Taking the Long Shot Ch. 01-02

I'm not by nature a violent person, but if I wanted to do serious injury to anyone in this world, it was those two. And Cassandra's uncle and aunt who I was fairly convinced orchestrated the newspaper campaign against me, that led to me becoming a bankrupt.

Yeah, I'd come to the Popeye point in my life, "That's all I can stands and I can't stands no-more!" were the thoughts going around in my brain.

Having finished my beer I headed towards the door, pool cue still in hand. As fast as my legs would carry me, without actually running.

"Stay away from me, Conway, or you might not live long enough to collect your pension," I was saying as I reached for the door handle.

But Conway stopped me dead in my tracks when he called out, "Cassandra's alive and well, Dan!"

End of Chapter 01

--------------------------------------------------

Taking the Long Shot, Chapter 02

"Cassandra's alive and well, Dan; we've found her!" Conway called out as I opened the door.

Of course that stopped me in my tracks, and I turned to look at him, wondering what kind of a sick trick he was trying to play this time.

Several times during the intervening years he'd told that me bodies had been discovered that were tentatively identified as being Cassandra. Forensics had always proven otherwise of course; but Conway and his oppos had always used the discovery of those bodies as an excuse to pull me in for yet another grilling.

I had no idea what kind of a game he was trying to play this time, and I had no intention of hanging around long enough to find out either.

"Bollocks!" I replied and then I walked out of the pub.

Of course I did wonder whether Conway was telling the truth or not, but I doubted it from the beginning. The man had told me all kinds of tales during his interrogation sessions; I figured that he was playing another of his mind games, trying to get me to say something stupid like "That's impossible because I killed her and buried her where you'll never find her!" Which of course I couldn't, because I hadn't!

Those sort of dumb confessions only happen at the end of badly written TV programmes anyway.

Over the next week or so there were a couple of times that I thought he might have been telling the truth. Actually at one time I hoped Conway had been telling the truth, but then I got to thinking about the few words he had said.

"Cassandra's alive and well."

Yeah, well, if she was alive and well, then why hadn't she come looking for me? Good question, eh? Cassandra would be a millionaire; finding the husband she walked out on four years before should be no problem for her.

Well, when you think about it, there's only one answer to that question, isn't there? Cassandra must have been stringing me along all the time, maybe to get her own hands on that trust fund of hers. Although I couldn't imagine why she didn't just divorce me. But then, who knows what was going on in her mind.

I could not make any sense in her letting me go through the hell I'd been through since that evening in Bristol. I had to come to the conclusion that if she was alive and well, then she had never felt anything for me in the first place.

For the next few weeks I checked the newspapers that I found laying around — I didn't waste my precious beer money on buying the bleeding things; after all most of them had been part of the conspiracy to get me hung, drawn and quartered. But there was never any mention of Cassandra being located. I had just about convinced myself that Conway had been lying. I'd say at least a month had gone past before anything else happened, maybe longer; time had little meaning for me by that stage. It must have been at least a month, because I got my social fortnightly and I was back drinking a proper beer in the same pub again.

I saw the guy come into the bar, a little later in the day than when Conway and his oppo turned up, so I was a little bit closer to never never land.

Anyway, he had some tart with him and they had had a whispered conversation with the barman, who I noted had gestured in my direction. He brought a couple of pints and a drink for the woman, then strolled over to my table and placed the full beer before me.

"Dan Elks, my name's Fox. Cassandra is one of my patients," he announced.

I was looking straight in his eyes as he spoke and somehow I knew that this wasn't some kind of trick of Conway's.

"I thought she was supposed to be well," I blustered. This guy had referred to Cassandra as his patient. That made him a doctor; if Cassandra was his patient then how could she be in perfect health as Conway had implied. I thought that a logical conclusion even if I was half pissed.

"Oh, she is ... physically, Mr Elks. But not quite in perfect health mentally."

And that was supposed to be news to me. Cassandra had to have been a sandwich short of a picnic to do what she'd done to me.

"You can say that again! Have you any idea what that woman has done to my life?" I found myself retorting.

