Killer Moon

by Hermione Stark

  “Hi India,” I say. “Do you remember me?”

  Her fingers stop picking at the bed sheet momentarily. Now she looks up at me, recognizing my voice. “Diana,” she says, as if searching her mind for how she knows me. A moment later she finds it. “We were supposed to have lunch.”

  I nod. “I waited for you, but I guess you had more urgent things on your mind, huh?”

  She gives a little laugh that is half sob. “I can’t remember,” she says. “What happened to me?”

  “What do you remember?” Leo says.

  She flinches at the sound of his voice. Her eyes turn towards him, but they rise only to the level of his chest. She doesn’t look into his face. She doesn’t say anything.

  “This is Leo,” I tell her. “Agent Leo Kane. And that’s Agent Storm over there. They are my friends. You can trust them.”

  I don’t introduce Detective Inspector Zael and this does not escape his notice. He gets a sour look on his face.

  “We want to help you,” I tell her. “But we need your help. We need to know what you remember.”

  She shakes her head. “Nothing.”

  “Sure you do. You told me you were going to a bar to celebrate Rachel’s birthday.”

  When I mention Rachel’s name I see Storm’s body stiffen from the corner of my eye. He doesn’t want me to mention Rachel’s death. He is worried it will make India too hysterical to question.

  I don’t know how I am supposed to jog her memory without mentioning Rachel, so I carry on. “You invited me, remember? But I couldn’t come. You remember being at the bar, right?”

  She nods. “It was Rachel’s birthday.”

  She is wide-eyed, tired, docile. She reminds me of a frightened child, not the cheery confident girl who sashayed into Grimshaw’s a few days ago. I don’t reach for her hand because I worry she will flinch away. If I had thought it might spark a vision, even the merest glimpse of what happened to her that night, I would have risked it. But I have to rely on mere words.

  “Did Rachel like the presents you picked for her?” I ask.

  Her face brightens. “Yes. She loved them. She was excited. She used that glow-up makeup potion that you picked for her. I think it must have worked because all of Charlie’s friends were all over her. I think she liked the attention.”

  “It sounds like you guys had fun!”

  She smiles, but her eyes are still wide and slightly worried-looking. “We had fun. The guys brought us loads of cocktails we’d never tried before. We were drinking and dancing. It was good.” She frowns and looks around the room. “Where’s Charlie? Why isn’t he here?”

  “He’s at work,” Leo tells her.

  “Oh,” she says, seeming disappointed, and still refusing to look at Leo. “Yeah. He’s been really busy with a project.”

  “Is everything alright between you and Charlie?” I ask.

  “Really good. He asked me to move in with him.” She says this proudly, smiling with excitement as she remembers.

  “Did you say yes?”

  “Of course!”

  “So there were no arguments?” says Leo.

  “Everything was fine. We were happy.” Then she looks upset. “Where’s Rachel? I want to see Rachel.”

  She looks around the room as if Rachel might be here, and then she looks at the door. The heart rate monitor beside her starts beeping rapidly in warning.

  “Your doctor said you need to rest,” I say. “No visitors. We only came because she said that you might be able to talk to us for a few minutes first.”

  My words seem to reassure her a bit. The monitor’s rapid beeping stops.

  “Do you remember leaving the party at the end of the night?” asks Leo.

  India frowns. “No. I don’t know.”

  “You and Rachel left without telling anyone why you were leaving. Do you remember why?”

  “I don’t know.” She sounds frustrated and whiny. “Maybe we wanted a smoke. Maybe we felt sick. I can’t remember.”

  “You walked up an alley with Rachel,” says Leo. “Not towards the main road. Which means you weren’t going home. Why did you walk up the alley?”

  “I don’t remember!” she says with a greater degree of confusion and distress. She looks Leo right in the eyes and then she looks away quickly as if it hurt. She begins crying. “I don’t remember. Where is Rachel? Where is she? Why won’t you tell me?”

  The tone in her voice makes me feel sick in my stomach. She looks at me pleadingly, and that haunted look on her face brings back a sudden memory that I didn’t expect. Of me sitting in a hospital bed like this. Aged fifteen. Pleading with a doctor to tell me what happened. My memory a black hole. Filled with a sense of dread and emptiness. And the doctor had said it was all going to be okay. He said to take my time. That my memory would come back eventually.

  I shudder, and push those thoughts away. So many years later and I still cannot remember what had happened in the car crash that killed my adoptive mother and took my memory of my entire early years of life away.

  Suddenly I am filled with the conviction that if only they had told me what had happened back then I might have remembered. I might not have this black hole in my mind.

  It crippled me for life, the not knowing. It cripples me even now.

  “She’s dead,” I say. “Rachel is dead.”

