Come at one pm for lunch he had said. Bring said lunch with them he had suggested. A lunch of chicken madras, tarka dall, two paratha and some onion bhaji. And a few beers. With all this agreed David had said he would be more than pleased to meet Oliver and Jenny. Could he borrow twenty quid as well? Great.
Kennington Park Flats were clustered off the Kennington Oval Road, behind the famous Oval cricket ground. Each post-war block was six stories high and all built exactly the same from the same brown-black brick, synonymous with some of London’s less salubrious areas. This council estate was imposing and warren like. Oliver and Jenny felt conspicuous by them obviously being lost, not least because they wandered around with a large bag of hot take away from the nearby Kennington Tandoori on Kennington Park Road.
“Where is his block?” Jenny asked Oliver.
Oliver stood at the entrance of the block named ‘Mandela House’, “It’s this one sixth floor number forty eight, I think.”
They stepped inside the main entrance, it opened into a hallway, with access left and right to the ground floor flats. In the middle where they stood flights of concrete steps with black metal railings weaved upwards.
“Where is the lift?” Jenny asked Oliver.
“Doesn’t look like there is one,” Oliver replied, head arched back as he looked up and around.
Exchanging looks of resignation they began to climb the stairs.
Oliver and Jenny, after a tiring climb, arrived at the top floor and commenced knocking on the door and ringing the bell at number forty eight for several minutes. While they had climbed the stairs, Oliver with greater ease than Jenny, she had questioned the absence of a lift and mused on how the furniture for all these flats had been carried into each home. They had passed several people from a melting pot of backgrounds, all of whom had studied them to a highly uncomfortable degree.
“After all this, he is not in?” Jenny sighed, frustrated, “and I really thought he was our lead.”
“Hang on,” said Oliver. He stepped in nearer to the door and with his mouth close to the glass he called into the flat, “David, David Brown. It is Oliver Harris and Jenny Combes, from the e-mail exchange yesterday.”
Oliver looked back at Jenny, she shrugged and looked around increasingly uneasy.
“You’re curry is getting cold,” Oliver called.
From behind the door a response came, “Did you remember the onion bhaji?”
“Yes,” replied Oliver.
“Chicken Madras?”
“Yes,” Oliver further confirmed, “the full curry works David.”
“Few beers?”
“Yes,” Jenny called in to David and she gave the carrier bag she was holding a short shake, to provide some reassuring chinks of beer bottles.
Silence.
“And the twenty quid?” David asked.
“Yes,” Oliver and Jenny both replied in tandem with bemused smiles on their faces.
From inside they could here David moving around, then the sounds of bolts being undrawn in the door, three locks unlocking and eventually the door opened, on a chain. Through the opening of around six inches they could see David. He was white skinned and had matted thick black hair and a long black beard. He was portly and his white t-shirt grubby. He wore pyjama bottoms and slippers. He studied them briefly and then looked at the take away bag.
“You both look alright,” he commented after observing them, “curry smells good, come in.”
And with that he unfastened the door chain and invited them in.
Mary had chastised Oliver once they had finally spoken. She hadn’t spoke or swapped a text with him in over a week. He knew from Jamie she disapproved of him becoming immersed in his regression theories once again, he also knew she felt Jenny was not the genuine article. He saw no value in this view and felt irritated with Mary for sharing it with Minnie and Jamie. However, their friendship was long standing and rock solid. They would argue, fall out but never had they stopped being friends. Oliver also understood Mary’s concerns, he had become ill before, strained under the humiliation of exposure. He had been ridiculed as a mad professor character, studying fanciful science fiction and had become marginalized from the course. He was the number one student Professor Blooms frowned upon. Mary was instrumental in retaining his place on the course and the closest to him as she nursed him back to health.
Mary had tried to be understanding and supportive with Oliver, as he shared with her the email exchanges, phone calls and meetings with various people from the alternative therapy community. Some were therapists, others had undergone regression therapy. None had offered any insight or reveal that shone new light on the area, nor had they any offer that might help Jenny with her ‘gift’.
It was when Oliver talked about their latest and strongest lead yet, that Mary became firstly concerned then frustrated. David was unknown to them but claimed to have met Dyer as a young man. Mary was one to resist snobbery but she knew the Kennington Park estate and its news worthy reputation for drug dealing and gang violence. Oliver was unmoved by her concern and at that point she knew she had lost him until this episode concluded, if it ever would she thought. She couldn’t stop herself from calling him a bloody fool, warning him of how unsafe some places were and finally advised Oliver Jenny had him wrapped around her finger. Mary had then hung up and instantly felt dreadful.
Oliver had smiled and felt warmed as he approached the estate, as he received a text from Mary. It was a safety procedure and the code word was ‘Help’ to be sent to her by text if they got in trouble. She made Oliver text her the address they were visiting.
David ate his curry in probably the most unpleasant fashion either Oliver or Jenny had ever seen. As they sat down Oliver was at once dejected by the scene in front of him. David’s house was a mess, with clutter and hoarded objects strewn everywhere. The furniture was worn and battered, the kitchen off the hall was filthy and had dirty crockery piled high in the sink. David was disheveled and his communication at first was stilted.
In the brief time Oliver had worked as a section twelve approved doctor (under the mental health act) he had assessed and detained several people with severe and enduring mental illness. Whilst there was no suggestion of David needing this drastic intervention today, it was clear to Oliver they were meeting someone with a long standing psychosis. As such he expected nothing now from the meeting.