"I read the papers, Mr Elks ... and I've spent some time talking to John Conway. It was he who informed me where to find you."

"You've just made yourself very unwelcome at this table, mate; I suggest you leave whilst you're still able to walk."

"Hear me out please, Mr Elks. I'm a psychologist and I'm treating Cassandra for what is commonly known as amnesia."

"So what the fuck's that got to do with me?" I said angrily. I never had had much faith in all these shrinks and the like, with all their psychobabble.

"Everything, Mr Elks, believe me. Cassie is in what we call a fugue state; have you any idea what that is?"

"Not the slightest and I don't much care."

"Mr Elks, Cassandra's condition is not only extremely rare, it's almost unheard of for it to have lasted as long as it has. Usually, the patient recovers within a matter of days or weeks. We believe Cassandra's been in this condition since the night she disappeared. And we believe that you might hold the answer to bringing her out of it."

Damn it, when he first spoke to me I'd intended to see the tosser off, the same way I'd seen Conway and arse wipe off a few weeks previous. But the bugger had got me intrigued; which I suppose, was what he'd intended to do. Crafty arsehole.

"Oh, yeah, how can I hold the answer to anything? I don't know what the bitch was playing at or why she ran off that way. Where's she been anyway?" I asked, surprising myself somewhat that I even cared.

Shit! With that damned question, the bugger had me, and what's more he knew it. Maybe there is something in all that psychology crap after all.

Fox slipped into the seat opposite me, and his female colleague came over to join us. I was to find out later that she was into people who drink too much. Not alkies, but the likes of me who try to hide in a bottle.

What's that? You didn't know there was a difference? Yeah, well, there is! Alcoholics drink because they are addicted to the stuff. When they've got it bad enough they will drink just about anything that contains alcohol. Some of us don't get addicted; we can take or leave alcohol as we please. We are choosy about what we drink and only consume the stuff to turn our minds into mush. We choose to drink ourselves into oblivion as much as we can.

"I'd better explain a little about Cassie's problem to you first, Mr Elks; and I'll try to keep it in layman's terms as much as I can. Cassie appears to be in a fugue state. As I told you it's a rare condition, but extremely well documented. The sufferer loses all knowledge of who they are, and inexplicably are known to travel away from home, or places they are familiar with, as if running away from something."

"Usually they are assumed to have taken on or invented a new persona for themselves whilst in this condition. And most commonly they recover after a few days or even weeks. The odd thing is, they usually have no recollection of the time they are in the fugue state. So knowledge of what they actually do whilst in a fugue is extremely limited."

"As far as it's understood, usually they will just wake up one morning in a strange place, with no idea how they got there or what they've done during the fugue. Sometimes giving the impression that they've only just lost their memory. Other times the memory has returned. But rarely with any knowledge or memory of what happened when they were in the fugue."

"So, Cassandra should know why she left then."

"No, Mr Elks; Cassie is the exception, it's been nearly four years and she's still in the fugue condition. She has no recollection of her childhood, or of you. She believes at the present time that she's an American by the name of Sarah Lee."

"Why should she think that?"

"Because that's who she's been for the last four years. Look Mr Elks, let me explain how she was found. You know the Americans are getting a little paranoid about the terrorist threat. Well, apparently Sarah Lee applied for a position in a government agency over there. As a matter of routine she was finger printed and her prints didn't match up to the prints of Sarah Lee that the FBI had on file."

"Add to that, she speaks English with a very pronounced English accent and she is also fluent in Serbo-Croat..."

"Do what?"

"Yes, she apparently speaks it like a native, didn't you know? Well, it's not surprising really, her parents were Croatian. Ah, you never knew that either!"

"They were both dead long before I met Cassandra."

"Don't suppose there was any point in Cassie mentioning the fact then. I know she had ample reason to want to forget the country. Anyway the American authorities kind-of had themselves a communal heart attack, and assumed that Cassandra, or Sarah Lee, was some kind of terrorist sleeper. Apparently it's routine for them to check terrorist fingerprints with the British police and their system threw up Cassandra's name as a missing person pretty quickly."

