Find Me

by J. S. Monroe

  ‘It’s hidden by a filing cabinet,’ Jar says as they look around for the entrance to the basement. There are more than five cabinets dotted around the room, some with doors hanging open, others closed.

  ‘Over here,’ Carl says. The three of them walk across to a cabinet in the far corner. All its drawers are closed and behind it there is a panel on the grey linoleum floor with an inset catch. There are scratch marks to the side where the cabinet has been pulled backwards and forwards.

  Jar doesn’t hesitate now as he bends down and lifts the catch on the panel. He starts to pull, lifting it upwards, with Carl’s help.

  The smell hits them first: a rancid mix of excrement, airlessness and something else that reminds Jar of hospitals. Or is it what he smelt at the morgue, when he went with Da to say goodbye to Mamó? Max pulls out a spotted handkerchief and holds it up to his mouth. Carl turns away, walks to the door and retches. Jar puts his hand over his mouth and nose and pulls the panel back fully. Despite the darkness below, he can see the top rung of a metal ladder.

  ‘I’m going down,’ he says.

  ‘Use this,’ Max says, passing him his handkerchief.

  Jar takes it, turns and feels with his feet for the ladder.

  ‘Tell Carl to keep a watch out for Martin,’ he says. No human would be down in the basement of their own volition, he thinks, not with that smell. Perhaps Martin has popped out. To get some fresh air? A pint of milk? Jar is no longer thinking straight, his heart beating fast, his hands clammy on the metal ladder. Did Rosa climb down these stairs that first night? Or had she been so drugged that Martin had had to carry her down, or maybe drop her like a sack of coal?

  *

  I close my eyes and open them again, holding the electrodes apart in my hands below me. I can’t go through with this. I can’t.

  Dad has slipped back into the room, cutting it fine again for a school performance. He gives me a look of reassurance, the you-can-do-it smile he gave me when I was wobbling on the beam, arms held high, about to cartwheel. Then Jar appears, too, with that same look he had given me when my credit card defaulted in the restaurant. ‘There’s enough money in the tip box, from other diners, for me to cover it,’ he said. I loved you for that, Jar.

  ‘I’m ready,’ I say, as he steps forward to remove the table so my body can hang freely when it begins to twist and contort.

  ‘One on your foot, the other on your tongue,’ he whispers. There is sweet alcohol on his breath and his skin is beading with sweat.

  I check with Dad, who nods and turns away. Jar nods, too.

  And then I plunge both electrodes into the sides of his head, one against each sweaty temple, pushing as hard as I can as his body convulses beneath me.

  *

  Standing at the foot of the ladder, Jar peers around the dark room, using his mobile phone as a torch. He holds the handkerchief against his nose, wanting to be sick, but he forces himself to swallow. Where’s Rosa? Is she here? Or is this just used for animals? Taped to the bottom of the bitch’s foot… She just sat there on her haunches, staring back at me…

  The first thing Jar sees is an orange hammock suspended from the ceiling. It’s empty, hanging limply, two electric cables trailing away from one end into the darkness. This is where the video was made, Jar realises. He turns to retch into the handkerchief.

  ‘You all right down there?’ Max calls out, but Jar barely hears him. He flicks the mobile phone light around, hoping it answers his question.

  ‘Rosa?’ he says, wiping his mouth. His voice is weak. ‘Rosa, it’s me, Jar. Where are you now?’ He walks over to the harness, making sure it’s empty.

  ‘Rosa?’ he calls, gaining confidence.

  He walks past the hammock into a side room, where there is a lavatory and a basin, and shines the light around the tiny space, flicking from one object to another: a glass beaker, a car battery, electrodes, two large wooden crates, like cubicles, that have been joined together, and a stack of what look like lampshades. The sort you put around a dog’s neck to stop it scratching, he thinks. He shines the light on the shelf above. A row of tins: dog food. Below it, on a work surface, one open tin with a spoon in it.

  And then he hears a sound, the faintest shuffle. He shines the light down at the floor. There, crouched beneath the basin, naked, arms clutching her knees, trembling, alive, is Rosa.

