by Seb Kirby
She came closer and hugged me. “You see, you do remember.”
I pointed to the photograph. “And we travelled on towards the Grand Canyon. Stopped to look down, right down, to see white water rafters like specks below us negotiating the Colorado River. And then on to the Canyon itself. Where this photo was taken.”
“Where you told me you were scared of heights.”
I smiled for what felt like the first time ever. “And open spaces.”
“You just told me that to avoid the helicopter tour.”
“I’ve never liked helicopters. When they go down, they go down.”
She gave me another hug. “And do you remember what we promised?”
I surprised myself. “That we’d come back to this wonderful place one day and we’d stay in that big green and white hotel on the edge of the Canyon.”
She smiled. “We will do that. We’ll return. We’ll stay in that hotel. Once you’re better.”
It was a small step but one that filled me with real optimism.
I wouldn’t forever have to learn my past as if I was another. With Janet’s help, and given time, I would remember.
Remember it all.
CHAPTER 25
When Evan Hamilton called he couldn’t hide the fact that the time he’d spent traveling up from London and sitting with me here in Lichfield was something a busy newspaper editor just didn’t have.
“You shouldn’t have come, Evan. I know the deadlines won’t wait.”
He opened wide his hands. “Screw the deadlines. We’re all concerned, Tom.”
“They tell me I’m making progress. I want to get back.”
“But how do you feel? You know I had a visit from the police?”
“DI Ives?”
“He wanted to know about missing young women, about what information the paper held on them. I told him that as far as I knew they’d never once been on our radar. He was concerned to find out if we’d done anything to connect the four cases but I told him I was sure we hadn’t and he could find nothing to suggest that we had. So he left it at that. There’s nothing I need to know about this, is there, Tom?”
I considered telling him about the visions of the four girls being killed but decided he wouldn’t understand. Ives must have told him that I’d come forward with their names. “There’s nothing, Evan.”
I could tell he suspected there was something I wasn’t telling him and for the first time I understood the real reason for his visit. “Well if anything breaks on this, anything that might affect the newspaper, you need to let me know, as soon as.”
I nodded. “Evan. You can depend on me.”
“That’s one thing I’m sure of, Tom. You remain a key man. That’s why I was so keen to see you come on board as part of the team. You’re important to us. But, for the time being, you stay here.”
“I think I’m strong enough to come back. I’ll be honest, Evan. I need to get back to The Herald. I need to make sense of what’s been happening.”
He stared back without any sign of changing his mind. “That’s final, Tom. You stay here until you’re well enough. Understand?”
We talked for another hour, most of it to encourage me to keep making progress with my recovery. But though I was grateful for the help he was giving me, I couldn’t stop asking myself why he was so determined to make sure I stayed in Lichfield.
CHAPTER 26
Next day, Janet handed me the phone.
“It’s for you.”
I listened.
“Tom, it’s me, Jason. Jason Blair.”
I was thinking back to the images on Janet’s tablet. My colleague, Jason Blair. The one for whom nothing is safe in a skirt. I tried my hardest to believe that I knew him but I was working from what Janet had told me, little more. I pretended. “Jason, good to hear from you.”
“I wanted to let you know that we’re all thinking of you. Wishing you well in this tough time.”
“What have they told you?”
He lowered his voice. “They thought they’d lost you. You’ve have, well, memory problems.”
I bridled at the thought that they would think of me this way. But I knew I should expect nothing less. The newspaper game is ruthless and competitive. The world moves on each day in its own precarious and often baffling way. The need to observe, comment on and analyze that unpredictable perpetual motion couldn’t wait for any one individual, however important or otherwise they may take themselves to be.
It wasn’t going to do me any good to play the invalid in the eyes of my colleagues, I knew that. The ride is too wild and unfathomable to carry passengers. If, despite what Hamilton said, I was ever going to re-establish myself in my old job, I had to rule out such perceptions.
I took the first step along that path. “I’m OK now. Wanting to get back.”
He grunted. I hoped that meant he believed me.
I went over in my mind what I’d learned from reading the articles that Janet had collected. It was precious little. I knew it was going to be difficult to hold my own in talking with Jason but I had to try.
“Does Hamilton know you’re calling me?”
He coughed. “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. And anyway, why wouldn’t I want to talk with an old friend and colleague?”
“You’ve made progress while I’ve been away?”
“Well, we’re still not there, to be honest, Tom. And not just because we’ve been without you. It’s gone quiet all over. No one’s saying a thing. We still haven’t nailed Montague.”
In my mind’s eye, I was scanning through the articles Janet saved for me while trying to make it sound to Blair that I knew this for real. “Montague’s still standing?”