"It took a few months before an American psychologist realised that Cassandra wasn't a threat, but a patient in need of help. They eventually got in touch with Cassandra's Aunt and she had Cassie flown back to the UK, where she was placed into my hands. I'm charged with the problem of getting Cassie's memory back."

"Well, if you're convinced she lost her memory, surely all you got to do is find out what caused her to lose it. But if you're expecting me to come up with a reason, then you're barking up the wrong tree mate. I have no idea what came over Cassandra that night, or why!"

"Oh no, Dan. You don't mind me calling you Dan, do you? We know what caused her problem and what triggered it that particular evening. I've had a detective friend of mine going through everything and we know just about all there is to know about how Cassie became Sarah Lee and why she went. What we don't know, or haven't found yet, is the trigger that will bring Cassandra back. I believe that you might be that trigger."

"You know what set her off do you, would you care to explain it to me?" I asked, sarcastically adding. "In layman's terms of course."

"Mr Elks ... Dan," Fox's colleague spoke, for the first time. "Were you aware that Cassie was raped as a teenager?"

"No!" I replied, taken aback a little by the sudden revelation

I'm not sure whether I was surprised that Cassandra had never mentioned the fact, assuming that it was true. I'll admit that I was still pretty sceptical about what these shrinks had to say.

"When she was fifteen, Cassandra went to Yugoslavia with her father." Fox continued, "He, his siblings and parents had fled the country at the end of the war, before Tito took complete control over the whole country. The place had opened up again towards the end of Tito's reign and we believe Cassandra's father knew that things were about to fall apart following Tito's death. It's most likely he was in the country looking for some of his relatives. Unfortunately the trouble between the Serbs and the Croats came to a head whilst they were still there."

"Cassie and her father were taken prisoner or kidnapped by some Serbian militia or they might have been bandits for all anyone really knows. From what I've heard say things were pretty chaotic. Anyway they shot Cassie's father in front of her and then raped her repeatedly until she was freed by some Croatian fighters some time later. It's believed that they held her captive for about two weeks."

"Oh shit, the foreigners in the restaurant. The people who attacked her weren't in that group, were they?"

"Quite the opposite Dan. The Leader of the group of Croatian fighters who rescued Cassandra was though. Unfortunately seeing him again, brought it all back to Cassie and ... well, as they say, she flipped."

"How do you know all this now, if Cassandra can't remember and the police didn't know it at the time of her disappearance?"

"I explained that I had a private detective friend of mine go over everything. Cassie's aunt had told us about the rape and murder of her brother. John Carpenter went back to the restaurant and questioned the manager and staff there with, shall we say, an open mind. Once he realised that the other party there had been mainly Croatian students and ex-pats, it didn't take him very long to find the guy whose father had freed Cassie.

"Of course he hadn't recognised Cassie on the night she disappeared. But he was aware that something had happened that evening. They'd gone on to a bar by the time the police started asking questions and for some reason, weren't approached by them later."

"He's a nice man, who flew over from Croatia to see if meeting him again would jog Cassie's memory." Fox added

"Was that wise?" I asked.

"Who knows, but it was worth a try. But Cassie's mind has really clammed up tight about who she was."

"How did she come by the name Sarah Lee, and how could she get away with pretending that she was her for so long." I asked.

"Well, to Cassie's mind she is Sarah Lee. How she came by the identity is coincidental in the extreme. But as far as John Carpenter my detective friend can put it together it goes a bit like this. A week or so before Cassie disappeared; a small cruise ship was towed into Falmouth harbour with engine trouble. Some of the passengers were flown home, whilst others stayed with the ship whilst repairs were carried out."

"One of the people who stayed with the ship was a young American woman by the name of Sarah Lee; she was an orphan and had recently been divorced from her husband, who was later killed in Somalia. Anyway there was apparently no one who she was close to left in the world."

"Now, whilst repairs to the ship were carried out, those passengers who remained with the ship treated it like a floating hotel, they came and went as they chose. Unfortunately quite a few of the cabin crew were rotated home at the same time. Some new passengers also joined that ship just before she sailed, her engine having been repaired. Consequently when the ship set sail for Portugal there wasn't really anyone on board who knew that the confused woman found wandering on deck wasn't Sarah Lee."

