The Last Thing She Remembers

by J. S. Monroe

  The phone rings as he comes over to the bed. Tony snatches at the receiver.

  “There’s no frickin’ fire here,” he snarls. “No smoke, no flames, nothing...” He listens for a moment, eyes locked on to me. “There can’t be any steam because we haven’t used the goddamn shower yet.” He slams down the phone just as there’s a knock on the door.

  “I’ll get it,” I say, pulling on my top. I’m keen to get off the bed and to avoid him walking through the fog of my perfume by the door. He must have smelled it by now. Hopefully, he will think I was getting myself ready for him. Fat chance.

  “I just need to check the room,” the uniformed man says.

  “Sure,” I say, stepping aside, never so happy to see someone at my door.

  CHAPTER 89

  Luke tries speaking to Strover for the third time this morning, and gets her answering machine again. He leaves another message, asking her to call him as soon as possible as he has information about Tony de Staal. He hadn’t been able to get back to sleep after the second call from his old friend Nathan in California, troubled by H.M. and William Beecher Scoville, the neurosurgeon from Connecticut. He made the mistake of looking up Scoville’s experiment on H.M.—not a good idea before breakfast.

  His phone rings. It’s Strover.

  “What have you got for me?” she asks.

  “I’ve been calling you all morning,” Luke says, unable to hide his frustration.

  “I’ve been busy. Proper job being a detective, you know.”

  What’s she implying? He’s got a proper job too.

  “When Tony was using his old name, de Staal, the one you sent me—”

  “I didn’t send you anything,” Strover interrupts, more curt than usual.

  Luke checks himself. “I was forgetting. It’s been a while. Tony Masters, who runs the café, used to be called Tony de Staal.”

  “We know.”

  “Before he left America twenty years ago, he was a medical student in Santa Fe, where he was in trouble for disrespecting cadavers.”

  “Tell me something I can’t find on Google. What did Luke the award-winning journalist discover? Something that the police are too busy to find out for themselves because a boss wants their limited resources directed elsewhere. Like farm fuel thefts. And cockfighting.”

  Luke pauses. He likes Strover, now that he’s getting the measure of her. “I spoke to an old friend in America, a senior doctor on the West Coast.”

  “Better.”

  “Tony was obsessed with a famous neurosurgeon from the 1950s called Scoville. He once operated on an epilepsy sufferer known as H.M.—removed both his hippocampi with a hand crank and drill saw and wiped his memory. Oh yes, and Tony was kicked out of medical school for date rape.”

  “Are you sure?” He has Strover’s attention now, knows she’s taking notes. He’s forgotten that feeling of getting ahead of the police in an investigation.

  “I think that’s why he changed his name,” he adds.

  “Where are you now?”

  He doesn’t want to tell her. It would only confirm her worst suspicions. After cooking breakfast for Milo, he went back to bed with his laptop.

  “At my parents’ house, in the village.”

  “Isn’t it time you flew the nest?”

  “Long story.”

  “We’re just outside Tony’s café. Meet here in five?”

  Luke’s surprised to hear that Strover is in the village. There is still a lot of activity down on the canal, mainly police investigators, but he assumed Strover and her boss, Detective Inspector Hart, would be buried beneath paperwork back at the office. The shooting’s still making news headlines on the TV this morning.

  Five minutes later, he’s down by the café. Strover is nowhere to be seen. Then he spots an unmarked car across the street. Strover lowers the front passenger window.

  “Get in,” she calls, nodding at the seat behind her.

  Luke walks over and climbs into the car. On the seat next to him is a framed picture sealed up in Bubble Wrap. Strover acknowledges him in the rear mirror, unlike Detective Inspector Hart, who sits impassively in the driver’s seat, hands resting on the steering wheel.

  “You don’t publish anything until we say so,” Hart says, staring ahead.

  Luke doesn’t like being told what to do. He turns away, glancing at the picture next to him. A sticker on it says Seahorse Photography.

