Watt Wilson lived in the lower conversion of a once grand Victorian mansion in Cathkin Road on the city’s Southside. He had carefully decorated his home cum business premises in the original style, with a grandfather clock gently chiming in the study and walls lined with row upon row of leatherbound journals.
His bald head, half-moon spectacles, tweed jacket with leather elbow patches and brogues gave him the air of an elderly scholar. But Watt was no doctor. Far from it. In fact, he hadn’t bothered to read the many books that gave such a grand air to his study. The truth was, Watt was nothing more than a showman – a stage hypnotist, performing cheap parlour tricks in town halls across the country. He had once made a good living from it back in the late 1960s when hypnotists were all the rage, but his stage career had been cut short when one night a member of the audience – who it turned out had a history of mental illness – was hypnotised on stage by the great Watt Wilson.
Her schizophrenia had been suppressed by a cocktail of strong medication, but once under Watt’s spell her darker side was suddenly set free. She had produced a kitchen knife from her bag and repeatedly stabbed the unfortunate Wilson to within an inch of his life. The attack had made front pages a long time ago. Since then Watt had reinvented himself as a doctor of the mind. He stopped short of calling himself a psychiatrist lest he feel the full wrath of the Psychiatric Council of Great Britain as he didn’t have a single psychiatric qualification.
He had gone back to his old ways, hypnotising patients. But instead of asking them to drop their trousers for the amusement of a drunken theatre audience, he instilled them with positive thoughts.
His ‘happy hypnosis’ sessions, as he called them, proved successful enough for his popularity to spread by word of mouth. Apparently there wasn’t a ‘mind matter’ that the great Watt Wilson couldn’t resolve with around a dozen sessions – at fifty pounds each – on his velvet-covered chaise-longue.
‘Depressed housewife? Never mind, dear, just be grateful for what you’ve got,’ would be the message that Watt would repeatedly chant while they were under hypnosis.
His methods worked … to a point. His clients certainly left Watt’s sessions feeling better about themselves, but his lack of professional training became apparent whenever one of his patients returned with their existing problem unresolved. For his hypnosis merely opened a can of worms for the more complicated cases.
Like the one who had just walked through the door.
Crosbie hadn’t identified himself as a police officer, but Watt recognised a copper when he saw one. The dope parties he’d attended in the 1960s were prone to ‘busts’ by loutish police officers with an appetite for violence. All those old feelings of fear and loathing came back when Watt set eyes on the officer of Her Majesty’s Constabulary.
‘A friend recommended you,’ Crosbie said curtly as he took off his jacket and placed it neatly on the chaise-longue.
‘Well,’ Watt replied with a well-rehearsed speech, ‘that’s the best recommendation of all. How can I help you?’
Crosbie shattered Watt’s routine with a chilling demand. ‘You can start by dropping the professor act, you stage hypnotist cunt, and find me a cure.’
Watt’s heart sank. Not only did he hate his past catching up with him, but he already knew he had bitten off more than he could chew with this mysterious new patient.