  ‘Where is he?’ she whispers, as Jar reaches down to cradle her in his arms.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Jar says, starting to sob, shocked by the coldness of her skin. ‘Take my jacket.’

  ‘He’s here, Jar.’

  ‘It’s over,’ Jar says, not hearing her words as he lifts her to her feet and wraps his suede jacket around her, just like he did on the banks of the River Cam. It’s hard to believe she is the same woman. Her hair is shaved, the side of her face bruised and swollen, her body skin and bones. ‘We need to get you out of here.’

  He will never let her be taken away again, he thinks, holding her close to him, closer than he’s ever held anyone. But his own skin is beginning to cool too, chilled by her silence. He’s here.

  ‘I tried,’ Rosa whispers.

  Jar feels the chain around his neck before he hears Martin. His hands shoot up to the heavy links, desperate to release the pressure as he is pulled into the middle of the room, away from Rosa, his legs kicking out in a hideous cancan. He can hear himself choking, as if it’s someone else.

  ‘I hate stories with happy endings, don’t you?’ Martin says, his mouth close to Jar’s ear.

  ‘My jacket,’ Jar manages to say to Rosa, who has sunk back down to the ground, curled up in fear – or is it helplessness? She looks up at him. Jar motions with his bulging eyes at his jacket pocket, unable to speak. He doesn’t want her to watch him die, but she fails to understand. There’s no energy left in his body now. The chain is hard against his windpipe and he is losing consciousness.

  ‘I saved her soul,’ Martin says. Jar is aware of a different smell, singed flesh. He closes his eyes. It doesn’t matter any more. Life is leaving him. Where’s Max? Carl? Haven’t they heard them? ‘So the bitch is mine.’

  With a final effort, Jar drops one hand from the chain and pendulums his elbow behind him. Martin doubles up, releasing his grip enough for Jar to free himself. He staggers over to Rosa, trying to ignore the pain around his neck, grabs his jacket and takes the gun from the pocket.

  ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ Martin says as he looks up at the gun Jar is now pointing at him. ‘Wouldn’t know how.’

  ‘Shoot him!’ Rosa shouts, rising to her feet.

  Jar glances at her and releases the safety catch. He needs no persuading. There’s a wildness in Martin’s eyes, a lethal unpredictability about him. His trousers are bloodied and the sides of his face are covered in raw burn marks and blood. He’s a simple enough target.

  ‘Five years you kept her down here.’ Jar grips the gun to stop it shaking. His neck is on fire. ‘Five fucking years,’ he repeats, louder now.

  ‘How time flies,’ Martin says, smirking.

  ‘She thought she could trust you, her own uncle.’ Why’s Jar saying all this? The three of them know the charges against him, but it’s as if he needs to spell them out, rest his case before he can pull the trigger. Or is Martin right and he’s not up to it? ‘She thought you’d come to save her on the pier. Instead—’

  ‘Are you OK down there?’ It’s Max. Jar looks across at the ladder. Max would have shot him by now.

  ‘Jar!’ Rosa screams.

  Jar turns to see Martin rushing towards him. He pulls the trigger, but there’s just an empty click. Instinctively, he adjusts his grip and swings the butt of the gun into Martin’s face, as hard as he can, thinking back to how he’d been felled – with the same gun – on the cliffs in Cornwall. It’s enough to stop Martin. Jar grabs the back of his neck and pulls Martin’s head up and then down on to his raised knee with a brutality that Jar never knew he possessed. Martin collapses.

  ‘Call the cops, Car
l!’ Max shouts up the hatch as he rushes over to Martin’s motionless body and stands guard over it.

  Jar, breathing hard, glances from Martin to Rosa, who is slumped against the wall, clutching his jacket around her. He reaches down and helps her to stand. Her whole body is shaking. He holds her tight, trying to calm her, calm himself, resting his forehead against hers.

  ‘This time it is over,’ he whispers. ‘I promise.’

  97

  ‘You should have rung me,’ Miles Cato says, standing outside the Nissen hut.

  ‘I thought I just did,’ Jar replies.

  ‘Before you came out here. As soon as you read Martin’s journal. This is a major crime scene – with your fingerprints all over it.’

