The Last Thing She Remembers

by J. S. Monroe

  “And maybe I was a little shy.” She pauses. “The thing is, I’ve been through all my contacts on my phone. I don’t recognize any of the names.”

  Hart leans forward with a piece of paper. Tony has almost forgotten the detective was there. On the paper, it says: Ask if there are any family numbers on the phone—Mum, Dad, etc.

  “Perhaps you’ve got some family contacts on there,” Tony duly says. “Mom? Dad?”

  “I’ve been through them all. Nothing.” She sounds tearful. “I’ve got a name now but I still don’t know who I am.”

  Tony knows it would be sensible at this point to suggest to Maddie—he likes the name, he’s not fussy—that she call one of the contacts in the phone. Maybe a number she’s recently dialed, ask their name, explain to them what’s happened, that she’s suffering from amnesia. But he doesn’t. He wants to see what she says next.

  “I was thinking, this might be too much but...would you consider coming back with me to Berlin?” she asks.

  “Berlin?” He is unable to hide his shock. He looks up, relieved to see that the cops seem equally surprised by the suggestion.

  “To help me sort my life out, find out who I am. I thought I was coming back to Heathrow from a work conference, but it seems my home might be in Berlin. There’s a return plane ticket in my bag.”

  Berlin?

  He can think of nothing better, but he’s still under arrest for perverting the course of justice. He glances up at Detective Inspector Hart, whose face offers no clues. Surely she’s said enough for the charges against him to be dropped?

  “I’m asking too much, I’m sorry,” Maddie continues. “I think that’s where I must live, that’s all. And there’s a set of house keys in my bag too.”

  “For our house?”

  Maddie laughs. “I still don’t know why I came to the village, why I had a train ticket.”

  “And knew the layout of our home.”

  “I’d forgotten that.”

  Tony will never forget. That surge of excitement when she had described the layout of their home on that first day, a growing sense that she might be Jemma Huish.

  “You must have lived there once,” he says.

  Tony doesn’t give a damn now. He just needs to get to Berlin with her.

  “It’s going to be quite disorientating, when I get back,” she continues. “I’d really appreciate having you there, someone to show me around Berlin.”

  What did she just say? There’s a commotion of some sort on the line, maybe a person coming into her room. Tony swallows, replaying her words. Someone to show me around Berlin. What was she implying? That he knows the place? He’s never told anyone about Berlin. No one, not even Laura. It’s his secret. City of memories, forbidden fruits. It’s been a while since he’s been there. Too long. He closes his eyes. Was it just a casual remark, a confused mistake? Or does Maddie know something? He was careful not to betray any knowledge of the city when she had arrived at their house saying she’d flown in from a business trip in Berlin. Very careful.

  Hart slips Tony another piece of paper: Ask her what her surname is. Tony has to read it twice, unable to concentrate, too distracted by the thought of Berlin, what she’s just said.

  “I’ve got to go,” Maddie says. “Call me later. I’m staying near to the airport tonight.”

  Hart gestures for him to ask her, but it’s already too late. The line is dead.

  CHAPTER 72

  I look at the phone for a second before putting it away. Tony definitely had company—it sounded like I was on speakerphone. Did I say enough? Lay it on too thickly? I turn down the TV and glance around the room where I’m staying, in a hotel close to Terminal 5. Sitting on the end of the bed, I run through the most likely sequence of events again.

  The police find my hairbrush under the bed in the pub, check its DNA and confirm that I’m not Jemma Huish. (Given the subsequent shooting, I left that a bit late.) As part of a village-wide search for me, the police interview Tony and establish that his wife Laura has left for London after a row. Suspicions aroused, they follow him, possibly out to the ammunition dump in the forest, where they find my things. Tony’s now in the frame for obstructing a police inquiry.

