Ducie by Chris Freeman
Chapter 35. Change of clothes and an open mind
Getting her here had been the easy bit. An ultra-efficient kidnap witnessed by no one at all; not bad for their first ever attempt at such a hazardous crime. A quick dose of palcranolol, with the dual benefits of both sedating Daniella and preparing her for what was to come when she finally woke again. Minimal struggle and no injuries. Stage one had been a modest success, beyond what Frank could have hoped for.
It would have been unwise to have left a market trader’s storage trunk lying suspiciously in the street after Harrison snatched Daniella, so Frank had loaded it into the van along with her. Now, the contents of the giant suitcase were strewn across the back of the Renault Kangoo, after Harrison had clumsily emptied them out on the way to the hotel. A tidal wave of ornaments and trinkets had surrounded Daniella, as she lay deep in the clutches of a palcranolol-induced sleep. On arriving in the hotel car park, they had loaded Daniella into the wooden trunk, closing its one working buckle and carefully lowered the box and its new human contents down onto the pavement. From there it was just a case of looking casual, which Harrison almost always did as a matter of habit anyway. He had wheeled Daniella through the barely supervised hotel lobby, a slightly exaggerated spring of overconfidence in his step, as he whistled a perfectly tuned rendition of ‘Israelites’ by Desmond Dekker and did his best to make it appear like the load he was pulling did not weigh around 110 pounds. As a distraction, Frank had tried to engage the old, bearded Argentinean man behind the reception desk in a conversation about bus times, but seeing as the man appeared reluctant to lift his eyes from his copy of today’s edition of ‘Los Andes’, Frank probably needn’t have been too concerned about whether the man would notice the six foot, three inch dreadlocked Jamaican wheeling an unconscious Argentinean market girl through his reception in a giant suitcase.
Frank felt a pang of guilt about tying up Daniella. As he looked at her flimsy little wrists tied to the hotel room bed posts with cable-ties that were normally used to prevent hub caps falling off car wheels, he considered for a second whether restraining her was really necessary. Yes…. it definitely was. An essential part of the process. What if she screamed when she woke up? What if she flipped out and trashed the place? What if her survival instincts took over and she started swinging punches and flailing kicks at them? The thought of Daniella trying to inflict harm on his man-mountain partner Harrison with those dainty little arms entertained Frank for a moment, making him smirk to himself like a cocky teenager. He popped a white, rolled-up cotton sports sock into her mouth and marveled for a second at how her body automatically made the adjustment to breathing through her nose. She didn’t even stir.
The palcranolol would probably have kept her out for another hour or so, but it was time Frank didn’t want to waste. The ammonium carbonate smelling salts would take care of that. Frank gave Harrison the nod and on cue, he produced the little brown, glass bottle. Another deceptively small package of chemical magic. Frank passed the smelling salts under Daniella’s perfect little button nose and as if he’d pressed the ‘wake up’ button on one of those realistic, hi-tech, modern dolls, her eyes sprung open and stared blankly to the ceiling, her brain yet to catch up with the visual stimulus her eyes were now trying to process. Frank caressed Daniella’s forehead with caring, reassuring strokes of his hand, as her eyes began to widen, the panic taking hold. Her scream seemed to fill her whole face, causing it to bulge with indignity, its exit path through her mouth blocked by the rolled up sock.
- Just relax Daniella. The only person who is going to harm you is yourself. Just listen to what we have to say and this’ll all work out.
As Daniella’s breathing quickened, Frank spoke with the casual confidence of an airline pilot reassuring his passengers that the violent jolting that rocked the plane was just a routine pocket of turbulence.
- Calm, calm, calm. Ok.
Daniella eventually gained a rudimentary control over her breathing. Doing her best to relax as Frank had instructed. Her eyes continued to bulge however, betraying her brain’s intentions to stay as calm as possible.
Frank smiled at Daniella in acknowledgement of her compliance. She was listening to him. That had to be a good sign at least.
- I’m going to take this gag out of your mouth now Daniella. It’s important that you don’t do anything stupid now, ok? Any noise, any sudden movements, and we’ll be back to square one. Do you understand me Daniela?
Daniella nodded. Her eyes containing a new level of fear now, as if the removal of the gag signified the next chapter of this drama, the details of which she didn’t want to entertain. Harrison was poised and ready to smother her if necessary, as Frank carefully slipped the white sock out of her mouth. She gasped as she took her first mouthful of the dirty, stale hotel room air, whimpering a little, as she struggled desperately to contain her emotions from spilling out all over the room. Her bottom lip protruded and quivering in a way that sent a twinge of sympathy for her through Frank’s stomach.