  ‘It was personal,’ Jar says, looking at all the people now in attendance: four police cars, two ambulances, a fire engine with cutting and lifting equipment, and the police helicopter that Cato had hitched a ride in from London, not to mention the patrol cars down on the road that has now been sealed off. There is blue-striped police-incident tape everywhere, strung between trees, rippling in the breeze.

  ‘She’s going to be all right, you do know that,’ Cato says.

  ‘Her body, maybe.’

  Jar has just stepped out of the ambulance where Rosa is being looked after. The paramedics have cleaned her up, given her a smock to wear, and will soon be taking her to the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, but not without Jar. He has insisted on going everywhere with her, and this is the first time he has left her side since he found her more than an hour ago.

  Carl and Max are still with him, giving statements to the police, offering reassurance. Martin was arrested and whisked away to Norwich police station, for his own safety as much as others’. No one has yet established the whole story, what happened before Jar arrived, but he assumes Rosa seized her moment and somehow managed to administer a near-fatal shock to Martin, enough for her to escape the harness. As for the gun, Cato has confirmed that it was a fake, which isn’t much consolation. Another reason why Jar should have challenged Martin’s colleague on the cliffs in Cornwall.

  ‘I’m going back in to see her,’ Jar says, motioning towards the ambulance. ‘They want to drive her over to the hospital now.’

  ‘We’ll need to talk to her, when she’s feeling stronger,’ Cato says. ‘There are a lot of questions. I’m sure you understand.’

  ‘As you like.’ Jar holds Cato’s gaze, thinking back to the first time they met. He still doesn’t trust him.

  98

  Cornwall, 2017

  This won’t be long. I find everything tiring at the moment and spend much of my day sleeping. It was Jar’s idea to start writing a diary again – my own words written in freedom – and it feels good, the first steps to reclaiming my life, my past.

  It was Jar’s suggestion to come down here, too, to the place where Dad used to bring me: a sanctuary, even though the last time I was here was for his funeral. I walk up to Paul every day with Jar, to visit Mum and Dad’s grave. It takes a long while (2,700 seconds), but I tell myself it’s good for body and soul.

  It’s been a month since Jar found me. For the first few days I was in hospital, before he brought me here. A counsellor comes from Truro every day and we talk for two, sometimes three hours, depending on how strong I’m feeling. She shows me pictures of my ‘cell’, photos of Martin, with and without his balaclava, and I read her extracts from my ‘prison diary’, the bits that I wrote on scraps of paper. She’s suggested that I write up the final hours of my incarceration as well, when I electrocuted Martin. It will help me to get some closure, she says, if I can recall the events in real time.

  I feel so sorry for Amy. One day soon, I hope, she will feel able to visit me. I’ve written a letter, telling her not to blame herself.

  Bright sunlight remains a problem. I wear big sunglasses wherever I go, which also helps to conceal my identity. Sometimes I put a wig on, too – one of the advantages of having short hair. There’s still a lot of interest in what happened to me, how I survived.

  I want to go back to college, that much I do know. Complete my studies. Dr Lance has written to me, says my place will be kept open indefinitely. I’ve just got to persuade Jar to come back with me, do a PhD or something. He’s agreed to have some more counselling with Kirsten and his writer’s block has finally lifted. He says he was always too fearful of borrowing from other writers, but now he’s not so bothered and is going to steal an idea that was stolen from someone else before they could use it. What goes around comes around.

  I never want him to leave my side.

  99

  Jar holds Rosa tightly. It’s the first time they’ve kissed properly since he found her in Norfolk two months ago. They are lying on the bed upstairs in her parents’ old net loft in Mousehole, the sound of the sea rolling up through a large double window. Noisy gulls have gathered on a neighbour’s rooftop.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Jar says, stroking her hair, which is growing back. A tear rolls across her cheek. ‘Shall we go down to the harbour wall?’ She smiles back at him, shielding her eyes from the light. Jar leans over to the bedside table and passes her sunglasses.