  Should I call the police? Explain that I’m okay? I could even find a police station near here, present my passport, tell them I’m fine. The last thing I need is for Tony to be charged. The police were only interested in me because they thought I was Jemma Huish. Now that she is dead, I assume that I’m no longer their concern. But going to the police is too much of a risk.

  I Google the main number of the village surgery on my phone and call it.

  “Can I speak to Dr. Patterson please?” I ask.

  “Who’s calling?”

  “Tell her it’s Jemma, a patient of hers. I was with her this morning but had to leave.”

  I am put on hold, and then Dr. Patterson comes on the line. I don’t like involving her again, but I can see no alternative.

  “Jemma?” she asks tentatively.

  “I’m sorry for running off this morning,” I say.

  “Where are you now?” she asks. I try to picture her consulting room and shiver at the memory, the instruments. It was so tough going there, but it was unavoidable.

  “I’m at the airport, Heathrow,” I say. “Long story but I got my bag back from lost property. My real name’s Maddie. I just wanted to let you know. And to say thank you. I’m flying to Germany tomorrow.”

  “Are you feeling better?” she asks, surprised by my manner.

  “I know my own name now, which is a start. And I think I live in Berlin. The rest is still a bit of a blur, to be honest.”

  “Will you be able to get help there?” she asks. Dr. Patterson is a good woman.

  “I hope so.”

  “Have you spoken to the police? DI Hart?”

  “Not yet.” He was listening when I spoke to Tony, though. And it’s important Dr. Patterson relays this conversation back to him too. “I’m so sorry about what happened on the canal.”

  “We all are.” Her voice is suddenly full of emotion.

  “Thanks—you know, for everything you’ve done for me. I’ve been reading my notes this evening.”

  “I’m not sure I did much.” She pauses. “For the record I did change my mind. No longer thought you were Jemma Huish, not after we’d met on the second day.”

  “I hope I haven’t caused you too many problems. Professionally.”

  She laughs sarcastically. “You shouldn’t have disappeared from the surgery like that. The police were looking for you everywhere.”

  “That’s why I had to run off.” I think again of the looks I received as I passed through the surgery waiting room. “I didn’t want to be mistaken for Jemma Huish.” Poor woman. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Look after yourself then.” Dr. Patterson’s tone has become perfunctory. She’s understandably hurt.

  I am about to hang up—I’ve said all that I need to—but I need to ask one more thing. “Is Laura okay?”

  “Laura? She’s far from okay actually. After everything that’s happened. She’s staying with me tonight.”

  It’s a mistake to have asked.

  “Please tell her I’m sorry,” I say.

  I hang up, pressing my lips together until they hurt. I hope I said enough, reassured her that I’m okay. Safe. And that I’m not completely heartless. Dr. Patterson will contact the police, let them know that I’ve called. She can then close the case, allowing her to deal with more needy people. I’ve wasted enough of her time already.

  I realize I’m shattered after the day’s events. I’ll get something to eat in the hotel restaurant downstairs and turn in early, watch the news again. The shooting has been dominating the headlines all evening. My plan is to stay here until Tony can join me, hopefully tomorrow morning. Then
we will fly to Berlin together.

  I pray that Laura will one day forgive me. For what I’ve done and what lies ahead.

  CHAPTER 73

  “One more?” Milo asks, turning to Luke on the sofa.

  “Shouldn’t you be studying?” Luke asks, regretting the question immediately.

  “Fine,” Milo says, walking off to his bedroom. And it had all been going so well. As part of his ongoing effort to bond more, Luke had watched back-to-back episodes of This Country, his son’s favorite TV show, a mockumentary set in a Wiltshire village not dissimilar to their own. They’d laughed loudly, eating pizza on their laps. In between episodes, they’d had a more serious chat, talking about the shooting. Milo knew all about it from social media, but hadn’t realized his dad had been on the canal at the time. Luke spared him the details.

