The Last Thing She Remembers

by J. S. Monroe

  “It was a long time ago,” I say.

  “My plan is to move out to Berlin when I’ve finished my studies in London. Only place to be if you want to cut it as a DJ. You know the city, then?”

  “I do, yes,” I say, pausing, “but my memory of it isn’t so good.”

  “As in you’ve got bad memories or you can’t remember it?”

  One of the policemen knocks on the car window, gesturing for Mungo to drive on and saving me from having to answer Mungo’s question.

  “You better go,” he says. “Nice knowing you, Maddie.”

  “You too. Thanks for the lift,” I say and give him a peck on the cheek. “Maybe see you again one of these days.”

  “DJ Raman, that’s my club name,” he says, as I get out of the car.

  “I’ll look out for it. Sounds Indian. Short for Ramachandran.”

  “If you say so.”

  I stand and watch as he accelerates away in a puff of black exhaust.

  I need to move quickly now. I assume that the police are no longer looking for me in connection with Jemma Huish, but they will have almost certainly discovered that Tony was hiding me in his loft and at the ammunition shelter in the forest. In which case he will be in trouble, and there might be concerns for my welfare. I walk past the policeman who knocked on Mungo’s car window, trying not to catch his eye. I’ll call Tony in a minute.

  I take the lift to the Arrivals hall on the ground floor. It feels strange to be back at Heathrow again. A lot has happened in the three days since I turned up on a flight from Berlin. So much has gone right; a lot has gone wrong too. I look around and head for the women’s loos. Once inside a cubicle, I slip a hand into my bra and retrieve a ticket for the Excess Baggage Company. It’s a little crumpled but should still do the trick.

  Back outside in the main hall, I walk past a sign for the Lost Property Office where I had visited on my arrival.

  “Unless you tell me who you are, I am unable to register your handbag,” the man in the airless office had said, glancing down at the form in front of him. His tone had been routine, just this side of polite. Unsuspecting.

  I can’t remember my own name.

  At the Excess Baggage Company desk, I have to queue for several minutes while a family in front of me deposits a fleet of bulging suitcases. Each one has to be scanned before it can be stored.

  And then it’s my turn.

  I hand over my ticket and wait, glancing around the hall. There’s no reason why the police would still be looking for me, not unless they believe I was being held under duress by Tony.

  “Here we go,” the member of staff says, passing me my handbag.

  “Thanks.”

  We both know it’s an unusual item of luggage to have left for three days, but he doesn’t comment. I take it, check that my passport, phone and bank cards are inside, and head upstairs to Departures, trying to suppress a smile of satisfaction.

  I’m back on track with the plan.

  CHAPTER 69

  “I haven’t got time for this,” Silas says. He is in an interview room in the custody suite at the back of Gablecross police station. Tony is sitting across the table from him.

  “Then let me go,” Tony says. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  Silas glances up at the big clock on the bare wall. It’s 5:00 p.m. He wants to rule out any hint of an abduction or worse before downgrading the search for the mystery woman. He had been to see his boss earlier, keen to voice his concerns about Tony. The shooting is bad enough for the force. The last thing it needs is another major incident. His boss had reluctantly agreed, reminding him that he was with Swindon CID now and not the Major Crime Investigation Team.

  “You willfully obstructed a police investigation—perverted the course of justice,” Silas says, sitting down at the table again. “We have samples of the woman’s DNA in your loft, the boot of your car and at the ammunition shelter in the woods. Why were you hiding this woman when you knew we were trying to find her?”

  “I was concerned for her safety,” Tony says, quieter now, less bullish.

  Progress. Last time Silas talked to him, down at the canal, Tony had denied everything. He’s not stupid. The mounting forensic evidence is hard to dispute.

  “Were you physically attracted to her?” Silas asks.

  “What kind of question’s that?”

  “She’s a good-looking woman.” Tony doesn’t need to know that he’s only seen Jemma at a distance in the graveyard. “And I’m trying to understand why you were protecting her from the police.”

