The Last Thing She Remembers

by J. S. Monroe

  “How long ago was she here?” he asks, looking around.

  “Fifteen minutes ago? Maybe less. I’m sorry, Silas.” At least Susie is talking to him again, one good thing to have come out of Jemma’s disappearance. He’s not going to make up with her too quickly, though.

  “Tony, the American—he saw Jemma walking down toward the station,” she continues. “I went after her but when I got to the station, a train had just left.”

  That’s all Silas needs, but he restricts himself to an exasperated shake of the head. Jemma’s sudden departure is starting to worry him.

  “It’s entirely my fault,” Susie says, watching Silas take out his phone. He turns his back on her and puts a call through to Strover, who’s still looking for Jemma in the village.

  “What are the next three stations up the line?” he says to Susie, hand over his phone.

  Susie tells him it was a rare westbound train. He asks Strover for police checks down the line. He’s not hopeful. Force resources are already stretched in the region, but it’s worth a shot.

  “Did anyone get a photo of Jemma?” he asks.

  Susie shakes her head. If she hadn’t been so difficult yesterday, Strover could have sneaked one during her interview.

  “There’s CCTV in the surgery waiting room,” Susie says, brightening up. “It was installed a few months back, after a bag was stolen. Patient confidentiality could be an issue,” she adds. “The identities of other patients would need to be preserved.”

  “Confidentiality my arse. Who keeps the tapes?”

  Two minutes later, Silas is in the practice manager’s office, looking through CCTV footage of the surgery waiting room at 9:00 a.m. the day before. Susie and the manager are stood next to him. Silas has overridden any privacy concerns by explaining that disclosure was in the interests of public safety, but the manager seems to have similar objections, citing General Medical Council confidentiality guidelines. Data protection has become the bane of Silas’s life.

  “That’s her,” Susie says, pointing at a woman and a man entering the surgery.

  “Freeze it there,” Silas says to the manager. The woman in the image looks a bit like Jemma Huish, but it’s hard to tell through the lens of cheap CCTV. “Who’s the bloke with her?”

  “Tony, the American,” Susie says. “He and his wife put Jemma up for the first night.”

  “Where is he now?” Silas asks, noticing the man’s body language, the way he is with Jemma, how close he is standing.

  “He runs a café in the high street. I can take you there.”

  “Get me a printout of that,” Silas says, peering at the screen again. “And email the file to me at this address.” He gives the manager his card.

  “I’ll have to pixilate the other patients.”

  “You can put flashing antlers on their heads for all I care. I’m only interested in her.”

  It’s not a great image, but there’s enough of a likeness. Enough for Strover anyway. Unlike him, she’s actually met Jemma in the flesh. The closest Silas has been to her is fifty yards away in the graveyard. He’ll get the image circulated across the region—they can enhance the image back at HQ.

  “I don’t know why she suddenly disappeared,” Susie says, as she accompanies Silas down to the high street.

  “Maybe she heard we’re coming. Did Jemma have access to any money?”

  Silas suddenly realizes how hungry he is—and irritable. Yesterday was a fast day, which never helps.

  “Not as far as I know,” Susie says.

  “So she might not get far on the train.”

  “They hardly ever check for tickets at this time of the day.”

  “Great,” he says, making no effort to conceal his frustration from Susie. He’s going to milk this one for all it’s worth.

  “I need to speak to Tony,” he continues, increasing his pace. He’s tall, with a long stride, and Susie almost has to run alongside him to keep up. “And his wife. They might know more if they put Jemma up for the night.”

  “This is where he works,” Susie says, out of breath. They are standing outside the Seahorse Gallery & Café.

  “Oh Christ,” Silas says, glancing at a board outside before going in. “‘No bacon, no egg, no problem.’ It has to be a vegan café, doesn’t it?” He didn’t fast yesterday just so he can chew on a mung bean today. He walks up to the counter, where a man with a ponytail looks up at them.

