Room 15: a gripping psychological mystery thriller

by Charles Harris

  But now nothing. No houses, no gardens. Just half-built walls, skips, portable toilets and rubble under the falling snow, slowly fading to white.

  11

  I climb back into the cab and try not to panic. Just when I thought I was home and safe, I find myself in the nightmare again. I open up my phone’s address book and tap Home, but now that I look at the number I realise with a shock it’s not mine at all. Where is home? Where is Laura?

  ‘You don’t throw up in my cab,’ the driver calls over his shoulder as he reaches to turn the meter on again.

  ‘I’m not drunk!’ I shout back.

  ‘Of course not.’ He sits there smugly, cracking his knuckles. ‘Someone stolen your house? Want me to call the police?’

  ‘Very bloody funny. Want me to report the illegal extra charges on your meter?’

  At this he shuts up, closes his eyes and waits. In desperation, I empty my wallet onto the seat. There’s a creased shiny photo of Laura I don’t recall ever seeing before: she’s sitting cross-legged on the deck of a cruise ship, smiling nervously at the camera. Is this a holiday I’ve forgotten too? I’m terrified that my brain is out of my control. And here’s my driving licence. But it’s wrong. The address is not the address I know. It’s in Stanmore. I bang on the internal window and hold it up. ‘You know this road?’

  ‘Fucking hell,’ he says and shakes his head as he puts the cab back into gear. I need fresh air. Dragging down a window, I sit back to think what I can remember. It’s like a diary with missing pages, or a wound that keeps healing over and then opening again. I tell myself to calm down. This will be solved soon, if I work it through.

  I close my eyes and try to go back. Earlier today – nothing. Leaving home – saying goodbye to my wife – still a blank. All I get is a blackness like a night fog – wiping away everything in my life for the last year and a half. I feel terrified. What have I lost?

  It’s after two fifteen when the cab drops me in the darkness outside a detached house in Stanmore – square and plain. The snow falls steadily, filling a neatly planted front garden. This is the address on my licence. I pay the driver his extra fare and climb out. I’m about to tell him to stay in case this too is wrong, but before I can speak he reverses and speeds away.

  Treading carefully, I make my way up the path, take out the unfamiliar keys I found in my jacket earlier and try one in the lock. It slides in easily. I don’t know whether to be relieved or scared. Beyond, I find a shadowy hallway, expensive wooden floor gleaming in the night, a smell of pine polish, daffodils erupting from a vase on a low table and I recognise none of it. I shut the door behind me – waiting for a strange man to confront me, to ask what I’m doing breaking into his home.

  In front of me is a flight of stairs. Two doors on the left are closed. Through an open door on the right, I can make out a lounge, a stylish sofa and coffee table in front of a large TV. Right next to me is a small study. Everywhere else is immaculately tidy but the study is in chaos. Filing cabinets have been pulled open and papers have been left lying on the floor.

  A floorboard shifts above, quiet but unmistakable. I turn quickly. Someone is watching me from the landing.

  ‘Ross?’

  ‘Laura?’ I say. She turns on the light and it’s so good to see her.

  She’s pulled on a robe that contrasts with her skin and she peers over the banisters. ‘Shit. What’s happened to you?’ Disappearing for a moment, she returns and comes downstairs, holding a box of Elastoplasts.

  ‘It’s nothing, Lolo.’

  But she opens one of the doors on the left, which turns out to be a downstairs toilet, and runs water into the sink.

  ‘I was worried about you,’ she says.

  ‘I’m sorry. I left messages on your phone.’

  ‘And those messages, Ross, like – I don’t know. You sounded weird. For fuck’s sake, you storm out this evening without saying anything and now you’re back here covered in blood.’

  Again I’m facing that emptiness. The things I’ve done I can’t remember. She gently rinses my left palm and the backs of my fingers under the tap, then dabs them dry and applies the plasters, fumbling in her hurry as she tries to tear open the wrapping. The knife cuts sting to hell, but they aren’t deep and the touch of her hands on my skin is soft and forgiving, just as in my dream. I watch her move, her body so familiar, the same slight clumsiness I know so well, shifting under the glossy nightgown. I put my arms round her and it feels good. For a moment she stays still, but then she draws away to inspect her work. ‘You need to have those looked at.’