“Worse than that, he’s expanding. OAM has just completed a successful takeover of Wild Cherry. Cost them eleven million. It’s like Montague’s sticking up two fingers and saying how could I mastermind a takeover that’s been through this level of due diligence if I’m involved in anything shady? And he has a point. How was he able to get away with the takeover if he’s skimming off from the company like we think he is? Must be working Albert Emery, that pet auditor of his, twenty-four-seven.”
I was delving back into what I knew from the press cuttings again. Albert Emery, small, round-spectacled, respectable looking. “Emery?”
Blair nodded. “Indeed. We’re sure he’s still cooking the books but once again there’s a wall of silence. Everyone’s too scared to speak because of Quinn.”
I’d picked up nothing on anyone of this name from Janet’s articles. “Quinn? I need a refresher.”
Jason Blair took a little too long to reply, meaning that he needed time to hide his surprise at my question, but what he said was helpful. “You remember. Mike Quinn. Son of East End hard man Charlie Quinn. Quinn senior wanted something better than he himself ever had and opened doors in the City for his offspring. The problem was that Quinn junior didn’t want to shake off the strong arm habits of his father and now has a reputation as an enforcer who collects with ruthlessness and violence. The word is out that Mike Quinn and Tyrone Montague are hand in glove but proof of wrongdoing is hard to find.”
I passed off the lapse as best I could. “Of course.”
“We’ve been receiving threats from Quinn and his men. There are those who blame him for what happened to you. But no one’s talking. There’s a climate of fear, even in the office.”
Another reason, perhaps, why Hamilton had no interest in my rejoining the team. That could mean he wanted to protect me. Or that he’d been frightened.
I struggled to build a picture of Quinn in my mind. If he’d been behind my accident, surely I would be able to visualize the man. But nothing came. “But there’s no evidence that he was involved in what happened to me?”
“Nothing that definite. Seems you’re the only witness.”
“Place me.”
He sounded surprised. “What do you mean?”
“Take me through what you know about wha
t we were doing before the accident.”
“If it helps. We were paying Tyrone Montague a visit out at Canary Wharf. Montague had finally agreed to an interview. We had no expectation that he was about to admit anything but it’s no exaggeration to say we were disappointed by what we found. He had an answer to everything we put to him. He gave away nothing. Looking back, we shouldn’t have been surprised. His reputation as one of the most slippery customers in the City wasn’t earned for nothing.”
“And that’s all that happened? We just walked away?”
“Yes, that’s about it. We left with our tail between our legs.”
“And that’s the last time you saw me?”
“Yes. Next day you didn’t show in the office. Ten days later we heard you’d been pulled out of West India Quay.”
CHAPTER 27
DI Stephen Ives sat up straight and took one of the cups of coffee from the tray brought in by DS Lesley.
He welcomed these sessions with June away from the hustle and bustle of the main incident room. This was where he tested his ideas. He knew if he were off track, Lesley would be the one to let him know. “June, time to consider where we’re up to with Tom Markland. Is it worth interviewing him again?”
She took her drink from the tray and sat opposite him. “Hard to say, sir. It’s not easy to place him as a suspect when we don’t have any evidence that Cathy Newsome has been killed. Or, in fact, if any of the girls have come to a violent end. Yet, he seems to know more about them than he should. And, again, the hospital did find narcotics in his blood.”
“But that doesn’t seem to fit with how he presents himself as the upstanding, honest type of person he wants us to think he is. The drugs involvement still remains the most likely reason he ended up in the North Dock.”
“My thoughts, exactly.”
“So, maybe for that reason alone, we should spend more time looking in depth into how he might have got to know about the girls?”
“Wouldn’t that distract from the work we need to do in finding Cathy?”
“Time to get real, June. Unless she turns up, and that’s looking like a more remote possibility each day, the investigation is going nowhere other than being wound down. We may have nothing to lose.”
“Then what do you suggest, sir?”
“OK, just suppose that Markland knew those young women he’s been telling us about for real. And they’re more than a fantasy. Where and how might he have met them?”
“You’re saying that the whole visions thing is some kind of defense to throw us off, should the evidence start to point towards him?”
“Maybe. If he suspects that as soon as we start looking in detail we’ll find connections to him and the women, then, yes, perhaps that’s exactly what he is doing.”
“And that’s why you want to spend more time on him?”
Ives took another sip of coffee. “Call it a hunch. But let’s think again. If he knows the women for real, how might he have come to meet them?”
“Well, they’re all about the same age - younger then he is by ten years. Could be he’s in some position of authority in his spare time. Like a volunteer or a youth club worker?”
“Or he does some kind of charity work that brings him into contact with younger people.”
“It would be no more than a few hours to check it out.”
Ives was pleased he’d convinced her. That meant the idea must be worth pursuing, “Yes, the more I think about it, there’s more than enough here to make me feel we need to know a lot more about Tom Markland.”
CHAPTER 28
Recalling the time we spent at the Grand Canyon didn’t mean that the dam broke. There was no sudden return of everything I’d known before. It was more like intermittent flashes of light, illuminating one train of memory for an instant, only to leave me again in darkness.