  “Isn’t that obvious? After what happened at the canal? I thought that sort of gun shit only went down in America. Or so your media’s always telling us. She was worried that she would be wrongly arrested as Jemma Huish. So was I. Neither of us had any idea she was at risk of being frickin’ gunned down by two trigger-happy cops.”

  Silas ignores the rant. It’s not up to him to apologize for the armed response. “And you didn’t personally believe that she was Ms. Huish?”

  “No, I didn’t.” Another lie. Tony’s body has closed in on itself, the faintest turning of a shoulder.

  “So why did you call her Jemma?” Laura, his wife, had explained in her interview earlier that the name had been Tony’s idea.

  “Because she looked like one.”

  “With a J? The less common spelling.”

  “An uncommon woman.”

  Thirty million search results for “Gemma”; half as many for “Jemma.” Silas had Googled it before the interview.

  “She was a bit out of the ordinary, you know?” Tony continues.

  “Were you aware that Jemma Huish had once lived in your house?”

  “I’d no idea. Not until Dr. Patterson told us. Can I go now?”

  Silas really doesn’t like Tony, but he’s learned to put personal prejudices to one side, not let them cloud his judgment. “What’s the hurry?” he asks.

  “Like, I have customers wondering why my café is closed.”

  “Really? Never knew vegan food was so popular.” It was tasty, though; he can’t deny it.

  “And a wife who wants to see me.”

  “She must be very forgiving.”

  Tony sits back in his chair. “I don’t have to explain my personal life to anyone except my wife, but for the record there was nothing going on between Jemma and me. Okay, so I was intrigued by her mental condition. I happen to take an interest in such things, have done ever since my father died young of Alzheimer’s. And I didn’t want to see her caught up in the Jemma Huish case. But that’s as far as it went.”

  His story matches what Laura told Silas of Tony’s obsession with memory. “So she wasn’t being kept against her will,” Silas says.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “There was a lock on the outside of the loft hatch in your house. She couldn’t get out if she wanted to.”

  “I gave her a cell phone.”

  “And a bucket—that was decent of you. It’s what we do in prisons. Slopping out.” Silas doubts the American even knows what the phrase means.

  “You’re making it sound way worse than it was. And she was only in the loft for a couple of hours, before I took her out to the forest.”

  “In your car boot. Not very comfortable. Hog-tied, was she? You can see how it looks. That you’ve hidden her somewhere. Deeper in the woods, perhaps?”

  “Of course I frickin’ haven’t. I’ve as much idea as you where she is now.”

  Both men look up as Strover comes into the room.

  “Sorry to interrupt, sir, but we’ve got a location for Jemma’s mobile phone. She’s just turned it on.”

  “And?” Silas says. At least she’s not dead.

  “She’s at Heathrow—Terminal 5.”

  Tony seems as surprised as Silas. Maybe he knows less ab
out the woman than they thought.

  “Get Tony’s phone from the duty sergeant,” Silas says. “Tony here can give her a call. See how she is. And we can all listen.”

  CHAPTER 70

  The Slaughtered Lamb is packed when Luke walks in. He’s meant to be having a quiet early-evening pint with Sean, but it takes a while to reach him at the bar. Everyone is talking about the shooting on the canal and Luke, as the sole witness, is the person they all want to discuss it with. He hates to disappoint, but Detective Inspector Hart has warned him against talking about the incident while it is under investigation. He’s had his phone off and told his parents not to answer the door to reporters.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he says, standing next to Sean.

  “You okay?” his friend asks.

  “Better after a pint.”

  Luke glances around as Sean beckons the barman. Most of the assembled drinkers are locals, drawn out of their houses by a need to discuss the dreadful events of earlier. Luke fears the village will never be the same again. There are a few media types in too. Broadcasters rather than hacks, drinking in the corner. He will avoid the temptation to go over and chat with them, much as he’d like to.

