‘No. I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to think.’
She makes an irritated tutting sound, the only sign of disapproval I have ever had from her. ‘You’re not thinking straight. You should have done what I said.’
Her voice is harsh, and I can tell she is really quite cross with me, but given everything else that is in my head I don’t give it much thought. She jumps up off the bed with far more energy than one might expect from a woman of her age.
‘Right. I’m going to get you something to eat, and please don’t argue. We need to work out what is for the best, bearing in mind that we are implicated in this too. It was my car, and it’s probably caught on CCTV somewhere, and you’re in my house. So I would be grateful if you would accede to my requests until we are able to come up with a solution that causes the least damage to all of us.’
I stare at her back as she marches out of the door.
When Thea returns with a big bowl of porridge I can’t bear the thought of eating it, or of drinking the herbal brew sitting alongside it on the tray. I just want to throw up. But Thea’s mouth is set in a hard line; it’s unlike any expression I have seen before on her face. She seems angry with me, and who can blame her?
I start to get out of bed again. ‘I should go, Thea. None of this has anything to do with you. I’ll tell the police that I honestly don’t remember what I did, but I’ll take my punishment if I have to.’
Only part of me believes this. I don’t want to go to prison, but I can’t stay here either.
‘Will you please sit down, Judith.’
‘My name’s not Judith,’ I say, with a flash of defiance.
‘Eat this now,’ she says, ignoring my remark. ‘Nobody thinks well on an empty stomach.’
I will try to eat it to please her, but I’m not sure I can swallow.
I take a mouthful of the hot tea and manage to get it down my throat, so I pray that I can swallow the porridge, which sits like a grey puddle in the bowl, swimming in honey and cream. I take a spoonful, the sickly sweet honey masking all other tastes. The porridge feels thick and claggy and seems to grow to fill my mouth so that I can barely find the saliva to swallow it. I gulp, and Thea nods.
‘More,’ she says, staring at me fiercely. I do as she says.
Gradually it becomes easier, and I feel myself start to relax. Thea was right – hunger was making me incapable of coherent thought. She stands over me until every scrap has gone and the mug is completely empty. I begin to feel the tension slipping away.
Thea is talking to me, but her words are washing over me, her voice hollow in my ears. She is holding her hand out, and I realise she wants me to take it. I feel her gentle pull and know I have to get off the bed and stand up, but for a moment my legs feel too weak to support me.
Words are echoing in my head. ‘Come with me,’ Thea seems to be saying, over and over again. I hear the word ‘safe’ and find myself walking towards the door, her arm around my waist.
Slowly, slowly, we make our way along the corridor and down the stairs. I’m not taking much notice of where we’re going, so when she opens a door on the ground floor that I don’t think I’ve been through before, I think we must have become lost in the maze that is her home. Her grip on me has become so familiar that I almost don’t notice she’s there.
There is a wall straight ahead. Thea opens a small cupboard and presses a series of numbers on a keypad. There is a loud clunk. A question slithers through the fog in my head and then away again. The wall seems to open, and I realise it is a door without a handle. I think I hear the sound of other doors closing somewhere.
After a few seconds Thea pushes the door fully open and I see we are at the top of another staircase, which leads steeply down into a gloomy space below. I’m not sure I can manage the stairs – the treads beneath my feet swim in and out of focus – but Thea helps me reach the bottom. The corners of the space we are in hide in deep shadows, and I squint towards a single light bulb, suspended above a small table, creating a puddle of yellow light on its surface. Thea coaxes me past the table and along a narrow corridor. There seem to be a lot of doors, and all I want to do is lie down.
Without knowing entirely how I got here, I find myself in a small room with a bed and not much else.
Thea is speaking, and I try hard to catch her words, but they come and go – closer, then further away. I latch on to one word. Safe. She seems to be repeating it, and it’s all I need to know. Thea says I’m safe, and that must be right.
