The Picture On The Fridge: The debut psychological thriller with the twist of the year

by Ian W. Sainsbury

  I thought about the money, but only for a second. I had saved everything, since they were feeding me and the apartment was rent-free. The research guys could keep the rest of their money. Their operation hadn't worked, so I owed them nothing.

  I packed the few things I owned, left the apartment, took the first bus without knowing where it was heading. As I looked at the faces around me—on the street, in the bus station—I saw pain. I saw exhaustion. They needed peace just as I did. The peace of the Lord. And I could bring them that peace.

  The bus headed south. Two days later, I was back in Florida. As I got closer, I made plans. I had been given a purpose, and nothing would deflect me from my path.

  Since then, I've followed it through the United States and, finally, across the Atlantic.

  It ends here.

  I'm standing on a sidewalk in London, and the blood is singing in my veins. I was drawn to this place as surely as a fish on a hook.

  The sky is getting lighter. This city wakes early. I feel the other presence in my mind bloom. It's not faint. It's burning me up. I am about to meet an angel. She is here, and it is time. No more planning. No more waiting.

  I smile, step off the sidewalk, and walk towards the house.

  It's laughable, what happens next. Or it would be, if it didn't nearly end me.

  I look left as I step off the curb. When you grow up with a sleep disorder, you learn to take care when crossing the street.

  But I forget I'm in the wrong country.

  The van brakes before it hits me—the tires scream—but it's too late. Everyone says time slows in a crisis like this, but not for me. For me, it's two explosions of pain, one straight after the other.

  Bang. The van hits my hip. It shatters a split second before my body twists and my cheek smashes into the windshield.

  Bang. I'm on the ground. My arm smacks the street with a sound like fast-twisted bubble wrap - a rapid series of pops. My skull flares with new light, red, liquid, wrong. Needle-stabs of pain. Something gives way a few inches under the scar from my operation.

  I am still conscious when I see her.

  The woman gets to me first. I recognise her, but I can't speak. I can't even move my eyes to look at her. Behind the woman is a smaller figure. It's her. I've come all this way. Thousands of miles, and there she is, a few feet away. I can't move. Something mutes my hearing, everything is confused.

  Don't die. I latch onto this and clasp it to myself, this thought, this belief, this vow.

  Don't die, don't die, don't die.

  When I black out, it's not like the movies. The sky doesn't tilt, there is no dark tunnel. I don't lose focus, or see blackness coming in from the edge of the frame.

  I'm there one second. Then I'm gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Tam's scream and the sickening impact of the van hitting the pedestrian outside happened at exactly the same moment. Eleven years of therapy had taught Mags to interrogate her own thought processes, question her conclusions. She mentally rearranged the facts to make sense. The crash must have happened first, followed by Tam's scream a fraction of a second later.

  Mags was out of the door first. The driver of the van—young, with a wispy beard and dreadlocks—was only just exiting the vehicle. He was shaking, and could barely bring himself to look at the man lying on the ground.

  Mags took charge. "Sit down." She pointed at the kerb, and the young driver did as she said, putting his head in his hands and moaning.

  At first, Mags thought the man was dead. His body was twisted, his jeans bloodied and torn. One of his arms was bent the wrong way, and a piece of bone had pierced the skin just below the elbow. He had a head wound. Mags couldn't tell how bad it was, but blood was seeping from the back of his skull, matting his hair, glistening like an oil spill in the morning sun.

  When she got close, she saw his chest move. He was breathing. A bloody bubble emerged from one side of his mouth as he exhaled, and she couldn't help looking away when she caught sight of his ruined cheek. Then pity overcame squeamishness, and she looked back, kneeling in front of him.

  He was focussing on something behind her. There was a strange intensity in his expression, a tension around his eyes, as he clung to the last shred of consciousness. Mags looked over her shoulder.

  Tam stood there. In the middle of the road. Staring. Not moving. Looking at the injured man.

  "Wake Dad up," shouted Mags. "Tell him to call an ambulance. Bring a blanket. Tam!"