A small piece of spicy chicken hung from David’s beard. It quivered as he ate greedily, sauce ran into his beard and down his fingers.
“This is lovely, thank you very much,” David commented on the food in a warm and surprisingly clear way.
“You’re welcome,” Jenny said.
“I know what you’re thinking,” David said looking at Jenny and Oliver whilst removing the chicken from his beard, “this place, me, that I’m just some nutter whose mugged you into giving him a free meal.”
“No, David, you seemed genuine enough on the email,” Oliver tried to sound genuine himself.
“Schizophrenia is very debilitating, but I’m not daft or mad. This is lovely. I haven’t had a curry from them in nearly a year. Partly because I am so skint and partly because I get paranoid thoughts,” David took a drink of beer, a long drink, “the voices kept telling me I would be poisoned.”
“But you trust us?” Jenny asked with some uncertainty.
“You know of Professor Dyer, then I trust you,” David opened a second bottle of beer and held it up to them both.
“Cheers,” David said and he drank some more.
“So how did you know the professor, how long ago?” Oliver asked.
“Over twenty years ago, you see I was detained under the mental health act at the age of nineteen. My delusion was that I was Haile Selassie, who had died in seventy five, this was nineteen eighty something. Anyway if you don’t know he was a living god to many Rastafarians, so how I could be him I do not know. So anyway I’m detained and I also tell them I can regress, access past lives and went
on about who I could see who I had been.”
“Can you regress David? Could you really regress?” Jenny asked.
“Look I was mentally ill, am mentally ill, that stuff about regression therapy, it’s just the same as herbal medicine, if it works for you, all well and good. I was case conferenced until I was blue in the face, because my regression accounts were very accurate, and they couldn’t get it. They assumed I was very well read, which I was, but not on all the stuff I came out with.”
“So how did you meet Dyer?” Oliver wanted to move this on.
“He came to see me, not as a doctor, but as a visitor, he wore a baseball cap, casual clothes, he didn’t want to be recognised by the staff. He was very agitated but said he had learned of my case and quizzed me about the past life stuff, but unlike anyone else he spoke to me like he believed in it, which freaked me out to be honest. Then he asked me to join him.”
David chomped on an onion bhaji, he dipped it into the raita and put it in his mouth. He chewed on the large mouthful with great pleasure.
“Mmm, love bhajis.”
“Join him doing what?” Jenny asked trying to refocus David.
“In his experiments, said he was studying the subject and would I privately, secretly join his study, he offered to pay me.”
“And did you?” asked Oliver, excited at the discovery unfolding.
“Just once,” David replied. Oliver’s expression of optimism faded, “Just once and then it all went tits up for Dyer and he disappeared.”
“What went wrong for him?” Jenny asked.
“A scandal of some kind, a tragic break up of his family, though I don’t know who they were, a suspicion he topped his wife, though I’d never believe him capable of that. Police interest in his dark studies, a complete mess, and then he was gone. And that’s twenty years ago.”
Oliver was dejected, “I thought you could help us trace him David?”
“Oh, I can, he is in Vietnam, was in Vietnam, if he is still alive.”
Oliver looked up, “What? How do you know that?”
“He contacted me about two years ago, with some advice, he had been contacting all those who had worked on his studies, with advice. Most have died since with one tragic thing or another. He is on the Mekong Delta, has a simple life, a reclusive life, does a bit of voluntary work, there is so many poor people in Vietnam still. He looks good, considering he is in his sixties now.”
“You’ve seen him?” Jenny asked.
“He sent me a photo of him, on a boat on that delta river, big expanse of water, he looked well but a bit thin.”
Oliver studied David, “What advice David, what advice was he giving people?”
For the first time David looked solemn, “I can’t tell you, but I’m not doing very well with his advice speaking to you two at all to be honest.”
“So why have you?” asked Oliver.
“Because I think one of you needs help, from what you’ve said, probably you Jenny, help to understand regression more. He won’t talk to you though, you can try the e–mail address I have, but I’ve done my best telling you what I know. I like to help.”
With that point made the unusual meeting ended. David saw them to the door, he paused before he opened it. At this point Oliver felt very threatened. The pause was uncomfortable and sustained, David stared at them. Oliver wondered if he might need his text SOS in the next few moments. David stared at them eyes fixed forward toward them.
“Twenty quid,” David smiled, “I feel awkward asking but we also agreed twenty quid. I am really strapped for cash.”
“Oh god, of course,” and with much relief Oliver got his wallet and gave David twenty, with such relief he added in another ten.
“Lovely,” David said as he opened the door, “I’ll send the photo and the email address I have to your inbox Jenny. But he hasn’t answered me in eighteen months, not sure if it is still a valid account, but it is the best I can offer.”
Oliver and Jenny stepped out into the concourse that ran in front of the sixth floor flats. The bright sunshine hurt their eyes, contrasting from the dark dingy place they had been in.
“Look,” David whispered, he now looked less relaxed, even regretful, “I’m just trying to help you but Dyer would say leave this alone, it’s a subject not to be tampered with. He swore me to silence when he gave me my advice, and look, it left me frightened, still does, so just think carefully, okay?”
With that he returned into his flat and the loud noise of chains, bolts and locks echoed out into the summer’s air. Oliver and Jenny shared a look of confusion and uncertainty as to the value of what they had just heard. Oliver was taken by how self possessed David was in closing their meeting and how uncertain he felt about going any further.
Jenny took his hand and they walked to the stairs. As they descended the stairs Jenny squeezed his hand affectionately and he remembered why they should continue.
17.