The beta blocker had been injected into Daniella’s arm while she slept and by now was busy coursing its way through her system, lying in wait to work its magic. On its own though, the drug would be useless as far as memory tampering went. Currently, it was floating aimlessly around Daniella’s system like a blind sniper with a loaded gun, but no notion of exactly what or where it should attack. To delete or remould the relevant memories, Frank needed to bring them to the forefront of Daniella’s mind. Once he’d got the memories out into the open like this, Frank could bend and manipulate them into a new form with an expert blend of programming language and phraseology that he had mastered through his research. A second dose of the sedative would whisk Daniella off on her second trip to sleepsville in the space of a few hours, giving the new, modified memory time to ‘set’ in her brain. Frank called this part of the process ‘sealing’. The new memory would be given time to integrate itself into her brain while she slept, mingling in amongst her real, genuine memories and her sleep state brain activity, a.k.a dreams. The idea was that upon waking in a few hours, the new memory would be ‘sealed’ into Daniella’s mind. Her chances of knowing about what had happened to her not helped by her confused and disorientated state, caused by a series of erratic, induced sleeps, a barrage of neuro linguistic trickery and of course the effects of the beta blockers.
Frank then planned to load her back into the van and drive back to the exact spot they had taken her from. When she approached consciousness again, Frank would give Harrison the nod to carefully unload her from the van, along with her giant trunk full of market stall trinkets and place her in the exact spot they’d taken her from initially. She’d then wake up to a party of confusion, unable to account for the time that had elapsed since she apparently collapsed in the middle of the street on the way home. The new remoulded memories would be buried somewhere inside her head, just waiting for the moment that something or someone triggered Daniella to try to recall them.
But first things first, there was one more side story to this experiment that Frank needed to straighten out to cure his own curiosity….
- Daniella, do you remember what happened to you? How you got here….
Frank spoke as if he didn’t know the answer himself. As if he and Harrison hadn’t bundled her into the back of a van on her way home from work.
- It was you, wasn’t it?
Daniella looked accusingly at Harrison, who had lost all of his lady’s-man charm and was understandably doing his sheepish best to remain inconspicuous, given his new kidnapper status. He stared at the floor, under instruction from Frank to leave the talking to him. Frank continued pulling the memory to the forefront of Daniella’s mind.
- What do you remember Daniella?
- I’d finished work. I crossed the piazza. I had my trunk with me. I remember passing Fortunato’s…. Someone grabbed me…..He grabbed me!
Daniella pointed a calm, nit accusing finger at Harrison who continued his intimate
- What’s all this about? What do you want from me? If you want money, then you’ve got the wrong girl. I work on the market, selling little bits of tack mainly.
- We know what you are Daniella, and we don’t want money.
- What is it then? The tape? The recording you showed me? I won’t tell a soul, I swear.
- So you remember that? What exactly do you remember about the recording Daniella?
- The girl. Kate was it? She was ill, right? She said my name. She thought she was me.
- That’s correct Daniella. And you remember the dog that burst into Fortunato’s and went wild?
- A dog?
There was no dog at Fortunato’s that Day, but Frank was multitasking here. Whilst his main objective was to coax the real memory to the forefront of Daniella’s mind, so he could remould it into something new, he was also slipping some false memories into the mix. Frank called these phony decoy memories ‘Wallys’, after the children’s book character ‘Where’s Wally?’, who would hide himself discreetly in a scene on the page that the artist had purposely designed to be chaotic and difficult to navigate. Slipping the Wallys into the subject’s mind was an important part of the remoulding process Frank had devised. The purpose of implanting these false memories was twofold: In the short term, it would serve to add confusion to a mind that at this point was very impressionable, having had the emotion stripped from its recollections by the beta blockers. She was also in a traumatic situation, which would lead her to a natural state of survival driven obedience and compliance, making it all the easier to sell these lies to her. Later, when they drugged her unconscious again and dropped her off at the spot they’d snatched her from, any vague recollections of strange occurrences like a dog trashing a restaurant would just add to the notion that she had been dreaming.
- Yeah, you remember the dog. It just waltzed through the door as someone was leaving. Barking, panting, knocking over tables and stuff.
Daniella paused for a moment.
- Right, the dog….Yeah.
- That’s why you left. We never got a chance to finish our chat.
Harrison looked up from the floor for the first time in a while. He was impressed by what he was seeing. Frank had outlined his remoulding techniques to him in dumbed down terms, but to see Frank in action like this; well that was something entirely different!
- So that’s why you snatched me? Why you put me in a van and brought me here? Just to finish our chat?
The way Daniella spoke about her own kidnap was so calm and unflustered. A sure sign that the beta blockers were hard at work manipulating the functions of the amygdale, the part of the brain responsible for memory consolidation. Amongst other things, the beta blockers lessened the effects of adrenaline release while the amygdale was activated, making the memories appear less traumatic to Daniella. They were now merely a mass of raw, indifferent information. Whilst they were in this raw state, and seeing how Daniella now had no emotional attachment making her cling to the real version of events, the memory could be tampered with and altered. Frank got back to work on just that.