  At first, she wasn't sure Tam had heard. Her daughter was still staring. Then she blinked, looked at Mags, and moved, sprinting to the house.

  Mags turned back. The man's eyes were closed now. He was still breathing. Each breath brought with it a distant gurgle, like the water tank in their attic when she ran a bath. In this context, it was a shocking sound. Mags thought his lungs might be filling with blood. He must have internal injuries along with the obvious broken bones and lacerations.

  She leaned down and put her face close to his. He smelled of cheap shampoo mixed with the dark, pungent, iron stench of fresh blood. "We've called an ambulance. You're going to be all right. Please. I don't know if you can hear me, but if you can, my name is Mags. You're not alone. You will be looked after. The hospital is close and they will take care of you."

  The gurgling sound was worse, and his lips—where they weren't wet with blood—had taken on a bluish tinge. Mags found part of his head that was uninjured and stroked his hair. There was an old scar there. She could feel the ridge of hard skin.

  Tam brought the blanket, and Mags covered his prone body.

  "Is he…?"

  "He's still breathing. Is the ambulance coming?"

  As if summoned by her words, a siren cranked into life in a nearby street, sending a dozen hedge sparrows into the air from the privet outside number twenty-eight. Blue lights flashed in the windows opposite before the ambulance appeared.

  She stood up as the paramedics approached and let them do their work.

  Bradley came out of the house. While Mags answered questions, and directed a paramedic to the van driver, who was still moaning, her husband put an arm around her shoulder. One of the paramedics moved, putting her head flat on the road to examine the head injury. Bradley's hand squeezed Mags' shoulder so tightly, she yelped and twisted away.

  She looked at him. His face was set, rigid. "What's the matter?"

  He said nothing, staring down at the broken figure, the shocking red splashes of red sprayed across the street.

  "Bradley. What is it?"

  He turned his back on the scene, put his hands on his knees. "Oh," he murmured.

  Mags led him away. She turned back to the paramedics. "Is it okay if I…?"

  "Of course. My colleague will nip in to get your details in a minute."

  In the kitchen, she made Bradley drink tea with three sugars. Her mother had always insisted sweet tea was essential in a crisis.

  Bradley pulled a face, but he drank it.

  "You're the last person I'd expect to be squeamish," she said. "In your profession, I mean. Genetics. And your degrees in medicine."

  "One of the many reasons I didn't go into that line of work," he said. "The only time I see blood in the lab is when it's on a slide. It's hardly the same thing, is it?"

  When Bradley had recovered his poise, he retreated to his office. An hour later, he emerged, took the car keys and picked up his jacket from the back of a chair.

  Mags stopped him at the door. "Where are you going? What did your dad say? Talk to me."

  Bradley put a hand on her arm. "We traced him."

  "What? You traced him? Who is he? Have you told the police? Has he been arrested?"

  "I told you we would deal with it. I said our contacts would get results. They did. But I can't give you details."

  He opened the door. Mags slammed it shut with the palm of the hand. "The fuck you can't. Tell me what's going on, Bradley."

  "I can't. Officially, what I did, asking Dad to
use the company's contacts… it never happened. I don't even know everything myself. Trust me. Let me go check what I need to check. If I'm right, then Tam is safe. Now let me go."

  "Safe? Safe? How can you say that? How can you know if she's safe? David is dead, Bradley. Murdered by a man who has killed at least ten people in America. How is anybody safe from him if he's not locked up?"

  "That's what I'm trying to tell you."

  Mags felt the strength drain out of her, her shoulders slumping. "He's been arrested?"

  "If the information is correct, then he is on his way back to America. They will arrest him before he gets off the plane."

  Bradley was giving her that confident, in-control, getting-things-done schtick. Mags knew it well. It had been attractive in her late twenties. Now she was nearer forty she often wondered if it wasn't—sometimes—nothing but show and bluster. She tested the theory.

  "I have a google alert set up. I'm looking forward to seeing the news reports when they get him."

  "Ah."

  Ah?

