The Last Thing She Remembers

by J. S. Monroe

  The floor is tiled, black and white, easy to wash down. I remember how cold it was. Another feeling. How clean it smelled. I walk around the island, running a finger across its smooth, marble-like surface. Tony would hate the dust. A flash of him in a white coat. Was it where he laid out his photos? He liked to print them up himself in the early years. A medical white coat. This wasn’t for his photos. It’s where he brought me later in the evening, prodded and poked my body like a surgeon sizing up a patient before an operation. Except that I was conscious. Sort of. What did he do to me? I hoped that by coming here I would complete the picture, but sometimes the brain protects us from our worst traumas, puts them beyond reach, even from Machig Labdrön and the serotonin-rich figs of the Bodhi tree.

  I walk around to the far side of the island, where there is a set of built-in drawers. I pull one open, shine my phone and gasp, barely able to look. A collection of medical tools and instruments. Hand drills, a few scalpels, a saw and surgical chisels. A small steel hammer. Clamps and forceps. What unspeakable things happened in here? I know I’ve seen them before, but I don’t know why. The mere sight of them is making me shake, a deep, instinctive fear. I did well to keep it together at the surgery.

  I try to tell myself they’re just like the vintage tools my dad used to keep in his garden shed, but I know they’re not. Another drawer. This time it is photos, A4 prints. More dried seahorses, like the image I found in Tony’s loft. I lift up one of the prints and study it carefully, my hands trembling. A pair of desiccated seahorses photographed on the island surface in front of me. Except that they don’t have eyes.

  More than the price of silver. I look closer at the photo. A drop of blood. I turn it over, fear swelling in the pit of my stomach. Anger too. I should have known. I’d read enough about them in India, that they shared the same Latin name as part of the human brain. They’re not seahorses.

  The writing is in pencil: In memory of Florence.

  I hear a noise outside.

  CHAPTER 104

  Silas slams down his phone in the squad room. Old contacts have been crawling out of the Fleet Street woodwork all day, asking him for off-the-record comments about yesterday’s shooting on the canal. He’s got better things to do. Like trying to persuade the BKA in Wiesbaden to take his concerns more seriously. They still haven’t managed to track Maddie’s Indian phone, and don’t share his growing alarm that a serial killer might have just flown in to Berlin. His boss doesn’t seem to believe him either, dismissing the Hippocampus madeleine file on Tony’s computer as “artist’s whimsy.” Whatever that is.

  “I’ve just got through to Maddie’s mum,” Strover says, walking over to his desk. At least she’s a believer.

  “And?”

  “Beside herself. Had no idea Maddie was in Europe.”

  “Did she say anything about the monastery? What Maddie’s been trying to remember?”

  “Berlin.” Silas looks up. “Something bad happened to her there—ten years ago. She wouldn’t elaborate.”

  His direct line rings. A German number. It’s the officer he’s been dealing with in the BKA in Wiesbaden.

  “We’ve traced Maddie’s phone,” he says, in embarrassingly good English. “She switched it on half an hour ago—an old warehouse in Friedrichshain.”

  He gives the exact address, which Silas writes down. “Does it mean anything to you?” the officer asks.

  “Not yet,” Silas says, passing the address to Strover. She calls it up on her laptop.

  “Our colleagues in Berlin have also just had a call from a taxi driver,” the German officer says. “He was worried about two passengers he dropped off thirty minutes earlier at the same address.”

  Strover passes Silas a piece of paper with GrünesTal nightclub—Detroit techno written on it.

  “Is that where GrünesTal used to be?” Silas says, glancing at Strover. “You know, that Detroit techno club?”

  “You are younger than you sound,” the officer says. Silas rolls his eyes.

  “It was an English-speaking woman and a man in a wheelchair,” the officer continues. “He picked them up at Tegel Airport. We’ve checked with the airlines—Maddie Thurloe ordered a wheelchair.”