I tumble onto the bed and curl into a tight ball. Thea may say I’m safe, but I seem to be in some sort of hell and I’ve no idea how I got here.
33
Becky waddled along the corridor as fast as she could. She needed to talk to Tom about Jasmine and wanted to catch him before the end of the day. Now that they knew who their victim was, they finally had lines of enquiry to pursue.
She tapped on Tom’s open door.
‘Come in, Becky,’ he said, without lifting his eyes from the screen of his computer. She didn’t bother to ask how he knew it was her.
‘These trainers give a bit of an advanced warning of my arrival, don’t they,’ she said, sitting down and stretching her feet out in front of her, frowning at them. ‘But I do have some news, and it’s looking interesting.’
Tom clicked his mouse, presumably to close whatever he had been looking at, and lifted his eyes.
‘Ooh, you don’t look too happy. What’s up?’ Becky asked.
‘Just looking at some figures for a meeting. We’ve got too many unsolved crimes. The trouble is, we know exactly who did what, but everyone is covering for everyone else. It’s a nightmare. Anyway, you didn’t come in here to listen to me moan. What’s up?’
Becky sat up straight.
‘It turns out that Jasmine DuPont had been going to a bereavement support group here in Manchester. According to the few people who knew her, she was constantly in search of an explanation for why her sister had taken her own life. Jasmine didn’t have a regular job – she took bar work to pay her way – and she tended to live in flat shares and even the odd squat. It’s made it really hard to check her movements, but it seems that nobody had seen her for months – at least eight, from what we can work out.’
‘If she moved around, is that so unusual?’
‘Yes, because one thing she always did without fail was visit her sister’s grave every Friday. The man who tends the graveyard says she never missed. She used to sit on a plastic bag with her legs crossed and talk to her sister. But suddenly she stopped coming, and she didn’t turn up at the bar where she’d been working for a few weeks.’
Tom lifted clasped hands and put them behind his head. ‘What was the feedback from the people where she worked? Did they think she was flaky?’
‘That’s the point. They said it was obvious she had issues and seemed to struggle hugely with her sister’s death, but in spite of that she was reliable. In the short time she was employed there she’d only failed to turn up for her shift once, and she called to let them know she wasn’t feeling well. They thought she was troubled but reliable, and were surprised when she stopped showing up for work. They never heard from her again.’
Becky could see Tom’s mind ticking over, and she stayed quiet to let him think.
‘What about the bereavement group? Did you manage to get any information from them?’
Becky sighed. ‘Yes and no. I’ve only managed to speak to the woman who runs the group, and it took a bit of persuading to get her to tell me anything. When I explained that Jasmine was dead and that we are treating her death as suspicious, she opened up a bit. She said Jasmine seemed to blame herself for Esme’s death but wouldn’t admit why she felt that way. This woman had a theory, though, based on little nuggets of information that Jasmine shared in the sessions.’
‘And that theory was…’
‘Jasmine knew how ill Esme was and had bought drugs for her sister on the street – ones she thought might lift her spirits.
When Esme died, Jasmine not only blamed herself but was terrified that maybe she would be accused of killing her sister because of the drugs in her system, most of which Jasmine had acquired for her.’
‘So why would Jasmine take such a weird cocktail of drugs herself?’
‘I looked at the drug report that Lynsey wrote to see if there was any correlation – maybe Jasmine was trying the same combination as her sister to see if the drugs she procured had been the indirect cause of her death. There were overlaps but lots of discrepancies too. Lynsey was right about the pattern being weird – drugs that fire you up followed by those that calm you down. We’d ruled out any concerns about the scopolamine she’d taken, partly because she took it too long ago for it to be related to her death, but also because it’s used in legal drugs – for motion sickness, among other things. But taken in high doses it makes you lose your memory, and I don’t know if that’s relevant.’
Tom got up from behind his desk and paced the floor as if it might help him think; Becky just wished he would sit down so she didn’t have to keep swivelling her head to look at him.