  Bradley's hand was on the handle. "It won't happen like that, Mags. There's insufficient evidence for a warrant, but certain anti-terrorist laws are flexible enough to allow Homeland Security to bring him in. Not strictly legal, so you won't see it reported. Sorry, Mags. He'll be incarcerated. That's what's important here. We can relax."

  He left without another word. Mags went back to the kitchen. Tam put the kettle on when she saw her.

  "Any news on that poor man, mum? Will he be all right?"

  "I'll call the hospital later."

  Mags sat down and while Tam bustled around the kitchen, Kit gave her something that almost resembled a smile. She smiled back, but her thoughts were elsewhere.

  She wasn't sure she believed a word of what Bradley had told her.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  For the longest time, everything is just plain wrong.

  I wake up slowly. This is a new experience. Normally, I wake up a few minutes after I go to sleep. If sleep is an ocean, I've just been bobbing along on the surface all my life, rarely dipping my head under. When I had the procedure, the anaesthetic let me dive under the surface. But this… it's like they sent me down in one of those little submarines you see on the Discovery Channel. Down to the bottom of the ocean where there's no light, and the fish are nightmares, all goggling eyes and luminous fangs.

  They put me in my submarine and sent me down, down, down. They left me there, just me and the nightmare fish. For days, weeks, months.

  When I wake up, I'm in a hospital bed, and I don't know why. I don't remember. Not straight away. I don't know what city I'm in, or even the country. My name I do remember, but it has no meaning at first. The concept of a name confuses me. I look at the glass of water on the table beside me. I know the word water describes the colourless liquid, and glass means the receptacle that holds it. Glass is also what the skylight above me is made of. I know what a skylight is, too. But my name comes without a definition attached. I've returned from my solo expedition in the deep, and they've stitched me inside this sack of skin and bone.

  I know enough to keep quiet. I remember I have secrets, but not what they are.

  Thoughts appear in my mind along with images. Some are blurred, fogged, unclear. Others are more vivid, with edges, corners, beginnings and endings. These, I begin to recognise, are real. These are memories. Some are violent. Some involve death. These are my favourites.

  The first time the doctor talks—or, at least, the first time I remember him talking—he tells me I've been sick for a long time. He says I will have to put myself together again. Like the nursery rhyme, he says. When I just stare back at him, he says my mind is a jigsaw puzzle I will have to assemble without a picture to help me.

  It's not like a jigsaw puzzle. Even without a picture to work from, at least I'd have all the pieces of the puzzle, and could keep trying to put them together until I found the right ones. No. This is more like walking in the dark in a room the size of a football stadium. I stumble around this space and—every so often—I bump up against another part of myself. I absorb it and carry on walking. When I absorb a new piece, it gets a little easier to find the next. Slowly, I am taking shape. Slowly.

  Besides the nurses, there are two doctors, an American and a Brit. The Brit answers questions. The American asks them.

  The Brit—Doctor Stokely—tells me they kept me in a medically induced coma for seventeen weeks. He says they nearly lost me a few times during the first forty-eight hours. If they hadn't moved me to this private hospital, I would be dead. I wonder who's paying. Nothing comes for free. I remember that much. He tells me the holes healing on my left leg came from pins that were holding the bones in place for the first six weeks. He shows me a photograph. I only know it's my leg because of an old scar on my knee. In the photograph, there's a bicycle wheel around it, the spokes stabbing into my flesh. Stokely says it's called an external fixate. They used it because my left leg was broken in four places above the knee. Above the fixate is a fresh scar where they put in my new, plastic hip. My left arm was broken up even more than my leg. I lift it off the sheet. I can barely manage it.

  "The most painful stage of healing happened while we kept you asleep. The nurses removed the pins in the fixator three times a day and rinsed the wounds with hydrogen peroxide. It can be uncomfortable, I'm told."

  I wonder about Stokely's definition of uncomfortable. That's the word he used to describe how I might feel when Nurse Ratched manipulated my legs to prevent what he called 'flexion contraction'. I screamed and blacked out the first time. Uncomfortable. Sure.