  “Tony, this is—” Susie begins.

  “DI Hart,” Silas interrupts, showing him his ID. “I’d like something edible,” he says, looking unhopefully around the counter, “and a little chat.”

  CHAPTER 43

  Tony made the attic as comfortable as he could before he left to go back to the café, but it still feels like a prison. Maybe it’s the bare light bulb hanging from the roof timbers. I’ve got a camping roll mat spread out on the chipboard floor, some bottled water and fruit, a radio with headphones Tony insisted on—and a bucket for emergencies. It makes my room at the pub seem luxurious.

  What worries me more is that I’m entirely reliant on Tony to let me down. The metal folding ladder can be operated only from the landing below, as there’s a small lock on the outside of the panel. I feel out of control again, but for the moment my options are limited and I am happier being out of sight, away from the police. Tony will come back later and let me know how long I need to be up here, once he’s got a sense from the police where their investigations are heading.

  I take a sip of water and glance around the attic. There are boxes everywhere, laid out neatly in a grid. Tony said they were his visual diary. Each box contains 365 photos, one for each day of year. He told me I could look at any if I wanted—they’re all on Instagram, the most recent ones anyway. It’s something to do while I am up here, he said, but it’s important I don’t move around or make a noise if someone comes to the house.

  He thinks the police might want to interview him, either at the café or at home, but if they ask to look around, he’ll insist on a search warrant. He knows his rights. As a precaution, he’s given me a basic mobile phone, one of Laura’s old “brick” ones. They keep it as a spare, he said. All the numbers have been erased, and it’s got an unused pay-as-you-go SIM card in it. He’ll warn me with an anonymous text if anyone is coming: something innocent and domestic, as if he’s messaging Laura.

  I listen to the stillness of the house. All I can hear is the distant rumble of a train, a solitary car accelerating up the high street. Satisfied that I’m on my own, I crawl on my hands and knees over to the boxes—the eaves are too low for me to stand up. The first box is the current year: A4-size prints, some black-and-white, some color, each one in a clear plastic slip with a date on it. I recognize one of the graveyard, a close-up of moss on the lych-gate; another is looking down the canal at a beautiful arched bridge, a low mist rising off the water. I flick through some more photos, pausing at one of Laura. She is lying in bed, her naked body half covered by a sheet, eyes closed. Is she asleep? Did she know he took it?

  I stop, guilty that I’m going through another person’s private things, even if Tony said I could. And then I open an older box. Lots of the photos are of other women. Fashion-style shots in European cities—I recognize Paris and Rome, Amsterdam and Venice. Snow scenes in parks, sunny smiles to the camera, nothing risqué. He likes a certain look in his women: short dark hair, big eyes. I flick through the images and stop at one of a woman in a beret. My heart flips. It looks like Fleur. I look again and realize it’s not her. I breathe deeply, the sheaf of photos shaking in my hand. The silence of the village feels eerie from up here, muffled. And then there’s the distant cry of a red kite.

  I move through the seasons in reverse, glancing at each image. Summer, spring. Photos of graffiti on a bridge wall, a complex matrix of train tracks stretching out behind. And then, in among images of cityscapes and rive
rs, a pair of seahorses. They are not alive like the ones in the café’s framed pictures. These look small and shrunken, photographed against a white background, a table of some sort. I look closer at them. The seahorses are shriveled, as if they have been pickled. Or maybe they have been dried. Their distinctive tails are curved like a treble clef, but the long snouts have been damaged and are missing. Tony mentioned that dried seahorses fetch a lot of money, particularly those breeds that are popular in Chinese medicine. Were these ones he bought, perhaps? Or sold for a large amount?

  More than the price of silver.

  I stare at the photo, holding it on one side and then the other. There’s nothing to like about them. I find them troubling, their almost prehistoric shape deeply unsettling.

  I swallow hard and look away.