- We saw you on your way home and we thought we could talk to you. Wrap this whole thing up, y’know? But when Harrison here tapped you on the shoulder, you screamed and shouted for help.
Daniella’s eyes offered no clues as to whether she believed what Frank was saying. He continued.
- I don’t know if it was the dark night or what. I don’t blame you though…. I mean, look at him.
Frank gestured an open palm from Harrison’s head all the way to the floor, indicating his size.
- He scares me to look at in broad daylight most of the time.
He slapped Harrison on the back, letting out a high pitched chuckle that opened a peephole to the nervousness that he’d been burying under his mask of confidence. Harrison responded with a brief spasm of his torso, which vaguely resembled a silent, unenthusiastic laugh. Daniella forced a blank smile, which moved to a frown, her eyes narrowing as if this somehow channeled the memory better.
- I can’t…. I mean…. I don’t…. It’s fuzzy….. You know….
This was Frank’s favourite part of the show. They always started off so sure of themselves. But then there was always a point. This point, where you could almost see the internal dilemma of the person, as they began to doubt their own recollections, sometimes even their own sanity. The beta blockers had softened the memories to putty and Frank was slowly reshaping them into something Daniella didn’t recognise. It was child’s play from this point. The more he could control the conversation, and the less he allowed her time to try to introspectively retrieve the original memory, the more quickly he could make the new memory harden, meaning the truth would be buried and irretrievable. Frank quickly interrupted Daniella, before she had chance to think.
- It’s ok mate. You’re bound to be confused after blacking out like that.
- I blacked out?
- We put you in the van to get you out of the way. Calm you down. We didn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea. What, with the screaming and everything. Two foreigners and a young girl. We knew how it looked, but we would never do a thing to hurt you Daniella.
- It’s kind of coming back to me.
It wasn’t coming back to her at all. In fact, it was slipping further and further away from her with every expert layer of deceit that Frank was weaving into her now deluded mind. Silence grasped the room for a few moments, as all parties seemed to be taking stock of where they were at.
- A pill !
The sudden outburst was like an alarm calling Frank back to work. He’d relaxed for a second, but there was a loose end that was screaming to be tied up.
- I remember a pill ! You gave it to me.
Daniella’s tone seemed more excited than skeptical or accusing.
- For your head. You banged it on the floor of the van when you blacked out. I knew you’d wake up with a pounding skull, so I got Harrison here to force a tablet down you, so it kicked the pain out before you woke up.
Daniella hit Harrison with a coy smile that melted away the tension that had kept him silent up until now.
- Thank you.
- No problem gal. Ya near-ally tek me ‘and off widya teet.
Harrison mimed the action of biting off his own hand, which cleared up the confusion his accent had caused for someone whose first tongue wasn’t English. Daniella smiled again, before pointing down one corner of her mouth apologetically. She turned to Frank.
- How long have I been asleep?
- About an hour. Maybe a little more. Do you have family that will be worrying about you?
- My Mother, perhaps. I sometimes stop at Fortunato’s for a coffee after work though. It’ll be another hour or two before she starts fretting.
- Do you think she’ll be cool with you coming back to England with us?
Frank had been picking his moment to drop that bomb. He wasn’t sure whether it was a step too far for the first remoulding session. They had another couple of days in Argentina tops though. They likely didn’t have time for a second session. Daniella paused for a second, her skeptical frown has gone, replaced by a look of only mild confusion. Then acceptance washed over her. The momentum was with her now.
- To meet Kate you mean? The sick girl?
Bonus! Frank hadn’t expected her to build on the lies with her own additions. This was getting too easy.
- Yeah, of course. We leave tomorrow.
- I won’t tell her. Probably best I don’t. She’ll only worry about me.
Daniella adored her Mother, but the beta blockers had stripped her of any emotional preference. Be with her Mother, get on a plane and fly to the opposite side of the planet to her Mother, it didn’t matter. It was simply what was.
When Daniella awoke on the pavement of Piazzo Tiartino, a young, good-looking gentlemen she didn’t recognise stood over her. His maroon skin and side-parting seemed made to sit alongside eachother. She though
- Stay where you are girl. The police are on their way. Did you get a good look at them?
Daniella felt a strange fizz at the top of her right thigh, which immediately drew her hand to the spot to feel out the source of this bizarre rumbling. A mobile phone. She dug it out of her pocket, flipping open the folding display. She sheltered the text message from the glaring sun light with a cupped hand.
Airport taxi rank. 11pm. Passport. Change of clothes. Open mind. Frank.
The pretty boy was on the other side of the street talking to an elderly couple as he smoked a cigarette. He had his back to Daniella, but gestured towards her occasionally, pointing out his prized discovery, as he waited for the police to arrive.
Daniella picked her moment and ran.