  ‘I need something to eat,’ I say. ‘I haven’t eaten since…’ I don’t remember eating. I must have at some time, but that too has gone into the frightening void. I step back into the hall. One door is still closed. Opening it, I find myself in a large kitchen, much bigger and more modern than in our old house. On the counter sits Laura’s phone, laptop and piles of legal folders, as they always did. In the sink, an empty Pinot Noir. I walk to the nearest window and lift one side of the blind to peer through at the blackness of a garden beyond. Apart from the falling snow, I can see no movement. The kitchen cupboards all look identical, so I pick one at random. Inside stand bottles of expensive wine and spirits.

  ‘You want food?’ says Laura behind me. She opens a Smeg and brings out a plate of chicken. I feel like an idiot and I’m aware of Laura watching me as she cuts slices of bread.

  ‘I was worried. I was fucking worried about you. Gerry Gardner phoned and said you’d disappeared. He said you were in Camden General and then suddenly you weren’t.’

  Folding the chicken into the bread, I ask if Gerry told her to call him when I made contact. She nods briskly. ‘Don’t, please, Lolo. Not until I tell you.’

  She sucks her teeth but doesn’t question it.

  I start eating and then stop. ‘I’ve lost my memory,’ I say simply. I’ve said it and it frightens me to tell her. It makes it real.

  ‘Oh my God.’ She puts out a hand uncertainly as if I might be too fragile to touch.

  ‘I haven’t forgotten everything. I can remember us. I can remember my job. But I can’t remember this place at all.’

  ‘What? But you came back here.’

  ‘I found the address on my driving licence. I can’t remember what I did earlier this evening. What we did last week. Last year. It scares me shitless.’

  ‘What can you remember?’

  ‘I can’t remember anything for a year and a half. We had a party to celebrate my promotion. We were out in our garden… That’s it. Then it was this evening. I was in town and I don’t know how I got there. I tried to go home and went to the old place – it’s a building site.’

  ‘We moved six months ago. You don’t remember that?’

  ‘Nothing. This kitchen? Nothing. Nothing’s even vaguely familiar. It’s fucking scary.’ I want to reassure her but I don’t know how. I should be the strong one, not her.

  ‘Is it your head? Did you get hit?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Just cuts and scratches. The hospital did a scan.’

  ‘And?’

  I take a breath. ‘I had to leave before I got the results.’

  ‘Ross!’

  ‘I had a good reason.’ I try to sound more confident than I feel. I finish the sandwich and reach over to take some more.

  She sits down and stares at me in horror. ‘You’re scaring me, Ross. You really can’t remember?’

  ‘Not a thing since the party.’

  She picks up her mobile. ‘You need to go back to the hospital.’

  ‘No.’ I speak louder than I intended and she gives me a concerned glance, but puts the phone down again. ‘Please. Tell me. Help me here. You said I stormed out this evening. That doesn’t make sense. At nine thirty I was on late turn, but late turn starts at two in the afternoon and ends at ten, so I should have been out on duty. Why was I here?’

  ‘I don’t know, Ross.’ She looks terrified and I want to comfort her and tell
her everything will be all right. ‘Lolo, I don’t know what’s happening to me but I need to know what happened tonight.’

  ‘All I know is, you came back unexpectedly. It was a little after six. You were in a foul temper, went into your office, banged around in there and then left. You’re not exactly easy to talk to when you get into those moods.’

  I don’t get into moods. But I let it pass. ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then, I don’t know. The next I heard from you was when you left those weird messages.’

  ‘But you didn’t answer?’

  ‘I was busy, Ross. I had my own work to do. I’ve got a meeting to prepare for.’ This is typical Laura. When her emotions are high, she turns to practicalities. It’s her way of coping with her feelings, burying them perhaps, and for her it works.