  Back in the kitchen, he clears away their plates. He’d taken his eye off Milo while he was with Chloe, let a distance grow between them. Sometimes parenthood feels like a long guilt trip, particularly if there’s only one parent. Upstairs, he pops his head around Milo’s bedroom door. Milo is at his desk, studying hard. His exams start in a week.

  “We’ll watch some more tomorrow,” Luke says. Milo smiles briefly back at him. “‘Mucklowes look after Mucklowes,’ eh?” Luke adds, quoting a line from the show.

  Another mistake. Milo returns to his work, shaking his head in disbelief.

  Luke retreats downstairs and tries Freya’s number in India again. They’d exchanged contact details after their late-night chat on FaceTime in Battersea Park. This time the number connects. It would be wonderful if Milo could meet his older sister. Some female influence on his life.

  “Luke?” Frey asks.

  “It’s me. Is everything okay?” He glances at his watch: 2:00 a.m. in the Punjab. She’s told him to ring at any time. It’s good to hear her voice again, makes him feel a little more grounded.

  “After we spoke, I made some inquiries,” she begins. “Not to my parents but to my auntie, who’s always been my ally in the family. She was involved in the adoption, handing our daughter over and so forth.” Freya pauses, clearly struggling to contain her emotion. “Auntie told the couple to get in touch with her if there was ever a problem, or if she wanted to make contact with her biological mother when she was older.”

  Luke’s struggling, too, now, thrown by the reference to “our daughter,” anxious to know where Freya is going with this. He switches on the dishwasher and walks down to the French windows, staring out into the dark garden.

  “It turns out her adoptive parents got in touch with Auntie ten years back,” Freya continues. “She’d gone missing. Disappeared. They thought that maybe she’d returned to India—they’d explained a lot to her about her background and whatnot when she turned eighteen. Auntie never told me all this time, didn’t want to upset me. She let me know just now when I explained about your call.”

  “Is she still missing?” Luke asks.

  “It seems so. But what is missing? She’s an adult—twenty-nine years old now. Why not? As the police said at the time, she’s free to live her life.” Freya pauses. Luke can tell she’s trying to put a brave face. “The parents say it wasn’t like her to run off,” she adds quietly. “Not for so long. She was a good girl, home-loving and all.”

  “Did they tell you her name?” Luke asks, glancing up at the ceiling. Milo has started to play loud music.

  “No. But Auntie...” She takes a deep breath. “When she handed our baby over, she asked if they might call her Freya. None of us know if they did.”

  Our baby. Luke suddenly feels overwhelmed. It’s been a long day.

  “Thank you for telling me,” he says.

  “I’m not sure it helps. I just wanted you to know. Maybe there’s a slim chance she is the same woman who came to your village, if some likeness is there. Is she still with you?”

  “She’s disappeared.”

  He hesitates, looking up at the ceiling again, thinking of Milo. “Just like our daughter.”

  CHAPTER 74

  “The good news is that the boss is happy we’ve released Tony Masters,” Silas says, walking back into the squad room with Strover after a meeting upstairs. He notices two uniforms discreetly eyeing her up and down, and gives them a stare normally reserved for murderers.

  “The bad news—” he continues, sitting down at a free desk with Strover.

  “You’re not happy?” Strover interrupts. She’s getting to know him better. Even started to call him “boss.”

  “Correct,” he says. “Far from it.”

  Silas hopes Strover hasn’t made any plans for the evening. It’s going to be another late one. His own date with Susie Patterson tonight bit the dust long ago. He’ll call her later. She’d rung earlier to tell him about a phone call she’d taken from Maddie at Heathrow. Her tone was conciliatory, and on impulse Silas had made the mistake of asking her out to dinner. He’s been in this game long enough not to be booking restaurants.

  “I want you to find out everything you can about Tony,” Silas says, opening his laptop. Despite what his boss says, he’s not going to let Tony drop off the grid that easily.