  “Diana!” Storm says sharply.

  But I don’t look at him. India is staring at me, her eyes wide. She is shaking her head, but I know that what I said is sinking in. She believes me. She knows that Rachel is dead.

  “She was stabbed to death,” I say relentlessly. “She was stabbed in that alley that the two of you went into.”

  India starts sobbing, her shoulders shaking. “No she’s not,” she says. “She’s not. She’s not.”

  “Yes she is,” I say. “She’s dead, and you have to remember what happened to her.”

  “Diana, that’s enough,” says Storm firmly. He strides towards me and puts his hand on my shoulder, making it clear that he wants me to leave the room.

  I shake his hand off. “She needs to know this. She needs to remember. You can remember, India. You left the bar with Rachel. You wanted to smoke or you were feeling sick. You walked up that alleyway. Why did you walk up there? Why?”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  “Yes you do,” I insist. “Remember, India. Remember why you did it.”

  “Rachel felt sick!” she says suddenly, her words rushing out.. “She was upset. She walked off. And it was so dark. And then there was a bright light. And… and…”

  She starts gasping for breath. The heart rate machine starts beeping rapidly again. India reaches out her hands as if to grab me, but she only grabs the thin air, as if she is reaching for something that she can’t touch. She begins weeping.

  “What happened to her?” she says, sobbing frantically. “What happened? Why didn’t I protect her? What did I do?” The heart rate monitor starts beeping even more frantically. India starts pulling its wires off herself. She starts getting out of the bed.

  The doctor and a nurse rush into the room. They firmly put India back into the bed.

  “Get out,” the doctor orders us. “All of you out right now!”

  “What did I do?” India is wailing. “What did I do?”

  Chapter 13

  DIANA

  The doctor has to push DI Zael out of the room because he refuses to leave. When the doctor has slammed the door shut on us, he paces in agitation outside it.

  “She as good as confessed it,” he says victoriously. “If that damn doctor hadn’t thrown us out of the room she was going to admit what she did. I know it.”

  “That wasn’t a confession,” I say hotly. “You don’t know what it was. She was scared and upset because Rachel is dead is all!”

  “We won’t know what it was until her memory comes back,” Leo says.

  “Bullshit,” Zael says. “That girl was telling us lies
as fast as she could invent them. And you saps fell for it.”

  “Are you blind?” I snap. “She was distressed. She obviously couldn’t remember.”

  “If she couldn’t remember it’s because she didn’t want to remember. She doesn’t want to remember what she’s done.”

  “I know what it’s like to have amnesia. I know what it’s like to not remember. She wasn’t lying.”

  He waves his hands in the air mockingly. “Wooh. You know because of your special psychic skills!”

  “No actually. Because I have amnesia too. You can get it from the shock of a traumatic event. But I suppose you think that trauma couldn’t possibly happen to a werewolf? Just because you see India as a wolf and Rachel as a bunny rabbit, you’re convinced India killed her.”

  “Don’t give me your predator-prey bullshit again. That girl is as guilty as they come.”

  “The only thing she is guilty of is being a werewolf.” My voice rises. “She didn’t ask to become a werewolf. Someone did it to her. And what motive does she have for killing her best friend? Her only friend. Because it’s not easy to make friends when you’re a werewolf. It’s not like people trust you. Tell me her motive!”

  “She’s a werewolf,” DI Zael says scathingly. “She doesn’t need a motive. That doctor-lady said her werewolf instincts overwhelmed her after the wolfsbane in her blood ran out. Maybe that happened the night of the murder too.”

  “She wouldn’t have allowed it to happen. She would be careful about that. She even bought some wolfsbane when she came to Grimshaw’s.”

  “If it happened once, it could have happened before.”

  “It only happened because she was clearly being kept prisoner by someone,” I say, my voice high with frustration. Only sheer effort keeps me from calling him an idiot and worse.

  “If you’re desperate for a motive then it’s men,” DI Zael says. “Men are what women argue over. Maybe they were fighting over a man.” He says this last part rather smugly.

  “This is getting us nowhere,” Storm says calmly. His had moved away a few minutes ago to make a phone call, but I had been too busy arguing to pay attention. Now the look on his face immediately tells me that he has some new information. Maybe he asked Monroe to look something up and has drawn some sort of conclusion.

  “What is it?” I ask anxiously.

  “Rachel’s blood was all over India,” he says. “But India was hurt too. The doctor said she had a laceration from the knife, and yet none of her blood was found on Rachel.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” DI Zael protests.

  “Actually, it means that India did not get her cut during a fight with Rachel. If India had been cut while she was stabbing Rachel, India’s blood would have got onto Rachel. Even a small amount. But there was none.”

  “So she was fighting afterward with the killer?” I say eagerly.