  “I know this doesn’t sound so good,” Sean says. Seems like he’s had a few already. “But you know, at least it wasn’t the Jemma we all met. The one who came to the pub quiz. She was a fine thing.”

  “It was a tragedy, Sean. Whoever it was.”

  “Someone said your friend DI Hart was talking her out of it when the cops opened up with their Heckler & Kochs.”

  “You know I can’t say anything. And I’m not sure DI Hart’s my friend.”

  He’s got Luke’s respect, though. The detective was still negotiating right up until the end. Luke wishes he could tell Sean more. He needs to talk to someone. An image of the detective’s outstretched hands comes and goes. He’d given a detailed witness statement earlier, which was a useful start, but Luke will take up the police’s offer of talking to a counselor. It helped when his wife died, allowed him to make her sudden death less surreal, bring it into his own time line. He still can’t believe what he saw today.

  “Any news on Tony?” Sean asks.

  “They’ve got until tomorrow lunchtime to charge him,” Luke replies, grateful for the change of subject. “Depends what he says. You know Tony, how much he loves the police. If he manages to behave, they might release him without charge.”

  Luke now knows that Tony was hiding the woman in his loft, the woman who could be his daughter. Everyone in the village knows. The hideaway in the woods is also common knowledge, after a dog walker saw Tony being arrested beside an old ammunition dump. Nothing goes unnoticed around here. But the emerging consensus is that the mystery woman had every reason to be concerned for her own safety, given the police’s eagerness to track down Jemma Huish. What’s less clear is why Tony took it upon himself personally to protect her.

  “Everyone’s saying their marriage is over,” Sean says. Luke’s inclined to agree, after his last awkward meeting with Tony at his house. “Did you know that Laura had legged it up to London?” Sean continues. “They’d rowed about Jemma, apparently.”

  “And she’d come back down to patch things up with him.”

  Luke dislikes the thought of Laura being the subject of so much village gossip. Or that Tony has no desire to see her. He’s been trying to ring her, ask if he can help in any way.

  “So have you been in touch with your old flame Freya again?” Sean asks.

  “Not since we FaceTimed in the park. Why?”

  “I’ve been thinking,” Sean says, more serious than Luke’s heard him for a while. “If I was adopted and I’d been having a tough time in life, you know, a bit of a cultural identity crisis, I might want to get back to my biological roots. She was suffering from amnesia, didn’t know who she was. Maybe her subconscious was kicking in and that’s what drove her here.”

  “But how would she know who I am? Where to find me?” Luke’s grateful for his friend’s support. Up until now, Sean has been more interested in his own crazy Russian theories.

  “You tracked down Freya easily enough. The internet’s made the world a smaller place. Maybe she knew where her old man lived but that was as far as it went. She just had to get herself here, to the village, in the hope that you would recognize her.”

  “Which I did,” Luke says. Where’s Sean heading with this?

  “Exactly.” He pauses, drinking deeply from his pint. “On the other hand, her sudden disappearance from the village bears all the hallmarks of a textbook Kremlin exfiltration.”

  “Jesus, Sean,” Luke says. He knew it was too good to last.

  “The way she seduced Tony to get out of the village—typical swallow behavior.”

  “Swallow?” He mustn’t encourage Sean, but it’s an intriguing thought. Not the Russian stuff but the use of seduction for a different end.

  “It’s what the Russians call a female operative who uses her sexual charm to manipulate the enemy. If you or I did that, we’d be known as ravens. My guess is she’s being debriefed over blinis in Moscow Centre as we speak.”

  “Come on, Tony’s hardly the enemy.”

  “He’s American, Luke. The cold war’s back, remember?”

  Before Luke can reply, his phone buzzes. He pulls it out, in case his parents are trying to contact him, and opens up Facebook Messenger.

  Hi Luke, please call me urgently.

  It’s from Freya Lal.

