Flannagan printed on the front. “And so to work.”
“Thanks. Yes, indeed. To work.”
Dr. Shevlin entered his consulting room to find “John Lennon” sprawled in one of the armchairs, trying to roll a cigarette. Difficult, since his hands were shaking so much. The masquerade was perfect. Long dark hair, parted in the middle and held in place with a beaded headband worn low on the forehead. Wire glasses perched on a beaky nose. He was wearing a black T-shirt two sizes too big and bearing the epigraph Give Peace a Chance , a pair of baggy trousers with a hole in the left knee, and bright green flip-flops.
Henry held out a hand. “Hello, Finbar. I’m Dr. Shevlin. How are you?”
Finbar looked up, briefly. “Who the feck is Finbar? I’m John Lennon. And who the feck are you ? Where’s Balby? You’re not Balby. I want Dr. Balby.”
He’d spoken, Henry decided, with a near-perfect Liverpool accent. He’d ended his little rant as abruptly as he’d begun it. Now his full concentration was on the cigarette.
The consulting room had five easy chairs placed about a sturdy coffee table. In keeping with the theme of the garden, the tones were muted: cream walls with watercolor prints of roses, pale green carpet, two waist-high plants in pots by the window. A room that, of necessity, had to be minimalist and functional with nothing in it that could be used as a projectile. The plant pots were of immovable granite. The pictures nailed to the walls. The coffee table bolted to the floor. The ashtrays were of disposable foil.
Henry drew up an armchair opposite Finbar.
“Dr. Balby thought you could do with a change of scene,” he said, careful not to use the name “Finbar.” He placed his notes on the coffee table. “I like your hair. How long did it take you to grow it?”
Finbar took a lighter from his pocket and sucked the roll-up into life. He sat up abruptly in an effort to stop shaking, crossed his legs, uncrossed them again, sighed deeply, gazed about the room.
“D’you want a bifter?”
“Sorry?”
“A bifter. A ciggy , you divvy.”
“No, thanks. I don’t smoke.”
The patient’s eyes locked on the foil ashtray. In a low voice he said, “I never held with wonders. I never held with gods . . . I never held with Jesus . . . I never held with rishis. . . I never held with yoga . . . I never held with cosmic truths . . . I never held with the bleedin’ Beatles. I only hold with me .”
“That’s good. So tell me about the ‘you,’ the real you, Finbar.”
“You’re like me auld fella, you are. Left me mam when I was four.”
“Oh . . . ?”
“Oh, aye, up and left her. He was a fecking sailor, so what would he know? Brainless gobshite.”
Henry, no expert on John Lennon’s life story, found himself having to ask a leading question. “And where were you living then?”
“Merseyside. Why you asking that? The whole bleeding world knows that. John Winston Lennon, born October ninth, nineteen forty, in Liverpool Maternity Hospital, to Julia Lennon née Stanley and Alfred fecking Lennon. I got John after me grandda, John ‘Jack,’ and Winston for Winston fecking Churchill, prime minister of Britain at the time. I—”
“Sorry, John, would you mind if I had a word with Finbar?”
“Why you asking that? Eh? Eh? You winding me up, you divvy, ’cos if you are, I’ll clock you one. I will.”
“No, I’m not winding you up. John Lennon died four years ago. So, you are not John Lennon.”
Henry was sitting within easy reach of the alarm buzzer. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. Balby had been correct in his diagnosis: D.I.D. Dissociative Identity Disorder. A rare condition seen more often in females than males—and all the more unpredictable for that.
“I know I died four years ago, you divvy. Shot four times in the back with a point thirty-eight revolver, ’cos I said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. That gobshite Chapman . . . that’s why he did