  A wheelchair? “What was the taxi driver’s concern?”

  “He was worried about the man. I think we can stand down. She is taking him sightseeing. ‘A trip down memory lane,’ I think you say in English.”

  “With respect, I really don’t think you can stand down,” Silas says, anger rising. He knows it’s a lost cause.

  “An interesting theory—about the seahorses and missing people. We must leave it with you now.”

  CHAPTER 105

  I stop to listen. Silence. I should call the police now, tell them where to find Tony, what happened to Fleur. Abandon my plan. And yet I must know everything that happened here. Every last detail. That’s why I came. Tony said something else that night, another fragment.

  “Tomorrow we will see each other again as strangers—If you are to live.”

  I have thought about it long and hard, pieced it together with my other memories. He must have said it to us before he drove us back to Fleur’s flat. A farewell warning to our drugged-up brains, an appeal to our unconscious not to recognize him if we bumped into each other in the street.

  Tomorrow we will see each other again as strangers. It wasn’t by chance we met the next day. It was a test to see if our amnesia was complete. If he was safe. When we went to a café across the road for a late lunch, still hungover and feeling sore, he must have come in and seen us, fixed us both in the eye. I didn’t recognize him, but Fleur... My love, you were always so observant, so alert. Two hours later she walked to the corner shop to get some soya milk and was never seen again.

  I shine the phone around the room for one final time, the torchlight reflecting off the smooth island. I came here to see where Fleur’s beautiful life was brought to an end. Pay my respects, purge some of the guilt. I feel close to her here. We shared everything when she was alive—hopes and dreams, headphones and baths. And now I want to share her death too, which I so failed to prevent.

  I take a deep breath and lie down on the cool island surface, turn off my phone and stare up into the darkness, stilling my mind. Five, maybe ten minutes pass before I see him peering over me, close to my face, wearing a surgical mask. He has some medical tools in his hand—I don’t want to look too closely. A scalpel, I think. Maybe a drill. He doesn’t do anything to me. He just explains. “This is what happens to those who remember,” he whispers, close to my ear. “All things considered, it’s best you forget.”

  And I did forget. Until now. Only dear Fleur remembered.

  I finally feel at peace, here in the place where she spent her last waking moments. No pain, I hope, as the monster removed your memories. I will never forget you, my love. I hold my wrist up in the darkness and kiss the tattoo.

  A click outside. Or was it my lips? Another sound, louder this time, like a steel shutter opening and then being closed. It came from behind another door off to my right, which must lead to the garage. Tony didn’t give me a key for it. I try to listen, but my blood is beating too loudly in my ears. I feel in the darkness for the drawer by my side, careful not to make a sound.

  The door to the garage opens. I turn my head to see the silhouette of a figure.

  CHAPTER 106

  “I’m on my way to Neukölln,” Luke says on the phone to Strover. “Maddie’s texted me to meet there.”

  He’d received her message after waiting half an hour at the airport.

  “You might be on your own,” Strover says.

  “How come?” Luke says, looking out of the taxi window. He’s never been to Berlin before, wishes he wasn’t here in these circumstances. His driver keeps pointing out landmarks—Charlottenburg Palace, International Congress Center—but he’s in no mood for sightseeing
. He just wants to get to the address in Neukölln as fast as possible.

  “Maddie was seen pushing Tony out of the airport in a wheelchair,” Strover says.

  “A wheelchair?”

  “Her phone was traced to a former nightclub in Friedrichshain before it was switched off. I’ll pass your message on to our colleagues in Berlin, but don’t hold your breath. What’s the address?”

  Luke reads out the details. He had texted Maddie straight back, but once again she didn’t reply. There’s something very wrong. Is it her sending the messages? Or is someone else using her phone?

  “Do you think she’s in danger?” he asks, unable to disguise his mounting worry.

  “My boss has passed on our serious concerns. There’s not a lot we can do without more evidence. I’m so sorry.”