  I study Stokely's face while he talks. His eyes are dark, and he yawns. He's tired. A thought slides across my consciousness. I picture Stokely on his back, eyes bulging as the light inside them dies.

  My face feels different. One morning, they bring me a mirror, and I find out it looks different, too. They've patched up my cheekbone and repaired the left side of my face. I guess it's pretty good, but it doesn't look like me. Nurse Ratched holds the mirror so I can see myself. That's not her real name, but I saw a movie once with a nurse I didn't like, so that's what I call her. She doesn't care either way. I think Ratched expected a bigger reaction from me when I see my reflection for the first time. She doesn't realise it doesn't matter what I look like. I remember enough to know I am an instrument of the universe. The fact that God didn't take me, the fact I'm still here proves my work is unfinished.

  I wish I knew how. How I'm supposed to do my work. I don't remember what the work is, but I know I was close to the end. So close. That thought brings the sting of tears. Nurse Ratched notices, and dabs at my face with a tissue. She shows no emotion, but I think she enjoys this. She reminds me of Mom.

  I ask her to hold the mirror to one side.

  Tilting my head to the left, I watch the mirror with my right eye. My left eye is closer to my nose than it used to be. The skin below is shiny and pink. The eye still works, just not so well. I get few details, not much more than light and shade. I try to see the back of my skull, but I need two mirrors. I won't ask Nurse Ratched. Stokely will show me. It's his work I want to admire, after all.

  The head injury was serious. When they took me out of the local hospital and brought me here, I went straight into surgery. Stokely says I'm his greatest triumph. Eleven hours cutting into my skull, fishing around inside, picking out fragments of bone from my brain. Repairing damage where possible. Stokely likes to talk about the procedure. He asks if I ever played that game when I was a kid—Operation—the one with a guy who had holes in his body containing his organs. You needed a steady hand.

  "It's just like that. Only if my hand shook or slipped, your nose didn't light up and there was no buzzer, just some fresh bleeding and the risk of permanent brain damage."

  He's cheerful in his work, Stokely. Not like Ratched. Or the American. The other nurse, Simon, is the only one who tells me his first name. He's young, and he talks like Dick Van Dyke in Mary
Poppins. A little like him, anyways. Only Simon talks faster and the accent isn't quite the same. I understand little of what he says, but I like the fact he talks to me at all. He doesn't care if I answer or not. I bet he talked the same way when I was unconscious. I bet he talks the same way to his dog.

  About a week after they bring me out of the coma, Simon stops on his way out the door, looks back at me and whistles.

  "I wasn't sure even Doctor Stokely could bring you back," he says, shaking his head. "I mean the man is good, do you get me? The best. But I've never seen anyone come back from where you'd gone. You were dead, for sure. Nice one, though. Amazing. You are one lucky, lucky bastard."

  Lucky. He had no idea. None of them did. That was the day I remembered what my work was.

  That afternoon, Stokely shows me the back of my skull. He takes a picture on his phone. Then he fetches the x-rays and shows me the damage, and his repairs. I look hard, but I'm no doctor, and can't see what he missed.

  I wish I hadn't come back. Shoulda stayed in the submarine until my oxygen ran out. Better dead than this; this half-life, this nothingness.

  When I see Stokely yawn, there's no urge to bring him peace. I can imagine it, but there's no passion. Nothing at all. There are no more signs. No guidance. The angel has left me. She isn't here.

  I am alone.

  The American sits in the only chair, after dragging it closer to the bed. He stares at me, says nothing. I glance at him and look away. But that glance is enough. I know him. I've seen him before. I'm good at remembering people. I search the parts of my memory that have returned, trying to find him. Then he speaks, and I have it. It's like when the fourth wheel of a combination lock swings to the right number and the whole thing clicks open.

  "We almost lost you, Scott. And that would have been a tragedy."

  He doesn't say Scott. He uses my real name.

  He was there that night at the hotel. In the conference room. He was the one who told us about the drug trial, before we were interviewed.