Private London (Private 4)

‘Oh, yeah,’ I said. ‘Very fair dinkum.’

‘I’ll have a think about that, then.’

I nodded. ‘Good.’

Fifteen minutes later, after trawling through all manner of coded files, I hit the mother-lode.

‘Jesus Christ!’ I said out loud.

Chapter 97

HALF AN HOUR later we were sitting in the conference room.

Up on the screen Professor Annabelle Weston was in her office in mid-counselling session.

Her student and patient sat in the reclining chair. Hannah Shapiro. Her head lolled back, her mouth slightly open, her eyes closed, but a sluggish movement behind them, as the eyes move when searching for a memory. And the professor’s voice: honeyed, silken, soporific. Planting seeds as carefully and deliberately as an Iraqi insurgent building a bomb.

I picked up the remote and paused the tape. I figured Hannah had seen enough.

Hannah shook her head, dragging the back of her right hand across her eyes. Tears streaming down her cheeks.

‘Why would anybody do something like that?’ she asked.

I didn’t reply. I knew exactly why Annabelle Weston had done it. She had taken an already vulnerable young woman and made her even more emotionally wrecked. So she could build her up again and make a tool out of her.

It’s what cults did, it was what oppressive regimes did. Break down a person’s personality, their individuality and mould them into becoming part of a machine.

‘So he never did any of those things?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘You were in a heightened state of suggestion. She led you down a series of thoughts that weren’t your own to a conclusion that was entirely hers.’

‘It was so long ago, I was thirteen. I couldn’t remember exactly, because …’ She trailed off.

‘It’s what she was counting on. You had all those bad feelings because of what had happened to your mother, parts of what had happened on that day you recall. She let you think that the abuse had occurred but you had driven them out of your memory because you couldn’t face them.’

‘It’s called False Memory Syndrome, Hannah,’ said Sam. ‘It’s a form of brainwashing.’

‘She used me.’

The sadness in Hannah’s voice was heartbreaking – or it would have been had I not thought of Chloe.

‘You had deep-seated issues with your father, which she exploited. Abandonment issues, betrayal issues. You had a lot of anger. In your eyes he was responsible for what happened to your mother, after all, and at thirteen years old things can seem very black and white in moral terms.’

‘He was to blame! He refused to pay the ransom. It was peanuts and he did nothing!’

‘He thought he was doing the right thing, Hannah. He hired Jack Morgan,’ I reminded her.

‘Who got there too late!’

‘He saved you.’

‘Maybe I’d have been better off dead.’

‘No, you wouldn’t. Jack Morgan didn’t have the resources back then that we do now. He was on his own.’

‘Then my father should have gone to the police.’

‘Do you know what the statistics of surviving a kidnapping are, even if the ransom is paid?’