‘You know it’s used a lot in South America – Colombia in particular – don’t you?’ she asked. ‘The favourite trick is to dope victims and then coerce them into emptying their bank accounts.’
Tom spun round and looked at her. ‘Devil’s Breath,’ he said, nodding. ‘It can turn you into a compliant zombie. A nasty beast and highly dangerous. It could suggest that she was being controlled. Philippa and I talked about whether she might have been involved in either the sex or drugs trade, but we have no evidence to that effect, so I’m not sure it gets us anywhere unless we can find her dealer.’
‘No luck on that yet, but we’re going to go back to the bereavement group to see if we can find any other members who might talk to us.’
Tom started pacing again and Becky fell silent.
‘Was there anyone she was close to in the group – someone she might have turned to for help?’ he asked, turning to face her.
Becky shook her head. ‘Not really. The group leader said that on a couple of occasions she saw her heading towards the tram stop with one of the other members. But she didn’t get the feeling they were going anywhere in particular, just home.’
‘Did she know who the person was?’
‘No. Like Jasmine, the woman doesn’t go any more.’
‘So Jasmine disappeared and nobody reported her missing.’
‘That’s right. Not a soul.’
Tom pulled back his chair and sat down. ‘How awful that someone so young wasn’t missed by anyone. Do you remember I had a visit from one of Jack’s old friends the other day? His sister Hannah is missing too. Nobody reported that either, until Nathan showed up to surprise her.’
‘Do you think her disappearance is related?’
‘I doubt it. So many people go missing it would be absurd to assume there’s any connection without more evidence. I just hope for Nathan’s sake that she turns up.’
Becky sensed that the meeting was over and was about to stand up and leave when Tom spoke again.
‘Do you remember the woman who was found on the golf course? Now we’ve identified Jasmine we might be able to find some connections – anywhere their paths may have crossed, people they knew in common. Do you know the case I mean?’
Becky nodded. ‘I do, yes. We couldn’t make any links other than the hypoxia because we didn’t have any background for Jasmine. I’ll dig out the file. I can’t remember her name, but I’ll look it up.’ She pushed herself out of the chair and headed for the door. ‘I’m on it.’
‘Hang on a minute, Becky. I think her name was Williams. That might speed up the search. And her first name was…’ Tom looked up at the ceiling as if for inspiration. ‘Julia, or maybe Judith? Something like that, anyway.’
34
For a moment, as I struggle my way out of a deep sleep, I wonder where I am. I remember nothing, but as my eyes flutter open and I see the stark, bare walls of the room in which I am lying, I am assaulted by flashes of memory, none of which make sense.
I have no time to think though, because someone is sitting on the end of the bed, someone I’ve never seen before.
I sit up too quickly, and for a moment the room spins as I push myself back as far as I can against the wall to get away from the dark silhouette. The memories begin to solidify and I want to scream that it can’t be true. Have I dreamed the whole thing, or am I really hiding in Thea’s cellar because I killed Ian? I groan out loud and lift my hands to cover my face. I want to cry, to beg someone to believe that I can’t have murdered him. Whatever they think, it wasn’t me.
But I had the hammer, the blood, the anger.
I want to return to who I was before, when I still believed I had a chance at a normal life.
The person on the end of the bed watches me quietly, saying nothing. I can see now that it’s a woman, but I don’t know who she is or why she is here. Does she know what I’ve done?
I hardly remember how I got to this room. I have no more than a vague sense of Thea guiding me and helping me walk down some stairs; the feel of her hand gripping my arm harder than was necessary; a snapshot of a single light bulb casting a dull, yellow glow. It seems like it was hours ago, but I don’t know whether it is day or night because the room has no windows.
‘Drink this,’ the young woman perched on the edge of my bed finally says as she holds out a cup. My vision seems to have recovered a little, but there isn’t much light. All I can make out is a slight figure with tied-back dark hair and the biggest pair of brown eyes I have ever seen.