  I finish eating and stand. My arms and back are aching more by the minute. ‘Did anyone else phone, apart from Gerry?’

  ‘You mean from your work?’ Laura’s treating me like she handles a client, caring but logical, taking one step at a time. Being practical again. Her slow thoughtfulness helps me get my own chaotic feelings under control.

  ‘Anyone. Because I need to know. Because it’s important.’ I return her gaze. ‘Tell me everything – however trivial it may seem.’

  She crosses her arms. ‘I’ve been here alone since you left this evening. I went through the best part of a bottle of our most expensive wine. No, actually, all of it. I… I had a long call with Izzie.’

  ‘Izzie? Gerry’s wife Izzie?’

  ‘Yes, Gerry’s Izzie. You want the details? Everything we talked about?’

  ‘I spoke to Izzie myself earlier. When I couldn’t get hold of Gerry, and she sounded… tense.’

  Laura stares at me heavily for a moment. ‘She has her ups and downs, Ross. Like all of us. You keep looking out of the window; you’re scaring me. Is there anyone there?’

  I’ve pulled open a gap in the blinds again. ‘No. Probably not.’

  ‘“Probably” not? Is there something I should be worried about? Fuck it, this is doing my head in.’

  ‘It’s doing my head in too. I can’t remember stuff and it’s terrifying me. But please help me.’

  A fragment of Laura floats reflected in the window, the sheen of her thin satin robe, her eyes unwavering. I’m desperately tired. What I really want is to go up to bed, make love, then sleep and get my memory back, and not have to think about the man who wants me dead. I let the blind fall.

  ‘Then what. After you spoke to Isobel?’

  ‘I made three calls for work – my own work. Then Gerry called. You really should speak to him.’

  ‘No. I need to work this out for myself first.’

  ‘If that’s what you want.’

  I feel a sudden surge of warmth towards her. If I can’t understand what’s going on with me, how on earth can she? I go over and hug her.

  After a moment, she puts her arms round me and sighs. I love this smart woman who is my wife. The truth is, I’ve spent too many years watching police marriages fall to pieces not to feel grateful for ours.

  ‘I’ll be okay,’ I say. I’m terrified but I try not to show it. ‘I still remember us.’

  ‘You remember when we first met?’ she says. ‘You remember what I said to you then?’

  I don’t reply.

  A few seconds later I drop my arms and leave the kitchen. I limp slowly up the strange polished wood stairs. At the top, I find a large main bedroom. One side of the double bed appears crumpled, duvet thrown back and I smell her perfume, sweet and musky, familiar among all the disturbing strangeness. Automatically, I go and touch the sheet, the reflex habit of a detective, and it’s still slightly warm. On a bedside table, radio alarm, make-up remover, book with bookmark – Zadie Smith. The other side – mine, I presume – has only a clock.

  Coming out, I notice a smaller spare bedroom. Suitcases lie open on the bed. Were we planning to go off somewhere together? Is that something else I’m supposed to be remembering?

  Laura has followed me up. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’

  I locate the bathroom and find a packet of paracetamol in the cabinet. ‘I’m shit tired,’ I say, turning away from her, taking two of the pills and pouring a glass of water. She returns downstairs without another word.

  But, yes, I remember what she said when we first met.

  I’d heard about a black-tie party in Hampstead that I had no business being at. I’d been told I’d find useful high-fliers from Scotland Yard there, people who might help my career, so although I hated such things, I rented a dinner jacket and got myself slipped in by a friend, a woman training to be a compliance manager in a small merchant bank. But the high-fliers never appeared. We were roaming the house, waiting for me to be thrown out, when I noticed Laura, standing in one of the larger rooms, sipping wine and taking a book from a shelf. Not so much pretty as classy, if a little nervous, in an expensive ivory-white sheath dress – an up-and-coming commercial lawyer, my friend said, with a CV to die for.

  As I approached, Laura turned cautiously, looked me up and down and said, ‘Don’t give me a line. Everyone here has a line.’

