Obsession (75 page)

‘He’d been seeing Annalise for almost a month by the time he told me about her. He was deeply concerned by her resemblance to Siobhan – afraid that it was Siobhan he was falling in love with and not Annalise. Over the following weeks we spent many hours discussing this, and by the end of it I was of the opinion that what Luke was feeling for Annalise was perfectly normal. Which it was, considering that neither of us at that time knew the truth. Anyway, with your help, Mr Denby, Annalise and Luke went ahead and set up TW productions and you may remember, sir, that it was at the party following the announcement that TW had secured a network slot, that Annalise first introduced Luke to her mother. Luke recognized Mrs Denby immediately, and with the recognition came the horrific realization of why it was that Annalise looked so like Siobhan.

‘I am sure you recall, Mr Denby, the way Luke left the party so abruptly that night. He in fact came straight to me. His distress, as I am sure you can imagine, was immeasurable. He stayed with me for three days, by which time I had persuaded him to go and speak to Mrs Denby – though there seemed little doubt of his relationship to
Annalise
I felt it necessary that he should find out for certain. Mrs Denby of course confirmed it.

‘I don’t think I need to explain, gentlemen, that Luke’s entire world had been turned inside out. Everything he had striven to forget was once again staring him in the face. And the first love he had ever felt in his life to be totally pure, was of course anything but. Naturally, what tormented him most of all, was that he was doing the same to his own daughter as his father had to Siobhan. Not with the same brutality, of course, but nevertheless he was engaged in a sexual relationship with her. Not only that, Annalise’s mother, just as Luke’s own mother had, was allowing it to happen. In Mrs Denby’s case, she actively encouraged it. And on top of it all, your name, Mr Denby, was the same as his own father’s. The coincidences, the shock, the altogether tragic reflections of his own childhood meant that Luke’s grip on his sanity became severely jeopardized. He couldn’t, and how many of us could?, come to terms with the fact that life had played him such a monstrous trick. He was in love with Annalise, he didn’t want to give her up, but knew that he had to. He tried, and until this week I thought he had succeeded. I knew he had continued his affair with Mrs Denby, but only when he came to spend four weeks at the clinic recently, did he tell me what she had been putting him through all this time. Knowing how desperately he was suffering she had been stimulating his confusion over his identity to the point that he truly believed he was his father. The bastard Phillip Fitzpatrick Denby, was what she called him, using your name, Mr Denby, to confuse him all the more. She incited him to torment you or to blackmail you in any way he could. At first Luke resisted, but when Mrs Denby threatened to tell Annalise who he really was, Luke complied. And it didn’t take long for his mental state to deteriorate to the point that he no longer knew who he or anyone else was. Of course there were days, even weeks of clarity,
during
which he tried to break his relationship with Annalise many times, but never successfully. She was as in love with him as he was with her, and it seemed not to matter how cruel he was to her, she wouldn’t let him go. And he simply didn’t have the strength to let her go.

‘I must emphasize here, gentlemen, that I had no idea what was happening in Luke’s mind or life over this two year period. He stopped confiding in me at the time he told me he had ended his relationship with Annalise. It was only when he came to spend some time at the clinic recently that I learned of at least some of what had been happening. He told me that he had been trying to punish you, Mr Denby, for what had been done to Siobhan. Of course he didn’t tell me how he had been punishing you, but we know now that it was through the prostitutes. He confessed to the terrible identity crisis he was having between himself and his father – and he also told me that he believed, if he could only get through to Corrie, she could help him.’

Cristos’s head came up. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he said.

Horowitz sighed. ‘I think, as far as Luke is concerned, that Corrie is the only member of Mr Denby’s family who is untainted. I imagine that at first he wanted to seduce Corrie as a means of tormenting Mr Denby, but as his state of mind worsened, and I think he knew that it was deteriorating, he started to view Corrie in a very different light. You must understand, he can no longer see his life as being apart from this family, or perhaps I should say, as being apart from his own nightmare. So his salvation, he believes, must come from within the family. Or, as it turns out, must come from Corrie. But he has been unable to reach Corrie, though he’s tried in many convoluted ways to do so. And, as we know, she is in love with you, Mr Bennati. I strongly believe that it is because of that, that Luke’s last vestiges of hope – and indeed sanity – died.’

