Unravelling Oliver(58)

I have my own room, so in a lot of respects it is better than boarding school was, although my housemates are a peculiar bunch of miscreants. I remember years ago, one of my less imaginative colleagues in the civil service had a ‘witty’ sign on his desk that said, You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps! It wasn’t even funny at the time.

It is not a mad house, however; it is a sad house. Everyone here has committed crimes deemed to result from their insanity. I feel like I am here under false pretences, but that is nothing new for me. Almost my entire life has been a deception of one kind or another. I am not obliged to mix with the others, and I spend most of my time voluntarily alone.

There is a working farm within the grounds, and even though it has been quite a while since I did any manual labour, I have enjoyed getting my hands dirty. I am no longer a young man, but I am fitter than I have been in decades.

I am a model ‘patient’. They don’t call us prisoners in the nuthouse. ‘It’s political correctness gone mad!’ I hear all the time. I agree. The guards and nurses are decent, and I cause them no trouble. It is generally acknowledged in here that my crime was a ‘one-off’. I ‘snapped’. I am on a low-dosage antidepressant and go placidly amid the noise and haste.

I will have a ‘mental health review’ every six months to decide if I am sane or not, but if I am declared sane, I might be released and that would never do. I have decided to stay here, because even though I am not a danger to society, or myself, I do not want to leave. I plan to fake a suicide attempt if they ever suggest it.

The house has been sold. All proceeds from the sale went towards the continued care of Alice and maintenance payments to Barney Dwyer for Eugene. Alice is in a private facility. The lawyers told me she is in a beautiful room and is receiving the very best of treatment, but she will never know it. It is likely that she will continue in this state for years. Copyright and royalties from the books have been assigned to Madame Véronique and I am denounced internationally, but particularly in France, for stealing from a war hero, and profiting from his death and that of his grandson. If only they knew that it was worse than that, that I was the one to cause their deaths. I have never told the analysts that part of my story. It would cause such a fuss. Why add arson and murder to the list of my crimes?

Journalists have made several attempts to visit, offering to ghostwrite my story. The insult. I turned down their offensive requests. All but one particular French journalist. At least, I assumed she was a journalist. Her letters to me were more formal than the others, and she was not easily put off. Her name is Annalise Papon. I ignored her first five letters and then finally responded to the sixth, thanking her for her interest but declining an interview, regretting that I would not be putting her on my visitors’ list. There is nobody on my visitors’ list.

A month ago, she wrote back the most startling letter.

She is apparently a lawyer, not a journalist, but she has no interest in my case or the charges against me. She says she has recently become a mother for the first time, and the birth of her precious son has led her on a path of discovery that she almost wishes she never began.

Her birth was registered in the city of Bordeaux, France, as being on the 11th of March 1974 in a small village called Clochamps. Her name at birth was Nora Condell. She was placed for adoption on the 20th of July of the same year. Annalise is hoping that I might be able to help her trace her father. It has been implied to her that her mother named me as her father.

Laura’s baby. My child.

She admits that she is confused as to how to feel about this, that after two years of searching records she discovers her father could be a violent criminal and a plagiarist.

Laura’s name is on Annalise’s original birth certificate as her mother. She knows from her research that Laura is dead and that it was a suicide. She assumes her birth might have precipitated her mother’s death. She has been able to track down photographs of Laura through her old school’s website, and although the shape and colour of her eyes are similar, in one distinct aspect she is not like Laura at all. She began to do some searching to see if she could find her father instead. The father’s name is not listed on her birth certificate, but Annalise has made contact with the adoption social worker who dealt with Laura. Apparently Laura insisted that the father was an Irish student called Oliver Ryan, but she was not allowed to name me on the birth certificate. Annalise was able to quickly discover that Oliver Ryan was better known as the infamous Vincent Dax. She has studied photographs of me from the covers of my books and has seen film footage of me on YouTube from some television appearances, and she has noted a striking resemblance between us in our mannerisms and way of speaking that cannot be ignored; and yet, she says, ‘something is wrong’ because Annalise is of mixed race and, clearly, ‘you and my mother are white Europeans’.

My hands began to shake again, and I laid the letter on to my desk so that I could stop the words from dancing.

My daughter is nothing if not dogged in her pursuit of truth.

I have recently availed myself of a personal genomic service to have my DNA genetically profiled. It seems that my ethnicity is specifically at least 25 per cent sub-Saharan African, which would indicate that one of my parents is of mixed race, i.e. one of my grandparents is black. I was able to find out that both of Laura’s parents are Irish born, but can find very little information about your parentage. I note that your colouring is darker than the average Irishman, although your features are undoubtedly ‘white’.