"They just checked all the cabins and put Cassie into Sarah's Cabin because her gear was there, but she wasn't. In her confused condition Cassie probably looked through Sarah's belongings and ... well she became Sarah. We're not sure how people in a fugue condition adopt their new identities but it appears obvious how Cassie found hers."

"Three months later, a car that Sarah Lee had hired in Falmouth to tour the county was found in the bottom of a river. But by that time Cassie had become Sarah so the American officials told the British police that Sarah couldn't have been in the car when it crashed, it must have been a car thief."

"Yeah, I can remember the body in the car; it was one of many I was asked to try to identify."

"What! After three months at the bottom of a river?" Fox's colleague blurted out.

"Conway and his cronies were trying to shock me into admitting that I'd done away with Cassandra. I think they were hoping the shock of seeing that body would make me confess."

"I would have thought it would driven you too dri..." Fox realised what he was saying and stopped speaking before he finished his sentence.

"It did!" I replied.

"Sorry that was unconscionable for me to say that."

"Why, it's the truth. I was damned near crazy with worry and that bastard tried to send me over the brink. God knows how I haven't laid the bugger out."

"Yes, so I gather from your reaction when I asked Chief Inspector Conway to approach you for me. I understand that the local police don't come too near you either?"

"I've got five cases for police harassment in the works; if one of the buggers looks at me funny, I call my brief and he lodges a complaint. I'm completely innocent of any crime and yet I've had four years of the buggers giving me grief. They leaked lies about me to the press and vilified me in public. I lost my company, my home and my life because of the way those buggers behaved. They ain't getting away with anything where I'm concerned in the future."

Fox and his colleague exchanged glances, then he asked. "Dan are you going to help us try to bring Cassie back?"

"I don't know, whether I want to. From what you say Cassandra might be better off as she is. She obviously isn't mine any more, I'd probably do better to forget I ever met her."

"But you were in love with her when you married her, weren't you?" The female shrink asked.

"Were, being the operative word, madam. It's a very short step between love and hate you know. For a while I thought that Cassandra had been abducted. But somehow I knew that she wasn't dead, even when I tried to convince myself that she was. I knew she was out there somewhere and I grew to hate her for what her disappearance has done to me. In my mind she's grown to be as guilty as Conway and his bunch of arseholes."

"Oh dear, so I can't count on your help than."

"No I don't think so, Mr Fox. Let sleeping dogs lie, and yesterday stay a long forgotten memory. What if Cassandra gets her memory back, would she still love me, I somehow doubt it. Well not enough anyway, if she'd loved me that much surely she would have told me about her past?"

"Not necessarily Dan. Have you ever heard of repressed memories?"

"Eh, yeah kind-of."

"Well it's not only possible but very likely that Cassie had repressed those memories of her father's death and what happened to her in Yugoslavia. Seeing that man who rescued her that day may have brought it all back into her conscious mind. We have no way of knowing for sure though."

"Well then, it's probably better that she doesn't remember it now either. So possibly the best thing anyone can do is leave her mind where it is, don't you think?"

"No, because the confused woman who thinks she's Sarah Lee, will spend the rest of her life in a mental health unit if we can't bring her back."

"Probably better than the hell I've been living in for the last four years. But I'm pretty sure sclerosis will ensure that I don't suffer for too much longer." I replied, as usual feeling sorry for myself.

To be honest, I was seriously reticent about helping the doctor with Cassandra's treatment. What would happen if she didn't come out of it, but I fell in love with her again? Being without her had been bad enough in the beginning when I could kid myself she was dead. But how would I feel if she rejected me. I honestly did fear for my own sanity.

"I'm sorry, doctor; but you are on your own on this one. I really can see no point in me trying to assist you. I'm not even sure that I can trust myself to be in the same room as Cassandra. I really don't know how I would react to seeing her again."

Much to my surprise the two doctors didn't try to persuade me any further; although I did thank them for telling me the details of Cassandra's disappearance.