  They dress and take two Union Jack mugs of tea with them: Earl Grey for her, Barry’s Gold for him. It’s too early for the shops on the front to be open. They have spent a lot of time sitting on this particular bench on the harbour wall, talking quietly, trying to piece together her life, one second, one hour, one day at a time. If the daily walk to Paul hasn’t taken it out of her, they climb Raginnis Hill, behind the village, and venture along the coast path. They haven’t got beyond the coastguard lookout yet, but they hope to make it to Lamorna in the coming months. Jar is pleased with the progress she’s making. The counselling sessions are helping, and she’s started to keep a diary again, but there’s still a long way to go.

  This morning, though, they venture no further than the bench on the harbour wall, cradling their mugs of tea in cold hands, watching as a mackerel fisherman steers his boat out of the narrow harbour entrance. He raises a salty hand in acknowledgement.

  Jar senses that a lot of people come to this far-flung part of the country to heal. The village has left Rosa to herself, despite a five-page article in a Sunday broadsheet, which triggered worldwide media interest. Rosa gave only one interview, to Max, who told her story from the beginning. The rest of the world’s press has accepted that she won’t speak again.

  It wasn’t quite the spy scoop that Max had been expecting to write, but the sub-editors still managed to get the SAS into the headline, much to Jar’s and Max’s amusement.

  Max has been down to visit a couple of times, first to interview Rosa for the article – sensitively, slowly, over three days, writing notes longhand with a fountain pen – and then with his family for a short holiday, during which he and his wife came over regularly to check on Rosa. Jar played French cricket with their twins on the small beach below the car park. And Max is back being a journalist, having decided to wind up his PR business in Canary Wharf. ‘Bankers will have to tell their own lies now.’

  Carl has been down too, sleeping on the sofa in the net loft. He came with good news from the office. Jar can have his old job back, with two provisos: he mustn’t be late, and when he is, he must lay off the lame excuses. Anton has also resurfaced. Turns out he’d had some girlfriend problems, nothing to do with Rosa’s diary, which he has now finished decoding and sent to Jar. Carl’s even had a skateboard lesson with him, claims he’s now mastered the pop shove-it.

  Cato’s visit was more businesslike. After conducting further formal interviews with them both, he’d stayed the night in Mousehole, at the Old Coastguard, and called Jar over in the evening for a pint of Betty Stogs and an off-the-record update. For half an hour, Jar almost began to like him.

  According to Cato’s ongoing inquiries, Martin was fired by the company in Huntingdon because of excessive cruelty to animals. He went on to lose his second job, in Norwich, for similar rea
sons, although there his cruelty had manifested itself in an unauthorised first-in-human trial on a new antidepressant that he was testing for the company. A lab assistant was fired at the same time – the same person who had taken Rosa away in Cornwall and had chased Jar in Canary Wharf. He was Martin’s cycling companion but also his partner in crime, helping to keep Rosa captive and assisting with Martin’s experiments on her. The police had found him unconscious, his head through the windscreen of a white Transit van, on the same day as Martin’s arrest.

  Cato confirmed, too, that Martin’s old company had reconnected the electricity to the facility out at the airfield, in advance of plans to use it again. In other words, he explained, Rosa would have been found soon enough. It wasn’t much comfort. Nor was Cato’s reluctance to reveal more about the ongoing police investigation into the circumstances of Rosa’s abduction five years ago.

  Only Amy has failed to visit them. A heaviness descends on Jar as he thinks back to the letter from her that arrived earlier in the week, darkening their sunny corner of Cornwall. Very soon, in a matter of minutes perhaps, he will know whether he and Rosa can move on with their lives.

  ‘Some days I want to know what happened,’ Rosa says, getting up from the bench to walk along the harbour wall. ‘On other days, like today, I don’t care. I just want to hitch my past to another person’s life, put a different name on my diary.’

  ‘Martin changed much of what you wrote,’ Jar says, repeating what he’s told her many times.

  ‘I know that.’

  Together, they have been through a printout of each diary entry, highlighting with a green marker pen those memories that are hers, focusing on what they both know to be true, and redacting with a black pen Martin’s numerous additions: from the entire Karen character to signing the Official Secrets Act in Herefordshire, and much in between. Jar was intrigued when Rosa confirmed that her dad was awarded a KCMG – she’s got the medal somewhere. She even remembered the private ceremony at St Paul’s – at least she thought she did. Was he a spy? No, he was much more important than that.