  “And you really think this missing Freya Schmidt looks like Maddie?”

  But the line’s already gone dead.

  CHAPTER 107

  “Maddie?”

  It’s Tony. I don’t think he can see me yet, lying on the island in the darkness.

  “Are you here?” he asks, still in the doorway.

  I am barely able to breathe.

  “That was so unfriendly,” he continues. “Knocking me out on the plane like that.”

  His voice is still slurred. He will soon be able to see me, once his eyes have adjusted. I can smell nail varnish remover.

  “You’ve got yourself nice and ready, I see,” he says. “It’s where they all lay. Those who remembered.”

  “What did you do with her?” I ask, my voice barely a whisper.

  “Normally I have to drug ’em up.”

  “What did you do with Fleur?” I repeat. I feel so vulnerable lying down, but I don’t want to make any sudden movement.

  “Actually, maybe you did lie there. I sometimes gave little warnings. Like a verbal pre-med. You know, if I thought someone might remember.”

  I was right. “Her body?” I ask. “Where did you put her?”

  He closes the door behind him and walks into the room. It’s pitch-black now. He stands there in silence, his breathing slow and steady, unlike mine. The medical smell is growing stronger, like alcohol. Antiseptic. Almost overpowering. I should have rung the police.

  “And you did remember,” he continues. “Jesus, you took your time, though. Ten frickin’ years.”

  I should have found more bags of cement, stacked something else against his cage, taken extra precautions. Or did a part of me hope that Tony would follow me here? That I would share Fleur’s fate?

  “I thought you’d remember me,” I say, thinking back to that first day, when I had walked up from the station, limbs heavy with fear. “When I arrived on your doorstep.”

  “I recognized your face. Never forget a pretty face. Just didn’t know who you were.”

  He sounds drunk.

  “You thought I was Jemma Huish,” I say. I need to keep him talking.

  “For a while. I was confused.”

  I can’t help myself. “How bad is it now? Your memory.”

  “How bad?” He pauses. “How bad?” His voice is mocking, angry. That’s the irony. Bit by bit, he’s becoming as forgetful as his victims. I know it’s his worst fear. “I can still remember what happened yesterday,” he continues. “More than can be said for your dumb bitch of a friend Flo.”

  “Fleur.” I close my eyes, trying to control my own anger now. How dare he? “And she wasn’t dumb.”

  “Told me her mom called her Florence. Just before I opened her up.”

  I can’t bear it, the last conversation that Fleur must have had with him. Lying here on this table in terror, talking about her mother. She would have been brave to the end.

  “I’ve always preferred formal names,” Tony continues. “Look better on the pictures. More Latin-sounding somehow.”

  “How many?” I ask.

  Tony is closer now, to my right. I can just make out his outline. My hand is in the drawer on the left, feeling through the metal instruments.

  “About to be eight. Each one’s memories immortalized in art. I got your seahorse ready, just in case. Started to worry when you remembered your name. ‘Hippocampus madeleine.’ Never had you down as the lying sort, though. You had me fooled there. One step ahead.”

  My fingers move over the sharp edge of a chisel and slide down the shaft to grip the handle.

  “Big frickin’ gamble, that was,” he continues. “Turning up on my doorstep.”

  “Not really.” I pause. There was something else that I remembered in India, another piece of the puzzle that gave me the courage to pursue my plan, roll the dice and risk recognition on his doorstep. “You said something that night. ‘My brain is dying.’ Those were your words. ‘My brain is dying.’ I calculated your decaying synapses might not recall my pretty little face. Or my tattoo. We both had one, Fleur and me, the night you took us. Matching flowers. Memorable. I watched you closely when I arrived at your house. The tattoo was my canary in the mine. If the sight of it had triggered something, I’d have been out of there in a flash. But no. Nothing. Not even a flicker of recognition. Still forgetting what the car keys are for?”