  I was surprised by her defensiveness and don’t remember exactly what I answered, something about not having a line. I never had any lines anyway, certainly nothing intelligent.

  She said, ‘But that is a line.’

  ‘I’m better at interrogating suspects than being interrogated.’

  She looked up at me with a sly smile. ‘So you like to be the one in charge.’

  ‘That depends.’

  She moved closer. ‘But you’re ambitious, yes? You want to get to the top. Or you wouldn’t be at a place like this.’

  ‘There’s more to life than being on top. I got that from a box of Christmas crackers once.’

  She sucked her teeth. ‘It’s not very funny.’

  ‘It was a cheap box.’

  And she laughed, a low laugh. Seeing my chance, I offered to get her a refill. Of course, I was out of my league, a new copper who had somehow scraped through a sociology degree paid for by the force and had no experience of her kind of life at all. I’m still not sure what she saw in me, except maybe that we were more similar than it first appeared.

  We were married six months later.

  I make my way down again to the study, stepping carefully over the mess of papers and files strewn around, to look through the window at the road out front. The snow has stopped and sits yellow under the street lights. A desolate little scene, a sour parody of a Christmas card, the rows of parked cars snowed in like boats in a frozen sea. But I notice one new set of tyre tracks has appeared since I came home.

  ‘I’m going back to bed,’ Laura says from the doorway.

  I answer I’ll be coming up soon, but when I turn round she’s gone.

  I close the thick curtain, switch on the light and examine this unfamiliar little room, this room I’m supposed to know. On the wall, I can now see a photo of me at my passing-out parade from Hendon: proud in my crisp dress uniform. That I remember. There’s a computer on the desk; I fire it up and it plays a little electronic tune and welcomes ‘R’.

  R? That’s my initial, but I’ve never signed on with it. And my password fails.

  Struggling to think my way through the fog in my head, I pick up a few of the papers that have fallen onto the floor and the chair. Reports of old cases, I recognise none of them. On the desk, half hidden by some bank letters, lies a notebook, black, police issue, though when I open it the writing’s not mine – similar but more angular and scrawled – and the cryptic notes may as well be in a foreign language. I feel the panic rising again. I try to control it, to work logically.

  Next to the letters sits an office phone, its cable stretched as if it’s been tugged out of position. I pick up, press redial and listen to the tones of the last number dialled. Eleven. That means national or mobile. I hang up before it connects.

  It turns out Laura’s n
ot actually in bed but in the lounge, staring blankly at a file open on her lap. I stay behind her, by the door. ‘You said you phoned Izzie and then made three calls for your work?’

  ‘Yes, Inspector. My work. I too have work. I had clients trying to fly in from Germany for meetings, but they’ve had bad weather there too, so I had to reschedule them for later today. Anything else?’

  ‘Did you phone from my office?’

  She takes a moment before saying no, she called on her mobile. And there’s a feeling of something being held back, unsaid. I ask why she hesitated.

  ‘Ross, don’t pick on every pause. I’m tired. This isn’t easy for me. I want to help you but I don’t know how.’

  I breathe slowly, count to ten, all of that. They train you to interrogate suspects but they don’t teach you how to question the woman you love. I remain behind her and massage her shoulders, but she tenses.

  I say, ‘There’s something else. It’s not only my memory. At the hospital tonight, someone attacked me with a knife.’

  ‘Stabbed you?’ She twists round, shocked.

  ‘I’m okay, Lolo. I’m fine. Like you see. A few cuts. But he came at me. For no reason.’

  ‘You think he’s still following you? He’s here. Is that why you kept looking out of the window?’

  ‘No, probably not. I can deal with it. Don’t worry. But please don’t talk to anyone, even from the station. Just in case.’

  I go back to the study and pick up the receiver. It seems I stood right here last night, rang someone, then left urgently. It’s two forty-five on a Sunday morning and I don’t expect anyone to be awake, but I might get an outgoing voicemail message, which might in turn give me a name. Something to help me find my way in the dark. I waver, then make up my mind and press redial again. It rings for a long time and I’m about to hang up when a man answers, sleepily, warily.