  “Or she did it to herself to make herself look less guilty,” says Zael.

  “Either could be true,” says Storm. “We need more information. We’ll question India again later.”

  DI Zael huffs angrily, but he is unable to contradict Storm.

  Storm runs his fingers distractedly through his hair. “In the meantime we’ll continue interviews with Charles Blair’s friends from the bar to see if any of them was involved.”

  “Including Jacob Jabari?” I say.

  “Including Jacob Jabari,” Storm confirms. “DI Zael, did your team get hold of the footage from the CCTV camera overlooking the parking bay where Rachel was found?”

  “I said we are working on it,” mutters DI Zael resentfully.

  “Prioritize it and send it to us immediately please. It may well have captured the attack. It’s critical to the investigation.”

  How Storm manages to keep his patience while he says it is beyond me. I glower at Zael. I cannot believe he has dragged his feet when there could be a tape that shows the attack and puts India in the clear.

  “And we need a guard,” I say. “India is going to need a guard outside her room.”

  DI Zael looks at me like I’m mad.

  “Do you ever think?” I say in exasperation. “Somewhere out there is a man who wants to shut India up. He doesn’t know she has amnesia. He is going to be worried about what she is going to say to us. We could spread the information about her memory loss to protect her.”

  “Protect her?” says DI Zael in disgust.

  “I bet the press is going to love it when it turns out she is innocent and you let someone kill her,” I say to him coldly.

  “We’ll post 24 hour guards on shift,” says Storm.

  “And me,” says DI Zael hurriedly. “I’ll make my men available.”

  Chapter 14

  DIANA

  Now that India has been found, I am at a loss what to do next. If I’d had my psychic powers I would have insisted Storm hire me for this case. If he had refused I would have done my own investigation. But without them I feel useless and adrift. I had taken the whole morning off from work at Grimshaw’s to help with the case but now nobody needs me.

  Storm, Leo and DI Zael leave the hospital, intent now on intensifying the hunt for Rachel’s murderer. Or in DI Zael’s case probably intent on proving that India is the murderer.

  I linger outside of India’s room until the Agency officer that Storm had assigned arrives to take his post outside India’s room. DI Zael had insisted that one of his police officers must be there at all times too, and the guy arrives shortly afterwards.

  I introduce myself to them both. By the aloof disinterested manner of Zael’s officer, I’ve no doubt that he is there more to keep India prisoner than to protect her. I leave the two officers standing apart on either side of India’s door, neither of them talking to the other.

  I go down to the hospital café to see if I can find any snacks to tempt India’s appetite. Her nurse had told me that India is a vegetarian. I come back up with some fruit and some chocolate-coated corn cakes, figuring that India probably likes to eat healthily. When I pop my head inside of India’s door, I find that she is propped up against her pillows, staring blankly at the wall.

  “Want some company?” I ask her.

  She nods, and I go in, shutting the door on the two officers, and pull a chair closer to India’s bed. I offer her the snacks, and when she shakes her head, I put them down on her bedside table.

  “My foster parents haven’t come yet,” she says in a voice that trembles no matter how casually she tries to say it. “They must be here in London right? Have you seen them?”

  She looks at me searchingly. I don’t know what to say. I had overheard Storm mentioned that he’d interviewed them. Which means they are here in London. I don’t know why they haven’t come to visit her.

  It makes me angry. If they had cared they would have come. But I can’t say that to her. I don’t want to upset her even more.

  “Maybe they aren’t allowed to visit you until the Agency has interviewed you?” I suggest lightly.

  She shakes her head. Tears leak out of the corners of her eyes and down her cheeks, ruining her efforts to pretend that everything is okay. She angrily wipes them away. “It’s because they think I did it. It’s because they think I did that to Rachel.”

  “If they think that then you don’t need them here. You’re better off without them.”

  She looks stricken. “But I don’t want them to think it! I need to tell them it’s not true. It can’t be true.”

  “It’ll be okay,” I say. “Storm says we need to keep an open mind until we know all the facts. He will have told them that. They can’t blame you for this.”

  “That police guy thinks I did it too. I could tell.”

  “Detective Inspector Zael. Don’t let him get to you.”

  She bites her lip worriedly. She is twisting her fingers in her lap roughly enough to make me wince. It looks painful.

  “It’s true though, isn’t it? What you said? Rachel really is dead?”

 
She looks like she desperately doesn’t want to believe it, and when I nod, she gives a little cry of shock.

  “You said… You said she’d been stabbed? Stabbed with a knife?”

  I nod again.

  “I can’t remember. Why can’t I remember?”

  The haunted tone in her voice brings back my own feelings of confusion and loneliness from years ago. Even thinking of it makes me feel sick in the pit of my stomach.