  CHAPTER 44

  “When did you last see Jemma?” Detective Inspector Silas Hart asks, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Surprisingly tasty.”

  Tony has never liked cops, and he dislikes the one sitting in his café more than most, but he knows he must talk to him, appear unflustered by his questions. Cooperate. So he has given him an extra portion of vegan mac-and-cheese balls, which he’s dunking in buffalo sauce—anything to slow him down—and is now trying to appear helpful as they talk. Susie Patterson has left them to it, full of remorse, resuming what appears to be a village-wide search for Jemma.

  “I was here in the café, serving breakfasts, when Dr. Patterson called me, said she was searching for Jemma. I went outside, took a look around and saw her down the bottom of the street, turning off toward the station. I called out, but she was too far away to hear. I was about to head after her when a customer showed up.”

  “What time was this?” Hart asks, pulling out a notepad from his jacket pocket.

  “Fifteen, twenty minutes ago?”

  “Why didn’t you call Dr. Patterson back?”

  Because he’s just made this up. He’s always been a good liar.

  “After the customer left, I went outside again and bumped into Dr. Patterson,” he says, which is true. He’d caught up with her after leaving Jemma in the loft. “She was looking for Jemma, so I explained that I’d just seen her heading in the direction of the station.”

  The cop seems to buy his story, writing down a few short notes.

  “Here’s my number in case she turns up,” he says, handing Tony a card.

  “What’s this about?” Tony asks.

  “We just need to eliminate Jemma from our inquiries,” he says, giving nothing away. They always say that. And then the cop blindsides Tony with a surprising question. “Why did you put her up on that first night?”

  “Why?”

  “Total stranger knocks on your door. Come in, make yourself at home. Not very British.”

  “I’m American. We don’t bite.” The cop’s caught him out. “And it wasn’t quite like that.”

  “What was it like?” he asks.

  Tony thinks back to the afternoon Jemma arrived, considers how much to tell.

  “I’m just trying to build a picture in my mind of this mystery woman,” the cop adds. “Seems to have caused quite a stir in the village.”

  “She’s a good-looking woman, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Did I mean that?” he asks, staring at him. “I’ve yet to meet her.”

  “She also thought she lived in our house. Even knew the layout. She was clearly confused. Laura, my wife, and I—I guess we both felt sorry for her, gave her a cup of tea, took her down to the surgery.”

  Hart writes in his notepad and then looks up at him. “Your wife—is she around?”

  “Right now she’s staying at her mom’s.”

  The cop raises his eyebrows. “Which is where?”

  “London.”

  He makes another note. “Was she happy about Jemma staying?” he asks, still writing.

  “For one night, yes.” Jeez, how much does this guy know? “Then we felt it best the professionals took over. Jemma appears to be suffering from retrograde and anterograde amnesia.”

  “You sound quite the professional yourself.” Tony could do without the eyeballing. Hart’s stare is unnerving.

  “I take an interest in these things. My dad died young of Alzheimer’s.”

  The cop’s phone starts to ring. “Excuse me a moment,” he says, standing up from the table.

  Tony involuntarily puffs out his cheeks once his interrogator’s back is turned. And then he tries to catch what he can of the phone conversation.

  “I want police units on all the main roads in and out of the village,” the cop says. “And we’ll need to do a door-to-door... Forensics too... I’ll speak to Corporate Comms and Engagement about a public appeal.” He hangs up and turns to Tony. “A colleague’s just spoken to the train driver—apparently no one boarded the westbound train from here.”

  CHAPTER 45

  I slip the photo back into the box, trying not to dwell on it too much. When will Tony be back? He hasn’t sent any cryptic texts, so perhaps the police have lost interest in me. Their attention is becoming a big distraction, but I must deal with it. And then I see another box, away from the others, wedged under the eaves near the water tank. I crawl over and pull it out. Inside is a collection of newspaper articles, paper-clipped into separate bundles. Some of the newsprint is yellow and faded.

