The Last Thing She Remembers

by J. S. Monroe

  I stop and look up at them. “Who’s Jemma Huish?” They both flinch. “It says in my notes you asked last night if I was her.”

  “She suffered from amnesia,” Laura says, after a hesitation.

  “Is that all?”

  “And she once lived in this house. A long time ago. Which might explain how you know where everything is.”

  I stare at her as she glances around the kitchen.

  “And she looked a bit like you,” Tony says.

  “Is that why you called me ‘Jemma’?” I ask.

  “I had no idea,” he says. “It was just a name.”

  “But you both really think I might be this woman?”

  Laura glances across at Tony, checking with him before she speaks.

  “I did, but I’m not sure any more. I’m taking you down to the surgery this morning—they’ll know for sure.”

  “Jemma Huish,” I repeat, watching Laura sit back down at the table. I wish I could put her mind at rest, but I can’t.

  “Would you like some breakfast?” she asks.

  I sit down next to her. She moves her knife away from me before passing a plate of fruit.

  “What did she do?” I ask, taking a dripping slice of mango. “I really need to know.”

  Laura hesitates before answering, exchanges another glance with Tony.

  “She killed her best friend,” Laura says.

  “What?” I whisper, unable to hide my shock.

  “Twelve years ago. She was found guilty of manslaughter and sent to a secure psychiatric unit. Seven years later, she was released. No one’s seen her since.”

  “And she lived here?” I ask. “In this house?”

  Laura nods. “She was once registered at the surgery. A long time ago.”

  “We really don’t think it’s you,” Tony says, glancing at Laura. “But it’s probably better that you’re taken care of by the professionals from now on.” He clears his throat unnecessarily. “I’m sorry, but you can’t stay here any longer. With us.”

  I hold Tony’s gaze for a second, stunned by what he’s just said.

  “We’re due at the surgery at 9:00 a.m.,” Laura says.

  There’s an awkward silence. I’m not sure what to say. They’ve been very kind taking me in for the night and I know I should be grateful, but... I don’t want to stay in a hospital.

  “I’m guessing the surgery will know if I’m Jemma Huish,” I say, trying in vain to lighten the mood. “If I’m not, maybe I could stay for—”

  Another look between Laura and Tony. “I’m sorry, Jemma,” he says. “We’ve done our bit. Given you a bed for the night, shown you the village. It’s over to them now. Laura didn’t sleep too well.”

  “Because you think I’m a murderer?”

  “It sounds so silly now,” Laura says, getting up from the table to clear the breakfast plates. “Crazy, in fact.”

  She is almost in tears and keeps her back to me and Tony, who shrugs his shoulders. It’s definitely not his call to kick me out, which is something. And then his blue eyes are on me again. I make myself return his smile before I look away. The house phone begins to ring.

  Tony stands up to answer the call.

  “Speaking,” he says, glancing first at Laura, who has turned around, and then at me. I’m still sitting at the kitchen table. I watch Tony’s demeanor change, his eyes lingering on me in a way that suggests I’m the subject of whatever conversation he’s having. His smile has gone. And then he takes the phone out of the room to finish the conversation, raising his eyebrows at Laura before he leaves. She follows him into the hall. I strain to hear the conversation, but they are both talking in whispers. I think I hear Tony say the word police, but I can’t be sure.

  He comes back into the room on his own, which strikes me as odd, and replaces the phone on its base.

  “That was the cops,” he says.

  “Have they found my handbag?” I ask, tensing.

  “Not exactly.” His manner is distant now, more objective. Any collusion between us has disappeared.

  “What did they want?”

  “They’re sending over two detectives.”

  “Did they say anything else?” I ask, trying to ignore the edge in his voice, the growing tightness in my chest.

  “There’s been a development,” he says, standing sentinel at the doorway.

  “What? You need to tell me, Tony.”