  After listening again to a recording of Tony’s phone call with Maddie at Heathrow, Silas had no option but to release him without charge earlier this evening. If Tony did brief her in advance, she deserves an Oscar. Maddie’s subsequent call to Susie Patterson seemed to confirm it was the correct decision. Susie said that Maddie sounded better, now that she knows her real name. Hardly a kept woman. But Tony lies. Silas knows it.

  He is learning to read the American, understand his poker tells, the pauses. His denial that he knew Jemma Huish had lived in his house as a child is particularly troubling. A few hours earlier, Laura, Tony’s wife, had called him. She had found a list in the attic of previous owners, including Jemma Huish’s parents. Why would Tony deny that? She had also found a sheaf of newspaper cuttings on amnesia, including a number of articles about Jemma Huish. And it seems Tony likes to take a photo a day. Strover’s been going through his Instagram posts. Rather her than him.

  “We need to know more about Maddie too,” Silas says. “A surname would be nice.”

  “While you were upstairs, I got back a list of scanned passports from Border Force at Heathrow.”

  “About bloody time,” Silas says, leaning across as Strover angles her own laptop for him to see.

  “We’ve been cross-referencing them with the passenger information lists from all Berlin flights that day,” she says.

  “And?”

  “There were only two Maddies who arrived from Berlin, including this one, who appears to be our woman.”

  Strover pulls up an image of a passport page.

  “‘Maddie Thurloe,’” Silas says, reading from the screen.

  “I ran a quick check on her,” Strover continues. Silas is starting to like those words. They mean Strover’s got the bit between her teeth, trawling social media and accessing digital sources he’s too late in his career to learn about. “Daughter of the well-known Irish travel writer, James Thurloe,” Strover adds.

  “Had his own TV series in the 1990s,” Silas says. He used to watch it with his dad, who wanted to travel but could never afford it.

  “Bit before my time, boss,” Strover says.

  “You’re not suggesting I’m old, I hope?”

  Strover ignores him and starts to read out from her computer. “According to Wiki, Thurloe drank himself to death ten years ago, shortly after he was divorced from Maddie’s Indian mother. She renounced her UK citizenship and moved back to live in India after the marriage broke up.”

  “And Maddie?”

  “She must be a nun. No Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram.”

  “Or just trying not to waste her life.” Silas has refused to embrace social media, personally or professionally, much to the desp
air of the force’s Comms and Engagement team. Some of his colleagues spend more time tweeting than policing.

  “The only thing I can find is a travel blog from ten years ago,” Strover says. “Nothing in it except a title.”

  “Which was?”

  “‘Berlin.’” Strover pauses. “She flew into the city last week on an Emirates flights from Cochin.”

  “Kochi.”

  Strover glances up at him.

  “Cochin’s now called Kochi,” Silas says. He went to Kerala once, stayed on a houseboat. One good thing about living and working in Swindon is that it encourages global travel, a desire to get as far away from the town as possible.

  “Like Madras is called Chennai?” he continues.

  “Still called Chicken Madras at my local takeaway,” Strover says, not looking up. “Maddie was traveling on an Indian passport with visas, which suggests she’s been living in India. I’ve checked with the Passport Office—she renounced her UK citizenship nine years ago, a year after her mother, and also became an Indian citizen.”

  “Not living in Germany then.” She had told Susie and Tony that she now thought she lived in Berlin. “We know more about her than she does.”

  “I wish we could say the same about Tony.”

  Strover’s initial search of the Police National Computer had revealed nothing. Not like Strover at all. No criminal record, never been the subject of any police inquiries. Just three speeding charges.

  “There is one thing,” Strover continues. “I spoke to a friend in forensics, the digital investigator who was looking through Tony’s laptop at his house. Seems like there were some hidden files on there.”

  “Did he open them?” Silas asks. Vegan porn probably. The joy of ceps.

  “There wasn’t time, but she made a copy of the hard drive.”

  Strover throws her boss a look that he ignores. He’s all for women doing jobs that were once done only by men; he’s just not used to it.