  I check to listen and begin to leaf through them. Each one appears to be about amnesia: a migrant worker in Peterborough with no idea who he is; a British banker who had walked into a New York police station, saying he had just woken on a subway train unaware of his own identity; several magazine articles about Henry Gustav Molaison, who underwent crude brain surgery in 1953 in an attempt to reduce his seizures. Miraculously, the seizures stopped but he was left unable to form new memories. And then Jemma Huish is staring up at me from a blurred photo, the student killer who slit her best friend’s throat.

  Is this what I look like to others? I skim through the article, the pen marks circling phrases such as “dissociative amnesia,” “no recollection” and “Wiltshire village.” I look at the photos, read the captions. It’s this village, this house.

  There are more annotated articles underneath it, many more, about the case, the trial, her obsession with the radio. She had to have it on whenever she was on her own, harming herself if she couldn’t listen to it. And she reported hearing auditory commands that seemed to come from trees.

  I am about to read further when I hear the front door open. Fumbling with the articles, I put them back into the box, wedge it under the eaves again and return to my mat just as the loft hatch opens.

  “We’ve got to go,” Tony says, his head appearing. “Everything okay?”

  “Fine,” I say, trying to compose myself. “What’s happened?”

  “Get your stuff,” he says, looking around the attic from the hatch.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Away from here—out of the village.” He starts to descend the ladder again, disappearing from sight. “The cops know you didn’t get on a train,” he says, louder so I can hear. “They’re about to lock down the whole place.”

  “Tony,” I call out. “I think we should—”

  Silence. And then his head appears at the hatch opening again. “Do you remember what we ate for dinner last night?” he asks, his voice cold and baleful.

  I look at him, scared by his question, the tone of it, and shake my head.

  “You’re vulnerable, Jemma,” he says, descending the ladder again. “The cops are panicking about Jemma Huish—under pressure to arrest someone. It’s not going to be you.”

  I gather up my things and lower my suitcase down to Tony, who is now on the landing below.

  “Where are we going?” I repeat, once we are by the back door.

  “I know a place in the forest,” he says, grabbing
a bottle of water from the fridge. “It’s not much, but it’s dry. Used to be an ammunition shelter in World War II.”

  I follow him out into the garden. “You’ll have to hide in the car trunk, with your stuff,” he says, locking the back door. My heart’s beating too fast. Tony looks around and opens the boot of his old BMW. We both stare at the cramped space. There’s an empty green plastic petrol can in the corner, next to a folded up high-visibility jacket.

  “Trust me,” he says, sensing my reluctance. “We need to go now.”

  He checks both ways again as I climb into the boot, clutching the sleeping bag for comfort. Is this the right decision? Judging when to run is critical. I got it wrong once, when Tony found me climbing out of the window. He wedges the suitcase in next, by my feet, followed by my roll mat, the radio and finally the bottle of water.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he says, one hand above him, ready to close the boot door. He manages a smile that I am unable to return. My legs are tucked up into the fetal position. “Only for a few hours, maybe a day or two.”

  A click and my world turns black.

  CHAPTER 46

  Luke remembers the day he arrived in the village with Milo as if it was yesterday. His wife had died six months earlier, and he’d chucked in his job on a national newspaper to bring up their four-year-old son in the country with his parents. He’d felt a sense of new beginnings, which helped to numb the sadness. Selling the house in East Dulwich had been difficult, but he couldn’t stay in it after she’d died. He’d found her on the kitchen floor. A brain aneurysm, out of the blue. At least Milo had been at playgroup when it happened.

  Over the years his parents have suggested sending Milo away to boarding school, but Luke has always resisted, signing him up for the village primary and then the nearby state academy. The son of an army officer, he’d been sent away to board when he was eight. His parents had wanted stability for him as his father moved from one posting to another, sometimes abroad. Maybe Milo will board next year, when he’s in the sixth form, if only for the food. Milo’s eating them out of house and home.