by J. S. Monroe
“Tony de Staal,” Silas says, mulling over the name.
“It got a bit of coverage at the time,” Strover says. “But it was twenty years ago, so no social media. Otherwise it would have gone viral.”
“I don’t suppose his wife knows.” Silas pauses. “So he drops out of medical school, changes his name and moves to Europe to become a photographer—swapping corpses for nightclubs.”
“And seahorses.”
Silas remembers the framed pictures in Tony’s gallery, and glances at the story on the screen again. “What is the hippocampus when it’s at home anyway?”
He watches Strover work her laptop, fast fingers touch-typing. “It’s located in the medial temporal lobe,” she says, half reading out loud, half summarizing. “We’ve got one on each side of the brain, and it’s often referred to as a ‘gateway through which new memories must pass’ before being stored permanently in other parts of the brain. ‘Hippocampal damage can result in anterograde amnesia—the inability to form new memories.’”
“What our friend Maddie suffers from,” Silas says, unable to stop himself reading ahead.
“Hippocampus derives from the Greek words for ‘horse’ and ‘sea monster,’” Strover continues. “Part of the brain’s limbic system, the hippocampus owes its name to its distinctive curved shape, which represents a seahorse.”
“Call up an image of a seahorse and a human hippocampus,” Silas says.
They both stare at the photograph of the two side by side. They look almost identical.
“Jesus,” Silas whispers.
Alzheimer’s, hippocampi, seahorses, amnesia—Silas is missing something here, another connection between Tony and Maddie.
“How long has he traded under the name Seahorse Photography?” Silas asks.
Strover calls up another file on her laptop. “He used it when he was photographing DJs in Europe,” she says, “but he seems to have dropped the name when he moved to the UK five years ago and set up shop as a wedding photographer in Surrey.” She scrolls down her screen. “After that goes bust, a ‘Seahorse Photography’ picture credit starts to show up on various Wiltshire newspaper sites. He recently took some photos of a group of touring Buddhist monks who visited the village.”
“To pay the bills, I guess,” Silas says. “Can’t be making any money from that vegan food.”
“Thought you liked it, boss?” Strover asks, looking up at him.
“I’d been fasting the day before,” Silas says, giving her a withering look. “We need to get back into Tony’s gallery first thing, take a look at those pictures again. And see what else you can find tonight on Tony de Staal.”
CHAPTER 79
“Are you asleep?” Tony asks.
I sit up in bed and look around the room, remembering where I am, who I’m meant to be. My name is Maddie and I’m in a hotel at Heathrow.
“Not yet,” I lie, adjusting the phone, trying to wake up quickly. Is this Tony testing me? If I tell him that I’ve been asleep, he will expect me to have forgotten everything.
“We need to catch an earlier flight,” he says.
“Okay,” I say. He sounds tense. I want to ask him why, but I can’t risk it in case I slip up, recall too much. “I’ll be at the hotel as early as I can tomorrow,” he adds.
I try to think of what he might expect to hear. “I haven’t written any notes—just a message, that we’re going to Berlin together.”
“That’s good,” he says. “I’m looking forward to it. Showing you around.”
I close my eyes. “Me too.” I open them again with a start. Why did he say that?
“And Maddie?”
“Yes?” I ask, dreading his question. Have I made a mistake?
“Don’t go checking out of that room of yours too early.”
CHAPTER 80
Luke’s slipping into sleep when the text comes through. His phone should be charging on the landing, given that he insists Milo puts his phone out at night. The text is short and cryptic and from his new best friend, Detective Constable Strover: Tony de Staal. What does she mean? There is only one Tony they both know. The search-junkie in him likes the surname already.
He’s spent most of this evening trying in vain to discover more about Maddie Thurloe. He can find plenty on her father, but he seems to have kept his wife and only daughter out of the media. Certainly nothing on adopting a child from India. Or the Baha’i faith. Just one article about Delhi in which he mentions the Lotus temple. All he can find is an aborted travel blog in Berlin she started ten years ago. Too much literary expectation, perhaps, for the daughter of a famous travel writer. It’s still odd, though, for someone her age not to have left any kind of digital trail.
He reaches for his laptop and starts searching for “Tony de Staal” when he hears music. Milo’s still awake. He was meant to be having an early night. Luke listens again. It’s only the two of them up here in the old, eighteenth century part of the house. His parents are in a self-contained ground-floor flat. He walks down the landing to his son’s room, pushing aside the Jamaican rainbow drapes now hanging in the doorway. Another eBay purchase.
Milo is fast asleep, his music still playing quietly. He’s done well in the circumstances, steered a sensible course through the maze of modern teenage life, but Luke can’t help thinking how different Milo would be if his mother were still here. How much happier. He hopes a sister will help. He’s getting ahead of himself. He turns off the music and rests a hand on his son’s shoulder, leaving it there for a while, envying the stillness of his sleep.
Back in his bedroom, Luke resumes his search for “Tony de Staal,” and comes across an archived story about a medical student in New Mexico. It’s on a local newspaper site and an access fee is required. He switches to searching for images and a photo of a young Tony stares back at him. An extended picture caption reads: “Tony de Staal, a first year medical student at University of New Mexico School of Medicine, was suspended for showing disrespect to a cadaver during a dissection class.”