An oppressive silence stretched through the minutes that
followed.
Phillip was sitting with his head in his hands, Cristos was still at the window staring sightlessly out at the darkening sky, and Radcliffe was quietly smoking another cigarette. Phillip was the first to speak.

‘After Luke returned to Ireland in ’67, did he ever go back to London again?’

Horowitz frowned. ‘I’m sure he did, many times as a journalist, but he didn’t live there again until ’85.’

‘I see,’ Phillip said, and as he spoke it was evident that he was somewhere deep inside his own thoughts. He lifted his eyes to see that they were waiting for him to speak again. ‘I was just trying to connect the disappearance of Geraldine Lassiter’s gigolo with … certain other things that happened at that time,’ he explained.

Cristos’s head came up. ‘Who?’

‘Geraldine Lassiter, the woman who … educated him.’

‘You remember him then?’ Horowitz asked.

‘I don’t recall ever meeting him, no,’ Phillip answered. ‘But I knew of his existence. Everyone did.’

‘Would you like to tell us what those certain other things were – at the time of his disappearance?’ Radcliffe asked.

Phillip shook his head. ‘Not yet, no,’ he said. ‘I’d like to speak to my wife first.’

Every one of them was on the point of protesting, but something in Phillip stopped them.

‘Do you remember your wife’s affair with Luke?’ Horowitz asked.

‘Yes, I remember it,’ Phillip answered.

Long minutes ticked by as they waited for him to speak again. In the end it was Cristos who broke the silence.

‘So where does all this leave us?’ he said, turning to Horowitz. ‘We still don’t know where they are …’

‘I’m afraid that’s a question for Mr Radcliffe,’ Horowitz answered.

‘Then perhaps you should tell us,’ Cristos said, knowing that at this stage Radcliffe would be unable to answer the
question,
‘just what kind of danger you consider them to be in.’

The expression on Horowitz’s face as he glanced at Radcliffe was as unsettling for Cristos as it was for Phillip, who was now listening intently. It showed so clearly that Horowitz was seeking Radcliffe’s permission as to whether or not he should divulge his worst fears. Radcliffe gave an almost imperceptible nod and Horowitz turned back to Phillip and Cristos.

‘I believe that it is Annalise who is in the most immediate danger,’ he said. ‘Her resemblance to Siobhan will confuse and frustrate him, and if she does know that Luke is her father then her behaviour towards him is likely to be very much on a parallel with the way Siobhan was with her father. Luke could very well respond to that in the way his father did with Siobhan.’

‘Oh, God help us,’ Phillip breathed, letting his head fall back as he closed his eyes. It was Radcliffe though, who asked the question that had soared to the front of Phillip’s mind.

‘Phillip Fitzpatrick never went so far as to kill Siobhan,’ he said, ‘so are you saying that Luke is likely to adhere to that too?’

Horowitz’s sallow face became pinched with unease. ‘No, I’m afraid I’m not saying that.’

‘And Corrie?’ Cristos asked, unable to look at Phillip.

The sympathy was clear in Horowitz’s silvery eyes as he looked back at Cristos. ‘As I said earlier,’ he answered, ‘Luke has, for some time, been convinced that Corrie’s love and compassion was all he needed to make his life whole. This is an irrational conviction, of course, but his mind is very far from rational. He sees Corrie as someone who can heal the damage that has been done to him … He feels he needs her, that he can’t be without her – in life or in death.’

Fear churned through Cristos’s stomach like a vortex. ‘What do you mean, in death?’ he asked.

Horowitz looked at him, blinking sadly. ‘It is my belief that Luke intends to take his own life,’ he said. ‘If he does then I’m very much afraid that he will take Corrie with him.’

Cristos’s face had become very pale, every muscle in his body was taut.

‘Please understand, Mr Bennati,’ Horowitz continued in a feeble effort to comfort him, ‘that I am only surmising. I cannot say for sure what Luke will do.’ And it was true, he couldn’t. But there was no doubt at all in his mind that Luke had by now lost control completely. There would be no reaching him now, his reason was lost to him forever. There was nothing to be gained from telling Cristos that, for neither man need know the extent to which he, Horowitz, feared that the degradation, abuse and terror of Luke’s childhood would be meted out to both Corrie and Annalise before they went to their deaths.