  “I’m not on a story,” he says. “All I’ve written recently is my witness statement about the shooting. And for the record, you did everything to disarm her.”

  Strover glances at her boss, watching to see how he reacts to Luke’s comment.

  “You’re a journalist,” Hart says, still looking forward.

  “And the sole witness,” Luke adds, keen to remind Hart. “I’ve left that world behind. I just want to find out if Maddie is adopted. If she’s my daughter.”

  Hart seems to believe him. “Did Maddie ever tell you anything about a friend of hers called Fleur?” Hart asks, more engaged now, fingers tapping the steering wheel.

  “Not that I can remember.” He wishes he had talked more with Maddie, felt that there was a real bond between them. Or is that wishful thinking again? She’d been a good listener when he had confided in her at the quiz, seemed to understand why he had started to look for Freya online since his split with Chloe. “Has she arrived in Berlin?” he asks.

  “We last spoke to her yesterday evening at Heathrow,” Silas says.

  “And Tony’s with her?”

  “We assume so. She asked him to accompany her, and he’s free to do so.”

  “Shouldn’t you be more concerned? Given Tony’s history?”

  Hart pauses, his eyes fixed on Luke in the mirror. “At the moment we’re speculating.”

  “Tony was done for date rape at university.” Luke was shocked when Nathan had told him on the phone.

  “How much do you know about the brain and memory?” Hart asks.

  “Enough to know that a part called the hippocampus, which looks like a seahorse, plays a crucial role in storing and processing memories,” Luke says. “The part that Tony de Staal tried to lift from a lab in New Mexico twenty years ago. The same part that a surgeon called Scoville removed from a patient called H.M., leaving him amnesic.”

  If Hart is impressed with how much he knows, he’s not showing it.

  “Take a look at this,” he says, nodding at Strover, who passes Luke a printout of a photo.

  “Seahorse on the left, hippocampus on the right,” Strover says.

  “Could just as easily be the other way around, though, couldn’t it?” Hart adds, still watching Luke in the rear mirror.

  Luke stares at the photo, his eyes drawn to the hippocampus. He’s never seen one on its own before. All the images he’s looked at show the hippocampi in context, one on either side of the brain.

  “We’re getting one of Tony’s seahorse pictures analyzed,” Hart says, “but we need more. Unless we find the Mona Lisa underneath, it still won’t be enough to issue a warrant for his arrest.”

  “What exactly are you looking for?” Luke asks, his mouth beginning to dry.

  “Seems like each seahorse has been overlaid with another image—of a human hippocampus.”

  Luke involuntarily tightens his grip on the photo, creasing its sides. He needs to get himself to Berlin too.

  CHAPTER 90

  I try to concentrate on the air hostess as she takes passengers through the safety procedure, but my mind is elsewhere. Tony is sitting in the seat next to me, his hand on mine. He has persuaded the person originally beside him to swap with me.

  The fire alarm was eventually switched off, by which time the hotel’s entire maintenance staff had gathered in our room. Tony smelled the perfume when we walked out but said nothing. None of the staf
f commented either, but I think they knew something was amiss from the looks they gave me. I flinch at the memory of Tony pressing me down on the bed.

  “Are you okay?” he asks, patting my hand. “You feel tense.”

  “I don’t seem to like being in an airplane.”

  I close my eyes and sit back. This is even much harder than I thought it would be. No notes for yesterday means I have to tread more carefully, make no reference to anything that’s happened in the past twenty-four hours: the ammunition shelter in the wood, hitchhiking with Mungo, being reunited with my cards and passport. When I made mistakes in the village, remembered things that I shouldn’t have, I was able to cover them up by using my notes as an excuse. I don’t have that safety net anymore.

  An air steward walks past, handing out newspapers. Tony takes one, glancing at the front page. He starts to read it, making no attempt to hide the headline from me. It’s about the canal shooting. I lean across toward him, resting a hand on his knee. It’s important we look like just another loved-up couple going on a European break.