Luke stares at the image, taken twenty years ago. For showing disrespect to a cadaver. Everyone has secrets but Luke is shocked. It might just have been student prank but it’s still sick. Does Laura know her husband changed his name? That he has a dodgy past in America? So much for his New York accent. It looks like he’s from New Mexico.
Luke glances at his watch, realizing how little he knows about the couple. It’s almost 1:00 a.m. Tony’s medical background would explain his obsession with Alzheimer’s. Why did Detective Constable Strover send him the text? Earlier, she’d asked him to share anything about Maddie Thurloe. What’s the connection? Is Tony with Maddie now? He’d been released without charge, but no one’s seen him back in the village. And Luke’s got no desire to go around there, not after their last meeting.
He searches through the contacts on his phone until he finds his old university friend Nathan. There was no reason why their paths should have crossed at Cambridge—Luke studied classics, Nathan medicine—but they were in the same college and rowed together in their first year, since then they’ve been good if absent friends. Nathan used to help him out with occasional NHS stories in his early days as a journalist until he moved with his family to America twenty years ago. Like all medics, he’s a heroic gossip. He might just know something about Tony de Staal’s medical indiscretions, given they made news at the time.
Luke texts him a message, asking first after his family—Luke’s an errant godfather to Nathan’s eldest son—and then explaining that he’s writing a story about medics who post disrespectful cadaver photos on Facebook. Does he happen to know anything about a Tony de Staal from New Mexico? Details of his former misdemeanors twenty years ago, which made headlines at the time, would be particularly appreciated. He signs off by telling him to call him soonest with any news—even if it’s the middle of the night.
CHAPTER 81
I can’t sleep, not after Tony’s last call. He suspects something. I get out of bed and walk over to the sideboard, where there is a pill in a plastic bag. The guy outside the nightclub in Berlin called them “Xany bars” when I bought one off him before my flight to Heathrow. That took me back. Two milligrams of alprazolam, a potent, fast-acting benzodiazapine anxiolytic—a tranquilizer, in other words.
I’d put it in my purse and was relieved to find it was still there when I collected my bag earlier from the Excess Baggage Company. In the old days, Fleur and I used to parachute our pills, grinding them up and wrapping them in a sheet of one-ply tissue paper before chasing them down with vodka. But never Xanax or other benzos. Not with alcohol.
I sit down on the chair, take the pill out of the bag and start to grind it up—tricky with a knife and spoon—until it is eventually a fine powder. I was going to do this in the morning, but it feels better to have got it out the way now. I pray that it will have the desired effect: amnesia, incapacity, compliance.
I glance across at the Xanax, telling myself that everything will be okay, and place two fingers on my lotus tattoo, breathing in deeply. Maybe I need to practice some yoga now, but I’m too tired. Instead I close my eyes and think of the Bodhi tree in blossom, hoping it will clear my mind of all the deceit.
CHAPTER 82
Silas waits until Strover has left for the night before he rings Susie Patterson. He knows it’s too late. He promised he’d ring her earlier but work, as ever, has got in the way. The shooting and now Tony de Staal. He has a feeling about him that he can’t let go. The woman, Maddie Thurloe, is harder to read. She has an Indian passport and flew into Germany from South India last week, but she said to Tony that she thinks she might live in Berlin.
“It’s me,” Silas says, glancing out the squad room window as a patrol car accelerates away from the station yard, lights blazing. He tries to imagine where Susie is. In bed? That would be nice.
“What time is it?” she asks, her voice heavy with sleep.
“It’s late—I’m sorry.” He shouldn’t have rung her. “Shall I call back tomorrow?”
“It’s fine.” He imagines her sitting up in bed, pushing hair out of her eyes. “How’s your day been?”
“Busy,” he says, spinning a pen on his hand. He does it more when he’s trying to quit smoking. “Sorry about supper.”
“Another time.”
Silas knows he shouldn’t bring work into their conversation, but he can’t help it. Not tonight. “What did you make of Maddie?” he asks. “The mystery woman?”
“I thought you were ringing to wish me good-night.”
“I was.” Sometimes Silas hates himself with a passion. Or is it his job he doesn’t like? How it makes him behave.
“I’m not sure I’m the best person to ask,” Susie says. “As you know, I thought she was Jemma Huish when she first arrived.”
“Everyone did.”
“Then I changed my mind.”
Tell him about it. She made Silas’s life more difficult than it already was, prevented him from interviewing Maddie, but he’s forgiven Susie already. It’s a weakness of his.
‘If you are asking me if she’s going to be okay, I would say probably,” Susie continues. “Her manner on the phone today was quite different, more together.”
“Too together?”
“How do you mean?” she asks, suddenly defensive.
Silas spins his pen again. He needs a cigarette. “Could she have faked it? Her amnesia?”
It’s a long shot but the only explanation that Silas can come up with that might explain Maddie’s behavior.