Josh Healey, in our next session, told me this was to be expected. “Don’t expect too much too soon. Concentrate on the fact that your memories are slowly coming back as you make progress in repairing your body. Given time, you’ll get there.”
“How long will that take?”
“There’s no way of being sure, Tom. Now you’ve started piecing things together, you can expect to make real progress. It may come in stages, bundles of recollections, set off by one particularly strong association, making their way to the fore. Leaving gaps. As time goes on there will be fewer gaps and more memories.”
“But there will be gaps?”
He looked up from his note taking. “I have to tell you that’s a strong possibility. Memories that evoke the greatest trauma may be lost forever. It’s a common pattern in amnesia. Victims of near death incidents such as a ’plane or car crash seldom recall the events that led up to the crash. It’s your mind’s way of protecting you.”
“So I may never recall what happened. How I ended up beaten and near drowned in the North Dock?”
He made another note. “Maybe not. And if that’s the case you may have to accept that your memories stopped at the point where the trauma of recollection would have been too great.”
“I need to know what happened. Who did this to me.”
“You should leave that to the police. They’re investigating?”
“They tell me they are. But I think that without help from me they won’t be able to take the investigation much further. They tell me there are no witnesses and if I can’t recall what took place, there’s may be little more they can do.”
“Well, you shouldn’t let that deflate you. You’re making excellent progress. Don’t let anything take that away from you.”
CHAPTER 29
I heard nothing more about my accident.
Nothing about who nearly killed me.
My case joined the long list of unsolved, violent assaults taking place late at night in English cities where the police can find no witnesses and the victims are so traumatized by the events that they can’t offer evidence themselves.
I was becoming reconciled to the idea that the only way I was going to discover who attacked me was to be able to recall it myself. In the end I was the only witness. If there had been anyone else they would have been found by now.
I considered more than once contacting Cathy’s parents, to tell them I understood their anguish, that I knew something about what happened to their daughter. But what could I tell them? That I’d seen her die? Just that and nothing more. It would only make their agony worse.
I searched the media online for any links between Cathy and the disappearance of the others - Rebecca French, Margot West, Felicity Jenkins. I found none. No one but me was connecting the cases. None of them had been found. Three more added to the missing persons list. Three more families in agony.
Despite all that Josh Healey was telling me, despite how reasonable Janet was making it seem, I couldn’t stop believing that what I knew about those girls was real.
Yes, I was stronger now.
As I sat in the garden chair that I’d looked at with such hesitation when I’d first come home and lifted my head with such pain to look out from the bedroom window, I knew there were just two things that were important.
There was a killer out there who had killed four times and would kill again.
Unless I found a way to discover what happened and stopped him.
Part Two
Six weeks earlier
CHAPTER 30
Working security didn’t pay well. The hourly rate was just above the minimum but you could make that up by working the hours. How many was it this week? Seventy-two and counting?
Marshall Brogan turned towards the elevator that would take him to the upper floors of the Canada One Tower where, for the third time this night, he’d do the rounds.
The building was almost empty now at two in the morning yet he’d learned not to be surprised at finding traders who’d worked so long and so late that they’d decided not to go home and instead sleep at their desks. As long as they belonged, he wouldn’t disturb
them. Everyone knew they shouldn’t be here but a blind eye was turned as long as the building was secure. It was a fine line. One night, for sure, something would go wrong and the wisdom of being easy on the stayers would be called into question. But everything he’d now learned told him to go with the flow, to give those around him what they wanted. Life was more manageable that way.
It hadn’t always been like this.
As he emerged from the elevator and began the long walk around the corridors on Floor 34, he thought back to those earlier times.
His days in the children’s homes he’d been sent to were a time of ever building hatred. Hatred of those who had placed him there. Hatred of those who told him what to do, how he should behave. Hatred of the unknown driver who’d killed his father. And, yes, hatred too of the mother who’d allowed her children to be taken from her and separated from each other.
He still had to fight back the tears as he thought about Della, the sister he’d lost. Nothing had been more terrible than being parted from her.
It had made him angry and determined to fight. Anyone and everyone who crossed his path. By the time he was sixteen he was well-enough known to the police and the magistrates for them to send him to juvenile prison. The two years he spent there hardened him the more. It was what you did to survive. What else would anyone expect if you crammed together the toughest, most deprived and drugged-up section of the youth population in such a place?
When he was released at eighteen, his first thought was to find Della. But she was lost, sent to homes who knows where and, being three years older than him, she would be out there living a life of her own. He’d realized then that she could be anywhere. Living with a new name, in another country for all he knew. And in any case, what had he to offer if he was ever to find her and come back into her life? He was a mess, a ball of anger about to explode as it flamed down a mountainside. He understood this truth about himself, more than ever now.