  He pauses before speaking. “They’re going to join you at the surgery.” I hear the front door close and see Laura walk past, breaking into a run down the road. She is frightened and doesn’t look in through the window. My stomach lurches. “Jemma Huish seems to have got them interested.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Detective Inspector Silas Hart glances across the water meadow, his gaze moving up to the hill beyond that overlooks the village. Not for the first time in his career he senses that someone is out there, watching him go about his work. He dismisses the thought and tries to appreciate the view. England at its best, kept just this side of chocolate box by the shifting landscape of canal boats and the Victorian grit of the Paddington to Penzance rail line. He takes a last drag on his cigarette and turns to walk back to the surgery with Detective Constable Strover, who is waiting for him by the road.

  Strover is young and new but keeps him on his toes. She’s also not afraid to take the initiative, one reason why he wanted her to work for him. Already this morning she’s pulled the passenger lists for all BA flights from Berlin Tegel that arrived at Heathrow before 3:00 p.m. yesterday. And asked Border Force to check names against advanced passenger information and send over scanned passports. That way they get to see photos.

  “Always meant to live in a place like this when I transferred out of the Met,” Silas says, as they walk down the road toward the surgery. “Small village with a country pub, beer served from wooden kegs.”

  Strover maintains a respectful silence.

  “Not your thing?” Silas asks, glancing at her. Strover is from Bristol. More city and cocktails. She makes no attempt to disguise her Bristol accent, the way she occasionally drops an l from the end of a word. Bristol becomes “Bristo”—a pride he admires. Silas buried his Wiltshire intonations deep beneath an estuary twang when he worked for the Met, worried about being branded a provincial carrot cruncher.

  “Prefer somewhere a little livelier, sir.”

  He just wishes she’d stop calling him sir. In time, he hopes she’ll come to call him “guv” or “boss.” Everyone used to call him “guv” when he was working on homicides. Since his internal transfer from the Major Crime Investigation Team, a collaboration between local police forces, to Swindon CID—he tries not to think of it as a demotion—he’s called “sir” and spends his time investigating pop-up brothels.

  Despite his rural aspirations, Silas has somehow ended up working in Swindon, reputedly the ugliest town in Britain, the place of his birth and boasting a roundabout as its main tourist attraction.

  “How much do you know about the Jemma Huish case?” he asks.

  “Just what I’ve read,” Strover says. “She killed her flatmate and then rang the police.”

  “Rang us before she killed her, that was the problem. Warned us what she was going to do. There was a Domestic Homicide Review—believe me, you really want to avoid those.”

  On the plus side, a different DHR was how Silas had met Susie Patterson while she was practicing at her old surgery near Devizes. “Early intervention,” “procedure and protocol assessments,” “interagency working”—he shivers at the memory. He’s never been much of a corporate player.

  “You think this case could be related?” Strover asks, as they cross over the road into the sunshine.

  “Probably not.”

  He knows she doesn’t believe him. He dropped everything to be over here after S
usie had rung him late last night. Would he have come so quickly if someone else had called him?

  “A mystery woman turning up in a village with no memory would normally be one for the local mental health team,” he says, stopping to look at the small ads in the post office window. Bunk beds and babysitters mainly. His colleagues spend more than enough time doing “uniform social work,” picking up the pieces of a care-in-the-community policy that doesn’t seem to allow for out-of-hours emergencies.

  But Susie’s call last night had been different. She’d mentioned Jemma Huish, a name he’s not forgotten since his days as a sergeant in South London. A name he’ll never forget. In uniform in those days, he was one of the first officers on the scene, a tiny room in Huish’s hall of residence. Her roommate was almost dead, but he stayed with her until the paramedics arrived. Huish was being restrained in the corridor outside, screaming how sorry she was, how it all could have been avoided if someone had just listened to her.

  “As a precaution, I’ve got hold of Huish’s old ‘this is me’ file,” Silas says, pushing the memory of Huish’s screams aside as they reach the surgery. “Not that it helps much—the data is either out-of-date or wrong.”