“I doubt it,” Susie says. “I saw her in the surgery on that first night, just after she had turned up in the village. She cut a tragic figure. I mean it does sometimes happen—people looking for attention—but she wasn’t doing that. I’m almost certain she was suffering from a dissociative fugue.”
Silas has been reading up on fugues since Susie first mentioned the condition, discovered that one of his favorite film characters, Jason Bourne, was based on a real life nineteenth century preacher and amnesic called Ansel Bourne.
“It’s just strange, that’s all, given Tony’s interests,” Silas says.
“What sort of interests?” Susie asks.
“Memory. Amnesia.”
“He’s certainly obsessed with Alzheimer’s—came to see me about it once. His father died very young of the disease.”
Silas pauses, weighing up what Susie has said, how much to tell her.
“Tony’s going away with her to Berlin,” he says. “Tomorrow.”
“Oh Christ, really? Laura’s already in a bad way.”
Silas had forgotten about Laura, the effect this must be having on her, that she’s friends with Susie. “Have you seen her tonight?” he asks.
“She’s here, sleeping in the spare room.”
“I think Maddie might be driving this.”
“How do you mean?”
He hasn’t shared this theory with anyone else yet, not even Strover. Silas reminds himself how Maddie had sounded on the speakerphone. It was definitely Maddie who had asked Tony to come away with her to Berlin.
“Why did she knock on his door and not someone else’s when she arrived in the village?” Silas asks. “Now that we know she’s not Jemma Huish.”
“I can’t answer that, Silas. All I know is that it’s late.” She pauses. “You know it won’t look good for me if it does turn out she was faking it.”
A part of him hopes he’s got this all wrong. That Maddie is suffering from a fugue. If he’s right, he’s not sure how Susie will cope with another professional misdiagnosis. High profile too. The media has already got wind of “the other Jemma,” the woman everyone thought had been shot.
“Can we try for dinner tomorrow?” he asks, keen to change the subject. He has no desire to remind her of the past. Everyone makes mistakes.
“I can’t do tomorrow,” she says, her enthusiasm waning. “Maybe next week.”
“I’ve quit smoking,” he lies.
“You should get some sleep,” she says, hanging up.
Silas nods at the handful of uniforms at he walks out of the squad room, trying not to feel resentful. They get enhanced rates of pay for their whole night shift, unlike detectives, who get much less for working late. Clothing allowance has been cut for detectives too. And they wonder why no one wants to join the CID anymore.
Five minutes later, Silas is driving out of the car park at Gablecross. He shouldn’t have called, shouldn’t have mentioned Maddie, implied that Susie might have messed up again.
On impulse, he decides to take a different route back to his flat in Old Town and drives down Fleming Way. He turns into Princes Street and then into Islington Street, past the Crown and County Court building where he’s spent too much of his life. The old police station used to be here, a covered walkway connecting it with the courts. And then he slows beside the multistory car park, looking up at the corrugated structure. Conor is in there somewhere, usually in the lift lobby on the fourth floor, surrounded by the detritus of drugs.
Silas brings his car to a halt in the street below and sits in the darkness, still holding the steering wheel. Should he go up there, remove Conor from that world, tuck him up in bed at home? He failed to save Jemma Huish’s life on the canal. If he doesn’t do something soon, Conor will be dead too. What can he do? He’s removed him from here before, but it never works. Last time a fight broke out as he tried to drag him away. Two uniforms turned up. Not his finest hour.
Wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, he drives off into the Swindon night, glancing again up at the car park, thinking of Jemma Huish’s face as the shots rang out. Too many wasted lives.
CHAPTER 83
Luke answers the phone after one ring. He’s always been a light slee
per, a result of years of being on solo night duty for Milo.
“You did say to call anytime,” Nathan says.
Luke turns on the light and glances at his clock radio: 2:30 a.m.
“It’s fine,” he says, sitting up in bed, trying to orientate himself. “No problem.”
“Bitchin’ good to hear your voice, buddy,” Nathan says. “Been way too long.”
Is Luke still asleep? Dreaming? Each time they speak, Nathan sounds less like an English medic and more like a Californian surfer. Or a caricature of one. He’s always been a good mimic, could have gone onto the stage, but medicine called. Nathan is now a professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Stanford School of Medicine and by far the most successful of all Luke’s university friends. They talk family for a couple of minutes—Nathan’s wife, also a doctor, recently got made a professor of Anesthesiology; looks like all three of their children will go into medicine too—and then Nathan turns to the subject of Tony de Staal.
“I’ve put in a call to an old colleague over in Santa Fe,” Nathan says. “Turns out your friend Tony—”
“He’s not my friend.”
“I’m kinda glad you said that—I was beginning to worry for you. By all accounts, this Tony was one sleazefuck of a freshman.”
“What did he do?” Luke asks. “Apart from trying to walk out the lab with a brain in his back pocket?”
“You know about that?”
“I read an old news story online.” Luke thinks again of the article about Tony being kicked out of medical school. For showing disrespect to a cadaver.
“We’ve got the right guy then. I wanted to check before hitting the phones—my colleague gave me a whole list of people who might know more. It might take some time.”
“Is it a problem?” Luke asks, grateful for his old friend’s help. He never did do things by halves. “Don’t go out your way.”