I look at the cup she is thrusting towards me and shake my head frantically. ‘I don’t want it. I think I’m going to be sick.’ My throat is dry and my voice croaky, as if I’ve been crying.
‘You have to drink it. Thea will blame me if you don’t.’
‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’
She says nothing, and pushes the cup a little closer.
‘Give it to me, then. I’ll tip it down the toilet,’ I say, although I have no idea where the toilet is.
The woman’s eyes grow even larger at what I have said. ‘She’ll know,’ she says, her voice dropping to a hoarse whisper. She glances over her shoulder as if Thea is going to materialise through the gloom.
My head is aching and I feel vaguely as if I have a hangover, but I only had a single glass of wine with the soup that Thea brought me. I don’t know if that was yesterday or the day before, but I know I’m in her cellar. Why is this other woman here? Now that I’m used to her presence she no longer seems threatening.
‘Do you have any paracetamol?’ I ask.
She furrows her brow and shakes her head as if I’ve said something ridiculous.
‘If you have a headache, this will make you feel better,’ she says, trying to force the cup into my hands.
I ignore her and rub my eyes. They feel sticky, gummy, and I wonder how long I slept. The horror of the last twenty-four hours comes racing towards me again, out of nowhere, threatening to knock me down. I gasp out loud. Will it always be like this – thoughts of what I have done retreating into a background ache, only to gather steam to punch me in the gut again?
‘Are you okay?’ the woman asks.
I don’t know what to say to her. How can I tell her that I’ve killed someone but don’t remember anything about it? I shake my head.
‘Thea said you’d be confused. That’s why you have to drink this. I have to go in a minute. I’ve got to finish the ironing. Please take the cup. I’ve got to stay until it’s all gone, and I’m going to be late if you don’t hurry. We all have to drink our tea and eat our food. It’s one of the rules.’
I have no idea what she’s talking about, but she looks concerned and I know I’m being obstinate, so I hold out my hand. The hot sweet liquid tastes good, and I don’t know why I was being so difficult. The slight nausea abates, and I feel the panic attack that was about to engulf me retreat
as my breathing slows.
‘Thea says you don’t have to do anything right now, so you can stay in here. There’s a bathroom across the hall, but if you hear the buzzer you have to come straight back here and close the door until it sounds again.’
I barely take in what she’s saying, but there is something slightly vacant in her expression and I don’t know what she means about the buzzer. I’m sure if I can find Thea she will tell me what’s going on and how long she thinks I need to stay here. But then it hits me. If I don’t stay here, where will I go? To the police – to prison?
I struggle not to cry out as a memory of the last time I saw Ian leaps into my mind. At least, it’s the last time I remember seeing him. We were in our bedroom and I threw his clothes out of the window. But I have no memory of going back there, of hurting him. Have I erased it from my mind?
I want to do something decisive that will clear my name, but my eyelids start to feel heavy, and the woman takes the cup from my hand and walks towards the door.
‘What’s your name?’ I mumble as she reaches the door.
She stops with one hand on the jamb, and my heart jumps as she answers.
‘It’s Judith, of course,’ she says.
35
I can’t believe that I slept again. It’s so quiet down here, but after I drank Thea’s brew I settled back and my worries seemed to float away.
They’re back now, though.
I remember Thea telling me that I was safe, but for how long? What’s going to happen? When can I leave? Is Thea planning to help me flee the country? I’m so confused and I’m desperate to talk to her. My eyes flood with tears. How did I get myself in this mess? What did I do? I just want to go back in time to before the nightmare began.
I turn my head and see another mug of something sitting by me. I’m thirsty, and I know that Thea’s herbal remedies always make me feel so much better, but right now I don’t want to feel better. I don’t want to forget, and that’s what will happen if I drink the contents of that mug. I want to force myself to remember.
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