ill, your normal parameters of behaviour wouldn’t apply. You might have been disinhibited, in an altered state. I know that’s hard to accept.’
‘What? It’s more likely that I’m off my rocker than had a brother that was adopted?’
Clare said nothing, which in itself spoke volumes.
Farrell stood up to leave.
‘Look, why don’t you have a word with your mother, broach the subject, solely to put your mind at rest?’
‘Not an option,’ said Farrell. ‘We’re not on the best of terms right now. Maybe I got it wrong anyway. When I came face to face with the abductor I was close to passing out from the stabbing. Maybe my brain got a bit scrambled in the process.’
There was an awkward pause.
Farrell stood up to go. Best to get it over with.
‘I guess, given the circumstances, you and I probably shouldn’t continue seeing each other?’
‘If you think that’s best,’ she replied with composure.
Farrell scanned her expression and was dismayed to see a flicker of relief. What had he expected? That she would collapse into hysterics and beg him to reconsider? At least he could exit her life with dignity. He owed her that at least.
‘Frank, wait. Don’t go!’
Farrell turned round, scarcely daring to hope.
Clare walked towards him and took both his hands in hers.
‘I don’t want us to stop seeing each other but I need you to promise me that you’ll keep taking your medication. I’m worried about you.’
‘I promise,’ Farrell said. ‘I won’t let you down.’
‘The reason I became a psychiatrist was that my mother was mentally ill. She ended up killing herself.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Farrell, squeezing her hands. ‘I had no idea.’
‘I was driven to help others like her but it gave me a fear of ever being tangled up with something like that in my personal life. If I didn’t like you so much things would never even have got this far.’
‘Let’s just take things one day at a time,’ said Farrell.
‘There’s something else,’ said Clare. ‘A condition, if you like.’
‘Go on.’
‘I want you to see a psychiatrist, just to be on the safe side. I assume you have someone you see in Edinburgh?’
‘I do. And I will,’ said Farrell. ‘I promise. But in the meantime, I’m still signed off sick so at least it gives me a bit of free time to start digging around.’
‘Be careful,’ Clare said.
As Farrell drove back to Kelton his thoughts whirled like an erratic fairground ride, trying to make sense of all the information whizzing by. Could he really have a twin? How could that be possible? With a jolt he remembered the first crime scene. His DNA had been found there. He’d put it down to the shock, kicked himself for being sloppy. Suppose it hadn’t been his after all? A bark of mirth squeezed from his lips as he imagined how the super would take it if it turned out he had a twin running amok. He had to keep even the remote possibility to himself for the time being. The only person who would know for sure was his mother and she’d cut out her tongue rather than tell him any—
That’s it! Suddenly Farrell knew what he had to do. You can always rely on the Bible to point the way. Time for a visit from the prodigal son. He needed help; someone else in the loop. Someone who could reel him in if he really was going off his rocker. Who to trust?