  CHAPTER 71

  Tony dials the number of Laura’s old cell phone and waits, watched by Strover and Hart. God how he hates cops.

  “Place the phone on the table and switch it to speaker,” Hart says.

  Tony does what he’s told. He wants to get out of this lousy interview room as soon as he can. He also wants to know why “Jemma” is now in Heathrow. He’s been through every emotion today. Sadness when he heard that Jemma Huish had been gunned down at the canal; joy when he discovered that it wasn’t the woman who had turned up at his doorstep.

  “Hello?” she answers. It’s so damn good to hear her voice again.

  “It’s Tony. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Jemma says. “I was about to call you.”

  Hart told him not to reveal that they know she’s at Heathrow. Tony’s not sure why. The cops either don’t have permission to track her phone, or they hope to establish more by asking questions they already know the answer to. Oldest cop trick in the book. Hart nods at him.

  “Where are you now?” Tony asks.

  “Heathrow. I’m sorry, had to run. I was worried about the police.” Tony glances up at Hart, who holds a finger to his lips. He’s not a child but it works. Tony was about to tell “Jemma” that the cops are listening.

  “Have you heard what happened?” she continues.

  “At the canal?” Too right he heard. He’ll never forget the sickening feeling in his stomach when the shots rang out.

  “Poor woman,” she says.

  “I thought it was you.” Tony throws another look at Hart, whose eyes narrow. If he plays this carefully, she can help him get out of here without being charged. “Now you understand why I was trying to protect you,” he says, still looking at Hart.

  “I know.” She pauses. Come on. Just say the words. “Thank you for all you did,” she continues. “You know, for hiding me, getting me out of the village in time.”

  Good girl.

  “I’m not sure what I’d have done without you,” she adds.

  Tony’s unable to resist a look of triumph. Surely that must be enough.

  “What are you doing in Heathrow?” he asks.

  “After you left me at the ammunition dump, I went for a walk. Not far, just down the lane. It was there that it suddenly came back to me, who I am.”

  “Everything?”
r />   “Just my name.” Tony closes his eyes, trying to conceal his relief. He has come to terms with the fact that she’s not Jemma Huish, that she wasn’t returning to her childhood home, but it would be too much to bear if she was no longer amnesic. “Enough for me to come here and ask at lost property. Seems like my bag was handed in the day I lost it.”

  “And everything was still in it?”

  “Passport, bank cards, phone, even some cash. When I gave the man my name but couldn’t produce any ID, he called his supervisor, who checked me against the photo in my passport and handed it all back.”

  “That’s great,” Tony says. He knows what everyone in the room is waiting for him to ask. “And what is your real name?”

  There’s a pause. “Maddie. I’m called Maddie.”

  “Not Jemma then.”

  “Not Jemma.” Another pause. “Did you really think I was her? Jemma Huish?”

  Tony wants to be honest with her but he can’t. Not here. He’s told the cops a different story, and the last thing he needs is for them to get interested in him again.

  “I just thought you looked like a Jemma.”

  “With a J.”

  “With a J,” he repeats, allowing himself a small laugh.

  “Tony? Are you on your own now?” she asks.

  If only. Her tone is different, more intimate. Does she suspect he’s with the cops? Know that he’s been arrested? She must mean if Laura is with him. He glances around the interview room. The two cops are still watching him, Hart’s arms folded across his spreading stomach. “It’s just me,” he says, more quietly now. “Why?”

  “I’d like to see you again.”

  “I’d like that too.” Screw the cops. They can’t stop him. He’s in the clear now anyway. No one listening can believe that she was being kept by him against her will.

  “I’ve been reading my notes,” she continues, “all you’ve done for me, the dinner we had together. And I can still remember today at the shelter, in the woods.”

  “Maybe I was a little forward.” Jesus, he’d wanted her badly this morning. He adjusts his position on the chair, aroused at the thought. He wants to see her again now, savor her amnesia, the synaptic imbalance that exists between them. Own her mind. Her memories.