– 29 –

CORRIE AND ANNALISE
were lying back to back on a vast wooden bed inside the villa. Their hands and feet were bound to each other’s, a flimsy cotton sheet covered their near nudity. Some time ago Corrie had heard a distant clock chime midnight and just after there had been the sound of footsteps passing along the corridor outside followed by a door closing nearby. She wondered if Luke had gone to bed too, if he would lay down the gun while he slept – if this could be an opportunity to escape.

She bit down hard on her lip as the futility of her wonderings, the sheer helplessness of their position pushed tears into her eyes. Even if she and Annalise could loosen their bonds, which Corrie knew already they couldn’t, the door
to
their room was locked and the windows were too high for them to jump.

For hours now Corrie had felt her inner strength ebbing. The effort of holding herself together, if only for Annalise’s sake, was proving so difficult as to be almost impossible. In her weakened state her desperate longing for Cristos and the yearning to feel herself being lifted into the safety of his arms was growing to such a pitch that she could feel herself drawing ever closer to the brink of panic. But she mustn’t allow herself to think of Cristos, she had to push all thoughts of him from her mind. He had no more idea of where she was than she did, and to think of him coming for her was a dangerous fantasy for it was clouding the brutal and stupefying reality of what was happening to her and Annalise.

Luke had kept them out in the blazing sun the entire afternoon while he himself had disappeared inside, or maybe he had even left the villa for a while, Corrie had no way of knowing. What she did know was that she was still, all this time later, reeling from the shock of all that Annalise had learned from her mother while they had been in Spain with Luke. But it wasn’t only that Luke was Annalise’s father that Corrie was finding so hard to accept, it was the part Octavia herself had played in the whole unspeakable deception.

‘Luke says that she’s corrupt, that she’s rotten right through to her soul …’ Annalise had said in a voice fractured by the terrible sadness and betrayal she was suffering. ‘And how can I doubt that after what she’s done? I see her face in my mind’s eye and I know that beneath the shallow surface of her oh-so-perfect skin there’s nothing more than a festering mass of poison. But whatever she is, whatever evil there is in her, it doesn’t change the fact that Luke knew what he was doing. He knew who I was and he never told me. He’s tried to excuse himself by reminding me of how many times he tried to break it off between us – it’s
as
though he’s blaming me for it all because I wouldn’t let him go.’ She had looked up at Corrie then with such desperate torment in her eyes that Corrie, who was perched on the edge of the hammock chair, brushed her fingers gently over her face.

‘But you didn’t know,’ Corrie soothed her. ‘How could you have known?’

For a while then neither of them said anything. Corrie’s eyes wandered across the sea, following the tide to the distant shore. The heat was so oppressive it was soaking through the pores of her skin. It was difficult to move, even to think. The shock, the sheer horror of what had been happening to Annalise these past two years was beyond comprehension. She wanted to find some words of comfort, but what comfort could there ever be for something like this? And what in God’s name was going to happen to her now – to either of them?

She looked down as Annalise shuddered, then reached out to her as she struggled to catch her breath through a battery of dry sobs.

‘I can’t bear it!’ Annalise gulped. ‘To think that I have to live the rest of my life knowing what I did, what my own mother … Oh, Corrie, she laughed when she told me, do you know that? She actually laughed.’

Corrie’s face was drawn with pity as she all too vividly envisaged the scene Annalise had had to endure.

‘And then … Oh God …’ As Annalise’s chest heaved with the pain and revulsion of memory she turned away from Corrie and buried her face in her hands. ‘Do you know what she did, Corrie? Oh God, I can hardly believe it even now. She came and stood behind me and she told him he could rape me. She said she’d hold me down for him, and she would make me call him daddy.’

Corrie’s eyes closed. She could feel the sun scorching across her back, she could see the blisters starting to form on Annalise’s shoulders, smell the pungent sweetness of the
flowers,
taste the salt in the air. But all of it, just like Annalise’s words, seemed so remote from the heart of her senses that it was as though reality had become blurred by the shimmering heat around her.