  “You bitch,” he says, lunging forward at me. I feel a cloth on my face. A penetrating smell. Like overripe bananas. I grip the chisel tightly and arc my left arm toward his head in a vicious swing. As it makes contact, I roll off the table onto the floor, pulling the cloth from my face. Tony falls too, landing on his back. I don’t want to look where the chisel is embedded.

  He groans, reaches for the tool and pulls it out.

  “That was a mistake,” he whispers.

  I know I have hurt him. Blood is pooling on the tiled floor. The floor he kept so clean. What a mess he’s made. I stand up, looking down on his helpless figure. Before I left our town, I promised the monks my demons had gone, leaving only compassion in my heart, just as Machig Labdrön wished. But I knew deep down what I had to do, why I was leaving in a hurry. That I was coming here to complete the picture of what happened that night. And also to kill Tony. I hate him with a passion that I am unable to control. Hate him for what he did to Fleur. All the people he’s taken or abused.

  I reach for the drawer and pull out the small steel hammer.

  “Kill me,” he says.

  “Where did you hide Fleur’s body?” I ask, surprised by the heaviness of the hammer. I need to know I’ve got it right.

  “She shouldn’t have glanced up at me.”

  “Where?”

  “In the café.” My theory is correct. “One glance but that was enough. You can see it in their eyes. Recognition.”

  I grip the hammer at my side. “Tell me where,” I repeat.

  “Müggelsee,” he says. One of Berlin’s lakes. Fleur took me there once. We walked the shore arm in arm in the spring sunshine before going to see The Lives of Others at a friend’s flat. The bastard.

  “All of them?” I ask.

  “That would be telling.”

  I can bear it no longer. I want to break Tony’s head into tiny pieces, shatter the memories of all the pain he’s ever inflicted, erase them from this earth forever. I hold the hammer high, my eyes locked on to his.

  “Do it,” he whispers.

  “I will,” I say. “Don’t you worry.” And I know I will.

  A moment later, I hear the sound of the garage shutter, and the door is open and light is streaming into the room.

  “Maddie!” Luke shouts out, rushing toward me.

  The hammer is still poised above my head. I look at Tony, pathetic, dying, and let Luke take the hammer from me. My work here is done. Luke reaches for his phone, but the police are already on their way, sirens wailing ever closer from across the city.

  CHAPTER 108

  ONE MONTH LATER

  “Where’s Milo?�
�� Maddie asks.

  “Round at Laura’s.” Luke adjusts the iPad on his kitchen table so that he can still see Maddie on his screen while he pours himself a glass of water at the sink. “She’s teaching him yoga, would you believe it?” he calls out.

  “That’s great,” Maddie says, smiling, but Luke can tell she’s making an effort to be cheerful. She’s back in her mother’s house in the town in South India with the name he can never remember. Kushalnagar?

  “Something to take the stress out of his exams,” Luke continues, sitting back down at the table. “He has two sessions a week with a couple of his female friends. I think he’s just trying to impress them. Show them his feminine side.”

  “How is Laura?” Maddie asks, her voice quieter now. They’ve been talking a lot on FaceTime in recent weeks. He needs it as much as her as they both come to terms with what happened in Berlin.

  “Doing pretty well,” Luke says. “All things considered. We see quite a bit of each other.”

  “I hope you can bring some happiness into her life.”

  “Me too,” he says, pausing. Some days when they talk Luke thinks Maddie’s doing well; at other times, like today, he worries for her. “Are you okay?”

  Maddie turns away from the screen. “I’m fine,” she says. “I think Mum’s back. I better go.”

  Maddie reaches forward to turn off the screen, a false smile on her lips.

  “Wait,” Luke says. Maddie hesitates, struggling to compose herself. “Call me anytime,” he continues. “If you need to talk. You know, about anything.” Several times recently, he has felt that Maddie is on the point of telling him something important, but then she holds back.