  “Did you see what the Japanese are doing with dementia sufferers?” Strover asks, as a dog walker passes them on the pavement. “Tagging them with QR codes.”

  “They should do that here,” he whispers, entering the busy waiting room. The only useful piece of information in Huish’s file is her DNA profile, taken at the time of her arrest.

  Silas waits his turn and then walks up to the receptionist, who says that Dr. Patterson will see him straightaway.

  “Join us in a couple of minutes?” he says, turning to Strover, unable to hide a sudden awkwardness. He doesn’t mean to pull rank. He just has no wish to explain to a junior colleague that he fancies the arse of Dr. Patterson and would like to spend a few minutes on his own with her. “The old mags are always worth a flick through,” he adds, gesturing at the waiting room behind them. “Only time my suits feel fashionable.”

  Strover gives him a suspicious look as he turns to walk down the surgery corridor. She’s not stupid.

  CHAPTER 16

  “You’re up early,” Luke says, surprised to see Sean walking past the train station with his dog, a tan-colored whippet lurcher. Luke is queuing for the ticket machine, about to board the train to London.

  “Not actually hit the sack yet,” Sean says. He looks rougher than usual in his baggy T-shirt and jeans. At odds with the quotidian uniformity of the assembled commuters. “Trying to nail the third act. Staying in town?”

  “Couple of nights.” Luke’s looking forward to being submersed in the anonymity of London, far from accountability of village life.

  “Any news on our mystery amnesiac?” Sean asks.

  “Haven’t seen her today,” Luke says, thinking back to the texts last night from Laura, her suggestion that Jemma was a former psychiatric patient. He’s sticking with his own theory, that she’s somehow related to Freya Lal.

  “Just saw a pair of plainclothes cops arrive in the village.”

  “Where?”

  “Up by the surgery.”

  Luke instinctively glances in its direction even though the surgery can’t be seen from the station. Several late runners are heading for the train.

  “How do you know?” he asks.

  “Recognized one of them off the news. Salisbury.”

  Sean doesn’t miss much on the news. Doesn’t miss much in the village.

  “It’s got me thinking,” he continues. “Did you see the way she answered those Russian questions in the quiz last night? She even knew the address of the KGB headquarters.”

  “And?” Luke glances at his watch and looks back down to the track. His train is nosing its way out of the siding onto the main line. He’s fond of Sean, but not in the mood right now for one of his wild conspiracy theories. Fidel Castro is Justin Trudeau’s dad; Taylor Swift is a Satanist; Hunter S. Thompson was murdered. He’s heard them all. As for the nerve agent attack in Salisbury...where to start?

  “Two thousand ten—ten Soviet sleeper agents rounded up by the FBI in America,” Sean says. “They’d buried themselves deep within the fabric of American suburban society, waiting to be activated by Moscow. Okay, so they were shite spies—the FBI had been bugging and following them for years—but my point is that they targeted ordinary America. These people lived in New Jersey, went to Colombia Business School, told everyone they’d been born in America.”

  “You honestly want me to believe that Jemma might be a Russian sleeper?” Luke says over his shoulder, entering his details at the ticket machine. He reaches down to give Sean’s dog a sympathetic rub behind the ears. Poor mutt has to listen to Sean’s wild theories every day.

  “After Salisbury, they’ve returned to basics. Had to. Moscow rules. Old school. This Jemma is confused, doesn’t know who she is. Maybe she’s been woken up too early, can’t remember where her loyalties lie.”

  “Write it all down, Sean—and file it under comedy.” Luke removes his printed tickets from the machine just as the train pulls up. “Actually, make that farce.”

  “Where was the third and final attempt made to poison Alexander Litvinenko?” Sean calls out, as Luke steps into the carriage. “Fourth floor, Millennium Hotel, Grosvenor Square. Who the hell knows that level of detail in a pub quiz, Luke? A former Russian sleeper, that’s feckin’ who.”