  “What’s all that about?” I ask, trying to keep my voice as neutral as I can.

  He looks at me. Is he searching for signs of recovery? Of synaptic connections? A smile breaks across his lips.

  “Another good reason why we’re going to Germany,” he says. “A woman was shot dead on a canal in Wiltshire. Not in downtown New York but in rural Britain. Seems like she had a history of mental illness.”

  “That’s terrible,” I say.

  “Could have happened to any of us,” he says, folding the newspaper away. Another test, I’m sure of it. He looks at me again. It still terrifies me that I might have been shot, but I manage not to show it. “Cops, eh?” he adds.

  I think I’ve passed.

  I had expected us to be stopped by the police as we had entered Terminal 5, but there were no problems at the airline desk, where we managed to switch to an earlier flight, nor as we moved through Departures. My only worry is when we arrive in Berlin. There shouldn’t be an issue. All charges have been dropped against Tony, and I’m free to do as I wish, traveling on a valid Indian passport with all the necessary tourist visas. I tell myself that I’ve done nothing wrong, apart from waste good people’s time in an English village. And broken up a marriage.

  “Hold tight,” Tony says, taking my hand again as the plane accelerates down the runway.

  “A drink might calm my nerves,” I say.

  He glances at his watch.

  “They’re an hour ahead in Germany,” I say, a coy smile on my lips.

  “You’re right. Time to celebrate.”

  CHAPTER 91

  It’s almost twenty minutes into the flight before drinks are served. Just in time. Maddie is becoming increasingly anxious. Tony hasn’t seen her like this before. The air hostess is one row in front of them with the trolley. He waits for her to finish serving a passenger, and then she’s beaming at him, asking what he’d like to drink. Nice eyes but not his type. He pays for the champagne on his card, hoping there’s some credit left, and passes the opened bottle and two glasses to Maddie. She has lowered her table in readiness. Patience. He’d frightened her in the hotel room, got ahead of himself. There will be plenty of opportunities in Berlin. Memorable opportunities—at least for him.

  Maddie’s amnesia seems to be holding up well—she’s still only able to remember her name. And he’s beginning to think that yesterday’s comment about showing her around Berlin might have been a casual remark, nothing more. If anything was going to stimulate the synapses, rebuild the degraded networks, it would have been the newspaper headline about yesterday’s shooting, but she appeared utterly unmoved when he showed her the story before takeoff.

  “Shall I pour it now?” Maddie says, holding the bottle.

  “You go right ahead. I just need the bathroom.”

  Tony walks down the aisle. His hands are dirty from all the travel. The champagne should help her to relax. He can’t imagine what it’s like to be afraid of flying. He’s done so much over the years, crisscrossing Europe’s capitals. Maddie is unable to remember being on a plane, and yet she has a fear of flying. Like experiencing pain in a phantom limb. Where does that fear reside if not in her memory?

  He steps into the tiny cubicle, slide-locks the door and starts to rinse his hands, adding more soap as he rubs his fingers together. After he’s satisfied his hands are clean—they can never be completely clean—he looks at himself in the mirror. Without memory Maddie is nothing and he is everything. When she wakes each morning, their shared experiences of the day before, the previous night, reside only with him. Her life is his.

  For now, at least.

  He leans closer to the mirror, turning his head to one side and then the other. It’s his medial temporal lobes that are starting to deteriorate, furring up with the rust of Alzheimer’s. He’s had the test, volunteered for a trial. They gave him a scan, and injected his veins with a low-level radioactive glucose tracer that measured levels of amalyoid plaques and protein tangles in his brain, the hallmark abnormalities of Alzheimer’s.

  His brain had lit up like a Christmas tree.

  CHAPTER 92

  I pour out the champagne while Tony is still in the loo. My hand is shaking so much that I spill a few drops. I need to move quickly. Checking that the passenger next to me is not looking, I pour the crushed Xanax into one of the glasses. I’d kept the tiny bag of powder in my bra, where I’d hidden my luggage ticket. Thank God the smoke alarm went off before I had to remove it in the hotel room. I stir the glass with a pen and wait for him to return, hoping the champagne will mask the taste of the Xanax—like chalk, apparently. Not that I can remember. And bitter. All the powder seems to have dissolved.

  A minute later, he’s back in his seat, beaming at the sight of the two glasses on my tray. I pass one to him.

  “Berlin,” he says, clinking glasses.

  “Berlin,” I say, and we down our champagne in one gulp.

  CHAPTER 93

  Silas has long got over the fact that his boss, Detective Superintendent Ward, is ten years younger than him. He’s also accepted that Ward’s rocketing career is on a trajectory that is widely assumed will only level out at chief constable level. Unlike his, which he sometimes feels has yet to leave the launchpad.

  “How’s Conor?” Ward asks, turning to a printout of the report Silas has just emailed him. They are in the meeting room upstairs, which he had to book. Even Ward doesn’t have his own office, has to hot desk with the rest of them in the squad room.

  “No better,” Silas says, watching him digest the report, a summary of his concerns about Tony de Staal and Maddie Thurloe.

  “If you need time off—”

  “It’s okay.”

  Silas doesn’t like talking about his son with Ward. His boss’s genuine sympathy always makes him tear up. He’s about to change the subject when his phone vibrates. Strover said she’d text him in his meeting only if something important came up. Silas glances at his boss, who is still reading, and sneaks a look at his phone.

  “I gave you half a day when I shouldn’t have done,” Ward says, looking up at him.

  “And I think we’re onto something,” Silas says, trying to process the contents of Strover’s text.

  “This woman, Maddie Thurloe,” Ward continues. “She’s not even a British citizen anymore. And Tony Masters, Tony de Staal, he’s a dual US citizen.”

  “And?” He’s struggling to concentrate.

  “We have to prioritize. You know how it is, Silas. I’ve also got the chief’s office on the phone every half hour, asking about yesterday’s shooting—”

  “I’m working on my PIP—”

  “Asking why you hadn’t been on your negotiator’s refresher course.”

  Silas knows he should have done the course. Just like he should have done his expenses. And
his 360-degree appraisal. In between solving crimes on a rapidly diminishing budget.

  “If your dots do join up, and that’s a big if, what exactly are we looking at here?” Ward asks. “Tony hasn’t committed an offense by changing his name or by making art from photos of body parts.”

  Silas weighs up his options. Should he cut to the chase and share the contents of Strover’s text, or stick to his plan to win Ward over with some wider context? The boss appreciates context, likes it when cases break out of routine police work and extend into other spheres, the more esoteric the better. Everyone knows he studied theology at Oxford.

  “As I’m sure you know, sir, in medieval Christian art, European painters liked to paint memento mori—images of death, skulls and so on,” Silas begins.

  “‘Remember that you must die,’” Ward says, sitting up. For the first time in their meeting, he seems interested. “Not just medieval, of course. The photographer Joel-Peter Witkin uses real body parts in strikingly macabre tableaux.”

  Silas regrets his decision to go wide, already feels ignorant. Always has done in the company of graduates. And now all new police officers will need a degree.

  “Exactly,” Silas continues. “I think that’s what Tony’s doing in his pictures, except that death is not so explicit. Most people who look at them wouldn’t get the message.”

  “And that message is...?”

  “He’s showing off, sir. By including a part of the brain, the hippocampus, that deals with memory, he’s being ironic. Clever. Remember you are mortal—that’s if you can still remember.”

  “Last time I checked, irony wasn’t a crime.”

  “It depends whose hippocampus it is.” Silas thinks again about the text.

  “I assume the ones he tried to steal from medical college in the States had been donated to science.” Ward glances at a photo Silas included in his report. The lab has managed to separate Tony’s images into the original seahorse and a hippocampus. “He probably found these online.”