  Luke shakes his head in disbelief as the train doors close behind him.

  CHAPTER 17

  I stare at Tony as he makes his way into the hall. “Do I look like I’m going to kill anyone?” I ask.

  “They have to rule her out, that’s all,” Tony says, as he takes his house keys off the windowsill.

  I try to think fast, my heart racing. Coming to this village was a mistake. If I’m unable to remember my own name, how can I convince them I’m not a killer?

  “Can I pack my bag?” I ask.

  Tony nods. “Then I’ll walk down with you to the surgery.”

  “Where’s Laura gone?” I’m haunted by the image of her running past the window like a fleeing animal.

  “To see a friend.” He pauses. “She’s frightened.”

  “Of me?” The idea sounds ridiculous when I say it out aloud.

  Tony positions himself in front of the door as I walk past him and up the stairs, my legs heavy with adrenaline. I try to picture the bedroom where I slept, remembering the layout of the house outside, which is single story at the rear. There’s a sloping roof below the window, above the kitchen. Tiles and a central skylight.

  I rush into the bedroom and look at my suitcase. There’s nothing I need in there, and I have no intention of taking it with me. Instead, I grab my handwritten notes from the bedside table, skim-read them again and fold them into the back pocket of my jeans. My hands are shaking. Tony is still at the bottom of the stairs. I walk across the landing and stand by the bathroom door.

  “Won’t be a minute,” I call out.

  I pull on the light cord and let it ping. The handle at the end of the cord is a wooden carved seahorse. I watch it spin around for a second, feeling dizzy, and then I shut the bathroom door with its noisy farmhouse latch and tiptoe back to my room, closing the door behind me. The sash window opens more noisily than I expect, and I slip one leg out onto the roof, desperate to get away.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  I spin around to see Tony standing in the bedroom doorway, arms folded. I stare at him and then turn back to the window. A robin on a tree in their back garden looks at me as if I’m the most stupid human on earth.

  “Running away isn’t going to help anyone,” he says.

  I don’t move. He’s right. I’ve made a mistake, thrown by the Jemma Huish development and the fact that she lived in this house. I just need to relax
, trust the system.

  “I’m worried they’ll think I’m her,” I say.

  “Listen, I dislike the cops more than most, but if you run now, you’re guilty. Period.”

  I pull my leg in from the window and drop back into the bedroom, leaning against the window ledge. I’m embarrassed by my attempt to escape. It was the wrong move. Even the robin has flown off in disgust.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “It’s okay. We’ve all run away. It never helps.”

  The room suddenly feels airless, intimate. As I pass him at the top of the stairs, he steps in my way and wraps his arms around me.

  “Here, let me give you a hug.”

  I suppress my gut response to push him away and allow him to hold me. One, two, three seconds. And then I remove myself from his embrace. My breath shallowing, I follow him downstairs in silence and tell him I need the loo. After locking the door, I rest my forehead on the cold wall in front of me, close my eyes and try to think of the Bodhi tree.

  CHAPTER 18

  “Good to see you again,” Silas says, entering Dr. Susie Patterson’s consulting room. He waits until the door is closed before kissing her on both cheeks. “Looking well.”

  “You too,” she says, sitting down behind her desk. He remains standing, glancing around the room, the map of the world on the wall. He loves travel. “Slimmer,” she adds. “A lot slimmer.”

  He realizes she’s being kind, knows he has the gaunt look of someone who’s lost weight too quickly. His skin, particularly around the face, is hanging off him like shredded wallpaper.

  “I fast for a day and then trough like a pig,” he says. “Now you see me,” he adds, arms held up on either side of his head, “now you don’t.” He spins like a surrendering marionette to face her sideways on. “Now you see me,” he repeats, spinning again, “now you don’t. Magic, eh?”